Bible on a chip smaller than a pinhead

Thursday, December 20, 2007 Comments (0)

Israeli scientists said on Tuesday they have created the world’s smallest Bible, fitting a Hebrew-language version of the holy book on a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead.

A page of the world’s smallest electronic Bible. Israeli researchers were able to pack the 3,08,428 word Hebrew Bible – known to most as the Old Testament – on a 0.5 millimetre square

Researchers from Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, were able to pack the 3,08,428-word Hebrew Bible – known to most as the Old Testament – on a 0.5 millimetre square, said Ohad Zohar, who directed the project.

“This is the world’s tiniest Bible,” Zohar said. “The Guinness Book of World Records has a Bible 50 times bigger.”

The scientists managed their feat by sending focused beams of tiny particles, called gallium ions, onto the surface of the silicon chip.

“By sending a particle beam towards various points on the substrate, we can etch any pattern of points, especially one that represents text,” said Zohar, a physics student.

The nano-Bible was developed by the institute as part of a programme aimed at increasing interest in nanoscience among teenagers.

The scientists now want to take pictures of the miniature Bible and blow it up to a seven-by-seven metre poster, which will make it “possible to read the entire Bible with the naked eye,” he said.

Labels: unbelievable

Scientists who studied 'dolphinese' claim they are closer to humans than we thought

Wednesday, December 19, 2007 Comments (0)

Scientists are teaching themselves to speak dolphinese.

The real-life Dr Doolittles have identified nearly 200 distinct whistles and clicks made by dolphins in the wild - and say they know what half a dozen mean.

The findings highlight once again the intelligence of dolphins, and how humans may not have a monopoly on intelligent conversation.

Scientists claim to understand what half-a-dozen dolphin whistles and clicks mean

Liz Hawkins, of the Whale Research Centre at Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia, reckons her team has identified 186 different types of dolphin whistles. Of these, 20 are relatively common.

They include a flat-toned whistle made by dolphins as the rode the waves created by Dr Hawkins' boat. The team suspect the noise is the dolphin equivalent of an over-excited child shouting "wheeee".

In a group of dolphins living off Moreton island, Queensland, they identified a whistle made by lonely dolphins when they were on their own.

"That whistle could definitely mean 'I'm here, where is everyone?'," Dr Hawkins told New Scientist magazine.

Dr Hawkins eavesdropped on the group of bottle-nosed dolphins off the Western Coast of Australia for three years. The findings were presented at a conference of the Society for Marine Mammalogy in Cape Town, South Africa this month.

"This communication is highly complex and it is contextual, so in a sense it could be termed a language," she said.

Dolphins have long been known to use "signature whistles" to identity themselves to others. However, the meaning of the other clicks and whistles has been a mystery.

The researchers recorded 1,647 whistles from 51 different pods, or groups, of dolphin in Byron Bay, New South Wales.

Dr Hawkins was able to identify 186 distinct noises from the length and pitch of the sound.

Within these noises, were five groups of similar whistles that went with different types of behaviours. When a group of dolphins was moving, more than half of whistles rose and then fell.

But when they were resting or feeding, they made far fewer whistles of these type. While socialising, they "talked" to each other with flat-toned or rising-toned whistles.

A separate study found that dolphins make more whistles whey they are being hand-fed than dolphins in the wild.

Dr Melinda Rekdahl of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, said it was too early to say whether the whistles were the dolphins way of shouting "hurry up" or "there's food over here".

She added: "But it is possible. Dolphin communication is much more complicated than we thought."

Labels: best

Some 3,800 young people homeless in New York

Saturday, December 15, 2007 Comments (0)

An estimated 3,800 people under age 24 go homeless each night in New York City, but they blend in so well they are hard for social workers to find, according to the city's first-ever census of homeless youth.

Three-fourths come from minority groups, with black youths accounting for nearly half the total and Latino youths representing a quarter, said the survey, released on Friday

Gay, lesbian and bisexual youths were especially vulnerable, accounting for nearly a third of homeless cases.

"Young people who are homeless take great care to look like everyone else. They're unbelievably creative in their ability to find ways to make it look like they're not homeless at all," said Margo Hirsch, executive director of the Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services, which conducted the survey for the city.

While many homeless youth found temporary shelter with a friend or a relative, some 1,600 reported spending nights on the street, in an abandoned building or in a bus or train.

Selling sex, another 150 spent nights with a clients.

The count was conducted in July and surveyed just under 1,000 youth who were either homeless or at risk for homelessness.

Earlier this year, the New York City Department of Homeless Services reported that 3,755 New Yorkers of all ages, out of a total population of 8.2 million people, were living without shelter on any given night, down from 4,395 in 2005.

Labels: news

THE WORLD'S FASTEST HUMAN CALCULATOR

Thursday, December 13, 2007 Comments (0)

The human calculator: 393 trillion answers - and he picks the right one in 70 seconds

When the answer is 2,407,899,893,032,210 you know the question is tough.

Not so tough, however, that Alexis Lemaire could not work it out in his head.

His challenge yesterday was to come up with the 13th root of a computer-generated 200-digit number.

And, with 393 trillion possible answers to choose from, the PhD student made it almost look easy.

A mere 70.2 seconds later, he cracked it and officially became the world's fastest human calculator.

A slight frown and a stare of deep concentration had been the only sign the 27-year-old "mathlete" was doing anything more than running through the eight times table.

Appropriately, the Frenchman broke his previous world record of 72.4 seconds at the Science Museum in London, where he had a backdrop of Charles Babbage's 1840s Difference Engine No2, the first successful mechanical calculator.

For those in the know, 13th roots are a yardstick in mental arithmetic for mathletes determined to show ever greater feats of brainpower.

A 13th root is - if your maths is no longer at Mr Lemaire's level - a number that multiplied by itself 13 times matches the initial figure.

Lemaire used a computer to generate a massive 200-digit number before working out its 13th root

Mr Lemaire, from Reims, began demonstrating his mental prowess by finding the 13th root of a random 100 digit number.

But this soon became too easy. The first time he tried a 200-digit challenge, it took him 40 minutes.

Since then, he has put himself through a mental training regime that has seen him repeatedly cut his time.

Cracking the answer is, apparently not all about maths, it also owes a lot to memory. Mr Lemaire, who is single, has memorised thousands of combinations of 13th root numbers.

"It's a bit like multiplication tables but with huge digits," he said. "It's a combination of techniques, partly memory and partly maths."

Asked to explain further, he would only say: "I won't give you my secret."

He did, however, agree to try the Daily Mail's 30-Second Challenge, and finished the advanced task in eight seconds.

It was a more than respectable performance - but, for a champion "13th rooter", it didn't seem that impressive.

Perhaps he was still tired after his world record.

Labels: unbelievable