Science

Tricking Birds With Magic

Researchers at Cambridge studied how well hand based magic tricks work on Eurasian Jays. The clever birds saw through two of the three magic tricks, possibly because the birds had no expectations around human hand mechanics.

Environment

Life

Science

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Birdsong Spectrograms

#266

Soundshader published on Github a study of using the DFT shift theorem to generate spectrograms from birdsong and compare them to spectrograms generated from musical instruments.

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Russian Nuclear Spacecraft

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Russia's federal space agency Roscosmos announced plans for its nuclear power space tug spacecraft to go interplanetary in 2030 with missions to the Moon and Jupiter.

Science

Space

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Robotic Third Thumb

#265

Researchers at UCL conducted a study where participants trained themselves to use a robotic third thumb which was desisgned by the Royal College of Art. Users of the thrid thumb control its movement using their toes. The UCL study measured brain activity of participants after time using the thumb and found that the brain's representation of the hand had changed.

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Ireland's First Computer Scientist - Percy Ludgate

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The Irish Times published a piece this week about Percy Ludgate who is believed to be Ireland's first computer scientist. In 1914 the accountant and inventor from Skibereen presented designs for the worlds second analytical engine, a mechanical computer of the time.

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Podcast of the Week: Blindboy with Dr. Sabina Brennan

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Another great podcast this week was Blindboy interviewing neuroscientist Dr. Sabina Brennan about how the brain processes habits, learning, sleep, & lots more interesting topics.

Life

Podcast

Science

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Maxwell's Demon

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Jonathan O'Callaghan published an interesting article in Quanta Magazine about the history of Maxwell's Demon and how the concept has moved from a thought experiment in thermodynamics in 1867 into physical experiments from 2007 onwards.

Science

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Spider Web Music

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Scientists and MIT used laser imagery to make 3D maps of spider webs and then calculated the vibrating frequency of each thread based on size and elasticity. Using this information, Markus J. Buehler's team then converted these frequencies into sound and music.

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Negentropy

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Alison Carr-Chellman from University of Dayton has developed the theory of negentropy, the opposite of entropy.

Life

Motivation

Science

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Faster Linear Equation Solving

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Richard Peng and Santosh Vampala of Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new method of solving linear equations that is faster than matrix multiplication. Quanta magazine published an interesting article describing the new method, how it differs from standard matrix multiplication using coordinated random guessing, and how it can solve any sparse linear equation in n2.332 steps compared to the n2.372 of matrix multiplication.

Science

Tech

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