POEGLES » Science Daily

Curiosities

admin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:53:33 +0000

Finding poetry where ye may

Poetry of Physics, Physics of Poetry (thanks Ron Silliman)

Some massive galaxies like Milky Way relatively new

“I am the last”….

Curiosities

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:37:32 +0000

National Poem in a Pocket Day

Women May Be Sniffing Out Biologically-relevant Information From Underarm Sweat

Schmidt Tells Newspaper Execs: I’m From Google, and I’m Here to Help

The End of Philosophy

Curiosities

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:38:23 +0000

Saint Patrick’s Day Poetry

London’s Mayor recommends the English learn their poetry

As anyone who loves poetry will testify, when you learn a good poem, you make a good friend. You have a voice that will pop up in your head, whenever you want it, and say something beautiful and consoling and true. A poem can keep you going when you are driving on a lonely motorway, or when you are trapped on some freezing ledge in the Alps, or when you are engaged in any kind of arduous and repetitive physical activity, and need to keep concentration. When some disaster overwhelms you, or when you are feeling unusually cheerful – or when you are experiencing any human feeling whatever – it is amazing how often some line or phrase will swim to the surface and help to articulate your emotions, to intensify them or to console.

Young Dinosoaurs Lived and Roamed Together

How many practicing poets in America? 10,000? 20,000? More?

“When Dreaming Is Believing: Dreams Affect People’s Judgment, Behavior”

admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:32:10 +0000

“In another study reported in the article, the researchers wanted to explore how dreams might influence people’s waking behavior. They surveyed 182 commuters at a Boston train station, asking them to imagine that one of four possible scenarios had happened the night before a scheduled airline trip: The national threat level was raised to orange, indicating a high risk of terrorist attack; they consciously thought about their plane crashing; they dreamed about a plane crash; or a real plane crash occurred on the route they planned to take. A dream of a plane crash was more likely to affect travel plans than either thinking about a crash or a government warning, and the dream of a plane crash produced a similar level of anxiety as did an actual crash.”

“The Liberating Effects of Losing Control”

admin — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:01:20 +0000

“Self-control is one of our most cherished values. We applaud those with the discipline to regulate their appetites and actions, and we try hard to instill this virtue in our children. We celebrate the power of the mind to make hard choices and keep us on course. But is it possible that willpower can sometimes be an obstacle rather than a means to happiness and harmony?

“Tufts University psychologists Evan Apfelbaum and Samuel Sommers were intrigued by the notion that too much self-control may indeed have a downside – and that relinquishing some power might be paradoxically tonic, both for individuals and for society.”

Spoken Word

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:07:08 +0000

ScienceDaily: ”Scientists from Maastricht University have developed a method to look into the brain of a person and read out who has spoken to him or her and what was said. With the help of neuroimaging and data mining techniques the researchers mapped the brain activity associated with the recognition of speech sounds and voices.

“In their Science article “‘Who’ is Saying ‘What’? Brain-Based Decoding of Human Voice and Speech,” the four authors demonstrate that speech sounds and voices can be identified by means of a unique ‘neural fingerprint’ in the listener’s brain. In the future this new knowledge could be used to improve computer systems for automatic speech and speaker recognition.”