omnibrain | March 6, 2007According to Thomas and Irwin in Perception & Psychophysics 2006, 68 (3), 475-488:
Blinks occur on average once every 4 sec, or 900 times per hour, and the average blink duration is approximately 250 msec; thus, a total of 1 h out of every 16âh waking day is spent blinking.
During this time we see absolutely nothing that's going on around us - but what's even more crazy is that many cognitive functions (iconic memory for example) are suppressed shortly before, during and after the blink.
Someone decided to see what he was missing during a blink and created a crazy device that takes…
omnibrain | March 6, 2007According to the court:
(The) system touted its offering of legal advice and projected an aura of expertise concerning bankruptcy petitions; and, in that context, it offered personalized -- albeit automated -- counsel. ... We find that because this was the conduct of a non-attorney, it constituted the unauthorized practice of law.
The computer program is now serving time in jail for not being able to pay the fines imposed by the courts. OK just kidding, the creator was fined and forbidden from allowing his computer program to offer bankruptcy advice.
Read the more detailed blog post here
omnibrain | March 5, 2007The Visual Cognition laboratory at Harvard is looking for your help!
These aren't the usual ho-hum surveys - these are some pretty cool visual cognition experiments (I'm biased of course since that's what I study).
Head on over and participate in a short study!
From Josh:
Web-based experiments are becoming very common. Putting surveys online
is not that new and is already reasonably common, but it was generally
thought that you couldn't put cognitive psychology and perception
experiments online because they require careful controls in timing,
display, etc. Well, increased bandwidth has helped…
omnibrain | March 5, 2007There's a funny post over at A Genteman's C today with this great quote from Ann Coulter:
...Professors are the most cosseted, pussified, subsidized group of people in the U.S. workforce. They have concocted a system to preemptively protect themselves for not doing their jobs, known as "tenure." They make a lot of money, have health plans that would make New York City municipal workers' jaws drop, and work -- at most -- fifteen hours a week.
What is she smoking?
omnibrain | March 2, 2007We all know that the full moon turns you into a werewolf or just plain stark raving mad. Well at least according to this website:
The full moon is credited for a lycanthropic man's moonlight metamorphosis into a dangerous howling beast - the werewolf (in North American cultures, or a horse or goat in Brazil, or a tiger in India, and so on). In a less Anthropomorphic vain, many believe that the full moon is responsible for an increase in abnormal psychological behaviors such as suicides and violent crimes. As I shared the introduction of this article to this point with the nurse at my…
omnibrain | March 2, 2007F'n hilarious!
MISSOULA, MT--University of Montana wildlife biologist and Herbert R. Braithwaite Foundation research grant recipient Dr. James Neuthom has spent his entire $275,000 grant--intended for the study of whirling disease on rainbow trout--on such items as a 15-foot sailboat, scented stationery, and several dozen boxes of chocolate, according to documents he submitted to the foundation Tuesday.
Neuthom spent $7,000 on a trip with Hamilton to Lake Tahoe, which contains no trout.
Neuthom is now seeking additional Braithwaite Foundation funds to continue his desperate attempt to win the…
omnibrain | March 1, 2007Ahhh the life of the grad students. The Simpsons have it soooo right.
Ok.. I don't actually grade any papers or have a pony tail...but hahahah...
I have a feeling this is going to be more like my entry into teaching:
(HT: Jennifer and David for the video links)
omnibrain | February 28, 2007I haven't taken my TA orientation program yet - and I'm sure they cover this in that class - but it looks like you can get into a little bit of trouble for cutting a student's tongue out.
An Italian teacher has been suspended by her school in Milan after cutting off the tongue of a lively 7-year-old child with a pair of scissors, daily Corriere della Sera reported Tuesday.
The boy has since had his tongue stitched back but is afraid to go back to school. His parents say he suffers nightmares and runs away whenever he sees a knife. They are now suing the school for damages.
Only suspended?…
omnibrain | February 27, 2007There's been a bit o' lively chatter around the blogosphere about the present tenure system for teachers. One of the clear arguments is that bad teachers should be able to be fired more easily so our children get a better education. Seems nice right? But would it work? Here's one reaction from Uncertain Principles.
And here's another from my mother the teacher:
I think firing incompetent teachers would improve the state of public education; however, making it easier to fire teachers wouldn't necessarily get rid of the incompetent teachers. In my experience the teachers that…
omnibrain | February 27, 2007There are all sorts of remote control rodents and cockroaches out there now - but I guess they've stepped it up a notch and created a remote control flying rodent cockroach hybrid (also known as the common pigeon). Now, not only can they control in which direction the pigeon flies, they can also control when it releases its little whitish projectile. Researchers say they are working on a laser guided shit release system and hope to have it installed in the next version of the robotic mind controlled shitting pigeon machine.
Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling…
omnibrain | February 25, 2007I've pretty much ignored all the academic fraud cases lately since I don't know what good can come from getting upset/annoyed/whatever about asshole scientists who screw it up for the rest of us. But lately I haven't been able to ignore them anymore - they are really starting to affect both my day to day life as well as how I read actual science.
Day to Day:
At Illinois we had a married couple who while perhaps not committing academic fraud (although that has been questioned) were committing actual monetary fraud by essentially double charging their respective grants for things like travel…
omnibrain | February 25, 2007Ok just kidding but you should really read this funny post from the Language Log mocking a Washington Post article about spear use in chimps.
The Original:
Chimpanzees living in the West African savannah have been observed fashioning deadly spears from sticks and using the tools to hunt small mammals -- the first routine production of deadly weapons ever observed in animals other than humans.
The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of…
omnibrain | February 24, 2007
A new X-Ray screening device that clearly exposes aliens hiding in human bodies is being tried at the Phoenix airport. This technology will clearly protect us from the alien menace as you can surely see in this photo provided by the creators of this alien exposing technology. I wonder what planet these particular aliens are from?
The Phoenix airport started testing the new technology on Friday. It can see through people's clothes and show the body's contours with blush-inducing clarity.
Critics have said the high-resolution images created by the "backscatter" technology are too invasive.…
omnibrain | February 23, 2007Do you have a great memory? Go compete at the The 10th Annual Memory Championship! It will be held on Saturday, March 10, 2007 in New York City at the Con Edison Building. You can also watch it live on HDNet If you have HD ;) Hey all you guys can come over to my place! Actually I don't think I could watch it... sounds more boring than a spelling bee.
In anycase... how does this contest work?
There is a pre-qualifying round of four events in which the top seven scoring "Mental Athletes (MAs)" advance to the Championship Round. The memorization categories are: Names and Faces, Speed…
omnibrain | February 23, 2007Funny since my mother is a librarian... "March of the Librarians" is a spoof of sorts of the "March of the Penguins."
Via Improbable Research Blog
Watch out for that hipster librarian in the crowd!
I also just ran across this at Bad Astronomy Blog:
Good stuff!
omnibrain | February 22, 2007
"and protect us from Atkins and his disciples. Ramen."
From the user Salad Is Slaughter.
He has won a copy of the Book God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.
Thanks for all the great entries! And Thanks to the marketing team at Prometheus Books for picking the winner!
Go out and buy the book today!
omnibrain | February 21, 2007The role of glial cells - or cells that "glue" the neurons together - has traditionally been that of a house keeper, cooking up and serving food, cleaning up waste products, and holding everything in place. In recent years the role of glial cells has been expanded somewhat, which leads us to Einstein's brain:
In 1985 scientists at the University of California in Berkeley published anatomical studies of slivers of Einstein's brain after counting the different cells in the organ. They found the only difference between his brain and those of dead doctors was a greater ratio of glial cells to…
omnibrain | February 21, 2007An interesting youtube video from the Discovery Channel featuring the research of Chance Spalding. The video features a monkey who can control a robotic arm with the implanted electrodes in its brain.
via boingboing
omnibrain | February 19, 2007A study from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Center in Australia has shown that nearly a third of people under the age of 30 think marijuana is totally uncool. Drug abuse is clearly a problem that has to be dealt with through education and treatment programs (don't get me started on the war on drugs though). The only problem with this statistic is that people might think marijuana is uncool for totally inaccurate reasons that they pick up either through a lack of education (or even more bothersome - mis-education).
It seems that a possible reason that people believe pot is so…