Thursday, June 30, 2016
Detecting "Mechanical Doping" in Bike Races
"Tour de France Goes High Tech to Battle Mechanical Cheating"
Chemistry Of Nitro Beverages
"'Nitro' coffees and beers are the coolest things to sip this summer. What makes them so creamy?"
tldr; Nitrogen creates smaller bubbles than carbon dioxide, and doesn't produce extra acid.
tldr; Nitrogen creates smaller bubbles than carbon dioxide, and doesn't produce extra acid.
Mixed Political Marriages
"How Many Republicans Marry Democrats?"
Here's an excerpt of the findings:
Here's an excerpt of the findings:
First, 30 percent of married households contain a mismatched partisan pair. A third of those are Democrats married to Republicans. The others are partisans married to independents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are twice as many Democratic-Republican pairs in which the male partner, rather than the female partner, is the Republican.Lots more interesting information in the full article, such as effect of age, geography, etc., on the rates of such mixed marriages.
Second, 55 percent of married couples are Democratic-only or Republican-only, which raises a question: Is that a big number or a small number? In other words, is there more or less partisan intermarriage than we should expect? Here are two ways we try to answer that. We can compare interparty marriages to interracial marriages. Using voter registration data, we can do this in three states, Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina, where public voter files list everyone by their party affiliation and their racial identity. In those states, 11 percent of married couples are in Democratic-Republican households. In comparison, only 6 percent of married couples are in any kind of interracial household. At least in these states, there’s about twice as much interparty marriage as interracial marriage...
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
GPS Tracker Fail
Washington Post: DC Court attaches GPS ankle tracker on man with artificial leg. Man switches legs and commits murder.
Outdated Tech
"10 Organizations That Use Horribly Outdated Tech"
Hmmm, I wonder what common element unites 9 of these 10 organizations?
Hmmm, I wonder what common element unites 9 of these 10 organizations?
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Police And Self-Driving Cars
Reasons the police might pull you over when you're in an autonomous car.
Monday, June 27, 2016
Decoding The Antikythera Mechanism
"Multispectral scanning reveals ancient text on the fabled Antikythera Mechanism, and suggests the machine was a mechanical textbook."
Sunday, June 26, 2016
Transient Smartphone Blindness
The New England Journal Of Medicine recently reported on a couple of cases of "transient smartphone blindness".
Short version: Some patients were coming to their doctors after recurrent episodes of temporary loss of vision at night, only affecting one eye. The patients underwent testing (including expensive MRI scans), and in one case started on medication for presumed blood vessel issue.
But the transient blindness was caused by the fact that the patients were reading their smartphones at night with one eye. Hence, the reading eye was exposed to light whereas the other eye remained adapted to the dark. When they shut off their phones, the phone-reading eye was relatively "blind" compared to the other dark-adapted eye and needed a few minutes to recover.
The doctors even ran an eye sensitivity experiment.
From the article:
Short version: Some patients were coming to their doctors after recurrent episodes of temporary loss of vision at night, only affecting one eye. The patients underwent testing (including expensive MRI scans), and in one case started on medication for presumed blood vessel issue.
But the transient blindness was caused by the fact that the patients were reading their smartphones at night with one eye. Hence, the reading eye was exposed to light whereas the other eye remained adapted to the dark. When they shut off their phones, the phone-reading eye was relatively "blind" compared to the other dark-adapted eye and needed a few minutes to recover.
The doctors even ran an eye sensitivity experiment.
From the article:
When the patients were seen in our neuro-ophthalmic clinic, detailed history taking revealed that symptoms occurred only after several minutes of viewing a smartphone screen, in the dark, while lying in bed (before going to sleep in the first case and after waking in the second). Both patients were asked to experiment and record their symptoms. They reported that the symptoms were always in the eye contralateral to the side on which the patient was lying.
We hypothesized that the symptoms were due to differential bleaching of photopigment, with the viewing eye becoming light-adapted while the eye blocked by the pillow was becoming dark-adapted. Subsequently, with both eyes uncovered in the dark, the light-adapted eye was perceived to be “blind.” The discrepancy lasted several minutes, reflecting the time course of scotopic recovery after a bleach...
Although most people view screens binocularly, people frequently use smartphones while lying down, when one eye can be inadvertently covered. Smartphones are now used nearly around the clock, and manufacturers are producing screens with increased brightness to offset background ambient luminance and thereby allow easy reading. Hence, presentations such as we describe are likely to become more frequent. Our cases show that detailed history taking and an understanding of retinal physiology can reassure both patient and doctor and can avoid unnecessary anxiety and costly investigations.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
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