“Magical things can happen when you enthusiastically open your mouth on the internet.” – Kevin Zelnio
Science writer and marine biologist Kevin Zelnio started theTwitter hashtag #IamScience last month, encouraging scientists to share their individual stories about their traditional or unconventional paths that brought them to where they are today. The response was overwhelming, with hundreds of tweets pouring in over just a few days.Mindy Weisberger compiled some of the tweets and added Reckless Kelly’s “Wicked Twisted Road” to create this video. If readers of this post can share their thoughts about how they got into their profession including science that would be great.
Pupils? Did I mean Look into her eyes? Well the title of this post is correct. According to Bruno Laeng, Pupillometry expert from University of Oslo, we need to look closer and deeper into the pupils of individuals in order to gauge their emotional responses.Pupillometryis basically the measurement of diameter of eye’s pupils. It has been shown during past 50 years of pupillomtery that pupils respond not only to changes in light from surroundings but also to other stimuli including thoughts, emotions and mental loading. Typically, in response to strong emotions or heavy mental loading, pupils dilate which indicates increase in attention of the individual. In other words, if pupils of your loved one increase listening to your Vday proposal, its indication that she has got your attention and that’s a good sign!
Video credit: Science Friday podcast
Pupillomtery article: Pupillometry A Window to the Preconscious? Laeng et al. | doi: 10.1177/1745691611427305 Perspectives on Psychological Science January 2012 vol. 7 no. 1 18-27
While my blog was in hibernation, there was massive solar activity going on which resulted in some spectacular Aurora display on earth. Here is one breathtaking video captured by Christian Mulhauser in Norway during the week of Jan 24. Enjoy the video!
Time to restart my blog now! Time to analyze and discuss numerous scientific stories, share some pictures, videos. While the web address of this blog remains same, my physical location has changed. I have moved to Purdue University at West Lafayette, Indiana where I will be be doing ultra-fast spectroscopy to understand laser and matter interaction. This week, for the first time I operated femtosecond laser and was able to create a plasma Now just thinking of creative ways to use this new scientific tool I am learning. So, Science Is Beautiful-Season 2 starts from today with pictures from Purdue University after weekend snowfall.
Last night’s The Daily Show was awesome as always. Take a look at the video and here is a word of caution: don’t let any scientist con you into believing in evolution or global warming or vaccination or any other “science junk”.
It’s been a while I posted something, consider this a semi-hiatus from blogging. I will try to post something from time to time. I have posted several posts on Auroras. Here is another one with video and pictures taken by astronauts on ISS while passing over Indian Ocean on Sep 17th 2011. They took several images and compiled a video which shows spectacular Aurora display. This particular Aurora display was a result of Coronal Mass Ejection event which occurred in the Sun on Sep 14th 2011, leading to stirring of the earth’s magnetic field and excitation of nitrogen and oxygen molecules in earth’s atmosphere. Greenish part of the Aurora glow is contributed by emission from excited oxygen molecule while blue or purple glow is from nitrogen molecule. Enjoy the Video. Towards the end of the video you can notice some specks and bright glows on earth’s surface which are infact forest wild fires and agricultural fires in Australia.
Hurricane Irene spanned from Caribbean to Canada and lasted for more than a week. NASA/NOAA satellite GOES-13 kept a track of the hurricane and NASA posted a video of the hurricane dating Aug 21st to Aug 29th which covers almost entire life-span of the hurricane. In the video you can see the formation of eye (at about 30 seconds in the video). Right after the formation of eye, you can see a burst of white clouds on the right of the eye which then merges with the core of the hurricane. This burst is due to warm air rising the clouds , also called as overshooting tops, and resulting in severe rainfall. Hurricane Irene at it’s strongest was a category 3 hurricane and turned out to be one of the top ten most destructive hurricanes in the history of US since 1980. About 27 lives were lost, entire transportation system in east coast was affected and more than 5 million people lost power.
May 20, 2012 1799 Honore De Balzac 1851 Emile Berliner 1908 James Stewart 1920 Betty Driver 1942 Lynn Davies 1944 Joe Cocker 1946 Cher 1961 Nick Heyward
Now just thinking of creative ways to use this new scientific tool I am learning. So, Science Is Beautiful-Season 2 starts from today with pictures from Purdue University after weekend snowfall.
