By hooking up an EEG to a pinball machine, scientists from the Berlin Brain-Computer Interface project have demonstrated that brain power could be used to control almost any device. Check it out.
[Via Neatorama]
Your solar system needs YOU!
Do you fancy helping scientists save the planet, or at least its communications and power systems, from the comfort of your own computer? A new project helps you do just that, even if you don’t have any specialist knowledge.
Solar Stormwatch is an appeal by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London for public volunteers to look through images from satellites orbiting the Sun to spot solar storms. Those are gigantic releases of material from the Sun’s magnetic field which can disrupt communications satellites. In some cases they can even damage cellphone networks or power lines.
It might seem strange to imagine, but even “unskilled” humans can do a better job of analyzing the images than a computer. That’s because the eye and brain are more able to make the type of subjective decisions needed to recognize the patterns which could indicate storm activity.
Bringing in the public to help solves two problems. Firstly, it simply increases the number of people looking at images and shares the workload beyond the scientists working on the project full-time. But more importantly it allows images to be viewed by multiple people from different backgrounds and with different knowledge. The organizers believe this will allow them to benefit from the wisdom of crowds theory, by which different elements of each person’s knowledge and judgment can be combined to produce a more accurate assessment.
Volunteers will be asked to spend a few minutes on a training exercise to learn what they are looking for in the images. Once they’ve successfully completed this, they can help out as and when they have time, with no commitments.
The project follows on from a similar scheme named Galaxy Zoo, which aims to use volunteers to help classify galaxies. That’s already thrown up some discoveries of overall patterns, such as that two galaxies in proximity are much more likely to spin in the same direction than any two randomly selected galaxies. The results also suggest around one-third of red-colored galaxies are spirals, contradicting previous theories that all red galaxies were elliptical.
Epic Wii Curling Fail
I dare you to try and not laugh at this.
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time – New Official Movie Trailer
From the team that brought the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to the big screen, Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films present PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME, an epic action-adventure set in the mystical lands of Persia. A rogue prince (JAKE GYLLENHAAL) reluctantly joins forces with a mysterious princess (GEMMA ARTERTON) and together, they race against dark forces to safeguard an ancient dagger capable of releasing the Sands of Time—a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world.
Free will is naught but a comforting illusion [PIC]
[Source]
Put a Spark into your Presentations with Ignite
If you’ve sat through many presentations, you’ll know there are two common problems with them: over-long ones, and others where the speaker pauses and plays about with his Powerpoint slides before explaining each one in excruciating detail.
Both those problems go out the window in a format being celebrated across the planet this week. Ignite is a presentation style designed to make it easy to share ideas and passions through three simple rules: presentations are fixed at five minutes, they all have exactly 20 slides, and each of these slides are automatically displayed for 15 seconds.
The idea is that the format forces speakers to boil down their ideas into a clear and focused structure, using illustrative slides which convey concise messages: with just 15 seconds to display and explain each point, there’s no room for waffling. The speaker also needs to have a pretty strong idea about what they are talking about in order to keep to the rhythm and avoid getting thrown by the slides advancing.
The concept was developed and first tried out in Seattle in 2006 (having been adapted from a Japanese idea called Pecha Kucha) but is now used for events worldwide. While Ignite events can take place anywhere and at anytime, being locally organized, this week (March 1 through March 5) has been classified as Global Ignite Week, with at least 50 events taking place as far afield as Jakarta, Brisbane and Nairobi.
Event organizers are encouraged to film the talks and upload them to both online video sites such as YouTube and the Ignite website. The general principle is that all events should be free to attend and are being run on a voluntary basis, with the speakers being unpaid and motivated by their desire to share knowledge. (As the movement’s slogan has it: “Enlighten us, but make it quick.”
So what do people talk about at Ignite? Anything and everything, as long as it fascinates and excites the speakers, and hopefully the audience. But here’s a sample of some previous talks:
The secret underground world of Lego
I Speak Klingon: Love 101 for Uber-Geeks
Should you quit your tech job and join a rock band?
The riddle of experience vs. memory
Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our “experiencing selves” and our “remembering selves” perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness.
