Friday Foolery #11. Is Friday the 13th bad for your Health?

Is Friday the 13th bad for your health?

Apparently it is, at least according to a study published in the BMJ in 1993 [1].
This retrospective study comparing driving and shopping patterns and accidents shows that Friday 13th is unlucky for some. Despite that there were consistently and significantly fewer vehicles on the southern section of the M25 on Friday the 13th compared with Friday the 6th, the admissions due to transport accidents were significantly increased on Friday 13th (total 65 v 45; p < 0.05). Since the risk of hospital admission as a result of a transport accident may be increased by as much as 52%, staying at home is recommended by the authors.

In a related article (PubMed) in the Am J Psychiatry (2002), deaths from Finnish traffic accidents on Friday the 13th were compared with those on other Fridays. Here a difference was found between men and women. In men, the adjusted risk ratio for dying on Friday the 13th, compared with other Fridays, was 1.02, (no difference) but for women, it was 1.63. An estimated 38% of traffic deaths involving women on this day were attributable to Friday the 13th itself.
Therefore again this author concludes that Friday the 13th may be a dangerous day, but only for women. The author thinks this is  largely because of anxiety from superstition. Although the risk of traffic deaths on this date could be reduced by one-third, the absolute gain would remain very small: only one death per 5 million person-days.

Other Finnish researchers reinvestigated this finding, but they also looked at the injury accident database, because this database contains much more data than the fatality database. They reasoned that if there was a Friday-the-13th effect by impaired psychic and psychomotor functioning due to more frequent anxiety among women, it should also appear in the number of injury crashes. They found no consistent evidence for females having more road traffic crashes on Fridays the 13th, based on deaths or road accident statistics. Still, since an effect of superstition related anxiety on accident risk can not be excluded, the authors conclude that people who are anxious of “Black Friday” may stay home, or at least avoid driving a car.

Well at least you now know what scientific research says about Friday the 13th, or uuh don’t you?
At least, females suffering from Paraskevidekatriaphobia or even Triskaidekaphobia should better stay at home. You know, just in case…

Credits:

• Hattip for 1st article: @TheSofa
• Photo Friday the 13th: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danniquee/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

References

1. Scanlon TJ, Luben RN, Scanlon FL, Singleton N. Is Friday the 13th bad for your health? BMJ. 1993 Dec 18-25;307(6919):1584-6.
2. Näyhä S. Traffic deaths and superstition on Friday the 13th. Am J Psychiatry. 2002 Dec;159(12):2110-1.
3. Radun I, Summala H. Females do not have more injury road accidents on Friday the 13th. BMC Public Health. 2004 Nov 16;4:54.

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• Triskaidekaphobia or fear of 13 (tech.bl0x.info)
• Friday the 13th Superstitions | Triskaidekaphobia (blippitt.com)
• Friday the 13th Superstitions: Triskaidekaphobia, Fear Of 13, Fuels List Of Related Fears (huffingtonpost.com)

Friday Foolery #10. 6 x X-Rays

“X-rays” were in the news this week, at least there was an illuminating exposure on Twitter. Here are 6 stories, half serious and half not so serious.

[1] First, voters have picked the X-ray machine as the most important scientific invention (objects in science, engineering, technology and medicine), in a poll to celebrate the centenary of the Science Museum in London. As a matter of fact medical inventions were in the top three places in the poll (1. X-ray machines 2. Penicillin and 3. DNA double helix), ahead of the Apollo 10 capsule (no. 4) and the steam engine (8).

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8339877.stm
BMJ: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/339/nov05_3/b4602?rss=1

[2] Margaret Daalman came to hospital complaining of stomach ache – and one glance at her X-ray showed why:  the 52-year-old woman’s stomach contained an entire canteen of cutlery. She had to go under the knife to remove the (78!) forks and spoons. (see fotos here) The woman told the doctors: ‘I don’t know why but I felt an urge to eat the silverware – I could not help myself.’ She was somewhat picky however, as she never ate knives.
The images were actually taken over 30 years ago, but they were published for the first time this week in a Dutch medical magazine. Yes the woman was Dutch. At least according to the Daily Mail…….

However, the actual story published as a case in Medisch Contact is somewhat different.They actually state below the article:

Mededeling redactie

Over deze casus is in de populaire media foutieve berichtgeving gaande. De in andere media opgevoerde ‘mw Daalmans’ heeft niets te maken met deze casus. Het betreft, in tegenstelling tot wat elders wordt beweerd ook geen casus van 30 jaar geleden.

Which means something like: in contrary to what has been stated by the popular press this case has nothing to do with Mrs Daalmans, nor did it happen 30 years ago.
In effect, the Daily Mail mentions both (?) Rotterdam and Sittard as towns where this should have taken place, but in Medisch Contact only Helmond was mentioned. The towns are far apart.

One wonders why, because the story is extraordinary enough.

Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1223563/The-woman-knife--swallowing-entire-canteen-cutlery.html
Twitter: http://twitter.com/drves/status/5403151285
Medisch Contact: http://medischcontact.artsennet.nl/blad/Tijdschriftartikel/Bestek-in-de-maag.htm

[3] An obese man died after refusing an X-ray taken in a machine for zoo animals because he was too large for the hospital’s X-ray machine, the maximum capacity of most hospital machines being around 200 kilo. Later his wife told that the man felt too humiliated to go to the zoo.

The Local (Germany news in English, Bild.de.) http://www.thelocal.de/society/20091103-22993.html

[4] Todays Friday Funny post of dr. Val at Better Health is Joyful Radiology or Merry X-Ray

Better Health: http://getbetterhealth.com/the-friday-funny-joyful-radiology/2009.11.06

[5] A special X-Ray: CAT-scan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinkearney/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

[6] When both your arm and the X-ray are broken:

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Ooh, I wonder whether the great number of X-ray related posts has something to do with the upcoming overlooked holiday: X-ray day (November 8th).

Can someone put the light off?

Articles by Zemanta

• X-ray machine voted top modern discovery in poll (guardian.co.uk)

Silly Sunday #9: the Apocalypse of the Vocal Bubblewrap.

Tuesday Grand Rounds will be hosted by Gina Rybolt of Code Blog (see announcement).

O dear, a few hours left before the deadline expires …. What to do?

I could submit the post on BlogWorld Expo [SOTB], where I embedded an interview with Gina and Kim.

However, because it is almost Haloween, Gina is all for the super-scary!

What about the Attack of the Flu-Virus Invaders. Pretty Scary if viewed under magnification.

Or what about the next video. I could barely watch it. It is not medical, but it sure looks like eyeballs. Moohaha!

You know, we let Gina choose.

Hattip: @2525 (Francisco van Jole). This is what he said: “De bolletjes van bubblewrap laten knallen? Na het zien van deze gruwelijke film nooit meer”. And I agree, after seeing this *horror film* I will never ever pop a bubble wrap again (2x)

This post is tagged as Friday Foolery post (#9)

Friday Foolery #8: Dynamic LAIKA Sputnik and Pandora’s box

@fackeldeyfinds on Twitter alerted me to the following video saying: “This one is for you”.

more about “LAIKA on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

Indeed the video is about Laika Sputnik, but not about me, nor Laika the dog, but about a dynamic font “that can seamlessly use the whole spectrum of its cuts. A font that is able to move between its extremes in real time. An interactive font that is able to respond to its surroundings.”

Apparently Laika has been developed by two Swiss men, Michael Flückiger und Nicolas Kunz, for their bachelor thesis at the Hochschule der Künste Bern.

You can read more on their website http://laikafont.ch/ (see here for English version).

On that website you can also dynamically interact with Laika by moving your mouse (see test-page).

More fun with fonts and letters by Michael Flückiger: “Details Pandoras Box” and Typocraphic Spiderweb. The last is really spectacular.

more about “Details Pandoras Box on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

more about “Typocraphic Spiderweb on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

Friday Foolery #7 Play Doh World, the Safe and Unexpected

Seen at the Loom of Carl Zimmer: using Play Doh, Sophia Tintori and Cassandra Extavour talk about multicellularity and the specialization of reproductive cells.

The video, made by the evolutionary biologist Casey Dunn, is from Creature Cast, a collaborative blog produced by members of the Dunn Lab at Brown University. The Dunn Lab investigates how evolution has produced a diversity of life. On this newly evoluted “Creature Cast” you can find short, original and  good quality posts on zoology in the broad sense often with beautiful photos or videos. You can now subscribe to the CreatureCast video podcast through Brown University at  iTunes U.

more about “CreatureCast Episode 2 on Vimeo“, posted with vodpod

Work provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Another example of a great post on Creature Cast is the Tale of two holes about why some animals have one hole and others two. Does the single hole in one-holed animals correspond to the mouth or anus of animals with two holes?  Apparently the same sets of genes appear in many different contexts within and across species. In this case there are two distinct modules for mouth and blastopore (the first hole developed in animals during their development) and they can be decoupled. Again there is a terrific photo made by Dunn showing a sea anemone with a single hole for eating, excreting, and shedding eggs and sperm, and an annelid worm with two holes.

This is a Friday Foolery post, thus permit me to show me something completely different: a successful Play-Doh ad-campaign started in Singapore (what a coincidence, the city I left 26 h ago). These ads talk to parents directly, reminding them about the thousand of possible things you can make with the product, but even more so about how safe it is to play with it. (although someone commented: “what if kids eat those pills? Although Play-Doh is non-toxic…)

From: Play Doh Ads Make Crying Out For Help Fun [Weird] (consumerist.com) and A campaign with an edge (uglydoggy.com)

Related articles by Zemanta

• CreatureCast video: multicellularity explained (boingboing.net)
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Silly Sunday [5]: Best use of Twitter so far!

I had no time to post a Friday Foolery post. So I make it a Silly Sunday post.

The comic is posted at: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-10-04/

Thanks to @Pharmagossip (for strip and title)

Oh and here is another Twitter-comic: Twitterous girlfriend by meerasapra

picture taken by erben, hattip: @matushiq

Friday Foolery [4]: Maps & Mapping

In the previous post I showed a map of the world made in 1689.
Here only half of North America was represented, because the world was “Europe-centered”.
The map was made in Amsterdam, Europe.

How different is the world according to Americans (source: Neil Bonginkosi Lawrence Taverner of the blog Other things amanzi on Facebook).

The Netherlands have even been submerged into the sea

Countries and continents can also be extremely “big” or extremely “small” in real life. See the sometimes confronting representation “of the world as you never saw it at worldmapper.org. See for instance the world worldmapper age of death animation (CC).

At breathingearth.net you get a real life picture of CO2 emissions, birth rate & death rate simulation (no Figure, it is an animation).

This real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates.

Please remember that this real time simulation is just that: a simulation. Although the CO2 emission, birth rate and death rate data used in Breathing Earth comes from reputable sources, data that measures things on such a massive scale can never be 100% accurate. Please note however that the CO2 emission levels shown here are much more likely to be too low than they are to be too high.

Less serious, but also characteristics is the well known map of online communities from xkcd webcomics (http://xkcd.com/256/)

Map of online communities From xkcd webcomics (http://xkcd.com/256/)

Google Mashups we have seen used for many serious things, like for mapping H1N1 infections, but I had to smile about this map of exploding i-phones (via @NilsGeylen on Twitter)

Twitter’s #FollowFriday #FF – Over the Top. Literally

Last Update: Sunday (2009-13-09), text added in blue

The Twittermeme #FollowFriday (or #FF) was started January this year by Micah Baldwin (@micah) with one single Tweet: “I am starting Follow Fridays. Every Friday, suggest a person to follow, and everyone follow him/her. Today its @fancyjeffrey & @w1redone.”

A friend of Micah suggested to add the hashtag (a community driven tag) #FollowFriday to the tweet, some other friends helped to spread the word and a tweetmeme was born: now, all over the world #FollowFriday is a Twitter “trending topic” on Fridays (see Mashable)

http://ec.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/followfridaychart.png

The concept of FollowFriday is that every Friday you recommend a few people to your Twitter-followers. For at least 2 reasons:

1. it is a way to acknowledge those particular people
2. it is a very efficient way for your followers to find other interesting Twitter people

Ideally (at least IMHO) the #FollowFriday tweets (message of 140 characters or less):

• should consist of:
  • the hashtag #FollowFriday,  #FF or both
  • 1-3 names of people you would like to recommend (the tweet should not start with their names, because otherwise only the recommend person himself and your mutual friends will be able to read the tweet, -this doesn’t make much sense)
  • a short explanation why you recommend him/her.
• are tweeted on Fridays
• are more or less unique (just one or two tweets, not dozens in a row)
• should only recommend the best people in a particular field
  

Two examples, one by me and one by @jpardopardo (it was my one and only #FF recommendation in two weeks)

1. 
   laikas My #followfriday goes to @aarontay , a techy librarian from Singapore. Has many tips as a tweeter and a blogger http://is.gd/2ssJ3 #ff #fb 21 Aug 2009 from TweetDeck
2. 
   jpardopardo #followfriday Cochrane tweets you can not miss: @cochranecollab @radagabriel @MESOttawa @laikas @TSC_OH @DavidTovey 04 Sep 2009 from web

– this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

In these examples the hashtag #FollowFriday is followed by one or several names with the reason one should follow the person.

The general format thus would be:

#followfriday #FF @username Reason why you should follow him/her, area of interest, Their website URL, if applicable

If my followers see that I consider @aarontay a great techy librarian having a lot of good tips, they might find it worth while 2 check him by clicking @aarontay or the link to his blog http://is.gd/2ssJ3. If they go to his Twitter homepage and  find his tweets awesome, than they might decide to start following him.

If you’re interested in the Cochrane Collaboration, then you might try the tweople that are recommended by @jpardopardo. It takes somewhat more time, however, to check all 6 people, but it may yield some interesting new people to follow.

Thus, in principle #FollowFriday is a great tool to find other interesting people, BUT…

…suppose you’re following someone that tweets all this (x 3-5 times) every Friday?

I don’t follow this person (name not shown), but if I did, these #FollowFridays are really meaningless. I don’t know why I should follow the “suggested” people, nor do I want to try all the links. Furthermore if someone produces 10 or more of these kinds of tweets (those people exist!), my twitter account gets clogged with useless clutter. Its worse than an inbox full with spam.

But some people are even worse. They not only tweet a huge amount of meaningless FollowFridays, they also retweet (RT) the FollowFridays in which they are included to let the world know how popular they are (I can’t think of any other reason than that they want to show off).

And it is counterproductive….

Instead of following the recommended people I will unfollow those kind of FollowFridaying people (at the end).

I’m not a CEO or a marketing woman. I don’t want 10000 people to follow me, and even less so do I want to follow 10.000 people back.

I only desire to follow interesting people with a high signal to noise ratio of tweets in a manageable way.

I always thought that I was exceptional in thinking like this, but last two weeks several of my Twitter friends started to talk about the downside of FollowFridays. And when I Googled, o dear, the whole Twitterverse seemed to have written about it. (glad I Googled after I had almost finished this post)

1. 
   DrVes I don’t participate in “Follow Friday” (any day is good to recommend somebody) but @Dr_Steve_Ponder offers great diabetes info as Dr/patient 28 Aug 2009 from TweetDeck
2. 
   sciencebase I think it’s time to abandon #FollowFriday as a twitter meme, unless we can make it more useful and effective. 04 Sep 2009 from web
3. 
   novoseek agree / RT @sciencebase: I think it’s time to abandon #FollowFriday as a twitter meme, unless we can make it more useful and effective. 04 Sep 2009 from TweetDeck
4. 
   laikas RT @sciencebase: think it’s time 2 abandon #FollowFriday as a twitter meme, unless we can make it more useful/effective. wouldn’t agree more 04 Sep 2009 from TweetDeck
5. 
   DrShock RT @laikas: RT @sciencebase: think it’s time 2 abandon #FollowFriday what about #rec? 04 Sep 2009 from Seesmic

– this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

Oh and here is another one today (13-09)
pfanderson @laikas @wichor Yeah, I really hate it on Follow Friday when folks fill up a whole page nothing but people’s names. 22 minutes ago from web in reply to laikas

SO WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS? (blue added after publication)

ALTERNATIVES

1. Abandon FollowFriday
2. Just recommend anyone (special) whenever you like (DrVes , DrShock),
3. @MarilynMann: “What I do find useful is when someone joins twitter and people tweet “please welcome ___ to twitter,” which can be done any day of the week”
4. @sciencebase: “RT is the much better way to show fellow twitters that you care. If you’re RT’ing their tweets then you’re demonstrating that what they’re saying bears repeating, so recommending them indirectly…”
5. @philbaumann ’s tip mentioned by @problogger in the same post:  Mark tweets from people you want to recommend on FollowFriday by favoriting them and tweet the URL of your favorites page (i.e., see the URL of Philbaumann’s Favorites page).
6. Share Groups of Twitter Users in One Click with TweepML (Mashable) – here are some lists from which you can choose: http://tweepml.org/follow/, including a top librarianlist. Of course there are already many lists and directories around, but the good thing is that you can personalize your own top groups and that another person can add anyone from that list by simple clicking.
7. Use #MrTweet Instead of #FollowFriday, send your weekly recommendation there, get an overview of the most awesome people according to your friends and get recommended yourselves (see bkmacdaddy). [added 2009-09-02]
   
   BETTER USE
   
   
8. Use FollowFriday sparingly and wisely, i.e. as described above. In fact the founder of FollowFriday proposes similar rules.
9. Mention a series of people on Twitter and tell why they’re great people on your blog -there is more room there (sucomments)
10. @problogger: (on his blog Twitip.com) “Spread your tweets throughout the day via scheduling services like Tweetlater (currently rebranding themselves as SocialOomph, Futuretweet or Hootsuite” (while taking care of the twitteretiquette, see above).
11. Matt Stratton proposes to use the hashtag fussy-follow-friday, to discrimate good tweets from bad ones.
12. Maija Haavisto, again on Twitip.com: “ask others for recommendations (such as “female sports bloggers” ..), either as a normal tweet or by posing a question to someone. They reply with names of Twitter users – preceding the initial @ with a period or something else, if they want others to see their recommendations. All tweets should be tagged with #ff or #followfriday, of course.

    EXTRA TIP TO KEEP YOUR Followfriday-recommendations

13. Perform a Twittersearch with (your @twittername  OR your twittername) (#followfriday OR #ff OR followfriday) and take an RSS-feed to that search. You see your recommendations and who has recommended you.
    Thus my search looks like (laikas OR @laikas)(#followfriday OR #ff OR followfriday) (and you can also add “friday”)

To add fussy-follow-friday to the follow friday tweet [10] seems unnecessarily complex to me. Asking others for recommendations [11] is a good suggestion, but I don’t see me applying that approach each Friday. I would (and already do) use this approach on selected occasions. Why not just use FollowFriday as it was meant to be used: recommend one or two people once a week [3]. I still like the idea. Contrary to marketing people and strategists, I’m already happy and honored when I’m FollowFridayed: for me it doesn’t have to lead to tons of followers (for others this is the main goal). In my case it has lead to some new, great twitterfriends. Quality is more important to me than quantity. I’ve  “met” some new interesting people, who I might not have met otherwise.

Option 2, 3 and 4 also seem very sensible to me. I share the mild) critique of @problogger regarding 5: “Not every tweet I Favorite comes from someone I necessarily want to recommend and favorites are not necessarily tweets planned on sharing. But people not using favorites often might find this an excellent option.”

6 seems more of an adjunct, nice tool, but less personal.

What do you think?

(Solutions may be added to the above list)

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• Why #FollowFriday on Twitter Fails to Satisfy (ariwriter.com)
• Follow Friday (sucomments.com)
• Thanks for helping me get 20,000 Twitter followers in 4 months! (medicineandtechnology.com)
• TweeHits – check your FollowFriday rank (twi5.com)
• Twitroduce – Introduce your twitter friends (twi5.com)
• Woork’s Follow Friday List – Issue 01 (woork.blogspot.com)

suggest a list of people they followed whom they believed others would also enjoy

Read more: http://mattstratton.com/2009/06/10/fussy-follow-friday/#ixzz0QprUkP3o

Friday Foolery [3] Showing the invisible

I always found it difficult to think abstract. It was not until physics class at college, that I started to understand physics formulas,  because our professor gave practical examples from real life, i.e. he made me understand why the sky was blue. Mathematics was all right as long as we stayed in two dimensions, but stereometry was already one dimension too much. Molecules, chemical bonds and atomic structure were also vague especially when wave-particle duality came into play. It was even hard to imagine what DNA really looks like. At one stage I even tried to make a DNA structure at home from matches and colored clay. But the model was so fragile, that it crashed before the first minor groove was finished.

Nowadays, students are so lucky: a computer, the internet, beautiful graphs, videos, 3D-animations.

Below a mixture of recent  and some old animations and 3D representations, that highlight our understanding of numbers and dimensions, the infinite small and the infinite large.

First 3D image of an individual molecule and its bonds!

A real breakthrough was the visualization of the atomic backbone of an individual molecule (pentacene) and its atomic bonds. As reported in the August 28 issue of Science magazine, IBM Research Zurich scientists (in collaboration with Peter Liljeroth of Utrecht University), accomplished this by using an atomic force microsope (ATM) operated in an ultrahigh vacuum and at very low temperatures ( 268oC or 451oF). According to the researchers this is reminiscent of X-rays that pass through soft tissue to enable clear images of bones.

Below you see:

• the chemical structure of pentacene with 22 carbon atoms (Wikipedia).
• the force map image of pentacene (IBM).
• a video-interview with the researchers explaining their research (IBM-Labs).

Hattip: @jensmccabe (twitter) and Greg Laden (twitter and blog)
More info: www.physorg.com and gizmodo.com

The Galaxy mapped

Now quite the opposite infinity: the universe: “what 100,000 nearby large (i.e., Milky Way sized and larger) galaxies, look like reduced each reduced to a point” (translation by @dreamingspires) or “will give you an idea how totally insignificant we are” (@scanman). These tweople referred to Etann Siegel’s blog “It starts with a bang”.

One of the original researchers (Dominique Proust) has also posted a short description of the study and an image on the internet which shows the clustering pattern of about 100,000 nearby galaxies, revealed by the 6dF Galaxy Survey (see here) : “Each galaxy is shown as a dot. The galaxy we live in is at the centre of the pattern” (an enlargement of the image is here).

The astronomers came from all over the world (Australia, the UK, USA, South Africa, France and Japan). Their survey “will reveal not only where the galaxies are but also where they’re heading, how fast, and why. “It’s like taking a snapshot of wildebeest on the African plain. We can tell which waterholes they’re heading to, and how fast they’re travelling,” said D. Heath Jones of the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO), lead scientist for the Six-Degree Field Galaxy Survey (6dFGS)”

Dimensions

1, 2, 3 ….no here are 10 dimensions explained

but the 4th dimensions will do for me

Powers of 10

A classical video: the powers of ten. It dates from 1977. I have seen it during college and it made a lasting impression.
Powers of Ten explores the relative size of things from the microscopic to the cosmic. The 1977 film travels from an aerial view of a man in a Chicago park to the outer limits of the universe directly above him and back down into the microscopic world contained in the man’s hand.

There is even a website “powers of ten”. At the right you can click on a power of ten. Like 10 ¹³ and 10 -¹³

13

Measuring in meters, this power of ten is equal to 10 billion kilometers. We see the outer planets as they circulate counterclockwise, all in nearly the same plane.

Measuring in seconds, this power of ten equals

• Space 10 billion kilometers
• 317, 097 years.
• Unmanned Space Probes
• Johannes Keppler
• Space First Images Of Jupiter through Time

-13

Measuring in meters, this power of ten is equal to .1 picometer or 100 fermis. We see the kernel of a carbon atom, bound by six neutrons and six protons. This nucleus is dubbed carbon-12.

Measuring in seconds, this power of ten equals 100 femtoseconds.

• 100 fermis
• 100 femtoseconds
• Lasers
• Niels Bohr

Also the Wikipedia explains large numbers and astronomically large numbers. The Dutch Wikipedia gives more examples from daily life:

Do you still need some help in mathematics? Here is a tip from a Dutch educator @trendmatcher: your free online 24/7 math help, meant to help high school students with their homework. (There is also non-free material)

More frivolous:

Modern steps through time (via @scanman and @drves) : kalman.blogs.nytimes.com

And a  Twitter visualization tool that shows about 11,000 “good morning” tweets over a 24 hour period, between August 20th and 21st. All tweets are color-coded: green blocks are early tweets, orange ones are around 9am, and red tweets are later in the morning. Black blocks are ‘out of time’ tweets which said “good morning” (or a non-english equivalent) at a strange time in the day. Seen at the blog of @zbdigitaal (Edwin)
The original post and the video can be found here

more about “ZB DIGITAAL: Goede Morgen! 24 uur twe…“, posted with vodpod

REFERENCES:

Leo Gross, Fabian Mohn, Nikolaj Moll, Peter Liljeroth, and Gerhard Meyer. “The Chemical Structure of a Molecule Resolved by Atomic Force Microscopy.” Science, 28 August 2009: Vol. 325. no. 5944, pp. 1110 – 1114. DOI: 10.1126/science.1176210.

The 6dF Galaxy Survey: Final Data Release (DR3) and Southern Large Scale Structures
Jones D Heath., Read Mike A., Saunders Will., Colless Matthew., Jarrett Tom., Parker Quentin., Fairall Anthony., Mauch Thomas., Sadler Elaine., Watson Fred., Burton Donna., Campbell Lachlan., Cass Paul., Croom Scott., Dawe John., Fiegert Kristin., Frankcombe Leela., Hartley Malcolm., Huchra John., James Dionne., Kirby Emma., Lahav Ofer., Lucey John., Mamon Gary., Moore Lesa., Peterson Bruce., Prior Sayuri., Proust Dominique., Russell Ken., Safouris Vicky., Wakamatsu Ken-ichi., Westra Eduard., Williams Mary: 2009,
submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Friday Foolery [2]. How to use your inhaler. NOT.

For the first time seen on Allergynotes: “Compliance” or “Are you using your inhaler right.” I really had to laugh out loud when I saw it, and so did my daughter and husband.

Therefore I would like to share it with you.

Text with the video: As a doctor half the battle is figuring out if your patients are actually doing what you tell them. Here’s a prime example where Dr. House is trying so hard to be nice for the holidays….

If you’re looking for more serious posts on the matter, please see Allergynotes, another blog of Ves Dimov.

And House is also on the Dutch t.v. My daughter told me it is even one of her favorite series. I wouldn’t know, it was the first time I saw House. Most of my evenings are filled with Twitter, blogging or sports.

LoL: Stop Following Me!

This picture is so cool.
First seen at ScienceRoll of Bertalan Mesko (@berci); this print is from a T-shirt of Zazzle.
More t-shirts and other prictures can be seen here

LOL: NCBI ROFL

The last few days various people on Twitter (first: DoNotGoGently) tweeted about a hilarious website: NCBI ROFL (http://ncbirofl.blogspot.com/).

At first site this looks like a contradiction in terminis: NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information – that houses Pubmed) and ROFL (slang for Rolling On the Floor, Laughing). However, NCBI ROFL is exactly what it is: Rolling on the floor laughing about real scientific papers cited in PubMed. Hence the subtitle: “Real Articles, Funny Subjects”.

NCBI ROFL is the brainchild of two Molecular and Cell Biology graduate students. But everyone is invited to send in new ROFLs.

What are the articles everybody is ROFLing about? A few examples:

• Optimizing the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel.
• Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children.
• Mr. Bean. an important research tool: Kinematic analysis of facial behaviour in patients with schizophrenia under emotional stimulation by films with “Mr. Bean”.
• Feet rolled over by cars: radiological and histological consideratons from experiments. This is really weird: “A total of 15 detached feet from deceased persons who had donated their bodies to research were rolled over using a VW Passat station wagon. The feet were enclosed in various types of shoes.”

And what a coincidence. One of the first ROFL’s was the following:

• Mandibular angle augmentation with the use of distraction and homologous lyophilized cartilage in a case of morphing to Michael Jackson surgery. (Michael died June 25th)

Kinematic analysis of facial behaviour in patients with schizophrenia under emotional stimulation by films with “Mr. Bean”.Kinematic analysis of facial behaviour in patients with schizophrenia under emotional stimulation by films with “Mr. Bean”.

SuperNews! Twouble with Twitters

Via Twitter (@stephenfry and @ninjaboi) Check this out! http://tinyurl.com/cx723z
Hilarious. About the twitter phenomenon. Watch the failwhale!

more about “SuperNews! Twouble with Twitters // C…“, posted with vodpod

Top of the Tweets [2]

Twitter is a microblogging service initially meant as a place where people could answer the question “What are you doing?” via 140-character messages from their cellphone, laptop or desktop. But Twitter is more useful as a platform for breaking news, exchanging links, thoughts and views, and (indirectly) for social networking.

Twitter is particularly suited for oneliners that are funny or hit the mark. Below is my second selection of twitter oneliners that made me smile, grin or laugh. I hope you like them.

You can find the first edition of Top of the Tweets here.

This series is inspired by the “Selection of My Twitter Favorites” of Ves Dimov at his “Clinical Cases and Images” blog. His favorites tend also to contain more in depth discussions on a particular subject.