I, Somnambulate

Relax And Think Like A Rat

2006-05-04T16:23:00.000-04:00

Don't feel guilty about the breaks you've been sneaking at work—they could be helping you learn. Neuroscientists at MIT find that rats take a similar pause after exploring an unfamiliar maze. During that break, the animals' brains repeatedly review a backward version of the route they just took, most likely cementing memories of the steps needed to reach the goal.

David Foster and his team zero in on this process by placing tiny wires into the rats' brains and then eavesdropping on individual cells. The neurons that light up during the experiments lie in a region known to form short-term memories. But as those cells play the memory again and again—10 times faster than the original experience—the rest of the brain has lots of opportunities to absorb the information and to place it into long-term storage. "This implies that it's not just during an experience that learning occurs," Foster says. "If we're right, the period after the experience is just as important, maybe more important."

The results may explain previous studies showing that people and animals learn best when given breaks between tasks—and provide a persuasive new justification for office daydreaming.

A Better Energizer

2006-05-04T16:09:00.000-04:00

If you've ever had a cell phone suddenly die on you, you know that batteries are the weak link in mobile electronics. That's why MIT electrical engineer Joel Schindall thinks the time is ripe for capacitors. "They are better than batteries in almost every way, except in the amount of energy they store," he says. Schindall and his research group have licked that limitation.

Unlike batteries, which produce voltage from a chemical reaction, capacitors store electricity between a pair of metal plates. The larger the area of the plates, and the smaller the space between them, the more energy a capacitor can hold. Schindall's group had a radical idea: Cover the plates with millions of microscopic filaments known as carbon nanotubes. The tiny tubes vastly expand the surface area, creating a perfect sponge for electricity. "Now we can expect to store an amount of energy that is comparable to what batteries store," he says.

A capacitor-powered cell phone could be charged in minutes or seconds instead of hours. And since capacitors can be reused indefinitely, environmental waste from discarded batteries would become a thing of the past. Schindall says battery-free bliss may be less than five years away.

More Silly Things

2006-04-18T16:53:00.000-04:00

Cute and silly, great for everyone!
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/eggsong

Heres an insanly smart bird. You should watch this even if you dont like pet tricks. http://www.killsometime.com/Video/video.asp?ID=103

Marks Hurst's Game picks. http://www.goodexperience.com/games/

Another Addicting Game

2006-04-07T23:08:00.000-04:00

GROW CUBE:
In this game you have to drag the icons on the side of the screen into the CUBE in a certain order. If you get the order right you will see this screen:

This is a very simple game yet very hard. If you've played the game and can't get the answer then email me (view my profile then click email on the left side) and I will tell you the answer.

GROW CUBE- http://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube/index.html
EYEZMAZE home- http://www.eyezmaze.com/

Free WI-FI For San Francisco

2006-04-06T22:49:00.000-04:00

Via Forbes:

By Parmy Olson
Peace, love and Wi-Fi: It must have baffled members of San Francisco's legendary Beat Generation when after decades of gentrification, their city not only became a bastion of billionaires but featured pockets of wealth like Atherton, top of the Forbes list of the most expensive zip codes in the U.S. Surely now that its home to the tech revolution and affluent, hard-nosed eggheads, Frisco doesn't need a warm blanket of free wireless Internet. Or does it? Perhaps we shouldn't underestimate the power of that free-wheeling sentiment, and the will of a city mayor.

In 2004 Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed setting up a free Wi-Fi network for the city before inviting companies like search engine goliath Google, led by Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, internet service provider EarthLink and several others to bid for the honor. Now a panel of his officials have chosen their partners: none other than Google and EarthLink, two companies that had been bidding against each other before deciding it made more sense to work together.

Based on opposite sides of the U.S., the two firms will now pay to build the entire network, expected to cost at least $15 million--one reason why it's not all to be a free ride. San Franciscans will likely either pay $20 a month for the EarthLink service, or put up with a heavy dose of online advertisements if they opt for Google's free but slower service.

According to The Associated Press, the Google component of the service will make Frisco the largest city in the U.S. with free Internet access throughout its borders. There's even been speculation that Google is secretly planning to build a Wi-Fi network across the U.S. to get more people to see its money-spinning ads. But Google says it's only interested in providing free Wi-Fi in San Francisco, where many of its employees live, as well as in Mountain View, Calif. where its headquarters is.

It's hoped the service will be operational by the end of 2006, though one panel member told AP that stumbling blocks in the final negotiations and approval process, could slow things down.

The Computer of tomorrow

2006-04-05T11:33:00.000-04:00

Via: The Register

Asus dreams up modular PC of the future

By Tony Smith

23rd February 2006 13:25 GM

Asus has shelved plans to develop the PC of the future - literally. The Taiwanese vendor's Green PC concept computer, shown to Reg Hardware this week, is just that: a shelf. And some clever wireless connectivity and non-contact inductive power source.

Asus' design breaks the computer down into a series of interchangeable modules. It imagines the machine's hard drives, optical units, memory, processor, graphics engine, network interface, Wireless USB adaptor and so on, shipping as a mix of square full-size boxes and half-size units. To build a Green PC, you just stack as many of these as you need on the shelf-like base unit.

The idea is that all the modules communicate wirelessly to discover what capabilities each can offer, and then start exchanging data. The units draw power from the base through induction.

Markus Wierzoch of the company's Asus Design division admitted the concept doesn't yet exist as a working prototype, but he maintained that if technology evolves the way the company expects it to, building such a machine will be feasible in the future. That said, he didn't provide a date when Asus expects that point to be reached.

It's all a bit science fictional, of course, but inductive power transfer is a reality and has been used to re-charge notebooks and other devices wirelessly. A high-frequency oscillating electromagnetic field in the base generates a current in a receiver built into each component unit. It's broadly the same way a power transformer works, with a primary coil generating a current in a secondary coil, the difference between the number of loops in each coil governing the change in voltage.

The wireless connectivity is possible through something like ultrawideband (UWB), but Asus will have to wait for data transfer rates to get significantly faster before wireless technology can be used to, say, send information back and forth between the CPU and memory.

Of course, there's no reason why, in the near term, the units might not connect physically to the base unit through built in power and data connectors.

Asus also showed us a concept notebook which uses many of the modules that might be included in the shelf system. Standardised form factors would ensure your hard drive could be pulled from one and slotted into the other, for example. It could even double-up as an MP3 player, the company suggested.

It also said it foresees a time when new modules - perhaps even ones acquired on a lease rather than bought outright - will be delivered within half an hour of the order going through, rather like pizzas are delivered today.

Addicting Flash Game

2006-03-30T23:41:00.000-05:00

After playing this game for 20 minutes I thought that I might want to share it with everyone who reads this. The game is simple. Use the Roboclaw to pick up the blue orb, then drop it in to a hole on the other side of the board, but you have to avoid things and doge moving walls. This game is very fun, but you must read the instructions first.

CLICKY

I would like to thank Mark (www.thisisbroken.com) for giving me the link to this.

DIY Skin Cancer Test

2006-03-30T20:03:00.000-05:00

Do you have freckles? Do you think that on of them is changing color? Well now there is an accurate way to test that freckle to see if it is cancerous.

CLICK ME

I read the article and it looks pretty simple, but I don't know where you would get the PCB ring from.

Don't Worry, We Can "Fix" It For You!

2006-03-16T12:28:00.000-05:00

Have you ever had your Xbox crash? Have you ever had to pay the $80 after warranty repair fee? If you have, then you probably know how ticked off I am. If you haven't or are about to, then you should read what happened to me before you waste $80.
Three weeks ago I was playing my Xbox when the screen froze. I knew it hadn't over heated because I had only been playing for 5-10 minutes. So I waited for it to unfreeze but it didn't so I turned it off, let it sit for 30 seconds then tried to turn it back on. When I pressed the power button, nothing happened. So I did it again and it did not boot up but the red power ring was solid red. I know this wasn't good so I took my game out, turn the Xbox off then back on again. This time it tried to boot up three times then it turned off and the power ring flashed red and orange.
At this point I was worried so I called the Xbox help line and told them what happened. This took about ten minutes because the person I talked to did not know English well. So I called back to talk to someone who could understand me. This lady said that I should back up all of my game data then pay $80 so they could fix it, and if it could not be fixed then they would transfer all of my games to a new Xbox for free. I thought this was a great deal because a used Xbox is $90. I told the lady on the phone that I could not back up my games the Xbox would not boot up. She said that it was no problem because it is not likely that the hard drive will get erased. So I paid the $80 shipped it off thinking that when I get it back everything will be fine.
I was wrong.
After almost a month of waiting I finale got it back, plugged it in, set the clock, then tried to listen to some music. I was surprised to see that my five C.D.s of music were not there. So I checked the hard drive for any game saves and found none all of my progress was gone, forever!
I was ticked off so I called the Xbox help line and asked why it happened, she said "I'm sorry but we can not guaranty that all of your game saves will be on your hard drive when you get it back" so I said that the other lady I talked to said that my game saves would be fine and they will be careful because I could not back them up. Then I asked her how the games got erased because what I read online said that the problem was in the mother board not in the hard drive. She replayed with the same answer of "I'm sorry but we can not guaranty that all of your game saves will be on your hard drive when you get it back." So I said that I was promised that the saved games will be fine and now the game saves are gone and you failed to keep your end of the promise and that they should offer something to compensate for that. I asked for a $10 coupon for the next game that I buy. And she said that that her supervisor said that they wouldn't give me the coupon. Talk about stingy!
So I said that his is stupid. I spent $80 and waited almost a month to get a blank Xbox. I could of easily of gone on eBay and got a used one for $50.
Any ways, if your Xbox crashes you should just get one off eBay instead of wasting your time with Microsoft.

Great Web Sites

2006-03-14T11:33:00.000-05:00

Error Message generator:
This is a simple but fun web site where you can make your own windows error messages. You can also make funny Bar-B-Q signs, Chinese Restaurant signs, Offices Building signs and Signs that are displayed on the famous Park Place text sign.

MAKE:
This is a great site with lots of cool and not lame DIY inventions.

Instructables:
Instructables is a venue for showing what you make and how others can make it. Making things is part of being human. Whether you make bikes, kites, food, clothing, protocols for biology research, or hack consumer electronics, good instructions are critical

Life lessons:
Learn how to be a man.

Human Lightbulbs?

2006-02-28T21:31:00.000-05:00

There is new research that shows that the human body emits bursts infrared light in the same rhythm as your heart beat. There is no known reason for this but most scientists think that it is simply a byproduct of the human body's natural thermal and chemical reactions
Link: Pubmed.gov

Also, humans emit small amounts of photons (visible light) from their hands, palms, feet and fore heads.
Link: Discovery

Holographic Data Storage

2005-11-28T18:14:00.000-05:00

Now days information storage is getting cheaper and cheaper. But could you imagine storing 300 gigabytes if video, music, programs and images on something almost the same size as a CD? And for only $100? Well, Maxell is doing just that. And in 5 years they think that they can get over 1.6 terabytes (that's 1,000 gigabytes) if data on a single disk!

read more at News.com.com
And at Maxell.com

Computer Modding

2005-11-21T22:14:00.000-05:00

Sorry I have not posted in a while but I have been very busy. But to hold you over untill I write somthing "Blog Worthy" I will post two shiny new links:

For the computer geeks and dorks: Bit-tech.net

And for the oddly humored old people (as well as young): Weebls-stuff.com

Make sure to click around 'til you find some thing cool.

Men Hear Women's Melodies

2005-10-25T13:37:00.000-04:00

By David Epstein

Even if a wife's voice is not music to a man's ears, it may be melodic to his brain.

Psychiatrist Michael Hunter and fellow researchers at the University of Sheffield in England monitored the brain activity of 12 men as they listened to voice recordings and found they process male voices differently from those of females. Women's voices stimulate an area of the brain used for processing complex sounds, like music. Male voices activate the "mind's eye," a region of the brain used for conjuring imagery.

One reason, Hunter suggests, is that women generally have shorter vocal cords and a smaller larynx, giving them higher-pitched voices. Women's voices may also have more "natural melody," he adds. Qualities like pitch and volume vary more during speech. "There's more prosody in female speech."

Newspaper articles about Hunter's research said that men find the female voice more difficult to hear and understand. But Hunter thinks the opposite is true. Because the brain is apparently deciphering the modulation in women's voices, a female voice might be able to communicate more information per sentence than a male voice. "Most people at a railway station say female announcers are clearer," he says. "Maybe it's this added input."

Hunter speculated about why the male voice activates the brain's visual region: "Perhaps men listening to male voices try to picture what the speaker looks like." Hunter's findings might also explain why hallucinations usually involve male voices. "If the brain had to produce a voice from nothing, it might go for a more basic version—the male voice." The next step, he says, is to find out whether men's or women's voices are music to the female brain.

"Men Hear Women's Melodies." "Male and Female Voices Activate Distinct Regions in the Male Brain." Dilraj S. Sokhi et al. in NeuroImage, Vol. 27, No. 3, pages 572–578; September 2005. A press release about the study appears at www.sheffield.ac.uk/mediacentre/2005/422.html.

DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 11 | November 2005 "R+D"

This is crazy.....

2005-10-13T21:48:00.000-04:00

Target Corporation will continue to ban the Salvation Army from their 1,351 stores this Christmas season. The Army will not be allowed to place their red kettles in front of Target stores.

Despite increased need caused by the hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Target will continue their ban.

Many observers feel that the ban by Target is a result of pressure put on the company by homosexual groups. Homosexual activists have targeted the Salvation Army for years because of the Army’s refusal to recognize their lifestyle. Target is a supporter of various homosexual causes.

While Target contributes to homosexual groups, the company publicly states that they will not contribute to any religious groups. For Target, homosexual organizations are worthy of financial support, Christian and Jewish organizations are not.

Further showing their true colors, WTOP Radio Network in Washington, DC, reports that Target has begun stocking sex-toy-related products. "Formerly the domain of sex shops, such products have been brought out of the shadows by popular television shows like 'Sex and the City,'" WTOP reported.

Elexa by Trojan spokeswoman Cassandra Johnson says the products will be "discreetly packaged and sold in the feminine care aisle." Although not directly selling the "vibrator ring," Target is selling creams, gels, and stimulants associated with it. Click Here to see the product list website.

While Target continues to ban the Salvation Army, competitors such as Wal-Mart are increasing their donations to the Salvation Army. Wal-Mart and others continue to welcome the Army’s kettles.Please send an e-mail asking Target to end their ban of the Salvation Army and their offering of sex toy line of products.

In addition, you can e-mail Wal-Mart, thanking them for supporting the Salvation Army.

This letter will be sent to Target:

Dear Chairman,I am disappointed that your company continues to ban the Salvation Army from Target stores. I am also disappointed that Target has begun selling the 'Elexa by Trojan' line of sex products.Because of these actions, I will be making a conscious effort to not shop at Target, especially during this Christmas season.

This letter will be sent to Wal-Mart:

Dear Chairman,Thank you for continuing to allow the Salvation Army to place their kettles in front of your stores. And thank you for your additional contributions to help the victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.I will certainly keep your actions in mind when it comes time for me to go shopping.

To send these letters, go to the web-site (Here), then scroll down and enter your information at the bottom. Then click "Submit" and they will be sent.

One Face, One Neuron

2005-10-11T12:19:00.000-04:00

When you spot a celebrity on a magazine cover, your brain recognizes the image in an instant--an effect that seems to occur because of a single neuron. A recent study indicates that our brains employ far fewer cells to interpret a given image than previously believed, and the findings could help neuroscientists determine how memories are formed and stored.

Exactly how the human brain works to record and remember an image is the subject of much debate and speculation. In previous decades, two extreme views have emerged. One says that millions of neurons work in concert, piecing together various bits of information into one coherent picture, whereas the other states that the brain contains a separate neuron to recognize each individual object and person. In the 1960s neurobiologist Jerome Lettvin named the latter idea the "grandmother cell" theory, meaning that the brain has a neuron devoted just for recognizing each family member. Lose that neuron, and you no longer recognize grandma.

Experts long ago dismissed this latter view as overly simplistic. But Rodrigo Quian Quiroga of the University of Leicester in England and his colleagues decided to investigate just how selective single neurons might be. The team looked at eight patients who each had 64 tiny electrodes implanted in their brains before epilepsy surgery (a procedure to pinpoint the source of their seizures). Many of the electrodes were placed in the hippocampus, an area critical for the storage of long-term memories.

While each participant was shown a large number of images of celebrities, animals, objects and landmark buildings, electrodes recorded the brain cells' firings. This screening stage determined which images elicited a strong response in at least one neuron. The team then tested the responses to three to eight variations of those images from the narrowed list.

In one patient, a single neuron responded to seven different photographs of actor Jennifer Aniston, while it practically ignored the 80 other images of animals, buildings, famous or nonfamous people that were also presented. "The first time we saw a neuron firing to seven different pictures of Jennifer Aniston--and nothing else--we literally jumped out of our chairs," Quian Quiroga recalls.

Similar results occurred in another patient with a neuron specific for actor Halle Berry; the neuron responded not only to photographs but also to a drawing and an image of her name. What is more, even when Berry was costumed as the masked Catwoman, if the patient knew it was Berry, the neuron still fired. "This neuron is responding to the abstract concept of Halle Berry rather than to any particular visual feature. It's like, 'I won't recall every detail of a conversation, but I'll remember what it was about.' This suggests we store memories as abstract concepts," Quian Quiroga adds. Besides celebrities, famous buildings, such as the Sydney Opera House and the Tower of Pisa, elicited single-neuron firing.

"Not many scientists would have predicted such explicit single-neuron signals associated with individual people," says Charles Connor, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University. "It should now be possible to look at precisely what information is represented by those cells--a clear starting point for studying how memories are encoded."

Although the "Jen" and "Halle" neurons behave much like a grandmother cell, the findings do not mean that a given brain cell will react to only one person or object, notes Christof Koch, one of the study's researchers at the California Institute of Technology. These cells probably respond to a wide range of items (some neurons responded to more than one person or object). "We are not saying that these are grand-mother cells, but for familiar things, like your family or celebrities, things you see frequently, the neurons are wired up and fire in a very specific way--much more so than previously thought," Koch explains.

~Read more at Scientific American (sciam)

Sorry

2005-10-03T21:23:00.000-04:00

I'm having internet problems and keep losing my posts so for a while I will be posting good/funny links.

Todays link:
Toothpaste for dinner, This is a good site with lots of odd cartoons. From what I've seen none are dirty, but he has a lot, so be careful!

Moon plan 'comes up short'

2005-09-20T18:21:00.000-04:00

By Irene Mona Klotz

By failing to incorporate the long-term goals of establishing a permanent base on the Moon and missions to Mars in its new manned space program, the US space agency is missing a prime opportunity, say critics.

"To be blunt, we have big problems with this plan," Henry Vanderbilt, head of the Space Access Society advocacy group, wrote in an e-mail newsletter.

"It's the same basic approach as Apollo: disposable (mostly) spacecraft, on big Nasa-proprietary boosters, flown a few times a year, by a standing army of Nasa and contractor employees. This is Apollo 2.0."

The plan, outlined by Nasa administrator Michael Griffin on Monday, is based on a new capsule that initially would be used to ferry crews and cargo to the space station.

By 2018, however, the spacecraft, with four astronauts aboard, would be routed to the Moon atop a newly developed rocket for the first in a series of lunar expeditions.

The plan leaves open the possibility for developing a permanently occupied base on the Moon, but does not require Nasa to do so.

"Like Apollo, Nasa's new plan has built into it the seeds of its shutdown by some future Congress once the warm glow of the first few daring missions has once again faded," Vanderbilt said.

Read the rest of the artical at BBC NEWS

2005-08-30T20:43:00.000-04:00

A very good site explaining on of the most important things ever.

http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm
A pdf version is here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.pdf

Who Invented The Telephone?

2005-08-29T13:28:00.000-04:00

In February 1876 a Boston speech teacher named Alexander Graham Bell took out what was to prove the most valuable patent ever granted for a device that he said would transmit the human voice over a wire. His "telephone" made him rich, but embroil him in numerous lawsuits brought by people who debated the priority of his invention.

Bell's chief rival for the title of "Father of the Telephone" was a Frankfurt physicist named John Philip Reis, who in 1861 developed an apparatus for carrying sound impulses by wire. Constructed of such homey parts as a beer barrel cork (for a mouthpiece) and a sausage skin (for a diaphragm), it successfully transmitted the human voice. Reis clearly is the true inventer on the telephone.

Excerpt from Fabulous Fallacies, by Tad Tuleja.

Src: David Walechinsky and Irving Wallace, The Peoples Almanac #2 (Bantam, 1978)

Mike and Ray Mentzer Dead

2005-08-26T19:24:00.000-04:00

I just found out about this.
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mentdeath.htm

Finding the Right Odor Word

2005-08-12T11:55:00.000-04:00

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Apparently not. Words may very well influence how we interpret smell and other sensations.To test this idea, Oxford University experimental psychologist Edmund Rolls subjected a group of people to a cheesy aroma while simultaneously flashing before their eyes either the phrase "body oder" or "chedder cheese." The smellers werethen asked to rate the pleasantness of the scent.Not surprisingly, people prefered the chedder cheese scent over the body odor scent even through there were the same.

But the clincher came when Rolls analyzed fMRI brain images of the test subjects, which had been taken during the experiment. The scans revealed different patterns of activity in the secondary olfactory cortex- a collection of neurons that mediate pleasant sensory responses to smells and tastes. In the brains of those who liked the chedder smell, the scans showed much more action than in the brains of those turned off by body odor.

"The word label influences how the brain actually responds in its olfactory processing areas," says Rolls. "We're finding that words affect how you feel because they're influencing the emotional part of the brain." So if roses were actually called "stickweeds," he says, perhaps they wouldn't be so well loved-at least not by our noses.

Rules For This Blog

2005-08-01T11:19:00.000-04:00

Because I belong to the Google Adsense program, This blog has to fallow some guidelines.
Here are the rules from the Adsense page:

"Site may not include:

* Excessive profanity
* Violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization
* Hacking/cracking content
* Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
* Pornography, adult, or mature content
* Gambling or casino-related content
* Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others
* Incentives (monetary or point-based) to users to click on links or ads while visiting a site containing Ads
* Sales or promotion of certain weapons, such as firearms, ammunition, balisongs, butterfly knives, and brass knuckles
* Sales or promotion of beer or hard alcohol
* Sales or promotion of tobacco or tobacco-related products
* Sales or promotion of prescription drugs
* Sales or promotion of products that are replicas or imitations of designer goods"

Vacation

2005-07-13T16:10:00.000-04:00

Next week (July 17) I will be off to South Carolina to see my sister! I am very happy because the last time I saw her was last summer! I will get back on the 26th, so I wont be posting for awhile. But I will post as soon as I get back!