From Cool Science Dept: Mimicking Gecko Feet

From AAAS Science Roundup:

"The ability of gecko lizards to scurry up walls and cling to ceilings by their toes has fascinated scientists for decades. The creatures owe this remarkable ability to microscopic branched elastic hairs on their feet that are able to induce atomic-scale attractive forces to strongly grip surfaces. In a Report in the 10 Oct 2008 Science, Qu et al. reported on the latest attempt to mimic this impressive adhesive effect. The team showed that a disordered array of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes -- consisting of a straight body segment with curly entangled tops -- can achieve macroscopic adhesive forces almost 10 times that of a gecko foot. A strong shear adhesive force, forged when the tangled portions of the nanotubes become aligned when pressed onto a surface, allows for a strong grip of vertical surfaces without slipping, while a much lower normal adhesive force enable easy removal and reattachment. In addition to the ability to stick objects to walls, the material could have many technological applications, including connecting electronic devices and substituting for conventional adhesives in the dry vacuum of space."

Is it really a myth in "the myth of the paperless office"?

Turns out that the myth might not have been a myth after all! Since 2001, American office workers have been reducing their paper usage. The Economist has a great article on this.

Tonight's debate brings us these wonderful images...

brain gets smaller when you add alcohol?

Very interesting. So to summarize past research, some moderate drinking
of red wine causes a smaller brain and live longer. (and maybe happier?)

"People who drink alcohol -- even the moderate amounts that help prevent heart disease -- have a smaller brain volume than those who do not, according to a study in the Archives of Neurology."

The State of the Union: A bad case of hangover?

Oh, how we regret electing Bush to office?!

Sake as food

From the TrueSake newsletter, comes this interesting bit:

"the genesis of sake (nihonshu or wine of Japan) was not a crystal clear liquid that is best served chilled in fancy bar glasses. ... Like most all things sake can be traced back to ancient China, as this is where rice has its "ground zero."

Farming was a communal occupation, and rice was the most communal of bonds. It was a food source - so valued that at one time it was even traded as a currency. But more importantly rice brought people together. It brought folks together to chew and spit! Yes, the earliest recorded history of sake spoke about a form of brew that was created by chewing rice and spitting the gob into a wooden bucket - "kuchikami no sake" or "chewed in the mouth sake."

Those glorious farmers somehow realized that if they chewed the rice and spat it out into wooden tubs or buckets that the enzymes in their mouths would break the long-chain starch molecules into a glucose, and then this glucose would sit in the bucket for about a week and allow airborne yeasts to propagate and ferment the glucose into wonderful alcohol.

Bingo! A meal and a party in one! And that is indeed what happened. Villages used religious occasions to get groups together to chew and spit en mass to create a large batch of saliva sake - my words not theirs. ...

Then and thankfully some smart and perhaps germaphobic farmer said "I am sick of drinking Yoshi's spit," and suggested that he would prefer the ricey spit of a virgin. And so began the next phase of sake in its oldest form - Bijinshu or "beautiful girl sake" that basically was a virginal masterpiece.

Yes, the village virgins would all gather and chew rice as a team descended from the gods.

My Review of Yakima Big Powderhound Ski Mount - 6 pair

Originally submitted at REI

Carry up to six pairs of skis or four snowboards on your Yakima® roof rack with this nicely designed, easy-to-use Big Powderhound mount.

Yakima Big Powderhound Ski Mount - 6 pair

Installation not too bad; good quality

By Ed Chi from Palo Alto, CA on 10/12/2008

 

4out of 5

Gift: No

Pros: Stable, Durable, Easy to Use

Describe Yourself: Casual/ Recreational

Having installed Thule before on our Honda CRV with custom mount adapter, I didn't think the Yakima installation is too bad. This time around, we had to get the Yakima, because Thule did not make a 4 board solution for the Xterra. The universal mount is a little more complicated than the Thule Big Mouth clamp, but that's because Yakima really cared about this being secure. The installation procedure causes the screws to be covered, so that it cannot be easily unmounted. The installation probably took about 30min, but 15min was spent reading the instructions and figuring out how it would work.

(legalese)

Where does our taxes go [in the US]?

Ever wonder how the US gov't spend our tax money? Here is a great representation that tells you what happens to it:
http://www.wallstats.com/poster/


Apparently, we spend a huge amount of the military and national security, like 68% of 1182 Billion dollars or 799 Billion. We should all think about what Eisenhower about the power of the military industrial complex.

Tina Fey and Sarah Palin

Two is not better than One

Apparently, two handed turtles have a hard time deciding which way to rotate if they become overturned in water. See the description of Two-Headed Yellow Belly Slider here!

Music Mashups

This is a real mashup. The mashup is a real speaker that is embedded inside of a violin, so that the player can perform a duet of live and pre-recorded music. Cool!

New York Times on Rain and Fashion

This is a wonderful little slide show of how rain mix with fashion in New York:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/26/fashion/shows/20080927-street-feature/index.html

in the 'hmm' dept for psychology...

From the AAAS Science Mailer:

PSYCHOLOGY: Social Preferences

Gilbert Chin

The quotidian activity of playing cards (or kibitzing) can just as well be regarded as a self-sustaining institution within which individuals behave according to a shared set of incentives. As such, their behaviors become susceptible to game theoretic analysis, where strategies are formulated on the basis of estimated payouts, even those as intangible as a reputation for selfishness.

Yamagishi et al. have adopted this framework in analyzing the motivations for choices made by Japanese and Americans in a simple task. When offered a single colored pen from a group of five pens as a token payment for filling out a survey, Hokkaido students were less likely than Wolverines (Michigan students) to take a particular pen if it were the only one of that color available--that is, they would avoid reducing the scope of choice for subsequent people and thus, by incurring the cost of passing up the uniquely colored pen, not run the risk of making a negative impression on others. In contrast, a cultural psychological assessment would explain this outcome as revealing the preference (higher valuation) that East Asians place on conformity as opposed to the affinity of Westerners for individualism. When the choice task was expanded to include situations where the student was told explicitly that he was the first or the last of the five students to receive pens, the East-West difference disappeared; both Japanese and Americans were less likely to take the uniquely colored if they were the first and more likely (equally so) if they were the last to choose.-- GJC

Psychol. Sci. 19, 578 (2008).

Love this "Folder" for your laptop

This is a cheeky product, but it's definitely cute. Working on UI at PARC, the historical reference is hard to miss: "The whole "folder" metaphor was first developed by Xerox Parc for its ground-breaking Star desktop system. Those folders were designed to mimic the real-life paper-and-manilla-folders offices use to file paperwork. "

Why iPhone will not do well in Japan, at least initially...

Having just come back from Japan:

When the iPhone 3G finally came out, I didn't think it would do so well in Japan for a wide variety of reasons. I haven't heard any statistics about how it is doing, but there are a number of things the iPhone will have to address for the Japanese market:

- First, a lot of mobile phone use in Japan is while riding the train. iPhone, on the other hand, needs two handed input. It's impossible to use the iPhone while riding the train, unless you happen to have a seat.

- The iphone doesn't support the very important QR code, which is used to scan for more information. By scanning the QR code in a magazine, users don't have to type in URL, and can simply get a hyperlink to the required info. This can be fixed quickly, and someone is probably already writing the app.

- The iPhone doesn't support the wide practice of using emoticons to indicate a person's emotions. But this can be fixed easily, assuming Apple is paying attention.

- There are a number of hardware design issues. There is no IR port for easy contact information exchange, no FeliCa electronic wallet for paying for train tickets and conv. stores, and there are no holes for hanging trinkets, especially for the ladies. Worst of all, the iPhone has much worse battery life than a standard Japanese mobile phone.

On the other hand, the iPhone has piqued people's interest in Japan. What it has going for it:

- Great screen, and awesome web browser. This is so far ahead of other handsets, and is the one thing that gets people really interested.

- Applications. The app store is bringing out a bunch of great games and utilities that people will find interesting. This makes the mobile phone into a true platform, which has not been done very well in Japan so far.

Check out these links for more info:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/17/technology/jiphone.php

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/11/iphone_3g_rocks_japanese_smartphone_market.html

Architecture

"The purpose of architecture is to shelter and enhance man's life on earth and to fulfill his belief in the nobility of his existence." — Eero Saarinen

猪, 男人, 女人

I received this from my brother he found somewhere online:

人=吃飯+睡覺+上班+玩,
猪=吃飯+ 睡覺,
代入:人=猪+上班+玩,
即:人-玩=猪+上班.
結論:不懂玩的人=會上班的猪

男人=吃飯+ 睡覺+挣錢
豬=吃飯+ 睡覺
男人=豬+掙錢
豬=男人-挣錢
所以男人不挣錢等于豬。

女人=吃飯+ 睡覺+花錢。
豬=吃飯+ 睡覺。
代入上式得：女人=豬+花錢。
移項得：女人-花錢=豬。
结論：女人不花錢的都是豬。

综上：男人為了讓女人不變成豬而掙錢！
女人為了讓男人不變成豬而花錢！
男人+女人=吃飯+睡覺+挣錢+吃飯+睡覺+花錢（-挣錢）
=2X(吃飯+睡覺)=兩頭豬

Using Google to check on the true age of China's gymnastics competitors

So, there has been a great deal of controversy about the true age of the Chinese female competitors in the Olympic games. Apparently, the younger the competitors, the more likely their center of gravity is advantageous in the competition. The development during puberty changes their body shape and this makes a huge difference.

I had the thought of using search engines to check on the likely age of these competitors. I first found their Chinese names, and then searched for their name with the years to see which is more likely to be their true birth year. Here are the results:

For 何可欣 (He Kexin), 1994 gives 4000 results, while 1993 gives only 2730 results.

For 江钰源 (Jiang Yuyuan), 1992 gives 11500 results, while 1991 gives only 5220 results.

It seems quite clear that while the Chinese NGO can change the passports of the competitors, they can't change the documents that are already on the web. In fact, browsing through the web documents written before this past year, there is plenty of evidence that it was broadly known the true age of these competitors. For the IOC to not investigate this problem, it seems they're damaging their own authority.

A new description of the progress in the science of understanding visual perception

This article describes visual perception as an issue around the management of limited resource of visual attention that a person has. It is now somewhat understood in the field that visual perception is both a bottom-up as well as a top-down processing process.

Chernoff faces for baseball statistics

This is one of the most terrible ideas I have seen, and unfortunately described by a publication I usually enjoy, NYTimes. This article describes the use of Chernoff faces for looking at baseball statistics. This doesn't work, in my opinion, because humans have a real reactions to depictions of faces. Instead of looking at real correlations, the depictions only confuse the interpretation of the real useful statistics.