emotiv- brain/computer interface

"Emotiv has created the first brain computer interface technology that can detect and process both human conscious thoughts and non-conscious emotions. The technology, which comprises a headset and a suite of applications, allows computers to differentiate between particular thoughts such as lifting an object or rotating it; detect and mimic a user’s expressions, such as a smile or wink; and respond to emotions such as excitement or calmness."
apparently emotiv is going to be attacking the market first through video game applications, which is pretty exciting, but for some reason i find it strange that the video game industry will be responsible for bringing this kind of technology to the forefront.
heres a demo of the system from the game developers conference, i think.

seems kind of sluggish, but pretty cool, huh?

neil degrasse tyson- unintelligent design

i love this guy. the always lovable host of nova science now, director of the american museum of natural history hayden planetarium, recipient of seven honorary doctorates and the NASA distinguished public service medal, astrophysicist neil degrasse tyson refuting intelligent design.


as a bonus here is a link to his appearance on the daily show.
link

soudwave patterns in water

more of the same this time with water. these different wave phenomena all fall under the term cymatics. i love this kinda shit.

chlandi plate resonance patterns

sand on a metal plate hit with sound responds by creating different waveform patterns for each frequency. coool.

whitney music box

link
"In this movie, each of the 48 dots is moving in a circle. Each of the dots is on a 3 minute cycle. At the end of 3 minutes, the outermost dot will have moved around the circle once (this dot represents the first harmonic or fundamental). The next dot will have moved around the circle twice (representing the second harmonic). The next dot three times, and so on. The innermost dot moves around the circle 48 times.

Now, imagine these dots are raised bumps on a disc which is controlling a music box, with each bump triggering a note when it passes the zero degree line (a line extending from the center to the east). The result would look and sound something like this three minute looping movie, which I built in Flash"

be sure to check out some of the other variations on the right of the page, particularly "var. 16 - stereo - 210"

further explanation here by the creator jim bumgardner krazydad.com

spiders on drugs

funny parody of the famous 60s experiment where scientists gave spiders different drugs and observed the effects on their web building abilities

virgin galactics spaceship2

take a virtual flight inside spaceship2, virgin airlines first tourist centric space craft. tickets are 200,000, in case youre wondering.


for more info check out space.com

ecosphere ecosystems

this is kinda cool, a great teaching aid for understanding ecosystems.
" The Original EcoSphere® is the world's first totally enclosed ecosystem - a complete, self-contained and self-sustaining miniature world encased in glass."
"Unlike an aquarium, this little world is a closed ecological system. Light gets in, but nothing else - no food, no water, no nutrients. Everything must be recycled. Just like the Earth. In our larger world, we also - plants and animals and microorganisms - live off each other, breathe and eat each other's wastes, depend on one another. "

eco-sphere.com

realtime earthquake resources

weve had a couple nice little 3.7 shakes over the past few days centered in berkeley on the hayward fault. ive felt a ton of minor shakes and shimmies since ive been in san francisco, but few substantial ones yet. pretty wild. its insane, once you start paying attention, just how many little earthquakes are happening every day all over the world.
anyway, if anyone is intersted, heres a link to realtime earthquake info, shakemaps and seismographs.
quake.wr.usgs.gov
wheeeeee!

edo-period wildlife illustrations

pretty substantial collection of links to book scans featuring all sorts of different wildlife.
link
kind of difficult to navigate unless you know japanese, but all you need to do is click on
this icon-and youll find it.
lifted from boingboing who lifted it from pink tentacle. i dont know who they lifted it from. =]

virtual planetarium

this is a pretty neat little tool. you can change your latitude and longitude to reflect your location, as well as date and time, and compare with the sky above you. or the day you were born. or gaze at the sky your lover sees while theyre sitting on a beach in hawaii. without you. explore the skies and click on the stars for their names and information.
neave planetarium

heres a link to find your latitude and longitude-link

kinetic sculptures

so i just went digging on you tube trying to find this advertisment i saw some time ago featuring an artist whose work was really interesting. he built these huge sulptures that "walked" on their own, under the influence of the wind. so i searched for "kinetic sculpture", and boy did i hit paydirt. the mans name is theo jansen.

here is the bmw commercial i first saw


and a few more videos of his work






this one is neat, horse sculpture project inspired by jansens work


wow, thank god for youtube, huh?
oh, there are more videos of mr. jansens work available if anyone is interested.

new solar power breakthrough

from the u.s. department of energy website:

New World Record Achieved in Solar Cell Technology
New Solar Cell Breaks the “40 Percent Efficient” Sunlight-to-Electricity Barrier

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner today announced that with DOE funding, a concentrator solar cell produced by Boeing-Spectrolab has recently achieved a world-record conversion efficiency of 40.7 percent, establishing a new milestone in sunlight-to-electricity performance. ... making solar electricity a more cost-competitive and integral part of our nation’s energy mix.
"Reaching this milestone heralds a great achievement for the Department of Energy and for solar energy engineering worldwide,”
Attaining a 40 percent efficient concentrating solar cell means having another technology pathway for producing cost-effective solar electricity. Almost all of today’s solar cell modules do not concentrate sunlight but use only what the sun produces naturally, what researchers call “one sun insolation,” which achieves an efficiency of 12 to 18 percent. However, by using an optical concentrator, sunlight intensity can be increased, squeezing more electricity out of a single solar cell.

UPDATE- so i just wanted to add, in plain english, what this means. the argument against solar power being a viable alternative has always been that it wasnt economically feasible, and the return just wasnt enough to warrant fully investing in solar. that argument has just been squashed, or at least squished. this just goes towards proving that with a little time, and investment of resources and brain power, there is far greater potential to alternative power sources than we presently know.
3 cheers for the greening of science and technology. we may yet find a way to survive ourselves!!1

link to full story