Science Is Beautiful

Team Asha Purdue: Miles for Smiles

pdiwakar — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:52:50 +0000

A bunch of enthusiastic Asha for Education, Purdue chapter volunteers have come together and initiated Team Asha Purdue for raising awareness and funds for education of underprivileged children in India. To get started with, about 40+ Team Asha Purdue members will be running for 5k run on March 31st which is organized by Academy of student Pharmacists. Team Asha Purdue is hoping to raise about 4k through this event and to achieve that goal your help is needed. In future, Team Asha Purdue will be participating in 15k and half marathons. I will be running 5k run on 31st March and will be targeting half marathons in coming months. I request all of you to please donate any amount possible- $5, $10- anything will be helpful for the kids’ education back in India.

Lets run some miles to bring smiles

Weekend Video: Ride of Passage

pdiwakar — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:41:59 +0000

In my last post, I talked about world’s smallest and cutest chameleon. Now it’s time to watch some cute animated chameleon in this issue of weekend video.

Story: Toki’s tribe expects him to bring home the head of the biggest animal possible. In return, he will receive honor and respect. However, this rite of passage does not turn out as planned. With the help of a colorful new friend, he achieves something much bigger.

Video credit: Christian Bøving-Andersen, Casper Michelsen, Eva Lee Wallberg, Tina Lykke Thorn, Søren B. Nørbæk, Allan Lønskov, Jakob Kousholt, David F. Otzen

Picture of The Day: Cliff Climibing Polar Bear

pdiwakar — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:05:41 +0000

This is an award winning picture by photographer Jenny E. Ross where a polar bear can be seen carefully climbing the cliff above the ocean to feed on seabird eggs. Typically polar bears feed on sea seals but due to climate change and subsequent melting and receding of the polar ice it has been unable to find it’s natural food. This is a desperate attempt by the bear for it’s survival. The picture won the world press photo award in Nature category.

Image credit: Boston.com/Bigpicture | Jenny E. Ross

Meet World’s Smallest Chamaleon (Brookesia et al.)

pdiwakar — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:44:07 +0000

In a recent discovery, researchers from Germany and USA have found world’s smallest and cutest species of chameleon. These species also rank among world’s smallest reptile. These chameleons belong to group Brookesia minima and are found mostly in northern Madagascar region. Four newly discovered species have been named Brookesia micra, Brookesia tristis, Brookesia conifdens, Brookesia desperata. The maximum length of newly discovered species ranges between 22-48 mm. Brookesia micra, shown above, is the smallest of the group (maximum size 30 mm). These miniscule leaf chameleons have all the features and properties as you can find in any regular size chameleon- can rotate their eyes independent of each other, can camouflage when in danger or looking for food, can grab things using their tail and have projectile tongue to capture their prey. As mentioned earlier, the habitat region of these species is very small. All of them are found in a very small region of Madagascar and if this habitat is destroyed, we will lose this species forever. Lead researcher, Glaw, named the species keeping this issue in mind. For eg. the word tristis in Latin means sad, sorrowful which reflects the sad situation of massive deforestation of this region even after the region have been declared a nature preserve. Name desperata also reflects the sad situation of deforestation of the area where Brookesia desperata is found. These names might be world’s most sad names ever given but it also reflects the sad state of affairs of species preservation all around the world. Luckily, Brookesia confidens is found in the area where limestone formations have made the area very hard to access by the humans and therefore there is a hope that this species might be protected just due to natural protection.

Keck In Motion

pdiwakar — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:23:48 +0000

I have posted about Very Large Telescope (Chile) in past, this time posting a beautiful video showing Keck observatory in action. Keck observatory is located at the summit of dormant volcano in Hawaii and is used for probing our near and distant universe with great precision (nanometer precision level). The observatory hosts worlds largest optical and infrared telescopes; telescopes are about eight storeys high and weigh more than 300 tons while the diameters of their primary mirror are about 10 m! The telescope uses adaptive optics (AO) which changes it’s shape depending on changes in environmental conditions and thereby eliminates any kind of aberrations or distortions in images resulting from turbulence in earth’s atmosphere. For adaptive optics to work, a bright, nearby reference star is required but since bright stars are limited in the sky, astronomers at Keck have created their own little neighborhood star- by using a laser and exciting sodium atoms in upper atmosphere (90 km above the earth’s surface) resulting in a bright artificial star which adaptive optics can use as their reference. In this cool video, you can see the Keck observatory in action. In the beginning of video, you see the hexagonal object, that’s the keck 2 telescope. Enjoy the video along with the cool music!

# IAmScience

pdiwakar — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:01:54 +0000

“Magical things can happen when you enthusiastically open your mouth on the internet.” – Kevin Zelnio

Science writer and marine biologist Kevin Zelnio started the Twitter 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.

The Proof From The Book

pdiwakar — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:53:47 +0000

Abstruse Goose comic strip is simply awesome. Here is the Riemann Hypothesis, postulated in 1859, which is also one of the seven millennium prize problems:

Some numbers have the special property that they cannot be expressed as the product of two smaller numbers, e.g., 2, 3, 5, 7, etc. Such numbers are called prime numbers, and they play an important role, both in pure mathematics and its applications. The distribution of such prime numbers among all natural numbers does not follow any regular pattern, however the German mathematician G.F.B. Riemann (1826 – 1866) observed that the frequency of prime numbers is very closely related to the behavior of an elaborate function

ζ(s) = 1 + 1/2^s + 1/3^s + 1/4^s + …

called the Riemann Zeta function. The Riemann hypothesis asserts that all interesting solutions of the equation

ζ(s) = 0

lie on a certain vertical straight line. This has been checked for the first 1,500,000,000 solutions. A proof that it is true for every interesting solution would shed light on many of the mysteries surrounding the distribution of prime numbers. [Clay Mathematics Institute]

Stylish Java Sees Dark Side of Doritos

pdiwakar — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:47:31 +0000

I am working on a paper but apparently my idea machine is on a sleeping mode, time to get a coffee. Meanwhile you guys can enjoy these beautiful art works by Brock Davis. His creative artwork combined with a hot coffee (sans stylish jacket) might do the trick and help me in finishing the paper. I wish I could get ideas like Brock- by looking at simple things like coffee jacket and broccoli and Doritos and convert it to something beautifully amazing. Last picture is a recreation of album cover of Pink Flyod’s Dark side of moon. He used bags from different flavors of Doritos and cut it to get all the different colors and created “Dark side of Doritos”. Amazing!

Image credit: Brock Davis | Visit Brock’s Tumblr blog

Grandma and the Baby

Weekend Video: Eat & Eat

pdiwakar — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:38:34 +0000

Final video of the day for foodies like me. Enjoy this beautiful video filmed by Rick Mereki over a span of 44 days in 11 countries. Eat and Have a nice weekend!!

No related posts.

Weekend Video: VDay Special- Look Into Her Pupils

pdiwakar — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:43:55 +0000

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. Pupillometry is 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