Here’s a curious paradox related to American Sign Language, the system of hand-based gestures used by around 2 million deaf people in the US and elsewhere to communicate.

Almost 40 years ago, researchers discovered that although it takes longer to make signs than to say the equivalent words, on average sentences can be completed in about the same time. How can that be possible?

Today, Andrew Chong and buddies at Princeton University in New Jersey give us the answer. They say that the information content of the 45 handshapes that make up sign language is higher than the information content of phonemes, the building blocks of the spoken word. In other words, there is greater redundancy in spoken English than signed English.

In a way, that’s a trivial explanation, a mere restatement of the problem. What’s impressive about the Princeton contribution is the way they have arrived at this conclusion.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

First, we must know how the mass of Hell is changing over time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.

Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can make the assumption that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Next, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

(1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

(2) If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by my Professor during my Freshman year that, “it will be a cold day in Hell before I pass you”, and take into account the fact that I passed his class, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct…

{ via Albany.edu }

Is Heaven hotter than Hell?

The temperature of heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is the Bible, Isaiah 30:26 reads, Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days. Thus, heaven receives from the moon as much radiation as the earth does from the sun, and in addition seven times seven (forty nine) times as much as the earth does from the sun, or fifty times in all. The light we receive from the moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature of heaven: The radiation falling on heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation. In other words, heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann fourth power law for radiation

(H/E)⁴ = 50

where E is the absolute temperature of the earth, 300°K (273+27). This gives H the absolute temperature of heaven, as 798° absolute (525°C).

The exact temperature of hell cannot be computed but it must be less than 444.6°C, the temperature at which brimstone or sulfur changes from a liquid to a gas. Revelations 21:8: But the fearful and unbelieving… shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” A lake of molten brimstone [sulfur] means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, which is 444.6°C. (Above that point, it would be a vapor, not a lake.)

We have then, temperature of heaven, 525°C (977°F). Temperature of hell, less than 445°F). Therefore heaven is hotter than hell.

{ Applied Optics, 1972 }

photo { Mark Thiessen }

An abundance of brain scans, experimental studies and case histories has, in the end, failed to answer certain vital questions: What is music? Where can we find it in the brain? Why does it do what it does to us?

The brain is, in essence, a musical instrument—taking bits of material from a world of chaos, then shaping and modulating them into one graceful, lyrical stream. Yet, despite some scientific success in mapping its discrete compartments, it is an organ that resists efforts to render its workings in black and white. Cognition involves processes that are simply too wide-ranging and complex to be assigned to a single anatomical location.

Scientists have had to grapple with this, as well as with what is known as “plasticity.” At a recent conference on “Emotion, Music & the Brain” (…) Concetta Tomaino explained the phenomenon: “Simply put, the brain changes as it experiences and learns.” In effect, those attempting to pin down its internal circuitry are chasing a moving target.

Yet, the plasticity that reshapes the brain as we grow is also a blessing. “The challenge is in knowing how it can change when there is damage,” says Dr. Tomaino, “and then working with the neural networks that are still available.”

{ Wall Street Journal | Continue reading }

artwork { James Roper }

The success of many attacks on computer systems can be traced back to the security engineers not understanding the psychology of the system users they meant to protect. We examine a variety of scams and “short cons” that were investigated, documented and recreated for the BBC TV programme The Real Hustle and we extract from them some general principles about the recurring behavioural patterns of victims that hustlers have learnt to exploit.

We argue that an understanding of these inherent “human factors” vulnerabilities, and the necessity to take them into account during design rather than naïvely shifting the blame onto the “gullible users”, is a fundamental paradigm shift for the security engineer which, if adopted, will lead to stronger and more resilient systems security.

{ Understanding scam victims: Seven principles for systems security | University of Cambridge | PDF }

illustration { Richard Wilkinson }

Taxicab geometry, considered by Hermann Minkowski in the 19th century, is a form of geometry in which the usual metric of Euclidean geometry is replaced by a new metric in which the distance between two points is the sum of the (absolute) differences of their coordinates.

The taxicab metric is also known as Manhattan distance, or Manhattan length, with corresponding variations in the name of the geometry. The latter names allude to the grid layout of most streets on the island of Manhattan, which causes the shortest path a car could take between two points in the city to have length equal to the points’ distance in taxicab geometry.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Once again, I hear the siren song of Toxoplasma, the parasite that dwells in the brains of 50 million Americans.

Toxoplasma gondii is an extraordinary creature. (…) This single-celled organism has a life cycle that takes it from cats to other mammals and birds and back to cats again. Studies have shown that the parasite can alter the behavior of rats, robbing them of their normal fear of cats–and presumably making it easier for the parasites to get into their next host.

Toxoplasma is astonishingly successful, able to live in thousands of species, including us. Billions of people are infected with Toxoplasma, which they pick up from the soil or from contaminated meat or water. In most people it remains dormant, but even in this quiet state it may also have affect human behavior. Some scientists have linked Toxoplasma to schizophrenia, while others have found personality differences between people with Toxoplasma and those who are Toxo-free. It’s possible that it uses its prey-altering strategy on our brains, too.

All well and good. But now Toxplasma is going big time. Today the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London is publishing a paper called, “Can the common brain parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, influence human culture?”
The paper’s answer? Quite possibly yes.

{ Carl Zimmer/ScienceBlogs | Continue reading | Thanks Teaflax! }

The burning question is why same-sex behaviour would evolve at all when it runs counter to evolutionary principles. But does it? In fact there are many good reasons for same-sex sexual behaviour. What’s more, Zuk and Bailey suggest that in a species where it is common, it is an important driving force in evolution.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

I do not undertand why historians and academics, including many gay ones, refuse to believe that homosexuality has been pretty much the same since the beginning of human history.

{ Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide | Continue reading }

related { Beirut’s gay community }

photo { Mark Heithoff }

People have been bringing plants into residential and other indoor settings for centuries, but little is known about their psychological effects. In the present article, we critically review the experimental literature on the psychological benefits of indoor plants.

We focus on benefits gained through passive interactions with indoor plants rather than on the effects of guided interactions with plants in horticultural therapy or the indirect effect of indoor plants as air purifiers or humidifiers. The reviewed experiments addressed a variety of outcomes, including emotional states, pain perception, creativity, task-performance, and indices of autonomic arousal. Some findings recur, such as enhanced pain management with plants present, but in general the results appear to be quite mixed. Sources of this heterogeneity include diversity in experimental manipulations, settings, samples, exposure durations, and measures. After addressing some overarching theoretical issues, we close with recommendations for further research with regard to experimental design, measurement, analysis, and reporting.

{ The psychological benefits of indoor plants: A critical review of the experimental literature | ScienceDirect }

{ George Loannaidis | Double Pendulum Experiment }

I had been mistaken in thinking that I could see clearly into my own heart. But this knowledge which had not been given me by the finest mental perceptions had now been brought to me, hard, glittering, strange, like a crystallised salt, by the abrupt reaction of grief.

Je m’étais trompé en croyant voir clair dans mon cœur. Mais cette connaissance que ne m’avaient pas donnée les plus fines perceptions de l’esprit venait de m’être apportée, dure, éclatante, étrange, comme un sel cristallisé par la brusque réaction de la douleur.

{ Marcel Proust, Albertine Disparue, 1925 | Continue reading | Poursuivez la lecture | Wikipedia }

Show one image exclusively to one eye and a different image exclusively to the other eye and rather than experiencing a merging of the images, an observer’s percept will flit backwards and forwards randomly and endlessly between the two. This “binocular rivalry”, as it’s known, has been of particular interest to psychologists because it shows how the same incoming sensory information can give rise to two very different conscious experiences.

Now, in a research first, psychologists have shown that a similar process occurs with our sense of smell. If one odour is presented to one nostril and another odour is presented to the other nostril, a person will experience “binaral rivalry” - sensing one smell and then the other, backwards and forwards, rather than a blending of the two.

{ BPS | Continue reading }

From Proust’s Madeleines to the overbearing food critic in the movie Ratatouille who’s transported back to his childhood at the aroma of stew, artists have long been aware that some odors can spontaneously evoke strong memories. Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now revealed the scientific basis of this connection. (…)

The key might not necessarily lie in childhood, but rather in the first time a smell is encountered in the context of a particular object or event. In other words, the initial association of a smell with an experience will somehow leave a unique and lasting impression in the brain.

{ Weizmann Institute of Science | Continue reading }

A good exercise for learning about yourself is to think about how other people might view you in different ways. Consider how your family, your work colleagues or your partner think of you.

Now here’s an interesting question: to what extent do you play up to these expectations about how they view you?

This idea that other people’s expectations about us directly affect how we behave was examined in a classic social psychology study carried out by Dr Mark Snyder from the University of Minnesota and colleagues (Snyder et al., 1977). (…)

Understanding that other people’s expectations about us directly and immediately affect our behaviour is a vital component in understanding how we can come to be quite different people across various social situations.

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

Since World War II, Russian scientists have been researching ways to bend the weather to their liking. Today, they routinely ensure sun-splashed Victory Day celebrations by chasing away clouds using a technology known as cloud seeding (the same technology the Chinese government used to chase away clouds during the Beijing summer Olympics).

It’s nice to have sunny parades, but Moscow officials believe they can use their technology to alter the weather and save some rubles, according to the Los Angeles Times:

Now they’re poised to battle the most inevitable and emblematic force of Russian winter: the snow.

Moscow’s government, led by powerful and long-reigning Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, has indicated that clearing the capital’s streets of snow is simply too expensive. Instead, officials are weighing a plan to seed the clouds with liquid nitrogen or dry ice to keep heavy snow from falling inside the city limits.

{ Discover | Continue reading }

photo { Michael Kenna | more }

New observations of galactic clusters have revealed a controversial phenomenon called “dark flow,” which could be a sign of parallel universes.

{ Seed magazine | Continue reading }

related { Do quantum computers offer proof of parallel universes? | And: New quantum theory topples Einstein’s spacetime. }

illustration { panther house }

“People make optimistic predictions about themselves,” he says. “They expect relationships to last longer, tasks to take less time and things to turn out generally better than they will.” And when they ask for a waffle-maker for Christmas, they think, “I’ll use this all the time!”

“But sometimes the reality of owning an object doesn’t quite measure up to our expectations,” says Vietri. “The cappuccino machine is a hassle to clean, the fancy navigation system is not necessary for most driving, and no one has time to play the new piano.”

{ Consumers overpredict the use of holiday gifts | EurekAlert | Continue reading }

photo { David Lynch }

Superman’s extraordinary strength is somewhat of a mystery, since it seems at times to not satisfy Newton’s laws. Imagine Kal El lifting an office building over His head, one handed, while walking down the street. The feat of strength itself is not just unbelievable, but also unphysical. Consider figure 1. If we were to position a multi-storied office building upon on a post on a street, to be held from the same position as we imagine Superman holding it: the building above the post would crack from the enormous pressure; as would the pavement beneath the post. Since the post would not lie beneath the building’s center of mass, we would expect to see the building either tumble forward, or we would see the building crack from the shear stresses which come from being held by the corner.

In contrast, we see none of these effects when Kal El lifts an ob ject. We can only conjecture that Superman has the ability to move the center of mass (by controlling the moment of inertia) of the office building. In addition, the lack of deformation of the pavement (though the pressure beneath His feet as He walks must be intense), and the lack of damage at the point of contact of the building tell us that He must have also somehow reduced the effective mass of the building.

{ A United theory of Superman’s Powers by Ben Tippett | PDF }

Posing as patients, three undercover observers got themselves admitted as patients to a locked psychiatric ward to investigate conditions on the inside.

Each undercover patient had rehearsed an extensive back story, and the supposed family members who visited them were professional actors. A remote team monitored the project via hidden cameras and microphones from a command center in a nearby hotel.

The project, which took place this spring in De Gelderse Roos, a psychiatric complex about 40 miles from Amsterdam, was not a sting operation. The staff was told there would be mystery shoppers, of a sort, in the facility over a couple of months.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

Le fou est le joueur déréglé du Même et de l’Autre. Il prend les choses pour ce qu’elles ne sont pas, et les gens les uns pour les autres; il ignore ses amis, reconnaît les étrangers; il croit démasquer, et il impose un masque.

{ Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les choses, 1966 }

video { San Clemente, directed by Raymond Depardon and Sophie Ristelhueber, 1977 }

{ Bizarre light show freaks out Norway | full story }

When Thomas Mann was a child his father contrived an experiment to teach him and his siblings a lesson about appetite. “Our father assured us,” Mann writes, “that once in our lives we could eat as many cream puffs … and cream rolls at the pastry shop as we wanted. He led us into a sweet smelling Paradise, and let the dream become reality - and we were amazed how quickly we reached the limit of our desire, which we believed to be infinite.” Here the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. We need only to experiment with our greed to discover that it is only in our fantasies that we are excessive; in reality our appetite is sensible; is, as we like to say, self-regulating - we know when we have had enough. (…)

When we are greedy, the psychoanalyst Harold Boris writes, we are in a state of mind in which we “wish and hope to have everything all the time”; greed “wants everything, nothing less will do”, and so “it cannot be satisfied”. Appetite, he writes in a useful distinction, is inherently satisfiable. So the excess of appetite we call greed is actually a form of despair. Greed turns up when we lose faith in our appetites, when what we need is not available. In this view it is not that appetite is excessive; it is that our fear of frustration is excessive. Excess is a sign of frustration; we are only excessive wherever there is a frustration we are unaware of, and a fear we cannot bear.

{ Adam Phillips/The Guardian | Continue reading }

photo { Peter Sutherland }

Sounds played as you sleep can reinforce memories.

Ken Paller and his colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois asked people to memorise which images and their associated sounds – such as a picture of a cat and a miaow – were associated with a certain area on a computer screen and then to take a nap. They played half the group the sounds in their sleep, and these people were better at remembering the associations than the rest when they woke up.

How can you boost your sleep learning capacity?

As a rule, hit the hay after learning something new – late-night TV and Xbox marathons are a no-no.

That is, of course, unless the skill you hope to learn is a computer game: when Sidarta Ribeiro of the Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience in Natal, Brazil, got people to play shoot-’em-up video game Doom before bed, those who dreamed about the game during their sleep were better players the next day.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading | Cosmos magazine | Read more }

photo { Malerie Marder }