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n2doc's JournalTrillion-frame-per-second video camera is world’s fastest
MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second.
Media Lab postdoc Andreas Velten, one of the system’s developers, calls it the “ultimate” in slow motion: “There’s nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera,” he says.
The system relies on a recent technology called a streak camera, a $250,000 device deployed in a totally unexpected way. The aperture of the streak camera is a narrow slit. Photons enter the camera through the slit and pass through an electric field that deflects them in a direction perpendicular to the slit. Because the electric field is changing very rapidly, it deflects late-arriving photons more than it does early-arriving ones.
The image produced by the camera is thus two-dimensional, but only one of the dimensions — the one corresponding to the direction of the slit — is spatial. The other dimension, corresponding to the degree of deflection, is time. The image thus represents the time of arrival of photons passing through a one-dimensional slice of space.
more
http://www.kurzweilai.net/trillion-frame-per-second-video-camera-is-worlds-fastest#
Another hunter is shot by his own dog
A Florida man has become the second hunter in two weeks to be shot by his own dog.
Billy E Brown, 78, was driving to go deer hunting when his bulldog, Eli, managed to discharged a rifle into his leg.
He had been heading for a deer hunting spot in Pasco County with a friend when he was shot in the thigh, reports Fox News.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Gary Morse said: "His friend was riding next to him in the front seat, with the dog and the gun in between them."
As the trio drove down a rough limestone road, Eli "got excited in the truck" and knocked against the rifle, firing off a round.
more
http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Another_hunter_is_shot_by_his_own_dog
Did we lose the guns forum? I couldn't see it.
Christmas Card of the Year? Mayor Jorge Santini Reveals Baffling Family Photo
What do you think of when you think of Christmas? Do you think about family? Jesus? Presents? What about a jaguar mauling an antelope in front of a smiling family? Jorge Santini, the Mayor of San Juan, recently unveiled his annual Christmas card and the public is just a little bit confused.
The picture was so strange that it made its way to the Awkward Family Photo blog.
The Huffington Post reports that message on the card reads: “That you may illuminate your dream this Christmas.”
Ever dream of watching a jaguar eat an antelope?
The Santini family took several other photos during their Christmas photo shoot, and they’re all a little strange.
http://www.inquisitr.com/167596/christmas-card-of-the-year-mayor-jorge-santini-reveals-baffling-family-photo/
World's Smallest Frogs Discovered in New Guinea
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2011) — Field work by researcher Fred Kraus from Bishop Museum, Honolulu has found the world's smallest frogs in southeastern New Guinea. This also makes them the world's smallest tetrapods (non-fish vertebrates). The frogs belong to the genus Paedophryne, all of whose species are extremely small, with adults of the two new species -- named Paedophryne dekot and Paedophryne verrucosa -- only 8-9 mm in length.
The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
Previous research had led to the discovery of Paedophryne by Kraus in 2002 from nearby areas in New Guinea, but the genus was not formally described until last year (Kraus 2010, also in Zookeys). The two species described earlier were larger, attaining sizes of 10-11 mm, but the genus still represents the most miniaturized group of tetrapods in the world.
"Miniaturization occurs in many frog genera around the world," said the author, "but New Guinea seems particularly well represented, with species in seven genera exhibiting the phenomenon. Although most frog genera have only a few diminutive representatives mixed among larger relatives, Paedophryne is unique in that all species are minute." The four known species all inhabit small ranges in the mountains of southeastern New Guinea or adjacent, offshore islands. Their closest relatives remain unclear.
The members of this genus have reduced digit sizes that would not allow them to climb well; all inhabit leaf litter, and their reduced digits may be a corollary of a reduced body size required for inhabiting leaf litter and moss. Habitation in leaf litter and moss is common in miniaturized frogs and may reflect their exploitation of novel food sources in that habitat. The frogs' small body sizes have also reduced the egg complements that females carry to only two, although it is not yet known whether both eggs are laid simultaneously or at staged intervals.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111212123943.htm
Happiness and the English Language
By Brandon Keim December 13, 2011 | 6:30 am
The words in four massive text databases — 361 billion words in 3.29 million books on Google Books, 9 billion words in 821 million tweets issued between 2008 and 2010, 1 billion words in 1.8 million New York Times articles published from 1987 to 2007, and 58.6 million words from the lyrics of 295,000 popular songs — were analyzed, collated and distilled into a list of most-used words, then scored on their emotional resonance. The result: English seems to be a happy language, with positive words used more often than negative.
In these graphs, negativity and positivity flow from left to right along the x-axes, and word frequency is measured on the y-axes.
Image: Kloumann et al./arXiv
Citation: “Positivity of the English language.” By Isabel M. Kloumann, Christopher M. Danforth, Kameron Decker Harris, Catherine A. Bliss, Peter Sheridan Dodds. arXiv, August 29, 2011.
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