Crazy, Cool and Weird Stuff

In an accident which causes internal bleeding, a simple external compression or tourniquet application simply won't be enough to increase the chance of survival for the victim. But now, thanks to the technology developed by Arsenal Medical, the chance of survival can be substantially increased.

This is a relatively old article but for what it's worth, this work done by Prof. Lene Vestergaard Hau from Harvard University proves that light can be changed into matter and subsequently changed back into light.

Prof. Lene Vestergaard Hau. Source: Here

They did the experiment by slowing the light pulse using a cloud of cold atom and the light, now travels at a very slow speed will made its imprint onto the cold atom. The experimenters then turned the light pulse off and tried to guide the imprint to a second cold atom cloud and surprising enough, the fingerprint can't be seen but the atom in the atom cloud were found not touching each other.

An illustration of a 'super-photon' created when physicists turned photons into a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. | Jan Klaers, University of Bonn. Source: Here

The distance between the first and second clump is only eight - thousandths of an inch apart but this can be considered a very distance gap. So when they nudge the second cloud with light pulse, then the imprint survives and is turned back to the light which has the same characteristics, shape and wavelength as it entered the first cloud.

From the first to the second clump of atom, the light change from the form of light pulse into an invincible matter wave, a clump of atom that travels through the cloud and behaving as wave. After the light beam was fired to the second clump, this matter wave turned into light pulse again and out it goes.

Well, the application of this light - matter conversion mostly will be in telecommunication as it is believed that light can carry information and it is almost tamper proof. We won't be seeing light be casually turned into matter in near future but the imagination will come true if we search hard enough for it.

Source: Here

I recall to have write something related with wearable technology somewhere in my blog and it turns out the world has gone better than that simple shirt. VTT, a business technology group has now designed several wearable technology in the form of ring, functional fingernail and wristbands.


Through a product they called "inTouch", it allows you to store data temporarily for it to be transferred from source device to a destination device. According to VTT, this technology could also be used in healthcare (well...) and in the future, may serve as an extra layer of security where passwords are stored only in this device and is used for online accounts or even unlocking doors.

Technology has pretty much intrudes everything in our lives. One of the aspects is medicine. Today, the concept of incorporating medicine with technology helps a lot in saving people's lives.

A patch to relieve chronic pain in time of need.

The image shown above is a concept brought by Thimble Bioelectronics and it is used as chronic pain reliever. Current treatment for chronic pain involves some medications (ibuprofen, aspirin, vicodin) or meditations. The patch in this concept will act as pain reliever by method of Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), an electrical shock uses in electric therapy to treat certain types of chronic pain.

Traditional equipment for TENS therapy. Quite scary as compared to above picture.

Normal TENS therapy will need the use of some electrical powered machine to deliver a shock via several electrodes attached to the body. The patch, however, will function like a bandage in which the user can administer their own pain relief when needed (kinda like administering your own drug intake). It will come with Bluetooth connectivity and mobile devices with a special app tracking how the patch is used and managed. Pretty neat, huh?

Source: Here

Now, almost all human beings on Earth will learn mathematics or to simply put it how to count. A lot of people will flunk out of math class and if we look closer a lot of these are mainly girls rather than boys.

A new English study has found that girls suffer from mathematics anxiety more than boys, confirming some previous research. The analysis also found that high math anxiety was a stronger predictor of poor test performance for girls than boys. 

Even though girls have a higher tendency  of  flunking math class but the fact is that girls that performed in math will have a higher and better grades than most boys. This kinda balance out the whole thing.

To better understand the implications of math anxiety, the researchers looked at tests and questionnaires from 4,333 English secondary school children (in their early to midteens).  Some have considered math anxiety a part of another misery familiar to students: test anxiety. In this study, the researchers assessed test anxiety and controlled for it to see if it factored into the results.

They found that test anxiety was also linked to poor mathematics performance, but this link was stronger for girls than boys.

While many, but not all, previous studies indicate girls suffer from higher mathematics anxiety than boys, it is not clear why.

Researchers have offered many speculative reasons for this difference: that it arises from sex roles that assign math to the male domain; that girls may be more willing to admit feelings of anxiety or may be more critical of themselves than boys; that boys have greater self confidence; and that past experience with mathematics is responsible, the researchers write.

Reference : http://www.livescience.com/21470-math-more-likely-to-make-girls-anxious.html

In Marvel movie The Avengers, it is stated that the Tesseract contains an unimaginable power and can be used as weapon of mass destruction if the power can be unlocked. Well, the tesseract that i'm refering to is not in the movie but rather the one in field of geometry.

Tesseract from the movie The Avengers

According to wikipedia, a tesseract is a four dimensional analog of the cube and sometimes is called 8-cell, regular octahoron or cubic prism. Tesseract is a four dimensional hypercube, (cube with dimension higher than 3) and first proposed by Charles Howard Hinton, a British mathematician in the 19th century. 

A tesseract image in Schlegel diagram.

A tesseract can be unfolded into 8 cubes in 3D space, the same as a cube unfolded 6 squares in 2D surface. The image below shows how a tesseract can be build from 1 dimensional space until the first cube projection in 4 dimensional space.

How to draw a tesseract from a single point ie one dimension.

There are other types of tesseract for example truncated tesseract and rectified tesseract in which they have different Schlafli Symbol and Schlegel diagram.  The existence of higher dimension is by far an abstract concept and none have observed these higher dimensions. Nonetheless, the mathematics suggests the possibility and therefore could exist in this vast universe.


p/s: I read somewhere in which lower dimensional object couldn't possibly see the higher dimension but the higher dimensional object can definitely see the lower one. Not sure how this implicates the existence of higher deity though. 

For the past hundred years, many scientists tried to do alchemy, in which the ultimate aim is to create a philosopher's stone, an object powerful enough to convert normal metal to gold or silver. The stone also is believed to hold the secret of immortality through elixir of life. Though not all part from alchemy is understood nowadays, it did provide a foundation for modern science and chemistry.

Nonetheless, people are still trying to find ways to create gold because after all, gold is considered high value item and represents the wealth of an individual. Unfortunately, the status may change due to recent finding at Michigan University. The finding, which is a bacteria named Cupriavidus metalliduransc (right?) is found to be able to produce gold nugget through microbial processes.

"Gold nugget" after the microbial alchemy

Well, the amount, as you can see from the picture is not much compare to the gold that you'll find in nature but with more research, the capability to turn something into gold, though amazing, may bring impact to world's economy.

Gold nugget found in nature

The researchers presented their finding as an art project called The Great Work of Metal Lover by using a portable lab house where the bacterium performs the "microbial alchemy" thingy. And luckily, the researchers said that replicating the bacterium's actions on a larger scale would be impractical and cost prohibitive.

Source: here

Dawn chorus refers to a phenomena that occurs during sunrise and with proper but unsophisticated equipment, you can hear a music played by the Earth.


The music is believed to be generated by interaction between high energy electrons that trapped in the Earth's magnetosphere and electromagnetic field from solar wind. Well, ignore the scientific jargon for now, chill and listen to the song of the earth.

P/s: I'm not grasping the how this music is created just yet. But you are welcome to read about it here and here.




Source: Here.

Since the discovery of brainwave by Hans Berger, neurologist from Germany, more advance applications are made to utilize the brain function, which includes using brain to give instructions to physical object. The video below shows several experiments done by researchers at Zhejiang University, China regarding thought control. 

Problems regarding weight has been well documented over the past decades or so. Diabetes, renal malfunction and high blood pressure which can lead to stroke are all associated with weight. Well, fear not, recent studies on John Hopkins University stated that there'll be an easy way to prevent and control this problem.

Neuropeptide Y - protein involves in regulating food intake and physical activity.

Researchers at the university found out that rat group injected with the virus ate less as compared to the control group. The virus is said to interrupt/attack/inhibit the process of Neuropeptide Y (NPY), an amino acid said to be responsible for energy regulation, learning and memory processing.

To make it even more surprising, the observation on the rat revealed that injected rat when given high calorie food, didn't convert them into white fat, but easy-to-burn brown fat instead. The virus is years from being able to be used on human though, but one can feel the ramification of this finding towards mankind.


Source: Here and here



p/s: i think the virus 'forced' the NPY to convert it to brown fat cause i don't think the virus is responsible for fat conversion. Well, it's just an opinion, i have no idea how it actually behaves though.

An insect fitted with piezoelectric generator to harness the energy from the insect's wing.

There is a new clock that makes you wanna wake even if you don't want to cause you can't afford not to.

The Shredder Clock is just a concept, but it’s a pretty good idea, and a new spin on the notion that money is a great morning motivator. Other alarm clock inventions force you to feed them money before they’ll shut up, or automatically donate to charities that you hate until you get out of bed, but this one lets you see your money going to waste.

You could conceivably shred anything you find precious, from letters to pictures, not just money even summons if you want to risk going to jail.

This actually seems like a decent DIY project — it probably wouldn’t take much work to sync a paper shredder to your alarm clock although the outcome won't be as good as this.

Source (http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-06/shredder-clock-chews-money-get-you-out-bed)

The game Janken or rock-paper-scissors is so famous that almost everyone know how to play it. In fact, recent news in the world of technology reveals the ability of a robot hand to play this game, and you'll never beat it.

The robot hand on the right is designed to have 100% winning rate

This robot was developed by Ishikawa Oku Laboratory (Japan, obviously) and with the super-duper high-speed sensor that'll read opponent's hand gesture, the robot will make a counter move that will beat the human's move.

Here's the video.
The purpose of this highly frustrating machine (cause you play the game and lose everytime) is to demonstrate its ability in real world situation where the robot must be able to react like human when necessary.

I hope the researchers can tweak the algorithms so that it can play rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock just like in the series The Big Bang Theory.
Here's the graphical representation as to what Sheldon Cooper said in the video.

Certainly technology has advance quite fast and hopefully all of these achievements can give benefit to human in a peaceful way. 

A group of engineers from Duke University and University of Arizona recently have managed to build a camera with 5 times better than human vision of 20/20.

The camera was built by synchronizing 98 tiny cameras into one device and a computer processor will then compiles all the image captured by the cameras using a software developed by a team led by Michael Gehm.

The 50 Gigapixel Camera with 2 and half feet square and 20 inches deep

The typical consumer camera ranges from 8 to 40 megapixels only and by comparison, the image produced by this new camera will have 12++ more pixels than consumer camera. This undoubtedly will create an image with excruciating details.

Even with the 50 Gigapixel of resolution, the optic part of the camera only constitutes around 3% of the overall size of the camera and the rest is divided into processors and electronics used to assemble the information gathered by the optic.

Example of a picture taken by the high resolution camera

Currently, the highest amount of pixels in a picture is 272 Gigapixels, created by Alfred Zhao using 12000 images all taken in Shanghai, China. You can see the picture and the amount of details in this website. Engineers in this team claim that with smaller electronics and processors are being made, camera with this resolution may be able for general consumer and everyday photographers.

Source: Here.

Below are some characters, that you might have seen throughout your life. Some of them may be familiar to you and some of them are not. 

Dr R. Andrew Hicks, a math professor at Drexel University has successfully eliminates 'blind spot' in current design of side mirror by introducing a curved side mirror. Normal side mirror is often flat, giving you around 17 degrees field of view. This revolutionize side mirror, on the other hand, can give you field of view around 45 degrees, allowing you to see more as compared to flat side mirror.

The curvy side mirror might gave you a wider field of view but the visual distortion on the mirror which can make straight line looks curvy presents with great risks, hence no car companies want to try and use it. But Dr Hicks invention on the other hand is created with mathematical algorithm so that the visual distortion is minimized and in his invention, the curvy straight line is barely detectable, suggesting low visual distortion, but still, object appears in a distance when in reality it is much closer.

In the curvy mirror above, the silver car is seen at a distance but is much closer in reality. However, the field of view in above mirror allows driver to see details that aren't present in flat mirror.

The metaphor given by Dr Hicks to his invention is like disco balls bouncing off light. We can imagine the mirror's surface is created with thousands of smaller mirrors and the algorithm will manipulate each of these smaller mirrors' direction so that the resulting big mirror will give wider view to the driver without distorting the visual appearance on the mirror.

His invention though great, but it won't be installed in any new car soon because of US regulations that a car must have flat side mirror or a phrase 'Objects in mirror are closer than they appear' must be included for curve mirror. Nevertheless, this is a good invention to eliminate the high statistics of vehicle accidents in the whole wide world. Dr Andrew Hicks also have designed several bizarre mirrors. You can check it out here.

Source: Here

Eidetic comes from Greed word eidos which means "seen". Eidetic memory means the ability to recall any visual/audio events with perfect accuracy and details. People who claim to have this kind of memory possess the skills to exactly remember an event, for example the event in a ball room, where he/she can recall where the person was standing, the people around him/her, the shirt they were wearing, food they ate down to what kind of conversation that they were having.

There are several series depicting a genius with this kind of memory for example Dr Spencer Reid in Criminal Minds and Dr Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. In real life however, the case of eidetic memory have yet to be understood fully but there are a few who claim to have this memory for example Stephen Wiltshire, a British architectural artist that can draw a landscape after seeing it once. Another person, Daniel Tammet, also a British citizen, who can recall the number pi up to 22 000 digits.

Dr Spencer Reid holds Ph.D in Math, Chemistry and Engineering as well as B.A. in Philosophy.

Dr Sheldon Cooper portrayed by Jim Parsons in The Big Bang Theory.

Psychologically, people who have eidetic memory sometimes suffer from a condition known as autism, a medical condition characterized by problems in social interaction and communication together with repetitive behavior. Generally, people who have eidetic memory suffer also with autism but people who suffer from autism may not have eidetic memory.


There are several myths involving photographic memory especially as to whether normal people can acquire it or not. Most of the techniques that claim to help you acquire this memory are actually memory improvement technique, not the actual eidetic memory. Nevertheless, it is always good to improve your memory as it may helps you from time to time.

Source: here and if you like to read about some of the myths, you can go here.

In space exploration, there are terms where researchers use in order to determine the distance of a star from earth. The two most common terms are astronomical unit, which is equivalent to approximately 150 million kilometers or the mean distance from earth to sun, and the other unit is light year, which is the distance of light travel by a year or 9.5*10^13 kilometers.

The video below shows how the distance of two stars between universe is measured. The video used only simple terms and people with no scientific background can also understand this. Give it a whirl.