http://skrjabinesque.tumblr.com/

spaceplasma: NASA Probe Gets Close Views of Large Saturn...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:10:16 -0400

The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm (false-color image)

False-color image of Saturn's north pole.

NASA Probe Gets Close Views of Large Saturn Hurricane

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn’s north pole.

In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane’s eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.

“We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth,” said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn’s hydrogen atmosphere.”

Scientists will be studying the hurricane to gain insight into hurricanes on Earth, which feed off warm ocean water. Although there is no body of water close to these clouds high in Saturn’s atmosphere, learning how these Saturnian storms use water vapor could tell scientists more about how terrestrial hurricanes are generated and sustained.

Both a terrestrial hurricane and Saturn’s north polar vortex have a central eye with no clouds or very low clouds. Other similar features include high clouds forming an eye wall, other high clouds spiraling around the eye, and a counter-clockwise spin in the northern hemisphere.

A major difference between the hurricanes is that the one on Saturn is much bigger than its counterparts on Earth and spins surprisingly fast. At Saturn, the wind in the eye wall blows more than four times faster than hurricane-force winds on Earth. Unlike terrestrial hurricanes, which tend to move, the Saturnian hurricane is locked onto the planet’s north pole. On Earth, hurricanes tend to drift northward because of the forces acting on the fast swirls of wind as the planet rotates. The one on Saturn does not drift and is already as far north as it can be.

“The polar hurricane has nowhere else to go, and that’s likely why it’s stuck at the pole,” said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Hampton, Va.

Scientists believe the massive storm has been churning for years. When Cassini arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, Saturn’s north pole was dark because the planet was in the middle of its north polar winter. During that time, the Cassini spacecraft’s composite infrared spectrometer and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer detected a great vortex, but a visible-light view had to wait for the passing of the equinox in August 2009. Only then did sunlight begin flooding Saturn’s northern hemisphere. The view required a change in the angle of Cassini’s orbits around Saturn so the spacecraft could see the poles.

“Such a stunning and mesmerizing view of the hurricane-like storm at the north pole is only possible because Cassini is on a sportier course, with orbits tilted to loop the spacecraft above and below Saturn’s equatorial plane,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “You cannot see the polar regions very well from an equatorial orbit. Observing the planet from different vantage points reveals more about the cloud layers that cover the entirety of the planet.”

Cassini changes its orbital inclination for such an observing campaign only once every few years. Because the spacecraft uses flybys of Saturn’s moon Titan to change the angle of its orbit, the inclined trajectories require attentive oversight from navigators. The path requires careful planning years in advance and sticking very precisely to the planned itinerary to ensure enough propellant is available for the spacecraft to reach future planned orbits and encounters.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

awidesetvagina: this is still the best story ever told at a...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:02:19 -0400

awidesetvagina:

this is still the best story ever told at a talk show

Did You Make It Clear?: “We in the twentieth century have so deeply imbibed the Romantic...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:21:58 -0400

Did You Make It Clear?: “We in the twentieth century have so deeply imbibed the Romantic...:

imaginarydances:

“We in the twentieth century have so deeply imbibed the Romantic tradition that we take certain standards as generally valid. Does the composition sound well? Does it affect our emotions of the moment? These questions that assume such great importatnce today were barely raised at other times. The…

Photo

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:20:58 -0400

3 days ago on July 16th (approx 5:30 am) marked the 68th anniversary of the day we took our knowledge of the atom and how it works - (a body of knowledge whose development spanned the brilliant minds of hundreds and probably predated that of Democritus of Greece) - and constructed something which could be used to vaporize the flesh of thousands in a fraction of a second. I celebrated our entering the Atomic Age by sucking on an Atomic Fireball Candy Thing whilst reflecting on the following quote by Albert Einstein "The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 03:16:24 -0400

neurosciencestuff: BRAIN Initiative Launched to Unlock...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:54:49 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

BRAIN Initiative Launched to Unlock Mysteries of Human Mind

Today at the White House, President Barak Obama unveiled the “BRAIN” Initiative — a bold new research effort to revolutionize our understanding of the human mind and uncover new ways to treat, prevent, and cure brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury.

The NIH Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative is part of a new Presidential focus aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain. By accelerating the development and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a revolutionary new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, shows how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space. Long desired by researchers seeking new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, this picture will fill major gaps in our current knowledge and provide unprecedented opportunities for exploring exactly how the brain enables the human body to record, process, utilize, store, and retrieve vast quantities of information, all at the speed of thought.

Why is the NIH BRAIN Initiative needed?

With nearly 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections, the human brain remains one of the greatest mysteries in science and one of the greatest challenges in medicine. Neurological and psychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression, and traumatic brain injury, exact a tremendous toll on individuals, families, and society. Despite the many advances in neuroscience in recent years, the underlying causes of most of neurological and psychiatric conditions remain largely unknown, due to the vast complexity of the human brain. If we are ever to develop effective ways of helping people suffering from these devastating conditions, researchers will first need a more complete arsenal of tools and information for understanding how the brain functions both in health and disease.

Why is now the right time for the NIH BRAIN Initiative?

In the last decade alone, scientists have made a number of landmark discoveries that now create the opportunity to unlock the mysteries of the brain. We have witnessed the sequencing of the human genome, the development of new tools for mapping neuronal connections, the increasing resolution of imaging technologies, and the explosion of nanoscience. These discoveries have yielded unprecedented opportunities for integration across scientific fields. For instance, by combining advanced genetic and optical techniques, scientists can now use pulses of light in animal models to determine how specific cell activities within the brain affect behavior. What’s more, through the integration of neuroscience and physics, researchers can now use high-resolution imaging technologies to observe how the brain is structurally and functionally connected in living humans.

While these technological innovations have contributed substantially to our expanding knowledge of the brain, significant breakthroughs in how we treat neurological and psychiatric disease will require a new generation of tools to enable researchers to record signals from brain cells in much greater numbers and at even faster speeds. This cannot currently be achieved, but great promise for developing such technologies lies at the intersections of nanoscience, imaging, engineering, informatics, and other rapidly emerging fields of science.

How will the NIH BRAIN Initiative work?

Given the ambitious scope of this pioneering endeavor, it is vital that planning for the NIH BRAIN Initiative be informed by a wide range of expertise and experience. Therefore, NIH is establishing a high level working group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (ACD) to help shape this new initiative. This working group, co-chaired by Dr. Cornelia “Cori” Bargmann (The Rockefeller University) and Dr. William Newsome (Stanford University), is being asked to articulate the scientific goals of the BRAIN initiative and develop a multi-year scientific plan for achieving these goals, including timetables, milestones, and cost estimates.

As part of this planning process, input will be sought broadly from the scientific community, patient advocates, and the general public. The working group will be asked to produce an interim report by fall 2013 that will contain specific recommendations on high priority investments for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014. The final report will be delivered to the NIH Director in June 2014.

How will the NIH BRAIN Initiative be supported?

In total, NIH intends to allocate $40 million in FY14. Given the cross-cutting nature of this project, the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research — an initiative spanning 14 NIH Institutes and Centers — will be the leading NIH contributor to its implementation in FY14. Of course, a goal this audacious will require ideas from the best scientists and engineers across many diverse disciplines and sectors. Therefore, NIH is working in close collaboration with other government agencies, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Strong interest has also been expressed by several private foundations, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and The Kavli Foundation, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Private industries have also expressed a high level of interest in participation in this groundbreaking initiative.

sebastianshortcakes: Monroe Hall in the snow 1925 & 2013

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:39:40 -0400

sebastianshortcakes:

Monroe Hall in the snow 1925 & 2013

ayymonique: Saw this while touring the University of Mary...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 15:38:27 -0400

ayymonique:

Saw this while touring the University of Mary Washington today :)

Photo

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:13:24 -0500

christinetheastrophysicist: New Home for Runaway Black Hole The...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:50:32 -0500

christinetheastrophysicist:

New Home for Runaway Black Hole

The most massive black hole ever measured may be an intergalactic hitchhiker that escaped from one galaxy before getting captured by another. If this scenario, laid out in a paper posted February 18 at arXiv.org, is proven correct, it would be the first time astronomers have definitively spotted a black hole that was expelled from its original galactic home.

Read More.

tierradentro: “The Violinist”, 1891, Edward John Poynter....

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:04:11 -0500

tierradentro:

“The Violinist”, 1891, Edward John Poynter. (via)

There is no amount of water on this planet

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:24:27 -0500

That will quench the thirst of this thirsty ass student body.

WHY IS EVERYONE HERE SO DAMNED THIRSTY.

theonceandfuturedetective: Woman Holding a Balance Johannes...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:20:27 -0500

theonceandfuturedetective:

Woman Holding a Balance

Johannes Vermeer

c. 1664

Whether this is a secular depiction of the Virgin Mary or a representation of a more general theological theme regarding consciousness or free will. The Last Judgement in the background, has a pivotal role in the interpretation of this painting. It is interpreted better by acknowledging the influence of the small Roman Catholic community Vermeer lived in, after his marriage, as well as his close relationship to his family and the Reformed Church at Delft.

architectureofdoom: How one woman is building homes for the...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:48:58 -0500

architectureofdoom:

How one woman is building homes for the poor out of plastic bottles

Ingrid Vaca Diez is on a mission to build better homes for the poor.

With few funds and little support, she uses the only resource she can find in abundance - empty plastic bottles.

Her own life in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, is one of relative comfort but she is shocked by the rising level of poverty she sees around her.

Though completely self-taught, she designs and builds new homes using recycled plastic bottles filled with dirt as the “bricks”. So far, she has built 10 of these homes.

The people she is trying to help are rural, indigenous migrants, often living in single room, dirt floor shacks.

Watch here

Avengers Assemble!

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:47:25 -0500

Avengers Assemble!

christinetheastrophysicist: M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy in Dust...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:44:41 -0500

christinetheastrophysicist:

M51: The Whirlpool Galaxy in Dust and Stars

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a classic spiral galaxy. At only 30 million light years distant and fully 60 thousand light years across, M51, also known as NGC 5194, is one of the brightest and most picturesque galaxies on the sky. The above image is a digital combination of a ground-based image from the 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory and a space-based image from the Hubble Space Telescope highlighting sharp features normally too red to be seen. Anyone with a good pair of binoculars, however, can see this Whirlpool toward the constellation of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici.M51 is a spiral galaxy of type Sc and is the dominant member of a whole group of galaxies. Astronomers speculate that M51’s spiral structure is primarily due to its gravitational interaction with a smaller galaxy just off the top of the image.

paperimages: Chris Peters, I Cannot Return to You, But You Can...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 16:40:07 -0500

paperimages:

Chris Peters, I Cannot Return to You, But You Can Follow Me

Sorry, no femme: Femmephobia Within the Queer Community

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 16:39:09 -0500

Sorry, no femme: Femmephobia Within the Queer Community:

endracismandhomophobia:

Introduction

Lately, there seems to be a trend in the gendered marketing of products. Why is it that when items associated for men are marketed to women, they are not specially marketed with a few notable exceptions such as (pink tool kit set) yet items normally associated with women are usually renamed when marketed to men - megging (legging for men) or man bag (a laughable concept a mere decade back as evident in this clip from the sitcom, FRIENDS)?

One could attribute this to the concept of femmephobia.

Concept of Femmephobia

Femmephobia is essentially the fear and hatred of all things associated with women and can be argued as belonging within a subset of or another form of misogyny (fear and hatred of women). No matter where its exact position within the feminism discourse, one thing is certain. Feminine associations (activities like shopping) are less accepted than masculine associations (liking sports) in contemporary societies. Femmephobia is taught from young when most boys are discouraged from participating in feminine associated activities like ballet dance but girls are encouraged to participate in masculine activities such as soccer.

Masculinity in a woman gets increasingly accepted as we age while femininity in a man is frowned upon. A woman who prefers dressing in a masculine fashion such as having short hair and wearing shirts and pants would be a non-issue in most societies today. A man, however, who prefers dressing in a feminine fashion such as wearing a dress is viewed as having a possible psychiatric disorder - transvestic fetishism.

When a man is linked to some feminine association such as showing an interest in make-up, his identity as a man is called into question. It is as though he is lowering his sense of self as he directly threatens his masculinity by aligning himself with femininity. Femmephobia hence may actually be a factor in homophobia, because of the conventional stereotyped image a person normally has of a gay person - the effeminate gay men.

Femmephobia within the gay subculture

It is rather strange when one thinks about the presence of femmephobia within the gay subculture. After all, homosexuality already transgresses societal’s gendered norms. The societal stereotype of homosexuality is one where masculinity is almost erased - the stereotype of a gay man is an overtly effeminate and emotional gay man who likes all things feminine.

However, within the gay subculture, the gay ideal is a man whose physique screams masculine: sculpted body of an Adonis, bulging with muscles and washboard abs. Perceived masculine traits are exalted within the subculture - perhaps due to their need to reassert their gender identity as males in a more physical sense. In fact, it is ‘a compliment for someone to tell you that you could “pass as straight.”’ (Freddy Tlatenchi, Daily Sundial. 2012, May 9).

Hence, the effeminate men, often termed as femmes, are subjected to femmephobia instead of being accepted. They face outright rejection and exclusion from the very subculture they belong to.

A quick peek into online gay dating sites as well as profiles on the smartphone application Grindr are littered with the terms:

‘No femmes’/ ‘No fairy’/ ‘No sissies’/’no queens’ as well as ‘str8 acting only/ for masc only’.

Image: A gay man’s profile on Grindr and the chat message where he defines normal

image source:http://stopracismandhomophobiaongrindr.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/yawn-heres-yet-another-homophobic-gay-guy-on/

On top of facing difficulties in trying to forge a relationship, the effeminate gay man are also unfairly blamed for ‘dividing’ society’s opinion on homosexuality and for being the reason why homosexuals are not easily accepted because they stand out (Ramen Setoodeh, Newsweek. 2009, Nov 11).

One can only guess the stress effeminate men go through facing double discrimination - rejected by society at large (for being a homosexual and hence, transgressing gendered norms) as well as getting rejected by their own community for not conforming to societal’s masculine norms. They may be more at risk of engaging in self-harm or committing suicide.

Femmephobia in Lesbian subculture

For lesbians however, femmephobia is present in another form. Masculinity is once again upheld - this time as something radical as opposed to something that reasserts their identity. Amasculine lesbian - butch is the ‘face’ of lesbianism so to speak. A femme (feminine woman)is seen as someone who ‘conforms’ to most of society’s norms. She faces invisibility as there is no visible, stereotypical way of recognizing fellow femmes. Further, they are seen as a threat to the lesbian movement because they can pass off as a heteronormative female and not get subjected to the same form of homophobia that butch (masculine performing lesbian) face. Hence, femmephobia denies femme their identity as a queer woman because of their femme invisibility.

Conclusion

We need to challenge femmephobia because it is a potentially dividing concept, one that strictly delineates the world into two (male-female and good-bad) when the world is far, far more complex with its shades of grey. We thus need to critically examine, critique and call for change in terms of the gendered marketting. We should teach our children that they are free to explore their sense of identities as well as equip them with the necessary coping skills needed to navigate a potentially hazardous world.

I am a failure now.: so I jokingly commented on someone’s post in the virginia hall...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 15:16:15 -0500

I am a failure now.: so I jokingly commented on someone’s post in the virginia hall...:

dissimilar:

so I jokingly commented on someone’s post in the virginia hall facebook page about how if someone’s taking a shower and there’s a fire drill they should “just hide in [their] closet[s] idk”

and I end up with an email from reslife asking to “touch base” about virginia hall’s policy with fire…

#virginia hall ass #lame ass #panties in a bunch ass

jtotheizzoe: Hypnotic Mercury That’s over 1,000 images of the...

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 14:27:07 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

Hypnotic Mercury

That’s over 1,000 images of the planet Mercury stitched together in a copper-blue disco ball of hypnotic animation. Launched in 2004, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has been studying the smallest member of the Solar System for nearly two years with phenomenal success.

A single solar day on Mercury takes over 58 Earth days, so this GIF’s rotation would take you nearly two months to see with the naked eye … you know, should you be in space, near Mercury. Check out another shadowy video of a Mercurial day from NASA.

BONUS: Did you know that craters on Mercury are named for authors, artists and musicians? Dr. Seuss and Andy Warhol each have one.

(via Gizmodo, for higher-res GIF check here, and in video form here)