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tsuh:

NASA recently released imagery showing the deforestation of America  …in just 34 years.

(via kaylasworld-partyon)

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the-star-stuff:

How Much Water is On Earth?

In this illustration, the blue ball represents the volume of all the water on earth, relative to the size of the earth. The tiny speck to the right of the blue ball represents Earth’s fresh water. CREDIT: David Gallo/WHOI 

If Earth was the size of a basketball, all of its water would fit into a ping pong ball.

How much water is that? It’s roughly 326 million cubic miles (1.332 billion cubic kilometers), according to a recent study from the U.S. Geological Survey. Some 72 percent of Earth is covered in water, but 97 percent of that is salty ocean water and not suitable for drinking.

“There’s not a lot of water on Earth at all,” said David Gallo, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts.

(via fuckingickyricky)

Elephants: 10 Facts →

Fact 7: Death

Elephant graveyards are not supported by any hard evidence, but death is important to them nonetheless. Their normal lifespan is 60-80 years. Elephants, humans, and Neanderthals are the only animals known to have death rituals. If an elephant becomes sick, herd members will bring it food and help support it as it stands. If it dies, they will try to revive it with food and water for a while. Once it is clear that an elephant is dead, the herd will become very quiet. They often dig a shallow grave and cover the deceased elephant with dirt and branches, and will stay at the grave for days afterwards. If the elephant had a particularly close relationship with its deceased peer, it can show signs of depression. Even herds that come across an unknown lone elephant who has died will show it similar respects. There are also reported cases of elephants burying dead humans they have found in this way.

edwardspoonhands:

NATHAN BARNATT!! He’s my new favorite.

Oh my goodness his videos are astonishing. 

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reuters:

Every day, we choose one new photo to highlight as our Facebook cover photo on the Reuters Facebook page. This is today’s photo:

The Aurora Australis is seen in this handout picture taken by Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers on board the International Space Station between Antarctica and Australia March 10, 2012. [REUTERS/Andre Kuipers/ESA/NASA/Handout]

(via discoverynews)

Artist suspends real clouds in the middle of the room →

good:

This is not a fluffy mass of cotton strung up in a room. It’s an actual, man-made cloud.

That’s not photoshop; that’s an actual cloud hovering inside an actual room. Artist Berndnaut Smilde merges art and science to create small man-made clouds that exist — albeit for just a moment — indoors.

(via singularitarian)

(via poptech)

(via discoverynews)

lyfiaberg:

The Chin Mudra symbolizes the entity of the human mind with the divine. It supports the flow of energy and therefore is used during meditation or breathing exercises.

(via anoctopussquatingonyourbrain)

mothernaturenetwork:

Louie Psihoyos is an American filmmaker who directed and appeared in “The Cove,” the shocking documentary exposing the culture of whale and dolphin slaughter practiced by residents of Taiji. Psihoyos and his team had to deploy extreme covert surveillance tactics to get their footage and were often under real threat from local fisherman and officials.
6 world-changing filmmakers

Love Ruler : Neuroscience and the “love” emotion

bartholomewfromthesun:

Video of researchers using an MRI to scan the brains of 5 volunteers, searching for indications of who can generate the most intense feelings of love.

http://machineslikeus.com/videos/love-competition

(via psychology2010)

Music and Intelligence

thisisnotpsychology:

Brain development is still incomplete at birth. Early experiences that stimulate the brain are involved in enhancing its neural growth. A child’s brain develops its full potential with exposure to enriching experiences in early childhood. These stimuli received during the early parts of childhood are thus crucial to brain growth and connections made in nerve cell networks. Studies indicate that early exposure to musical training helps a child’s brain reach its potential by generating neural connections utilized in abstract reasoning.

The reasoning skills required for a test in spatial reasoning are the same ones children use when they listen to music. Children use these reasoning skills to order the notes in their brain to form the melodies. Also, some concepts of math must be understood in order to understand music. Experts speculate that listening to music exercises the same parts of the brain that handle mathematics, logic, and higher level reasoning.

Below are a few studies reinforcing the correlation between music and intelligence.

Music vs. Computers

In 1997 a study involving three groups of preschoolers was conducted to determine the effect of music versus computer training on early childhood development. One group received private piano/keyboard training and singing lessons. A second group received computer training, and a third/control group did not receive any special training. The group that received the piano/keyboard training scored 34% higher on tests measuring spatial-temporal ability than either of the other two groups. These results suggest that music enhances certain higher brain functions, particularly abstract reasoning skills, required in math and science.

Naming Body Parts

The use of music in training four and five year old children yielded the highest improvement in the ability to name body parts. A control group did not receive any training, a second group received verbal instructions, and a third group received verbal instructions plus acting out movements. The final group had a song coordinated with the verbal instructions and a dance coordinated with the acting out movements. Although the three experimental groups displayed an increase in their ability to name body parts the music group exhibited the highest degree of improvement.

Kodaly Training

First grade students received extensive Kodaly training for seven months. Kodaly training involves the use of folk songs and emphasis on melodic and rhythmic elements. At the end of seven months the experimental group had higher reading scores than the control group, which did not receive any special treatment. Not only did the seven month instruction increase reading scores, but continued musical training proved to be beneficial. The experimental group continued to show higher reading scores with continued training.

SAT scores

Data reveals a correlation between arts education, including music, and SAT scores. Students who were involved in arts education achieved higher SAT scores. The longer students were involved in arts education, the higher the increase in SAT scores. This study also correlated arts education with higher scores in standardized tests, reading, English, history, citizenship, and geography. An individual’s socioeconomic status plays a role in the attainment of arts education. The higher an individual’s socioeconomic status, the greater the likelihood of participation in arts education. To account for the advantage given by a relatively higher socioeconomic status, the same studies were done with a focus on students with a relatively lower socioeconomic status. The results indicated that students with a relatively lower socioeconomic status, that were exposed to arts education, had an advantage over those students without any arts education which was proportionally equal to the students with a relatively higher socioeconomic status and exposure to arts education.

Mozart

Music exposure affects older students as well. Three groups of college students were exposed to either Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, K448, a relaxation tape, or silence. The group exposed to the Mozart piece was the only group to achieve an increase on the spatial IQ test. Further studies revealed that neither dance music nor taped short stories produced an increase in spatial IQ similar to the Mozart piece. The increase in spatial IQ appears to be related to some unique aspects of the Mozart piece rather than music in general. The experimenters chose the piece because they felt its musical structure facilitated cognitive processing in the brain and music lacking sufficient complexity would result in interference with abstract reasoning.

Music may not only be related to intelligence by its stimulation of the brain, but it may also increase intelligence by the type of attitudes, interests, and discipline it fosters in children. Some believe that music gives children the self-confidence to achieve and that self-confidence spreads to other areas of education outside of music. With the increase of self-confidence, children may change their attitudes and aspirations toward academics. Music is also believed to increase interest in academic learning. One study revealed that when children were exposed to traditional Japanese and Chinese music, or other slow pieces, and paired with movements, such as Yoga and Tai chi, children became calmer and were better able to focus. This calming effect allows children to have a greater focus on learning. Music also improves students’ listening skills. Furthermore, discipline required to learn and play music is beneficial to academic achievement.

cwrl.utexas.edu

(via psychology2010)

Dunbar’s Number: Who Do You Care About?

thepsychologicult:

Dunbar’s Number is definitely one of my all-time favorite concepts in Psychology. It’s basically an idea that says a person can only know so many people before they stop really knowing people. In other words, how many best friends can you really have before they all start fading into just friends, acquaintances, strangers. 

Anthropoligist Robin Dunbar had several estimates as to exactly how many people a person could really care about, but most of them were pretty rough. According to Dunbar, you can only really care about 150 people before you stop seeing them as actual people. Again, this is kind of a hard to imagine, but picture this: You hear on the news that a massive earthquake on the other side of the globe has killed thousands of people. An hour later, you receive word that the last person you spent the day with has died in a car accident. Which of these tragedies has more of an effect on you? 

If it was the car accident, Dunbar was on to something. Why is it that the death of one person could upset you more than the death of thousands? Because as much as we’d like to think that we care about everyone, we really can’t. As the infamous Josef Stalin said, “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic…”

According to Dunbar, the person you imagined in the car crash scenario was a part of a very special group in your head called the Monkey Sphere. The Monkey Sphere - with the name coming from an experiment involving primates - includes all of the people you really care about. Parents, friends, teachers, co-workers. Up to around 150 of them depending how well your long-term memory is. Anyone outside of this Monkey Sphere isn’t really a person to you. 

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ontheastralplane:

Psychedelic flow chart.

(via asarya)

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malformalady:

The nape of a Geisha’s neck has the typical ‘W’ or ‘V’ shape of clear skin which has no white makeup. This is done to emphasize what is traditionally considered the most erotic part of the body.

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gatheringbones:

wrathofprawn:

lostsplendor:

stalins-princess:

Nightwitches

Die NachtHexen

Ночные ведьмы

for those not in the know, night witches were russian lady bombers who bombed the shit out of german lines in WW2. Thing is though, they had the oldest, noisiest, crappest planes in the entire world. The engines used to conk out halfway through their missions, so they had to climb out on the wings mid flight to restart the props. to stop germans from hearing them coming and starting up their anti aircraft guns, they’d climb up to a certain height, coast down to german positions, drop their bombs, restart their engines in midair, and get the fuck out of dodge.

their leader flew over 200 missions and was never captured.

(Source: sovietico, via endorphinhangover)

jtotheizzoe:

The All-New Scale of the Universe

Guys, I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly. What you’re about to play with is going to blow your brains right out of the back of your head. Proceed with caution. Abandon all productivity ye who enter here.

Cary and Michael Huang present an updated edition of the “Scale of the Universe” interactive web portal. In it, you can zoom from quarks to cells to planets to the scale of the entire known cosmos, complete with accurate powers of ten. You can learn more about the objects you encounter by clicking on any of them.

Of course, words alone can’t capture how awesome and fun this is to play with, so I made a little screen-capture video so you can experience what the journey into the infinite will feel like when you go play.

Have fun.