Thursday, December 10, 2009

At the end of young street

A cool stop motion video of walking down Young street in Toronto (Well, part of it at least.)

At the End of Yonge St from Fixinmytie on Vimeo.

Robotic dance comptiton



Like I always say, sciencific advance does not go like people think. It is always considered that robots would be advanced by useful endevors like building stuff, or cleaning... but I bet that leaning to make them dance is advancing the study more than anyone would have thought.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Osmotic power

Using osmosis to provide a pressure difference, and then this pressure to drive a turbine; a great idea using a microscopic principal.

There is now a company, Statkraft, making a prototype system.

The hormone that brings us together

A great article in the NY times about oxytoxin, a hormone found to influence animal social behaviour; allowing animals to interact in a positive way to one another;

The researchers found that the oxytocin-enhanced subjects were significantly more likely than the placebo players to trust their financial partners: whereas 45 percent of the oxytocin group agreed to invest the maximum amount of money possible, just 21 percent of the control group proved so amenable. Moreover, the researchers showed that the oxytocin boost didn’t simply make subjects more willing to take risks and throw their money around. When participants knew they were playing against a computer rather than a human being, there was no difference in investment strategy between the groups. Trust, it seems, is a strictly wetware affair.

Yet the hormone doesn’t turn you into a sucker. In the Nov. 1 issue of Biological Psychiatry, Simone Shamay-Tsoory of the University of Haifa and her colleagues reported that when participants in a game of chance were pitted against a player they considered arrogant, a nasal spritz of oxytocin augmented their feelings both of envy whenever the haughty one won and of schadenfreudian gloating when their opponent lost.

As a rule, though, oxytocin is a joiner not a splitter. Analogues of the molecule are found in fish, perhaps to help facilitate the delicate business of fertilization, by inhibiting a fish’s natural tendency to flee from other fish. The more elaborate grew the social demands, the more roles oxytocin assumed, reaching its apotheosis in mammals. If you’re going to give birth to a litter of needy young, why not let the same signal that helped push those mewlers into the world give you tips on their care and feeding? And if you’re a human, bent on turning everything into an extended family affair, here is oxytocin again to cheerlead and teleprompt. C. Sue Carter of the University of Illinois at Chicago, a pioneer in the study of oxytocin, suspects that the association between the hormone and childbirth long kept scientists from taking it seriously. “But now that it’s been brought into the world of economics and finance,” Dr. Carter said, “suddenly it’s very hot.”

Good/Bad science jokes


Bike racks

Ensenada is in need of bike stands. Here are a few links to bike stands; Google Image search and a decient post on R U Biking. Of course I'm use to the classic Toronto solution of the bike ring (see image.)#displayname#