In materials science, creep is the tendency of a solid material to slowly move or deform permanently under the influence of stresses.
Creep is more severe in materials that are subjected to heat for long periods, and near melting point. Creep always increases with temperature.
photo { Matthew Tammaro }
Harris has conducted two studies that show we may not enjoy watching a movie for two reasons: what we’re watching and who we’re watching it with. Particularly, the combination of watching a steamy love scene with your parents proved to be most unpleasant. (…)
The study focused on those uncomfortable movie-viewing moments and how viewers acted during the movie and after it. Harris said the gender of the viewer influenced reactions, a somewhat surprising result.
“Contrary to gender stereotypes, women were actually more likely to talk about it, both during the movie and after,” Harris said. “Men were more likely to do the avoidance types of responses: start talking about something else, not say anything at all or pretend it didn’t bother them.”
painting { Cary Grant by Kurt Kauper }
A wealth of documentary evidence relating to theatres and society in early-modern London has for the first time been brought together online, in an international project led by the University of Southampton.
Professor of English at Southampton, John McGavin, has directed research to find and transcribe historical texts relating to eight early theatres north of the Thames, which operated outside the capital’s city walls.
“The website [Early Modern London Theatres] allows you to see what direct use has been made in books and other texts over the last four centuries of pre-1642 documents relating to the theatres in Middlesex and Westminster,” says principal investigator, Professor McGavin.
He continues, “This gives a fascinating insight into many aspects of 16th and 17th century theatre life and its place in society.” (…)
Records show in 1575 that a chorister of St Pauls was ’stolen’, presumably by a rival group, prompting the Privy Council to call for action against the suspects.
photo { Nikola Tamindzic.com }
Ross utilized the wet-on-wet oil painting technique, in which the painter continues adding paint on top of still wet paint rather than waiting a lengthy amount of time to allow each layer of paint to dry. Combining this method with the use of two inch and other types of brushes as well as painting knives allowed Ross to paint trees, water, clouds and mountains in a matter of seconds. Each painting would start with simple strokes that appeared to be nothing more than colored smudges. As he added more and more strokes, the blotches transformed into intricate landscapes.
{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | How to | Bobross.com | Thanks Tim }
The debate over the demographic trends in the United States and other wealthy countries can be described a debate between those who care about our children and those who want more of them. This is apparent once a little bit of logic is applied to the tales of demographic disaster being hawked by those concerned about declining birth rates and greater longevity.
The basic story is that we are seeing a declining ratio of workers to retirees. This is supposed to mean that our children and our grandchildren will have an unbearable burden supporting us in our old age. In the United States the story is that we now have about three workers for each retiree. In 20 years this ratio is supposed to drop to two.
In countries like Germany and Japan the decline is somewhat greater, since they have lower birth rates and, in the case of Japan, less immigration. They also have somewhat more rapid gains in longevity.
This basic story has managed to make otherwise sane people seriously fearful about the country and the world’s future. A quick statistic that should alleviate the fears is that the ratio of workers to retirees in the United States was 5 to 1 back in the 60s, far higher than the current 3 to 1 ratio.
photo { Gary Lee Boas }
The Allstate Corporation today issued the following statement:
We recently issued a press release on Zodiac signs and accident rates, which led to some confusion around whether astrological signs are part of the underwriting process.
Astrological signs have absolutely no role in how we base coverage and set rates. Rating by astrology would not be actuarially sound. We realize that our hard working customers view their insurance expense very seriously. So do we.
We deeply apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
{ PR Newswire | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }
photo { Bronco Chase, Los Angeles, June 17, 1994 }
The simple act of closing our eyes has a significant effect on our moral judgement and behaviour. Eugene Caruso and Francesca Gino, who made the observation, think the effect has to do with mental simulation, whereby having our eyes closed causes us to simulate scenarios more vividly. In turn this triggers more intense emotion. (…)
Overall, there was no evidence that the eyes-closed participants had simply paid more attention to the scenario than the eyes-open participants, but they did experience more negative, guilt-based emotion and it’s this effect that probably underlies the study’s central finding.
Many regions of the brain literally shrink in size as adults grow older. The hippocampus, which is associated with memory and spatial tasks, is known to lose about 1-2% of its volume per year. As a result, memory eventually begins to suffer. But hippocampus shrinkage isn’t necessarily inevitable. Adults with higher physical fitness levels have been found to have larger hippocampi than less fit adults of the same age. Translation: Exercise now can prevent brain loss later in life. (…)
Aerobic exercise is the elixir of youth for hippocampi.
The president was too polite to mention it during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, but here’s a quick summary of the problem: The U.S. is broke. The hole is too big to plug with cost cutting or economic growth alone. Rich people have money. No one else does. Rich people have enough clout to block higher taxes on themselves, and they will. (…)
Whenever I feel as if I’m on a path toward certain doom, which happens every time I pay attention to the news, I like to imagine that some lonely genius will come up with a clever solution to save the world. Imagination is a wonderful thing. I don’t have much control over the big realities, such as the economy, but I’m an expert at programming my own delusions. (…)
As a public service, today I will teach you how to wrap yourself in a warm blanket of imagined solutions for the government’s fiscal dilemma.
To begin, assume that as the fiscal meltdown becomes more perilous, everyone will become more flexible and perhaps a bit more open-minded. That seems reasonable enough. A good crisis has a way of changing people. Now imagine that the world needs just one great idea to put things back on the right track. Great ideas have often changed history. It’s not hard to imagine it can happen again.
Try to imagine that the idea that saves the country is an entirely new one. (…)
Convincing the rich to accept higher taxes on themselves.
This article examines peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and the copyright enforcement problem it has created through the lens of scalability. Writing about the growth and governance of the Internet, David Post observed that “scaling problems - the problems that arise solely as a consequence of increasing size or increasing numbers - can be profound, and profoundly difficult to solve.” Both the Internet’s designers and P2P network designers solved difficult problems of scale in their efforts to revolutionize the distribution of information goods. In doing so, however, they created a problem of scale in the form of “massive infringement.” How to approach solving that problem of scale is the subject of this article.
A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response.
Double bind theory was first described by Gregory Bateson and his colleagues in the 1950s.
Tens of thousands of New York City employees who did not report for work during the snowstorm on Thursday could lose a day of leave — even though Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg sent out a predawn message that day saying that all city nonemergency offices and schools would be closed.
A memo went out to the heads of all city agencies on Monday saying that office employees will lose a day of vacation or comp time unless they write an acceptable excuse note.
{ NY Times | Continue reading }
You’re probably wondering how on earth microbes have anything to do with the 3 feet of snow you had to dig your car out from under last week…
I have two “believe it or not” statements for today:
First, believe it or not, microbes are ubiquitous in the Earth’s atmosphere (Bowers et al. 2009, and others). “Ubiquitous” is a fantastic word that simply means “absolutely everywhere” and it’s especially true with microbes. (…) Microbes are also extremely abundant in the air around us, above and beyond our reach, floating in the breeze and being carried thousands of miles on trans-oceanic trade winds. (…)
[Two]: many of those atmospheric microbes have been found to nucleate ice (Bauer et al. 2003). What I mean by “nucleate ice” is that they can serve as the starting point for ice crystals to begin to form.
Michelle Obama wouldn’t be pleased. Maine’s Legislature appears poised to make the whoopie pie the official state dessert.
The designation, supporters say, would give Maine bakeries a marketing edge and raise awareness that the pies are more popular here than anywhere else in the country.
But opponents say the legislation sends the wrong message at a time when the nation is struggling to fight childhood obesity, an issue the first lady has championed.
{ Kennebec Journal | Continue reading }
Whoopie pies are a New England cousin to Southern moon pies. They are chocolate snack cake “sandwiches” with a filling. Moon pies use marshmallow, whoopie pies use a cream filling.
photo { Nicholas Lorden }
related { Maine lawmaker proposed a bill to allow one-armed people to have and carry switchblade knives. }
also related { Why Men and Women Gain Weight }
How long does it take for a liter of water to go through our body?
For normal people it should take about 2 to 3 hours…
But it depends on several things.
First, the water has to be absorbed. For example, if someone has really bad diarrhea or is vomiting, the fluid won’t be absorbed.
Second, it depends on what is in the water. If it is pure water rather than water with salt in it, the pure water will be excreted faster than salt water.
Third, if someone is dehydrated, say, was playing soccer for two hours and sweated out two more litres water than he drank, the fluid would stay in his body and his rate of urine production will stay really low until he drinks more.
Fourth, it depends on the time of day. Usually, people’s rate of urine production decreases in the middle of the night and increases around the time we wakes up.
Finally, it depends on the state of health of the person. If a person has kidney disease, the urine production might not increase as much. If a person has heart disease, the fluid May build up in his tissues instead of being excreted.
The reference is a paper where students drank water in the morning and determined how long it took for the water to be excreted. In this paper, it looks like they urinated out about 400 or 500 ml of water over about 2 hours, before the rate of urine production slowed down.
{ MadSci }
The water runs down the throat, past the epiglottis (which is closed so that water doesn’t end up in the lungs) and down through the oesophagus into the stomach.
In the stomach, water is needed to assist in the processing and digestion of food. So far, the body has not absorbed any water. The only thing that has happened is that any thirst was probably quenched and the amount of saliva has increased.
The water and food are mixed into a dough and kneaded out into the intestines.In the small intestine, the body starts to absorb fluid, as well as vitamins and other nutrients from the dough. These nutrients are absorbed by the blood and transported to all the body’s cells…
The large intestine’s task is to absorb as much liquid as possible from the thin batter, so that the body can make use of this liquid and achieve a proper balance of body fluids. This is Important, as 60% of the human body is made of water.
The liquid is absorbed by the blood vessels in the large intestine and transported by the blood to the kidneys. In the kidneys, blood is purified and water is converted into urine which flows through the ureters to the bladder. When the bladder contains about 200 - 400ml of urine, signals are usually sent to the brain to promote urination.
{ lofric }
Computers have increased our ability to make anything signify anything in ways that Friedman could not have predicted. A Google search for steganography reveals a whole world of digital tools and communities that combine traditional cryptography with cutting-edge computation—and its applications are both more innocent and more sinister than anything produced by the Baconians. Unused bytes and pixels in files can contain huge amounts of invisible information, and by using basic programs and simply changing the settings in a display, a tree can become a cat, a cat can tell us to blow up a bridge, and an oil painting of a whaling expedition can carry the entire text of Moby Dick.14 The codes of the computer age contain more a’s and b’s than were dreamt of in Bacon’s philosophy.
photo { Mark Heithoff }
This paper investigates the relationship between environment and behaviour in a butterfly.
Adult butterflies are highly visual animals, relying on their keen eyesight to locate and identify appropriate mates by looking at and comparing their wing colours and patterns. Many butterflies show variations in wing colours and patterns depending upon the season they experienced as caterpillars or whilst cocooning. Knowing this, it is reasonable to assume that differences in wing colours and patterns (known as polyphenisms) could affect how adult butterflies interact with each other. But do wing polyphenisms affect adult butterfly behaviours? If so, how?
Dr Katy Prudic, and her postdoctoral advisor, Dr Antónia Monteiro, researchers in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, investigated the relationship between the environment and behaviour in the east African butterfly species, the squinting bush brown butterfly, Bicyclus anynana.
Even though this butterfly species has been bred and raised in captivity for 30 years, Dr Prudic was the first person to notice that female B. anynana appeared to be colour-coded according to season. When the adult butterfly holds its wings closed, as when perched on a flower, the exposed dorsal wing surfaces show distinct seasonal differences: adult butterflies that experienced a wet warm season as caterpillars have brighter and more numerous eyespots (figure 1A) than those seen in the cooler dry season form (figure 1B):
“Oh my God, I’m more naked that I was in Playboy,” Kim Kardashian told her sisters. “I’m so mad right now. [The magazine] promised I would be covered with artwork — you can see the nipples!”
“The whole concept was sold to me that nothing would be seen,” she continued. “I feel so taken advantage of … I’ve definitely learned my lesson. I’m never taking my clothes off again, even if it’s for Vogue.”
This wasn’t the first time Kim was upset over nude photos — when her Playboy spread came out, she similarly was upset, telling Harper’s Bazaar… (…) Then, she posed nude for Bazaar.
photo { Zoe Strauss }
The really surprising number you saw the talking heads on TV mention was the growth of consumer spending, at 4.4%. Is the US consumer back? After all, real final sales rose by 7.1%, a number not seen since 1984 and Ronald Reagan. But real income rose a paltry 1.7%. Where did the money that was spent come from?
Savings dropped a rather large 0.5% for the quarter. That was part of it. And I can’t find the link, but there was an unusual drawdown of money market and investment accounts last quarter, somewhere around 1.5%, if I remember correctly. That would just about cover it. But that is not a good thing and is certainly not sustainable.
Let’s see what good friend David Rosenberg has to say about those numbers:
Even with the Q4 bounce, real final sales have managed to eke out a barely more than 2% annual gain since the recession ended, whereas what is normal at this stage of the cycle is a trend much closer to 4%. Welcome to the new normal.
There is no doubt that there will be rejoicing in Mudville because real GDP did manage to finally hit a new all-time high in Q4. The recession losses in output have been reversed (though what that means for the 7 million jobs that have to be recouped is another matter). But, before you uncork the champagne, just consider what it has taken just to get the economy back to where it was three years ago:
· The funds rate moved down from 4.5% to zero.
· The Fed’s balance sheet expanded by more than 1.5 trillion dollars.
· The printing of M2 money supply of around 1 trillion dollars (the illusion of prosperity).
· Expansion of federal government debt of 4.8 trillion dollars.
All this heavy lifting just to take the economy back to where it was in the fourth quarter of 2007.
(…)
Thursday was the annual Tiger 21 conference, and the room held about 150 or so very-high-net-worth participants. The lunch session was Greta van Sustern interviewing Newt Gingrich. And yes, from what I heard he is going to run.
painting { Ju Myung Kim }
{ www.mta.me turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument }
more to watch { Documentary on American composer Milton Babbitt, who died Saturday, Jan. 29 }
All teenage girls are at least half-lesbian, always admiring their friends’ still-shifting bodies, their superior wardrobes, their make-up application expertise, their better luck with the opposite sex. Teenage girls curl up together like newborn puppies, painting one another’s toes as if they were licking one another’s ears. If you sit long enough in any Starbucks, or loiter outside any high school, you will see girls climbing onto one another’s laps, kissing on the lips. They aren’t hitting on each other, not precisely, though they are in a constant state of arousal that borders on the insane. No other love is like the love of a teenage girl, all passion and fire and endless devotion—at least for a week.
There are many painful, moving stories about female friendship out there, but even the most beautiful stories about teenage girls fail to capture the obsessive, all-encompassing infatuations I remember. That is, all except one: My So-Called Life. It began on the air in August 1994, the summer before my freshman year of high school, and it was as if someone had placed a mirror inside my bedroom and broadcast it on television.
related { An after-school conversation with girls about sex and the Internet. }
