13 DEC 2018 by ideonexus
A Minority of Users Account for Majority of Online Comments
In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016.
When NPR analyzed the number of people who left at least one comment in both June and July, the numbers showed an even more interesting pattern: Just 4,300 users posted about 145 comments apiece, or 67 percent of all NPR.org comments for the two month...
1 29 SEP 2017 by ideonexus
Government Internet Shutdown Mobilized the Masses
The government could have been smarter. The best way to divert our youth from politics would have been to give them free, unlimited internet access a few days before the protests, and drop the price of beer and condoms – all the while playing “Be safe, live long” songs on the radios. The youngies would have been watching porn, WhatsApping and YouTubing, and would have been too distracted to think about politics.
Shutting down the internet achieved the opposite. Far from limiting youth mobili...
1 09 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
Physiological Decline in the Body When You Stop Exercising
...regular endurance exercise leads to four major consequences:
Increased ability of the heart to eject blood
increased ability of the blood vessels to send blood to where blood is needed
Increased number of capillaries (the vessels that deliver oxygen and ‘food’ to the muscles)
increased size and the number of mitochondria (the “power plants” of the cells).
All these changes lead to the more efficient use of oxygen, as well as nutrients.
[...]
Pino considers a person who can run 5 kilom... 1 
notes
notes27 APR 2015 by ideonexus
Math Problem: How Long Until the Earth Falls Into the Sun?
Our earth has orbital motion, revolving once around the sun in about 365 days. Suppose that this orbital motion suddenly stopped completely, but everything else remained the same. How long would it take for the earth to plunge along a straight line into the sun?
[...]
Kepler's law applies to planetary orbits, whether they be of circular, or elliptical shape. It says that T22/T12 = R23/R13, where T is the period of an orbit and R is its semi-major axis. The semi-major axis is the average of th... 1 notes
notes08 APR 2013 by ideonexus
The Planning Fallacy
Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, then closed it. The witch rubbed the bridge of her nose, looking thoughtful. "Mr. Potter... if I were to offer to listen to you for a while... is there anything you'd like to talk to me about?"
"About what?"
"About why you're convinced you must always be on your guard against terrible things happening to you."
Harry stared at her in puzzlement. That was a self-evident axiom. "Well..." Harry said slowly. He tried to organise his thoughts. How could he exp...Folksonomies: cognitive bias fallacy
Folksonomies: cognitive bias fallacy
1 notes
notesWe underestimate how close we are to completing a task, the only solution is to consider how long it took us to complete the last time we did it.
30 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Exercise Increases the Number of Mitochondria in Brain Ti...
Past experiments have shown persuasively that exercise spurs the birth of new mitochondria in muscle cells and improves the vigor of the existing organelles. This upsurge in mitochondria, in turn, has been linked not only to improvements in exercise endurance but to increased longevity in animals and reduced risk for obesity, diabetes and heart disease in people. It is a very potent cellular reaction.
[...]
Like muscles, many parts of the brain get a robust physiological workout during exer...A study on mice finds that exercise increases the production of mitochondria in brain tissue in addition to their production in muscle tissue (I dig the term "mitochondrial biogenesis" as describing the benefit).
21 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Development of Memory in Infants
Memory is not a single entity but a patchwork of several different forms of information storage that emerge progressively with the maturation of different brain circuits. Babies begin life with a primitive yet very useful set of memory skills; lower parts of the brain can store information, but it is at an automatic level, beneath consciousness, and lasts for relatively short periods of time. Then, starting at eight or nine months of age, they show signs of a more flexible, deliberate type of...Folksonomies: memory infant development
Folksonomies: memory infant development
1 notes
notesThe first paragraph in this passage outlines the development milestones, while the second is included for its eloquence. Then select passages on habituation, classical and operant conditioning are included as types of memory.
21 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Practice Walking Helps Infants Walk Earlier
In fact, contrary to all of the early anecdotes claiming that practice has no effect on the onset of walking, one carefully controlled study has shown that special exercise can indeed accelerate it. In this study, a group of newborns were given just ten minutes per day of "practice walking." Every day between one and nine weeks of age, the baby would be held upright by a parent, with his feet on a table, and allowed to exercise his stepping reflex. Two additional groups of babies received, re... 1 notes
notesBy having the parent hold the infant upright on a table to practice walk for just 10 minutes a day, they are able to accelerate the child's acquisition of this skill; however, infant walkers are found to be detrimental to this purpose for the lack of feedback they provide.
