See The Beauty Of Math, Even If You Don’t Understand Math

Vizualizing complex math equations is a privilege for a unique few--that is, until you place them within real world context.

 There comes a moment in most of our lives when we realize that some secrets of the universe will remain hidden from us--not because mankind hasn't discovered them, but because those secrets are encoded in complex math and physics problems that few of us have the talent or patience to understand.

 

But Beauty of Mathematics, a new video by Yann Pineill & Nicolas Lefaucheux, gives the mathematically challenged a peek into living equations. The animated triptych shows an equation on the left, its quantified schematics in the center, and its real world manifestation on the right. The video is like academic X-ray vision, but in reality, its inspiration was never math or science. It was beauty.

Chilling truth about the video games your children got for Christmas

The setting is a crowded shopping centre. A man in a suit saunters into the atrium and up the escalator. Then he puts on a mask and produces a hand-gun.

A security guard who approaches is pumped with bullets. As he reels back, his blood is splattered all over the walls. The gunman presses on, scanning the horizon for any civilians in his way.

Next he heads for the cosmetic counter of a shop. When the female assistant looks up, he instantly shoots her through the head. Behind a shelving unit, a woman customer is now curled up into a ball, whimpering in terror, her head in her hands.

She, too, is blasted at point-blank range. No mercy, no emotion and no regrets. And so it goes on. Anyone who gets in the way, even with their arms up or lying on the floor is assassinated — 11 people in two minutes.

It is scene that looks eerily like CCTV footage of the Nairobi mall massacre in September when gunman hunted shoppers and killed 67. Except this is a video game called Pay Day 2 — and the choice of who to shoot is in the hands of the player.

A generation ago, entertainment during the Christmas period revolved around families playing board games before sitting down to watch the Morecambe And Wise Christmas Show and a Bond film.

But this year, the launch of two super-powerful games consoles — the Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox One — meant that, more than ever, video games like these were among the most popular presents received.

And despite such stomach-churning content and 18 ratings, the uncomfortable truth is that in hundreds of thousands of homes the person ripping the parcel open was a child.

Brain function 'boosted for days after reading a novel'

Reading a gripping novel causes biological changes in the brain which last for days as the mind is transported into the body of the protagonist

Being pulled into the world of a gripping novel can trigger actual, measurable changes in the brain that linger for at least five days after reading, scientists have said.

The new research, carried out at Emory University in the US, found that reading a good book may cause heightened connectivity in the brain and neurological changes that persist in a similar way to muscle memory.

The changes were registered in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, as well as the the primary sensory motor region of the brain.

Neurons of this region have been associated with tricking the mind into thinking it is doing something it is not, a phenomenon known as grounded cognition - for example, just thinking about running, can activate the neurons associated with the physical act of running.

Ni hao ma? Children as young as five set the pace with a love for Mandarin

Numbers learning the language are set to swell in the new year

Children as young as five are already learning Mandarin in British schools, as David Cameron pushes for it to replace French and German in classrooms across the country.

Pupils at RJ Mitchell Primary in Elm Park, Havering, north London, are among the first of their age group to have the lessons. The numbers learning Mandarin are set to swell in the new year as other schools react to the Prime Minister’s exhortation this month to make it the main modern foreign language in schools.

Children in the first two years at the 217-pupil primary school started learning the language last September, well before Mr Cameron’s words. Headmaster Barry Read said: “I’ve always been concerned at the lack of languages in the UK. I think our country is so insular I do despair about it.” He said he would like to see Mandarin lessons delivered throughout the school.

Forgetful snails could tell us about how our memories work

I hate cramming for exams. Tilwe

Snails, like all animals, need to remember – what is good or bad to eat, what might be trying to eat them, and who they recently mated with. All of these things can prove extremely important in the fight to survive and reproduce.

The basic way a snail’s brain works is very similar at the level of individual neurons to that of vertebrates, but when it comes to understanding exactly what is going on in their brains, they have some distinct advantages.

There are far fewer neurons in a snail than in vertebrates, for example – a snail has fewer than 20,000, whereas a mouse has around 75m and a human around 85 billion. Snail neurons are also much larger. This means we can accurately locate the same neuron in different snails and work out which behaviour a neuron controls.

In a study we published in PLOS ONE, we looked at the effects of stress on a pond snails' memory. We found snails respond to stress and the effects can be detrimental to their memory, much like in mammals – including humans.

Nuclear scare stories are a gift to the truly lethal coal industry

Coal is a much nastier power source than the one we have chosen to fear in a deadly form of displacement activity

 

A man walks past a coal plant in Lingwu, northern China. 'Research suggested by Greenpeace suggests that a quarter of a million deaths a year could be avoided if coal power [in China] were shut down.' Photograph: Stringer/China/REUTERS

 Most of the afflictions wrongly attributed to nuclear power can rightly be attributed to coal. I was struck by this thought when I saw the graphics published by Greenpeace on Friday, showing the premature deaths caused by coal plants in China. The research it commissioned suggests that a quarter of a million deaths a year could be avoided if coal power there were shut down. Yes, a quarter of a million.

Were Greenpeace to plot the impacts of nuclear power on the same scale, the vast red splodges depicting the air pollution catastrophe suffered by several Chinese cities would be replaced by dots invisible to the naked eye.

Electronic waste: we must design gadgets that don't poison the planet

We discard huge amounts of electronics every year, creating a toxic wasteland – often in the poorest countries

We love our gadgets, but we need to find safe ways of disposing of them. Photograph: Oliver Stratmann/AFP/Getty Images

Record sales of tablets, laptops and smart phones. Ever smaller computers, and thinner televisions, brighter screens and sharper cameras. What could possibly be wrong with the worldwide explosion in sales of electrical and digital equipment seen this Christmas? Consumers love the sleek designs and the new connectivity they offer, businesses can't make enough for a vast and hungry global market, and governments see technological innovation and turnover as the quick way out of recession. This is a new age of the machine and electronic equipment is indispensable in home and workplace.

But there is a downside to the revolution that governments and companies have so far ignored. In the drive to generate fast turnover and new sales, companies have deliberately made it impossible to repair their goods and have shortened the lifespan of equipment.

One in three children do not officially exist, UNICEF reports

10-year old Kangbe holds her birth certificate at her primary school in Côte d'Ivoire. Photo: UNICEF/NYHQ2011-2488/Asselin

11 December 2013 – Nearly 230 million children under the age of five have not had their births officially recorded, excluding them from education, health care and social security, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) today reported.

That is approximately one in three of all children under five who are unregistered or lack proof of registration, the agency said in a report released to coincide with its 67th birthday.

“Birth registration is more than just a right. It’s how societies first recognize and acknowledge a child’s identity and existence,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director. She added that registration is also key “to guaranteeing that children are not forgotten, denied their rights or hidden from the progress of their nations.”

Women's rights in Afghanistan: a headteacher's story – video

On behalf of an Afghan headteacher, Josephine Dibb shares a moving story about education and women's rights to mark Human Rights Day

 

 
Education is the greatest tool we have to empower young people to improve their life chances and help them to become catalysts for change in their communities.

That is a belief held very strongly by colleagues at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Girls' School where many of our young women face multiple disadvantages.

But the challenges we face seem to pale in comparison when I hear of the dangers faced by school girls and the women who teach them in a country like Afghanistan, where just over 10 years ago girls' education was outlawed altogether.

That seems incomprehensible for us and I know the girls themselves would be incredulous at the thought that they could be denied education. They know that education is their key to a better future.

The thought that our pupils could be poisoned, or gassed, or our teachers attacked, just because our aim is to empower young women, is unfathomable to me. And yet these are the very real dangers faced by my professional colleagues in Afghanistan.

Scientist Solves Mystery of Green Lightning, Says It's Surprisingly Common

Eerie flashes of green lightning happen often in thunderstorms--but usually stay hidden in clouds.

Green lightning strikes the ash cloud of Chaiten's erupting volcano on May 3, 2008, in Chile.

Photograph by Carlos Gutierrez, UPI Photo/Landov

Ιn May 2008, Chile's Chaiten volcano violently erupted, spewing out clouds of dirty ash and illuminating the dark sky with a most unusual kind of lightning.

Photographer Carlos Gutierrez captured the dramatic nighttime display—in which green lightning emerged from the ash cloud—in the striking image above. (See also "PHOTOS: Chile Volcano Erupts With Ash and Lightning.")

The origin of the bright green lightning bolts remained a mystery until atmospheric scientist Arthur Few, of Rice University in Houston, became curious about the phenomenon. "I thought, 'That's funny; why don't we see this in lightning storms?'" said Few at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco on Monday.