Sapere Aude
Tag: science
There is a 50% chance that a GRB took place during the last 500 Myr causing one of the major mass extinction events. The probability of a lethal GRB is much larger in the inner Milky Way, making it inhospitable to life. The safest environments for life are the lowest density regions in the outskirts of large galaxies and life can exist in only ~10% of galaxies.
the most plausible explanation of the fermi paradox yet.
another amazing science visualization
Neurons programmed to fire at specific faces may have more effect on conscious recognition of faces than the images themselves. Subjects presented with a blended face, such as an amalgamation of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, had significantly more firing of such face-specific neurons when they recognized the blended or morphed face as 1 person or the other.
Some neurons in the region of the brain known as the medial temporal lobe are observed to be extremely selective in the stimuli they respond to. A cell may only fire in response to different pictures of a particular person who is very familiar to the subject (such as loved one or a celebrity, as in the famous “Jennifer Aniston neuron“), the person’s written or spoken name, or recalling the person from memory.
On 27 August 1883, the island of Krakatoa let out a noise louder than any made on Earth since. It was heard 4800km away in the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues, near Mauritius (“coming from the eastward, like the distant roar of heavy guns.”) Think, for a moment, just how crazy this is. What we’re talking about here is like being in Boston and clearly hearing a noise coming from Dublin, Ireland.
an amazing read, highly recommended.
a dramatization of evolution from the dawn of time to the hypothesized end of time
balancing isn’t just for segways anymore, or how to make physics high school class interesting for the dim-witted. i somehow missed this the first time around.
birds learn to open doors by triggering the motion detector. now they no longer need opposable thumbs. dun dun dun
mr. wolfram is prone to hyperbole, but at least he’s not boring.
But could we systematically extend the Wolfram Language to cover the whole range of pure mathematics—and make a kind of “Mathematica Pura”? The answer is unquestionably yes. It’ll be fascinating to do, but it’ll take lots of difficult language design. One might think that somehow mathematical notation would already have solved the whole problem. But there’s actually only a quite small set of constructs and concepts that can be represented with any degree of standardization in mathematical notation—and indeed many of these are already in the Wolfram Language.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rushed to complete a computer program it had been developing to track outbreaks; the program needed to be translated into French so it could be used in Guinea. The C.D.C. also dispatched a team, which grew to more than 12 and was led by Rollin, who arrived in Guinea on March 30. Some 3000 biohazard suits were flown in. Experts and volunteers poured in from the World Health Organization and the Red Cross.
The international health community doesn’t seem to have strong internet technologies, and wastes too much time forwarding shit to each other. In the US, there are too many dumb laws like HIPPA to make rational systems possible, but surely that’s not the case around the world?
Without additional interventions or changes in community behavior, CDC estimates that by January 20, 2015, there will be a total of ~1.4M Ebola cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone
It’s not looking good, between the rock (hard to get around, poor communications, not enough trained workers) and the hard place (religious practices that require touching the dead).
2015-05-11: That sounds like movie-plot science but is apparently real.
When he was released from Emory University Hospital in October after a long, brutal fight with Ebola that nearly ended his life, Dr. Ian Crozier’s medical team thought he was cured. But less than 2 months later, he was back at the hospital with fading sight, intense pain and soaring pressure in his left eye. Test results were chilling: The inside of Dr. Crozier’s eye was teeming with Ebola.
2015-08-13: There’s now a Ebola vaccine, which is great news. Let’s hope there’s never an outbreak in southern California with all the anti vaxxers there.
The outbreak of Ebola fever in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which has killed more than 11K people, has dropped out of the news as it has been brought under control. Although new cases are now measured in 10s, rather than 100s, a week, the disease has not been stamped out—and a new epidemic could flare up somewhere else at any time. A vaccine against the virus responsible would be of enormous value. And a paper in the Lancet suggests one is now available.
See also
Ebola is no longer an incurable horror disease. The new vaccine, rVSV-ZEBOV, was used in the last outbreak in the Republic of Congo. It protected over 90K. Health responders deployed it in social rings: firstly those in contact with known cases, then their contacts. It’s the same strategy used against smallpox 40 years ago. And that was wiped out.
Amid unrelenting chaos and violence, scientists and doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been running a clinical trial of new drugs to try to combat a year-long Ebola outbreak. On Monday, the trial’s cosponsors at the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health announced that 2 of the experimental treatments appear to dramatically boost survival rates.
Researchers at Princeton University are transforming light into crystal. “It’s something that we have never seen before. This is a new behavior for light.” In the future, they hope to observe exotic phases of light such as superfluids and insulators.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 