Science_afficionado - Slashdot User

Submission + - Astronomers have come up with a better way to weigh millions of solitary stars (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Thursday December 14, 2017 @05:28PM

Science_afficionado writes: By measuring the flicker pattern of light from distant stars, astronomers have developed a new and improved method for measuring the masses of millions of solitary stars, especially those hosting exoplanets.

Submission + - Sorry, Grumpy Cat—Study finds dogs are brainier than cats (vanderbilt.edu) 1

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @05:38PM

Science_afficionado writes: Are you a cat lover? A dog lover? If so you may be interested in the first scientific study to actually count the number of cortical neurons in the brains of a number of carnivores, including cats and dogs. Bottom line: Dogs have about twice as many of these "little grey cells' as cats.

Submission + - 'Mind's eye blink' proves 'paying attention' is not just a figure of speech (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Monday November 27, 2017 @12:59PM

Science_afficionado writes: When your attention shifts from one place to another, your brain blinks. The blinks are momentary unconscious gaps in visual perception and came as a surprise to the team of Vanderbilt psychologists who discovered the phenomenon while studying the benefits of attention.
“Attention is beneficial because it increases our ability to detect visual signals even when we are looking in a different direction,” said Assistant Professor of Psychology Alex Maier, who directed the study. “The ‘mind’s eye blinks’ that occur every time your attention shifts are the sensory processing costs that we pay for this capability.”

Submission + - Your visual skills are not correlated to your IQ (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Wednesday November 08, 2017 @12:51PM

Science_afficionado writes: Psychologists at Vanderbilt University have conducted the first study of individual variation in visual ability. They have discovered that there is a broad range of differences in people’s capability for recognizing and remembering novel objects and this ability is NOT associated with individuals’ general intelligence, or IQ.

Comment Eclipse viewing great in Nashville (Score 1) 211

by Science_afficionado on Monday August 28, 2017 @12:34PM (#55097461) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How Did You Experience The Solar Eclipse?

Fortunately, I live in Nashville which was on the path of totality. So I could view it with friends on the Vanderbilt campus. The university threw a great eclipse-watching party for members of the campus community with a giant outdoor video display showing NASA streaming videos, a countdown clock. etc. They also provided water, ice cream and plenty of folding chairs. I've heard that clouds obscured totality in downtown Nashville, but at the campus the view was unobstructed and absolutely marvelous! Alas, the camera in my iPhone 7 couldn't handle to contrast even at totality so none of my photos turned out.

Submission + - Extreme exoplanet: Astronomers discover alien world hotter than most stars (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Monday June 05, 2017 @12:55PM

Science_afficionado writes: An international team of astronomers has discovered a planet like Jupiter zipping around its host star every day and a half, boiling at temperatures hotter than most stars and sporting a giant, glowing gas tail like a comet.

Submission + - Researchers make a high-performance battery from junkyard scraps (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Wednesday November 02, 2016 @03:31PM

Science_afficionado writes: A team of engineers and materials scientists at Vanderbilt University have discovered how to make high-performance batteries using scraps of metal from the junkyard and common household chemicals. The researchers believe their innovation could provide the large amounts of economical electrical storage required by the grid to handle alternative energy sources and may ultimately allow homeowners to build their own batteries and disconnect entirely from the grid.

Submission + - Segway with legs approved for clinical and personal use (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Friday March 11, 2016 @01:21PM

Science_afficionado writes: FDA has approved a powered lower-limb exoskeleton created by a team of Vanderbilt engineers and commercialized by the Parker Hannifin Corporation for both clinical and personal use in the United States. The device operates like a Segway with legs bandits minimalist design allows users to put the device on and take it off while sitting in a wheelchair.

Submission + - New spectroscope perfect for asteroid mining, planetary research (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Friday November 20, 2015 @06:45PM

Science_afficionado writes: Scientists at Fisk and Vanderbilt Universities are developing a new generation of gamma-ray spectroscope that is light weight, compact and don't require much power but have the capability for detecting veins of gold, platinum, rare earths and other valuable materials hidden within asteroids, comets, moons and other airless objects floating about the solar system.

Submission + - Want to boost battery performance? Add quantum dots made from fool's gold!

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Wednesday November 11, 2015 @07:28PM

Science_afficionado writes: A lot of attempts have been made to use nanocrystals to improve battery performance, but the results have been disappointing. The problem is that when the size of the crystals drop below a certain size they begin to react chemically with the electrolytes which prevents them from recharging. Now, however, a team of engineers from Vanderbilt University report in an article published in the journal ACS Nano that they can overcome this problem by making the nanocrystals out of iron pyrite, commonly known as fool's gold. The link to the paper is http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.... The link to the university news story is http://news.vanderbilt.edu/201...

Submission + - 'Geospeedometer' confirms super-eruptions have surprisingly short fuses (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Tuesday October 20, 2015 @07:04PM

Science_afficionado writes: Super-eruptions – you know, those gigantic prehistoric volcanic outbursts that throw 100 times more superheated gas, ash and rock into the atmosphere than run-of-the-mill eruptions like Mt. St. Helens — tend to pop-off within a few hundred years after their underground body of magma reaches a high enough proportion of molten rock and low enough proportion of crystallization to become explosive. That's a much shorter time than geologists had thought. That means if the hot spot under Yellowstone, for example, were to turn explosive, then we would only have couple hundred years to prepare for an eruption that could blanket the entire continent with up to 3,600 cubic miles of ash and rock!

Submission + - Creating bacterial 'fight clubs' to discover new drugs (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Monday June 29, 2015 @06:31PM

Science_afficionado writes: Vanderbilt chemists have shown that creating bacterial "fight clubs" is an effective way to discover natural biomolecules with the properties required for new drugs. They have demonstrated the method by using it to discover a new class of antibiotic with anti-cancer properties.

Comment Robot workers should pay FICA/ Social Security (Score 1) 628

by Science_afficionado on Monday December 22, 2014 @02:14PM (#48653387) Attached to: What Happens To Society When Robots Replace Workers?

If robot workers are required to pay FICA/Social Security taxes then they can support me and a lot of other people in our retirement. Seriously, the extent to which robots will displace human workers will depend primarily on the economic and legal structures that we put in place. Nothing is preordained. It is clear that robots will have an increasing capability of adding value/creating wealth. The real question we should all be concerned with is how this wealth will be distributed.

Submission + - Electric eel shocks like a Taser (vanderbilt.edu)

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Thursday December 04, 2014 @07:11PM

Science_afficionado writes: After a nine month study, a Vanderbilt biologist has determined that the electric eel emits series of millisecond, high-voltage pulses to paralyze its prey just before it attacks. The high-voltage pulses cause the motor neurons in its target to violently contract, leaving it temporarily immobilized in the same fashion as the high-voltage pulses produced by a Taser. He documented this effect using high-speed video. The eel, which is nocturnal and has very poor eyesight, also uses closely spaced pairs of high-voltage pulses when hunting for hidden prey. He determined that the pulses cause the prey's body to twitch which produces water movements that the eel uses to locate its position even when it's hidden from view.

Submission + - Are the world's religions ready for ET? (vanderbilt.edu) 2

Submitted by Science_afficionado on Tuesday September 30, 2014 @05:28PM

Science_afficionado writes: At the current rate of discovery, astronomers will have identified more than a million exoplanets by the year 2045. That means, if life is at all common in the Milky Way, astronomers will soon detect it. Realization that the nature of the debate about life on other worlds is about to fundamentally change lead Vanderbilt astronomer David Weintraub to begin thinking seriously about how people will react to such a discovery. He realized that people's reactions will be heavily influenced by their religious beliefs, so he decided to find out what theologians and leaders from the world's major religions have to say about the matter. The result is a book titled "Religions and Extraterrestrial Life" published by Springer this month. http://www.springer.com/social... He discovered that from Baptists to Buddhists, from Catholics to Mormons, from Islam to the Anglican Communion religious views differ widely.

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