A pig's 'mood' can show us how content he is, say researchers at Newcastle's School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development.

Led by Dr Catherine Douglas, the team has employed a technique to 'ask' pigs if they are feeling optimistic or pessimistic about life as a result of the way in which they live and their results say that pigs are capable of complex emotions which are directly influenced by their living conditions.

The Newcastle team taught the pigs to associate a note on a glockenspiel with a treat (an apple) and a dog training 'clicker' with something unpleasant – rustling a plastic bag.

Almost 30 years ago philosopher James Flynn discovered that IQ scores were increasing in every industrialized country around the globe. But before we pat ourselves on back, Bronson and Merryman warn us that we may be in the midst of a Creativity Crisis. Although IQ scores continue to climb, creativity scores, at least as measured on the Torrance Test of Creativity are dropping through the floor. 

After reviewing the scores of 300,000 children using the Torrance Test of Creativity, Kyung-Hee Kim of the College of William and Mary saw a steep decline in scores from kindergarteners to 6th graders.

What does the ionosphere sound like?  Well, our Project Calliope sonification will map the ionosphere's properties to a musical range.  What you'll hear is the volume and changes of activity within it.

In some ways, sound is the best method for getting a 'big picture' of an item.  Think of a large body of water.  With your eyes close, you can tell the gentle lapping of a lake from the burble of a brook, the flow of a river, or the periodic crashing waves of an ocean.

Werner Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty Principle'(1927) is a fundamental concept in quantum physics, basically saying you can be increasingly accurate in position or momentum (mass X velocity), but not both(1).  

This can be an important feature rather than a defect in something like quantum cryptography, where information is transmitted in the form of quantum states such as the polarization of particles of light.

A group of scientists from LMU and the ETH in Zurich say they have shown that position and momentum can be predicted more precisely than Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states - if the recipient makes use of a quantum memory that employs ions or atoms.

Optics normally treats the behaviour of packages of light waves (photons). However, when passing through appropriately shaped fields, particles may behave similar as photons. A beam of electrons that is not too dense will under such conditions behave similar to light beams that pass comparable lenses. In a dense beam the electrons will influence each others path via their own Coulomb field.

The OTF

While everybody is busy discussing the latest Tevatron results on the Higgs boson searches -is that the light-mass excess the internet was abuzz, is it consistent with a signal as we expected it, how long will it take to confirm it is not a fluke, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera- I think I have a different plot with which to enthuse you.

If you do not like the figure below, courtesy CMS Collaboration 2010, you are kindly requested to leave this blog and spend your time reading something else than fundamental physics. I do not know what will ever make you believe particle physics is beautiful, if not what is shown here.

Early last month, Michael White’s Adaptive Complexity on Science 2.0 had a useful critique of the citizen scientist.

Here's how I roll: my wife loves three-dollar bagels from the Sunday farmers' market. And so she says, "let's get a loaf of bread, some flowers, and a flat of strawberries!" When we roll home with only bagels, I feel I've won.

No more. I've armed myself with the tools of illogic, thus guaranteeing I win every marital argument from this point forward. You can too.

Use the following brain-deflating fallacies to ensure dominance in debate club and/or with unsuspecting significant other.

Arctic Ice July - Update #5

The sharp decline in ice extent slowed somewhat during July.  Some people are claiming this as a sign of recovery.

If you are going downhill at full throttle and you take your foot off the gas you will slow down.  A bit.  But if the brakes aren't working you are in for an exciting time.

Loss of ice extent has slowed down.  A bit.  In plain language: loss of ice continues to be a lot more rapid than has been considered normal historically.

Almost the entirety of the main Arctic Ocean ice cover shows substantial amounts of open water.  The ice is freely mobile in most areas.  Both the North West Passage and the Northern Sea Route, aka North East Passage seem to be easily navigable by icebreakers.

Plastiki  is made out of – you guessed it – plastic. Plastiki, the plastic bottle version of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki  , was carried from San Francisco to Sydney on a conveyor belt...._{and wind}

I remember when water bottles were introduced on the Norwegian market. It was the most stupid idea I had ever heard of and could not imagine how anybody would be willing to loose their money on this bound to fail business project. Obviously I was wrong. Even in a clean country like Norway where fresh water is abundant everywhere there was a market for bottled water. Go figure.