A homeless man finds a portal to a parallel world... and gets greedy onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A homeless man finds a portal to a parallel world... and gets greedy

A homeless man with sticky fingers encounters a mysterious mirror in Daisuke Kaneko's ECIRAVA, a clever little animated short about... well... the title kind of says it all.

Complement with "Symmetry," a live-action short film and audio/visual palindrome.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A homeless man finds a portal to a parallel world... and gets greedy

It's A Bad Week To Be a Crocodilian onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com It's A Bad Week To Be a Crocodilian

S

Sea otters, the adorable urchin-eating mustelids of the ocean, may be cute, but their relatives the river otters are another story. If this alligator's experience is anything to go by, I wouldn't want to be on the business end of their chompers.

River otters, despite their fairly diminutive stature, are actually considered to be apex predators in their riparian habitats since they have no natural predators. Maybe that explains why this river otter wasn't afraid to take on a juvenile alligator at Florida's Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge. While these photos were originally taken by Geoff Walsh in 2011, they only surfaced on Facebook this week.

S

S

Meanwhile, halfway around the world in Queensland, Australia, an olive python fought a freshwater crocodile to the death. It then proceeded to eat its opponent, face-first. Both species are apex predators, but it's not uncommon for mature individuals of one species to prey upon juveniles of the other. Bystander Marvin Muller managed to snag some photos.

S

S

While it's not news that snakes can take down prey as big as they are, here's another reminder that nature doesn't always work the way you think it does. I'd expect the pointy end of the croc to easily overcome the constricting action of the snake. You might take a second look at your predictions for Mammal March Madness...

[Lake Woodruff NWR; Brisbane Times via HuffPo]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com It's A Bad Week To Be a Crocodilian

How to be a winner by being a nontransitive loser! onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How to be a winner by being a nontransitive loser!

There are a set of special dice, called Efron's Dice. Each die will win over the last. And it will keep going until there's an ultimate winner - which will lose to the original loser. There's a lesson, there, that frustrates many sports fans. Here's how to snatch victory from the jaws (or even the stomach) of defeat.

Efron's Dice

Let us play a little game with a set of Efron's Dice. The game consists of a series of throws, one die against another, with the pot compounding the whole time. Efron's Dice aren't quite like others. They are a standard six-sided shape, but the first match with be between one die with faces that read 5, 5, 5, 1, 1, 1, and one die that reads, 6, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2. Despite the seeming advantage of that extra five, the second die has a probability of winning of two-thirds.

The winner moves on! The die reading 6, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2, is now up against a die reading 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. This new die has a probability of winning of two-thirds, so it will, in most matches, overthrow the previous champion and move on.

Next up! The all-threes die will go up against a die reading 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 0. This new die has a probability of winning of two-thirds.

Now for the final match. This winning die, this die that came out on top, will go up against the die that got beaten in the first match. The champion 4, 4, 4, 4, 0, 0, will go up against old, unlucky 5, 5, 5, 1, 1, 1. A quick look at the comparative sides will tell you what's likely to happen. That disgraced losing die now has a probability of winning of two-thirds.

S

That's the trick of Efron's Dice. Put in the right sequence of steps, and every die has a two-thirds chance of winning out over the last die, until you get to the end of the sequence and find out that the highest "step" is suddenly lower than the lowest one.

The Problem With Play-Offs

The trick is to stop seeing the odds as steps, or as terms of absolute odds, or anything else, because those ideas are transitive. Objects have a transitive relationship if there is a kind of linear progression between them. A dog is bigger than a mouse. Because size is (for the most part) a transitive relation, we can confidently say that anything bigger than a dog is also bigger than a mouse. Likewise, anything smaller than a mouse is also smaller than a dog.

We think of odds, especially in games, as getting progressively higher in absolute terms. Each step is higher than the last (a transitive property). Each risk or benefit is greater than the last (another transitive property). Efron's Dice, and other nontransitive dice or nontransitive games, throw us into confusion not because they're impossible to understand, but because they circumvent the easy assumption that if A is "better" than B, and B is "better" than C, then A has to beat C, because it's better.

Sports fans probably have bitter experience with nontransitive odds during play-offs that pit random teams or players against each other. Given the right sequence of games, and the right odds, a relatively weak team can hang on while better teams are eliminated. The game is run as if there were a transitive relation between winners and losers, and if the Rabid Squirrels beat the Plague Fleas, the Squirrels have to be better than every team that the Fleas have beaten.

But it's not that simple. Even aside from random chance, every team (and for that matter every individual player) is a complicated grouping of strengths and weaknesses. Although there's always a case to be made that whoever won must be the better team, everyone has seen a strong team taken out by a relatively weaker one that manages to hit the stronger team's one weakness. (For those who wish to stay entirely within the realm of geekdom, every Death Star has at least one exhaust port that can be taken out by a whiny backwoods kid with three days of training at using The Force.) That weak team goes on to get crushed during their next time around (Empire Strikes Back), leaving the fans with a thoroughly unentertaining show (ewoks). The point is, treating things like they are transitive when they are not can lead to big problems.

Then again, it's not all bad. When you face a disappointment in your life, losing out on something, look at Efron's Dice and take heart. You might not be a loser. You might be a nontransitive winner. (And if you win, don't get cocky, kid. You're just a nontransitive loser.)

Image: Ana

[Via Wolfram Mathworld, Plus Maths.]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How to be a winner by being a nontransitive loser!

A quarter of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A quarter of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth

The U.S. National Science Foundation conducted a survey that revealed only 74% of Americans know that the Earth revolves around the Sun. But wait — there's more.

According to NPR:

[A] survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

To the question "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.

In the same survey, just 39 percent answered correctly (true) that "The universe began with a huge explosion" and only 48 percent said "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."

Just over half understood that antibiotics are not effective against viruses.

Read more at NPR

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com A quarter of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth

The New Zealand Prime Minister publicly denies being a lizard person onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The New Zealand Prime Minister publicly denies being a lizard person

S

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key was recently asked to provide "any evidence to disprove the theory that [he] is in fact a David Icke style shapeshifting reptilian alien ushering humanity towards enslavement." Key, in a congenial manner atypical of shapeshifting reptilian aliens, responded.

Said Key:

To the best of my knowledge, no. I've taken the unusual step of not only seeing a doctor but a vet, and both have confirmed I'm not a reptile … I've never been in a spaceship, never been in outer space, and my tongue's not overly long either.

Auckland resident Shane Warbrooke, who first posed the question via an Official Information Act (OIA) request, said he was happy with (but unsurprised by) the president's response. He did complain, however, that the government "waited the full 20 working days they are allowed before getting back to me."

The White House responded to a similar accusation in March of last year. (Notably, the White House didn't go so far as to deny anything.)

[3News via Daily Dot]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The New Zealand Prime Minister publicly denies being a lizard person

Things are coming together on Helix, at last onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Things are coming together on Helix, at last

S

With last night's episode of Helix, the show finally hit its stride. What's become obvious is Helix is not a conventional science fiction tale. The zombie disease is our MacGuffin; the truly weird mystery at the heart of the story is Hiroshi, the man who runs the Arctic Biosystems facility.

Spoilers ahead!

I know this will sound weird, but I started to get a kind of Basic Instinct feeling as I watched this episode, which was penned by Middleman creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach. Like many noir movies, Basic Instinct is about trying to solve a crime, but more than that it's about a charismatic person who acts like a criminal but could in fact be innocent. Sharon Stone's bizarre behavior, and its possible meanings, structure that entire story. OK, yes, I guess I am saying that Hiroshi is Sharon Stone. Live with it.

What was refreshing about this episode was that we finally got to appreciate who our characters are, without all the drooling zombie razzamatazz and laboratory discovery fakeouts. This show is absolutely terrible every time it tries to "do science," and is great every time it veers into capturing its characters points of view. So I guess it's good that Sergio — who might also be this show's Sharon Stone — murdered our one decent scientist, Doreen, at the end.

So here's what happened. Alan gave his brother Peter some of the mega-antiviral serum that one of the researchers had been working on, despite the fact that it had a 75% mortality rate in mice. "Wouldn't you do it if it were your brother?" he asks the serum inventor guy. Well, maybe not if I had several dozen freaked out patients locked up in quarantine downstairs and it was my job to deal with them. Alan is so focused on saving his brother that he's neglecting his real duties. He's not even trying to figure out a way to communicate with the sealed-off isolation floor.

Still, he discovers that the serum works, albeit briefly, and we get a brief moment of Peter being coherent. They bond over their past, and Alan tearfully admits that he owes Peter for saving his life from their abusive father. Then Peter admits that his affair with Julia wasn't "that one night" — it was ongoing, and as we know from Julia, they had seen each other just days before the outbreak. Unfortunately, Peter doesn't know anything about the disease. It turns out Hiroshi just had him doing "grunt work," running tissue samples for the other scientists. "The main thing he seemed interested in was Julia," he whispers before slipping into a deep coma. Apparently, Hiroshi and Peter had bonded a little, and Peter had spilled part or all of his guts about his forbidden love/lust for Julia.

S

This detail makes sense, given that we've already seen Hiroshi's edition of My Creepy Scrapbook, filled with spy pics and upskirts of Julia. It makes even more sense when Julia starts to realize that she's been to Arctic Biosystems before, but doesn't remember it. This was actually a pretty awesome moment in last night's episode. Julia gets booted out of the dorm area on the quarantine level, after arguing with Crazy Guy about how to deal with their situation. Crazy Guy advocates for using that level's manual override on the oxygen scrubbers to force the people upstairs to come down and negotiate. Julia advocates for not killing people.

Which is why Julia is left wandering the hallways, mildly hallucinating, while Crazy Guy and his buddies shut down the oxygen and Hiroshi has to figure out WTF to do. It turns out the person in a gas mask that Julia keeps seeing is actually real — she's another person who is hiding out away from the dorm area and Crazy Guy. As Julia and her new pal bond over a cache of cheez whiz they've discovered, vectors are roaming the halls like random monsters rolled up by a slightly lazy DM.

S

Then, beneath a box of cheez whiz, Julia discovers her initials scratched into the wall, in her handwriting. Obviously, she's been here before and maybe even tried to leave herself a message about it. Why can't she remember being there? We know for certain that she wasn't there visiting Peter, because he tells Alan that they only hooked up at conferences. Now Hiroshi's My Creepy Scrapbook is starting to make a little more sense. It's possible that Julia is one of his experiments, or maybe an unwitting collaborator. Or a clone! Or an alien! Or something even more cool!

OK, calm down. Let's focus on Hiroshi for a minute. When all seems lost, he takes a secret stairway down to the quarantine level with ninja sidekick Daniel. While he's there, he stares down a vector who has been attacking people — and the vector just lets him pass.

S

There's Hiroshi's "do not fuck with me" stare. Nice.

Hiroshi has some kind of power over the vectors obviously. He also does this really touching negotiation with Crazy Guy, saying they all have to work together, and convincing them to turn the oxygen scrubbers back on. Then, when we're all feeling like Hiroshi is the good guy, he shoots Crazy Guy and his henchmen. Even Daniel is taken aback.

But Hiroshi points out they were just going to keep being a pain in the ass. Which — he's right about that. Crazy Guy was awful. "Clean up those bodies," he says, going back upstairs. So Hiroshi's main focus is on protecting the facility, and he doesn't really care who he has to kill to do it.

S

Meanwhile, Sergio is vying with Hiroshi to be the show's Most Interesting Psycho. He keeps harping on how Hiroshi didn't deliver what "their employers" ordered. So Hiroshi was supposed to be working on some kind of weapon (?) or maybe something even more nefarious for a secret organization that we're starting to suspect probably isn't the government. Or maybe it is?

Before Sergio kills Doreen, he tells her a story which might actually be true, about how he is investigating a "black bag" operation for the Pentagon, and urges her to check to see whether the disease is genetically engineered. Presto — she figures it out. Yep, it's a human-made disease, a form of gene therapy delivered by a virus, intended to give people "new traits." What those might be Doreen will never know, because as soon as she figures this out, Sergio kills her with a syringe to the neck. Then he leaves her to be eaten by the hairless rats.

S

Oh and meanwhile Sarah has some kind of tumor. And she's hiding an infected woman in her quarters, dosing the woman and herself with morphine because why not. I know I should be more interested in this subplot, but I'm sick of Sarah. All anyone ever does is sexually harass her. I love how Peter wakes up from his virus ravings, sees Sarah in her lab coat, and asks Alan, "Who is the pretty one?" Really? Um, she's a scientist, like everybody else here, and calling her "the pretty one" is kind of awful. Whatever — Julia already introduced herself to Sarah by saying, "Yeah I was like you once, and then I fucked Alan." Which is also pretty harassment-y. Ugh. I shouldn't blame Sarah for all this, but I just want her gone.

S

So let's focus on Hiroshi's twisted relationship with Julia and the zombies, and Sergio's twisted relationship with the virus and the government. And that's what this episode delivered. We finally got a story that focused on the real mystery — who these people are — and not the MacGuffiny crap in the labs. Given how utterly incompetent Alan has revealed himself to be, I'm really hoping for a showdown where Hiroshi shows him who's boss.

S

That's right Alan — quake in your booties.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Things are coming together on Helix, at last

Pakistani comics fans are super-excited about the new Ms. Marvel onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Pakistani comics fans are super-excited about the new Ms. Marvel

Here's a bit of Friday feel-goodery: American comics fans aren't the only people excited about Kamala Khan, the teenage Muslim Jersey girl taking the role of Ms. Marvel on February 5th. So are Pakistani women, who hope that the character will inspire Pakistani girls and help their country's image.

UPI interviewed several Pakistani women, who were almost universally pleased about the new character:

Anum Kazmi, an FM radio announcer in Lahore, said she expects the character will represent a combination of traditional values and modernization.

"The positive impact of the new Ms. Marvel will give Pakistani girls the confidence that they have a role to play for the betterment of the society," Kazmi told UPI Next.

Ruby Razzaq, a senior journalist based in Lahore, sees Kamala Khan as a part of the evolution of women's status in Pakistan. ...

Mobarak Haider, a Virginia-based Pakistani author who wrote "Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg," a book about fundamentalist Muslims, sees Ms. Marvel as an amalgamation of Muslims living in the United States.

"Pakistanis will feel proud to see their girl helping people and playing a positive role," Haider told UPI Next. "Kamala Khan is not only representing her compatriots in this role, but Muslims as a whole. Her character could have a great impact on Muslim families living in the U.S. The concept will make parents understand that by giving girls confidence, they can build a fabulous future."

Alas, I did say "almost":

"It is unrealistic for a girl to be a superhero," housewife Sanam Iqbal told UPI Next. "The dress Kamala Khan will be wearing doesn't represent our Muslim culture either.

"I can't expect that Kamala Khan is going to build our country's image. I am sure there will be a conspiracy behind this idea, either to disrespect our family values or to damage our religion."

Still, the overwhelming majority (that UPI interviewed, at least) supports Marvel's new heroine. The whole article is an excellent read, and an optimistic reminder of the cultural impact even something a small as a comic book can have. Now, if we can somehow make sure that people buy the damn issues...

[Via Comic Book Resources]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Pakistani comics fans are super-excited about the new Ms. Marvel

Whoa, this leech survived after being in liquid nitrogen for 24 hours onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Whoa, this leech survived after being in liquid nitrogen for 24 hours

S

Scientists have learned that a common parasite of sea turtles is capable of surviving ridiculously cold temperatures — a finding that could lead to the development of advanced cryopreservation techniques.

Okay, gotta say, this thing's really weird. Most organisms cannot survive exposure to temperatures below 0°C, let alone temperatures as low as liquid nitrogen. Once you get below the freezing point the water in the cells cause way too much damage, typically resulting in cell death.

What's even weirder is that this leech, Ozobranchus jantseanus, parasitizes sea turtles that swim in waters no colder than −2 to −4°C, and for more longer than 11 days. "It is likely," write the researchers in their study, "that this cryotolerant ability has arisen in response to some as yet unclarified adaptation."

And an extreme adaptation is it. The leech can survive exposure to super-low temperatures by storage in liquid nitrogen (−196°C) for 24 hours, as well as long-term storage at temperatures as low as −90°C for up to 32 months. The leech is also capable of enduring repeated freeze-thaw cycles in the temperature range 20°C to −100°C and then back to 20°C.

The researchers, a team lead by Dai Suzuki, say it's a wider temperature range than anything ever seen before in a cryobiotic organism. Some nematode worms, for example, can survive 28 days when exposed to temperatures as low as −80°C.

Interestingly, the researchers did not find any traces of trehalose or glycerol in O. jantseanus, both of which are typical and well known cryoprotectants. What's more, the leech didn't have enough time to enter into a state of super-dehydration — a common technique for surviving cold temperatures. Instead, the scientists speculate that the parasite has evolved a highly specialized — and largely unknown — way of tolerating physiological water freezing in their tissues; they have somehow evolved an innate capacity for withstanding such cold stresses.

The scientists say these findings could contribute to the development of new cryopreservation methods that don't require additives, and help resuscitate organisms that have been frozen underground in permafrost areas, on Antarctica — and possibly on other planets.

Or, it could help us improve current cryonic techniques for storing humans.

Read the entire study at PLoS: "A Leech Capable of Surviving Exposure to Extremely Low Temperatures."

Image: Suzuki et al.

Follow me on Twitter: @dvorsky

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Whoa, this leech survived after being in liquid nitrogen for 24 hours

Selfies In Space! onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Selfies In Space!

S

A selfie taken on Earth may not be that exciting, but snapped in space, the humble selfie suddenly becomes something pretty special. Here are some of the greatest spaces selfies ever to be snapped, ranging from the majestic, to the comic — even a few from before the selfie officially existed.

Top image: Astronaut Mike Hopkins on a Christmas Eve spacewalk, along with fellow astronaut Rick Matracchio (also pictured in his visor). The two spent the holiday switching out a broken pump module on the international space station. / NASA

It's full of stars

Like Hopkins' selfie pictured above, part of the appeal of the space selfie is the amazing backgrounds. Here are some other fantastic space selfies that capture some of the most gorgeous horizons, bleak expanses, and astronomical anomalies ever to cross space.

S

Image: Astronaut Clay Anderson took this picture during the shuttle orbiter Endeavor mission. Interestingly, NASA explains the curve of the Earth as seen in his helmet as not coming from the curvature of the earth itself, which appears only slightly curved from the height of the space stations, but instead is due to the curve of the helmet visor itself. / Clayton C. Anderson, Expedition 15 Crew, NASA

S

Image: Astronaut Michael Fossum took this shot during the Discovery image, capturing not only his own image, but also the reflection of crewmate Piers Sellers, and, of course, Earth in the background. / NASA

S

Image: Astronaut Aki Hoshide snaps a selfie, while in the midst of completing repairs on the ISS, in his visor you can see the robotic arm and the reflection of earth, while the sun shines behind him / via Expedition 32 Crew, International Space Station, NASA

Visors down!

The reflective quality of space helmets has been responsible for some of the most gorgeous astronomical images caught on camera — and, apparently, also for some friendly astronaut pranks, like this one from Astronaut Ron Garan (pictured below) who explains: "(…) I told Mike Fossum I was taking a picture of him. Actually, it was of myself in his visor."

Image: Ron Garan / NASA

S

Image: Astronaut Steve Robinson snaps a selfie, while working on repairing Discovery's heat shield, the heat shield on Discovery's underside can be seen in the reflection of his visor. / NASA

S

Image: Astronaut Robert Satcher took this shot during a 6.5 hour spacewalk, while also completing repairs to the ISS, including maintenance on the Kibo robotic arm. / NASA

Image: Astronaut Garret Reisman took this close-up shot of his helmet visor during a spacewalk for the Atlantis crew. Earth is prominent in the reflection, but you can also see the international space station. / NASA

Robot selfies on Mars

Most of the selfies from space feature humans, but a good robot selfie is also hard to resist. Here, Curiosity gets in on the selfie action, by stitching together a series of over a dozen images taken with its own Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). Besides letting Curiosity in on the selfie fun, this selfie also serves an engineering purpose, by letting the engineers back down on earth know how Curiosity's hardware is faring up on Mars.

S

Image: Curiosity self-portrait, taken in "Rocknest" in the Gale Crater, the mission's first scoop sampling site. On the left, four scoops can be seen where the soil was just collected. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Space station selfies:

Most of the selfies we see from astronauts are taken, by necessity, from safe within the confines of a spacesuit. In fact, part of the charm of the space selfie is the creative use of visors and reflections to throw back a gorgeous astronomical image or two, along with the selfie. Still, sometimes, it's nice to see a space selfie from outside of the spacesuit, and that's where these marvelous shots from the International Space Station come in.

S

Image: This selfie of Karen Nyberg uses water refraction to create a selfie, within a selfie / @AstroKarenN

Image: Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, flight engineer for Expedition 24, took this self portrait from the space station, looking down on earth below. / NASA

S

Image: Astronaut Chris Hadfield performs David Bowie's Space Oddity, making this not only an astronaut selfie, but also part of an astronaut music video. So cool. / Chris Hadfield

S

Image: Astronaut Karen Nyberg snapped this picture of herself on the international space station, with the caption "Say cheese!" / @AstroKarenN

Twitter selfies

Astronauts, it turns, out love tweeting a good selfie as much as the rest of us — with the small difference that their selfies are usually taken while balancing high above the earth against the dark chasm of the universe, defended only by a few thin layers of polycarbonate, fiberglass, and nylon. Here are some of the best selfies to hit social media:

Image: Astronaut Clay Anderson tweeted this charming shadow-selfie, along with the caption, "Talk about a "selfie!" This one, from 072307, is the ultimate for me! What do YOU think Twitterverse?" / @Astro_Clay

Image: Astronaut Tom Marshburn, who captioned this tweet "Leaving is bittersweet. It's been an unbelievable ride. Can't wait to see what's next!" / @AstroMarshburn

S

Image: Astronaut Luca Parmitano tweeted this snap of himself with captions in both English and Italian, "photo op before reentry... Un momento per una foto prima di rientrare #Volare#spacewalk" /@astro_luca

Image: Astronaut Chris Cassidy took this shot while working on some ISS maintenance. The maintenance walk ended up being cut short when fellow astronaut Luca Parmitano (pictured in Twitter selfies) reported water entering his helmet. Parmitano was unharmed. / via NASA's Instagram

Vintage space selfies

Long before the selfie had gotten its current cultural cache, astronauts were still snapping self-portraits of themselves in space. Here are a couple of selfies from before their time.

S

Image: This shot of Buzz Aldrin comes from all the way back in 1966, during the Gemini 12 mission / via US National Archives, who speculate that this might be the very first "space selfie."

Image: In 1969, Charles "Pete" Conrad took this shot of astronaut Alan Bean as he completed a lunar soil collection — and also caught his own reflection in his colleague's visor, as well as a gorgeous view of the lunar horizon. / Charles Conrad, Apollo 12, NASA

S

Image: The original space selfie. Neil Armstrong took this famous shot of Buzz Aldrin. But, you can also see Armstrong's image reflected back in Aldrin's helmet visor. / NASA

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Selfies In Space!

The Huygens Principle explains why waves turn corners onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Huygens Principle explains why waves turn corners

No matter where you are in a room, you can hear sound that emanates from a single hole. You can see light that spills through a small crack. You are picking up on waves, even though they're getting through spaces that aren't anywhere near you. Christian Huygens figured out why.

If you've seen a wave roll in along a beach, or over the length of an aquarium, or even along your bathtub, you've probably seen Huygens' principle in action. When the wave comes to a barrier that has one opening, the wave comes through the opening. It doesn't come through in the same shape as it went in, though. When the long plane of a wave comes through the opening, it "bends" around the corners of the opening, and continues moving outwards in a rainbow-like arc.

This arc is one of the reasons you can hear sound in another room, as if the sound were bending around corners. It's one of the reasons light spills out of a small hole in a spreading arch instead of a focus beam.

And it's come to be known as the Huygens' Principle. Christian Huygens was a mathematician and "natural philosopher," back in the 1600s. He wondered why waves behaved one way when they moved unobstructed, and behaved another when they moved through a small hole in a barrier. He noticed that light, sound, and water moved the same way, and figured they were all waves. But why were they behaving that way at all?

Huygens gave it some thought and came up with something unintuitive. He decided that every point on a wave was making its own little wavelets all the time. Those wavelets moved out in a spherical pattern, again, all the time. This is why, when a wave is restricted to one point as it hits a barrier, that point radiates out a spherical wave. Nothing special happened to that point of the wave - it just soldiered on while the rest of the wave was stopped.

S

But why don't we see all those little wavelets all the time? Why doesn't the shape of a planar wave turn into something round? If every point on a wave is propagating the wavelets, we see all the crests moving together, forming the same shape as the original wave. They all send out their circles, and the nearest points of those circles form a line.

So when a wave hits a barrier with a hole in it, we're not seeing anything new. We're seeing a part of the wave we couldn't observe before.

[Via U Texas, Everything Science.]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The Huygens Principle explains why waves turn corners

How the hell did this pelican survive after getting shot 110 times? onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How the hell did this pelican survive after getting shot 110 times?

Every year in Israel, countless birds get shot by farmers protecting their livelihood. Recently, one of these birds was brought by ambulance to an animal rescue hospital where x-rays showed the pelican had no less than 110 shotgun pellets in its body. Remarkably, the bird managed to live.

Yesterday, a badly bleeding pelican was brought to the Wildlife Hospital run by the Ramat Gan Safari Park and the Natuyre and Parks Authority in Israel. The doctors were shocked to discover some 110 shotgun pellets embedded in its body. In addition, it had lost an eye, had a broken wing, and was suffering from acute lead poisoning.

Haaretz reports:

The pelican is being treated, including with anti-lead medication and an operation to heal its cracked wing. The hospital says it should recover, though it may well remain lame. But that doesn't condemn it to a life of misery. The hospital places disabled pelicans in specially designated fish pools, which serves two purposes. Not only do they live off the fat fish of the land for life: their presence is noticed by migrating pelican flocks, which will then be likely to land at the designated pool rather than at a fish-farm, the hospital explains.

The zoo hospital treats more than 2,200 wild animals a year, almost all of which are injured by humans. More than 60% are returned to nature, and in the case they can't be, arrangements are made for them to live out a comfortable life.

[ Haaretz including images]

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com How the hell did this pelican survive after getting shot 110 times?