Smash your brain...

Brain Workshop

2011-11-08T08:46:00.000-08:00

What if a simple mental exercise could improve your memory and intelligence?

A recent study published in PNAS, an important scientific journal, shows that a memory task called dual n-back improves working memory (short term memory) andfluid intelligence. These findings are important because fluid intelligence was previously thought to be unchangeable.

Those findings have since been replicated twice with strongly positive results, and two more times in smaller studies with weaker, but still positive, results.

Brain Workshop implements this dual n-back task, and enables you to improve your working memory and fluid intelligence. The dual n-back task involves remembering a sequence of spoken letters and a sequence of positions of a square at the same time, and identifying when a letter or position matches the one that appeared n trials earlier. Brain Workshop can closely replicate the conditions of the original study. In addition, it also includes optional extended game modes such as Triple N-Back andArithmetic N-Back. It also includes features such as statistics tracking, graphs and easy configurability.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the dual n-back task also enhances focus and attention and may help improve the symptoms of ADHD/ADD.

Brain Workshop works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X and Linux.

Since its initial release in August 2008, Brain Workshop has been downloaded over 384,000 times!

New to the Dual N-Back phenomenon?

See this Wired article for an introduction to the Dual N-Back exercise and its benefits.
Read the original research paper by Jaeggi, et al. (2008).
Learn how to play by reading this quick tutorial.
Download the software.

We welcome the use of Brain Workshop for experimental research. Please contact us to discuss this possibility.

Sun Montage - SOHO NASA Solar Flare X-Flare Comet

2011-05-23T07:51:00.000-07:00

Site » http://PHJ.CA | NASA solar data & simulations from 1998+ I compiled and edited. Also, my Black Hole Montage: http://www.youtube.com/v/VvhimW97Kj4 & my Star Scale Montage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bov9M2gEgcE

Produced by PHJ.

Scale of the Universe

2011-05-02T00:53:00.000-07:00

Visualize

Google Art Project

2011-02-01T10:53:00.000-08:00

Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces (Go).

What is the ‘Art Project’?

A unique collaboration with some of the world’s most acclaimed art museums to enable people to discover and view more than a thousand artworks online in extraordinary detail.

Explore museums with Street View technology: virtually move around the museum’s galleries, selecting works of art that interest you, navigate though interactive floor plans and learn more about the museum and you explore.
Artwork View: discover featured artworks at high resolution and use the custom viewer to zoom into paintings. Expanding the info panel allows you to read more about an artwork, find more works by that artist and watch related YouTube videos.
Create your own collection: the ‘Create an Artwork Collection’ feature allows you to save specific views of any of the 1000+ artworks and build your own personalised collection. Comments can be added to each painting and the whole collection can then be shared with friends and family.

Why is there a difference between the museums in terms of the number of galleries, artworks and related information?

Google approached the museum partners without any curatorial direction, and each museum was able to chose the number of galleries, artwork and information they wanted to include, based on reasons specific to them. All content in the information panel pertaining to individual artworks was also provided by the museums.

Why are some areas or specific paintings in the museum Street View imagery blurred?

Some of the paintings and features captured with Street View were required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.

Are the images on the Art Project site copyright protected?

Yes. The high resolution imagery of artworks featured on the art project site are owned by the museums, and these images are protected by copyright laws around the world. The Street View imagery is owned by Google. All of the imagery on this site is provided for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the art project site, in the manner permitted by Google’s Terms of Service.The normal Google Terms of Service apply to your use of the entire site.

Our partners:

For now the following museums are included in the project:

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Germany
Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian, Washington DC - USA
The Frick Collection, NYC - USA
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin - Germany
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - USA
MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, NYC - USA
Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid - Spain
Museo Thyssen - Bornemisza, Madrid - Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague - Czech Republic
National Gallery, London - UK
Palace of Versailles - France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg - Russia
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow - Russia
Tate Britain, London - UK
Uffizi Gallery, Florence - Italy
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - The Netherlands

Perseus Digital Library

2010-10-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Perseus Project is an evolving digital library of resources for the study of the humanities. It is aimed to perform research on developing tools to provide users with improved access to various types of materials. Past work has focused on building and linking together collections. Current work considers ways of developing and refining tools for presentation of the materials in the Perseus DL.

You can now view the places mentioned in the Perseus Digital Library by collection or text through the Google Maps interface. Links to view places in a text can be found on a text page, in the Places box.

Trailblazing

2010-06-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Trailblazing website provides a timeline with key articles and historical events mapped out. Very nice and well worth spending a lunch-hour perusing!

The Universe: travel forwards and backwards

2010-05-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

Nature by Numbers

2010-03-23T12:57:00.000-07:00

A movie inspired on numbers, geometry and nature, by Cristóbal Vila. Go to www.etereaestudios.com for more info: theory behind, stills, screenshots, tutorials and workshops.

Top 10 quirky science tricks for Christmas parties

2009-12-12T05:34:00.000-08:00

Youtube video

ASYLUM: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals

2009-11-21T05:21:00.000-08:00

We tend to think of mental hospitals as “snake pits”—places of nightmarish squalor and abuse—and this is how they have been portrayed in books and film. Few Americans, however, realize these institutions were once monuments of civic pride, built with noble intentions by leading architects and physicians, who envisioned the asylums as places of refuge, therapy, and healing. For more than half the nation’s history, vast mental hospitals—some of the largest structures ever built in America—were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these massive buildings neglected and abandoned. Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals is a collection of large-format photographs taken by photographer Chris Payne, who was granted unprecedented access to seventy institutions in thirty states between 2002 and 2008. Through his lens we see palatial exteriors designed by famous architects and crumbling interiors never intended to be seen again. He shows how the hospitals functioned as self-contained communities, where almost everything of necessity was produced on site: food, water, power, and even clothing and furniture. Since many of these places no longer exist, his photographs serve as their final, “official” record.Accompanying the contemporary views are historic plans, drawings, and photographs, as well as an essay by world-renowned author and neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, who describes his own experience working at a state mental hospital. Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, “where one could be both mad and safe”.

See online exhibition

Mark Twain, illuminated

2009-11-04T05:58:00.001-08:00

From a 1895 article called Tesla's Osillator and Other Inventions, a photo of Mark Twain with one of Tesla's marvelous contraptions.

The shape of the book

2009-09-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

It is impossible to establish exactly when the book was invented or first began to circulate. Indeed, none of the forms exhibited here can be considered the embryo of what we have come to refer to as books. Nevertheless, if we narrow our scope to the Laurentian manuscript collection—in itself quite extensive—it would appear that the potsherd on which, probably under dictation, a pupil from the 2nd century BC wrote the ancient verses of one of Sappho’s odes marks the most significant threshold of its history; the fragment represents the longest extant portion of the poem, which may have been dedicated to Aphrodite. The ostracon is a rare medium due solely to the fact that, since it is a fragile material that was not used for anything meant to endure, large quantities have not been handed down to us. The book form we chose as our endpoint—and thus closer to our own era—is a 19th-century Japanese erotic-grotesque scroll expressing a genre that enjoyed widespread and lasting circulation because of its caricatural and entertaining contents. Due to its distant provenance, however, it is a rarity in Italian libraries. Between these two intentionally striking extremes, we have created an itinerary that requires some explanation.

Visit on line exhibition

Flat Lizard colourful displays & fly catching

2009-04-02T12:46:00.000-07:00

Watch the beautiful displays of the Flat Lizard and see the amazing acrobatics performed in the quest for a black fly dinner. Learn more about the fascinating world of the colourful Flat Lizard in this brilliant wildlife video from Sir David Attenborough's natural history masterpiece, Life in Cold Blood (see video).

The Iceman Photo Scan

2009-03-07T13:53:00.000-08:00

The Iceman Photo Scan is an innovative project which records the complete photographic documentation of the body of the Iceman mummy. Thanks to 12 differing angle-shots it is possible to see the whole body of the mummy. The intuitive zoom function enables a high-resolution navigation, from a total body image down to millimetric detail. The image at any enlargement guarantees both a perfect view and accurate colour reproduction. More

Darwin Big Idea

2009-01-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

Darwin is the biggest ever exhibition about Charles Darwin. It celebrates Darwin's ideas and their impact for his 200th birthday in 2009. Discover the man and the revolutionary theory that changed our understanding of the world. See incredible, revealing and rare exhibits, some on display for the first time (more at The Natural History Museum, London.

Magic and the Brain: How Magicians "Trick" the Mind

2008-11-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

Magicians have been testing and exploiting the limits of cognition and attention for hundreds of years. Neuroscientists are just beginning to catch up.But the most versatile instrument in their bag of tricks may be the ability to create cognitive illusions. Like visual illusions, cognitive illusions mask the perception of physical reality. Yet unlike visual illusions, cognitive illusions are not sensory in nature. Rather they involve high-level functions such as attention, memory and causal inference. With all those tools at their disposal, well-practiced magicians make it virtually impossible to follow the physics of what is actually happening—leaving the impression that the only explanation for the events is magic.
Neuroscientists are just beginning to catch up with the magician’s facility in manipulating attention and cognition. Of course the aims of neuroscience are different from those of magic; the neuroscientist seeks to understand the brain and neuron underpinnings of cognitive functions, whereas the magician wants mainly to exploit cognitive weaknesses. Yet the techniques developed by magicians over centuries of stage magic could also be subtle and powerful probes in the hands of neuroscientists, supplementing and perhaps expanding the instruments already in experimental use.
Neuroscience is becoming familiar with the methods of magic by subjecting magic itself to scientific study—in some cases showing for the first time how some of its methods work in the brain. Many studies of magic conducted so far confirm what is known about cognition and attention from earlier work in experimental psychology. A cynic might dismiss such efforts: Why do yet another study that simply confirms what is already well known? But such criticism misses the importance and purpose of the studies. By investigating the techniques of magic, neuroscientists can familiarize themselves with methods that they can adapt to their own purposes. Indeed, we believe that cognitive neuroscience could have advanced faster had investigators probed magicians’ intuitions earlier. Even today magicians may have a few tricks up their sleeves that neuroscientists have not yet adopted.
By applying the tools of magic, neuroscientists can hope to learn how to design more robust experiments and to create more effective cognitive and visual illusions for exploring the neural bases of attention and awareness. Such techniques could not only make experimental studies of cognition possible with clever and highly attentive subjects; they could also lead to diagnostic and treatment methods for patients suffering from specific cognitive deficits—such as attention deficits resulting from brain trauma, ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), Alzheimer’s disease, and the like. The methods of magic might also be put to work in “tricking” patients to focus on the most important parts of their therapy, while suppressing distractions that cause confusion and disorientation (Full text).

LIFE photo archive

2008-11-21T11:47:00.000-08:00

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google (go).

The Collegiate Church of Saint Isidoro

2008-10-04T13:09:00.001-07:00

At the northeast side of the roman encampment Legio VII Gemina (Leon) (now in Spain), by the camp wall, King Sancho the Fat (dead in 966), son of Ramiro 2nd, built a monastery for sheltering the rests of the martyr boy from Cordoba, St. Pelayo (we can see a sculpture of him in the front of the church). Her sister, a nun called Elvira Ramirez, moved with all the nuns of her elder monastery, Palat del Rey, to the new one. In the last Xth century, due to the arrival of Almanzor's army, the nuns went to Oviedo for refuge. The monastery of St. Pelayo in Leon was razed by the Arabic chief troops. King Alfonso the Vth (999-1027) rebuilt the monastery using very poor materials, like clay and bricks. Once more, a community of nuns established there, for taking care of the Royal cemetery, where the King had moved the rests of his predecessors, who were dispersed along various kingdom churches; even his parents's, Vermudo the IInd and Elvira.

The daughter of Alfonso the Vth, Doña Sancha, first infant and after the Queen herself, tried to exalt the monastery to the highest dignity, helped by her husband, King Fernando the Ist (1037-1065).

They rebuilt the elder brick monastery out of stone and so began the romanic style in their kingdom. They choose the portic of the church as a cemetery and ordered to be buried there. .

They wanted to dignify their church with relevant saints relics; they achieved the moving of St. Isidoro's corpse from Sevilla and St. Vicente's from Avila. They made an extraordinary feast in december, 21st, 1063, and next day they celebrated the moving of St. Isidoro. For this special event, they made splendid donations, jewels and ornaments, that we know nowadays as the Treasure of Leon.

Fernando and Sancha's daughter, infant Urraca Fernandez (dead in 1101), enlarged the church and made splendid donations, like the well known chalice. Another infant, Doña Sancha Raimundez (dead in 1159), with her brother, Emperor Alfonso the VIIth, continued the works in the elder church, began by her grand aunt Doña Urraca, and consecrated the new church in 1149. A year before they had substituted the benedictine female comunity in the monastery by an ordinary prebendaries Council. They ruled the temple and the abbey until 1956, when the council was changed into a secular priests institution, and since then it takes care of the liturgical and intellectual life of the Collegiate Church, the Temple, the Museums open to thousands of visitors, both national and foreign, the Archives and the Library at the disposal of researchers, the Isidorian Editorial and Bookstore, with the main purpose of divulging the history and the art the Collegiate Church and the life of Saint Isidoro.

Visit website.

Codex Ixtlilxochitl

2008-09-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

This is a manuscript with illustrations on European paper in folio, text in the Spanish language and is a fragment of a codex attributed by Leon y Parma to Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl who was a "nobleman" of the Confederation of Culhua Mexica ("Aztec Empire") and the outstanding native historian of the early years of the Spanish Conquest. The codex deals with people and events of the pre-Conquest "Aztec Empire", which Ixtlilxochitl remembered. This will, naturally, be indispensible for any complete Latin American Library.

View The Codex Ixtlilxochitl

Christmas roses (1886)

2008-09-09T02:10:00.000-07:00

By Lizzie Lawson and Robert ElliceMack.

Does the Sun look smaller to you?

2008-07-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

Criminy, I almost forgot: today, July 4th, at roughly 08:00 UT, the Earth was at aphelion.

Uh, what? I hear you ask. OK, brief astrolesson for ya, then back to the grill!

The Earth does not orbit the Sun in a perfect circle. The orbit is slightly elliptical. If you were to draw the Earth’s orbit on a piece of paper, you’d need a sharp eye to detect its non-circularity, but deviant it is. What this means in real terms is that the Earth ranges from about 148 to about 152 million kilometers from the Sun over the course of six months (which is how long it takes to get from one side of the orbit to the other, of course).

When the Earth is closest to the Sun it’s at perihelion, and when it’s farthest it’s called aphelion (I usually pronounce that app-helion, if you care, though I’ve heard others say aff-helion). So today we passed aphelion, and slowly but inexorably, over the next six months we’ll draw slightly closer to the Sun, and then the whole thing repeats.

That 4 million km difference sounds like a lot. But over the 150 million average radius of the orbit it’s only a slight difference by eye. The Sun will look about 3% larger at perihelion versus aphelion, and you’d never notice that, especially since the change is slow and takes six months. The amount of sunlight hitting the Earth does increase at perihelion, being about 5% greater than at aphelion. That’s quite a bit! But the effect isn’t as bad as you’d think. Why not?

For us northern hemisphere folks, we are farthest from the Sun in summer, and closest in winter, so that mitigates the temperature extreme. On average, winters are a bit warmer and summers a bit cooler. But wait! In the southern hemisphere, the seasons are reversed! So they should have extra hot summers and extra cold winters.

But they don’t. Why not? Because the southern hemisphere is mostly water. Go ahead, find a globe and take a look; it’s incredible how much of that half the Earth is water bound. Water absorbs and releases heat slowly, so all summer the oceans suck down that extra solar energy, and release it all winter. That helps balance out the temperature extremes.

Oh, one more thing: the Earth precesses, that is, the axis of rotation moves like a wobbling top. It takes a long time for the wobble to make one cycle, well over 20,000 years. But this changes the timing of the seasons compared to the orbit. In a few millennia, we’ll have perihelion at the same time as northern summer, and aphelion at northern winter. It’s hard to say what effect this will have on the environment, since it brings extra-hot summers and extra-cold winters. However, the last time this happened was around the same time the Sahara forest went away and was replaced by, well, guess.

But for today, don’t fret too much about wandering poles and aphelion… except to say, if you’re out sweltering in the Sun today celebrating the holiday in the U.S., you might want to take just a moment and be glad our orbit isn’t more elliptical, or that it isn’t 15,000 AD.

Sleep paralysis

2008-07-01T03:14:00.000-07:00

Sleep paralysis is a condition characterized by temporary paralysis of the body shortly after waking up (known as hypnopompic paralysis) or, less often, shortly before falling asleep (known as hypnagogic paralysis).[1] Physiologically, it is closely related to the paralysis that occurs as a natural part of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is known as REM atonia. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain awakes from a REM state, but the bodily paralysis persists. This leaves the person fully aware, but unable to move. In addition, the state may be accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations. More often than not, sleep paralysis is believed by the person affected by it to be no more than a dream. This explains many dream recountings which describe the person lying frozen and unable to move. The hallucinatory element to sleep paralysis makes it even more likely that someone will interpret the experience as a dream, since completely fanciful, or dream-like, objects may appear in the room alongside one's normal vision.
Possible causesSleep paralysis occurs during REM sleep, thus preventing the body from manifesting movements made in the subject's dreams. Very little is known about the physiology of sleep paralysis. However, some have suggested that it may be linked to post-synaptic inhibition of motor neurons in the pons region of the brain. In particular, low levels of melatonin may stop the depolarization current in the nerves, which prevents the stimulation of the muscles, to prevent the body from enacting the dreamt activity (e.g. preventing a sleeper from flailing his legs when dreaming about running). Many people who commonly enter sleep paralysis also suffer from narcolepsy. Especially in African-Americans panic disorder often co-occurs with sleep paralysis[2]. However, various studies suggest that many or most people will experience sleep paralysis at least once or twice in their lives. Some reports read that various factors increase the likelihood of both paralysis and hallucinations. These include: [3]
Sleeping in an upwards supine position
Irregular sleeping schedules; naps, sleeping in, sleep deprivation
Increased stress
Sudden environmental/lifestyle changes
A lucid dream that immediately precedes the episode. Also conscious induction of sleep paralysis is a common technique to enter a state of lucid dreams, also known as WILD .
Artificial sleeping aids, ADD medications and/or antihistamines
Recent use of hallucinogenic drugs
TreatmentDuring paralysis episodes, patients may be advised to try moving the facial muscles and moving eyes from one side to the other. This may hasten the termination of the attack. Clonazepam is highly effective in the treatment of sleep paralysis.[4] The initial dose is 0.5 mg at bedtime, while an increase to 1 mg per night might be necessary to maintain potency. Anecdotal reports indicate SSRIs such as fluoxetine markedly decrease the incidence of sleep paralysis. Several people who have been both on and off SSRIs have reported corresponding decreases and increases in sleep paralysis episodes. Others report no effects at all.
Cultural referencesComplete references to many cultures are given in the References section
In Vietnamese, sleep paralysis is referred to as "ma de", meaning "held down by a ghost". Most people in this culture believe that a ghost has entered your body, causing the paralysis state.
In Japanese, sleep paralysis is referred to as kanashibari (, literally "bound or fastened in metal," from kane "metal" and shibaru "to bind, to tie, to fasten"). This term is occasionally used by English speaking authors to refer to the phenomenon both in academic papers and in pop psych literature.
In Hungarian folk culture sleep paralysis is called "lidércnyomás" ("lidérc pressing") and can be attributed to a number of supernatural entities like "lidérc", "boszorkány" (witch), "tündér" (fairy) or "ördögszerető".[5] The word "boszorkány" itself stems from the Turkish root "bas-", meaning "to press".[6]
Kurdish people call this phenomenon a "mottaka", they believe that some one, in a form of a ghost or perhaps an evil spirit, turns up on top the of the person in the middle of the night and suffocates him/her. Apparently this happens usually when some one has done something bad.
In New Guinea, people refer to this phenomenon as "Suk Ninmyo", believed to originate from sacred trees that use human essence to sustain its life. The trees are said to feed on human essence during night as to not disturb the human's daily life, but sometimes people wake unnaturally during the feeding, resulting in the paralysis.
In Turkey this is called "karabasan" ("black-pressing"). It is believed that it is a creature which attacks people in their sleep.
In Mexico, it's believed that sleep paralysis is in fact the spirit of a dead person getting on the person and impeding movement, calling this "se me subió el muerto" (the dead person got on me).
Ogun Oru is a traditional explanation for nocturnal disturbances among the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria; ogun oru (nocturnal warefare) involves an acute night-time disturbance that is culturally attributed to demonic infiltration of the body and psyche during dreaming. Ogun oru is characterized by its occurrence, a female preponderance, the perception of an underlying feud between the sufferer's earthly spouse and a ;spiritual' spouse, and the event of bewitchment through eating while dreaming. The condition is believed to be treatable through Christian prayers or elaborate traditional rituals designed to exorcise the imbibed demonic elements. [7]
Several studies have shown that African-Americans may be predisposed to isolated sleep paralysis also known as "the witch is riding you," or "the haint is riding you." [8] In addition, other studies have shown that African-Americans who have frequent episodes of isolated sleep paralysis, i.e., reporting having one or more sleep paralysis episodes per month coined as "sleep paralysis disorder," were predisposed to having panic attacks. [9] This finding has been replicated by other independent researchers [10] [11]
Sleep paralysis in literature, art and music
(1605) Miguel de Cervantes makes mention of the phenomenon in Don Quixote when a tavern wench jumps into the bed of the soundly sleeping Sancho Panza, who, started, and feeling a prodigious weight upon him, thought he was labouring under the nightmare.
(1851) There is a particularly fascinating account of sleep paralysis in Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. Chapter 4 (The Counterpane) is an account of Ishmael's meditation on an episode of sleep paralysis in the middle of which he could not distinguish the difference between Queequeg's arm and the quilt. Indeed, he could not even distinguish the difference between his own body and his surroundings. He then recalls an earlier episode of sleep paralysis from his childhood, which he determines was the precise moment he discovered the feeling of "otherness" of his own body with respect to his surroundings.
(1936) An account can also be found in Ernest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro, in which death approaches and sits upon the narrator's chest so that he cannot breathe.
(1969) The main character in Kingsley Amis' novel The Green Man also suffers from the affliction.
(1975) Maxine Hong Kingston recounts an episode in her book The Woman Warrior where her mother, Brave Orchid, suffers a night of sleep paralysis in the "Haunted Room", in which she claims she battles a "Sitting Ghost".
In Zimbabwean Shona culture the word Madzikirira is used referring to the fact that something will really be pressing you down and mostly they refer to the spiritual world where some other spirit especially evil one will be trying to use you. The people believe that witches can only be people of close relations to be effective and hence a witch can try to use your spirit to bewitch your relatives.
(2001) The progressive rock band Dredg explores the different aspects of sleep paralysis, on their album El Cielo. The booklet with El Cielo contains letters written by sufferers of sleeping disorders with descriptions of various experiences with or relating to sleep paralysis. Singer Gavin Hayes incorporates and expands upon the material found in the booklet for the lyrics to the album; all of the songs on the album (except the instrumentals) contain snippets of the text in the booklet.
(2006) Experimental band Fear Before the March of Flames talk about the struggles of dealing with constant sleep paralysis on their album "The Always Open Mouth". One of the songs is even called "Drowning the Old Hag".
Notes
1. ^ When considered a disease, isolated sleep paralysis is classified as: Diseases Database 12182, MeSH D0201882. ^ Friedman, S. & Paradis, C. (2002). Panic disorder in African-Americans: Symptomatology and isolated sleep paralysis. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 26,179-198.3. ^ J. A. Cheyne. Preventing and Coping with Sleep Paralysis. Retrieved on 17 July, 2006.4. ^ Wills L, Garcia J. (2002) Parasomnias: epidemiology and management16(12):803-10.5. ^ lidérc, Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1977, ISBN6. ^ boszorkány, Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1977, ISBN7. ^ Aina OF, Famuyiwa OO (2007). "Ogun Oru: a traditional explanation for nocturnal neuropsychiatric disturbances among the Yoruba of Southwest Nigeria". Transcultural psychiatry 44 (1): 44-54. DOI:10.1177/1363461507074968. PMID 17379609. 8. ^ Bell CC, Shakoor B, Thompson B, Dew D, Hughley E, Mays R, Shorter-Gooden K (1984). "Prevalence of isolated sleep paralysis in black subjects". Journal of the National Medical Association 76 (5): 501-508. PMID 6737506. 9. ^ Bell CC, Dixie-Bell DD, Thompson B (1986). "Further studies on the prevalence of isolated sleep paralysis in black subjects". Journal of the National Medical Association 78 (7): 649-659. PMID 3746934. 10. ^ Paradis CM, Friedman S (2006). "Sleep Paralysis in African Americans with Panic Disorder". Transcultural psychiatry 43 (4): 692-694. PMID 15881272. 11. ^ Friedman S, Paradis CM, Hatch M (1994). "Characteristics of African-Americans and white patients with panic disorder and agoraphobia". Hospital and Community Psychiatry 45 (8): 798-803. PMID 7982696.
References
Bower, Bruce (July 9, 2005). "Night of the Crusher." Science News.
Conesa, J. (2000). Geomagnetic, cross-cultural and occupational faces of sleep paralysis: An ecological perspective. Sleep and Hypnosis, 2, (3), 105-111.
Conesa, J. (2002). Isolated Sleep Paralysis and Lucid Dreaming: Ten-year longitudinal case study and related dream frequencies, types, and categories. Sleep and Hypnosis, 4, (4), 132-143.
Conesa, J. (2003). Sleep Paralysis Signaling (SPS) As A Natural Cueing Method for the Generation and Maintenance of Lucid Dreaming. Presented at The 83rd Annual Convention of the Western Psychological Association, May 1 - 4, 2003 in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Conesa-Sevilla, Jorge (2004). Wrestling With Ghosts: A Personal and Scientific Account of Sleep Paralysis. Pennsylvania: Xlibris/Randomhouse.
Firestone K. The “Old Hag”: sleep paralysis in Newfoundland. The Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology 1985; 8:47-66.
Fukuda K, Miyasita A, Inugami M, Ishihara K. High prevalence of isolated sleep paralysis: kanashibari phenomenon in Japan. Sleep 1987; 10:279-286.
Hartmann E. The nightmare: the psychology and biology of terrifying dreams. New York:Basic,1984.
Hufford D.J. The terror that comes in the night: an experience-centered study of supernatural assault traditions. Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982
Kettlewell, N; Lipscomb, S; Evans, E. (June, 1993). "Differences in neuropsychological correlates between normals and those experiencing "Old Hag Attacks'." Perceptual and Motor Skills. 76 (3 Pt 1): 839-45; discussion 846. PMID 8321596
Ness RC. “The Old Hag” phenomenon as sleep paralysis: a bicultural interpretation . Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 1978; 2:15-39.
Ohayon MM, Zulley J, Guilleminault C, Smirne, S. Prevalence and pathologic associations of sleep paralysis in the general population. Neurology, 1999; 52:1194-1200.
Sagan, Carl (1997). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.
Schneck JM. Sleep paralysis and microsomatognosia with special reference to hypnotherapy . The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 1977; XXV:72-77.
Takeuchi T, Miyasita A, Sasaki Y, Inugami M, Fukuda K. Isolated sleep paralysis elicited by sleep interruption. American Sleep Disorders Association and Sleep Research Society, 1992; 15: 217-225.

The paradox of choice

2008-05-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

Atlas of Human History

2008-02-17T04:43:00.000-08:00

Where do you really come from? And how did you get to where you live today? DNA studies suggest that all humans today descend from a group of African ancestors who—about 60,000 years ago—began a remarkable journey.
The Genographic Project is seeking to chart new knowledge about the migratory history of the human species by using sophisticated laboratory and computer analysis of DNA contributed by hundreds of thousands of people from around the world. In this unprecedented and real-time research effort, the Genographic Project is closing the gaps of what science knows today about humankind's ancient migration stories.
The Genographic Project is a five-year research partnership led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Spencer Wells. Dr. Wells and a team of renowned international scientists and IBM researchers, are using cutting-edge genetic and computational technologies to analyze historical patterns in DNA from participants around the world to better understand our human genetic roots. The three components of the project are: to gather field research data in collaboration with indigenous and traditional peoples around the world; to invite the general public to join the project by purchasing a Genographic Project Public Participation Kit; and to use proceeds from Genographic Public Participation Kit sales to further field research and the Genographic Legacy Fund which in turn supports indigenous conservation and revitalization projects. The Project is anonymous, non-medical, non-political, non-profit and non-commercial and all results will be placed in the public domain following scientific peer publication.
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Other Christ

2008-01-05T06:24:00.000-08:00

Kunstmuseum Luzern

Koopman Collection

2007-12-29T03:36:00.000-08:00

The Koopman Collection in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands consists of over 8250 French works of literature in rare and deluxe editions, including dedication copies and artists' books, a series of manuscripts and archival documents. The The books are all listed in the KB online public catalogue and are available for reference in the Special Collections reading room. A provisional catalogue also exists in book form.
first donation for the collection dates from 1934. The collection was donated by Louis Koopman (1887-1968), in commemoration of his fiancée Anny Antoine (1897-1933) who died in an accident. Thanks to a legacy, the Anny Antoine/Louis Koopman Foundation, the collection can still be expanded with new acquisitions on a daily basis.
Léger, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Colette, Cocteau, De Beauvoir, Duras, and many others… The Koopman Collection is a unique collection of French literary works of the 20th century in special editions.
A wide selection of artists' books, dedication copies and deluxe editions is highlighted in seven films on this webexhibition and in dozens of richly illustrated essays on books from the collection.
Link to the digital collection and to the web exhibition.

Venus as a more Earth-like planet

2007-12-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

Venus is Earth's near twin in mass and radius, and our nearest planetary neighbour, yet conditions there are very different in many respects. Its atmosphere, mostly composed of carbon dioxide, has a surface temperature and pressure far higher than those of Earth. Only traces of water are found, although it is likely that there was much more present in the past, possibly forming Earth-like oceans. Here we discuss how the first year of observations by Venus Express brings into focus the evolutionary paths by which the climates of two similar planets diverged from common beginnings to such extremes. These include a CO2-driven greenhouse effect, erosion of the atmosphere by solar particles and radiation, surface–atmosphere interactions, and atmospheric circulation regimes defined by differing planetary rotation rates.

The overall sense of the results from the first year of operation of Venus Express is that the differences, particularly in climate, between Venus and Earth are much less mysterious than previously thought after the early phase of spacecraft exploration. They are consistent with theoretical ideas and interpretations suggesting that the two planets had similar surface environments in the past and that they evolved differently, with Earth's oceans converting most of its atmospheric CO2 to carbonate rocks, and Venus losing most of its water to space. Both processes can now be seen to be still going on. The high zonal winds and near-equatorial turbulence on Venus, as well of course as the high surface temperatures, result from the depth of the atmosphere and huge inventory of greenhouse gas retained by Venus. The slow rotation of Venus, as well as possibly being responsible for the lack of magnetic field that makes erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind so effective, permits the Earth-like Hadley cell component of the atmospheric circulation to extend closer to the poles, where it breaks down in spectacular fashion to form mid-latitude jets and polar vortices that are larger and more energetic than Earth's but are in many respects quite similar (Read more).

Flying Snake

2007-11-19T22:42:00.001-08:00

The image of airborne snakes may seem like the stuff of nightmares (or a certain Hollywood movie), but in the jungles of South and Southeast Asia it is reality.Flying snake is a misnomer, since, barring a strong updraft, these animals can’t actually gain altitude. They’re gliders, using the speed of free fall and contortions of their bodies to catch the air and generate lift.Once thought to be more parachuters than gliders, recent scientific studies have revealed intricate details about how these limbless, tube-shaped creatures turn plummeting into piloting. To prepare for take-off, a flying snake will slither to the end of a branch, and dangle in a J shape. It propels itself from the branch with the lower half of its body, forms quickly into an S, and flattens to about twice its normal width, giving its normally round body a concave C shape which can trap air. By undulating back and forth, the snake can actually make turns. Flying snakes are technically better gliders than their more popular mammalian equivalents, the flying squirrels.There are five recognized species of flying snake, found from western India to the Indonesian archipelago. Knowledge of their behavior in the wild is limited, but they are thought to be highly arboreal, rarely descending from the canopy. The smallest species reach about 2 feet (61 centimeters) in length and the largest grow to 4 feet (1.2 meters).Their diets are variable depending on their range, but they are known to eat rodents, lizards, frogs, birds, and bats. They are mildly venomous snakes, but their tiny, fixed rear fangs make them harmless to humans.Scientists don’t know how often or exactly why flying snakes fly, but it’s likely they use their aerobatics to escape predators, to move from tree to tree without having to descend to the forest floor, and possibly even to hunt prey.One species, the twin-barred tree snake, is thought to be rare in its range, but flying snakes are otherwise quite abundant and have no special conservation status.

Hafele-Keating experiment

2007-09-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

During October, 1971, four cesium atomic beam clocks were flown on regularly scheduled commercial jet flights around the world twice, once eastward and once westward, to test Einstein's theory of relativity with macroscopic clocks. From the actual flight paths of each trip, the theory predicted that the flying clocks, compared with reference clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory, should have lost 40+/-23 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and should have gained 275+/-21 nanoseconds during the westward trip ...

Relative to the atomic time scale of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the flying clocks lost 59+/-10 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and gained 273+/-7 nanosecond during the westward trip, where the errors are the corresponding standard deviations. These results provide an unambiguous empirical resolution of the famous clock "paradox" with macroscopic clocks.

Walton Ford

2007-09-16T08:02:00.000-07:00

Hall of Human Origins

2007-08-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

All species consist of individuals that differ at some level. In Homo sapiens, population diversity arose as small groups occupied varied environments around the world. Localized populations changed due to genetic drift and natural selection. For example, some populations eventually showed more susceptibility to certain diseases, or more ability to digest certain foods. Superficial differences in stature and hair, eye, and skin color also arose among individuals and populations.Although these population changes take place at a genetic level, it does not mean that genes define "race." Race is cultural and social, not biological.Small, isolated groups are less and less prevalent in the human population. Our population is now abundant, consisting of larger, varied groups that intermingle and overlap. Since humans reproduce both within and between groups, we constantly mix genetic information. As a result, genetic differences between people of the same "racial" group can be greater than the those between people of two different groups. Furthermore, influences other than genes—such as hormones and environmental factors—also contribute to individual variation (go).

The Secret Life of the Brain

2007-08-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE BRAIN reveals the fascinating processes involved in brain development across a lifetime. The five-part series, which will premiere nationally on PBS in winter 2002, informs viewers of exciting new information in the brain sciences, introduces the foremost researchers in the field, and utilizes dynamic visual imagery and compelling human stories to help a general audience understand otherwise difficult scientific concepts (go).

Averroes' commentary on De Anima

2007-08-15T01:44:00.000-07:00

On the Soul (Greek Περὶ Ψυχῆς (Perì Psūchês), Latin De Anima) is a major treatise by Aristotle, outlining his philosophical views on the nature of living things. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by the different life-processes those organisms go through. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism. Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humans have all these as well as intellect.
The notion of soul used by Aristotle is only distantly related to the usual modern conception. He holds that the soul is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in; that it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He speculates that some parts of the soul--the intellect--may be conceived to exist without the body, but most cannot.) It is difficult to reconcile these points with the popular picture of a soul as a sort of spiritual substance "inhabiting" a body. Some commentators have suggested that Aristotle's term soul is better translated as lifeforce.

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126-1198) was an Andalusian-Arab philosopher and physician. He wrote commentaries on most of the surviving works of Aristotle. These were not based on primary sources (it is not known whether he knew Greek), but rather on Arabic translations. On each work, he wrote the Jami, the Talkhis and the Tafsir which are, respectively, a simplified overview, an intermediate commentary with more critical material, and an advanced study of Aristotelian thought in a Muslim context. The terms are taken from the names of different types of commentary on the Qur'an.

San Martin de Fromista

2007-07-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

3D Virtual Visit at the temple "San Martin de Fromista" in Spain
(Visit)

Super-Kamiokande

2007-07-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

It is believed soon after the big bang, when the universe was at a very high temperature, many neutrinos were produced. In addition, when a star explodes as a supernova, many neutrinos are emitted. Neutrinos are also copiously produced in nuclear reactions in the core of the sun. Also cosmic rays which come into the earth's atmosphere and interact with oxygen or nitrogen nuclei produce neutrinos. Purposes of the research are to elucidate the source of energy of the sun and detect the properties of the enigmatic neutrinos by observing these neutrinos with considerable precision.The detector consists of an inner volume and an outer volume which contain 32,000 tons and 18,000 tons of pure water respectively. The outer detector is used to veto entering cosmic ray muons and is used as a buffer to keep radiation emitted by the surrounding rock and walls from entering the inner volume. The inner detector has 11,200 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) attached to the bottom, top and sides facing inward. The PMTs collect the pale blue light called Cerenkov light which is emitted by particles travelling fast as light in the water. By measuring the direction and intensity of this light,information about particle interactions such as neutrino interactions or proton decay can be determined (Official Website).

Simple Creatures, Intriguing Finds

2007-07-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

Researchers look to fruit flies and tiny worms for greater understanding of neurodegenrative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Fruit flies have many genes in common with higher animals, including humans. Researchers can easily transplant genes from humans into fruit flies. Finding mutations and observing the characteristics they produce are easier in fruit flies than in other types of animals.
Feany’s laboratory has bred a strain of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster that models Parkinson’s disease. Her team implanted mutant genes in the flies for a protein called alpha-synuclein.
Flies carrying the mutant genes lose dopamine-producing neurons in the brain’s substantia nigra, just as humans with Parkinson’s do. Also, fibrous bundles of alpha-synuclein form in the insects’ neurons. Bundles of the same structure and composition (called Lewy bodies) develop in the brain cells of people with Parkinson’s.
Cellular changes in the flies correlate with behavioral changes. Normal fruit flies climb up the sides of plastic vials. Middle-aged flies carrying the transplanted, mutant gene lose that ability.

28 New Exoplanets Discovered

2007-05-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Astronomers have discovered 28 new planets outside of our solar system, increasing to 236 the number of known exoplanets, revealing that planets can exist around a broad spectrum of stellar types-from tiny, dim stars to giants.
"We added 12 percent to the total in the last year, and we're very proud of that," said one of the study team members Jason Wright of the University of California at Berkeley. "This provides new planetary systems so that we can study their properties as an ensemble."
The planets are among 37 new objects spotted within the past year. Seven of the objects are failed stars called brown dwarfs, with masses that dwarf the largest, Jupiter-sized planets but too small to sustain the nuclear reactions necessary for stellar ignition.
John Johnson of the University of California at Berkeley and his colleagues presented the findings here today at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).
Astronomers don't directly spot extrasolar planets, but rather look for stellar wobbles caused by orbiting planets. The planet's size and distance from the parent star affect how strong or weak of a wobble, and more sophisticated techniques for measuring the stellar wobbles has led to an ever-lengthening list of such outer planets. Now they can detect wobbles of a meter per second compared with the 10-meter limit just 15 years ago.

Astronomers Find First Earth-like Planet in Habitable Zone

2007-04-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

The new planet known as Gliese 581 c (L) orbiting a red dwarf star

Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, an exoplanet with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and capable of having liquid water. Using the ESO 3.6-m telescope, a team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists discovered a super-Earth about 5 times the mass of the Earth that orbits a red dwarf, already known to harbour a Neptune-mass planet. The astronomers have also strong evidence for the presence of a third planet with a mass about 8 Earth masses.
This exoplanet - as astronomers call planets around a star other than the Sun - is the smallest ever found up to now and it completes a full orbit in 13 days. It is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, given that its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun - and thus less luminous - the planet nevertheless lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid! The planet's name is Gliese 581 c.
The discovery was made thanks to HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher), perhaps the most precise spectrograph in the world. Located on the ESO 3.6-m telescope at La Silla, Chile, HARPS is able to measure velocities with a precision better than one metre per second (or 3.6 km/h)! HARPS is one of the most successful instruments for detecting exoplanets and holds already several recent records, including the discovery of another 'Trio of Neptunes'
The detected velocity variations are between 2 and 3 metres per second, corresponding to about 9 km/h! That's the speed of a person walking briskly. Such tiny signals could not have been distinguished from 'simple noise' by most of today's available spectrographs (video).

Photographs from The Met

2007-04-27T09:42:00.000-07:00

See one hundred of the best photograph collection works of art from The Metropolitan Museum online.

Charles Nègre (French, 1820–1880). The Refectory of the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes, 1858–59

Gathered in the light-drenched refectory of a newly constructed convalescent hospital on the outskirts of Paris, patients and staff alike turned their eyes and attention to the man with the enormous camera at one end of the room, Charles Nègre. The resulting image, here in a rare unmounted and unretouched proof print from the artist's studio, is the largest and most engaging in a series of photographs that Nègre was commissioned to make as documentation and celebration of the Imperial Asylum at Vincennes. The hospital was established by Emperor Napoléon III to provide those injured on the construction site or in the factory—"the worker's true field of honor," in the words of one of Napoléon's ministers—with care comparable to that given to the nation's military veterans.
Trained as a painter in the same studio as Roger Fenton and Gustave Le Gray, Nègre was one of the era's most skilled photographers of architecture, possessing a particular sensitivity to the ways in which light and shadow animate the surfaces of centuries-old monuments. Here, he seized upon the streaming sunlight as a vehicle to enliven the structure and texture of his picture and to suggest enhanced activity and health in the hospital inhabitants.

Interactive Poster/Video of The Macaque Genome

2007-04-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

Special interactive version of the Macaque Genome poster, with large-format images, text, and video interviews on the broad biomedical and evolutionary themes that the genome raises (view).
You can also read the Lessons from Comparative Genomic (read).

Worldmapper

2007-04-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest.
There are 366 maps, also available as PDF posters.

http://www.worldmapper.org/

Summer Mountains from China

2007-03-23T02:50:00.000-07:00

This pictures let us travel to China, during the Song dynasty—one of the golden ages of this ancient civilization. Here we see one of the finest paintings in the Metropolitan's collection, Summer Mountains, which was painted in the mid-eleventh century and was once the treasured possession of several Chinese emperors.We know, from writings of the period that we are meant to enter with our imaginations into this world created solely of ink and pale pigments on silk.(view video with explanations)

Summer Mountains, Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), 11th centuryAttributed to Qu Ding (Chinese, active ca. 1023–ca. 1056), China

Video of Statue of a Kouros

2007-03-23T02:46:00.000-07:00

This Kouros, a work of great nobility, probably stood on a tomb, although its stance and expression are shared by cult statues of gods which suggests that it may have been created for a sanctuary. (view video with explanations)

Statue of a kouros (youth), ca. 590–580 B.C.; ArchaicGreek, AtticNaxian marble; H. without plinth 76 in. (193 cm)Fletcher Fund, 1932 (32.11.1)

What makes us human?

2007-03-23T02:35:00.000-07:00

Music, art, language and technology are just a few of the ways we shape our surroundings and define who we are. Although they vary over time and from culture to culture, these forms of expression reveal an inventive spirit shared by all humans.

Weighing only about three pounds when fully grown, your brain stores your every memory, generates your every thought and feeling and allows you to manage your world. More than any other part of the body, the human brain—and its capacity for symbolic thought—sets us apart from all other species.
Although the human brain reached its current size some 150,000 years ago, the first evidence of symbolic thought didn't appear until tens of thousands of years later. Our symbolic awakening occurred when modern humans began to use their brains differently (read more).

Timeline of art history

2007-03-23T02:22:00.000-07:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY) presents an illustrative timeline of art history (view).

Neurogenesis in the Adult Olfactory Bulb

2007-03-04T08:21:00.000-08:00

Active neurogenesis from neural progenitors continues throughout life in discrete regions of the central nervous system of most mammals. However, human adult neurogenesis is still a contentious issue. Signs of adult neurogenesis have been reported in the hippocampus, but a second neurogenic niche described in rodents has not been found in recent human studies. Curtis et al. have just published a paper in Science not only describing this missing rostral migratory stream in great detail but also showing that it is organized around a tubular extension of the lateral ventricle that reaches into the olfactory bulb. (view figures).

Buddhist resources

2007-01-21T01:45:00.000-08:00

Buddhist information and educational network:

Timeline of Buddhist history (go).

Talks by Mediation teachers. Chanting and Buddhist songs (audio).

Insight meditation online techniques (go).

Go inside Lian Shan Shuang Lin Monastery, located in Singapore (go).

The Thai Buddha Images (go).

Daily readings from the Word of Buddha (read).

Historical Wonders of Sanxingdui

2007-01-14T01:30:00.000-08:00

The site of Sanxingdui, located in the city of Guanghan, 40 km from Chengdu, Sichuan Province (China), is recognized as one of the most important ancient remains in the world for its vast size, lengthy period and enriched cultural contents.
The first Sanxingdui relics were discovered by a farmer in 1929 and excavation has continued ever since. During this period, generations of archaeologists have worked on the discovery and research of the Sanxingdui culture. In 1986, two major sacrificial pits were found and they aroused widespread academic attention around the world.
The Sanxingdui finds are exciting, but they remain enigmatic. No texts have been found, nor is there any mention of this culture in the records of other countries. Analysis of lead and other elements in the bronzes indicates sources similar to those of other cultures along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. At this point, however, the unique culture that produced these artifacts remains a mystery (View Pictures).

Book of Neuroscience

2007-01-14T01:01:00.000-08:00

An Introduction for Young Students - is available electronically in English, Mandarin and Spanish from the British Neuroscience Association. The book is idea for those with little previous knowledge of the brain and is a wonderfully neat and concise 'primer' of neuroscience, touching on everything from development to drug addiction. A number of leading neuroscientists in the UK have contributed chapters describing their field of expertise in a simple yet imaginative and visually appealing way (View Full Text).

Neural substrates of envisioning the future

2007-01-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

Cortical regions exhibiting activity differences and similarities during past and future thought. (A–D) Percent signal change for representative regions showing a significant interaction such that imagining of future events (SF) led to greater activation over the 10-modeled timepoints than did recollecting oneself in the past (SR). Both self-related tasks also led to greater activity than a control task involving imagery of another person participating in similar events (CI). (E–H) Percent signal change for selected regions showing a statistically indistinguishable pattern of activity across time while subjects envisioned their personal future (SF) and recollected the past (SR) in response to a series of event cues (e.g., Birthday). Imagining a familiar individual in similar scenarios (CI) resulted in a pattern of activity different from both the past and future tasks (View Full Text Paper).

Qur'an Recitation and Translation on-line

2007-01-07T12:46:00.000-08:00

Listen to the Quran Recitation and Translation online in Arabic, English, and Urdu.

Arabic audio recitation from 5 famous Qaris
Arabic text with English and Urdu translation
Audio Translations in English and Urdu

Manuscripts of the Renaissance

2007-01-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

Hurricane Katrina simulation

2007-01-03T12:19:00.000-08:00

Click on image to view movie.

Orange represents ocean temperatures at 82 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. This is the temperature required for hurricanes to form. The bottom left window shows wind analysis model data from NASA's Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction (MAP '05) program. The top right window shows rainfall accumulation for Hurricane Katrina from the TRMM spacecraft. The bottom right window shows energy-releasing deep convective clouds (as high as 16 km) in the eyewall of Hurricane Katrina. These clouds, called hot towers, formed on August 28 while the storm was intensifying to a category 5 hurricane.

Planets and stars size in scale

2007-01-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

Cave Painting 15,000-10,000 BC

2007-01-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

Wounded bison attacking a man. c. 15,000-10,000 BC. Bison length 43 in. (110 cm) Lascaux, France

The Christ of Dalí

2007-01-02T07:29:00.000-08:00

Christ of Saint John of the Cross, 1951

Meteorite fragments

2007-01-02T07:13:00.000-08:00

Click on the meteorite fragment to rotate the specimen and take a 360 degree look.

Meteorites are natural objects that survive their fall to Earth from space.When the Solar System formed, approximately 4570 million years ago, asteroids and comets were produced along with the Sun and planets. Meteorites are fragments broken from asteroids, and are our only opportunity for direct study of the material from which the Solar System was built.
Meteorites come in several forms. Iron meteorites are almost entirely metallic iron with several weight percent nickel (e.g., Henbury), whilst some are mixtures of stone and metal (e.g., Krasnojarsk). The biggest groups of meteorites are the stony meteorites, which are made from the same minerals that make up rocks on Earth. Some stony meteorite are close to terrestrial basalts (rocks made from lava: e.g., Stannern), whilst others have not melted since they formed. These unmelted stones are known as chondrites (e.g., Parnallee, Plainview). Although almost all meteorites come from the Asteroid Belt, one group of meteorites comes from Mars. (e.g., Nakhla).

Between Text and Image in Kandinsky’s Oeuvre

2007-01-02T07:01:00.000-08:00

Wassily Kandinsky‘Klänge’ from the album Klänge, Munich c.1912.

In 1938 Wassily Kandinsky published the text ‘My Woodcuts’ in the French periodical XXe Siècle. As was so often the case, when he wrote about his prints he focused largely on general artistic principles: the majority of the text is devoted to a general discussion of the need to privilege ‘synthesis’ over ‘analysis’ in both art and in life. However, he specifically referred to the album of poetry and engravings Sounds (Klänge), which had been published in Munich c.1912, as ‘a small example of synthetic work’

Cossacks 1910-11

2007-01-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

Wassily Kandinsky. Cossacks 1910-11. Tate Gallery.

The mysterious Cycladic civilization

2007-01-02T01:15:00.000-08:00

The Cup-Bearer, a Cycladic figurine of unknown provenance dating between 2800-2200 B.C.. A new discovery of smashed marble figurines on an uninhabited Aegean Sea islet has shed new light on the mysterious Cycladic civilization, whose strikingly modern figurines are prized exhibits in museums and collections worldwide.

Postetanic potentiation

2006-12-31T04:37:00.000-08:00

Some processes in nervous tissue are essentially discontinuous in nature, others, like heat and carbon dioxide production, and positive after-potential, are cumulative; they tend to develop in some relation to the number of impulses carried, not infrequently to appear in measurable form only after a number of actions have been compressed into a limited time. In such conditions of activity not only are cumulative processes demonstrable in nerve, but indications of their influence may be found in the altered responsiveness of simple synaptic relays and of neuromuscular junctions. The usual sequel to a period of tetanic stimulation in junctional tissues is a more or less prolonged increase in the transmitted response to standard, iterative, but infrequently elicited pre-junctional nerve volleys into which train of volleys the tetanus has been interpolated (2, 7, 10, 11, 23, 35, etc.). The observed phenomena have been called post-tetanic facilitation, or post-tetanic potentiation; the latter designation is to be preferred. This article by Lloyd, 1949 describes this process (full access).

Visual system by Descartes

2006-12-31T03:50:00.000-08:00

Figure 63 of De Homine (1662), by René Descartes. This figure shows how the light enters and makes images on the retina. The nervous pathway goes from the optic chiasma to the pineal gland. It moves toward the arm and induces the muscle contraction to project the arm onto the AC arrow.

Frogs lying

2006-12-31T02:43:00.000-08:00

If you happen across a pond full of croaking green frogs, listen carefully. Some of them may be lying. A croak is how male green frogs tell other frogs how big they are. The bigger the male, the deeper the croak. The sound of a big male is enough to scare off other males from challenging him for his territory.
While most croaks are honest, some are not. Some small males lower their voices to make themselves sound bigger. Their big-bodied croaks intimidate frogs that would beat them in a fair fight.

Giotto and the comet

2006-12-30T00:05:00.000-08:00

Giotto di Bondone (Colle di Vespignano, near Florence 1267 January 8 - Florence 1337), better known simply as Giotto, was a Florentine painter and architect who is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to and developed the Italian Renaissance. Giotto's master work is the Arena Chapel cycle of the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua depicting the life of the Virgin and the passion of Christ completed around 1305. The scheme has 100 major scenes with the heavily sculptural figures set in compressed but naturalistic settings often using forced perspective devices. Famous panels in the series include the Adoration of the Magi (picture), in which a comet like Star of Bethlehem streaks across the sky and the Flight from Egypt in which Giotto broke many traditions for the depiction of the scene.
This fresco, painted sometime between 1304 and 1306, features an accurately represents a comet above the Nativity stable. The fresco's realistic potrayal strongly suggests that it was based on the artist's first-hand observation of the comet Halley during its appearance in the skies over Europe in Oct. 1301. Almost seven centuries later the spaceprobe "Giotto" from the European Space Agency, was designed to study Halley's Comet. On March, 13, 1986, Giotto approached at a 596 kilometer distance from Halley's nucleus and obtained our first direct images of a comet nucleus. Giotto's images showed the nucleus to be an irregular object, something like a potato, with dimensions 15 km long and up to 10 km wide (picture).

A pale blue dot

2006-12-25T13:38:00.000-08:00

It was Carl Sagan's idea to turn Voyager's camera back toward the planet that launched the spacecraft in order to reveal to that planet's inhabitants their "true circumstance and condition". After much resistance, Dr. Sagan prevailed, and on February 14, 1990, from a distance of 6.4 billion kilometers , Voyager 1 captured this image of our Earth. Here the entire world fills only 0.12 pixel and appears as a tiny crescent of light.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate or your joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and distroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner, in the history of our species lived here -on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of a corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits that this distant image or our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsability to deal more kindly with one another , and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot , the only home we've ever known.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, Random House, 1994

Statue of Amun with features of Tutankhamun

2006-12-25T12:18:00.000-08:00

Amun typically appears as a man wearing a tall, double-plumed headdress. His tall headdress is missing from this statue, but his crown bears traces of gilding. Amun wears the false beard of a deity, an elaborately beaded broad collar, and a short kilt decorated on the belt with a tyet-amulet, a symbol related both to the goddess Isis and to the ankh, the hieroglyph meaning “life”. The god also holds ankhs indicating his immortality. His hands, which have been intentionally cut back, may represent a deliberate alteration to allow the statue to fit into a shrine or a portable ceremonial boat used to carry it in processions.
Provenance unknown, possibly Thebes, late Dynasty 18-early Dynasty 19 (1332-1292 BCE), greywacke.

The Rosetta Stone

2006-12-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

What is the Rosetta Stone?
The Rosetta Stone is a stone with writing on it in two languages (Egyptian and Greek), using three scripts (hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek).
Why is it in three different scripts?
The Rosetta Stone is written in three scripts because when it was written, there were three scripts being used in Egypt.
The first was hieroglyphic which was the script used for important or religious documents.
Detail of hieroglyphic and demotic script on the Rosetta Stone
The second was demotic which was the common script of Egypt.
The third was Greek which was the language of the rulers of Egypt at that time.
The Rosetta Stone was written in all three scripts so that the priests, government officials and rulers of Egypt could read what it said.
When was the Rosetta Stone made?
The Rosetta Stone was carved in 196 B.C..
When was the Rosetta Stone found?
The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799.
Who found the Rosetta Stone?
The Rosetta Stone was found by French soldiers who were rebuilding a fort in Egypt.
Where was the Rosetta Stone found?
The Rosetta Stone was found in a small village in the Delta called Rosetta (Rashid).
Why is it called the Rosetta Stone?
It is called the Rosetta Stone because it was discovered in a town called Rosetta (Rashid).
What does the Rosetta Stone say?
The Rosetta Stone is a text written by a group of priests in Egypt to honour the Egyptian pharaoh. It lists all of the things that the pharaoh has done that are good for the priests and the people of Egypt.
Who deciphered hieroglyphs? Many people worked on deciphering hieroglyphs over several hundred years. However, the structure of the script was very difficult to work out.
After many years of studying the Rosetta Stone and other examples of ancient Egyptian writing, Jean-François Champollion deciphered hieroglyphs in 1822.
How did Champollion decipher hieroglyphs?
Champollion could read both Greek and coptic.
He was able to figure out what the seven demotic signs in coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in coptic he was able to work out what they stood for. Then he began tracing these demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs.
By working out what some hieroglyphs stood for, he could make educated guesses about what the other hieroglyphs stood for.

Proceedings of the trial against Galileo Galilei

2006-12-24T16:45:00.000-08:00

Full access to the original proceedings of the trial against Galileo Galilei.
Rome, 1616‑1633. Paper volume, 338x225 mm, ff. 228: modern green cardboard binding, with a parchment back (View).

Earth from Space

2006-12-24T04:35:00.000-08:00

pdf documents showing beautiful photos from Africa, Asia and Oceania from Space.

Earth from Space - Africa
Earth from Space - Asia and Oceania

Madagascar

Total sunlight and heat reflected from the Earth

2006-12-24T04:24:00.000-08:00

Ships passing through the Panama Canal

2006-12-24T04:17:00.000-08:00

Appearing in this Envisat radar image like shining jewels, ships pass from the man-made Lake Gatun through the Panama Canal across Central America.
The colour in this image is due to it being a multitemporal composite, made up of three Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) images acquired on different dates, with separate colours assigned to each acquisition to highlight differences between them: Red for 16 March, Green for 12 Jan and blue for 14 October 2004. The view was acquired in ASAR Image Mode Precision, with pixel sampling of 12.5 metres.

Satellite portrait of global plant growth will aid climate research

2006-12-24T03:56:00.000-08:00

An ambitious ESA (European Space Agency) project to chart ten years in the life of the Earth's vegetation has reached a midway point, with participants and end-users having met to review progress so far. Harnessing many terabytes of satellite data, the GLOBCARBON project is intended to hone the accuracy of climate change forecasting. GLOBCARBON involves the development of a service to generate fully calibrated estimates of land products based on a variety of Earth Observation data, suitable for assimilation into sophisticated software simulations of the planet created by the global carbon modelling community.
The service is focused on the generation of various global estimates of aspects of terrestrial vegetation: the number, location and area of fire-affected land, known as Burnt Area Estimates (BAE), the area of green leaf exposed to incoming sunlight for photosynthesis, known as Leaf Area Index (LAI), the sunlight actually absorbed for photosynthesis, known as the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR) and the Vegetation Growth Cycle (VGC).

Worldwide leaf area index (LAI)

Ozone forecasts

2006-12-24T03:45:00.000-08:00

Explore planet Earth in near-real time

2006-12-24T03:35:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wanted to track natural events in progress, such as fires, floods and volcanic eruptions, or simply explore the planet through the eyes of a satellite? ESA has created a website, MIRAVI, which gives access to the most recently acquired images from the world’s largest Earth Observation satellite, Envisat. MIRAVI, short for MERIS Images RApid VIsualisation, tracks Envisat around the globe, generates images from the raw data collected by Envisat’s optical instrument, MERIS, and provides them online within two hours. MIRAVI is free and requires no registration (Go).

Peering into the Heart of the Crab Nebula

2006-12-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

In the year 1054 A.D., Chinese astronomers were startled by the appearance of a new star, so bright that it was visible in broad daylight for several weeks. Today, the Crab Nebula is visible at the site of the "Guest Star." Located about 6,500 light-years from Earth, the Crab Nebula is the remnant of a star that began its life with about 10 times the mass of our own Sun. Its life ended on July 4, 1054 when it exploded as a supernova. In this image, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has zoomed in on the center of the Crab to reveal its structure with unprecedented detail. The Crab Nebula data were obtained by Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in 1995. Images taken with five different color filters have been combined to construct this new false-color picture. Resembling an abstract painting by Jackson Pollack, the image shows ragged shards of gas that are expanding away from the explosion site at over 3 million miles per hour. The core of the star has survived the explosion as a pulsar, visible in the Hubble image as the lower of the two moderately bright stars to the upper left of center. The pulsar is a neutron star that spins on its axis 30 times a second. It heats its surroundings, creating the ghostly diffuse bluish-green glowing gas cloud in its vicinity, including a blue arc just to its right. The colorful network of filaments is the material from the outer layers of the star that was expelled during the explosion. The picture is somewhat deceptive in that the filaments appear to be close to the pulsar. In reality, the yellowish green filaments toward the bottom of the image are closer to us, and approaching at some 300 miles per second. The orange and pink filaments toward the top of the picture include material behind the pulsar, rushing away from us at similar speeds. The various colors in the picture arise from different chemical elements in the expanding gas, including hydrogen (orange), nitrogen (red), sulfur (pink), and oxygen (green). The shades of color represent variations in the temperature and density of the gas, as well as changes in the elemental composition.

Hubble Reopens Eye on the Universe

2006-12-23T14:24:00.000-08:00

In its first glimpse of the heavens following the successful December 1999 servicing mission, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a majestic view of a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a dying, Sun-like star. This stellar relic, first spied by William Herschel in 1787, is nicknamed the "Eskimo" Nebula (NGC 2392) because, when viewed through ground-based telescopes, it resembles a face surrounded by a fur parka. In this Hubble telescope image, the "parka" is really a disk of material embellished with a ring of comet-shaped objects, with their tails streaming away from the central, dying star. The Eskimo's "face" also contains some fascinating details. Although this bright central region resembles a ball of twine, it is, in reality, a bubble of material being blown into space by the central star's intense "wind" of high-speed material. In this photo, one bubble lies in front of the other, obscuring part of the second lobe. Scientists believe that a ring of dense material around the star's equator, ejected during its red giant phase, created the nebula's shape. The bubbles are not smooth like balloons but have filaments of denser matter. Each bubble is about 1 light-year long and about half a light-year wide. Scientists are still puzzled about the origin of the comet-shaped features in the "parka." One possible explanation is that these objects formed from a collision of slow-and fast-moving gases. The Eskimo Nebula is about 5,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Gemini. The picture was taken Jan. 10 and 11, 2000, with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. The nebula's glowing gases produce the colors in this image: nitrogen (red), hydrogen (green), oxygen (blue), and helium (violet).

World Wind

2006-12-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.Virtually visit any place in the world. Look across the Andes, into the Grand Canyon, over the Alps, or along the African Sahara (download).

The Brain in a Vat

2006-12-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

The Brain in a Vat thought-experiment is most commonly used to illustrate global or Cartesian skepticism. You are told to imagine the possibility that at this very moment you are actually a brain hooked up to a sophisticated computer program that can perfectly simulate experiences of the outside world. Here is the skeptical argument. If you cannot now be sure that you are not a brain in a vat, then you cannot rule out the possibility that all of your beliefs about the external world are false. Or, to put it in terms of knowledge claims, we can construct the following skeptical argument. Let “P” stand for any belief or claim about the external world, say, that snow is white.
If I know that P, then I know that I am not a brain in a vat
I do not know that I am not a brain in a vat
Thus, I do not know that P.
The Brain in a Vat Argument is usually taken to be a modern version of René Descartes' argument (in the Meditations on First Philosophy) that centers on the possibility of an evil demon who systematically deceives us. The hypothesis has been the premise behind the movie The Matrix, in which the entire human race has been placed into giant vats and fed a virtual reality at the hands of malignant artificial intelligence (our own creations, of course).
One of the ways some modern philosophers have tried to refute global skepticism is by showing that the Brain in a Vat scenario is not possible. In his Reason, Truth and History (1981), Hilary Putnam first presented the argument that we cannot be brains in a vat, which has since given rise to a large discussion with repercussions for the realism debate and for central theses in the philosophy of language and mind. As we shall see, however, it remains far from clear how exactly Putnam’s argument should be taken and what it actually proves

The Global Consciousness Project

2006-12-23T04:59:00.000-08:00

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international and multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. This website introduces methods and technology and empirical results in one section, and presents interpretations and applications in another. The purpose of this project is to examine subtle correlations that appear to reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. The scientific work is careful, but it is at the margins of our understanding (view).

Test your memory

2006-12-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

The National Memory Test is created and run by ABC Science Online and the Department of Education, Science and Training in Australia (Take the test).

Search For Your Ancestors

2006-12-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

Would you like to know about your ancestors? Just search in the largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world (Search).

Earth from above

2006-12-19T14:09:00.000-08:00

The "Earth from above Project" makes possible to draw up a true portrait of our planet which unceasingly continues to be updated. The web invites each one to reflect on engagement in favour of the sustainable development. The legends hich accompany the images inform the reader of the exposures the Earth seen on the sky of the alarming ecological evolutions (Visit the Menu and search by country).

Brain development

2006-12-16T10:17:00.000-08:00

The embryonic and fetal brains of all mammals develop in similar ways. The embryonic spinal cord develops along common sequences and patterns. The nervous system emerges from a simple elongated tube of cells, called the notochord. The head (cranial) end of the embryonic tube expands and differentiates more robustly (than does the spinal end) into several clusters of cells which emerge as the forebrain (telencephalon and diencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (metencephalon and myelencephalon) portions.
Please, compare to brain evolution.

Brain circuitry

2006-12-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

This diagram illustrates the principle that brain circuits travel up and down the neuroaxis, from one side of the brain to the other, as well as back and forth between many different brain components at several levels within the forebrain, thalamus, hypothalamus, midbrain, medulla, cerebellum and spinal cord.
Why is it important to learn how brains are constructed?
For a brain to perform all the functions that it must do, it must: 1. Detect and locate the great variety of stimulus types, sources, and happenings in the environment; 2. Make sense of all these sensory events; 3. Respond to all these features by expressing an elaborate behavioral repertoire; and 4. Make judgments, learn, and think about all these things.
Over the last 50 years, a great number of neuronal cell groups, circuits and connections have been identified and named in the several different regions of the brain. In addition, the functions of these different nuclei and circuits have been identified. Moreover, the neuroanatomical and neurochemical mechanisms by which these circuits operated to produce and enable them to function effectively have begun to be clarified. But much remains to be done, and in the next two decades, it is estimated that modern technology will provide ever greater insight as to how the circuits of the brain perform the functions that they do.

The Stroop effect

2006-12-16T05:04:00.000-08:00

Say aloud the ink colour of each word.How quickly can you do it? did you slow down?
When the name and the ink colour are different, most people slow down.
When you try to say the ink colour, you cannot avoid reading the word. If the two bits of information conflict, your brain struggles to work out what the correct answer is, and it takes longer.
This test is very sensitive to subtle changes in brain function. Lack of sleep, fatigue, minor brain injury and high altitudes will all increase the time it takes to do the test. The test has even been used on Everest expeditions to see how altitudes are affecting different people.
This is called ‘The Stroop effect’ and was discovered in 1935 by John Ridley Stroop.

An apparition?

2006-12-16T04:52:00.000-08:00

Stare at the blue dots while you count slowly to 30.
Now close your eyes and tilt your head back. A circle of light will slowly appear. Focus on it, and look into it. What do you see?
Try this again, but look at a white wall after 30 seconds.
Do you still see it?

Brain evolution

2006-12-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

Evidence of brain evolution can be seen in various fields of biology, such as paleontology, ethology, behavioral biology, cognitive psychology, molecular biology and genetics.

Please, compare to brain development.

Silos Apocalypse

2006-12-15T17:13:00.000-08:00

This spectacular manuscript of Beatus of Liébana’s commentary on the Apocalypse survives in near perfect condition from the first decade of the 12th century. It was copied and illuminated in the Spanish monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos at a time when the monastery’s scriptorium was producing its finest work. Painted in brilliant colours and embellished with gold and silver leaf, its 106 striking miniatures illustrate the most extraordinary scenes in the Christian Bible - a triumph of artistic vision.
Its beauty and excellent state of preservation would alone make this an important manuscript. But there is more besides. It also contains one of the oldest Christian maps of the world. The map presents a picture of the Mediterranean world virtually unchanged since the 8th century, which in turn reflected an even older world view inherited from Roman times.
The map was intended to show the routes taken by the Christian missions of the early saints. East is at the top of the map, rather than the right as in modern maps. Adam and Eve are portrayed against a dark green background representing the verdant Garden of Eden. Beyond the Red Sea is a hint of an undiscovered fourth continent that some ancient thinkers – among them, Pliny, the first-century Roman writer – had suggested must exist in order to balance the known land masses of Europe, Asia and Africa.

Highlights of the Vaticam museums

2006-12-14T16:57:00.000-08:00

Online tour through the 30 highlights of the Vaticam museums

Sistine Chapel
Events in the life of Moses (Botticelli)
Handing over of the keys (Perugino)
Creation of the sun, moon and planets (Michelangelo)
Creation of Adam (Michelangelo)
Original Sin and the Banishment from the Garden of Eden (Michelangelo)
The Last Judgement (Michelangelo)

Raphael's Rooms
Disputation over the Most Holy Sacrament (Raphael)
School of Athens (Raphael)
Encounter of Leo the Great with Attila (Raphael)
Liberation of St Peter (Raphael)
Fire in the Borgo (Raphael)
Battle of Constantine against Maxentius (Raphael)

Pinacoteca
Stefaneschi triptych (Giotto di Bondone e aiuti)
An angel playing the lute (Melozzo da Forlì )
The Transfiguration (Raffaello Sanzio)
St Jerome (Leonardo da Vinci)
Deposition from the Cross (Caravaggio)

Gregorian Egyptian Museum
Mummy in its case
Antinoo/Osiris
Statue of the priest Udja-Hor-res-ne
Colossal statue of queen Tuya

Gregorian Etruscan Museum
Fibula
Gold breastplate
Mars of Todi
Attic black-figure amphora
Attic red-figure hydria

Ethnological Missionary Museum
Quetzalcóatl, Pre-Colombian Mexican divinity
Bundu helmet mask of the Sande female society
Mask
Tu, main divinity of the pantheon of Mangareva island

Eye-to-eye

2006-12-13T15:36:00.000-08:00

This white-legged damselfly posed one May evening for more than an hour on symmetrically crossed grasses. It seemed as transfixed by the photographer as he was by it. ‘After a couple of photos from a distance,’ says Theo, ‘I crept closer and closer, trying not to make any unexpected movements. An hour or so and many shots later, I was really close. But it still maintained eye contact while I fired off shot after shot.’ The resulting detail reveals not only its beautiful colours but also its spiked hair and ‘goatee’ beard, together with its armoury of sensory leg bristles.

Ghost frog

2006-12-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

Many species of frog in Costa Rica have disappeared over the past couple of decades, probably a combination of a deadly fungus and the stresses of climate change. Ghost glass frogs are still relatively widespread, but are difficult to find. Edwin’s guide hadn’t seen one for a year, and so the discovery was even more exciting than the mountain lion footprints in the mud nearby. ‘I stood in a stream to get as close as I could,’ says Edwin. ‘The frog remained motionless as I took its portrait, completely confident in its ability to morph into the plant it was attached to.’ Ghost glass frogs get their name from the transparent skin on their bellies through which you can see their organs and even their circulating blood.

Evolution can't explain the soul

2006-12-13T15:20:00.000-08:00

This large, double-page article is full of sensational quotes designed to engage readers. The article is from The World Magazine, 19 November 1910 (page 7). The headline reads: 'Prof. Wallace, Who Formulated the Darwinian theory fifty years ago, now rejects it. There was, he claims, a subsequent act of creation that gave to man a spirit or soul... ...the difference between man and animals is unbridgeable.' This is extremely interesting as Wallace strongly defended 'Darwinian evolution' but increasingly, due to his spiritualist beliefs, felt he could not relate natural selection to human evolution. The article is richly illustrated with Wallace's portrait, and a biblical scene depicting Adam and Eve.

The earliest dated European astrolabe

2006-12-13T14:56:00.000-08:00

The astrolabe is a multi-functional instrument which enables the user to perform such diverse tasks as timekeeping at day and night, surveying, determining latitude, and casting horoscopes.
Geoffrey Chaucer (about 1342-1400), better known for his Canterbury Tales, also wrote a treatise on the astrolabe which was widely disseminated. The type of astrolabe he described matches the features of this instrument, with its distinctive Y-shaped rete, a dog's head as a star-pointer for Sirius (known as the dog-star), and other star-pointers in the shape of birds. The frame around the circumference has a dragon's head and tail respectively at the ends.
Three of the saints mentioned in the calendrical list on the back are of particular English significance, and one of the latitude plates is marked for Oxford, while the others are laid out for Jerusalem, 'Babilonie', Rome, Montpellier, and Paris.

Turquoise mosaic of a double-headed serpent

2006-12-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

This ornament was probably worn on ceremonial occasions as a pectoral (an ornament worn on the chest). It is carved in wood and covered with turquoise mosaic. The eye sockets were probably inlaid with iron pyrites and shell. Red and white shell was used to add details to the nose and mouth of both serpent heads. The mosaic work covers both sides of the serpents' heads.The serpent played a very important role in Aztec religion. It is associated with several gods such as Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent), Xiuhcoatl (Fire Serpent), Mixcoatl (Cloud Serpent) or Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt), the mother of the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli. The word for serpent in Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs, is coatl.The word coatl is also part of many place names, such as Coatepec ('the hill of the serpents'). Coatepec is the birthplace of the god Huitzilopochtli, the principal Aztec god, thus one of the most important places in Aztec mythology. Serpents were also used as architectural elements. For example, a wall of serpents (coatepantli) was used to mark out sacred spaces within a ceremonial area. At the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, such a wall surrounded part of the Great Temple, which was the ritual focus for the entire city.

Leonardo da Vinci Notebook.

2006-12-13T13:31:00.000-08:00

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest thinkers of his age and this notebook shows the breadth of his interests. It is one of several notebooks put together from loose papers after Leonardo’s death. His intention seems to have been to compose a treatise on mechanics, although it covers a multitude of topics. The text, in Italian, is in Leonardo's characteristic 'mirror writing', written left-handed and from right to left. The manuscript was probably acquired by Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1586-1646).
See the genius's personal notebook!

This aplication uses Turning the Pages™ and Shockwave plug-in, which can be downloaded from the Adobe website, to simulate the action of turning the pages of a real book. The volumes may not open if you block popups on your computer.

Egyptian mummy mask

2006-12-13T13:24:00.000-08:00

The ancient Egyptians performed mumification to transform the bodies of the dead into dwellings for the ba (spirit) in the afterlife. The seventy-day process purged the corpse of fluids that cause decay and endowed it with the attributes of gods such as Osiris and Ra, who had the power to renew human life eternally.An important part of the mummy was a helmet-like mask, which was placed over the head of the linen-wrapped body. Its youthful features were not intended as a likeness of the deceased, but projected an idealized image for their existence in the afterlife.This example has many of the typical features of these masks. It is made of cartonnage, a lightweight material formed from layers of linen coated with plaster. The gilded skin and the wig symbolize the wearer's divine status - the gods had flesh of gold and hair of the blue mineral lapis lazuli. The ornamental collar and the gilded winged scarab beetle on the top of the head promoted the resurrection of the deceased. Lastly, a spell from the Coffin Texts linked the mask's anatomy to that of powerful gods: 'Your forehead is that of Anubis, the nape of your neck is that of Horus, your locks of hair are those of Ptah-Sokar....' The mask also provided physical protection and could act as a substitute should the mummy's head lost or damaged.

Late 1st century BC-early 1st century ADFrom Abydos, Egypt (Greco-Roman Period).

Cupid finding Psyche

2006-12-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

Edward Burne-Jones, Cupid finding Psyche, a watercolour
England, AD 1866A design for Earthly Paradise. This drawing was one of the designs that Burne-Jones made for a vast project to illustrate William Morris's Earthly Paradise (six volumes of which were eventually published between 1868 and 1870). This daunting scheme, begun in 1865, was abandoned when Morris could not find a typeface that would do justice to the illustrations. Around fifty of the designs were cut as woodblocks by Morris, but it was not until he took over all aspects of book production with the Kelmscott Press that he was able to find satisfactory design solutions for such ambitious work.The deep, intense colour in this work is typical of Burne-Jones' heavily-worked watercolours, to which he added areas of thicker, more opaque bodycolour. The facial types are similar to those of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but the soft-focus, generalised details are unique to Burne-Jones. He produced at least five versions of this subject and later a series of paintings telling the whole story of Cupid and Psyche for the earl of Carlisle (now Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery).Jealous of Psyche's beauty, Venus sent Cupid to destroy her, but he fell in love with the sleeping princess. Cupid, who could visit Psyche only under the cover of darkness, represents love, and Psyche represents the longing of the human soul.

Gorilla picture

2006-12-13T13:16:00.000-08:00

Henrik Gronvold was one of the great bird artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He illustrated some of the great bird books of the period. This unusual oil-painting of a Gorilla, successfully conveys the strength and size of the animal and is a fine example of Gronvold’s work

Calligraphy painting, 'loyalty'

2006-12-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

Stylised rendering of the Chinese character 'zhong' meaning loyalty. A calligraphic painting, incorporating a prawn and a bamboo tree. From a set of eight paintings depicting the 'eight Confucian virtues'.
Title of Work: Munjado/Character paintings

The Fall and the Expulsion

2006-12-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

Upper part of drawing. A winged sepent, with a maiden's head, guides Eve's hand, holding an apple to her mouth; Adam eats the apple. Below, they leave the enclosed garden, symbol of Paradise, as the angel drives the pair through the gate. They are protesting, and hiding their nakedness with fig leaves. As Adam descends the steps, a thorn, an allusion to sin's fruit, wounds his knee
Title of Work: Holkham Bible Picture Book