Cool blog on brain chemistry and how it reacts to getting “loot” in WoW. Very cool blog, has some other interesting articles on gaming and psychology as well.
http://www.psychologyofgames.com/2009/12/27/phat-loot-and-neurotransmitters-in-world-of-warcraft/
Great article from BBC News about the hazards of how people interperet statistical accuracy.
A scanner to detect terrorists
If a test to detect something (a terrorist in this case) is 90% accurate, how good is it? Ninety percent sounds pretty good. Until you flip it around and calculate how many errors it can generate, especially if the thing you are looking for is rare. Lets assume there are 300 people who are terrorists in the US. Thats approximatly 0.0001% in a population of about 300 million.
Jul 25
A new variant of ion propulsion is being developed by Ad Astra Rockets (warning, lots of video embedded). Ion engines have been used on a few space probes already, but they’re not very powerful.
The main thing that makes this one different is that instead of using metal grids loaded with differing voltages to accelerate the ions out the back, the VASIMR Engine accelerates and energizes an ion plasma using magnetic fields. This prevents the volatile plasma from coming in contact with any of the engine parts, which would wear them down quite rapidly.
They’re saying that a manned ship using this propulsion could reach Mars in around 40 days, instead of the current timeline of 6 months using chemical rockets. I dunno about you, but spending 30 days in a metal trashcan sounds a lot better than 6 months. And that’s not even counting the time you spend crammed into it while you’re actually there. Which has got to be a least a few months just to make the trip worth it.
Jul 18
I never really thought about how weather worked on a global scale before. From the day-to-day perspective, clouds form “somewhere”, roll into your section of the sky, and either continue or dump a lot of rain on you. Sure I knew they probably formed over the ocean, but I never really understood how much of a pattern weather takes.
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2009/07/what_does_climate_model_output.php
The link leads to some videos that show the weather patterns on a simulated earth-sized model. They are quite sophisticated computer models that are driven by some of the most powerful supercomputers on Earth, as they have to take into account a mind-boggling list of factors from Earth’s rotation, sun position, incination, ocean currents, and the hot air coming from Congress.
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