News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it’s worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory’s capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.

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theeconomist:

Tomorrow’s cover today: after decades of searching, physicists have solved one of the mysteries of the universe.

••••••

AMAZING. But what’s with the cover “art”?

Dear Economist,

Next time you need imagery for science news this momentous, please email me. I’ll do you one better than “excited man jumping with papers” stock on top of “crab nebula”. I’m dying to, really.

(via fuckyeahmath)

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NEW RESEARCH:

{ The brain’s connections follow a grid } rather than a tangle…

“Far from being just a tangle of wires, the brain’s connections turn out to be more like ribbon cables — folding 2D sheets of parallel neuronal fibers that cross paths at right angles, like the warp and weft of a fabric,”

Neutrino Blog ›

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14-billion-years-later:

Speed of light may have been broken

Okay guys, this one is hot off the press. I’ve only found two sources for this (here and here) that have been posted in the last hour. I have to say that I immediately doubt the validity of this, but I feel I should bring it to your attention anyway.

Reports from our good friends at CERN say that they’ve observed particles traveling at faster than light speeds. For those of you who know a bit about relativity, this ain’t all that cool. The speed of light is basically meant to be the fastest speed there is, and if this wasn’t the case then we may have a major breakdown of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The scientists at CERN have concluded this based off results in which a beam of neutrinos fired from a particle accelerator in Geneva traveled 434 miles 60 nanoseconds faster than it should have. This may not sound like much, but the error was calculated at 10 nanoseconds and the scientists themselves seem fairly adamant in their results.

inb4 “Oops, just kidding guys, false alarm.”
One would hope.

(via itsfullofstars)

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{ Greenpeace finds toxic chemicals in branded clothing }
By Sebastien Blanc (AFP) – 1 day ago

Traces of toxic chemicals harmful to the environment and to human health have been detected in products made by 14 top clothing manufacturers, Greenpeace said Tuesday.

Samples of clothing from top brands including Adidas, Uniqlo, Calvin Klein, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lacoste, Converse and Ralph Lauren were found to be tainted with the chemicals, known as nonylphenol ethoxylates, the watchdog said at the launch of its report “Dirty Laundry 2”.

Greenpeace campaigner Li Yifang said that nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs), commonly used as detergents in industries including the production of natural and synthetic textiles, were detected in two-thirds of the samples the group tested.

“NPEs break down to form nonylphenol, which has toxic, persistent and hormone-disrupting properties,” Li told journalists in Beijing.

“It mimics female hormones, alters sexual development and affects reproductive systems.”

{ GreenPeace: Dirty Laundry 2 }
Publication - August 23, 2011

Research commissioned by Greenpeace International has revealed that clothing and certain fabric-based shoes sold internationally by major clothing brands are manufactured using nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs). NPEs — which are used as surfactants in textile production — subsequently break down to form toxic nonylphenol (NP). Nonylphenol is a persistent chemical with hormone-disrupting properties that builds up in the food chain, and is hazardous even at very low levels.

{ Download the report } (32 pages)

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itsfullofstars:

Universe expansion is slowing down, new study says

A new research, published at the Classical and Quantum Gravity journal, says the universe’s expansion is apparently decelarating - in opposition to what present theories on Dark Energy say.

The study was developed by Brazilian astronomer Antônio Cândido de Camargo Guimarães, at Universidade de São Paulo, in Brazil.

Guimarães says that the still accelarating expansion of the universe has been a consensus  for ten years, after the observation os supernovas 1a explosions. To understand the expansion, scientists established the Lambda-CDM model - which is based on the existence of Dark Energy: a mysterious force that occupies 70% of the universe (the rest would be 26% Dark Matter and 4% matter).

The astronomer used a cosmographic approach to study the expansion, avoiding any model that takes Dark Energy as a certainty: a method based on supernovas speed of withdrawal.

Thus, Guimarães concluded that the expansion still happening, but in a slower pace than present theories preach. This conclusion brings new light over universe expansion and what we used to know about it may not be 100% right.

The research is available here.

Source.

June 8, 2011

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Photo by Bok Yeop Ahn

A flexible array of LEDs mounted on paper. Hand-drawn silver ink lines form the interconnects between the LEDs.

University of Illinois engineers have developed a silver-inked rollerball pen capable of writing electrical circuits and interconnects on paper, wood and other surfaces. The pen is writing whole new chapters in low-cost, flexible and disposable electronics.

6/28/2011 | Liz Ahlberg, Physical Sciences Editor

{ news.illinois.edu }

Vibrating "SQUID" converts Virtual Photons in a Vacuum to Real Photons ›

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LHC: ATLAS Detector: Mural by Josef Kristofoletti