Yesterday Nurse Wretched asked a very good question: what is your earliest childhood memory, and how old were you?
Her question was prompted by having read this article by Bill Briggs.
The earliest memory that stuck with you likely came when you were “…3 1/2 years old, according to numerous past studies. At that age, the hippocampus, a portion of the brain used to store memories, has adequately matured to handle that task, experts say.” Continue reading
My children always get me lovely Mother’s Day gifts. I’m excited to discover what gifts I will be able to open with my breakfast in bed Sunday. Today I learned that my children gave me a great gift on the day of their birth: I became smarter.
Funny, after all of my children were born, I didn’t feel smarter. In fact, I felt downright stupid as my memory seemed shot from the lack of sleep. Little did I know that my maternal hormones were actually causing my brain to increase in size.
As China gets ready to launch some taikonauts (every country must have a unique name for their space going people) into space the government has decided that women will be included as two of the seven to venture into microgravity. But there are a few factors that helped them decide which women were qualified to go into space. The names will not be released until just before the June launch.
The women just have to conform to the following: Continue reading
I ride my motorcycle to work nearly every day. I have two main reasons for doing so: I can ride in the HOV lane (a major convenience here in the ATL) and because it’s just fun. Turns out I also may be turning into an evil genius with a dangerous amount of mental processing power. Researchers found that motorcycling doesn’t just make you more attractive, but also actually smarter. Continue reading
So, you’re probably thinking, “That first post made no sense. Of course I’ll keep reading!” It’s okay. I never seem to be able to start at the beginning. SO. In the interest of explaining what survey research actually is, how it works in practice, and what it aims to accomplish, I’ll backtrack and give you just a little about the tools and methods that are commonly used. Get out your notebooks everyone, I’m going to get all teachery for a bit. If you’d rather be on Facebook, or sleeping, or texting, there’s the door.
Adjusts glasses. Continue reading
The Dutch are at it again. Just creating weapons of mass destruction all willy nilly like. Now the guy wants to publish how he made it! The audacity of spreading knowledge! Seriously though, this guy took the bird flu, then modified it so that it can be contagious to people (maybe) through the air. Is that acceptable? Continue reading
Alright guys, I know this is long, but check it out. It is one of the smallest working engines I’ve seen completely built from scratch in this guy’s time off from work.
I swear to you that when it starts running off of the compressed air towards the end I squealed like a 12 year old girl at a Justin Beiber concert. Maybe not a first, or even an insane breakthrough, but the fact that someone put this much time and effort into precision machining and designing this thing deserves some serious props. Continue reading
My good internet friend sent me a link to this story and, like all news stories on the internet, I briefly scanned it, barely digested what it was about, and started making jokes about it in my head.
The story seems to be about a study that has found there’s a correlation between taking multivitamins, feeling a sense of invulnerability, and doing risky and/or stupid things. Continue reading
So who would have thought that you can just waltz down NASA parkway and apply to be an astronaut? Definitely not this guy. But, as it turns out, that’s exactly how you become an astronaut. Continue reading
So, a scientific study was published saying we had neutrinos that were moving faster than the speed of light. That’s crazy right? I mean, seriously, all we’re trying to say is that Einstein was full of crap. If someone is going to try and change the way we think about fundamental physics, it’s got to be reviewed by the best in the field. Why else would journalists report on it?
Continue reading