margaux loraine
Koko the gorilla is world-famous for her ability to communicate with humans using phrases in American Sign Language, and for her gentle play with pet cats. Now, a new study on Koko’s play with wind instruments shows that she skillfully controls how she breathes.
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npr:

Did you know the Morning Edition theme song has lyrics?!! Well, it does and here they are for your sing-a-long pleasure! — Tanya

The Morning Edition Theme

Oh I hate to get up in the morning

Please don’t wake me up this morning

Let me stay in bed … and … sleep (I don’t like to daydream)

****

The world can turn without me today

And if you wake me up I can say

That we will not be friends… for… long

****

Remember when… we used to sleep forever?

Dreams… floating as light as feathers

When… will those delightful dreams

Come back again?

Tell me when!!!

****

For crying out loud, please would you shut up

No news, no features, I’ve had enough …

But, say, who wrote your great … theme … song???

Lyrics ©1979 BJ Leiderman Music

Hahahajshsjahahajsha

amandamartinez:

Tammy Wynette had her beautician’s license renewed for twenty years after hitting it big, just in case she needed something to fall back on. Yeah right!

amandamartinez:

Tammy Wynette had her beautician’s license renewed for twenty years after hitting it big, just in case she needed something to fall back on. Yeah right!

meliorate:

Continue to support the legacy of The First Lady of Country Music — visit TammyWynette.tumblr.com today!

meliorate:

Continue to support the legacy of The First Lady of Country Music — visit TammyWynette.tumblr.com today!

scinerds:

How the Brain Spots Faces
The next time you see the face of jesus or a favorite character on an inanimate object or mother nature in general you might want to attribute it to something other than the supernatural.. try the brain.
Our brains are made to find faces. In fact, they’re so good at picking out human-like mugs we sometimes see them in a jumble of rocks, a bilious cloud of volcanic ash or some craters on the Moon.
But another amazing thing about our brain is that we’re never actually fooled into thinking it’s a real person looking back at us. We might do a second take, but most normal brains can tell the difference between a man and the Moon.
Neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wanted to investigate how the brain decides exactly what is and is not a face. Earlier studies have shown that the fusiform gyrus, located on the brain’s underside, responds to face-like shapes — but how does it sort flesh from rock?
Pawan Sinha, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and students created a procession of images ranging from those that look nothing like faces to genuine faces. For the ones in the middle — structures, formations, smudges and shapes that give us a pareidolic reaction that causes us to see a face — they used photographs that machine vision systems had falsely tagged as faces.
By doing a series of one-to-one comparisons, the human observers rated how face-like each of the images were. And while the subjects sorted out the photographs, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan their brains and look for activity.
The neuroscientists found different activity patterns on each side of the brain. On the left, the activity patterns changed very gradually as images became more like faces and there was no clear distinction between faces and non-faces. The left side would flare if someone was looking at a human or an eerily face-like formation of rocks.
Read on..

scinerds:

How the Brain Spots Faces

The next time you see the face of jesus or a favorite character on an inanimate object or mother nature in general you might want to attribute it to something other than the supernatural.. try the brain.

Our brains are made to find faces. In fact, they’re so good at picking out human-like mugs we sometimes see them in a jumble of rocks, a bilious cloud of volcanic ash or some craters on the Moon.

But another amazing thing about our brain is that we’re never actually fooled into thinking it’s a real person looking back at us. We might do a second take, but most normal brains can tell the difference between a man and the Moon.

Neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wanted to investigate how the brain decides exactly what is and is not a face. Earlier studies have shown that the fusiform gyrus, located on the brain’s underside, responds to face-like shapes — but how does it sort flesh from rock?

Pawan Sinha, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and students created a procession of images ranging from those that look nothing like faces to genuine faces. For the ones in the middle — structures, formations, smudges and shapes that give us a pareidolic reaction that causes us to see a face — they used photographs that machine vision systems had falsely tagged as faces.

By doing a series of one-to-one comparisons, the human observers rated how face-like each of the images were. And while the subjects sorted out the photographs, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan their brains and look for activity.

The neuroscientists found different activity patterns on each side of the brain. On the left, the activity patterns changed very gradually as images became more like faces and there was no clear distinction between faces and non-faces. The left side would flare if someone was looking at a human or an eerily face-like formation of rocks.

Read on..

rhamphotheca:

 
What is Dark Energy?
by NASA staff
 
More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.
One explanation for dark energy is that it is a property of space. Albert Einstein was the first person to realize that empty space is not nothing. Space has amazing properties, many of which are just beginning to be understood. The first property that Einstein discovered is that it is possible for more space to come into existence. Then one version of Einstein’s gravity theory, the version that contains a cosmological constant, makes a second prediction: “empty space” can possess its own energy. Because this energy is a property of space itself, it would not be diluted as space expands. As more space comes into existence, more of this energy-of-space would appear. As a result, this form of energy would cause the Universe to expand faster and faster. 
Unfortunately, no one understands why the cosmological constant should even be there, much less why it would have exactly the right value to cause the observed acceleration of the Universe…
(read more: NASA Astrophysics)     (image: NASA/STSci/Ann Feild)

rhamphotheca:

What is Dark Energy?

by NASA staff

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 70% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 25%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.

One explanation for dark energy is that it is a property of space. Albert Einstein was the first person to realize that empty space is not nothing. Space has amazing properties, many of which are just beginning to be understood. The first property that Einstein discovered is that it is possible for more space to come into existence. Then one version of Einstein’s gravity theory, the version that contains a cosmological constant, makes a second prediction: “empty space” can possess its own energy. Because this energy is a property of space itself, it would not be diluted as space expands. As more space comes into existence, more of this energy-of-space would appear. As a result, this form of energy would cause the Universe to expand faster and faster.

Unfortunately, no one understands why the cosmological constant should even be there, much less why it would have exactly the right value to cause the observed acceleration of the Universe

(read more: NASA Astrophysics)     (image: NASA/STSci/Ann Feild)

mega-mix:

  1. THE INTERNET IS OUR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

    We don’t have to remember phone numbers or addresses anymore. Instead, we can just hop on our email or Google to look it up. According to a study by Science Magazine, “the Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where…

mega-mix:

  1. THE INTERNET IS OUR EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE

    We don’t have to remember phone numbers or addresses anymore. Instead, we can just hop on our email or Google to look it up. According to a study by Science Magazine, “the Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where…