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Spatiotemporal context

     Beautifully designed interactive animation by 14 year-old Cary Huang making the challenging act of perceiving the relative scale of various objects in our universe tangible.

http://htwins.net/scale2/

Think of it as something like a hands-on version of Charles and Ray Eames' 1977 'Powers of Ten' short film.  

The way in which Huang's 'Scale of the Universe' allows users to scroll freely through numerous collected objects in order to give a clear sense of their spatiotemporal context is a great idea, here expertly realised.

To note again 'by 14 year old Cary Huang'. Interesting to see what projects the seventh-grader and his twin brother Michael will have in progress in a few years.  A brilliant and elegantly simple tool.  

here's the link again - enjoy...

http://htwins.net/scale2/

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Brain wave

   Like binary tea leaves scattered casually in the mind, brain scans used to precisely decipher dream imagery.

"Each image mentioned, from bronze statues to keys and ice picks, was noted, no matter how surreal." 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22031074

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Polaroid make camera to mimic camera made to mimic Polaroid

In a real life Ouroboros moment, The Telegraph reports on Socialmatic, a new digital camera being produced by Polaroid with Instagram filters embedded to alter images before printing.  Available in 2014.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9907961/Socialmatic-Polaroid-Instagram-camera-coming-in-2014.html

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Incredible prosthetic hand (the myoelectric double corr) from bebionic3 showcased by Nigel Ackland, 53

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Protect against hearing loss & cognitive decline with a glass of red

Fan of loud music, red wine and/or grapes?  Not so keen on hearing loss & cognitive decline... well this could be your lucky day according to a new lab study recently published by Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/hfhs-srs022013.php

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Organic computer

"Scientists have connected the brains of a pair of animals and allowed them to share sensory information in a major step towards what the researchers call the world's first "organic computer"." Ian Sample, The Guardian, March 1st 2013

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/feb/28/brains-rats-connected-share-information

Image - Donato Giancola 'Construct of Time', oil on paper mounted on masoni, 1993

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2,475,576,000 seconds - the average lifetime in numbers

Life expectancy: 78.5 years or 2,475,576,000 seconds Words spoken in lifetime: 123,205,750 Friendships: 1,700  Baths: 7,163 Dreams: 104,390 Beef and Veal consumed: 4.5 cows per person Chickens consumed: 1,201 Potatoes consumed: 2,327 kilos Chocolate: 10,354 bars Baked Beans: 845 tins Farts: 35,815 litres of wind Soap: 656 Toothpaste: 276 Deodorant: 272 Shampoo: 198 Beer: 10,351 pints Wine: 1,694 bottles Vomit produced: 149 litres Sex: 4,239 times Holidays: 59 trips

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DNA poetry

"University of Calgary professor Christian Bok is trying to encode a poem into the DNA of a living microbe. He talks to Doug Dirks about his Xenotext Experiment." Source: CBC Calgary

Stream the conversation here:

http://www.cbc.ca/homestretch/episode/2013/01/21/dna-poem/

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'Cool or creepy' test for new innovations, Washington Post, 10th December 2012

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Mezza voce

Simon Werner a Disparu LP (released 15th February 2011, SYR)

In a strange twist of fate, the final Sonic Youth record featured a band silenced, a blissful paean to an infinite summer past, turned ode to a future that could never be.  Released the day after Valentines Day in 2011, this would be the last original recording by the seminal band to surface before the split of Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, and subsequent break up of the band announced during the autumn of the same year.

http://70.32.78.35/sonicnews/?p=773 original news post announcing the soundtrack from SY website archive (April 15th 2010)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/oct/16/sonic-youth-thurston-moore-kim-gordon-split Guardian newspaper (UK) piece announcing the dissolving of the band (October 16th 2011)

'Au Café', the penultimate piece from the soundtrack:

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British Library English Pilot Project

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Carl Sagan explains the 4th dimension

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Non-human persons.  Developments on original 2010 Helsinki conference.  

Article, Telegraph Feb 2012: 'Dolphins and whales are so intelligent that they should be recognised as "non-human persons" and given their own bill of rights, researchers claim...'

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Visit Original Link

Gary Klein on insight, intuition and mistakes.  

Gary Klein is a Senior Scientist at Applied Research Associates.  He is the author of Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, and the coauthor of Working Minds: A Practitioner's Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis, both published by the MIT Press. 

Original source with full video and text transcript available here:

http://edge.org/conversation/insight

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3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine