Weird Science Thread

[Isgrimnur]

Blind men prefer narrow-waisted women, too.

In the study led by Dutch psychologist Johan Karremans of Radboud University Nijmegen, researchers recruited 38 men, 19 of them blind. Half of the seeing men were randomly fitted with blindfolds for the experiments, "conducted inside a van that served as a mobile laboratory room," the study says.
...
"The blind participants were instructed to feel and touch the waists and hips of the two female mannequin dolls," says the new study. "The experimenter asked them to rate the attractiveness of the body." Then they repeated the effort with sighted men, both the blindfolded and non-blindfolded, recruited by parking the van at a shopping center and asking for volunteers. Honest.
...
On an attractiveness scale of 1 to 10, with 10 better, the blind men roughly averaged giving the slimmer-waisted dummy a 7, as opposed to a 6 for the wider-waisted mannequin. Combined scores for sighted men, blindfolded or not, averaged giving the slimmer dummy an 8 and the wider one a 6.5. "This finding calls into question the importance of visual input for the development of men's low waist-to-hip preference, although it does not refute it," suggesting that visual cues only augment an underlying preference for slenderness, says the study. "The result does, however, cast doubt on the hypothesis that waist-to-hip preferences are primarily the product of exposure to visual media."

I wonder how the demographics ended up of the people that agreed to this study. Would you agree to enter a van blindfolded if approached at the mall by a couple guys in lab coats that told you they were going to let you feel up mannequins?

[Kraken]

Would you agree to enter a van blindfolded if approached at the mall by a couple guys in lab coats that told you they were going to let you feel up mannequins?

Heck no! I can stay home and do that.

[Turtle]

It's likely that ratio has to do with a general appeal to with birthing. Women with wider hips, not necessarily thin waists, give birth to babies more easily, and likely with less complications. A thin waist emphasizes the hips, leading to that combination being found more attractive.

A major complication we humans are running in to is that our heads are getting too big to fit through the birthing canal.

[Kraken]

A major complication we humans are running in to is that our heads are getting too big to fit through the birthing canal.

I respectfully suggest that you stop trying to shove your head up there.

[Remus West]

[Daehawk]

Well I guess I prefer wide hips because I'm not blind. You'd have to be blind to like boy hips I suppose

[Ralph-Wiggum]

I don't know how this study tells us anything we didn't know. It's been known for awhile now that a waist:hip ratio of 0.7 is both the most attractive to men and is an indication of high fertility. The link between the two most likely has been around for millions of years and has nothing to do with the media's idea of a beautiful woman. A blind man using his hands is akin to a sighted man using his eyes.

Now if they had real women in the study, the blind men could only smell them, and they still rated the slender waist women more attractive, that would be interesting. Anyone want to write up a grant?

[paulbaxter]

But do narrow waisted women prefer blind men?

[Isgrimnur]

OCD pets

Researchers studied Doberman pinschers that curled up into balls, sucking their flanks for hours at a time, and found that the afflicted dogs shared a gene. They describe their findings — the first such gene identified in dogs — in a short report this month in Molecular Psychiatry.
...
Dr. Dodman and his collaborators searched for a genetic source for this behavior by scanning and comparing the genomes of 94 Doberman pinschers that sucked their flanks, sucked on blankets or engaged in both behaviors with those of 73 Dobermans that did neither.
...
Dr. Overall said in an earlier paper that environmental causes might outweigh genetic factors in development of compulsive behaviors in some cases.

She said the practice of “hanging” a dog up by its choke collar, a form of discipline advocated by some trainers, produced compulsive behaviors. Dogs from puppy mills or shelters, rescue dogs and those that are confined and bored dogs or anxious also seem prone to compulsive behavior, she said.

I need to go find an investment in the pet health insurance market. It's only a matter of time before antidepressants for dogs become widespread.

[Unagi]

I (15 years old) was actually and AT Northbrook Court, outside - maybe 20 FEET away, when they filmed this scene....

[Isgrimnur]

News has been released about a towel-folding robot.

The key that a University of California-Berkeley group of engineers and computer scientists came up with was figuring out how to get robots -- which is another way of saying the computer program running a robot -- to deal with 'deformable objects," things whose shapes are not predictable.

Doctoral student Jeremy Maitin-Shepard and professor Pieter Abbeel, of Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, worked out an algorithm that allowed the robot to use high-resolution cameras to estimate the towel's shape, then find two adjacent corners and begin the process of folding.

Video at the bottom of the link. It's at 50x speed, meaning that it took an hour and 40 minutes to do this, but it's still pretty cool.

[LordMortis]

Wow, that thing feels like it has personality.

I want one. Especially if you can teach it iron as well.

[Sudy]

Fake. It's obviously shot in stop motion.

[Blackhawk]

Video at the bottom of the link. It's at 50x speed, meaning that it took an hour and 40 minutes to do this, but it's still pretty cool.

I could set it in front of a basket of freshly washed clothes and it would still be done before I even got around to starting on it.

[tjg_marantz]

Doesn't look womanly enough. Maybe version 2.

[Kraken]

I'll bet a fitted sheet would freak it out.

[Daehawk]

I'll bet a fitted sheet would freak it out.

Then it would turn on us and fold us.

[Blackhawk]

Octagonal tablecloth.

[Isgrimnur]

Grown your own urethra. Everyone needs a spare.

In a potential advance in the field of tissue engineering, researchers report that they've been able to repair injured urinary systems in boys by using bladder cells grown in a laboratory.

Currently, physicians use pieces of skin to repair the urethras of boys whose groins were injured in car accidents or other traumas, but the procedure often fails. In the new cases, surgeons tried a different approach, reconnecting the severed urethras with tube-like structures created with bladder cells. The boys, who had the procedures several years ago, are said to be doing fine now.
...
There are caveats about the findings, however. The injuries sustained by the boys are rare, and the study included just five boys. The procedure needs more testing, and it's not known if it would work in adults. And, creating body parts from cells -- the crux of tissue engineering's potential -- remains an immense challenge.

[LordMortis]

Nova Science Now did a piece on tissue growth last month or the month before and they've gone leaps and bounds for growing fresh tissue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAI5rLnnCBE" target="_blank

Way cool stuff.

[Matrix]

Now i see this thread. Yah attraction to slimmer women is biological, and waist line plays a huge role in guys dating. Women know it perfectly well hence in only dating they have more flattering photos, the clothing that make you look slimmer is a giant industry and colors that make you look slimmer are in use by women all the time.

"The result does, however, cast doubt on the hypothesis that waist-to-hip preferences are primarily the product of exposure to visual media."

There are lot hypothesis, and a lot of them are horrible, this is one of them.

On the other hand, for women weight on guys is not much of an issue, the height is however. Weight is changeable, and easier to mask with proper clothing/ colors , height is much harder to change unless go for super expensive operations or wearing huge platform shoes, which is hard to mask. Ultimately you are handed a luck of a draw, and if you are 6 foot guy, dating will be much easier. Problems in dating will be higher quality. That is ofcrouse if you get out there and dating, since if you are 6 foot, but you are not talking to women, it doesn't matter that much. Though those guys will get approached by women on some occasions.

Take away is though, if you are 5'6 foot guy, it doesnt mean your dating life is over. It just means you will need to put more effort improving your social/dating/communication skills.

[LordMortis]

http://laughterizer.weebly.com/1/post/2 ... ement.html" target="_blank

If only JeffV clicked on strange random links, he would fall in love.

Edit, I totally forgot ^^^^ NSFW and very loud to boot.

[Isgrimnur]

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the kidney laser!

Scientists have developed the first biological laser, made from a single living cell. This “living laser,” described in a new study in Nature Photonics, could one day lead to better medical imaging and light-based treatments for cancer or other diseases.
...
To start, the researchers modified cells derived from a human kidney to manufacture green fluorescent protein, or GFP, a molecule that glows green when exposed to blue light. This glowing cell served as the laser’s gain medium.

The researchers then nestled the cell between two mirrors, which were close enough together to form a cell-sized cavity, and shone pulses of blue light—the energy source—onto the cell through a microscope.
...
The cell was able to emit a few hundred laser pulses over several minutes before its GFP wore out. The cell survived without any significant damage. Plus, as it kept producing GFP, it’s likely it could repair its light-amplifying abilities and live to lase again.
...
The researchers also hope to integrate structures that take on the mirrors’ role into the cell, making each cell a stand-alone laser.

[Arcanis]

So if Cyclops was involved in a dirty boxing match maybe he could ditch the shades for a few days.

[Isgrimnur]

How are you walking around if you don't have a pulse?!?

Researchers at the Texas Heart Institute have now created a fully functioning artificial heart that uses rotors to circulate blood instead of contractions, like a natural heart.
...
To create their novel heart, surgeons Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier combined two ventricular assist devices, which typically aid failing hearts pump blood. Rather than mimicking the real organ like other artificial hearts, the contraption uses rotors to circulate blood throughout your body, non-stop.

Cohn and Frazier successfully tested their pulseless heart in 38 calves before moving on to a human. “By every metric we have to analyze patients, she’s not living,” Cohn said of an 8-month-old calf. “But here you can see she’s a vigorous, happy, playful calf licking my hand.”

In March, they decided to test their device in Craig Lewis, who was dying of amyloidosis, a condition in which protein deposits can clog organs and shut them down. When Lewis agreed to the heart replacement, he had about 12 hours left to live, according to his doctors (via NPR).

Lewis survived a month with his new humming heart but then died of liver and kidney complications brought on by his disease.
...
The surgeons believe their device is an improvement over normal heart pumps. In particular, the pulseless heart is likely to last longer because it only has two moving parts (the rotors). “These pumps don’t wear out,” Frazier told NPR.

[Arcanis]

How are you walking around if you don't have a pulse?!?

Researchers at the Texas Heart Institute have now created a fully functioning artificial heart that uses rotors to circulate blood instead of contractions, like a natural heart.
...
To create their novel heart, surgeons Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier combined two ventricular assist devices, which typically aid failing hearts pump blood. Rather than mimicking the real organ like other artificial hearts, the contraption uses rotors to circulate blood throughout your body, non-stop.

Cohn and Frazier successfully tested their pulseless heart in 38 calves before moving on to a human. “By every metric we have to analyze patients, she’s not living,” Cohn said of an 8-month-old calf. “But here you can see she’s a vigorous, happy, playful calf licking my hand.”

In March, they decided to test their device in Craig Lewis, who was dying of amyloidosis, a condition in which protein deposits can clog organs and shut them down. When Lewis agreed to the heart replacement, he had about 12 hours left to live, according to his doctors (via NPR).

Lewis survived a month with his new humming heart but then died of liver and kidney complications brought on by his disease.
...
The surgeons believe their device is an improvement over normal heart pumps. In particular, the pulseless heart is likely to last longer because it only has two moving parts (the rotors). “These pumps don’t wear out,” Frazier told NPR.

I must keep an eye on this science. Fascinating.

[LordMortis]

Sure we from rotary to pulse on phones and from pulse to rotary on hearts. What's that tell you about progress?

On a more serious note, don't rotary engines have inherent gyroscopic problems that need to be contended with? How does that work with your sense of balance and sitting still and such?

[Arcanis]

Sure we from rotary to pulse on phones and from pulse to rotary on hearts. What's that tell you about progress?

On a more serious note, don't rotary engines have inherent gyroscopic problems that need to be contended with? How does that work with your sense of balance and sitting still and such?

Since it is 2 rotors I would assume they rotate opposite directions thus balancing each other out, much like a Chinook helicopter. Plus your balance controls are in your ear not your chest so it shouldn't cause too much of a problem as the force trying to move you would be no more than a decent breeze would cause.

[Isgrimnur]

I want to see heart patients doing ground loops.

[The Meal]

Sure we from rotary to pulse on phones and from pulse to rotary on hearts. What's that tell you about progress?

Yeah, you'd think after reading your gibberish for a dozen years, I'd eventually be able to start figuring shit out. But no. No progress.

[Isgrimnur]

Human Jello

Several days ago, a tasty tidbit hit the science blogosphere: writing in a journal of the American Chemical Society, scientists reported the successful production of gelatin from human proteins.
...
Scientists are not actually on a mission to (a) gross us out, or (b) make us into cannibals. Gelatin, summed up quickly, is usually made by boiling and chemically processing the bones, skin, and connective tissue of animals like cows and pigs to release collagen, a long molecule that, when further broken down by heat and mixed with water, will set into a gel at room temperature. This is where your jiggly dessert comes from (apologies if I’ve just turned you vegetarian, or at least non-gelat-tarian).

Unfortunately, this process yields pieces of collagen of all different lengths, and that can affect a product’s ability to gel. Manufacturers would much prefer collagen of standardized lengths, with more reliable behavior. Furthermore, ever since mad cow disease came onto the scene, regulators have wondered whether gelatin, made from bits of many, many animals blended together, could transmit such a disease (they generally think that this isn’t a problem, but it was a chilling thought). Also, it turns out that some people can have immune reactions to the animal proteins in gelatin, and since gelatin has all kinds of medical uses, including in vaccines and pill capsules, avoiding this is of key importance.

All of these combined lead us to the research goal of, first, making collagen in yeast, which are unlikely to pass on diseases to us, and, second, using human genes to do it, to avoid any immune reactions, as well as to take advantage of the fact that the human collagen produced this way is of uniform length. Bada bing, bada boom.

Bill Cosby just got sinister, dude.

[LordMortis]

New innovations in, um, solar 3D printing... Does that count as laser....

http://www.kurzweilai.net/solar-powered ... -from-sand" target="_blank

[Arcanis]

sorry that is all I have.

[Isgrimnur]

Studies in plane boarding methodology:

In fact, boarding by sequential rows is the worst possible approach (pdf), according to a new study by physicist Jason Steffen of the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics.

Steffen tested the efficiency of several different boarding procedures by sending 72 luggage-toting passengers into a movie-set Boeing 757. Among the boarding techniques tested was the zone/block style, where passengers fill the plane back to front, one large group at a time; WilMA, or Window, Middle, then Aisle (how the “l” got where it did is a mystery); and Steffen’s own procedure (imaginatively called “the Steffen method”), which incorporates both the other two techniques (see chart).

Steffen timed how long it took the passengers to fill the plane under the different boarding procedures and found that the block style takes the longest, falling well behind the uber-sophisticated “random boarding” method—letting everyone on at the same time. The Steffen method was the quickest because it maximized the number of people who could use the aisle concurrently without crashing into each other.

[stessier]

I think the articles last sentence is the big kicker "How will you get the passengers to line up in the correct order?"

Yes, there are more efficient ways to board, but they have front end costs and what happens to the person who likes to board last just because? Once their seat is called and they don't board, do they have to wait until the end? Good in theory, unlikely to work in practice.

[coopasonic]

I think the articles last sentence is the big kicker "How will you get the passengers to line up in the correct order?"

Southwest seems to have that all worked out, though one might argue southwest travelers are not your typical passengers.

[Isgrimnur]

My thoughts on extrapolating that would be to redefine the groups. That grid represents 12 rows. So you'd double it (at least) for a real plane. Split the groups so you get, say:

{1, 8, 3, 10} for the back grid, {24, 17, 11, 4} for the front grid, etc. You'll never get everyone to line up in perfect order, but if you assign groups so that people are going to be in a relatively clear area until the next group arrives, that could improve things.

My issue is also that they call the groups too quickly. I've been part of the "last call" and been stuck in the gangway because all of the groups have been called, and they last 10 people aren't even through the hatch yet.

[stessier]

I think the articles last sentence is the big kicker "How will you get the passengers to line up in the correct order?"

Southwest seems to have that all worked out, though one might argue southwest travelers are not your typical passengers.

Southwest's "Free-for-all" is actually one of the methods tested. It didn't do as poorly as the block method, but he claims to be able to improve upon it by lining everyone up - which naturally makes sense, but I maintain is not feasible in real life.

My thoughts on extrapolating that would be to redefine the groups. That grid represents 12 rows. So you'd double it (at least) for a real plane. Split the groups so you get, say:

{1, 8, 3, 10} for the back grid, {24, 17, 11, 4} for the front grid, etc. You'll never get everyone to line up in perfect order, but if you assign groups so that people are going to be in a relatively clear area until the next group arrives, that could improve things.

But then you are basically devolving his method into one of the other methods but in blocks. It might help a bit, but Wilma would probably be just as fast (based on the fact that I'm on the internet and can argue anything. ).

My issue is also that they call the groups too quickly. I've been part of the "last call" and been stuck in the gangway because all of the groups have been called, and they last 10 people aren't even through the hatch yet.

That is from your perspective. It doesn't slow down boarding the plane to have you lined up on the jet bridge. And it helps the ground crew to have you checked in because they have a ton of stuff to do after that last ticket is scanned. So, as a wise man once said, it makes sense...from a certain point of view.

[coopasonic]

I think the articles last sentence is the big kicker "How will you get the passengers to line up in the correct order?"

Southwest seems to have that all worked out, though one might argue southwest travelers are not your typical passengers.

Southwest's "Free-for-all" is actually one of the methods tested. It didn't do as poorly as the block method, but he claims to be able to improve upon it by lining everyone up - which naturally makes sense, but I maintain is not feasible in real life.

I'm saying southwest has shown that you CAN get people to line up based on numbers printed on boarding passes. The assignment of numbers could be based on his method. The problem of course is that not everyone flying is an individual and I really don't want child who is seated next to me lining up 30 spaces behind or in front of me.

[stessier]

I think the articles last sentence is the big kicker "How will you get the passengers to line up in the correct order?"

Southwest seems to have that all worked out, though one might argue southwest travelers are not your typical passengers.

Southwest's "Free-for-all" is actually one of the methods tested. It didn't do as poorly as the block method, but he claims to be able to improve upon it by lining everyone up - which naturally makes sense, but I maintain is not feasible in real life.

I'm saying southwest has shown that you CAN get people to line up based on numbers printed on boarding passes. The assignment of numbers could be based on his method. The problem of course is that not everyone flying is an individual and I really don't want child who is seated next to me lining up 30 spaces behind or in front of me.

I haven't flown SWA in about 6 years. Do they actually get individual numbers 1-100? Or is it still 1-30, 31-60, 61-90, Everyone else? Cause that was what it used to be and that's no different than block boarding (although getting to pick your own seats is).