Science is Cool....

[Fish]

This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.

Post pictures, vidoes, stories, or links. Ask questions. Share science.

Why should I care?:

[ToxSocks]

Originally Posted by Fish

Sorry everyone. But Earth is kill today. It's been scientifically proven....

Yeah but Santa uses magic reindeer. So....**** off.

[GloryDayz]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I just love these Hubble telescope pics
http://www.iflscience.com/space/hubb...llars-creation
Almost 20 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope took a breathtaking image that would soon become one of the most famous pictures in astronomy. That image was of the iconic Pillars of Creation; towering, ghost-like clouds of gas and dust, bathed in the blazing light from a cluster of newborn stars within the Eagle Nebula, or Messier 16. Now, in honor of the instrument’s 25^th year in orbit, astronomers have revisited this sublime celestial landscape and captured its evocative features in an unimaginable level of detail.

Like!!! Rep!

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

Fake.
Clearly That left most pillar is the gopher from Caddyshack.

[Fish]

Bad news guys. It's just piss... and, um... prostate juice...



Here's where female ejaculation comes from, and what it's made of

For the first time, scientists have discovered that women who 'squirt' are expelling one of two different types of liquid - one pure urine, and the other a combination of urine and fluid from the female prostate gland.

Okay everyone, it’s time to talk about female ejaculation. And not because the British government has just banned it from appearing in porn. For the first time, researchers in France have observed the mysterious phenomenon using ultrasound scans, to discover that the ejaculate originates in a woman’s bladder - and is made up mostly of urine.

The team, led by Samuel Salama, a gynaecologist at the Parly II private hospital in Le Chesnay, worked with a small sample of seven healthy women who reported “recurrent and massive fluid emission” when they were sexually stimulated. It’s not uncommon for women to experience a little bit of milky white fluid leaking from their urethra at the point of climax, but the practice of ‘squirting’ enough liquid to fill a drinking glass is relatively rare.

"A few small studies have suggested the milky white fluid comes from Skene glands - tiny structures that drain into the urethra,” says Helen Thomson at New Scientist. "Some in the medical community believe these glands are akin to the male prostate, although their size and shape differ greatly between women and their exact function is unknown.”

Salma’s team first asked the participants to submit a urine sample, and then their pelvis was scanned via an ultrasound machine to make sure there was nothing remaining in their bladders. The women were left to either masturbate in the lab, or have sex with a partner, until they were just about to climax. This gave the researchers enough time to get their ultrasound machines at the ready.

In what must have been one of the most awkward moments of their lives, the women had scans performed on them as they were climaxing, and the expelled fluid was collected in sample bags. One last scan was taken of their pelvises afterwards to get a view of the bladder.

Oddly enough, even though the women had emptied their bladders before the big event, the scan taken just before they climaxed revealed that the bladders been completely refilled again, for no other reason than the women had been sexually stimulated. The scan after the climax - and ejaculation - occurred showed that the volunteers’ bladders were once again clear. The team published their results in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Soooo, does this mean the liquid that’s being squirted during sex is urine? The team had already confirmed that it was coming from the bladder, so it’s a good bet. They compared the samples that had been bagged up during climax to the urine samples collected at the beginning of the study and found that in two of the seven women, the samples were both chemically identical.

In the remaining five women, the samples were slightly different. The team found an enzyme called a prostatic-specific antigen (PSA) that was present in small amounts in these volunteers’ ejaculated urine. "PSA, produced in men by the prostate gland, is more commonly associated with male ejaculate,” says Thomson at New Scientist, "where its presence helps sperm to swim. In females, says Salama, PSA is produced mainly by the Skene glands.”

So when females ejaculate during an orgasm, they either release plain old urine, or urine that's been diluted by fluids from the female prostate gland.

Thomson spoke to an independent expert, Beverley Whipple, a neurophysiologist from Rutgers University in the US, who said that when we talk about female ejaculation, we should really only be referring to when PSA is released, not urine.

The remaining mysteries surrounding this phenomenon are whether or not it serves some kind of adaptive function, and why so few women are able to do it. Researchers think it could have to do with perhaps some women not producing PSA at all, or maybe the size and shape of an individual’s prostate gland comes into play. Salma thinks all women should be able to squirt "if their partner knows what they are doing”, New Scientist reports.

[Fish]

We've all been lied to. This is pretty crazy really...

This Is The True Size Of Africa

How large is Africa compared to the United States, or Western Europe? Most inhabitants of the latter places might guess it is a little larger, but few would have any idea of the scale of the difference. This has led German graphics designer Kai Krause to produce this map to shake people's perceptions a little.

[IMG][/IMG]

Any attempt to map a spherical planet onto a flat map will involve distortions of size, shape or both. There is a passionate debate among cartographers about the best way to hang the world on a wall, but most agree that the most common maps we get our sense of the world from are very bad ways to do it. The problem is that these maps exaggerate the size of the countries at high latitudes, and shrink places near the equator - leading to a perception that Europe is larger than South America, to pick just one example among many.

Lies, filthy lies:



Africa, which spans the equator, fares particularly badly on these sorts of projections: Krause says, "Africa is so mind-numbingly immense, that it exceeds the common assumptions by just about anyone I ever met: it contains the entirety of the USA, all of China, India, as well as Japan and pretty much all of Europe as well - all combined!”

Some have argued that since people associate size with importance this encourages the already strong tendency of the world's wealthiest nations to disregard those who live in the tropics.

Even if you are skeptical of those theories, there are clearer examples. Krause initally released the map years ago, achieving a burst of fame. The image has come back into the spotlight with a renewed relevance recently; the Ebola crisis has led to panic about visiting Africa. Any part of Africa. Tourism in Cape Town and solar installations in Tanzania have been affected because people are scared to fly to those places, despite the fact that Paris is actually closer to the countries with an Ebola outbreak than either of them.

[Beef Supreme]

It's called a globe. People should look into them.

[Fish]

Study: Facebook Knows You Better Than Even Your Family, Friends



Scientists have designed an algorithm that analyzes your Facebook likes, and it's strikingly accurate

It’s no secret that Facebook knows a lot about us. The social network is constantly collecting data about our lives, tracking our likes, locations and friendships.

But a new study shows just how intimately Facebook knows us. In the study, published Monday, scientists presented the first computer model to accurately predict a subject’s personality based solely on his or her Facebook likes. The researchers say their algorithm is often better at predicting your character traits than your co-workers, friends and even family members.

“Computers do better than human beings in most cases,” says Youyou Wu, a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and co-author of the study. “In some cases, the computer’s judgment can even describe real-life behaviors better than self-ratings.”

The researchers fed personality data and Facebook likes from over 85,000 volunteers into their computer model. The data consisted of a 100-item questionnaire via the myPersonality app, which focuses on the Big Five personality traits in psychology: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

Do you like Buddhism, Salvador Dali or The Daily Show on Facebook? If so, Wu says, you are probably liberal and artistic. How about the U.S. Navy, the novel Kite Runner or motorcycles? You should be well-organized. Silence of the Lambs, Nicki Minaj or The Urge to Kick Little Kids? Competitive.

“We basically asked our computer model to look at the association between likes and personalities,” says Wu. “We asked the computer to make a judgment for these people, based on their self-ratings.” (David Stillwell, one of the authors of the paper, reports that he received some revenue as owner of the myPersonality application.)

The researchers also asked some of the participants’ families and friends to weigh in on the assessment with a shorter questionnaire. Wu and her team found that the computer could predict a subject’s personality more accurately than a co-worker after analyzing only 10 likes, a friend or roommate after only 70 likes and a family member after only 150 likes.

Spouses generally beat the computer, but only by a hair.



The notion that Facebook likes could be powerful predictors of personality is nothing new. A few months ago, a similar paper published in PNAS concluded that intimate personality traits could theoretically be deduced from Facebook likes—and, in all likelihood, from “digital footprints” left behind on other social networks, too.

Wu envisions computer algorithms ultimately playing an active role within dating websites and career centers, helping employers find like-minded employees—or suggesting romantic partners who share each other’s interests and inclinations. “We can imagine that, in the near future, we will be able to trust computers with a lot of important decisions,” Wu says.

[Chuck Fargers]

J Lo has globes

[Fish]

Just don't let the damn robots watch World Star Hip Hop....

Robots learn to use kitchen tools by watching YouTube videos

(picture kind of but not really related)

Robotic systems that are able to teach themselves have been developed by researchers. Specifically, these robots are able to learn the intricate grasping and manipulation movements required for cooking by watching online cooking videos. The key breakthrough is that the robots can 'think' for themselves, determining the best combination of observed motions that will allow them to efficiently accomplish a given task.

Imagine having a personal robot prepare your breakfast every morning. Now, imagine that this robot didn't need any help figuring out how to make the perfect omelet, because it learned all the necessary steps by watching videos on YouTube. It might sound like science fiction, but a team at the University of Maryland has just made a significant breakthrough that will bring this scenario one step closer to reality.

Researchers at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) partnered with a scientist at the National Information Communications Technology Research Centre of Excellence in Australia (NICTA) to develop robotic systems that are able to teach themselves. Specifically, these robots are able to learn the intricate grasping and manipulation movements required for cooking by watching online cooking videos. The key breakthrough is that the robots can "think" for themselves, determining the best combination of observed motions that will allow them to efficiently accomplish a given task.

The work will be presented on Jan. 29, 2015, at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference in Austin, Texas. The researchers achieved this milestone by combining approaches from three distinct research areas: artificial intelligence, or the design of computers that can make their own decisions; computer vision, or the engineering of systems that can accurately identify shapes and movements; and natural language processing, or the development of robust systems that can understand spoken commands. Although the underlying work is complex, the team wanted the results to reflect something practical and relatable to people's daily lives.

"We chose cooking videos because everyone has done it and understands it," said Yiannis Aloimonos, UMD professor of computer science and director of the Computer Vision Lab, one of 16 labs and centers in UMIACS. "But cooking is complex in terms of manipulation, the steps involved and the tools you use. If you want to cut a cucumber, for example, you need to grab the knife, move it into place, make the cut and observe the results to make sure you did them properly."

[Fish]

First contracting human muscle grown in laboratory

DURHAM, N.C. -- In a laboratory first, Duke researchers have grown human skeletal muscle that contracts and responds just like native tissue to external stimuli such as electrical pulses, biochemical signals and pharmaceuticals.

The lab-grown tissue should soon allow researchers to test new drugs and study diseases in functioning human muscle outside of the human body.

The study was led by Nenad Bursac, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University, and Lauran Madden, a postdoctoral researcher in Bursac's laboratory. It appears January 13 in the open-access journal eLife

"The beauty of this work is that it can serve as a test bed for clinical trials in a dish," said Bursac. "We are working to test drugs' efficacy and safety without jeopardizing a patient's health and also to reproduce the functional and biochemical signals of diseases -- especially rare ones and those that make taking muscle biopsies difficult."

Bursac and Madden started with a small sample of human cells that had already progressed beyond stem cells but hadn't yet become muscle tissue. They expanded these "myogenic precursors" by more than a 1000-fold, and then put them into a supportive, 3D scaffolding filled with a nourishing gel that allowed them to form aligned and functioning muscle fibers.

"We have a lot of experience making bioartifical muscles from animal cells in the laboratory, and it still took us a year of adjusting variables like cell and gel density and optimizing the culture matrix and media to make this work with human muscle cells," said Madden.

Madden subjected the new muscle to a barrage of tests to determine how closely it resembled native tissue inside a human body. She found that the muscles robustly contracted in response to electrical stimuli -- a first for human muscle grown in a laboratory. She also showed that the signaling pathways allowing nerves to activate the muscle were intact and functional.

To see if the muscle could be used as a proxy for medical tests, Bursac and Madden studied its response to a variety of drugs, including statins used to lower cholesterol and clenbuterol, a drug known to be used off-label as a performance enhancer for athletes.

The effects of the drugs matched those seen in human patients. The statins had a dose-dependent response, causing abnormal fat accumulation at high concentrations. Clenbuterol showed a narrow beneficial window for increased contraction. Both of these effects have been documented in humans. Clenbuterol does not harm muscle tissue in rodents at those doses, showing the lab-grown muscle was giving a truly human response.

"One of our goals is to use this method to provide personalized medicine to patients," said Bursac. "We can take a biopsy from each patient, grow many new muscles to use as test samples and experiment to see which drugs would work best for each person."

This goal may not be far away; Bursac is already working on a study with clinicians at Duke Medicine -- including Dwight Koeberl, associate professor of pediatrics -- to try to correlate efficacy of drugs in patients with the effects on lab-grown muscles. Bursac's group is also trying to grow contracting human muscles using induced pluripotent stem cells instead of biopsied cells.

"There are a some diseases, like Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy for example, that make taking muscle biopsies difficult," said Bursac. "If we could grow working, testable muscles from induced pluripotent stem cells, we could take one skin or blood sample and never have to bother the patient again."

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I just love these Hubble telescope pics
http://www.iflscience.com/space/hubb...llars-creation
Almost 20 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope took a breathtaking image that would soon become one of the most famous pictures in astronomy. That image was of the iconic Pillars of Creation; towering, ghost-like clouds of gas and dust, bathed in the blazing light from a cluster of newborn stars within the Eagle Nebula, or Messier 16. Now, in honor of the instrument’s 25^th year in orbit, astronomers have revisited this sublime celestial landscape and captured its evocative features in an unimaginable level of detail.

As we speak, those don't exist.

[WhiteWhale]

It's sad that we can map out the ocean floors but are still figuring out the female orgasm.

Also, if you've ever been with a squirter, you probably knew that was piss.

[go bo]

aw, you guys take all the fun out of squirting...

it was so much more fun when it was magic juice all over my face...

[Holladay]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief View Post
I just love these Hubble telescope pics
http://www.iflscience.com/space/hubb...llars-creation
Almost 20 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope took a breathtaking image that would soon become one of the most famous pictures in astronomy. That image was of the iconic Pillars of Creation; towering, ghost-like clouds of gas and dust, bathed in the blazing light from a cluster of newborn stars within the Eagle Nebula, or Messier 16. Now, in honor of the instrument’s 25th year in orbit, astronomers have revisited this sublime celestial landscape and captured its evocative features in an unimaginable level of detail.

The second picture can't be real. It looks EXACTLY like the first one. Are they expecting me to believe that nothing has changed in 25 yrs???

Super cool pics thou

[stumppy]

Originally Posted by Holladay

The second picture can't be real. It looks EXACTLY like the first one. Are they expecting me to believe that nothing has changed in 25 yrs???

Super cool pics thou

Off the top of my head I'd say it's because those things are 1000's of light years tall. Stick around for a couple thousand years and you might be able to notice a difference.