Loosely Assembled » science

Mice in Virtual Reality

fekaylius — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:30:44 +0000

I have been fascinated by “place cells” recently, and it seems the press has just caught on as well this week with many articles in major outlets covering the phenomena. I guess it takes a spectacle to get people to write headlines about science, and this VR setup for a mouse is just that.

Basically they are watching the mouse’s place neurons activate differently depending where it goes inside the virtual environment. The same patterns emerge when it returns to the same places.

I have read a similar story with fMRI and humans, but I guess what’s different here are direct neural sensors, and real time physical movement (it’s hard to get a mouse to use a joystick like the humans did). The physical movement piece is critical in learning how proprioception contributes to the activity.

There is also a video on the linked page, worth taking a peek at too.

(Via @kernull.)

Stromatal image of type specimen TNS F-197981

fekaylius — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:37:17 +0000

(Via Stromatal image of type specimen TNS F-197981 | Cordyceps.us.)

Light Speed but much slower

fekaylius — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:16:07 +0000

An old story from 2007 still blows my mind. Lets get some artists working with this medium!

Here are a few snippets to get you to read this mind blowing article about Lene Hau’s work:

… slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.

… brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms.

… made a light pulse disappear from one cold cloud then retrieved it from another cloud nearby.

Light and matter united

Robot Scientist Makes Discoveries Without Human Help

fekaylius — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:29:42 +0000

A robot scientist that can generate its own hypotheses and run experiments to test them has made its first real scientific discoveries.

via NewScientist

Health Hacking

jason — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:01:22 +0000

Can’t convince anyone that your brilliant idea will really work? Can’t find a convenient way to prove your point? Oh yeah, just try it on yourself.

There is a great collection of self-experimentation stories up at the New Scientist site. Get ready to read about people pouring yellow fever infected vomit into their eyes, stabbing themselves, inflicting themselves with radiation burns, suffering from oxygen poisoning, sleeping with cave-rats, dropping acid, trying to get ulcers, and letting hookworm larvae burrow away.

100 Meters of Eventual Death