Posts Tagged ‘Mad Science’
Bees Fight to Death Over Females
By Matt Walker of BBC Earth News:
It is rare for any species of animal to regularly kill its own in combat. However, male Dawson’s bees, one of the world’s largest bee species, are so aggressive that they kill each other en masse in a bid to mate with females.
The bees enter a frenzy of fighting, and by the time their deadly combat is over, every male bee is either killed or has perished. The extreme behaviour, which can lead to even females being killed, is caught on film by a BBC natural history crew.
Video on BBC Earth News
French Scientists Working to Create Swine-Bird Superflu
Lauren Davis writes on io9.com:
Looking toward the worst case scenario for the swine flu pandemic, virologists in Lyon are attempting to create a virus as contagious as swine flu and as deadly as avian flu. Is it time to call in Bruce Willis yet?
Researchers at the Jean Mérieux/INSERM facility in Lyon, France, are working with the highly contagious H1N1 virus and its more lethal relation H5N1, better known as the avian flu. The scientists are attempting to determine if H1N1 could reassort with H5N1, blending their genetic material, and whether a resulting virus could have the worst traits of the original viruses.
More on io9.com
Mind Control with Sound and Light
From BoingBoing:
From a slew of new brainwave toys and bionic monkeys to advanced brain scans and wireless neuro-implants that will soon enable paralyzed people to remotely operate computers with their minds, the gap in the human-machine interface is closing. But while mind-reading gets all the glory, other researchers are developing new amazing non-drug methods to control the brain as well. We’ve posted many times about zapping regions of the brain with magnetic pulses, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, to treat depression, boost creativity, or even improve reaction time. And brain “pacemakers” are increasingly common treatments for epilepsy, Parkinson’s, and even depression. What’s next? Mind control through sound and light.
[Read the full story at BoingBoing]
The Real Psychic Soldier Behind The Men Who Stare at Goats
Lauren Davis writes on io9.com:
When Jim Channon authored the First Earth Battalion manual, he was hoping to bring warfare into a more humane, modern age. In a new series of columns, he talks about the film and why harnessing the paranormal is so important.
Jon Ronson, who wrote the book The Men Who Stare at Goats, has taken over the Guardian’s film section this week, and asked former Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, one of the inspirations behind The Men Who Stare at Goats, write a few columns about the film and his ideas. Channon authored the First Earth Battalion manual, which proposed that the US Army modernize warfare by looking toward the human potential movement. Channon suggested engaging the enemy with positive vibrations and offerings of peace, but also suggested that…
The Unromantic Truth About Why We Kiss — To Spread Germs
Fiona Macrae writes in the Daily Mail:
It is an international symbol of love and romance. But the kiss may have evolved for reasons that are far more practical — and less alluring. British scientists believe it developed to spread germs.
They say that the uniquely human habit allows a bug that is dangerous in pregnancy to be passed from man to woman to give her time to build up immunity. Cytomegalovirus, which lurks in saliva, normally causes no problems. But it can be extremely dangerous if caught while pregnant and can kill unborn babies or cause birth defects. These can include problems ranging from deafness to cerebral palsy.
Writing in the journal Medical Hypotheses, researcher Dr Colin Hendrie from the University of Leeds said: ‘Female inoculation with a specific male’s cytomegalovirus is…
25 of the Scariest Science Experiments Ever Conducted
Annalee Newitz writes on io9.com:
While science has the power to improve our lives and cure disease, it can also be used to torture, murder, and brainwash. Here are 25 scary experiments that destroyed lives, or have the potential to unleash doomsday.
Russians re-attaching dog heads: This infamous propaganda film from 1940 shows Soviet Dr Sergei S. Bryukhonenko removing the head of dogs, and keeping them alive on a heart-lung machine. While possibly a Soviet fake, it produced a major stir in the west. (Source: Time Magazine)
More on io9.com
Disinformation World News: More Hollow Earth, Return of the Popobawa
Disinformation World News – Return of the Popobawa
California’s green initiative, the second half of our report on the Hollow Earth, and the return of the Popobawa, this week on Disinformation World News.
Also, Happy Halloween from the Disinformation Podcast Crew!
Popobawa Action Figure
Conspiracy Theorist-o-lantern!
Mice That Play Quake
Molecular biologists at Princeton University created a special version of Quake II that’s played by mice! “Rather than earning points or power-ups, the mice were rewarded with water from a head-side nozzle,” and the harnessed mice walk on floating styrofoam balls — like a treadmill — to navigate the virtual corridors.
For the first time the experiment lets researchers record the responses of the individual neurons associated with spatial navigation. “Such precision may be decisive in determining how cells in the mammalian cortex encode location – our “sense of direction,”" the article notes.
And check out the amazing video!
Nuke the Moon: 5 Certifiably Insane Cold War Projects
Some fun mad science from Cracked.com:
The upcoming movie The Men Who Stare at Goats tells the story of a military operation that attempted to create Jedi warriors who could teleport through walls and kill goats by staring at them. It all sounds pretty far-fetched … until you realize that it’s based on a true story, and it’s just one of many bizarre operations Cold War-era militaries pursued seriously.
See, the Cold War was never really about physical combat. It was more like telling stories around a campfire: Whoever had the scariest idea, wins. And killing goats with your eyes was just the tip of the pant-crappingly crazy iceberg.
#5.
Project A119In the years before the first lunar landing, the United States was lagging behind a bit in the space race. The Soviets had both…
First Black Hole (For Light) Created on Earth
Whew, only for light. Please don’t implode the planet (not that you’d have any reason to…)
Anil Ananthaswamy writes in New Scientist:
An electromagnetic “black hole” that sucks in surrounding light has been built for the first time.
The device, which works at microwave frequencies, may soon be extended to trap visible light, leading to an entirely new way of harvesting solar energy to generate electricity.
A theoretical design for a table-top black hole to trap light was proposed in a paper published earlier this year by Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Their idea was to mimic the properties of a cosmological black hole, whose intense gravity bends the surrounding space-time, causing any nearby matter or radiation to follow the warped space-time and spiral inwards…
Is The Large Hadron Collider Being Sabotaged from the Future?
Lauren Davis writes on io9.com about an article in the NY Times:
What if all the Large Hadron Collider’s recent woes are more than bad luck and technical problems? Two noted physicists speculate that the future may be pushing back on the LHC to avert the disaster of observing the Higgs boson.
The quest to observe the Higgs boson has certainly been plagued by its share of troubles, from the cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider in 1993 to the Large Hadron Collider’s streak of technical troubles. In fact, the projects have suffered such bad luck that Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto wonder if it isn’t bad luck at all, but future influences rippling back to sabotage…
‘Independence Day’-Shaped Cloud Hovering Over Moscow
Reported on the Daily Mail:
In what could have been a scene from the film Independence Day, a luminous ring-shaped cloud could be seen hovering over the city of Moscow last week.
The pale gold ‘halo’ could be seen above the Russian capital city’s Western District on Wednesday, and was captured on film by stunned Muscovites.
Meteorologists rejected any theories of the supernatural however, calling it an optical effect.
Glass Can be Created by 3D Printers
MADDIE writes on News In Tech:
Artists and engineers from the University of Washington have discovered a way that 3D printers can now produce glass objects. Using a method which is known as Vitraglyphic processing, it is a step further after the group previously managed to create ceramics using a similar method.
Three dimensional printers have been used for some time to create prototype parts because the process is fast, efficient and relatively cheap. 3D printing using power normally uses a very fine layer of composite which is spread over a specific platform. The printer being used then deposits small drops of a binding agent at specific points, bringing the powder solution together to form the object.
However, previous attempts to build a glass object failed as any binding solution used was not…
