If we were able to move our brains, neuron-for-neuron, into a robot, would we still be the same person?

Big Think with Michio Kaku - Theoretical Physicist

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Homemade High Altitude Rocket (On-board Video) travelling to 121000 ft. Space is amazing and our atmosphere is beautiful.

Stats:

• 8" diameter
• 167.5" long
• 329 lbs
• Q-18,000
• 143,000 N-sec
• 4,000 lbs of thrust for 8 seconds
• Case-bonded, Fin-O-Cyl Grain
• Welded Aluminum Fin Can
• Graphite Throat in Phenolic Carrier with Aluminum Retainer/Expansion Cone
• 2 Timers
• 4 GPS
• 1 Accelerometer
• 1 Cosmic Ray Detector
• 2 GoPro HeroHD
• 1 FlipHD
• Black Powder Actuated Pneumatic Cylinder Recovery
• Custom Launch Tower
• 121,000' in 92 seconds
• 3,200 ft per second
• 15+ g's

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A ferrofluid (from the Latin ferrum, meaning iron) is a liquid which becomes strongly polarised in the presence of a magnetic field.

Ferrofluids are composed of nanoscale ferromagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid, usually an organic solvent or water. The ferromagnetic nano-particles are coated with a surfactant to prevent their agglomeration (due to van der Waals and magnetic forces). Although the name may suggest otherwise, ferrofluids do not display ferromagnetism, since they do not retain magnetisation in the absence of an externally applied field. In fact, ferrofluids display paramagnetism, and are often referred as being "superparamagnetic" due to their large magnetic susceptibility. True ferromagnetic fluids are difficult to create at present.

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This video always gets me excited. Hope it does the same for you.  Never thought I would feel a sense of emptiness for a person I never met. #stevejobslegacy

Thank You Steve Jobs. Rest in Peace.

1955 – 2011

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself -- at the university's 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.

Transcript of Steve Jobs' address:

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says. This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

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Steve Jobs Narrates Never-Aired “Here's To The Crazy Ones” Commercial

This needs to be aired. Today.

“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” When originally released in 1997, Richard Dreyfuss provided the narration for this famous ad campaign, but originally Jobs himself did it. Its message is moving already, and to hear Jobs say it makes it even more so.

Think Different.

Steve Jobs narrates the first Think different commercial "Here's to the Crazy Ones". It never aired. Richard Dreyfuss did the voice for spot however Steve's is much better 1997.

The people featured in "Here's To The Crazy Ones" video: Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Richard Branson, John Lennon, Buckminster Fuller, JR Tolkien, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson, Frank Lloyd Wright & Picasso



Here's the one with Richard Dreyfuss... you be the judge:

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Too bad it looks exactly the same as iPhone 4 on the outside. The iPhone 4S will be in stores October 14, 2011.



The iPhone 4S has officially been announced and is coming to stores on Oct 14th, preorder are being accepted on Oct 7th.

Iphone 4s will be available on Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T. older models of iPhone will be cheaper.

"iPhone 4S"
"iPhone 4S"
"iPhone 4S"
"new iphone"
"new iphone 5 release"

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29-year-old woman named Sarah Churman filmed by her husband as she gains her hearing for the first time. The clip is the #3 most-viewed video of the past week and remains the #3 most-viewed video today in the United States as of Monday afternoon. It's also still one of our Most Shared.

The video skyrocketed to fame on Friday when it was viewed over 1.7 million times on that day alone. YouTube data shows that views started to spike very late Thursday night when it was posted on social bookmarking site Reddit.

I was born deaf and 8 weeks ago I received a hearing implant. This is the video of them turning it on and me hearing myself for the first time :) Edit: For those of you who have asked the implant I received was Esteem offered by Envoy Medical. Sarah Churman.

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The lotus effect refers to the very high water repellency (superhydrophobicity) exhibited by the leaves of the lotus flower (Nelumbo). Dirt particles are picked up by water droplets due to a complex micro- and nanoscopic architecture of the surface, which minimizes adhesion.

This effect can easily be demonstrated in many other plants, for example Tropaeolum, cane and columbine (Aquilegia), and on the wings of certain insects.

The phenomenon was first studied by Dettre and Johnson in 1964 using rough hydrophobic surfaces. Their work developed a theoretical model based on experiments with glass beads coated with paraffin or PTFE telomer. The self-cleaning property of superhydrophobic micro-nanostructured surfaces was studied by Barthlott and Ehler in 1977, and perfluoroalkyl and perfluoropolyether superhydrophobic materials were developed by Brown in 1986 for handling chemical and biological fluids. Other biotechnical applications have emerged since the 1990s. Learn more about the 'Lotus Effect' on Wikipedia.

If you wipe your butt with the lotus leaf after taking a poop in the wilderness, will the turds stick to the lotus leaf?

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Presenting: ADAPTIV

Now you see it, now you don't! New technology allows military vehicles to travel undetected.

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Who knew this little lad would change the way we percive the world....good job little man...

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Thanks To Animal Research They'll Be Able To Protest 23.5 Years Longer (PHOTO)

WARNING: You will get teary-eyed. They freaking hugged!

It's good news all round then in Germany, where a group of lab chimps were allowed outdoors for the very first time. As you can see from the video, they're rather pleased.

These poor creatures are seeing sunlight for the first time ever in their lives. Look at them hug with joy and smile with sheer happiness. So sad and so happy.


See Also: 

Thanks To Animal Research They'll Be Able To Protest 23.5 Years Longer (PHOTO)

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Needled It. Pretty sure I'm going to have to eat a giant bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats now.

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Yeah solar flares are bigger than biblical. The solar flare captured in the video is absolutely spectacular!



The source video for the flare comes from NASA's SDO :http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5483193591/

For another perspective on the size of the flare see NASA's related image size comparison: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5492781335/

For further information about this February 24, 2011 solar flare see this site:http://geeked.gsfc.nasa.gov/?p=5651

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We'll soon be growing plants on thin films. Mebiol has developed IMEC, a technology for growing plants on special films just tens of microns thick, called hydro-membranes. Basically the same stuff used in diapers to absorbed liquids and turn into a non-leaking gel. Hydro-membranes make it possible for plants to take up only water and nutrients without letting harmful bacteria, nematodes, or viruses through.

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Scientists that have to do the researching on animals is probably hard on their souls. But you know what else is hard on the soul? Walking through the Children's Hospital on my way to work and seeing mothers bringing in their four-year old kids for Chemo Therapy.




Just to clarify:

By law, the procedure must be done in the most painless way possible, using the least number of animals possible, with the best available techniques. Vivisection without sufficient analgesia to prevent perception of pain would be exceedingly rare, especially on animals "above" mice and rats.

Any research involving stents, for example, would be done with proper anesthesia administered by a laboratory animal veterinarian, just as it would be with a human receiving a stent.

Saying "at the end, if they haven't died, they are given a lethal injection" is also misleading. An endpoint must be clearly defined in the paperwork submitted to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and it is not acceptable for animals to "die" as a result of a procedure if that procedure is not specifically intended to cause death (and if it is, the researcher would need a very strong justification.) If an animal appears at risk of dying from the procedure, it must be removed from the experiment and either treated or euthanized.

As far as "a significant amount" of research being BS: if anyone is concerned about this (and I personally am) you should become active in learning about how you can improve the IACUC committees at the universities and labs near you. Each state has its own rules, but generally speaking the committee consists of a veterinarian, a researcher, and at least one member of the public not affiliated in any other way with the research institution.

Unfortunately, most of these people are overworked, undertrained and underpaid for what they do. I've sat in many IACUC meetings, and I've seen for myself that the IACUC is not effective. Let me take a step back and talk about what the IACUC is: they are a committee at a particular institution that must review every research proposal that involves animals, and they must sign off that it is okay for that research to be done. Unfortunately, doing a good job at this would mean that you must 1) have a background in statistics to ensure that research is minimizing the number of animals without compromising data (most lab animal vets do not have such a background), 2) you must be familiar with the literature or you must become familiar with the literature of each little sub-specialty of research to ensure that every investigation is likely to provide new information; finally, 3) you must have sufficient time to apply 1) and 2) to every single request that comes across your desk.

At the institutions I've worked with, the research is split among IACUC members for an initial inspection-- a typical workload may consist of 10-30 proposals each week per person. The IACUC member must read each of the proposals, decide if all the legal requirements are met (including statistical, analgesic, etc issues), and if not, flag it for discussion later. Each week, the IACUC will then meet, and each person will give a rundown of their cases. Now you have 3-10 people in a room (some states have big IACUCs, some small) and they must go over dozens of cases. The person originally assigned the case will run it by the group really quickly. If they had a concern, they discuss it with the committee and decide what changes need to be made and the most tactful way to bring this to the attention of the researcher.

I've spent a number of years around IACUC committees and helping IACUC members review their stuff, and I've never seen any member who could calculate p-values or do a T-Test. I've never seen one search the literature for more than 5 minutes for a duplicate or near-duplicate paper.
I'm not trashing IACUCs here-- it's not their fault. Basically they are given an impossible job. The lab animal veterinarian, for example, generally has a full-time job caring for thousands of animals at a big research institution. Other than the hour they spend in a formal meeting, the rest of their job is done whenever possible between animal care tasks.

I feel very strongly that IACUCs should be bigger, they should have time mandated during which to review their paperwork, and that each committee should have a statistician or someone who the public can trust to be highly proficient in statistics on it. Until this happens, regulatory oversight will be impossible in any realistic sense. via pet_medic

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They should make that about 1000 times bigger and make a ride out of it. Electricity is generated by induction thus brakes the magnets' fall. Well, I'm off to the hardware store...

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I love science! New way for me to clean out the microwave. ;)

Steve Spangler discovers the microwave oven is not just for warming leftovers. Grab a bar of fresh Ivory soap and gather your friends around the microwave oven. Sure, you could do it at your home, but save this great trick for the break room or the staff cafeteria. In under two minutes, you'll have the best soap soufflé you've ever seen.

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