- Latest Popular Stories, Instablogs Community by Rj3sp

How Meditation Affects Your Body

Rob Jongschaap — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:38:36 +0000

It turns out peaceful thoughts really can influence our bodies, right down to the instructions we receive from our DNA, according to a new study.

Researchers for the study, published in the Public Library of Science, took blood samples from a group of 19 people who habitually meditated or prayed for years, and 19 others who never meditated.

The researchers ran genomic analyses of the blood and found that the meditating group suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related genes — about 1,000 of them — than the nonmeditating group.

The Tour de France on Google Maps with Street View

Rob Jongschaap — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:35:44 +0000

The tour de France 2008 can be followed on Google Maps with panoramic images of the route provided by the Street View feature.

LinkNotes: A Greener Apple

Rob Jongschaap — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:31:28 +0000

Apple’s new iPhone 3G will be shipped on July 11 in a potato starch paper tray. Apple placed an order with Dutch company PaperFoam, which also makes packages for...

Humor Shown To Be Fundamental To Our Success As A Species

Rob Jongschaap — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:08:50 +0000

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2008) â€” First universal theory of humour answers how and why we find things funny. Published June 12, The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour by Alastair Clarke answers the centuries old question of what is humour. Clarke explains how and why we find things funny and identifies the reason humour is common to all human societies, its fundamental role in the evolution of homo sapiens and its continuing importance in the cognitive development of infants.

Google Street View in France

Rob Jongschaap — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:59:05 +0000

As a special present for the upcoming Tour de France, Google added Street View imagery for Tour de France’s routes. The coverage is really limited, but Google will extend it in the next months, when Street View will be available in many...

New map IDs the core of the human brain

Rob Jongschaap — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:51:44 +0000

An international team of researchers has created the first complete high-resolution map of how millions of neural fibers in the human cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain responsible for higher level thinking — connect and communicate. Their groundbreaking work identified a single network core, or hub, that may be key to the workings of both hemispheres of the brain.

New evolutionary theory identifies mechanism and function of humor

Rob Jongschaap — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:56:17 +0000

Research identifies the reason humor is common to all human societies, its fundamental role in the evolution of homo sapiens and its continuing importance in the cognitive development of infants [...]
Alastair Clarke explains: “The theory is an evolutionary and cognitive explanation of how and why any individual finds anything funny. Effectively it explains that humour occurs when the brain recognizes a pattern that surprises it, and that recognition of this sort is rewarded with the experience of the humorous response, an element of which is broadcast as laughter.
“By removing stipulations of content we have been forced to study the structures underlying any instance of humour, and it has become clear that it is not the content of the stimulus but the patterns underlying it that provide the potential for sources of humour. For patterns to exist it is necessary to have some form of content, but once that content exists, it is the level of the pattern at which humour operates and for which it delivers its rewards.”

Nineyearold girl finds black widow spider in red grapes bought at Waitrose

Rob Jongschaap — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:24:19 +0000

Supermarket bosses have recalled red Mexican grapes from all their stores after a deadly black widow spider was found in a bunch.

Waitrose pulled the fruit from shelves in case other spiders had entered the country in the same consignment.

The black widow - the world’s fifth most poisonous spider - was found by nine-year-old Harriet Barron in a fruit bowl at her home.

Minutes earlier, her brother Elliot had been eating from the same bunch while watching television.

No way to hide from spit web calls

Rob Jongschaap — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 19:16:52 +0000

AS IF unsolicited sales calls weren’t bad enough, now you can be subjected to spit too, or “spam over internet telephony” messages. To make matters worse, current deterrents may be useless.

Spit is particularly annoying because a call is more intrusive than a spam email. What’s more, spam filters don’t block spit since the content of a call is only known once it has been made. Existing efforts to block spit range from tests to ensure the caller is human, to analysis of users’ internet traffic.

Orbiting robots could repair satellites on the fly tech 28 June 2008 New Scientist Tech

Rob Jongschaap — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:43:38 +0000

Fewer astronauts, more robots. That’s the call from three European aerospace engineers, who argue that crewed satellite repair missions - like the ones flown by NASA to fix the ailing Hubble Space Telescope - are expensive, wasteful and set the wrong agenda for the space community.

The trio - Alex Ellery, Joerg Kreidsel and Bernd Sommer - argue in the journal Acta Astronautica that while such missions may be spectacular, they are unsustainable. Space agencies and satellite operators should instead be accelerating their efforts to develop robotic mechanics that can ply various Earth orbits, fixing errant satellites on demand. That way failing spacecraft can be repaired much more economically.