Interesting links that I found...
Sep. 29th, 2019 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Congratulations, You Survived Black Hole Week
In September of 2015, those observatories gave Einstein his greatest moment in a century when they recorded space-time ripples emanating from the collision of a pair of black holes. The data agreed perfectly with his prediction that enough matter and energy in one place would sink together endlessly, wrapping space and time like a glove around it — a black hole.
LIGO and its ilk have made clear that the universe is full of these beasts rumbling and bumping around in the dark. After a brief rest, the twin LIGO antennas and their European relation, VIRGO, resumed sentry duty this spring. Their watch has paid off.
Last spring I downloaded a smartphone app called Gravitational Waves Events, which sends an alert every time LIGO or VIRGO detects a presumed gravitational wave. The alert arrives as a short chirp, the characteristic signal produced by a pair of colliding black holes as they speed up in the last seconds of their marriage.
It’s gone off some four dozen times since April. Sometimes I hear it in my sleep.
Of course, black holes don’t roam the universe like vampires looking for victims. They are as lazy as they are fat. They eat what the winds and currents of space and the dance of gravity bring to them.
But that can be a lot. The more that astronomers learn about the universe, the more it seems that what goes around comes around, whether in the form of meteoroids from Mars or interstellar comets from other stars. Oblivion is random. The issues raised by black holes, of what might be delicately called the Ultimate State — whatever it is that happens when you hit the bottom of a black hole — are always with us.
2. Well...this may kill the whole justification that my neice and various people have regarding being vegans. The Intelligence of Plants: Plants may be a whole lot smarter than we think
"A few years ago, Monica Gagliano, an associate professor in evolutionary ecology at the University of Western Australia, began dropping potted Mimosa pudicas. She used a sliding steel rail that guided them to six inches above a cushioned surface, then let them fall. The plant, which is leafy and green with pink-purple flower heads, is commonly known as a “shameplant” or a “touch-me-not” because its leaves fold inward when it’s disturbed. In theory, it would defend itself against any attack, indiscriminately perceiving any touch or drop as an offense and closing itself up.
The first time Gagliano dropped the plants—fifty-six of them—from the measured height, they responded as expected. But after several more drops, fewer of them closed. She dropped each of them sixty times, in five-second intervals. Eventually, all of them stopped closing. She continued like this for twenty-eight days, but none of them ever closed up again. It was only when she bothered them differently—such as by grabbing them—that they reverted to their usual defense mechanism.
Gagliano concluded, in a study published in a 2014 edition of Oecologia, that the shameplants had “remembered” that their being dropped from such a low height wasn’t actually a danger and realized they didn’t need to defend themselves. She believed that her experiment helped prove that “brains and neurons are a sophisticated solution but not a necessary requirement for learning.” The plants, she reasoned, were learning. The plants, she believed, were remembering. Bees, for instance, forget what they’ve learned after just a few days. These shameplants had remembered for nearly a month.
The idea of a “plant intelligence”—an intelligence that goes beyond adaptation and reaction and into the realm of active memory and decision-making—has been in the air since at least the early seventies. A shift from religion to “spirituality” in the sixties and seventies unlocked new avenues of belief, and the 1973 bestseller The Secret Life of Plants catalyzed the phenomenon. Written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, the book made some wildly unscientific claims, such as that plants can “read human minds,” “feel stress,” and “pick out” a plant murderer. Mostly, it proved to be a touchstone.
Wrapped in pseudoscience, these claims, the authors said, were “proven” by “experiments.” Cleve Backster, a polygraph tester for the CIA, did one such experiment in 1966 when, “on a whim,” he attached a galvanometer (a machine that registers electrical currents) to a dracaena, a tropical palm houseplant. Silently, Backster imagined the plant was on fire. The galvanometer flickered. Backster concluded the plant was feeling stress from his thoughts. “Could the plant have been reading his mind?” ask Tompkins and Bird in the book. In another experiment, Backster had a friend stomp on a plant. Then, that friend and five other human “suspects” walked out in front of the plant that had “witnessed” the stomping. The plant was hooked up to a galvanometer. When the killer entered the room, the plant sent out a wave of electricity, thereby “identifying” the murderer."
3. What Happens to Your Body On No Sleep
I don't know, I've read conflicting reports on this. Also, I don't think they know, since people aren't the same and there's no way they can tell for certain.
4. How the US Hacked ISIS -- well, at least, we did something right -- and with less violence.
5. Want to Make Difficult Conversations Easy - Try This Counterinetuitive Trick
In a nutshell? Talk less, listen more.
Easier said than done, by the way. Mainly because in my situations, people have a tendency to rant for an hour about things that do not pertain to the discussion.
They go off on subtangents. It's amazing. I thought I was the only one who did this for a bit, but no, everyone does.
Listening is actually harder than talking. Because I have to think differently.
It's taking in information and processing it, and trying not to relate it back to myself. And being present, and not letting my mind wander off.
6. Obsesity Not Caused by a lack of Will Power -- no, it's basically caused by stress, environment, and unavailability of healthier food choices. Also, apparently the UK is having the same problems with it as the US.
7. The Amazing Psychology of Japanese Train Stations
"To the casual observer, it is chaos; commuters packed shoulder-to-shoulder amid the constant clatter of arriving and departing trains. But a closer look reveals something more beneath the surface: A station may be packed, yet commuters move smoothly along concourses and platforms. Platforms are a whirl of noisy activity, yet trains maintain remarkable on-time performance. Indeed, the staggering punctuality of the Japanese rail system occasionally becomes the focus of international headlines—as on May 11, when West Japan Railways issued a florid apology after one of its commuter trains left the station 25 seconds early.
Tokyo is home to the world’s busiest train stations, with the capital’s rail operators handling a combined 13 billion passenger trips annually. Ridership of that volume requires a deft blend of engineering, planning, and psychology. Beneath the bustle, unobtrusive features are designed to unconsciously manipulate passenger behavior, via light, sound, and other means. Japan’s boundless creativity in this realm reflects the deep consideration given to public transportation in the country."
Off to eat, and take a walk.
In September of 2015, those observatories gave Einstein his greatest moment in a century when they recorded space-time ripples emanating from the collision of a pair of black holes. The data agreed perfectly with his prediction that enough matter and energy in one place would sink together endlessly, wrapping space and time like a glove around it — a black hole.
LIGO and its ilk have made clear that the universe is full of these beasts rumbling and bumping around in the dark. After a brief rest, the twin LIGO antennas and their European relation, VIRGO, resumed sentry duty this spring. Their watch has paid off.
Last spring I downloaded a smartphone app called Gravitational Waves Events, which sends an alert every time LIGO or VIRGO detects a presumed gravitational wave. The alert arrives as a short chirp, the characteristic signal produced by a pair of colliding black holes as they speed up in the last seconds of their marriage.
It’s gone off some four dozen times since April. Sometimes I hear it in my sleep.
Of course, black holes don’t roam the universe like vampires looking for victims. They are as lazy as they are fat. They eat what the winds and currents of space and the dance of gravity bring to them.
But that can be a lot. The more that astronomers learn about the universe, the more it seems that what goes around comes around, whether in the form of meteoroids from Mars or interstellar comets from other stars. Oblivion is random. The issues raised by black holes, of what might be delicately called the Ultimate State — whatever it is that happens when you hit the bottom of a black hole — are always with us.
2. Well...this may kill the whole justification that my neice and various people have regarding being vegans. The Intelligence of Plants: Plants may be a whole lot smarter than we think
"A few years ago, Monica Gagliano, an associate professor in evolutionary ecology at the University of Western Australia, began dropping potted Mimosa pudicas. She used a sliding steel rail that guided them to six inches above a cushioned surface, then let them fall. The plant, which is leafy and green with pink-purple flower heads, is commonly known as a “shameplant” or a “touch-me-not” because its leaves fold inward when it’s disturbed. In theory, it would defend itself against any attack, indiscriminately perceiving any touch or drop as an offense and closing itself up.
The first time Gagliano dropped the plants—fifty-six of them—from the measured height, they responded as expected. But after several more drops, fewer of them closed. She dropped each of them sixty times, in five-second intervals. Eventually, all of them stopped closing. She continued like this for twenty-eight days, but none of them ever closed up again. It was only when she bothered them differently—such as by grabbing them—that they reverted to their usual defense mechanism.
Gagliano concluded, in a study published in a 2014 edition of Oecologia, that the shameplants had “remembered” that their being dropped from such a low height wasn’t actually a danger and realized they didn’t need to defend themselves. She believed that her experiment helped prove that “brains and neurons are a sophisticated solution but not a necessary requirement for learning.” The plants, she reasoned, were learning. The plants, she believed, were remembering. Bees, for instance, forget what they’ve learned after just a few days. These shameplants had remembered for nearly a month.
The idea of a “plant intelligence”—an intelligence that goes beyond adaptation and reaction and into the realm of active memory and decision-making—has been in the air since at least the early seventies. A shift from religion to “spirituality” in the sixties and seventies unlocked new avenues of belief, and the 1973 bestseller The Secret Life of Plants catalyzed the phenomenon. Written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, the book made some wildly unscientific claims, such as that plants can “read human minds,” “feel stress,” and “pick out” a plant murderer. Mostly, it proved to be a touchstone.
Wrapped in pseudoscience, these claims, the authors said, were “proven” by “experiments.” Cleve Backster, a polygraph tester for the CIA, did one such experiment in 1966 when, “on a whim,” he attached a galvanometer (a machine that registers electrical currents) to a dracaena, a tropical palm houseplant. Silently, Backster imagined the plant was on fire. The galvanometer flickered. Backster concluded the plant was feeling stress from his thoughts. “Could the plant have been reading his mind?” ask Tompkins and Bird in the book. In another experiment, Backster had a friend stomp on a plant. Then, that friend and five other human “suspects” walked out in front of the plant that had “witnessed” the stomping. The plant was hooked up to a galvanometer. When the killer entered the room, the plant sent out a wave of electricity, thereby “identifying” the murderer."
3. What Happens to Your Body On No Sleep
I don't know, I've read conflicting reports on this. Also, I don't think they know, since people aren't the same and there's no way they can tell for certain.
4. How the US Hacked ISIS -- well, at least, we did something right -- and with less violence.
5. Want to Make Difficult Conversations Easy - Try This Counterinetuitive Trick
In a nutshell? Talk less, listen more.
Easier said than done, by the way. Mainly because in my situations, people have a tendency to rant for an hour about things that do not pertain to the discussion.
They go off on subtangents. It's amazing. I thought I was the only one who did this for a bit, but no, everyone does.
Listening is actually harder than talking. Because I have to think differently.
It's taking in information and processing it, and trying not to relate it back to myself. And being present, and not letting my mind wander off.
6. Obsesity Not Caused by a lack of Will Power -- no, it's basically caused by stress, environment, and unavailability of healthier food choices. Also, apparently the UK is having the same problems with it as the US.
7. The Amazing Psychology of Japanese Train Stations
"To the casual observer, it is chaos; commuters packed shoulder-to-shoulder amid the constant clatter of arriving and departing trains. But a closer look reveals something more beneath the surface: A station may be packed, yet commuters move smoothly along concourses and platforms. Platforms are a whirl of noisy activity, yet trains maintain remarkable on-time performance. Indeed, the staggering punctuality of the Japanese rail system occasionally becomes the focus of international headlines—as on May 11, when West Japan Railways issued a florid apology after one of its commuter trains left the station 25 seconds early.
Tokyo is home to the world’s busiest train stations, with the capital’s rail operators handling a combined 13 billion passenger trips annually. Ridership of that volume requires a deft blend of engineering, planning, and psychology. Beneath the bustle, unobtrusive features are designed to unconsciously manipulate passenger behavior, via light, sound, and other means. Japan’s boundless creativity in this realm reflects the deep consideration given to public transportation in the country."
Off to eat, and take a walk.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-29 06:09 pm (UTC)That seems like it should have been the lede, and at the same time seems really passive aggressive given the national norms. It's not only terribly public and creates chaos but I'd also think would be a terrible thing to witness for all the onlookers. It's certainly not how I'd like to go.
That's a curious thing about blue light -- given all we've heard about how it's stimulating I wouldn't have thought that would calm people down. And to think it has an 84% decline, that's rather astonishing.
Most stations have their own melodies, forming de facto theme songs that become part of a station’s identity.
Now that's interesting -- also helpful for distracted passengers, I'd think, given musical's subliminal effects.
residents living near open-air rail stations, weary of hearing endless repetitions of the same jingles all day, complained of noise pollution.
Understandable, but it's surprising that they'd rather hear harsh buzzes.
Interesting article, thanks for sharing!
no subject
Date: 2019-09-30 12:36 am (UTC)I think they chose not to start with the suicides as the lead or focus on it, because it's already been discussed and focused on elsewhere. Japan has a very high suicide rate due to the work-obsessed/success-based culture it developed over time. (Basically we have a country of insane perfectionists -- not surprising that there's a high suicide rate. Although it's also why they have an excellent transit system.)
I agree the blue light bit is interesting. And some of the article explains some of the things I've seen the MTA do over the years for Transit and Railroad.
I was a bit surprised by the hearing loss in adults, and how juveniles could hear a certain annoying sound but the adults couldn't.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-29 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-29 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-30 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-30 12:41 am (UTC)I've been trying to follow science news as much as possible -- out of natural curiosity, it's not depressing but exciting, and I have two sci-fi novels I have to get back too.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-29 09:55 pm (UTC)And black holes are both terrifying and thrilling.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-30 12:45 am (UTC)The black hole article and LIGO/Virago is wickedly cool -- particularly if you like space stuff and sci-fi like I do. I loved the pictures. I've always found black holes interesting, because it's basically the absence of light or energy, which results in a sort of abyss that sucks everything into it. Like anti-matter.