Elizabeth's Bookmarking

Expert describes what happens when we die

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:26 GMT

Dr. Sam Parnia is founder of the AWARE (Awareness During Resuscitation) study to discover whether “out-of-body experiences” really happen. His research indicates that the brain may continue to be active and aware after flatlining.

Moon myths: How real are lunar health effects?

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:53 GMT

Reliable studies comparing the lunar phases to births, heart attacks, deaths, suicides, violence, psychiatric hospital admissions and epileptic seizures, among other things, have over and over again found little or no connection.

It's not lunacy, probes find water in moon dirt

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:39 GMT

The moon isn't the dry dull place it seems. Traces of water lurk in the dirt unseen.

Artificial cloud created at the edge of space - space - 21 September 2009 - New Scientist

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:03 GMT

Noctilucent clouds occur naturally in the mesosphere over the poles, and lately at lower latitudes -- but I wonder what NASA's version consisted of, and how these artificial noctilucent clouds are different from or similar to nature's (or polluted nature's).

I was watching this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xF2vSKINK0 (warning, the narration is a song). But from this and other articles about NASA's experiment I still do not get an understanding of what NASA's noctilucent clouds were made of.

Waterboarding Doesn't Work, Scientists Say | Wired Science | Wired.com

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:30 GMT

Severe interrogation techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and the exploitation of phobias aren't just morally reprehensible, they're based on bad science, destroying the very memories they're supposed to recover.

The Spiders That Decorate Their Own Webs | Scienceray

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 19:34 GMT

Published by R J Evans September 20, 2009, Category: Zoology Spider webs – possibly the most beautiful and intricate animal structures of the natural world. However, some spiders are not content with a simple web. They go one step further.

Giant Star Blows a Glowing Space Bubble | Wired Science | Wired.com

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:29 GMT

Called the Bubble Nebula, this eerie, translucent sphere is created by fierce winds from a superhot star 40 times the size of our sun.

Chemical-free Gardening - Sciencebase Science Blog

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:25 GMT

It may come as a shock to anyone thinking of taking up gardening as a hobby or as a way to beat back the credit crunch by doing a little grow-your-own that gardening is based entirely on chemistry. There is no escaping this simple truth. Chemicals grow in the garden.

Minimally conscious patients can learn - health - 20 September 2009 - New Scientist

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:21 GMT

* 18:00 20 September 2009 by Jessica Hamzelou * For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain Topic Guide A mere glimmer of consciousness is all that's required to learn something new.

Review: Lifestreaming sites can organize Web lives

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 06:44 GMT

Update: Swurl is gone (Techcrunch tells why); Profilactic works OK now; I prefer FriendFeed and use it to auto-post to Twitter from blogs, SU, and other services.

Pandas to return to famous China reserve in 2012

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:36 GMT

Sixty pandas relocated last year from a famous Chinese nature reserve after their breeding center was severely damaged by a massive earthquake will return home after repairs in 2012.

US sends 2 missile defense satellites into orbit

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:22 GMT

Two satellites are heading to orbit as part of a missile defense program demonstration.

Coldest place in the solar system? Right nearby

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:38 GMT

Astronomers have found the coldest spot in our solar system and it may be a little close for comfort. It's on our moon, right nearby. NASA's new Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is making the first complete temperature map of the moon. It found that at the moon's south pole, it's colder than far away Pluto. The area is inside craters that are permanently shadowed so they never see sun.

Blogger Tips and Tricks

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 06:49 GMT

RecordMyCalls - Record calls. Anytime, anywhere

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:08 GMT

Record your calls from any phone - landline, cellphone or VoIP - without special hardware or equipment! Protect yourself from consumer fraud, unscrupulous customer service representatives and more. Easy to use and totally secure

Computer Parts Art at WomansDay.com - Artwork Made of Computer Parts

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:30 GMT

Recycle computer parts thru art-play!

accidental mysteries: Face Sculptures

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:27 GMT

Face sculptures from empty toilet paper rolls..Make a face or a crowd!

Race against the tide: Artist creates intricate masterpieces... that the sea washes away within hours | Mail Online

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:18 GMT

Giant sand-doodles..art-play..spatial-temporary FUN!

CrypticFragments' Poetry

Sun, 17 May 2009 09:01 GMT

Cryptic Fragment's poetry chapbook as a Squidoo lens

Cosmic numbers: Pauli and Jung's love of numerology - opinion - 24 April 2009 - New Scientist

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:59 GMT

Science in Society - unconsciousness and consciousness; dreams and numbers

Search Add-ons :: Firefox Add-ons - Noscript

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 12:06 GMT

Noscript is a brower security addon that protects against XSS and clickjacking

AuthenticTimes.com

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:08 GMT

Authentic Times is a blog and an online community for empowering women to live authentically throughout their lives.

Self Destructive Behaviour

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:44 GMT

Zut_Moon gets serious in this Squidoo lens, telling a lot of his personal, continuing, self-educational life story so others might benefit from his experiences recovering from self-destructive addictions and bad habits and the consequences. This might be just what someone needs to see at a certain moment - but not what many would want to read every day. This lens might annoy many people because it is so personal and describes many painful situations in detail and isn't written in the most elegant style. [I didn't tag this as 'internet' - StumbleUpon must have - but oh well, why not?]

WebWorkerDaily

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:46 GMT

Blog about earning a living through the internet

The Digital Poetry of Rip Kungler - Digital Poetry facilitated by Phrasr and Flickr

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 07:56 GMT

The Rip Kungler School of Digital Poetry facilitated by PIMPAMPUM, Phrasr and Flickr

PIMPAMPUM :: Phrasr .:.

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 07:47 GMT

Draws Flickr images and matches them to words, creating a digital poem

The Science Group Headquarters

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:12 GMT

Squidoo group for science lenses

Kaleidoscope Painter

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:07 GMT

You cannot take anything with you but for moments it's fun and mesmerizing to play with this Kaleidoscope-painter!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3508/3180985321_67fca82f43_o.jpg

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:01 GMT

Transpopulism in action, illustrated

Custom Postage from Zazzles Finest

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:56 GMT

This Squidoo lens by a Zazzle seller just reminded me that postage stamps can be an artful send-off!

Doomsday Comet

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:57 GMT

Science-minded rebuttal - not exactly a scientific debunking - of the popular New Age doctrine or prophesy or widely held expectation, based upon modern interpretations of the Mayan calendar, that a comet or asteroid hit will re-make the planet earth in 2012.

Etsy :: crypticfragments :: Cryptic Fragments Jewelry & Ethnic Inspired Design

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:26 GMT

Welcome to CrypticFragments Jewelry & Ethnic-inspired Design!I am pleased to introduce you to my unique creations, with a focus on ethnic and regionally inspired jewelry.My work incorporates design elements and components from Native A...

Art Shaman

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:19 GMT

Squidoo lens about life transformation through shamanic art and the Second Life virtual world by ArtShaman

Tuva - A Magical Land in Asia

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 14:41 GMT

Squidoo lens about Tuva with recommended books, products and resources by RinchenChodron

John Holt: Unschooling

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:29 GMT

Squidoo lens on home-schooling, part of the Ever Project, The Wisest Teacher Ever by Evelyn_Saenz

Birdwatching in the Philippines

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:34 GMT

I learned a lot about birds in the Philippines (a new topic for me) from reading this excellent lense.

Let us compost!

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:58 GMT

NatureMill: Automatic Indoor Composter

LifeMadeGreat

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:47 GMT

"LifeMadeGreat is a space that we have created for the expansion of joy in the lives of all. We explore and relate our findings on positivity and life improvement and wish for others to join us in the discovery and the giving. Here we share our free AffirmationFlow application, affirmation lists and lots of ideas and thoughts on our blog."

THE MAYAN CALENDAR DOES NOT END IN 2012

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:48 GMT

OK. Thanks for sharing this information. Flixya also looks like an interesting content sharing website.

Oooo...A beautiful dusk or dawn somewhere!

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:42 GMT

Is it dawn or dusk...photo or painting? Wow.

LivingSocial Books

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:58 GMT

Book organization and discovery tool; organize, discover, link, share, talk around books.

Fantastic journey

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:00 GMT

Slideshow of exoplanet milestones.

New Submillimeter Image Reveals Glowing Stellar Nurseries

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:20 GMT

Glowing stellar nurseries. Credit: ESO/APEX/DSS2/SuperCosmos

Submillimeter astronomy used to be known as the last unexplored wavelength frontier. But this new image from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope reveals the awesome power of submillimetre-wavelength astronomy, and shows another new frontier: a birthplace of new stars. An expanding bubble of ionized gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps, creating new stars. Submillimetre light is the key to revealing some of the coldest material in the Universe, such as these cold, dense clouds.
(...)
Read the rest of New Submillimeter Image Reveals Glowing Stellar Nurseries (282 words)

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Don't Trust an Insomniac [The Frontal Cortex]

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:15 GMT

Think, for a moment, about one of your cherished childhood memories, one of those sepia-tinged recollections that you've repeated countless times. I've got some bad news: big chunks of that memory are almost certainly not true. According to scientists, the brain is a consummate liar, a bullshit artist of the first order. To remember is to fabricate.

Why is memory so inherently dishonest? To make a long story short, it's now pretty clear that the act of remembering a memory changes the structure of the memory itself. (This is known as memory reconsolidation; Freud called it Nachtraglichkeit, or "retroactivity".) My favorite analogy is that, while we used to think of episodic memory as a "save" function in the brain (the hippocampus is the hard drive) we now know that every memory is really a "save as". To recall is to create a new file, and instantly overwrite what came before.

Obviously, this has big implications for the veracity of memory. It shows us that every time we remember anything, the memory is altered in the absence of the original stimulus, becoming less about what you remember and more about you. So the purely objective memory is the one memory you will never know. And the more you remember a memory, repeating it to yourself and others, the less honest that memory becomes.

But wait, it gets worse: according to a new PLOS One paper by German researchers, a bad night of sleep can make you even more dishonest than usual. While it's long been known that we make many of our memories while dreaming - this is why it's so important to get a good night sleep after studying for a test - it turns out that sleep deprivation causes us to make up memories.

The scientists conducted a rather sadistic experiment, forcing people to stay awake for up to 44 hours at a time. The end result? The insomniacs were much more likely to develop false memories. (As Freud pointed out, the most dangerous aspect of false memories is that they feel true.) The good news, though, is that there's a cheap and easy cure for such unintentional lies. When people drank a cup of coffee just before they recalled the memories, the dishonesty disappeared. Caffeine is a truth serum.

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Report confirms 'shadow war' waged by US special forces - Christian Science Monitor

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:08 GMT

Hürriyet

Report confirms 'shadow war' waged by US special forces
Christian Science Monitor - 1 hour ago
A 2004 classified order authorized the military to attack Al Qaeda operatives around the globe. As many as a dozen raids occurred under this mandate.
Secret Order Lets US Raid Al Qaeda New York Times
Rumsfeld ordered US special forces to target terrorists across the ... Times Online
Seattle Times - guardian.co.uk - Bloomberg - The Associated Press
all 616 news articles

The Power of the Memory Molecule

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:00 GMT

A new study by researchers from the Medical College of Georgia and the Shanghai Institute of Brain Functional Genomics shows that an enzyme called alpha calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (αCaMKII) [this is a type of CaM Kinase] is essential for the formation and retrieval of memories. By briefly altering levels of αCaMKII activity at different stages of the memory process, they were able to prevent the transfer of new memories from short-term to long-term storage and to selectively erase specific memories as they were being recalled. [More]

Can you build a house with found objects?

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:00 GMT

One man's bottle cap may be another man's doorbell. Whether they're working from economic necessity, an artistic bent or environmental motivation, some people build their homes from everyday objects.

What The Animals Teach Us - Chard deNiord

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:56 GMT

Words with hidden pictures

Cultural Studies & Analysis

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:46 GMT

I do NOT subscribe to the (unproven by any scientific investigation) pop-psychology notion of definite stages of stuff...of development or of grief...or of life or of any facet of life. But these human development stages are so often referred to that this webpage reference of descriptions might come in handy when I next find myself conversing with a believer in stages or someone who has gotten upset by comparing her or his real life to these 'official' development stages.

A Special Place in the Universe

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:59 GMT

Cosmologists find themselves in this interesting situation where they have a set of hypotheses — dark matter, dark energy, inflation — that serve to make impressively precise predictions that have been tested against a wide variety of data, but presently lack a firm grounding in established physics. We don’t know what exactly the dark matter is, what the dark energy is, or how inflation happened, if indeed it happened at all. So it behooves us to push at the boundaries a bit — start with the simple models and tweak them in some way, and then check whether the new version still fits the data. How confident are we that the dark sector has the properties we think it does, or that inflation happened in a straightforward way?

This was the philosophy that led Lotty Ackerman, Mark Wise and I to ask what the universe would look like if rotational invariance were violated during inflation — if there were a preferred direction in space, which left some imprint on the cosmological perturbations that currently show up as large-scale structure and temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background. I talked about how that paper came to be in a series of posts: one, two, three. And now there is even tantalizing evidence that our model fits the data! I don’t get too excited about it, but it’s something to keep an eye on as the data improve (e.g. when the Planck satellite gets results).

Ever since then, Mark and I have toyed with the idea that once you’ve broken rotational invariance, your next step is obvious: violate translational invariance! Instead of imagining a preferred direction in space, imagine there were a preferred place in the universe. Not because you have some good reason to think there is, but because you want to quantify the level of confidence we have in the assumption that there is not.

So we have now teamed up with Chien-Yao Tseng, another grad student here at Caltech, to do exactly that. The result is this paper:

Translational Invariance and the Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background
Sean M. Carroll, Chien-Yao Tseng and Mark B. Wise

Primordial quantum fluctuations produced by inflation are conventionally assumed to be statistically homogeneous, a consequence of translational invariance. In this paper we quantify the potentially observable effects of a small violation of translational invariance during inflation, as characterized by the presence of a preferred point, line, or plane. We explore the imprint such a violation would leave on the cosmic microwave background anisotropy, and provide explicit formulas for the expected amplitudes $\langle a_{lm}a_{l’m'}^*\rangle$ of the spherical-harmonic coefficients.

It took a while to put into equations what exactly was meant by “violating translational invariance” in an operational way. But once you figure it out, it’s obvious, and there are three ways to do it: imagining that there is a preferred point, line, or plane in the universe. Then you hypothesize that the density fluctuations are very slightly modulated in a way that depends on your distance from that preferred place. Once you have that, it’s just a matter of cranking out some monstrous equations. Thank goodness there are only three macroscopic dimensions of space, is all I can say.

So now we have some predictions to compare with data, so that we can understand exactly how well the cosmic microwave background really assures us that there is no special place in the universe. But aside from the general motivation of being careful to test all of our cherished assumptions, there is another reason for work like this: there are a handful of ways in which cosmological perturbations don’t look completely the same in every direction. As we say in the paper:

There is another important motivation for studying deviations from pure statistical isotropy of cosmological perturbations: a number of analyses have found evidence that such deviations might exist in the real world. These include the “axis of evil” alignment of low multipoles, the existence of an anomalous cold spot in the CMB, an anomalous dipole power asymmetry, a claimed “dark flow” of galaxy clusters measured by the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, as well as a possible detection of a quadrupole power asymmetry of the type predicted by ACW in the WMAP five-year data. In none of these cases is it beyond a reasonable doubt that the effect is more than a statistical fluctuation, or an unknown systematic effect; nevertheless, the combination of all of them is suggestive. It is possible that statistical isotropy/homogeneity is violated at very high significance in some specific fashion that does not correspond precisely to any of the particular observational effects that have been searched for, but that would stand out dramatically in a better-targeted analysis.

In other words, we have a handful of anomalies, each of which might easily go away, but perhaps when they are taken together they imply that something is going on. Maybe there is some incredibly strong signal out there, and we just haven’t been looking for it in the right way. We won’t know until we understand better how such anomalies would show up in the observations — and then go collect better data.

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Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe, Study Says

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:00 GMT

The universe is racing toward something beyond it, a new study suggests. This "dark flow" may be evidence that our universe is part of something bigger—the multiverse.

Oldest Shaman Grave Found; Includes Foot, Animal Parts

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:00 GMT

Archaeologists say they have uncovered the 12,000-year-old grave of a shaman in Israel. The "witch doctor" had been buried with a human foot, 50 turtle shells, and other artifacts.

How To Shamanic Shift Anything

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:57 GMT

Shamanic Shift Center's new Squidoo Lens by Elizabeth on shamanic shifting

Guest Post: George Djorgovski, A New World Overture

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:47 GMT

In the post about my upcoming talk in Second Life, I gave a newbie’s sketchy perspective of the outlook for the medium. But you should also hear the pitch of someone who is a real expert, both in virtual worlds and their use for scientific research. So we’re very happy to have a guest post from George Djorgovski — Professor of Astronomy at Caltech, observer of galaxies, Co-Director of the Center for Advanced Computing Research, and Director of the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics. He also goes by the name of Curious George, on the other side of the reality/virtuality divide. (Note: pretty pictures beneath the fold.)

——————————————-

As an avid reader of CV, I was pleased and honored when Sean invited me to contribute a guest post. Now, CV is a very forward-looking enterprise, and its Blogmaster has already fallen into the wormhole described below, so here is a little (way?) out of the box riff for your enjoyment…

* * *

It is not every day that you encounter a technology which may change the world. Especially if that technology is creating new worlds, albeit not in the chaotic inflation sense… (and unlike certain a priori untestable physical theories, these worlds are very much real, even if they are virtual — but let’s not go there now).

The development I would like to tell you about is immersive virtual reality (VR), or virtual worlds (VWs). It has originated largely from the on-line computer/video games, and that is still its main domain, but not for much longer. This technology has already gone well beyond the games, and I think it will go very, very far. It is in an embryonic stage now, sort of like the Web was circa 1993 (remember those ancient days, when you first heard about it? your first glimpse of the Mosaic browser?), or the Internet circa mid-1970’s (ask your grampa). Its prophets were science fiction writers of the highest rank: Stanislaw Lem, Vernor Vinge, Rudy Rucker, and pretty much the entire Cyberpunk movement and its offspring — William Gibson, Bruce Stering, Neall Stephenson, Charles Stross, to name but a few favorites. Credit is also due to the visionary computer scientist (and Unabomber victim) David Gelertner, whose book “Mirror Worlds” seeded some ideas in 1991 (before the WWW!). But this is no longer fiction, folks, and a growing number of us is trying hard to make it science. This is Serious Stuff. I think that this technology will be as transformative as the Web itself, and that the two will merge, soon, and change forever how we do, well, everything — science included.

Now, gentle reader, you may be a tad skeptical at this point; that is a perfectly normal and excusable reaction! (I know that, because that was how I reacted at first … ;). But if you indulge me for a moment and follow me down the rabbit hole, I promise that things will get curiouser and curiouser.

For a few years I have been reading about a rapid growth of the massive multi-user on-line role-playing games (MMORPGs), such as The World of Warcraft (WoW). I never played any, or had a slightest interest (in fact, I’ll date myself by admitting that the last computer game I played was the Space Invaders, back in the grad school, as a pure procrastination device). There are about 6 million WoW players word-wide. But gaming is not what this is all about, even though in May of 2008, there was a first scientific conference held in WoW.

A more interesting development is the rise of VWs which are general, interactive virtual environments. They can be used for gaming or role playing, but also for more serious things. There are currently well over 300 VWs on-line, some of them very special-purpose, some purely as games, but many with broad and open goals, according to the Association of Virtual Worlds. By far the dominant VW is Second Life (SL), developed by Linden Lab (LL), a company founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, and backed by such Internet business luminaries as Jeff Bezos, Mitch Kapor, and Pierre Omidyar — and these folks probably know what they are doing.

Predictably, media accounts of SL tend to focus on cybersex and silly looking avatars, and so my own superficial initial reaction was “what a b.s., video games for adults”. I got intrigued after reading Wade Roush’s article “Second Earth” in the July/August 2007 issue of MIT’s Technology Review. However, my personal conversion was really prompted by an old friend, Piet Hut, a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Piet is a numerical stellar dynamics guru, and a person with a very creative and eclectic mind. So after he posted a couple of preprints describing his initial exploration of VWs on the arXiv server (astro-ph/0610222 and 0712.1655) I got really intrigued, and started a conversation. I was skeptical at first, but then in March of 2008 I jumped in, and it has been a fun and intriguing journey ever since.

Judging by my own experience, there is no way that you can really understand all this just by reading or listening; you have to try it. It is a fundamentally visceral, as well as an intellectual experience. It is as if you have never seen a bicycle, let alone ridden one, and someone was showing you pictures of people having a good time biking around, and telling you what a fun it is. Please keep that in mind. You gotta try it, then judge for yourself.

Let me give you a few factoids about SL first. There are over 15 million registered users worldwide, and typically about 60,000 are on-line at any given time. Nearly 300 universities have some presence in SL (typically a virtual campus), including the likes of MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc. Numerous outreach organizations and museums (e.g., the Exploratorium), media programs (e.g., the NPR Science Friday), many scientific publishers (e.g., Nature) have active outposts. Hundreds of major brand companies, ranging from the usual tech giants (Cisco, Dell, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Sony, Xerox, etc.) to Ben & Jerry’s, Coca-Cola, Warner Brothers, etc., also have presence there. New business models are being developed, and companies whose business is only immersive VR are popping up. Many government agencies, both from the US (e.g., NASA, NOAA, CDCP, etc.) and from other countries, are active in SL, for outreach purposes, situational training, etc. Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds held a large conference in April 2008. Reuters has a news bureau in SL. Three countries (Sweden, Estonia, and Maldives) have embassies in SL. And so on.

There is a thriving economics in SL, which has its own currency (Linden dollars, L$) with fluctuating exchange rates, about L$ 250 - 260 for US$ 1. There is about US$ 25M in capital in SL, and the quarterly user transactions are around US$ 80M. For these reasons, the Congress held a mixed-reality (natch!) hearing, both in real life (RL) and SL, in April 2008 (see, e.g., this news report). You can find links to many other relevant news stories at LL’s own website. There are many SL blogs, which the readers of CV can surely hunt down on their own.

How does it work? In a nutshell, you can sign up for SL for free (a paid membership allows you to own virtual land, and has a few other privileges). Explore the SL website links. You download an SL browser from there. The way this works is that LL runs a grid of servers, which contain a vast database of who and what is where and how are they moving, communicating, etc. It sends the local data to your browser, which does the graphical rendering; you need a fairly new machine for this to run well, probably not more than 3 years old. SL is a “flat earth” world, and endless ocean with islands and continents. The basic unit of virtual land is a “sim” or an “island” (even if it is completely land-enclosed), and it is 256 meters square; it is mapped to a single compute note in the LL grid. Every user is represented by a human-like avatar; you get a pretty rudimentary one upon signing in, but you can acquire better designed ones for free or for money. (One annoying feature of SL is that you have a restricted freedom in choosing your avatar’s name; my nom de pixel is Curious George, and I lucked out on that one.) You can communicate with other users by voice or text; either one can be public, heard within a radius of about 20 - 30 meters, or private. You can move around by walking, flying (very cool) or teleporting (even cooler). And then … it’s all up to you, your curiosity and imagination. Users generate essentially all of the content - buildings, arts, gizmos and gadgets. There is a scripting language and a graphical editor. Or you can just buy stuff from creative and enterprising people who are good at making things in SL. You can also get a lot of free stuff, some of which is of a surprisingly high quality. SL is all about people interacting and creating content, very much a Web 2.0 in that way, even though it presages the Web 3.0, or 4.0 or …

What really surprised me — knocked my virtual socks off, so to speak — is the subjective quality of the interpersonal interaction. Even with the still relatively primitive graphics, the same old flat screen and keyboard, and a limited avatar functionality, it is almost as viscerally convincing as a real life interaction and conversation. Somehow, our minds and perceptive systems interpolate over all of the imperfections, and it really clicks. I cannot explain it — it has to be experienced; it is not a rational, but a subjective phenomenon. It is much better than any video- or teleconferencing system I have tried, and like most of you, I have suffered through many of those. As a communication device, this is already a killer app. Going back to the good old email and Web feels flat and lame.

So what has all this got to do with science and scholarship?

Well, first of all, it is an amazing education and public outreach venue. There are many superb science museum creations, some of them clustered in the SciLands Virtual Continent. I have given a few public lectures to audiences of several tens of people, and my friend Rob Knop (aka Prospero Frobozz or Prospero Linden in SL) runs a regular, well attended lecture series, “Dr. Knop Talks Astronomy”, where our Blogmaster Sean (aka Seamus Tomorrow in SL) will soon speak. There are many other thriving events and sims, and a growing number of SL uses in a (virtual) classroom setting; check out the Second Life Education Wiki.

VWs will likely become another empowering, world-flattening educational technology, very much like as the Web has already done. Anyone from anywhere could attend a lecture in SL, whether they are a student or simply a science enthusiast. And as a growing number of RL museums start developing their virtual outposts, people who could not dream of visiting the Louvre or other major cultural venues in the RL will be able to do so in SL, tour guides and all. What VWs provide extending the Web is the human presence and interaction.

The author gives a cosmology public lecture during the Virtual Feynmanfest, a conference organized in SL by James Maynard (aka SciArtMedia Sands) in honor of Richard Feynman’s 90th birthday, in May of 2008.

Beyond the direct mappings of traditional lecture formats, VWs can really enable novel collaborative learning and educational interactions. Since buildings, scenery, and props are cheap and easy to create, VWs are a great environment for situational training, exploration of scenarios, and such; this is of a special interest to certain governmental agencies, but not just for them. Medical students can dissect virtual cadavers, and architects can play with innovative building designs, just moving the bits, without disturbing any atoms.

So the first major scholarly use of VWs is as a communication, interaction, and collaboration venue. This includes individual, group, or collaboration meetings, seminars, or even full-blown conferences. You can interact with your colleagues as if they were in the same room, and yet they may be half way around the world.

Here is a technology which will finally make telecommuting viable. You may recall that there was a lot of hype on this subject in the early Web days; after all, if our work largely consists of staring at some computer screen all day long, why not do it at home? It did not work, because it lacked one key element: the human interaction. This problem is now solved; we finally have a virtual water cooler, the gathering work spaces.

The author and some of his SL friends talk about dark energy during one of MICA meetings.

As I already noted, this really works well on a subjective level. Too many times have I wasted 2 days of my life to attend a half-day meeting across the country. Instead of the immersive VR, people now talk about the effective telepresence technologies (the same thing, as far as I can tell, but the labeling has a market value), and some major companies (notably IBM) are investing heavily in this arena, replacing internal company meetings in RL with VR. I expect that this will become a major trend, because it is so cost-effective.

WVs are a very green technology: save your time, your money, and your planet by not traveling if you don’t have to. For the weary veterans of all major hub airports, this is a good news. And it works well enough already, at almost no cost!

What about research per se?

Clearly, complex human communities like SL are a gold mine for sciences like sociology, anthropology, economics, or psychology. For some pointers, see the article “The Scientific Research Potential of Virtual Worlds”, by the visionary sociologist and scholar Bill Bainbridge (2008, Science, 317, 472). Tom Boellstorff has written probably the first scholarly volume on the cultural anthropology of VWs, “Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human”. As immersive VR becomes a part of our daily life, as I am sure it will, continuing the process started by the Web, I expect that we will see a creative explosion of research in this field.

Several MICA members examine a multidimensional data set on stars, galaxies, and quasars, produced as a scientific visualization experiment by Desdemona Enfield and the author.

Another arena where immersive VR is likely to offer useful tools in in scientific visualization. Most sciences are now drowning under the exponentially growing growth of data sets, which are becoming increasingly more complex. For example, in astronomy we now get most of our data from large digital sky surveys, which may detect billions of sources and measure hundreds of attributes for each; and then we perform data fusion across different wavelengths, times, etc., increasing the data complexity even further. This is an even larger problem in biological or environmental sciences, among others. How do we visualize structures (clusters, multivariate correlations, patterns, anomalies…) present in our data, if they are intrinsically hyper-dimensional? This is one of the key problems in data-driven science and discovery today. And it is not just the data, but also complex mathematical or organizational structures, which can be inherently and essentially multi-dimensional. Visualization is a bridge between measurements and our intuition and understanding. VWs provide an easy venue for pseudo-3D visualization, with various techniques and tricks to encode more parameter space dimensions, with an added benefit of being able to interact with the data and with your collaborators. While there are special facilities like “caves” for 3D data immersion, they usually require a room, at least half a million dollars worth of equipment, special goggles, and only one person at a time can benefit from the 3D view. With SL on your laptop, you can do it for free, and share the experience with as many of your collaborators as you can squeeze in the data space you are displaying.

Visualizations of the E8 Lie group polytope, an 8-dimensional mathematical object projected into the 3D space, produced by Wizard Gynoid and Desdemona Enfield. Whatever you think of Garrett Lisi’s theory, this is one cool geometrical visualization.

Finally, for numerical astrophysicists (and presumably their cousins in other fields), there is a potential of interacting with your simulations in a whole different way. We may see some novel modes of numerical experimentation, with scientists interacting with each other, with their machinery, and the input and output of their simulations through VW portals.

All this has led Piet Hut and a group of his friends and collaborators to form the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA), the first professional scientific organization based entirely in VWs. MICA is a scientific organizational/cultural experiment, exploring the scientific and scholarly uses of VWs (specifically in astrophysics and related fields, but at this stage, many of these considerations and experiences should apply in other disciplines). It may be a foothold for the more extensive adoption of VWs technologies by the scientific community. It really is a whole new world out there, and more will come.

In MICA, we have group meetings, seminars or journal clubs (where we hope to attract an increasing number of new speakers), research activities in both numerical simulations and scientific visualization, and educational activities, including a popular lecture series. We are just about to get our own sim, with spaces for interactions, discussions, talks, etc.

In this already too long blog post, I could not do justice to many fascinating cultural, technological, and other aspects of the VWs phenomenon, but I hope that I have at least tickled your curiosity a little. If so, the best thing you can do is experiment and explore, and see for yourself. Please come and join us at the MICA events, including Sean’s popular talk on Nov. 8.

Practical advice: SL documentation ranges from non-existent to terrible. The GUI seems to have been designed by a committee of engineers, none of them Mac users; enough said. Many new SL users never make it past the Intro island. The best way to make it past the first baby steps is for someone to hold your little hand for an hour, and then you can be left in the wild to fend for yourself. We can help you with that, and introduce you to some wonderful SL volunteer mentors, to save you a lot of grief, and ease your initial explorations. Send me an email, or contact any of the people listed at the MICA website, and we’ll get you going.

We already live, work, and entertain ourselves in a cyberspace: the Web with its many wonders and tools. Immersive VR technologies are continuing this process, making our synergy with cyberspace and its informational and cultural contents more personal and more effective. These are still the very early days, and even so, there is a lot of potential. The VR technologies are still very limited in their functionality, but they will get much, much better. As Fermi supposedly said, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. Nobody in the early 1990’s could have predicted what the Web will become, and how it will change our world in the space of a few years. We may be at a start of a similar transformation.

Mice Frozen 16 Years Ago "Resurrected" by Cloning

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:00 GMT

A team of Japanese geneticists has successfully created healthy clones of long-dead mice. The technique could someday be used to bring back extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth.

Technological innovation may have driven first human migration

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:45 GMT

Ancient tools give up their makers' secrets.

Magnetic Portals Connect Earth to the Sun

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:40 GMT

Researchers have discovered 'magnetic portals' forming high above Earth that can briefly connect our planet to the Sun. Not only are the portals common, one space physicist contends they form twice as often as anyone had previously imagined.

Solar system's young twin has two asteroid belts

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:40 GMT

This nearby star is a triple-ring system.

African Spirit Bundle Found; Hints at U.S. Slave Ritual

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:00 GMT

An 18th-century relic found under the streets of Annapolis, Maryland, is one of the earliest examples of African religious rituals in the U.S., according to archaeologists.

PHOTO: From the World of Fungi, a New Disease-Fighter?

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:00 GMT

A new species of fungus discovered in Belize also represents a new genus from a group used in Asian herbal medicines and immune disease treatment.

Smart Amoebas Reveal Origins of Primitive Intelligence

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 08:49 GMT

Amoebas are smarter than they look, and a team of US physicists think they know why. The group has built a simple electronic circuit that is capable of the same “intelligent” behaviour as Physarum, a unicellular organism—and say this could help us understand the origins of primitive intelligence. ...

from New Scientist

Dark Photons

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:20 GMT

It’s humbling to think that ordinary matter, including all of the elementary particles we’ve ever detected in laboratory experiments, only makes up about 5% of the energy density of the universe. The rest, of course, comes in the form of a dark sector: some form of energy density that can be reliably inferred through the gravitational fields it creates, but which we haven’t been able to make or touch directly ourselves.

It’s irresistible to imagine that the dark sector might be interesting. In other words, thinking like a physicist, it’s natural to wonder whether the dark sector might be complicated, with a rich phenomenology all its own. And in fact there is something interesting going on: over the last 15 years we’ve established that the dark sector comes in at least two different pieces! There is dark matter, 25% of the universe, which we know is like “matter” because it behaves that way — in particular, it clumps together under the force of gravity, and its energy density dilutes away as the universe expands. And then there is dark energy, 70% of the universe, which seems to be eerily uniform — smoothly distributed through space, and persistent (non-diluting) through time. So, there is at least that much structure in the dark sector.

But so far, there’s no evidence of anything interesting beyond that. Indeed, the individual components of dark matter and dark energy seem relatively vanilla and featureless; more precisely, taking them to be “minimal” provides an extremely good fit to the data. For dark matter, “minimal” means that the particles are cold (slowly moving) and basically non-interacting with each other. For dark energy, “minimal” means that it is perfectly constant throughout space and time — a pure vacuum energy, rather than something more lively.

Still — all we have are upper limits, not firm conclusions. It’s certainly possible that there is a bushel of interesting physics going on in the dark sector, but it’s just too subtle for us to have noticed yet. So it’s important for we theorists to propose specific, testable models of non-minimal dark sectors, so that observers have targets to shoot for when we try to constrain just how interesting the darkness really is.

Along those lines, Lotty Ackerman, Matt Buckley, Marc Kamionkowski and I have just submitted a paper that explores what I think is a particularly provocative possibility: that, just like ordinary matter couples to a long-range force known as “electromagnetism” mediated by particles called “photons,” dark matter couples to a new long-range force known (henceforth) as “dark electromagnetism,” mediated by particles known (from now on) as “dark photons.”

Dark Matter and Dark Radiation
Authors: Lotty Ackerman, Matthew R. Buckley, Sean M. Carroll, Marc Kamionkowski

We explore the feasibility and astrophysical consequences of a new long-range U(1) gauge field (”dark electromagnetism”) that couples only to dark matter, not to the Standard Model. The dark matter consists of an equal number of positive and negative charges under the new force, but annihilations are suppressed if the dark matter mass is sufficiently high and the dark fine-structure constant $\hat\alpha$ is sufficiently small. The correct relic abundance can be obtained if the dark matter also couples to the conventional weak interactions, and we verify that this is consistent with particle-physics constraints. The primary limit on $\hat\alpha$ comes from the demand that the dark matter be effectively collisionless in galactic dynamics, which implies $\hat\alpha \lesssim 10^{-4}$ for TeV-scale dark matter. These values are easily compatible with constraints from structure formation and primordial nucleosynthesis. We raise the prospect of interesting new plasma effects in dark matter dynamics, which remain to be explored.

Just to translate that a bit, here is the idea. We’re imagining there is a completely new kind of photon, which couples to dark matter but not to ordinary matter. So there can be dark electric fields, dark magnetic fields, dark radiation, etc. The dark matter itself consists half of particles with dark charge +1, and half with antiparticles with dark charge -1. Now you might say to yourself, “Why don’t the particles and antiparticles all just annihilate into dark photons?” That kind of thinking is probably why ideas like this weren’t explored twenty years ago (as far as we know). But if you think about it, there is clearly a range of possibilities for which the dark matter doesn’t annihilate very efficiently; for example, if the mass of the individual dark matter particles was sufficiently large, their density would be very low, and they just wouldn’t ever bump into each other. Alternatively, if the strength of the new force was extremely weak, it just wouldn’t be that effective in bringing particles and antiparticles together.

None of that is surprising; the interesting bit is that when you run the numbers, they turn out to be pretty darn reasonable, as far as particle physics is concerned. For DM particles weighing several hundred times the mass of the proton, there should be about one DM particle per coffee-cup-sized volume of space. The strength of the dark electromagnetic force is characterized, naturally, by the dark fine-structure constant; remember that ordinary electromagnetism is characterized by the ordinary fine-structure constant α = 1/137. It turns out that the upper limit on the dark fine-structure constant required to stop the dark matter particles from annihilating away is — about the same! I was expecting it to be 10^-15 or something like that, and it was remarkable that such large values were allowed.

However, we know a little more about the dark matter than “it doesn’t annhilate.” We also know that it is close to collisionless — dark matter particles don’t bump into each other very often. If they did, all sorts of things would happen to the shape of galaxies and clusters that we don’t actually observe. So there is another limit on the strength of dark electromagnetism: interactions should be sufficiently weak that dark matter particles don’t “cool off” by interacting with each other in galaxies and clusters. That turns into a more stringent bound on the dark fine-structure constant: about two orders of magnitude smaller, at Still, not so bad.

More interestingly, we can’t say with perfect confidence that the dark matter really is effectively non-interacting. If a model like ours is right, and the strength of dark electromagnetism is near the upper bound of its allowed value, there might be very important consequences for the evolution of large-scale structure. At the moment, it’s a little bit hard to figure out what those consequences actually are, for mundane calculational reasons. What we are proposing is that the dark matter is really a plasma, and to understand how structure forms, one needs to consider dark magnetohydrodynamics. That’s a non-trivial task, but we’re hoping it will keep a generation of graduate students cheerfully occupied.

The idea of new forces acting on dark matter is by no means new; I’ve worked on it recently myself, and so have certain co-bloggers. (Strong, silent types who are too proud to blog about their own papers.) What’s exciting about dark photons is that they are much more natural from a particle-physics perspective. Typical models of quintessence and long-range fifth forces invoke scalar fields, which are easy and fun to work with, but which by all rights should have huge masses, and therefore not be very long-range at all. The dark photon comes from a gauge symmetry, just like the ordinary photon, and its masslessness is therefore completely natural.

Even the dark photon is not new. In a recent paper, Feng, Tu, and Yu proposed not just dark photons, but a barrelful of new dark fields and interactions:

Thermal Relics in Hidden Sectors
Authors: Jonathan L. Feng, Huitzu Tu, Hai-Bo Yu

Dark matter may be hidden, with no standard model gauge interactions. At the same time, in WIMPless models with hidden matter masses proportional to hidden gauge couplings squared, the hidden dark matter’s thermal relic density may naturally be in the right range, preserving the key quantitative virtue of WIMPs. We consider this possibility in detail. We first determine model-independent constraints on hidden sectors from Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background. Contrary to conventional wisdom, large hidden sectors are easily accommodated…

They show that these models manage to evade all sorts of limits you might be worried about, from getting the right relic abundance to fitting in with constraints from primordial nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background.

Our model is actually simpler, because we have a different flavor of fish to fry: the possible impacts of this new long-range force in the dark sector on observable cosmological dynamics. We’re not sure yet what all of those impacts are, but they are fun to contemplate. And of course, another difference between dark electromagnetism and a boring scalar force is that electromagnetism has both positive and negative charges — thus, both attractive and repulsive forces. (Scalar forces tend to be simply attractive, and get all mixed up with gravity.) So we can imagine much more than a single species of dark matter; what if you had two different types of stable particles that carried dark charge? Then we’d be able to make dark atoms, and could start writing papers on dark chemistry.

You know that dark biology is not far behind. Someday perhaps we’ll be exchanging signals with the dark internet.

Einstein’s cosmic messengers

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:54 GMT

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is one of the most amazing instruments ever built. It was constructed (and is now being upgraded) to search for gravitational waves. I’ll wax poetic about it soon enough. In the interim, readers can whet their appetites with Einstein’s cosmic messengers, a collaboration between Andrea Centazzo (a multimedia artist) and Michele Vallisneri (a physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory). They will be performing a world premiere of their work on the Caltech campus tomorrow evening (Oct. 30); the event is free, and open to the public. The concert will be preceded by public talks by Kip Thorne and Jay Marx, two of the most knowledgeable people alive when it comes to gravitational-wave theory and observation. The evening promises to be an interesting melding of science and art. Centazzo will perform the music live, synchronized with the video. The concert attempts to capture the grandeur of LIGO, as well as shed light (and sound) on the nature of gravitational waves. For those of us poor souls unfortunate enough not to live near Pasadena, we will have to satisfy ourselves with video:

For those of you that are able to make it to the concert, please let us know your thoughts on the event!

Shamanic Therianthropy

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:33 GMT

From the page: "The history of the transformation from human into animal form, with a focus on the spiritual meaning behind this."

Steve's Blogspot: The Shaman

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:30 GMT

a blog about shamanic experiences in Columbia

Digital Shamans

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:27 GMT

Teratone Vision live at Digitarts Festival VJ Yog versus Soyouth Excerpt of "digital shamans" special VJ set Switzerland Nov 11 2006, Goanimal Audio Mix by Absalhom Some video excerpt by Jan Kounen, with permission

On a quest for astronomy's holy grail

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:00 GMT

From her groundbreaking work on the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to her innovative theories about life on other worlds, Seager has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanets.

Hypnosis for Change

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:02 GMT

This looks like a very effective website and approach for marketing one's shamanic and related services! I bookmarked this as an example of what Shamanic Shift Center - Companions Circle is NOT doing. Why aren't 'we' doing any of this??? ~ Thegu (a shamanic circle companion-at-a-distance)

BBC NEWS | Americas | Mayas to cleanse site after Bush

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:35 GMT

Yes this is an old article describing a no longer current event - I am clipping it anyway because it is relevant to Shamanic Shift Center's mission and that is what our Newsvine column is here to provide reference materials for.

Elephants, lions to roam North America again?

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:53 GMT

LiveScience: Scientists propose reintroducing cheetahs, lions, camels and elephants to North America to replace populations lost 13,000 years ago.

8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:35 GMT

Double your browser's speed in just five minutes Firefox has been outperforming IE in every department for years, and version 3 is speedier than ever.

New Smithsonian Ocean Hall opens Saturday

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:52 GMT

Covering more than 70 percent of the planet's surface, the ocean is both a life-giving resource and a highway. Yet it's also a life-threatening obstacle, hiding untold mysteries.

Edible and Medicinal Plants

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:02 GMT

The plants in your neighborhood know how to heal what ails you!

Plastic Bags

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:28 GMT

More than you wanted to know about plastic bags!

[ timebeat ]

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:13 GMT

Flash clock with new age music background and heartbeat

The heartbreaking picture of the polar bears with 400 miles to swim to the nearest ice | Mail Online

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:47 GMT

Here is a global challenge topic calling for shamanic shifting!

Tui the African Grey Has a Tantrum - Video

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:44 GMT

This bird has plenty of brains!

Wild Sanctuary

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:47 GMT

home to a large private archive and natural sound

Survival International - The movement for tribal peoples

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:42 GMT

News and information about Earth's surviving and 'uncontacted' tribes and campaigns to help

Natural Cures and Remedies

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:55 GMT

Open source of natural remedies and cures...add yours.

UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 15:34 GMT

Research much about plant companions here and see the Botany Photo of the Day!

Door Peninsula Pathways

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 08:45 GMT

Research in Germany: Beetles fight the fire

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 22:05 GMT

Robotic beetles fight and extinguish fires before they turn into disasters

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 23:47 GMT

We would be better off without agriculture...is the thesis here..."Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and logest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it."

MetaEfficient: The Latest Green Technologies and Products

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 21:43 GMT

Unusual sights were seen here.