Glass Gem Corn

May 19th, 2014 | Brain

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

glass gem corn

glass gem corn Rainbow 2

The story of “Glass Gem Corn” starts with a half-Cherokee, half Scotch-Irish farmer from Oklahoma named Carl Barnes. As a way to reconnect to his Native American roots, Barnes became interested in the ceremonies surrounding planting, harvesting, and honoring seeds.
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After earning a degree in Agricultural Education, he worked to isolate ancestral corn varieties which had meaning to the Native American tribes that had been relocated to Oklahoma back in the 1800s.

Barnes selected and saved seeds from the cobs that exhibited the most vivid, translucent colors. The particular rainbow seed that became the Glass Gem Corn came from a crossing of “Pawnee miniature popcorns with Osage red flour corn and also another Osage corn called ‘Greyhorse.’”

glass gem corn Rainbow 3

Barnes passed down his knowledge to Greg Schoen who had this to say about meeting him:

“I first met Carl at a native plant and herb gathering in southwest Oklahoma in the fall of 1994. Carl had brought his portable display cases full of ears of traditional corns, which included several curious-looking, four- and five-inch ears, some of which seemed to literally have the whole spectrum of colors. I knew from the start there was something magical in that seed and that I needed to get to know Carl better.”

It’s pretty amazing what you can accomplish with genetics and selective breeding. This skill was a staple of ancient agriculture. Farmers have been choosing the most fruitful seeds to increase crop yields for generations.
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Carl Barnes had a slightly different goal in mind, but the technique is pretty much the same.

If you have any interest in trying to grow some Glass Gem Corn at home, you can actually purchase the seed at Native Seeds.

And you can read more about the rather fascinating origin story here.

-RSB

Kissing Hatsune Miku in Virtual Reality

May 13th, 2014 | Robot

hatsune_miku Virtual Reality

Kissing Hatsune Miku in Virtual Reality Oculus Rift

It seems we’re getting one step closer to that strange futuristic world portrayed in science fiction. Folks, it’s about to get weird!

The people over at Alcyone in Japan recently developed this virtual tool using a modified Oculus Rift headset and two Wii Remotes to interface with the synthetic lips. It’s really a sight to behold. I wonder if Facebook had this in mind when they purchased Oculus Rift for $2 Billion.

It seems that the sex industry is always quick to adopt the newest technology.
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Exciting (albeit strange) times ahead!

-RSB

A New Shark Deterrent Wetsuit

May 8th, 2014 | Brain

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

shark deterrent wet suit 2

I’ve always had an irrational fear of sharks. Every time I go surfing, I get this horridly vivid thought of a massive shark creeping below the surface, ready to pull me into the water.
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Hamish Jolly shares my fear. He’s an ocean swimmer in Australia, a country with 892 shark attacks on record since 1791, 217 of which have been fatal. He set out to create a suit designed to keep humans safe in the water, and the early results look promising!
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The designs work by using rather simple patterns that apparently confuse the shark just enough to avoid an attack.

I’ll definitely look into wearing one of these wetsuits next time I hit the open water.
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You can read more about the project here.

-RSB

Pyro Board: Modified Rubens’ Tube made from 2500 Bunsen Burners

April 25th, 2014 | Robot

Pyro-Board-2D-Rubens-Tube-Made-of-2500-Bunsen-Burners

Behold the Pyro Board: an array of 2500 flames created by Sune Nielsen, a Masters student in physics at Aarhus University in Denmark.

How it Works: As you can observe in the video, the board is an extension of the device known as a Rubens’ Tube.

Rubens Tube

Pressure variations caused by sound waves affect the flow rate of flammable gas in each of the holes in the Pyro Board. This leads to variations in the height and color of the flames.
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The magic of the video happens around the 3:30 mark. Fire and music seem to be a very natural fit.

-RSB

[via Veritasium]

Another Case of Bad Science and Science Reporting on Marijuana

April 22nd, 2014 | Brain

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

You may have recently stumbled across one of the recent headlines in the media that look something like this:

Casual marijuana use linked with brain abnormalities, study finds

Casual marijuana use may damage your brain

Even Recreational Marijuana May Be Linked To Brain Changes

The scientific paper they are all referring to is linked here (although you can’t read it without a subscription, which brings up a totally different problem in access to science):

When I first read these headlines, I was understandably intrigued. Had someone REALLY found good evidence in MRI data that there are differences in the brains of casual marijuana smokers? The idea is not totally far fetched. Alcohol is known to be neurotoxic and it can shrink the size of the brain through dehydration, but this is mostly corrected after you quit drinking. Carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke is also a known neurotoxin, but I’ve never read about any changes in the size of anatomical regions of the brain from smoking tobacco, unless you count brain tumors. However, no one has ever really found evidence to support major anatomical changes in the brain following marijuana use. So could this really be true?

Even before reading the paper, my intuition said the answer was no… brain imaging research is notoriously fraught with spurious findings linked to inappropriate use of statistics.

I gave the paper a casual read, and immediately, I noticed problems, MAJOR problems. First of all, sample size… only 20 people were included in the cross-sectional study. That is low. A cross-sectional study means that they had no within-subject comparisons. In other words, all of the data was collected at one time. A much stronger approach would have been to image subjects before they smoke and then through time as they begin to “casually smoke” marijuana. Of course, this is much more difficult, but with a study design containing so many potential confounds (see below), it’s pretty much required (imho) to say anything definitively.

Second of all, the confounds… the investigators did not control for various other aspects of these people’s lives that may cause changes in brain anatomy. How much did each subject drink? smoke tobacco? do other drugs? etc… These all could be equally correlated to the differences in brain anatomy which they discovered. Or it could something entirely different like genetics?

And lastly, the statistics… I came across this article by computational biologist Lior Pachter, and that was sort of the nail in the coffin. I suggest reading through it because Lior does a great job of highlighting the problems with multiple comparison statistics, causation vs. correlation, and many other mistakes.

He even calls it  “quite possibly the worst paper [he’s] read all year.” The Journal of Neuroscience is a rather prestigious journal, so this is all the more upsetting.

I do not study the effects of marijuana use on the brain, so I can’t tell you how it may or may not cause harm. I am absolutely positive it has some effect. But it’s important to remember that pretty much everything you do creates changes in your brain. Reading a book, riding a bike, talking with your friends…
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these all create lasting memories that are encoded in your neurons. However, after reading this most recent article, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY you can assert that marijuana use is harmful, or creates anatomical changes, or anything really…

It’s just another case of sensationalist reporting of poorly conducted science.
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-RSB

Falcon 9 Reusable Rocket – First Test Flight

April 21st, 2014 | Space

Falcon 9 Rocket Test Flight

The folks at SpaceX are leading us into a new era of space technology dominated by private enterprise. The company already became the first company to send an unmanned spacecraft to the International Space Station back in 2012 (fulfilling a .
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6 billion contract with NASA), and now, they are setting their sights on developing a reusable rocket system which will save the company a significant amount of money.

“If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space.
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” —Elon Musk

Above, you can see the video taken by a flying drone of the Falcon 9 Reusable (F9R) rocket taking its first test flight in Texas. The goal was to lift off and hover at a height of 250 meters before returning to the landing pad. They are still developing the rocket, so it’s much easier to do these sorts of small test flights to spot any design flaws before moving on to the bigger tests which will take place in New Mexico.
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The test flight was a success by all accounts. Stay tuned for the next design stage.

-RSB

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