50 Things taught to students before entering in College

50 Things taught to students before entering in College

Dear Class of 2014,

This will be my last entry written specifically for you; beginning with the launch of our new site in early September, I'll begin focusing on the future class of 2011. I hope that you guys won't be strangers; stay in touch either in person (come visit us!) or online (please drop by the blogs from time to time and say hi).

As you begin your college experience, and I prepare for my 10-year college reunion, I thought I'd leave you with the things that, in retrospect, I think are important as you navigate the next four years. I hope that some of them are helpful.

Here goes...

1. Your friends will change a lot over the next four years. Let them.
2. Call someone you love back home a few times a week, even if just for a few minutes.
3. In college more than ever before, songs will attach themselves to memories. Every month or two, make a mix cd, mp3 folder, whatever - just make sure you keep copies of these songs. Ten years out, they'll be as effective as a journal in taking you back to your favorite moments.
4. Take naps in the middle of the afternoon with reckless abandon.
5. Adjust your schedule around when you are most productive and creative. If you're nocturnal and do your best work late at night, embrace that. It may be the only time in your life when you can.
6. If you write your best papers the night before they are due, don't let people tell you that you "should be more organized" or that you "should plan better." Different things work for different people. Personally, I worked best under pressure - so I always procrastinated... and always kicked ass (which annoyed my friends to no end). ;-) Use the freedom that comes with not having grades first semester to experiment and see what works best for you.
7. At least a few times in your college career, do something fun and irresponsible when you should be studying. The night before my freshman year psych final, my roommate somehow scored front row seats to the Indigo Girls at a venue 2 hours away. I didn't do so well on the final, but I haven't thought about psych since 1993. I've thought about the experience of going to that show (with the guy who is now my son's godfather) at least once a month ever since.
8. Become friends with your favorite professors. Recognize that they can learn from you too - in fact, that's part of the reason they chose to be professors.
9. Carve out an hour every single day to be alone. (Sleeping doesn't count.)
10. Go on dates. Don't feel like every date has to turn into a relationship.
11. Don't date someone your roommate has been in a relationship with.
12. When your friends' parents visit, include them. You'll get free food, etc., and you'll help them to feel like they're cool, hangin' with the hip college kids.
13. In the first month of college, send a hand-written letter to someone who made college possible for you and describe your adventures thus far. It will mean a lot to him/her now, and it will mean a lot to you in ten years when he/she shows it to you.
14. Embrace the differences between you and your classmates. Always be asking yourself, "what can I learn from this person?" More of your education will come from this than from any classroom.
15. All-nighters are entirely overrated.
16. For those of you who have come to college in a long-distance relationship with someone from high school: despite what many will tell you, it can work. The key is to not let your relationship interfere with your college experience. If you don't want to date anyone else, that's totally fine! What's not fine, however, is missing out on a lot of defining experiences because you're on the phone with your boyfriend/girlfriend for three hours every day.
17. Working things out between friends is best done in person, not over email. (IM does not count as "in person.") Often someone's facial expressions will tell you more than his/her words.
18. Take risks.
19. Don't be afraid of (or excited by) the co-ed bathrooms. The thrill is over in about 2 seconds.
20. Wednesday is the middle of the week; therefore on wednesday night the week is more than half over. You should celebrate accordingly. (It makes thursday and friday a lot more fun.)
21. Welcome failure into your lives. It's how we grow. What matters is not that you failed, but that you recovered.
22. Take some classes that have nothing to do with your major(s), purely for the fun of it.
23. It's important to think about the future, but it's more important to be present in the now. You won't get the most out of college if you think of it as a stepping stone.
24. When you're living on a college campus with 400 things going on every second of every day, watching TV is pretty much a waste of your time and a waste of your parents' money. If you're going to watch, watch with friends so at least you can call it a "valuable social experience."
25. Don't be afraid to fall in love. When it happens, don't take it for granted. Celebrate it, but don't let it define your college experience.
26. Much of the time you once had for pleasure reading is going to disappear. Keep a list of the books you would have read had you had the time, so that you can start reading them when you graduate.
27. Things that seem like the end of the world really do become funny with a little time and distance. Knowing this, forget the embarassment and skip to the good part.
28. Every once in awhile, there will come an especially powerful moment when you can actually feel that an experience has changed who you are. Embrace these, even if they are painful.
29. No matter what your political or religious beliefs, be open-minded. You're going to be challenged over the next four years in ways you can't imagine, across all fronts. You can't learn if you're closed off.
30. If you need to get a job, find something that you actually enjoy. Just because it's work doesn't mean it has to suck.
31. Don't always lead. It's good to follow sometimes.
32. Take a lot of pictures. One of my major regrets in life is that I didn't take more pictures in college. My excuse was the cost of film and processing. Digital cameras are cheap and you have plenty of hard drive space, so you have no excuse.
33. Your health and safety are more important than anything.
34. Ask for help. Often.
35. Half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at any given moment. Way more than half of you will be in the bottom half of your class at some point in the next four years. Get used to it.
36. In ten years very few of you will look as good as you do right now, so secretly revel in how hot you are before it's too late.
37. In the long run, where you go to college doesn't matter as much as what you do with the opportunities you're given there. The MIT name on your resume won't mean much if that's the only thing on your resume. As a student here, you will have access to a variety of unique opportunities that no one else will ever have - don't waste them.
38. On the flip side, don't try to do everything. Balance = well-being.
39. Make perspective a priority. If you're too close to something to have good perspective, rely on your friends to help you.
40. Eat badly sometimes. It's the last time in your life when you can do this without feeling guilty about it.
41. Make a complete ass of yourself at least once, preferably more. It builds character.
42. Wash your sheets more than once a year. Trust me on this one.
43. If you are in a relationship and none of your friends want to hang out with you and your significant other, pay attention. They usually know better than you do.
44. Don't be afraid of the weird pizza topping combinations that your new friend from across the country loves. Some of the truly awful ones actually taste pretty good. Expand your horizons.
45. Explore the campus thoroughly. Don't get caught.
46. Life is too short to stick with a course of study that you're no longer excited about. Switch, even if it complicates things.
47. Tattoos are permanent. Be very certain.
48. Don't make fun of prefrosh. That was you like 2 hours ago.
49. Enjoy every second of the next four years. It is impossible to describe how quickly they pass.
50. This is the only time in your lives when your only real responsibility is to learn. Try to remember how lucky you are every day.

Be yourself. Create. Inspire, and be inspired. Grow. Laugh. Learn. Love.

Welcome to some of the best years of your lives.

The world’s first acoustic invisibility cloak has been created by Duke University

Duke University has built the first 3D omnidirectional acoustic invisibility cloak. The cloaking device, which takes the form of a pyramid of perforated plastic, is hidden from sound waves striking it from any direction — if you fired some sound waves at the device, using sonar for example, you would see nothing; not the cloak, and not the object beneath it. This has obvious applications in the military, but also in architectural acoustics.

Here at ExtremeTech we’ve written a lot about metamaterials — specially fabricated materials that have properties never found in nature — and how they allow for the creation of some seriously outlandish devices, such as invisibility cloaks and superlenses. Metamaterials aren’t necessarily restricted to bending light waves in odd ways, though; they can also be used to manipulate acoustic waves, too.

Case in point: Duke University’s 3D acoustic cloak, which consists of layers of perforated plastic arranged in a pyramidal shape. The exact geometry of the cloak, plus the placement of the holes, very precisely control the propagation and reflection of sound waves. The idea is that, when the cloak is hit by some acoustic waves, it alters the trajectory of the waves so that it’s as if the cloak and the cloaked object were never there.

If you imagine the Duke cloak sitting on the ground, and sound waves moving straight down towards it, they would be reflected by the cloak in such a way that it appears that they’ve bounced off the floor. As you can see in the diagram below, the cloaking is not quite perfect (compare Ground to Cloak), but it’s pretty good for an experimental prototype.

The leader of the project, Duke University’s Steven Cummer, says, despite the cloak’s rudimentary appearance, “We put a lot of energy into calculating how sound waves would interact with it. We didn’t come up with this overnight.” He doesn’t go into details, but there was probably a lot of computer modeling, with different sized holes and geometric arrangements. [Research paper: doi:10.1038/nmat3901 - "Three-dimensional broadband omnidirectional acoustic ground cloak"]

Just your usual creepy shot of a researcher trying to look mesmerized by his latest creation.

Moving forward, Cummer says there are obvious military applications. ”We conducted our tests in the air, but sound waves behave similarly underwater, so one obvious potential use is sonar avoidance.” Imagine, if you will, underwater mines that cannot be detected due to acoustic cloaking. There could also be interesting civil applications, too — architectural acoustics are a very important factor when designing any kind of space, whether it’s an office or an auditorium. If a structural component — a beam, a window, a door — is getting in the way of the acoustics, you could just shield it.

Was Genghis Khan history's greenest conqueror?

The Mongol invasion scrubbed nearly 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, according to surprising new research.

GENGHIS GREEN: The founder of history's largest contiguous empire cooled the planet while taking a body count. (Photo: Wiki Commons/public domain)

Genghis Khan's Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th centuries was so vast that it may have been the first instance in history of a single culture causing man-made climate change, according to new research out of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, reports Mongabay.com.

 

Unlike modern day climate change, however, the Mongol invasion cooled the planet, effectively scrubbing around 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

 

So how did Genghis Khan, one of history's cruelest conquerors, earn such a glowing environmental report card? The reality may be a bit difficult for today's environmentalists to stomach, but Khan did it the same way he built his empire — with a high body count.

 

Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests.

 

In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere.

 

"It's a common misconception that the human impact on climate began with the large-scale burning of coal and oil in the industrial era," said Julia Pongratz, who headed the Carnegie Institution research project. "Actually, humans started to influence the environment thousands of years ago by changing the vegetation cover of the Earth's landscapes when we cleared forests for agriculture."

 

Pongratz's study, which was completed with the help of her Carnegie colleague Ken Caldeira, as well as with German colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, measured the carbon impact of a number of historical events besides just the Mongol invasion, including the Black Death in Europe, the fall of China's Ming Dynasty and the conquest of the Americas.

 

What all of these events share in common is the widespread return of forests after a period of massive depopulation, but the longevity of the Mongol invasion made it stand out as having the biggest impact on the world's climate.

 

"We found that during the short events such as the Black Death and the Ming Dynasty collapse, the forest re-growth wasn't enough to overcome the emissions from decaying material in the soil," explained Pongratz. "But during the longer-lasting ones like the Mongol invasion ... there was enough time for the forests to re-grow and absorb significant amounts of carbon."

 

The 700 million tons of carbon absorbed as a result of the Mongol invasions roughly equals the amount of carbon global society now produces annually from gasoline.

 

Though Genghis Khan's legacy as one of the world's cruelest conquerors isn't likely to change because of the unintended "green" consequences of his invasions, Pongratz hopes that her research can lead to land-use changes that someday might alter how future historians rate our environmental impact.

 

"Based on the knowledge we have gained from the past, we are now in a position to make land-use decisions that will diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle. We cannot ignore the knowledge we have gained," she said.

Sources:

Genghis Khan the GREEN: Invader killed so many people that carbon levels plummeted

Church Of Scientology Investigated 'South Park' Creators Matt Stone, Trey Parker: Report

For Matt Stone and Trey Parker, nothing is holy or immune to satire. And since the launch of their groundbreaking animated TV series "South Park," they've skewered a multitude of world religions, pointing out hypocrisies, inanities or just playing with ridiculous stereotypes. One of their most famous religious satires, 2005's Scientology-targeting "Trapped In The Closet" episode, allegedly struck such a nerve with the church's leaders that the group responded by targeting Stone, Parker and their friends in a long-term covert investigation.

Marty Rathbun, a former Church of Scientology executive-turned-critic and independent worshipper, revealed to the Village Voice a number of documents that detailed the religious sect's detailed surveillance of the Emmy-winning TV moguls. Through the help of informants, public records and various other means, they searched for "vulnerabilities" in the pair's personal lives, and after exploring their personal and business connections, widened their focus to investigating actors such as John Stamos, as well.

"Phone records. Bank records. Personal letters that expose some kind of vulnerability," Rathbun told the Voice. "They'll read stuff into the kind of alcohol you're drinking and how much. Prescriptions. They'll figure out your diet. They can find out a lot about you through your trash."

Rathbun's personal site leads with a post that includes more information, including this summary: "In ’06 the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, became targets of Corporate Scientology’s OSA. Operations were run in an attempt to silence Parker and Stone. While Corporate Scientology was ultimately unsuccessful, left behind an instructive data trail during their efforts."

"Trapped in the Closet" featured a storyline that had Stan, one of the four children that make up the show's core, take a "personality test" after being encountered on the street by a group of Scientologists. The vague test reveals that he is miserable, which leads him to agree to pay the church to make him happy again. An "E-meter" reading reveals that he is housing the soul of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and various Hollywood celebrities who are members of the church flock to his home to help convince him to become their new leader.

One of those celebrities included Tom Cruise, who locks himself in a closet, which was a clear allusion to various rumors about his sexuality. John Travolta, another member of the church, soon joined him in the closet. Stan's friends tell him that the religion is actually a cult, pointing out that Hubbard was a science fiction writer, though he at first refuses to believe it. Eventually, the Scientology elders reveal that the church is a for-profit con, calling their own religion "crap."

Cruise was so incensed by the episode that he allegedly threatened to not participatein promotion for "Mission: Impossible III" junket if a re-run of the episode was aired; Viacom owns both Comedy Central and Paramount, the studio that put out the film. Cruise's reps denied this, though the episode was indeed pulled. Stone and Parker, for their part, put out a satirical statement on the matter:

"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"

"Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu."

Rathbun teased more documents, which reveal major advances in their investigations, would come soon. He was arrested in September, allegedly at the behest of the Church of Scientology, though charges were later dropped; the Voice reported then that the Church of Scientology was harassing him, in part because he practices the faith outside of the official Church.

"South Park" satirizes religion in just about every episode (click here for a slide show of ten of their most memorable). The show has cast Satan as the cowardly lover of Saddam Hussein, while Kyle, another of the four core children, comes from a very stereotypical Jewish family. Parker and Stone also created the Broadway show, "Book of Mormon," which pokes fun at that religion.

References:
Church of Scientology Spied On Southpark Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Found Nothing

Tardigrades: The only animal that survives in Vacuum of Space

Tardigrades are tiny water dwelling animals.

They're also complete badasses.

They are to date the only animals known to be able to survive in the vacuum of space. They can also survive doses of ionizing radiation that would kill a human, go without food or water for ten years and survive temperatures almost down to absolute zero. They can also completely dry out, to the point where they're just 3% water, and then rehydrate and happily carry on their life cycle.

Image by Andreas Schmidt-Rhaesa, Corinna Schulze and Ricardo Neves for the Nikon Small World competition.

OCEA Project Finalists – I-15 Corridor Expansion

his is the first of a series about the five finalists for ASCE’s Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement (OCEA) awards. Established in 1960, the OCEA Award recognizes a project that makes a significant contribution to both the civil engineering profession and society as a whole. The winner of this year’s OCEA award will be announced at ASCE’s Outstanding Projects And Leaders (OPAL) Gala, March 20, at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Today, read about the I-15 Corridor Expansion project.

I-15 Corridor Expansion Project

Like many interstates in the U.S., Interstate 15 in Utah County, Utah, had reached the end of its design life. The infrastructure was deteriorating and needed to be updated; congestion and population growth in the area demanded the freeway be widened.

The Utah Department of Transportation’s (UDOT) $1.725 billion I-15 Corridor Expansion (I-15 CORE) project used innovative procurement, scheduling, and planning techniques to complete the highway expansion project 2 years ahead of schedule while saving taxpayers $260 million. The expanded roadway relieves congestion for motorists who travel to and from Salt Lake City and Provo. By using accelerated bridge construction, wireless paving and grading, and diverging diamond interchanges, the impact to traffic was reduced for the over 130,000 motorists traveling through the I-15 CORE every day.

ASCE News Associate Editor Doug Scott interviewed Brian G. Tolbert, P.E., project manager/infrastructure with the Fluor Corporation, who served as deputy project director of the I-15 CORE project.

1. What is the most innovative or creative aspect of your project?

Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) is not entirely new to UDOT projects, on a singular basis. However, PRC [Provo River Contractors, a joint venture of Fluor, Ames Construction, Ralph L. Wadsworth Construction, and Wadsworth Brothers Construction] moved 5 bridges into place using ABC methods over the course of the I-15 CORE project. In particular, our team set a Western Hemisphere record for moving the Sam White Bridge via self-propelled modular transport (SPMT), the longest completed bridge structure and the longest continuous 2-span bridge structure. This bridge is 354 feet long and 80 feet wide, and was coined the “Super Bowl” of bridge moves due to its football-field size and the fact [that] it was moved around the time of the NFL Super Bowl. The Sam White Bridge was only the second multispan bridge structure moved in the Western Hemisphere. The first multispan moved by SPMT was the 200 South bridge, which was moved into place by PRC the prior weekend. The use of large-scale wireless paving was another innovative aspect of this project. The use of cloud computing allowed up-to-date design information to be available nearly real-time for this GPS-guided system.

2. What was the biggest challenge?

Constructing the largest transportation project in Utah history, faster than any other megaproject, while  maintaining all existing lanes of traffic, was the biggest challenge. Essentially, the entire 24-mile stretch was under construction at the same time. Coordinating all of the construction activities, including traffic lane shifts and effective public outreach, was a significant challenge, too. Maintaining the safety of our workers exposed to high levels of traffic adjacent to work zones was also a major issue during construction.

 3. Did your project have any technical issues that you had to overcome? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?

The entire project area is ancient lake bed. This results in soils that aren’t ideal for construction, particularly when accelerating the project to a record pace. Perhaps the most time-consuming technical issue to resolve relates to the poor subsurface conditions near Utah Lake that affectan approximate 3-mile stretch of the interstate. The proposed design contemplated raising this section of roadway along the lake by approximately 5 feet to exceed the 100-year flood plain elevation. However, this amount of embankment was predicted to induce long-term settlements that would have lasted for years and resulted in significant settlement amounts – up to 2 feet. PRC and UDOT overcame this issue by redesigning the interstate vertical profile to reduce the embankment-inducing settlement, while also designing and constructing earthen berms along the lake border to provide a dam effect and keep the interstate from being submerged in flood events. Also, highway detention areas in the highway alignment were constructed that would function in the event [that] the 100-year flood occurred.

  4. What time and budget challenges did your project have and what did you do to overcome them?

The extremely short construction schedule was the biggest challenge on the project. We had less than 3 years to design and build a $1.1 billion interstate freeway. We brought in 3 of the industry leaders to complete the design using over 300 design engineers in only 14 months. These firms were HDR, Michael Baker, and Jacobs. During the construction phase our team worked double shifts six days [a] week. We also came up with innovative techniques for cold-weather concrete paving and MOT [Maintenance of Traffic] shifts to help facilitate the schedule.

5. Sustainability is one the three initiatives here at ASCE. Describe how your project adheres to being sustainable.

Our project recycled a large majority of the pavement and base materials that were demolished by the project. Instead of going to landfills or other disposal sites, this material was crushed into useable size and composition for embankment and pavement base materials. Slag, a by-product of steel processing, was used extensively throughout the project, which reduced the need for excavation of other sources. A secondary sustainability benefit was the reduction in traffic congestion and delay [through] utilizing innovative MOT strategies that maintained the existing number of lanes open to traffic throughout 90% of the construction schedule. UDOT estimates this reduction in congestion provided over $800 million in user-cost savings.

Giant virus revived from ancient permafrost

Melting permafrost could unleash new human pathogens

Scientists have discovered a new type of  virus in 30,000-year-old permafrost and managed to revive it, producing an infection.

The giant virus obtained from Siberian permafrost was frozen for 30,000 years, but was able to infect an amoeba when it was revived. (Image courtesy of Julia Bartoli and Chantal Abergel, IGS and CNRS-AMU.)

Fortunately, the new virus, namedPithovirus sibericum, infects amoebas and is not harmful to humans. 

But its ability to become infectious again after so many millenniums is a warning, writes Jean-Michel Claverie at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at Aix-Marseille University and his colleagues in a new study published Monday..

"The revival of such an ancestral amoeba infecting virus … suggests that the thawing of permafrost either from global warming or industrial exploitation of circumpolar regions might not be exempt from future threats to human or animal health," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Giant DNA viruses, first discovered just 10 years ago, are so big compared with most other viruses that they are visible under a visible light microscope. Before the new virus was discovered, just two families were known. Both infect amoebas.

The researchers collected a 30,000-year-old permafrost core from Siberia. In order to hunt for giant viruses, they took a type of amoeba that often gets infected with giant viruses and used it as bait. After the amoebas were exposed to permafrost samples, the amoebas became infected with a previously unknown giant virus. The virus has a mix of traits from the two known giant virus families.

The researchers suggest that looking for amoeba-infecting viruses in permafrost is an "inexpensive and safe way to realistically assess the threat" posed by pathogens that might be released from ancient frozen soils and sediments as permafrost melts, either due to global warming or industrial activities such as mining and drilling.

Earliest Case of Child Abuse Discovered in Egyptian Cemetery

When the researchers came across the abused toddler, labeled "Burial 519," in Kellis 2, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first. But when they began brushing the sand away, they noticed prominent fractures on the child's arms. The excavated in situ burial of 519 shown here.

          A 2- to 3-year-old child from a Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, shows evidence of physical child abuse, archaeologists have found. The child, who lived around 2,000 years ago, represents the earliest documented case of child abuse in the archaeological record, and the first case ever found in Egypt, researchers say.

         The Dakhleh Oasis is one of seven oases in Egypt's Western Desert. The site has seen continuous human occupation since the Neolithic period, making it the focus of several archaeological investigations, said lead researcher Sandra Wheeler, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Central Florida. Moreover, the cemeteries in the oasis allow scientists to take a unique look at the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt.

         In particular, the so-called Kellis 2 cemetery, which is located in the Dakhleh Oasis town of Kellis (southwest of Cairo), reflects Christian mortuary practices. For example, "instead of having children in different places, everyone is put in one place, which is an unusual practice at this time," Wheeler told LiveScience. Dating methods using radioactive carbon from skeletons suggest the cemetery was used between A.D. 50 and A.D. 450.

        When the researchers came across the abused toddler — labeled "Burial 519" — in Kellis 2, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first. But when Wheeler's colleague Tosha Duprasbegan brushing the sand away, she noticed prominent fractures on the child's arms. 

Archaeologists discovered the remains of a toddler in Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, who showed evidence of child abuse. Here, mud bricks for two tomb structures in the cemetery. In the foreground, several excavated graves can be seen.

"She thought, 'Whoa, this was weird,' and then she found another fracture on the collarbone," Wheeler said. "We have some other kids that show evidence of skeletal trauma, but this is the only one that had these really extreme fracture patterns."

Signs of abuse

The researchers decided to conduct a series of tests on Burial 519, including X-ray work, histology (microscopic study of tissues) and isotopic analyses, which pinpoint metabolic changes that show when the body tried to repair itself. They found a number of bone fractures throughout the body, on places like the humerus (forearm), ribs, pelvis and back.

Whereas no particular fracture is diagnostic of child abuse, the pattern of trauma suggests it occurred. Additionally, the injuries were all in different stages of healing, which further signifies repeated nonaccidental trauma.

One of the more interesting fractures was located on the child's upper arms, in the same spot on each arm, Wheeler said. The fractures were complete, broken all the way through the bone — given that children are more flexible than adults, a complete break like that would have taken a lot of force.

Close-up of upper body of burial 519, the 2,000-year-old remains of the abused toddler in Egypt.

        After comparing the injury with the clinical literature, the researchers deduced that someone grabbed the child's arms and used them as handles to shake the child violently. Other fractures were also likely caused by shaking, but some injuries, including those on the ribs and vertebrae, probably came from direct blows.

       The archaeologists aren't sure what ultimately killed the toddler. "It could be that last fracture, which is the clavicle fracture," Wheeler said, referring to the collarbone. "Maybe it wasn't a survivable event."

       A unique case Child abuse in the archaeological record is rare. One possible reason, Wheeler said, is that archaeologists didn't really pay much attention to child remains until about 20 years ago, believing that children couldn't tell them much about the past.

       A few cases of possible child abuse have since come out of France, Peru and the United Kingdom, all of which date back to medieval times or later. "Certainly, our case has the best context in terms of the archaeology and skeletal analysis," Wheeler said. Of the 158 juveniles excavated from the Kellis 2 cemetery, Burial 519 is the only one showing signs of repeated nonaccidental trauma, suggesting child abuse wasn't something that occurred throughout the community. The uniqueness of the case supports the general belief that children were a valued part of ancient Egyptian society.

       By contrast, though Romans loved their kids immensely, they believed children were born soft and weak, so it was the parents' duty to mold them into adults. They often engaged in such practices as corporal punishment, immobilizing newborn infants on wooden planks to ensure proper growth and routinely bathing the young in cold water as to not soften them with the feel of warm water.

 "We know that the ancient Egyptians really revered children," Wheeler said. "But we don't know how much Roman ideas filtered into Egyptian society," she added, suggesting that the unique child abuse case may have been the result of Roman influence.

Via livescience

Nissan eliminates blind spots with rear-view mirror that doubles as a wide-angle LCD

As car tech goes, here’s a small but useful step forward: Nissan created a rear-view mirror with a full-width LCD that shows a wide angle view behind you. The video feed comes from a rear-mounted camera. Flip a switch on the mirror and it reverts to being a traditional reflective mirror. Flip back and it’s a camera again.

Nissan will unveil the mirror at the Geneva Motor Show next week. It will first be used at the 24 Hours of LeMans Race on a car that doesn’t have any significant rear view other than the side mirrors. Nissan hasn’t said what passenger car it would be on. It will be offered this spring as a dealer add-on accessory in the Japanese market, followed by an introduction to global markets in 2015.

Special 4:1 aspect ratio LCD

Nissan said it developed a special 4:1 aspect ratio LCD that fits inside the rear review mirror. Even a 16:9 wide-angle LCD common on laptops or desktops would be too squarish. It’s linked to a 1.3-megapixel camera at the rear of the vehicle. In an artist rendering, the camera is mounted at the top of the window glass on a crossover SUV. It isn’t clear where it would go in a sedan — perhaps on the trunk or rear window glass.

According to Andy Palmer, chief planning officer and executive vice president of Nissan, “[The Smart mirror] offers the possibility of new and exciting designs for our upcoming models because Smart rearview mirror is an alternative to a very wide rear window for good visibility. We’ll have the flexibility to create new shapes, and to further improve aerodynamics for better fuel efficiency.”

Put another way, Nissan is playing catch-up on visibility, but faster than the competition: car designs with high rear deck lids and big C (rear) pillars already restrict rear visibility, so this restores the rear vision drivers lost in the last generation. Also, SUVs with more side pillars generally have worse rear vision than cars.

Ready for the backup camera mandate?

Sooner or later, the US will mandate backup cameras so you don’t back over kids, pets and bicycles. It has been proposed for several years and postponed by the Department of Transportation. If Nissans are equipped with smart rear-view mirrors, it’s thought that automakers wouldn’t need to put “costly” (their term) color LCDs in the center stacks of all cars. The problem is, automakers will still need a center stack LCD for infotainment. You can’t tell buyers the two- or three-line display on the head unit is good enough for searching through 1,000 songs or a 500-name phone book.

A few car models have already tried backup camera displays in the rear-view mirror, produced by Gentex and other suppliers (photo right). Unlike Nissan’s width-of-the-mirror display, the Gentex-style displays were small insets in the mirror. The image was so small that you might not see a child if there’s sun flare on the lens, or if the person is wearing clothing that blends in to the background.

Smart rear-view mirror answers questions, raises others

The Nissan smart rear-view mirror is pretty cool. It deals nicely with limitations on what the driver can see, but some questions remain. Will drivers have trouble adapting to a view that’s three to 12 feet (one to four meters) behind the mirror? If the view is so wide that you can see cars in your blind spot, does that make cars a couple hundred yards back too small? At night, will the headlamp glare on the lens be better, worse, or different from the glare on your eyeballs? Will this also double as the rear backup camera, and how will the driver judge the last 12-24 inches if the camera is mounted up high on a sloping rear glass?

The camera might be more useful with blind spot warning so the driver doesn’t miss a short car that’s pulling alongside.

First, let’s go racing

Nissan says the first car to use the smart rear-view camera will be the Nissan ZEOD MP. It’s an experimental car entrant and is capable, Nissan says, of running a lap (eight miles or 13km) at a time solely on electric power; ZEOD stands for zero emissions on demand. The other laps are run on the 90-pound, three-cylinder gasoline engine. The engine is so small — 20 x 16 inches — that it would fit on a plane as a carry-on.

As the photo shows, there’s almost no vision to speak of. For the race car, the rear camera should be a big advantage because even cars with inside rear-view mirrors have limited vision.

Nissan also has a significant small- and medium-size truck business. For the first time, for all tracks — but especially panel vans — drivers could actually see what’s behind them, not just what’s behind them in adjacent lanes.

New State Of Matter Discovered in Chicken Eyes

New State Of Matter Discovered in Chicken Eyes

photo credit: Joseph Corbo and Timothy Lau, Washington University in St. Louis

The retina of the eye is home to rods and a variety of cones, which help the brain perceive color. When studying the retina of the chicken, researchers found that the five different types of cones are arranged in what is known as “disordered hyperuniformity” and has never before been seen in biology until now. The research was led by Yang Jiao of Washington University and was published in Physical Review E.

When a small section of the pattern is viewed, the position of the individual components (in this case, the different types of cones) appears to be random. On the large scale, there appears to be more some order to the perceived madness. This hyperuniform state of matter has been seen before in plasmas and liquid helium (which occurs at -269 degrees C, -450 degrees F) and allows the substance to act both as a crystal and a liquid.

Because the different types of cones are different sizes, this arrangement allows the retina to take on the crystal-like ability of maintaining the density throughout. However, all of the cones also have the same physical properties, just like a liquid. Chickens and other birds depend on acute eyesight, which is aided by their five types of photoreceptive cells that are densely packed into the retina. It is speculated that this ordered arrangement lends to the integrity of the retina while allowing them to perceive light and colors evenly.

Each type of cone has a set pattern that, when viewed individually, appears pretty obvious. When all of the patterns are put together, it has a very complicated order that is described as a “uniform disarray.” Each cone appears to have a zone around it which helps space out cones of the same type. This is a multi-hyperuniformity that has not been seen before, and the researchers believe it calls for a new state of matter to be used to describe it.

Beyond just being a neat fact about avian vision, disordered hyperuniformity is used to develop optical circuits which operate or restrict based on certain wavelengths. Now that this type of patterning has been found in a biological system, the field may be expanded in future research. Researchers hope that other scientists will go back and reexamine old data to determine if there are more instances of disordered hyperuniformity that may have gone unnoticed. 

Concrete-Eating Robot Recycles Buildings

Concrete-Eating Robot Recycles Buildings

Building demolition demands a lot of heavy machinery to crush concrete and separate valuable materials for reuse. Often, those materials are transferred to offsite locations, which wastes time and resources. The process also wastes a lot of water in order to prevent harmful dust clouds from blooming. However, a Swedish student’s concrete-eating robot aims to change all that.


The ERO Concrete Recycling Robot was designed to efficiently disassemble concrete structures without any waste, dust or separation and enable reclaimed building materials to be reused for new prefabricated concrete buildings,” explained Omer Haciomeroglu of the Umea Institute of Design of Design. ”It does so by using a water jet to crack the concrete surface, separate the waste and package the cleaned, dust-free material.”

The idea is to send in a fleet of the ERO robots that will scan buildings to determine the best route to execute demolition. Once the robot goes to work, using vacuum suction and electrical power, it erases the building.

“ERO deconstructs with high-pressure water and sucks and separates the mixture of aggregate, cement and water. It then sends aggregate and filtered cement slurry separately down to the packaging unit to be contained,” Haciomeroglu wrote. ”Clean aggregate is packed into big bags, which are labeled and sent to nearby concrete precast stations for reuse. Water is recycled back into the system.”

Turbulence dynamos strategically placed inside air suction chambers even provide a percentage of ERO’s energy needs. Once the last wall has been demolished, essentially nothing has gone to landfills or been sent away for additional processing.

BLOG: Electric Ice Cream Makes Sweet Music

“Even the rebar is cleaned of concrete, dust and rust and is ready to be cut and reused immediately,” Haciomeroglu stated. “Every bit of the load-bearing structure is reusable for new building blocks.”

So far the design remains a concept, but influential organizations are starting to take note. Last year, Haciomeroglu’s concept won in the Student Designs category of the International Design Excellence Awards.

via Inhabitat

Japanese Charity Breast-Squeeze!

A charity breast squeeze took place last weekend in Shinjuku, Tokyo as part of the “Erotica will Save the World” event.

Is this a typical reward for donating to charity in Japan? We go hands on… I mean… just read on for more details.

“Erotica will Save the World” is a 24-hour live-streamed fundraising event that took place last Saturday and Sunday (August 25-26). Men and women (yes, that is right) came out to enjoy two days of erotically-charged festivities: Some of the areas had stalls selling goods and DVDs, other areas had fun events such as a “Masturbation Marathon.” We’ll leave the details of that that competition up to your imagination.

The most popular attraction was the “Breast Fundraiser”, which encouraged people to donate to charity. How did it encourage them to do that? Well, if you donate some money you are allowed to squeeze the breasts of one of ten lovely adult video actresses (known as oppai momi in Japanese – yes, they have a phrase for it).

The 10 volunteers

Here is a quick rundown of the “Breast Fundraiser”:

1. Line up, have your ID checked (must be over 18)
2. Donate money
3. Sterilize your hands (they don’t know where they have been)
4. Squeeze breasts (up to two squeezes per hand)

The organizers have recommended that if the allocated squeeze is not enough for you, to go through processes 1 to 4 again.

Showing how it is done…

All money raised will be donated to STOP!AIDS, a charity aimed at promoting the awareness, treatment, and prevention of AIDS.

Oppai momi is particularly popular in Japan, and there are plenty of Japanese style pubs where you can go have a beer and also a squeeze of the waitresses breasts after a hard day in the office.
This is the first oppia momi fundraiser we are aware of though.
Source:

Tokyo Sports, Paradise TV