science - Dave's Blog

A Slower Speed of Light Official Trailer — MIT Game Lab (by Steven Schirra)

“A Slower Speed of Light is a first-person game in which players navigate a 3D space while picking up orbs that reduce the speed of light in increments. A custom-built, open-source relativistic graphics engine allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player’s own maximum walking speed. Visual effects of special relativity gradually become apparent to the player, increasing the challenge of gameplay. These effects, rendered in realtime to vertex accuracy, include the Doppler effect; the searchlight effect; time dilation; Lorentz transformation; and the runtime effect.

A production of the MIT Game Lab.

Play now for Mac and PC! http://gamelab.mit.edu/games/a-slower-speed-of-light/”

“A particularly troublesome finding was that for some children, if they were told that sugar would make them hyper, then they actually would become hyper after thinking that they had eaten sugar.”

Ben Goldacre’s TED talk on publication bias, drug companies hiding the results of clinical trials.

(via I did a new talk at TED, on drug companies and hidden data.)

Winterton, a senior entomologist at the California Department of Food and Agriculture, has seen a lot of bugs. But he hadn’t seen this species before.

There’s no off switch when you’re the senior entomologist. If you’re browsing the web you find your way to Flickr photos of insects or start correcting Wikipedia articles on insects.

wired:

jtotheizzoe:

Meet Sarcastic Mars Rover, now on Twitter, doing a science all over your everything.

Meet your new twitter friend.

laughingsquid:

Nope. Nik Tesla.

(via Classic pro-science-careers music video PSA: Chemical Party)

Xeni says: “The EU wasn’t always so terrible at promoting science careers through funny internet music videos! (thanks, Guido)”

So this is another Stuxnet by Israel/US?

The analysis reinforces theories that researchers from Kaspersky Lab, CrySyS Lab, and Symantec published almost two weeks ago. Namely, Flame could only have been developed with the backing of a wealthy nation-state. … “It’s not a garden-variety collision attack, or just an implementation of previous MD5 collisions papers—which would be difficult enough,” Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography in the computer science department at Johns Hopkins University, told Ars. “There were mathematicians doing new science to make Flame work.”

wired:

[via motherjones]:

theweekmagazine:

Sticking to an exercise routine takes dedication, and many fitness junkies swear that a running companion can be a huge help. That’s why researchers have developed “Joggobot,” a quad-rotor helicopter drone designed to motivate joggers by flying in front of them. 

The aerial robot uses its camera to spot a colorful pattern on a T-shirt worn by the jogger, and flies at a safe distance ahead. The runner can control Joggobot using a smartphone: In “companion mode,” the drone simply maintains the jogger’s pace; in “coach mode,” it pushes its human trainee a little faster.

Don’t worry, there’s a video

Science!

Maybe it should chase you instead?

Star Trek’s hypospray apparently already existed and has been patented since 1960.

A whole Richard Feynman Talks collection by Brian Norgard contains wonderful videos like this.

What a cool idea!

(via Mad Science Monday: Never Visit The Dentist Again)

I hadn’t heard of “Social DRM” (described in this article). Sounds like my blackmail DRM idea.

(via Best. research paper abstract. evar.)