This googly eyed gentleman is named Dan Considine, and he’d like to take you on a tour of accents from across the globe, starting with the Land of Blarney and ending in the good ol’ U.S. of A…
Everything you need to know about the Higgs Boson in under eight minutes
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/41038445[/vimeo]
The Higgs Boson is kind of a big deal. If it does exist, it could provide a key to unifying the standard and quantum models of physics. But what is a Higgs Boson, what does it do, and how does it work? With the help of this animated short, UCI physics professor Daniel Whiteson breaks down the basics of this mysterious particle (or is it a field?) in a way even your parents can understand.
[Vimeo via Open Culture]
Thinking in a different language affects how you make decisions
The languages you know affect how you think.
Back in 2002, psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the economics Nobel Prize for showing that human beings don’t have a really good intuitive grasp of risk. Basically, the decisions we make when faced with a risky proposition depend more on how the question is framed than on what the actual outcome might be.
The classic example is to tell a subject that there’s going to be a disaster. Out of 600 people, she has a chance of saving 200 if she takes x risk. If she doesn’t take the risk, everybody dies. Most people will take the risk in that scenario, but if you present the same situation and frame it differently—”If you take this risk, 400 people will die”—the decisions suddenly flip in the other direction. Nothing has changed about the outcome. But everything has changed in terms of how people feel about the decision they have to make. This is the kind of thing that matters a lot to economics because it helps to explain why economic behavior in the real world isn’t always as rational and self-interested as it is in theory…
Continue reading… “Thinking in a different language affects how you make decisions”
Girl cuts hair to buy house
It took four hours every week to wash her hair and an hour and a half to brush every day
There are certain drawbacks to having a five-foot-long mane of hair. Twelve-year-old Natasha Moraes de Andrade of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was proud of her hair, but it took hours to wash and comb it. Her family couldn’t turn on fans for fear of getting it caught. And riding a bicycle was out of the question. Still, getting her hair cut was a difficult decision.
‘I cried at first when I was at the hairdressers to get it cut,’ she says.
‘I was afraid I wouldn’t like it, and I was also scared I might not get the money I wanted for it…
Top 10 Photos of the Week
Unbeknownst to David Letterman, the Cleveland Philharmonic spent over 400 hours
practicing to land a 4 minute spot on his show
Quote of the Day: “The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.” – – Johnny Carson
Samsung overtakes Nokia to become world’s largest cellphone brand
Samsung Galaxy Note
In the first quarter of 2012, Samsung became the world’s largest cellphone brand for the first time, overtaking longtime market leader Nokia.
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More singles in the U.S. are living alone and loving it
Despite the economy more singles are living alone and loving it!
Monica Russell and Rich Rickaby are close friends and have shared apartments with roommates and even with romantic partners before. Neither one of them wants to relive this arrangement ever again.
Continue reading… “More singles in the U.S. are living alone and loving it”
JoeyBra is made to carry an iPhone
JoeyBra
There are a lot of places ladies put their iPhones – jeans pockets, purses, wallets – but bras usually aren’t one of them. But the JoeyBra may change all of that. It is a new sports bra designed to hold the iPhone safe and close when no other options are available.
Young children prefer live animals to toys: Study
“The fact that children find animals so appealing suggests that children may benefit from having an animal, like a pet, in their lives.”
Kids as young as 11 months showed more interest in live animals than toys, even ones made to replicate real living creatures, it was found in a new study.
Daylight could reduce risk of having a heart attack
Daylight exposure inside hospital could also reduce the damage caused by a heart attack.
Treating a heart attack victim could be as simple as exposing them to light. Doctors say strong light or even just daylight could cut the risk of having a heart attack or suffering permanent damage after having one.
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30% of U.S. workers are affected by insufficient sleep
Insufficient sleep can have serious and sometimes fatal consequences for tired workers and the people around them.
Thirty percent of the nation’s workers are sleeping under 6 hours a day, which is less than the 7 to 9 hours that the National Sleep Foundation recommends for healthy adults, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Repairing heart attack damage without using stem cells
Researchers used molecules called microRNAs to convert scar tissue (called fibroblasts) into heart muscle cells.
When someone suffers a heart attack, scar tissue forms over the damaged areas of the heart, reducing the organ’s function. In a new study, scientists successfully turned this scar tissue into working heart muscle without the use of stem cells.
Continue reading… “Repairing heart attack damage without using stem cells”