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Academia I need a break

I think this guys has a great idea. Every day this guy writes a new song. Now thats commitment right there. I particularly like his heavy medal song about Winter Solstice.

Savants

The brain has always been one of the areas of the human body that has fascinated me the most, Savants especially. If you did not know a Savant is, it is a person who has developmental disorders and have one or more areas of expertise, ability or brilliance that are in contrast with the individual's overall limitations. These areas of expertise range from math to art. If you have ever seen the movie Rain Man, the character played by Dustin Hoffman is an example of a individual with savant skills.

However people with these amazing abilities are few and far between. Here are some statistics.

•10% of people on the autistic spectrum have savant skills
•Less than 1% of persons with other developmental disabilities have savant skills
•50% of savants are autistic; the other 50% have different disabilities, mental retardation, brain injury or a brain disease
•Male savants outnumber female savants by four to six times.

There is an exception that proves the rule. Daniel Tammet is a savant who only has a mild form of autism who is able to speak about and explain what his thinking process are like. Daniel's speciality is with numbers. He recently set the European record for the number of digits of pi he recited from memory, wich ended up totaling at 22,514 digets. He explains that for every number he can see a corresponding shade in his head. So when he makes a calculation or recites digets of pi, he is looking at picture in his head. I find this incredibly amazing -- because its something I wish I could do.



http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126881.800-inside-the-mind-of-an-autistic-savant.html

Sub-counterculture in the Tunnels of Las Vegas

Subculture
noun
a cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture.

Subcultures and Countercultures have always fascinated me. These weird off shoots of society allow taboos and creativity thrive. Without the bounds of society holding people down amazing things are created. Recently I read an article about the tunnels of Las Vegas. I had previously had never heard of any tunnels underneath Las Vegas, so of course I was very interested. What amazed me the most, although I found the extensive network of tunnels interesting, is that a whole counterculture exists within these tunnels. Many things exist with in the tunnels, for example:

This is one of the underground art galleries that I discovered down in the storm drains. Basically, you walk in about a half-mile in pitch dark, and you have artwork going down the walls that goes down for about a half-mile.

Along with the underground art galleries exist camps of people. It's such a stark contrast from the world above. With all the tourists looking up at the lights, no one would ever look down towards the storm drain. Tunnels and the world of the underground have always fascinated me and when I have had the opportunity to go underground I have taken that chance. I remember when I was young, I used to take off the storm drain cover near my house and I would climb in to explore. Although I could not get very far it still was an adventure.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97800190&ft=1&f=1012

Soviet Space Shuttle

Out of all the illusive, weird topics in history the Soviet space shuttle, the Buran, has always been something that has caught my attention, but I have never had the time to research it to any extent. At first glance the Buran looks like the American space shuttle, but closer inspection reveals the words 'CCCP' and the distinct hammer and sickle flag. The russians developed the Buran in the late '80's as a direct response to the american orbiter because they perceived it as a significant military threat. The russians borrowed heavily from the american design in shaper and even the three stage booster design. In 1988 the Soviets conducted the one and only unmanned flight test. Three hours after launch and two orbits later the Buran glided back to Earth just a few miles from were its journey started.

Years after the program was canceled, mainly due to the collapse of the soviet union, the shuttle was left abandoned in a hanger in Kazakhstan. The hanger was left unmaintained for decades, which caused its collapsed, crushing the Buran and the remanding parts of its booster assembly. I find it said that the crowing achievement of the soviet space program has been lost.

Fungus That Makes Diesel Fuel...?

A recently discovered fungus has demonstrated the ability to convert cellulose directly in to diesel fuel. This fungus was discovered growing on the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian Rainforest, which is located in southern Argentina. The scientific name for this fungus is Clonostachys rosea. Here is a quote from on of the scientists that discovered this amazing

“Gliocladium roseum lives inside the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest. We were trying to discover totally novel fungi in this tree by exposing its tissues to the volatile antibiotics of the fungus Muscodor albus. Quite unexpectedly, G. roseum grew in the presence of these gases when almost all other fungi were killed. It was also making volatile antibiotics. Then when we examined the gas composition of G. roseum, we were totally surprised to learn that it was making a plethora of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives. The results were totally unexpected and very exciting and almost every hair on my arms stood on end!

”

The next step is to find out how this fungus can be genetically engineered to produce more hydrocarbons and how the process of capturing can be made more efficient so that this process will be economically feasible. But if you think of the implications of this kind of process its mind boggling to imagine that agricultural waste could one day all be converted into diesle fuel.

Personally I find this very interesting. If there is an organism that defends its self by producing hydrocarbons, what other creatures or plants have yet to be discovered that can do other amazing things. However, this organism was discovered in the rain forest while this is not a bad thing, it shows us that amazing things exist in the rain forest and they need to be protected. It is unknown how many other organisms that have equally amazing talents have yet to be discovered or have already been lost.

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/11/06/fungus-discovered-that-makes-diesel-from-cellulose/

Dooms Day Device... is broken.

During a power test of the Large Hadron Collider sprung a leak of liquid helium. The leak was in one of the power bus that transfers the massive amounts of electricity needed to power the LHC. To use this power more efficiently it is transferred through superconducting niobium–titanium cables, which need to be cooled to 1.9 Kelvin or -271.3°C. This is where the liquid helium leaked from. When the helium leaked the cables could not withstand the load of almost 8,000 amps. The current began to arch and subsequently destroyed near by parts of the machine. Some nearby magnets where destroyed and the vacuum chamber was punctured. The current was so powerful that the wire was vaporized. Scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, are confident that an accident like this will not happen again. Measures will be taken to ensure that electrical fluctuations in the bus will be monitored more closely. This is important because the LHC cannot be simply switched off, it takes nearly a minute for heating coils and bypass circuits to discharge the power stored inside the magnets.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081029/full/news.2008.1194.html?s=news_rss