CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-04-18 13:48:48 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I know I have been fairly quiet the past few weeks. I know, based on stats, that you've noticed my silence. My silence has been driven by funding fears and sequestration.

EDIT My blog is coming to a halt under your traffic. In response, I'm copying the entirety of my blog post below.

I have spent the past several weeks trying to figure out how to write this post. Sometimes emotions are so raw that they don’t readily shape themselves into words: They manifest themselves as a face that can’t smile, a head that throbs with a stress migraine, and with an exhaustion driven not by lack of sleep but rather deriving from the emotional exhaustion that just makes a person want to hide in a dark room locked away from the world. My head hurts. I am exhausted. My emotions are raw. I am writing now because there is a very real possibility that the proposed restructuring of the USedu... more »

2012-03-30 15:33:47 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 13 +1s)

"A sample of Pure Evil was obtained from the ruins of an exploded toaster in the south of England."

#jollygoodjollyjollygood

2012-03-16 13:35:35 (9 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Your "representing relative sizes with 2-D or 3-D images is hard" example of the day. The battery to the right is representing a 70% increase over the battery to the left. Um, right.

2012-03-10 21:12:34 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 11 +1s)

Paul Dietz works in the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft, and he’s been working on improving the latency of touchscreens. What they have achieved is to decrease the latency of a touch panel down to just 1ms. That’s fast enough to keep up with the quickest finger movements.

The video above gives a great demonstration of the difference the super low latency makes. Even at 10ms the lag is noticeable, but 1ms makes it as close to perfect finger tracking as it will ever get.

2012-01-18 02:19:53 (4 comments, 8 reshares, 9 +1s)

Your holy-shit-corvids-are-awesome video for the day:

2011-12-05 18:54:54 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

In a talk by Helen Barbas, she's explaining how two different types of inhibitory neurons are different. Parvalbumin-containing cells innervate the cell bodies of excitatory cells, and so cause very strong inhibitory effects, and Barbas uses the analogy of a policeman, who can just stop behavior. Calbindin-containing cells innervate more distal areas of the excitatory cells, and so their inhibitory effects are stronger, "not like a policeman, but more like, ah, a boy scout!" ::room erupts in laughter::

2011-12-02 16:05:34 (1 comments, 4 reshares, 4 +1s)

A newly discovered species of “yeti crab” farms bacteria on its arms. It lives in the deep ocean, near seeps that belch out methane. The bacteria living on its bristly arms (hence the name “yeti crab”) feed off the seeping gases, and the crab encourage the bacteria to grow by rhythmically waving their arms.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/12/02/yeti-crab-farms-bacteria-on-its-arms/

2011-12-02 16:05:10 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

Don't worry if your friends and family aren't here on Google+.

We're here, and we're more fun.

2011-11-29 15:54:22 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Creepy! And cold...

2011-11-17 16:26:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Now this is effective humor with gender stereotypes :) Kudos +Alex Wild http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/2011/11/17/nature-publishing-groups-new-journal/

2011-10-14 15:36:07 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

From a paper I'm reading: "...these deficits fade in the elderly (our elderly group was about 40 years old)." The details of the measure aren't important here, but who on earth categorizes a group of 40-year-olds as "elderly"?!? This is what happens when you (the reader) skip the "Participants" section because you trust the authors to have done something reasonable...

2011-10-14 02:21:32 (2 comments, 12 reshares, 12 +1s)

Lightning Reveals Its Power in Slow Motion

If you thought lightning couldn't be any more awesome, you thought wrong. The power of slow motion let's you see every last spark as it dances across the sky.

One strike hovers in the frame almost the entire time while other hundreds of other strikes flicker in and out in single frames.

2011-10-07 16:20:53 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

http://www.vimeo.com/30172435 For the librarians in my life: A foaf's Dance Your Dissertation.

2011-10-07 14:53:36 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

The Big Picture has entries from the Nikon Small World competition today! My aesthetic favorites are numbers 15 (sand) and 19 (doesn't that look like a space-filling fractal curve?); my "Damn that's cool" favorites are 26 (water droplet with mosquito larvae in it) and 28 (embryonic shark).

2011-10-06 14:42:29 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 2 +1s)

http://betterposters.blogspot.com/2011/10/mostly-right.html
These guidelines on how your work is misperceived if you miss one element of the presentation are just as true for scientific writing as for posters.

2011-10-06 14:34:44 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 1 +1s)

I would have loved to learn about neuroscience in early education. This is a great idea.

2011-10-05 01:35:12 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Oatmeal spice chocolate chip cookies. Mine are an approximation of this recipe, since I had no orange zest, and I"m not big on nuts in cookies. And all I had were mini chocolate chips. Having the oven on this evening is glorious, though - we're starting to get cold nights (finally!).

2011-10-04 16:32:02 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

For all my new followers, here is my HDR album. Hope you enjoy!

2011-09-28 19:04:36 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Cognitive psychologists help solve a WWI shipwreck mystery. http://www.npr.org/2011/09/27/140816037/how-psychology-solved-a-wwii-shipwreck-mystery

2011-09-28 03:55:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

QOTD, from Rav: "One of my roommates in first year was learning to play the bagpipes. The first time I heard her practicing, I thought, “Why on earth would someone bring a dot matrix printer to university?”"

2011-09-27 22:38:58 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

2011-09-27 22:04:40 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Talked about brains to a bunch of HS students in Tyngsboro this morning. We got onto neurosurgery for epilepsy (which always comes up at these things), and one student asked how/if you ensure that the patient is not going to have a seizure while the surgery is happening. Anyone know more about this than me?

2011-08-25 02:39:15 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Test yourself: Two scientists want to know if a certain drug is effective against high blood pressure. The first scientist wants to give the drug to 1,000 people with high blood pressure and see how many of them experience lower blood pressure levels. The second scientist wants to give the drug to 500 people with high blood pressure and not give the drug to another 500 people with high blood pressure, and see how many in both groups experience lower blood pressure levels. Which is the better way to test this drug? Why is it better to test the drug this way?

Answer and some interesting data in the comments

2011-08-11 15:36:51 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

http://nyti.ms/nvZ96G Nice NYTimes piece on the plethora of light bulb options, and advice on wading through them.

2011-08-09 02:45:34 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

My post on the Scientific American guest blog! In which I discuss the structure of people's musical preferences and attempt to explain factor analysis for a general audience.

2011-07-15 14:46:13 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 1 +1s)

Are you a psychologist or neuroscientist on Google+? If so, please add yourself to this Google Spreadsheet so that others can find you. And, please share this widely.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?pli=1&hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=tK7JObyUaUhSUa3b1YdzLgA#gid=0

2011-07-15 13:52:04 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 12 +1s)

You know who else put his friends in circles? Dante.

2011-07-14 15:55:51 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

http://therumpus.net/2011/05/meanwhile-the-san-francisco-public-library/

2011-07-12 21:17:05 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Via Kottke: "Did you know 3-D printers could make complex objects with moving parts like gears and crescent wrenches? I had no idea...this is kind of mind-blowing."

2011-07-10 22:21:23 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

"I am interested in what you are doing and would like to share what I am doing with you.

"I know who you are, but you don't know or care who I am. However, I would like to know what you are up to. (The setting for collecting celebrity news and companies' loyalty discounts.)

"Apparently you find me interesting. Here, look at something/nothing/everything.

"I don't mind you using my profile on the social networking site to find my phone number, but I have zero interest in what you had for breakfast.

"You are the math nerds who I know, so I want to tell you about math; you are the knitting nerds I know, so I want to tell you about yarn. Other people can hunt this information down if they want to.

"You are the math nerds who I know, so I want to tell you about math; you are the knitting nerds I know, so I want to... more »

2011-07-10 03:27:35 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/07/how-a-parisian-artist-created-this-stunning-optical-illusion/#more-461017

2011-07-07 14:12:29 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 3 +1s)

hi all,

we, at google+ are passionate about bringing people together. and for us on hangouts it’s about really connecting small groups together face to face (to face to face... ). bringing people together from around the world... and bringing them together in a new way. we all have a human need to connect and communicate. some find communicating in this world easier than others.

one area that i'm personally quite passionate about is facilitating communications and community for the deaf. my grandfather, aunt, and uncle were/are all deaf. while i’m very much a novice, i find ASL to be a beautiful expressive language. i hope that hangouts can be awesome for the deaf & hh community as well as the hearing.

that said, i know that Hangouts aren’t good enough yet for this purpose. voice switching on the loudest speaker isn’t the right cue in this world;we need... more »

2011-07-04 03:05:31 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

New and Improved Google+ Notes/Bookmarking "Hack"
And a new "hack" to save Voice Memos from mobile phone

Hello Google+ friends:

This is an update to the "hack" I posted recently that allowed you to save notes/links to your own private area in Google+. This one improves on it thanks to others.
Thanks to everyone who shared the original "hack" - which seems to have gone viral with 300+ shares so far.

Note: "Hack" here is used in its good sense; don't worry this hack won't break anything; and no coding is involved!

Plus there are some additional tips, and a way to save voice memos while on the go from your mobile phone.

Thanks to +Brian Swetland for suggesting the change to my original version. [Brian's profile says he was the first Google Android engineer - which I... more »

2011-06-30 02:37:16 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Abby Noyce changed her profile photo.