Serbia wants U.N. to honor Tesla birthday
Serbia says it will ask the United Nations to declare the birth date of scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla International Science Day.
In 2010 Serbia declared Tesla’s birthday, July 10, as Science Day in Serbia with events drawing attention to Tesla’s accomplishments, the news agency Tanjug reported.
Tesla was born in the region of Austria-Hungary that is today Croatia and built his career in the United States.
Best remembered for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Tesla was an important figure in the early days of commercial electricity, whose patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power systems.
Full Story at upi
Nikola Tesla at Wikipedia
The autobiography of Nikola Testla
The Horizon Guide: Moon with Professor Brian Cox
Professor Brian Cox (who has recovered from the neck injury shown above) takes a look through nearly 50 years of BBC archive at the story of man’s relationship with the Moon.
From the BBC’s space fanatic James Burke testing out the latest NASA equipment to 1960s interviews about the bacon-flavoured crystals that astronauts can survive on in space, to the iconic images of man’s first steps on the Moon and the dramatic story of Apollo 13, Horizon and the BBC have covered it all.
But since President Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s was reached, no one has succeeded in reigniting the public’s enthusiasm for space travel and lunar voyages. Why?
On his journey through the ages, Professor Brian “Lovely” Cox explores the role that international competition played in getting man to the Moon and asks if, with America no longer the world’s only superpower, we are at the dawn of a bright new space age.
Available now at iPlayer
Myth-busting: As you get older your mind deteriorates, tell that to the man who just got his PhD at 82
“Cognitive fitness” is defined as the results of the overall functioning of brain processes such as comprehension, decision-making, problem-solving, learning and retention of knowledge. Most interesting are the capacities of abstraction, generalization, and meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) – which all aid in the ability to assess our environment, solve problems creatively and act decisively.
Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts claimed in Harvard Business Review—”Cognitive fitness is a state of optimized ability to remember, learn, plan, and adapt that is enhanced by certain attitudes, lifestyle choices, and exercises. The more cognitively fit you are, the better you will be able to make decisions, solve problems, and deal with stress and change.”
Evidence of very strong mental ability in later life can be seen in the likes of Arthur C Clarke who at 90 was still giving advice on the future, David Attenborough (85) continues to produce excellent books and TV programs and Noam Chomsky (82) is one of the most quoted intellectuals alive today and is quickly approaching his 200th book publication.
Also joining the list of brilliant octogenarians is 82-year-old Moreshwar Abhyankar. He has a string of degrees and diplomas to his credit, including a masters in arts, business administration, LLB, MMS and diplomas in journalism and social work.
It took Abhyankar nine years to complete the PhD on the subject ‘Impact of training interventions on the development and competencies of employees in private sector units in Pune’.
Abhyankar, who retired in 1988, chose this particular topic for his thesis because of his teaching experience of over 50 years.
“During my experience in training and teaching, I often wondered if the training programmes designed and conducted by the companies helped these employees at practical level.”
More on Abhyankar Times of India
Arthur C. Clarke
David Attenborough
Noam Chomsky
Feel free to list any other 80+ year brilliant old minds in the comments.
Paranormality free mind bending magic app
For those of you in need of a Richard Wiseman fix, there’s plenty to keep you happy even if you live in the US. His recent book has had trouble finding a publisher open minded enough to distribute it, despite the fact it’s had rather wonderful endorsements from:
James Randi
PZ Myers
The Magic Newswire
and many others including Richard Dawkins who has said that in the book ”Wiseman shows us a higher joy as he skewers the paranormal charlatans, blows away the psychic fog and lets in the clear light of reason“.]
Available in the UK here: Amazon Book, Amazon Kindle
Available in the US here: Amazon Book, Amazon Kindle
Urban Miner scrapes over £600 worth of precious metals from cracks in London pavements
The Sunday Telegraph has collected quantities of the precious metal from cracks in the pavements outside the capital’s most famous jewellers.
Our quest was inspired by 43-year-old New Yorker Raffi Stepanian, who crawls around on the sidewalks of Manhattan’s “diamond district” looking for chips of gemstones and tiny pieces of gold.
The “urban miner” claimed last week to have collected a haul worth roughly $1,000 (£620) over the course of a fortnight – mostly gold fragments which are thought to rub off the clothes or shoes of jewellery workers.
The pieces can be so small that they are only recoverable when Mr Stepanian pans the scraped-up dirt using a bowl of water, like a nineteenth-century prospector.
RSA Animate – The Paradox of Choice
RSA animate create another gem of animation and insight with their latest release. In this episode Renata Salecl - a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana and visiting professor at the University of London – explains the Paradox of choice.
In the days of communism choice wasn’t freely available, all resources and the means of production were controlled by the government. When choice became ubiquitous it created a layer of anxiety in people.
Renata explores these ideas in beautifully animated words.
The (new) World’s Shortest Man
Move over, Edward Nino Hernandez, there’s a new smallest man in town. Junrey Balawing of Zamboanga del Norte, who turns 18 today, measures only 24 inches from head to foot lying down and just over 23 inches standing up.
Balawing, the eldest of four siblings, is not only the shortest living man, but the shortest living man in history, the Guinness World Records said.
Happy Birthday dude.
More at Neatorama
Jack Horner the man who’s making a “Chickenosaurus”
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He’s found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he’s taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even hands — to make a “Chickenosaurus”.
"
