Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication
Definitions, information and explanations in science
*General fluid intelligence is the ability to infer relationships, do complex reasoning, and solve novel problems. ( http://esciencenews.com/articles/2013/10/08/brain.training.may.boos... )
*Gravitational microlensing: the gravitational influence of a star and its planets slightly bends the light of a more distant object. Also termed as - Natural space lens.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/natural-space-lens-...
According to some scientists...we may actually have more than five basic senses including Magnetoreception which is the ability to detect magnetic fields &
Chronoception which is the sense of time passing.
*What is the difference between a hypothesis and a theory?
In a word, evidence.
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for something.
We call it a theory when that hypothesis has been tested with considerable evidence. As a result, a theory is usually a much larger set of statements than a hypothesis ... because a theory can grow with every new piece of evidence it explains. In other words, a theory can explain far more than the phenomenon it originally was proposed to explain.
Several answers here all used the word "proven." This is a big mistake! (Another misconception is that a "law" is a "proven theory" ... also equally incorrect.) Theories are accepted with higher and higher confidence ... but never called "proven." Science *starts* with the assumption that we can never, ever "prove" anything absolutely true. All we can do it find the best explanation based on the current evidence.
This is really, really important point because dishonest people try to mislead non-scientists into thinking that all theories are either "proven" or "not proven" (there is no in-between) ... and therefore to lump "not proven" theories in with "false" theories. This completely misunderstands science!
Anybody who ever uses the phrase "just a theory" in science is under the spell of that misunderstanding about what "theory" means in science.
Be careful with just copy-pasting something from a dictionary. In both of those definitions, it is only part (1) that applies to the use of the words 'hypothesis' and 'theory' *IN SCIENCE*. The other definitions will just get you confused if you apply them to what scientists call 'hypothesis' or 'theory' ... and there are too many dishonest anti-science people in the world willing to exploit that misconception to confuse you.
To emphasize it once again...
A hypothesis is an attempt to explain phenomena. It is a proposal, a guess used to explain something. A theory is the result of testing a hypothesis and developing an explanation that is taken to be true about a phenomena. A theory replaces the hypothesis.
So, a person might make an observation and immediately form a hypothesis about why something happens the way it does. He or she then tests the hypothesis and eventually develops a theory. A hypothesis can be right or wrong, but a theory is supposed to be true based upon the scientific method. So, when a hypothesis has been verified to be true, it becomes a theory.
*What is the Scientific Method?
The scientific method is used in SCIENCE as a means of gaining understanding about the physical universe. There are differences of opinion on exactly what the scientific method is, but basically it consists of the following main parts.
- Observation - a perception, viewing of a phenomena.
- Hypothesis - a proposed explanation is developed to account what has been observed.
- Experimentation - tests are developed to validate or invalidate the hypothesis.
- Prediction - after tests and validation of the hypothesis, predictions are made based upon the evidence gathered in experimentation.
- Theory - a theory is based upon a hypothesis, verified by testing, and is generally accepted as being an accurate explanation of phenomena.
So, with the scientific method, people attempt to understand something sufficiently to reproduce an event and/or accurately predict an event.
The exact order of the steps is fluid, but generally the scientific method is the process used to understand phenomena through developing a hypothesis, experimentation, and learning so that we are able to predict the phenomena again. This means the phenomena is understood.
*What's the difference between a cyclone, a typhoon and a hurricane?
The storms are called ‘hurricanes’ In the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, "typhoons" in the Northwest Pacific and "cyclones" in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean.
They’re all the same, officially tropical cyclones. But they just use distinctive terms for a storm in different parts of the world. Hurricane is used in the Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, central and northeast Pacific. They are typhoons in the northwest Pacific. In the Bay of Bengal and the Arabia Sea, they are called cyclones. Tropical cyclone is used in the southwest India Ocean; in the southwestern Pacific and southeastern India Ocean they are severe tropical cyclones.
The only difference between a hurricane, a cyclone, and a typhoon is the location where the storm occurs!
Source: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/cyclone.html
*What is Proteomics?
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins, particularly their structures and functions. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, as they are the main components of the physiological metabolic pathways of cells. The term proteomics was first coined in 1997 to make an analogy with genomics, the study of the genome. The word proteome is a blend of protein and genome, and was coined by Marc Wilkins in 1994 while working on the concept as a PhD student.
The proteome is the entire set of proteins, produced or modified by an organism or system. This varies with time and distinct requirements, or stresses, that a cell or organism undergoes. Proteomics is an interdisciplinary domain formed on the basis of the research and development of the Human Genome Project it is also emerging scientific research and exploration of proteomes from the overall level of intracellular protein composition, structure, and its own unique activity patterns. It is an important component of functional genomics.
While proteomics generally refers to the large-scale experimental analysis of proteins, it is often specifically used for protein purification and mass spectrometry.
For more information read this article by clicking on the link: http://www.ama-assn.org//ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-scienc...
*"Rainbow gravity" - so named because the idea posits that gravity's effects on spacetime are felt differently by different wavelengths of light, aka different colors in the rainbow. Rainbow gravity was first proposed 10 years ago as a possible step toward repairing the rifts between the theories of general relativity (covering the very big) and quantum mechanics (concerning the realm of the very small). According to Einstein's general relativity, massive objects warp spacetime so that anything traveling through it, including light, takes a curving path. Standard physics says this path shouldn't depend on the energy of the particles moving through spacetime, but in rainbow gravity, it does. "Particles with different energies will actually see different spacetimes, different gravitational fields." The color of light is determined by its frequency, and because different frequencies correspond to different energies, light particles (photons) of different colors would travel on slightly different paths though spacetime, according to their energy. ( http://iopscience.iop.org/1475-7516/2013/10/052/ )
*Wormholes are hypothetical shortcuts through spacetime, also known as Einstein–Rosen bridges, after Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen, who predicted them in 1935 (wormholes are theoretical objects that connect two different points in space).
*4-D world: Three dimensions of space and one of time.
* Trans fats are a type of unsaturated fat which is uncommon in nature but can be created artificially. In chemical terms, trans fat is a fat (lipid) molecule that contains one or more double bonds in trans geometric configuration. In 1901 the German chemist Wilhelm Normann discovered the process of partial hydrogenation, which converts inexpensive liquid vegetable oils into shortenings and margarines and creates trans fats as a by-product. Trans fatty acids are not essential and provide no known benefit to human health, whether of animal or plant origin.While both saturated and trans fats increase levels of LDL, trans fats also lower levels of HDL thus increasing the risk of coronary heart disease. Dietary trans fatty acids are more deleterious with respect to coronary heart disease than saturated fatty acids. This analysis is supported by a 2006 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) scientific review that states "from a nutritional standpoint, the consumption of trans fatty acids results in considerable potential harm but no apparent benefit."
*The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. It is a standardized measure of demand for natural capital that may be contrasted with the planet's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to assimilate associated waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the Earth (or how many planet Earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody followed a given lifestyle.
*Biocapacity is a measure of ecological productivity and reflects the rate at which ecosystems renew and regenerate. Most fundamentally, it encompasses the biomass useful to humans, including renewable resources like food, fiber and timber, and waste absorptive services, such as sequestering carbon from burnt fossil fuel.
An urban heat island (UHI) is a metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak. UHI is most noticeable during the summer and winter. The main cause of the urban heat island effect is from the modification of land surfaces, which use materials that effectively store short-wave radiation. Waste heat generated by energy usage is a secondary contributor. Rapid population growth, coupled with an increase in different kinds of pollution, especially air, and decrease in water evaporation and transpiration, leads to formation of heat islands.
As a population center grows, it tends to expand its area and increase its average temperature. The less-used term heat island refers to any area, populated or not, which is consistently hotter than the surrounding area.
The polar vortex is a prevailing wind pattern that circles the Arctic, flowing from west to east all the way around the Earth. It normally keeps extremely cold air bottled up toward the North Pole. Occasionally, though, the vortex weakens, allowing the cold air to pour down across Canada into the U.S., or down into other regions such Eastern Europe. In addition to bringing cold, the air mass can push the jet stream—the band of wind that typically flows from the Pacific Ocean across the U.S.—much further south as well. If the jet stream puts up a fight, the moisture it carries can fall out as heavy snow, which atmospheric scientists say is the circumstance that caused the February 2010 “snowmageddon” storm that shut down Washington, D.C.
But why does the vortex weaken? Now it gets interesting. More and more Arctic sea ice is melting during summer months. The more ice that melts, the more the Arctic Ocean warms. The ocean radiates much of that excess heat back to the atmosphere in winter, which disrupts the polar vortex. Data taken over the past decade indicate that when a lot of Arctic sea ice disappears in the summer, the vortex has a tendency to weaken over the subsequent winter, if related atmospheric conditions prevail over the northern Atlantic Ocean.
* Regenerative Medicine is “‘the process of creating living, functional tissues to repair or replace tissue or organ function lost due to age, disease, damage or congenital defects. Many of these processes involve the use of stem cells.”
Protistology is a scientific discipline devoted to the study of protists, a highly diverse group of eukaryotic organisms.
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis : The hypothesis that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change.
Horizontal gene transfer – the process by which one organism shares DNA with another Vertical gene transfer - In this process parents pass DNA to their offspring
Horizontal gene transfer is very common in bacteria but thought to be rarer in organisms with a nucleus such as plants, animals and fungi.
Optogenetics: A technique that uses light to control the activity of the brain.
M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. The existence of such a theory was first conjectured by Edward Witten at the string theory conference at the University of Southern California in the summer of 1995.
Malthusian
zymology: The science of fermentation.
Microchimerism is the persistent presence of a few genetically distinct cells in an organism. This was first noticed in humans many years ago when cells containing the male “Y” chromosome were found circulating in the blood of women after pregnancy. Since these cells are genetically male, they could not have been the women’s own, but most likely came from their babies during gestation.
H+:
The symbol H+ is the code sign used by some futurists to denote an enhanced version of humanity. The plus version of the human race would deploy a mix of advanced technologies, including stem cells, robotics, cognition-enhancing drugs, and the like, to overcome basic mental and physical limitations.
The notion of enhancing mental functions by gulping down a pill that improves attention, memory and planning—the very foundations of cognition—is no longer just a fantasy shared by futurists.
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P-hacking: This happens when researchers either consciously or unconsciously analyse their data multiple times or in multiple ways until they get a desired result. If p-hacking is common, the exaggerated results could lead to misleading conclusions, even when evidence comes from multiple studies.
Although fairly common, p-hacking nonetheless probably does not drastically alter scientific consensus, scientists say.
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Four states of matter are observable in everyday life: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Many other states are known such as Bose–Einstein condensates and neutron-degenerate matter but these only occur in extreme situations such as ultra cold or ultra dense matter.
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The h-index is an author-level metric that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar. The index is based on the set of the scientist's most cited papers and the number of citations that they have received in other publications.
The H-index value of 40 holds a magical value for many scientists.
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Prions (“proteinaceous infectious particle”) are misfolded proteins that make copies of themselves by inducing others to misfold. By so doing, they multiply and cause disease.
Some of the many neurodegenerative diseases caused by prions: Multiple system atrophy (MSA), a neurodegenerative disease similar to Parkinson's, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), a rare human dementia, a whole class of diseases called spongiform encephalopathies (for the spongelike appearance of affected brains), including the bovine form known as “mad cow” disease.
PrP prions have different strains, resulting in different diseases. Researchers think this is due to alternative shapes the protein can take, which can have different properties.
Connectome : The human brain is an extraordinarily complex network, comprising an estimated 86 billion neurons connected by 100 trillion synapses. A connectome is a comprehensive map of these links—a wiring diagram of the brain.
Researchers use techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging to map connections between areas of the human brain that span several millimeters and contain many thousands of neurons.
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The greater the number of bodies that are involved in a dynamical system ( like the planets in our solar system), interacting with each other, the more complicated that system grows and the harder it is to predict (the outcome). This is called the N-body problem.
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The windshield phenomenon (or windscreen phenomenon) is the observation that fewer dead insects accumulate on the windshields and front bumpers of people's cars since the early 2000s. It has been attributed to a global decline in insect populations caused by human activity, e.g. use of pesticides.
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The surge of energy before death is often referred to as “terminal lucidity.” This phenomenon occurs when a dying person, who may have been unresponsive or unconscious, suddenly becomes clear-minded, alert, and communicative.
Terminal lucidity (also known as rallying, terminal rally, the rally, end-of-life-experience, energy surge, the surge, or pre-mortem surge).
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As efforts to restore tree cover accelerate to help avoid runaway climate change, a new study highlights how restoring tree cover can, in some locations, heat up the Earth rather than cool it by affecting how much sunlight the surface reflects (i.e. "the albedo").
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Anand G.V. on
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Trypophobia is the fear of holes.
People with the phobia experience panic attacks, increased heart rate and hot sweats when they see clusters of holes (like honeycomb or Swiss cheese).
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Ecological footprint calculators, including the Global Footprint Network, the WWF footprint calculator and the Earth Day Network Footprint Calculator. The calculators approximate the amount of biologically productive land required to generate the resources an individual or a population consumes and to absorb the waste that the individual or population leaves behind.
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El Niño is a cyclical climate phenomenon rooted in the tropical Pacific that features a buildup of warmer-than-normal waters in the central and eastern portions of the basin. El Niño isn’t just about a feverish ocean — what matters to most people are the impacts to weather that those warmer waters can usher in around the world. The shift of warm water from west to east in the tropical Pacific causes changes in the circulation of the atmosphere overhead. These shifts in turn create a domino effect of altered atmospheric patterns across the globe.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on
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Citizen science and open science. They welcome submissions that explore the role of citizen science, benefits, pitfalls, mechanisms, philosophy and ethics surrounding non-scientists involved in scientific research. This concept suggests that scientists share their data as quickly as possible, allowing others to benefit from and make use of their research. “Open notebook science” implies the dissemination of both raw and processed scientific data as it is captured.
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Many molecules come in one of two forms, known as stereoisomers, which chemists designate as left- or right-handed. These two forms are identical apart from the fact that they are mirror images of each other.
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Ground speed, which is defined as the speed at which an object travels relative to a fixed point on the Earth's surface. Mach number, however, is measured with respect to the velocity of the object through the air, or its airspeed. The difference between ground speed and airspeed is caused by the influence of winds on the overall velocity of the aircraft.
More detailed explanation can be found here:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/instruments/q0210.shtml
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An argument about wormholes and spooky actions: How can this be called an advance and how can one talk of verifying these pipe-dreams if there is no practical way to empirically to test them? Is this not more pseudo-physics from our heroic celebrity theorists.
Multiverse fantasies, sophomoric anthropic reasoning, unobservable WIMPs, unobservable "sparticles", ludicrous Boltzmann brains, firewall fantasies, holographic fantasies, extra dimension fantasies, ..., should I go on?
None of this rubbish is scientifically testable (failed pseudo-tests are followed by theory "adjustment" and broadening of the "parameter space") , and it is generated by the same small group of celebrity theoreticians (and this is the polite name for them).
No definitive predictions/testing means no science.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=wormholes-quantum-...
And a reply to it: your version of science doesn't start with hypothesis? These conjectures are mathematically interesting, not in principle untestable. So for they are an interesting way to think of a relationship in a new way - nothing more but nothing less either.
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Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a primary disease of the myocardium (the muscle of the heart) in which a portion of the myocardium is hypertrophied (thickened) without any obvious cause. It is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes. The occurrence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a significant cause of sudden unexpected cardiac death in any age group and as a cause of disabling cardiac symptoms. Younger people are likely to have a more severe form of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
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In medicine, coma (from the Greek κῶμα koma, meaning "deep sleep") is a state of unconsciousness in which a person: cannot be awakened; fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound; lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle; and does not initiate voluntary actions.
Coma ( or unconsciousness ) is a state in which a patient is totally unaware of both self and external surroundings, and unable to respond meaningfully to external stimuli.
Coma results from gross impairment of both cerebral hemispheres, and/or the ascending reticular activating system.
There are many causes of coma (including Newcastle Brown Ale ), and these may be classified as either focal or diffuse brain dysfunction.
Coma is the most severe alteration of consciousness. You cannot arouse a portion from a coma
Unconsciousness is a state of partly or completely being unaware of external stimuli. Unconscious occurs normally in deep sleep.and pathologically in fainting, shock and intoxications.
From consciousness to coma it is an increasing range of consciousness which culminates in Coma .
A person may be aroused to consciousness in all these forms except in COMA.
But development of a coma may be from initial unconsciousness and passing through the grades or without the previous grades, all of a sudden.
For example in slow brain bleeding the various steps may be passed when slow bleeding occurs, but due to a sudden embolism of a blood vessel in the brain, (depending on the site and the size) instant coma may occur.A comatose person exhibits a complete absence of wakefulness and is unable to consciously feel, speak, hear, or move. For a patient to maintain consciousness, two important neurological components must function. The first is the cerebral cortex—the gray matter that forms the outer layer of the brain. The other is a structure located in the brainstem, called reticular activating system (RAS). Injury to either or both of these components is sufficient to cause a patient to experience a coma. The cerebral cortex is a group of tight, dense, "gray matter" composed of the nuclei of the neurons whose axons then form the "white matter", and is responsible for perception, relay of the sensory input (sensation) via the thalamic pathway, and many other neurological functions, including complex thinking.
RAS, on the other hand, is a more primitive structure in the brainstem that is tightly in connection with reticular formation (RF). The RAS area of the brain has two tracts, the ascending and descending tract. Made up of a system of acetylcholine-producing neurons, the ascending track, or ascending reticular activating system (ARAS), works to arouse and wake up the brain, from the RF, through the thalamus, and then finally to the cerebral cortex. A failure in ARAS functioning may then lead to a coma.
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Eastern Pacific Hurricanes
If a tropical cyclone occurs somewhere between 140 degrees West and the western coast of the United States, we call it an Eastern Pacific hurricane. The National Hurricane Center is responsible for these storms. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is a component of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) located at Florida International University in Miami, Florida. (If you are not sure exactly where 140 degrees west is located, go to the map.)Central Pacific Hurricanes
A tropical cyclone occurring between 140 and 180 degrees are called Central Pacific hurricanes. According to the Weather Doctor, this designation is mostly due to a change in the forecast center responsible for forecasting the storms.Typhoons
West of 180 degrees, the Japanese Meteorological Agency takes over in tracking the storms in the region. Now, the name designation is typhoon.Cyclones
A cyclone is both the name for the whirling, organized storms we call a hurricane or typhoon as well as the name for storms in the Indian ocean -
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What some scientists call 'fun science' are projects that appeal to scientists only because they answer a question, not necessarily serving an economic function.
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Archimedes reportedly asked the Roman soldier who killed him during the fall of Syracuse not to disturb the mathematical proof he was working on.
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If you multiply
111,111,111
X
111,111,111
It gives the magical mathematical result of
12,345,678, 987,654,321--
- “Facebook Addiction Disorder” is a mental disorder identified by Psychologists.
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Panspermia
Panspermia (from Greek πᾶν (pan), meaning "all", and σπέρμα (sperma), meaning "seed") is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by meteoroids, asteroids, comets, planetoids and, also, by spacecraft in the form of unintended contamination by microorganisms.
Panspermia is a hypothesis proposing that microscopic life forms that can survive the effects of space, such as extremophiles, become trapped in debris that is ejected into space after collisions between planets and small Solar System bodies that harbor life. Some organisms may travel dormant for an extended amount of time before colliding randomly with other planets or intermingling with protoplanetary disks. If met with ideal conditions on a new planet's surfaces, the organisms become active and the process of evolution begins. Panspermia is not meant to address how life began, just the method that may cause its distribution in the Universe.
Pseudo-panspermia (sometimes called "soft panspermia" or "molecular panspermia") argues that the pre-biotic organic building blocks of life originated in space and were incorporated in the solar nebula from which the planets condensed and were further —and continuously— distributed to planetary surfaces where life then emerged (abiogenesis). From the early 1970s it was becoming evident that interstellar dust consisted of a large component of organic molecules. Interstellar molecules are formed by chemical reactions within very sparse interstellar or circumstellar clouds of dust and gas. The dust plays a critical role of shielding the molecules from the ionizing effect of ultraviolet radiation emitted by stars.
Several simulations in laboratories and in low Earth orbit suggest that ejection, entry and impact is survivable for some simple organisms.
(From Wikipedia)
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