zombie
carlyo | December 9, 2013By Stacy JannisKavli Science Video Contest Manager
The Kavli Science in Fiction Video Contest challenges Gr 6-12 students to examine the science in fiction, including science fiction movies, TV shows, and games. Our contest advisors include science educators , scientists, and Hollywood scifi visual effects experts.
Steven Schlozman, M.D. is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a staff child and adult psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. He is also the co-director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry for Harvard Medical School. His…
carlyo | October 28, 2013Join us TODAY- Tuesday October 29th at 5:30 EST, for our very first Google Hangout on Air! In preparation of our "Science in Fiction" Kavli Video Science Contest launch (Nov. 1) we are hosting a "Science of Monsters" Hangout! We have recruited an incredibly talented team of zombie and monster experts that have graciously dedicated their time to participate in the Hangout.
With Halloween just days away, enjoy our spirited live Hangout on Air by listening to our experts tackle questions like "Why are zombies hungry all of the time? What regions of the brain change in the fictional zombie? What…
esiegel | May 27, 2012"Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead." -Kyle Reese, the Terminator
Sure, they may look innocent now. Maybe you think they'll even live peacefully with us and create nothing but beauty, as Florence + the Machine might have you believe with their song,
Cosmic Love.
But the apocalypse will soon be upon us. And I think that this cute fella may be just the thing that ushers it in.
NAO robot, courtesy of Aldebaran Robotics,…
sb admin | April 16, 2012As part of a workshop on Creative Commons, I'm doing a short presentation on Open Data and The Panton Principles this week to various members of our staff. I thought I'd share some of the resources I've consulted during my preparations. I'm using textmining of journal articles as a example so I'm including a few resources along those lines as well.
The Panton Principles
Why does Dryad use CC0?
#sparc2012 a manifesto in absentia for Open Data
Information mining from Springer full-text: I ask for freedom
Textmining Update: Max Haussler's Questions to publishers: They have a duty to reply
The…
rallain | July 8, 2010In my last zombie post, I looked at a human moving in a circle to avoid a zombie (if they are stuck in a room). What if I build a zombie evading robot that always moves perpendicular to the path of the zombie? Would this work?
This shouldn't be too difficult to model. I can use my existing model for the zombie (where there is a force towards the human and a drag force). For the right-turning-robot, I will also have a drag force and a "driving" force. How do I find the direction of the driving force for the robot? Here is a diagram.
This Fdrive force will really be the frictional force…
laelaps | July 1, 2010
The trailer for Shaun of the Dead.Not all zombies are created equal. The most popular zombie archetype is a shambling, brain-eating member of the recently deceased, but, in recent films from 28 Days Later to Zombieland, the definition of what a zombie is or isn't has become more complicated. Does a zombie have to be a cannibal corpse, or can a zombie be someone infected with a virus which turns them into a blood-crazed, fast-running monster?
For my own part, I have always preferred the classic George Romero zombies from the original Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead films (as well as my…
rallain | July 1, 2010Title: Chased by zombies
When I heard word about the ScienceBlogs Zombie Day, I knew I wanted to participate with a post - but I had no idea what to do. My first thought was to somehow talk about living off the electric grid in the case of a zombipocolypse - you know, like how big of a solar panel would you need?
But you know what? Physics is difficult - but modeling is easy. How about I model something? How about a model for the motion of a zombie horde? This will be great.
Zombie motion model
What do I want in my model? What are the constraints? What real-life situations can I use to…
sciencepunk | July 1, 2010To celebrate Zombie Day at ScienceBlogs, I'm pleased to reveal a short excerpt from my forthcoming book Zombology: the new science of reanimation and mind control. I hope you enjoy it!
"Go, my dear Ernst," she said very gently; "go, and forget me. You might as well love a buried corpse as love a woman with such a fate as mine.""My love should have the power to magnetise the corpse into fresh life!"--Ouida, The Massarenes
Death has always been seen as a permanent barrier that only the most divine could cross at will. For the rest of us mortals, it was intended to be a one-way trip, and…
jchosy | June 30, 2010We here at Zooillogix balked at the idea of 'Zombie day' on ScienceBlogs (and secretly loved it, too). What better example than the animal world to show TRUE zombie-ism at its best?
Parasites.
Need I even say more? We've posted and posted again and posted another time about zombies before this day of celebration. But in honor of the day, we have found a few more interesting parasite zombie stories to share with your children when they are misbehaving.
Pillbugs. Potato bugs. Rolly pollies. Don't we all remember these little innocuous guys? But did you know they could be zombified?!…
sb admin | May 17, 2010So a week back or so, a number of friends read an article about death by rectal eel and immediately thought of me. For those of you who missed the story, it went a little something like this:
* Chinese man gets drunk with friends and passes out
* Friends think it would be hilarious to insert a large living swamp eel into the man's butt while he is unconscious
* Hilarity does not ensue. In fact, the man dies. Chinese doctor says the eel "consumed the man's bowels"
The article was widely reported in major news outlets like CNN and the Times, but I am linking instead to the UK edition of…
bleimanb | May 21, 2009It seems like we've been covering zombie bugs a lot lately. The newest story comes from Texas, where researchers are trying out a new form of pest control on invasive fire ants: using parasitic flies to lay eggs in the ants brains, zombify them, and then explode their heads with emerging larvae. Seems reasonable.
We're under attack!
Researchers at Texas A&M's AgriLife Extension Service in Overton, in East Texas are experimenting by releasing four different species of phorid flies (a native predator of fire ants from their native South America) into fire ants' new habitats. The flies…
sciencepunk | May 16, 2009As the last Zombie Identification Card was so popular, here's another. As you can see, my art is improving. All criticisms / suggestions welcome. The next will probably be Ampulex, simply because it's a strong visual, but I'd also like to makes some cards referencing other forms of zombification - i.e. Robert G. Heath's attempts to control psychiatric disorders using electrodes implanted into the brain.
Sacculina spp is a parasite of crabs.
sciencepunk | May 12, 2009Here's a little something I made for a project I'm working on. A blend of science and surreal humour. Tell me what you think. Yay or nay?
Cordyceps unilateralis is a parasitic fungus of ants. It really does exhibit mind-control capabilities.
bleimanb | April 28, 2009So you start out with a simple experiment, so simple in fact, that it sounds like Andrew and I came up with it when we were seven: How long do different species of spider survive underwater? You take 120 wolf spiders of three different species that live in marsh lands, and you submerge them underwater until they drown. Simple enough. Some live 24 hours, some 28 hours, and some 36. Ok, that's a long time, but it makes sense as these creatures live in marshes so they must have adapted to survive submerged for extended periods of time. It is then, however, that things take a turn for the…
bioephemera | April 1, 2009
I've been as eager as a brain-starved zombie to get my hands on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Jane Austen mash-up concocted by Seth Grahame-Smith for Quirk Books. It sounded a like Regency Buffy: zombie-slaying Lizzy Bennet indulges in arch quips while skewering zombies and ninjas with her Katana, all in time for the Netherfield ball. The obvious question was, could this conceit actually work for the length of a novel?
The answer: yes - sort of. P&P&Z is no Buffy. But it will be entertaining for a particular type of reader: those who are familiar with the original novel, yet…
bleimanb | December 3, 2007Humans are now one large step closer to producing armies of undead, zombie hordes who live only to feast on the brains of the living and reproduce by infecting non-zombies with their "zombie virus" through their saliva or other bodily fluids. This is thanks to the work of a team of scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, who have documented a kind of wasp that zombifies cockroaches.
Ampulex compressa enjoys licking pieces of wood, long walks on the beach and necromancy.
The Ampulex compressa actually stings a roach twice, once to disable it, and again (this time…