A Rube Goldberg concept and construction with fire and torches.
A Rube Goldberg machine is an extremely complicated apparatus that performs a very simple, easy task in an indirect and convoluted way. Some examples of his machines have an anticipation factor, as the machine makes slow but steady progress toward its goal. In Goldberg’s original drawings, the machines very often involved and depended upon actions of a captive live animal, which was part of the device and expected to perform an operation, thereby greatly increasing the complexity, maintainance difficulty, and unreliability of the contraption. For obvious reasons, animals have less often been part of actual devices built in homage to Goldberg. - wiki
This is part of 100 Weird facts about the human body by Christina Laun found here.
The Brain
The human brain is the most complex and least understood part of the human anatomy. There may be a lot we don’t know, but here are a few interesting facts that we’ve got covered.
Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. Ever wonder how you can react so fast to things around you or why that stubbed toe hurts right away? It’s due to the super-speedy movement of nerve impulses from your brain to the rest of your body and vice versa, bringing reactions at the speed of a high powered luxury sports car.
The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb. The cartoon image of a light bulb over your head when a great thought occurs isn’t too far off the mark. Your brain generates as much energy as a small light bulb even when you’re sleeping.
The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as the Encyclopedia Britannica. Or any other encyclopedia for that matter. Scientists have yet to settle on a definitive amount, but the storage capacity of the brain in electronic terms is thought to be between 3 or even 1,000 terabytes. The National Archives of Britain, containing over 900 years of history, only takes up 70 terabytes, making your brain’s memory power pretty darn impressive.
Your brain uses 20% of the oxygen that enters your bloodstream. The brain only makes up about 2% of our body mass, yet consumes more oxygen than any other organ in the body, making it extremely susceptible to damage related to oxygen deprivation. So breathe deep to keep your brain happy and swimming in oxygenated cells.
The brain is much more active at night than during the day. Logically, you would think that all the moving around, complicated calculations and tasks and general interaction we do on a daily basis during our working hours would take a lot more brain power than, say, lying in bed. Turns out, the opposite is true. When you turn off your brain turns on. Scientists don’t yet know why this is but you can thank the hard work of your brain while you sleep for all those pleasant dreams.
Scientists say the higher your I.Q. the more you dream. While this may be true, don’t take it as a sign you’re mentally lacking if you can’t recall your dreams. Most of us don’t remember many of our dreams and the average length of most dreams is only 2-3 seconds–barely long enough to register.
Neurons continue to grow throughout human life. For years scientists and doctors thought that brain and neural tissue couldn’t grow or regenerate. While it doesn’t act in the same manner as tissues in many other parts of the body, neurons can and do grow throughout your life, adding a whole new dimension to the study of the brain and the illnesses that affect it.
Information travels at different speeds within different types of neurons. Not all neurons are the same. There are a few different types within the body and transmission along these different kinds can be as slow as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec.
The brain itself cannot feel pain. While the brain might be the pain center when you cut your finger or burn yourself, the brain itself does not have pain receptors and cannot feel pain. That doesn’t mean your head can’t hurt. The brain is surrounded by loads of tissues, nerves and blood vessels that are plenty receptive to pain and can give you a pounding headache.
80% of the brain is water. Your brain isn’t the firm, gray mass you’ve seen on TV. Living brain tissue is a squishy, pink and jelly-like organ thanks to the loads of blood and high water content of the tissue. So the next time you’re feeling dehydrated get a drink to keep your brain hydrated.
People with voices deemed sexy and attractive tend to have greater body symmetry upon close inspection, suggesting that what we hear in a person can greatly affect what we see in them.
“The sound of a person’s voice reveals a considerable amount of biological information,” said Susan Hughes, an evolutionary psychologist from Albright College in Reading, Pa. “It can reflect the mate value of a person.” Hughes, whose new study is detailed in the June 2008 edition of the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, cautions that an attractive voice does not necessarily indicate that this person has an attractive face.
A symmetric body is genetically sound, scientists say, and in evolutionary terms, in the wild, it can be an important factor when selecting a mate. But sometimes changes during prenatal development can slightly skew this balance. For instance, the length ratio between index and ring fingers, known as the digit ratio, is fixed by the first trimester, a time that corresponds with vocal cord and larynx development. If the hormone surge that affects vocal development also affects finger growth, there should be a connection between an individual’s voice and digit ratio.
Hughes could not demonstrate a connection between voice attractiveness and digit ratio in her previous work, possibly due to vocal changes that occur during puberty. So in the new study, about 100 individuals listened to previously recorded voices and independently rated them on nine traits important during mate selection: approachability, dominance, healthiness, honesty, intelligence, likelihood to get dates, maturity, sexiness and warmth.
Study participants generally agreed on what made a voice attractive. But when Hughes used a spectrogram to analyze these voice ratings according to different acoustic properties such as pitch, intensity, jitter and shimmer, she could not find a common feature that made these voices seem attractive.
This indicates our perceptual system may be more advanced than expected. “We can agree on what’s an attractive voice yet I can’t capture it with a computer,” Hughes told LiveScience.said. - yahoo
It is good to know the nine top traits: approachability, dominance, healthiness, honesty, intelligence, likelihood to get dates, maturity, sexiness and warmth.
The controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding has served a “valuable” purpose and does not constitute torture, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told a House committee Thursday.
Testifying on the Bush administration’s interrogation rules before the House Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft defended the technique while answering a question from Rep. Howard Coble, R-North Carolina.
“Waterboarding, as we all know, is a controversial issue. Do you think it served a beneficial purpose?” the congressman asked.
“The reports that I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, indicate that they were very valuable,” Ashcroft said, adding that CIA Director George Tenet indicated the “value of the information received from the use of enhanced interrogation techniques — I don’t know whether he was saying waterboarding or not, but assume that he was for a moment — the value of that information exceeded the value of information that was received from all other sources.”
Waterboarding is a technique designed to simulate drowning. The agency has acknowledged using it on terror suspects. … - cnn
How about telling the damn truth? Waterboarding is not “simulated drowning” it is real suffocation. Ashcroft’s assumption is wrong. According to both the FBI and CIA, it results in people lying to stay alive, also known as false confessions. Call it what it is: Torture. Or Smother Bagging.
The victim of an aggressive type of dementia, the 57-year-old businessmen was unable to answer the phone, order a meal or string more than a couple of words together.
In desperation, his family agreed to try a revolutionary new treatment - a bizarre-looking, experimental helmet devised by a British GP that bathes the brain in infra-red light twice a day.
To their astonishment, Mr Fennel began to make an astonishing recovery in just three weeks. …
While the helmet has yet to be proven in clinical trials, the family say the effects of the 10 minute sessions are incredible. Mr Fennell can now hold conversations and go shopping unaccompanied.
The treatment is the brainchild of Dr Gordon Dougal, a County Durham GP. He believes the device could eventually help thousands of dementia patients. … Developed with Sunderland University, the helmet has 700 LED lights that penetrate the skull. They are thought to be the right wavelength to stimulate the growth of brain cells, slowing down the decline in memory and brain function and reversing symptoms of dementia. - dailymail
As the planet warms there will be more people suffering from kidney stones most probably due to dehydration that comes by either not drinking enough liquid or losing too much because high heat conditions, US researchers say.
Kidney stone disease or nephrolithiasis is not the only condition scientists have predicted to come together with global warming. Many scientists already think global warming will increase the reach of tropical disease such as malaria. Heart disease is also expected to hit high once temperatures increase. … Currently, kidney stone disease occurs in about 12 percent of US men and 7 percent of women. The disease is more common in the warmer parts of the US, more exactly in the Southeast, a region known as the “kidney-stone belt” because of the high number of people suffering from kidney stones. US states confronting with this situation include Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, and Arkansas. - eflux
Am I at risk since I take 3 grams of vitamin C per day every morning? Being too acidic is one cause of stones.
The doctors state that there are four types of kidney stones. They all are caused by different things. There is a calcium kidney stone, which is caused by excess calcium. These are the ones that I had. The next is a struvite kidney stone. If you have repeated bladder or kidney infections, this might be the one you are apt to get. The third kind is uric acid stones, which of course are caused by too much acid in the urine. The fourth, and least common are cysteine kidney stones. Any body builder or people taking amino acids, are familiar with L-cysteine. It is a body building amino acid.
Whether you decide to go the medical route or herbal and natural route to get rid of kidney stones, be sure to contact your doctor. Some of the medicines they might prescribe you are Zyloprim, or Calcibind. Both are effective in diminishing the attacks you might have, but they can take several weeks or longer to work.
There are several natural ways to fight kidney stones. A homeopathic store, or naturalfood store can give you ideas. One thing they suggested was using cell salts along with berberis vulgaris. This is more commonly known as Bilberry, and is often used for vision problems. Some suggest using cranberry pills, as they clear out the kidneys and bladder. The salesperson at the naturalfood store stated that these both have been proven to work. - ac
I may cut down to 2 grams but I haven’t had any problems taking 3 grams per day for over a year. How long do kidney stones take to form?
Over twenty years ago, Linus Pauling proposed that the RDA for vitamin C should be increased to 200 mg/day. At about the same time, he mustered theoretical and experimental arguments to support his belief at that time that the optimal intake for humans is about 2 grams/day. While the merits of ingesting that much vitamin C or more each day are debatable, at least we can be confident that large doses are not harmful for healthy people and may be of therapeutic benefit in many cases. In particular, the concern about the role of vitamin C in kidney stone formation, a source of speculation for several decades, appears to be no longer justified. - pi
Google Inc. will delete personal information about users of its YouTube video-sharing website before turning data over to Viacom Inc. and other companies in a copyright lawsuit alleging widespread piracy.
Google, owner of the most-used Internet search engine, earlier this month resisted a federal judge’s order to turn over all users’ viewing histories, citing privacy concerns. The agreement lets Google use anonymous numbers to replace data such as usernames and Internet addresses, which would have allowed Viacom to identify specific YouTube users. … Viacom, which sought the information as part of its 2007 lawsuit against Google, agreed to the partial deletion yesterday after US District Judge Louis Stanton in New York ordered them on July 2 to work out a plan to turn over the data. Viacom, owner of the MTV and Comedy Central networks, plans to use the information to determine if YouTube users illegally share content.
Google has resisted attempts to get at its user data. In 2006, the company fought a US subpoena for months as it sought to assure visitors that their search records weren’t easily accessible. Google founder Sergey Brin said the company has an “obligation” to protect users’ privacy. - boston
