The supercomputer that folded a protein
It took the supercomputer known as Anton, which you can see below, about three weeks to fully simulate every aspect of the atoms’ movements, not to mention that of the surrounding water. Such a small period of time may not sound like much, but the protein went through 15 rounds of folding and unfolding in just those couple hundred microseconds.
MIT researchers may be closer to understanding why spacesuit gloves hurt astronauts’ hands
All spacesuit gloves stiffen and fill with gas during an astronaut spacewalk, also known as extravehicular activity, or EVA. This pressure production is required to keep astronauts alive in space, and current spacesuits provide one-third of an atmosphere, which is sufficient to ensure astronaut well-being. But the pressurized gloves in a pressurized spacesuit make it very difficult, and often painful, for astronauts to grasp objects during an EVA, which can last up to eight hours each day. Not surprisingly, the most common type of injury reported by astronauts involved in EVA work is hand-related, including a condition known as fingernail delamination, in which the nail completely detaches from the nail bed.
Counter‐intuitive illusory contours © Bart Anderson
(University of Sydney, Australia)
2nd Prize winner in the Best Illusion of the Year Contest.
In many natural scenes, portions of occluding surfaces and contours can be camouflaged by having an identical color as their background. It is now well known that the visual system will often generate illusory contours and surfaces in order to fill-in this missing information. It is widely believed that the visual system does this in order to provide the best overall “explanation” of the images that form in our eyes.
In this illusion, four circular disks are simply translated back and fourth over a thin square outline. Although all of the image data is fully “explained” by the visible disks, the visual system generates a strong and clearly visible additional illusory contour inside the square outline. This illusion cannot be understood with any known mechanism or theory that has been proposed to explain the formation of illusory contours. This quicktime movie is best viewed by downloading it and playing it in “loop” mode.
Gil Scott-Heron’s Me And The Devil from his recently released album I’m New Here.
I’m new to his music.
Here’s what the man himself has to say about the way you should experience his music. Printed on the inside of his record sleeve.
There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investement.
Music, for example. Buying music is an investement,
To get the maximum you must
LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS.
Not in your car or on a portable player through a headset.
Take it home.
Get rid of all distractions, (even her of him).
Turn off your cell phone.
Turn off everything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles.
Make yourself comfortable.
Play your LP.
LISTEN all the way through.
Think about what you got.
Think about who would appreciate this investment.
Decide if there is someone to share this with.
Turn it on again.
Enjoy yourself.
Gil Scott-Heron
Promotional video for a newly created city district by +1 Amsterdam. Restructuring urbanized areas isn’t all about aesthetics. That is why we chose to put emphasis on the architects and especially it’s inhabitants and the surrounding of the buildings. To achieve this, we decided to combine live action video with 2D- and 3D-animation. Herewith we were able to complement reality with our interpretation of the most important factors of restructuring urbanized areas.The city district Amsterdam Osdorp recently merged with Slotervaart and Geuzenveld-Slotermeer and was given the name Amsterdam Nieuw-West. This change also meant the end of 20 years of restructuring urbanized areas. To celebrate everything achieved, a book was published. ‘The Metamorphosis of Osdorp’ gives an overview of the architectural highlights. We were asked to create an intriguing video, featuring the buildings we find most characteristic.
