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20th
JAN
Brain Size Can Predict Game Performance
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Gaming, Medicine
If you wonder why you suck so badly at Modern Warfare 2, it could be biological. According to a study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, the size of your brain can predict how well you perform in video games,
(Presumably mad) scientists at the University of Illinois say specific parts of the striatum, a collection of tissues deep inside the cerebral cortex, influence a person’s ability to “refine his or her motor skills, learn new procedures, develop useful strategies and adapt to a quickly changing environments.” In short: All the skills you need to do well in a game.
“This is the first time that we’ve been able to take a real world task like a video game and show that the size of specific brain regions is predictive of performance and learning rates on this video game,” said Kirk Erickson, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh and first author on the study.
Sadly, it doesn’t work in reverse, so you can’t play a bunch of video games and grow those structures in your brain — you’re stuck with the equipment you were born with.
Study shows that better gamers have bigger brains, are better learners too [Engadget]
Tags: Research, Science, University of Illinois, Video Games
23rd
JUN
New Treatment Filters Bacteria From the Bloodstream with an Electromagnet
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Tech
This may sound like something out of Iron Man, but it’s very real. Don Ingber has developed a machine that uses an electromagnet to suck sepsis-causing bacteria out of the blood.
In lab tests, Ingber’s team mixed donor blood with the fungus Candida albicans, a common cause of sepsis, and added plastic-coated iron-oxide beads, each a hundredth of a hair-width in diameter and covered with antibodies that seek out and attach to the fungus. Next they ran the mixture through the dialysis-like machine, which uses an electromagnet to pull the beads, and any pathogens stuck to them, from blood into a saline solution. The device removes 80 percent of the invaders-enough so that drugs could knock out the rest-in a couple of hours.
He still has to perform testing on animals to make sure it doesn’t, you know, kill things, but it all looks quite promising. If it works for this bacteria, he’s hoping to jigger the process to pull cancer cells from the body or harvest stem cells. [PopSci]
Tags: Medicine, Science, Technology
19th
JUN
First Spaceport Ever Begins Construction Today!
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Tech
This image, released earlier this week, shows the sun rising over Spaceport America. It just started construction today. It will be the beginning of the real future, the stuff dreams are made of.*
Spaceport America will be the first spaceport in history, and it will host commercial operations by private space travel companies, like Virgin Galactic.
I’m sure that—in a few centuries—this structure will be buried under multiple layers belonging to another huge structure: A giant spaceport—one of many in the world—in which massive spacecrafts will be lifting off and arriving from trips from the Moon, Mars, Titan, and Europa. Or at least, I hope that’s what will happen.
* Apparently, the stuff dreams are made of look like vaginas from the air. Rubber vaginas.
Tags: Science, Space, Spaceport America
18th
JUN
Is This the Warp Drive Spaceship of the Future?
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under Tech
Warp drives may hold the key to reach the stars—despite the naysayers. The Discovery Channel is featuring a scientifically accurate warpship design, following our current knowledge of spacetime.
The spacecraft’s shape—created by Dr. Richard Obousy and Alex Szames Antigravite—is optimized to manipulate the surrounding dark energy and surf the spacetime bubble, as you can see in this concept image:
First proposed by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre, a warp-drive powered spacecraft won’t move faster than the speed of light-which is not possible under Einstein’s relativity theory-but will move the space-time around it faster than the speed of light itself. Unlike Alcubierre’s drive, Dr. Obousy’s concept doesn’t use general relativity but “the physics of higher dimensional quantum field theory.”
And since I’m not Scotty, you can see Dr. Obousy explaining the theory himself here. [Discovery]
29th
MAY
The way you hold a glass reveals personality
Posted by Mavrik | Filed under ZOMG
Those who know me personally know I’m obsessed with personality types and analyzing people. It’s probably why psychiatry is currently my top specialty choice. I saw this article today and thought it was really interesting so why not post it. Dr Glenn Wilson, a psychologist, observed the body language of 500 drinkers and divided them into eight personality types: the flirt, the gossip, fun lover, wallflower, the ice-queen, the playboy, Jack-the-lad, and browbeater. I am totally the fun lover. Which are you? Check out the article to find out. You may even learn something about yourself.
‘Glass hold’ reveals personality [BBC]
Tags: Psychiatry, Science