In addition to mammalian immune systems that besiege the bugs, bacteria have natural enemies called bacteriophages, viruses that kill half the bacteria on Earth every two days.
The English-language version of the site suffered a net loss of 49,000 volunteer 'editors' in the first three months of this year, compared with 4,900 for the same period a year earlier, according to a university study.
This is believed to be a result of increased bureaucracy to prevent errors -- such as the death of Senator Edward Kennedy being announced prematurely -- and the sense that Wikipedia is now part of the establishment.
But yawning doesn’t just relax you—it quickly brings you into a heightened state of cognitive awareness. Students yawn in class, not because the teacher is boring (although that will make you yawn as well, as you try to stay focused on the monotonous speech), but because it rids the brain of sleepiness, thus helping you stay focused on important concepts and ideas. It regulates consciousness and our sense of self, and helps us become more introspective and self-aware. Of course, if you happen to find yourself trapped in a room with a dull, boring, monotonous teacher, yawning will help keep you awake.
Yawning will relax you and bring you into a state of alertness faster than any other meditation technique I know of, and because it is neurologically contagious, it’s particularly easy to teach in a group setting. One of my former students used yawning to bring her argumentative board of directors back to order in less than 60 seconds. Why? Because it helps people synchronize their behavior with others.
MyDNA is an unusual fragrance company that creates custom scents based on people’s DNA profile. They are now releasing a new line of fragrances culled from the DNA of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis and Michael Jackson.
By the time the Yankees rushed the field to celebrate their 27th World Series victory, Robert Caplin had photographed the action — 12,000 times. The result is a romantic and captivating time-lapse presentation.
Mr. Caplin used three cameras to shoot that night so that he would have enough footage to “properly capture the narrative of the evening”; a narrative of ice melting into hot dogs, the greasy glass of a popcorn cart, the rise and the fall of the fans.
In the 1970s it was a popular belief that 75% of all the people who had ever lived were alive in the 1970s, which would have put the total number of people who ever lived as of the 1970s as less than the current number of people alive today. This view was eventually debunked as a myth. A more recent estimate of the total number of people who have ever lived was prepared by Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in 1995 and subsequently updated in 2002; the updated figure was approximately 106 billion. Haub characterized this figure as an estimate which required "selecting population sizes for different points from antiquity to the present and applying assumed birth rates to each period". Given an estimated global population of 6.2 billion in 2002, it could be inferred that about 6% of all people who had ever existed were alive in 2002.
You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Your sexual adjustment has presented problems for you. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in life.
Psychologist Bertram Forer gave a personality test to his students and then asked each person to rate how the accuracy of their 'individual personality profile'. In reality, all the 'individual profiles' were identical but students tended to rate the descriptions as highly accurate. In fact, on a scale of 1-5, students rated the accuracy of their profile, on average, as 4.2.
Paul Frijters, a professor at Queensland University of Technology, has calculated a formula he claims delivers the monetary equivalent of the value of various milestones in life.
The figures represent a lump sum a person would need to receive out of the blue in order to make him or her as happy as marriage [or other event] would over a lifetime.
Marriage: woman - £8, 726.25 man - £17, 675.68
Birth of child: woman - £ 4, 866.77 man - £18, 236.39
Divorce: woman - £4, 977.08 (loss) man - £61, 116.46 (loss)
Death of a loved one: woman - £73, 204.86 (loss) man - £350, 830.36 (loss)
Illness: woman - £28, 124.61(loss) man - £201, 264.68 (loss)
Moving house: woman - £1, 453.80 (gain) man - £8, 947.11 (loss)
I make now a standing offer: any individual who feels too burdened by all his or her choices can give them to me. I'll take them off your hands, free of charge. You're welcome.
In a recent scientific study just published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, Bangsbo and co-workers demonstrate that by reducing the volume of training by 25% and introducing the so-called speed endurance training (6-12 30-s sprint runs 3-4 times a week), endurance trained runners can improve not only short-term but also long-term performance.
Henry Markram says the mysteries of the mind can be solved -- soon. Mental illness, memory, perception: they're made of neurons and electric signals, and he plans to find them with a supercomputer that models all the brain's 100,000,000,000,000 synapses.
In this up and down economy I’m outsourcing my wardrobe (namely shirts) to corporate america and you! I’m going to wear a different shirt for 365 days straight in 2009, take multiple pictures throughout my day and blog about it. Days are sold at “face value” so January 1 is $1 and December 31 is $365.
A user-friendly interface provides easy access to any section or topic, and the program is filled with virtual tours, video, maps and artwork to bring the story to life. Glo runs on Windows only at this point (using up a whopping 18 gigs of disk space), and needs to be connected to the internet to work.
The Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of 1,000 adults nationwide conducted Oct. 11-12 found that 63 percent opposed North Carolina's plan to charge overweight employees more for the state employee's health plan. The survey found 30 percent supported the plan and 7 percent were unsure.
Book of Odds is the world’s first reference on the odds of everyday life.
For over three years we have been building what we believe is the missing dictionary, one filled not with words, but with numbers – the odds of everyday life. It contains hundreds of thousands of Odds Statements, from the odds of being the only one to survive a plane crash, to the odds of having a heart attack, to the odds of having ever eaten cold pizza for breakfast. Book of Odds not only allows you to search for those odds that concern or interest you the most, but also to understand probability by comparing the odds of unfamiliar events to others you have personally experienced. Book of Odds was built for you, and we hope you’ll enjoy it.
OpenStreetMap, or OSM, is behind the effort to produce a map more accurate than anything else on the market.
The Atlanta mapathon will take place this weekend, with around 200 volunteers armed with global positioning devices mapping the city.
"The way to think about it is as a really big mapping party," said OSM founder Steve Coast.
"We will have about 15-20 mapping stations throughout Atlanta and start by noting all the freeways and motorways, then the main roads, smaller roads and eventually go right down to the footpaths, bars and restaurants."
All other things being equal, I'd give the nod to an ugly candidate. It’s not charity: They have less value in the marketplace and can be hired less expensively, even though looks have, for most jobs, little or no bearing on job performance. I've found that, on average, ugly people are more likely to be kind and to work harder because they know they're working at a disadvantage. And unattractive people are more likely to stay with me because they tend to have a tough time getting hired, in part because they generally don’t network efficiently. If I treat unattractive employees well, they’re usually very loyal.
For the human condition, forgetting is at least as important as remembering - sometimes more so. Without it, we are all bound to lead the miserable life of A. R. Luria's patient Solomon Shereshevsky, who was crippled by his boundless, indelible memory, or his fictional counterpart, Jorge Luis Borges's Funes. No forgetting implies no generalisation, no real present time, no amelioration of trauma, and no weaving of meaningful life narratives.
Bad hair? Check. Cold sore? Check. Homemade tie-dye shirt? Check. Arrested at a protest over a grove of trees being turned into a parking lot? You bet your ass, check.
A few years later, Pee Wee would be photographed in the same room.
