How many of you have ever wondered about how a song played on, say, the Martian surface would actually sound? Assuming you pressed the “play” button on a Hi-Fi audio system, would Bach’s famous “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” sound the same as on Earth, as you would expect? Scientists say that no, it would not, and explain why. Just like the outer space causes sound to travel with extremely high difficulty, because it lacks a proper propagation medium, so does the less dense atmosphere of other planets.
This is why, in the Martian atmosphere, for instance, you would barely hear anything at all, let alone perceive every note or, even less likely, enjoy the richness of Bach’s music. “Sound doesn’t travel very far on Mars,” explained Amanda Hanford, an acoustics doctoral degree candidate at Penn State University. Read the rest of this entry »
It is clear that alcohol consumption can turn a gentleman into a rude beast. For the first time, a new research study published in The Journal of Neuroscience explains why. Social drinkers intoxicated with alcohol have lowered sensitivity in brain nuclei controlling threat detection, while displaying higher activity in brain nuclei connected to reward.
“The key finding of this study is that after alcohol exposure, threat-detecting brain circuits can’t tell the difference between a threatening and non-threatening social stimulus. At one end of the spectrum, less anxiety might enable us to approach a new person at a party. But at the other end of the spectrum, we may fail to avoid an argument or a fight”, said Dr. Marina Wolf, at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Read the rest of this entry »
We are all in the search of happiness, but the failure of finding it can cause us all kinds of frustrations and psychological issues. First of all, it is tricky to even define happiness: is it having what you want or wanting what you have? A new research published in the Psychological Science tested this. The results point that people can grow accustomed to their possessions, which in the end bring them less happiness. Nevertheless, people can keep wanting the things they have and it is precisely this category that experiences the highest level of happiness.
The team, made by Texas Tech University psychologist Jeff Larsen and Amie McKibban of Wichita State University, asked undergraduate subjects to fill in a questionnaire assessing if they possessed 52 different material items, like a car, a stereo or a bed. Read the rest of this entry »
Here come the results for the 2007-2008 Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey. It was made on a pool of 26,000 people from 26 countries around the world, and the results may be surprising or not.
The list is topped by the Greeks, 87% of them having sex at least once a week, followed by the Brazilians, with 82%. Third on the list, with 80%, are the Russians. 60% of the Australians have sex weekly.
Only 55% of the British have sex at least once a week; the number is 53% for Americans and Nigerians, and 34% (!) for the Japanese. Read the rest of this entry »
A week or so ago you may recall many newspapers carried a story about an odd looking contraption that you strapped to your legs, which generated power as you walk, enough to power up to 10 mobile phones one report said. Well, here’s something a tad more elegant. Researchers at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology have come up with an idea that generates power from nano fibres, that can be incorporated into everyday items of clothing, like shirts and trousers. Pairs of fibres are coated with zinc oxide nanowires and as they rub against each other they generate tiny currents using a piezoelectric effect. Read the rest of this entry »
How many of you have ever wondered about how a song played on, say, the Martian surface would actually sound? Assuming you pressed the “play” button on a Hi-Fi audio system, would Bach’s famous “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” sound the same as on Earth, as you would expect? Scientists say that no, it would not, and explain why. Just like the outer space causes sound to travel with extremely high difficulty, because it lacks a proper propagation medium, so does the less dense atmosphere of other planets.
