close-window – Tech Today w/ Ken May

What Are the Weirdest Languages in the World?

According to Idibon, a company that makes language processing applications, these are the weirdest languages on different continents: In North America: Chalcatongo Mixtec, Choctaw, Mesa Grande Diegueño, Kutenai, and Zoque; in South America: Paumarí and Trumai; in Australia/Oceania: Pitjantjatjara and Lavukaleve; in Africa: Harar Oromo, Iraqw, Kongo, Mumuye, Ju|’hoan, and Khoekhoe; in Asia: Nenets, Eastern Armenian, Abkhaz, Ladakhi, and Mandarin; and in Europe: German, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, and Spanish. But is weirdness relative? Maybe the World Atlas of Language Structures provides a source for objective evaluation. Here’s what Idibon did with it: For each value that a language has, we calculate the relative frequency of that value for all the other languages that are coded for it. So if we had included subject-object-verb order then English would’ve gotten a value of 0.355 (we actually normalized these values according to the overal entropy for each feature, so it wasn’t exactly 0.355, but you get the idea). The Weirdness Index is then an average across the 21 unique structural features. But because different features have different numbers of values and we want to reduce skewing, we actually take the harmonic mean (and because we want bigger numbers = more weird, we actually subtract the mean from one). In this blog post, I’ll only report languages that have a value filled in for at least two-thirds of features (239 languages). What’s the weirdest language (subjectively speaking) that you’ve ever encountered? Link -via Marginal Revolution (Photo: Amazon.com)

Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray

Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray We heard that you were getting old. Not to worry. Now you can make the bitterness of life more palatable with The Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray from the NeatoShop. This spearmint-flavored breath spray is less emotionally painful than therapy and much cheaper than plastic surgery. Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Personal Care items. Link

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Accept The Fact That You’re Aging Breath Spray

Oldest Grave Flowers

The tradition of burying loved ones with grave flowers turns out to be quite an old one. Archaeologists Daniel Nadel and colleagues discovered the oldest example in a grave in Israel’s Mount Carmel, dating back 12, 000 years ago: Ancient mourners lined four graves with the flowers, most notably one that holds the bodies of two people. The pair—an adult male and an adolescent of undetermined sex—belonged to the primitive Natufian culture , which flourished between 15, 000 and 11, 600 years ago in an area that is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. The Natufian society was one of the first—possibly the first—to transition from a roaming hunter-gatherer lifestyle to permanent settlements, and was also the first to establish true graveyards, said study leader Daniel Nadel , an archaeologist at the University of Haifa in Israel. The new discovery indicates that the Natufians were also among the first to use flowers to honor their dead. Link

Unlooted Tomb of the Wari is Filled with Treasures and Human Sacrifice

Photo: Daniel Gionnoni Archaeologists have discovered something truly stunning, the first unlooted imperial tomb of the Wari, an ancient civilization in South America that existed between 700 and 1000 A.D. The tomb, located in modern day Peru, is filled with treasures, precious artefact and – cue the ominous music – human sacrifice: Tomb robbers had long dumped rubble on the ridge. Digging through the rubble last September, Giersz and his team uncovered an ancient ceremonial room with a stone throne. Below this lay a large mysterious chamber sealed with 30 tons of loose stone fill. Giersz decided to keep digging. Inside the fill was a huge carved wooden mace. “It was a tomb marker,” says Giersz, “and we knew then that we had the main mausoleum.” As the archaeologists carefully removed the fill, they discovered rows of human bodies buried in a seated position and wrapped in poorly preserved textiles. Nearby, in three small side chambers, were the remains of three Wari queens and many of their prized possessions, including weaving tools made of gold. “So what were these first ladies doing at the imperial court? They were weaving cloth with gold instruments,” says Makowski. National Geographic Daily News has the scoop: Link

Metal of Heaven: Ancient Egyptians Got Iron from Meteorites

The Gerzeh Bead, an ancient Egyptian iron bead derived from a meteor (c. 3300 BC) Photo: The Open University / The University of Manchester The name for iron in ancient Egyptian is ” metal of heaven ,” and they’re not kidding! Researchers from The Open University and the University of Manchester have proven that ancient Egyptians used meteorites to make iron beads accessories for their dead. Dr Joyce Tyldesley is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at The University of Manchester and worked on the research. She said: “Today, we see iron first and foremost as a practical, rather dull metal. To the ancient Egyptians, however, it was a rare and beautiful material which, as it fell from the sky, surely had some magical/religious properties. They therefore used this remarkable metal to create small objects of beauty and religious significance which were so important to them that they chose to include them in their graves.” Link – via Nature

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Metal of Heaven: Ancient Egyptians Got Iron from Meteorites

Spider Silk Dress

Stylish and bullet proof! What’s not to like? This new blue dress by Japanese company Spiber is woven from synthetic spider silk, which is five times stronger than steel, more flexible than nylon, and is extremely lightweight. The electric-blue dress was created from a material Spiber calls Qmonos (from kumonosu , or “spider web,” in Japanese). The high-collared cocktail dress, on display at the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo, was created to demonstrate the technology behind Qmonos. The territorial nature of spiders makes them difficult to farm like silkworms. So instead, Spiber developed a technology that uses synthesized genes and coaxes bacteria to produce fibroin , the structural protein in spider silk. Spiber then uses technology it developed to culture the microbes efficiently and weave the fibroin into fabric. Apart from clothing, Qmonos could potentially be be used to make film, gels, sponges, artificial blood vessels, and nanofibers. Tim Hornyak of CNET has the scoop: Link

Madonnas of Science

Madonna of the Microscope (2013) by Chris Shaw Madonna of the Particle (2013) Artist Chris Shaw , whom you may know from his rock poster art, has a new art series centered on the Madonna icon , which is currently on exhibit at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He wrote: I’m not sure exactly where my fascination with Madonnas was born, but I’ve loved Icons of all kinds for a very long time. As an artist I’m intrigued with the the way icons present their ideas — an easily understood, blunt central image juxtaposed with deep symbolism and cryptic geometric foundations. Icons also have a reason for existing, they are conveyers of information. The modern icons I create also convey information, it could be a scientific concept, a political statement, or a pop-culture reference. Regardless, each icon has a story and a reason for existing. In this body of work I use the Madonna as the vehicle to literally carry the ideas I’ve chosen to portray. The titles are straight forward. However, underlying and obfuscated by the image is a rigid geometric base, over which the Madonna icon is constructed. The geometry within this base is a riddle to decipher as are many of the symbols within. I’ve mainly learned about hidden geometry and symbolism in art by deconstructing an artworks composition, then researching what I find, something I like to do for fun. Golden ratios, spirals, and fibonacci sequences are easily found in many types of art, but especially deeply woven into icons. How and why this geometric language was used fascinates me, it ultimately led to creating my own icons with their own meanings. View more of Chris’ Madonnas of Science (and other pop culture Madonnas) over at his website and blog: Link Madonna of the Dark Matter (2013) Madonna of the Magnet (2013) Madonna of Evolution (Simian Vanitas)

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Madonnas of Science

College Students Invent a Shoe That Generates Electricity with Every Step

Undergraduate mechanical engineering students at Rice University built a shoe that recovers and stores energy generated by walking. This energy could be used to power small electronic devices, such as cell phones: The Agitation Squad – Carlos Armada, Julian Castro, David Morilla and Tyler Wiest – decided last fall to focus their attention on where the rubber meets the road to create a shoe-mounted generator. Another device to draw energy from the motion of the knee had already been developed and patented and led them to analyze other sources of energy. Working with the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Shriners Hospital for Children in Houston, the team determined the force at the heel delivered far more potential for power than any other part of the foot. “We went to the lab and saw the force distribution across the bottom of your foot, to see where the most force is felt,” Morilla said. “We found it would be at the heel and at the balls of your toes, as you push off. We went with the heel because, unless you’re sprinting, you’re letting gravity do the work.” […] The prototypes deliver an average of 400 milliwatts, enough to charge a battery, in benchtop tests (and a little less in walking tests, where the moving parts don’t move as far). They send energy through wires to a belt-mounted battery pack. A voltage regulator keeps it flowing steadily to the battery. The PediPower hits the ground before any other part of the prototype shoe. A lever arm strikes first. It is attached to a gearbox that replaces much of the shoe’s sole and turns the gears a little with each step. The gears drive a motor mounted on the outside of the shoe that generates electricity to send up to the battery. You can watch a video of their device at the link. Link -via Inhabitat

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College Students Invent a Shoe That Generates Electricity with Every Step

LEDs in an Engagement Ring

Ben’s engagement ring is awesome not only because it lights up, but because it lights up when he and his girlfriend hold hands: Putting a battery of capacitor inside a ring is nigh impossible, so [Ben] decided to power the LEDs with an inductive charging circuit. A coil of wire wound around kapton tape serves as the inductor and a small SMD capacitor powers three very bright and very tiny LEDs. The inductive charging unit itself is a masterpiece of hackery; [Ben] wanted the ring to light up whenever he and his ladyfriend were holding hands. To do this, [Ben]‘s inductive charger is also a wearable device: a large coil of wire is the charger’s transformer and was would to fit around [Ben]‘s wrist. The entire charging circuit can be easily hidden under a jacket sleeve, making for a nearly magical light-up ring. You can watch a video of the ring at the link. Link

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LEDs in an Engagement Ring

Scientists Managed to Clone Human Embryos

Donor egg held by pipette prior to nuclear extraction. Image: OHSU Photos/Flickr A significant, and undoubtedly controversial, milestone in stem cell therapy was reached yesterday. Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University managed to achieve the Holy Grail of stem cell research : they’ve cloned a human embryo. OHSU cell biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov led a team of 23 scientists who methodically culled the lessons learned from stem cell research on amphibians, mice and rhesus monkeys — as well as from the abundant failures of others in the field. They devised a welter of new techniques to use the DNA of a fully formed skin cell in its most primitive embryonic form. In past efforts to coax such an assemblage of components to life, researchers have burned through dozens of donor eggs without getting any embryos even to the 16-cell stage at which stem cells become a remote possibility. This time, the researchers said their methods were so efficient that they could create at least one embryonic stem cell line from each batch of eggs donated by 10 female volunteers. In one case, a single donor produced eight eggs of such exceptional quality that researchers were able to derive four embryonic stem cell lines. Some hailed the development as an important advance in the paving the way to treat a range of diseases, but others feared that it’s one step closer to cloning humans. Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times has the post: Link

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Scientists Managed to Clone Human Embryos