What does your handwriting say about you?

Recently the National Pen Company in the U.S announced their research about handwriting suggesting personal personalities and creates graphic references for the personal traits links to handwriting.

People with small handwriting tend to be shy, studious and meticulous, whereas outgoing people who love attention will have larger handwriting.
People with small handwriting tend to be shy, studious and meticulous, whereas outgoing people who love attention will have larger handwriting.

The type of looping created by the letters 'l' and 'e' can suggest a person's nature, for example, wide loops means someone is relaxed and spontaneous as well as open minded. People who write narrow loops tend to be skeptical of others and may restrict themselves from certain activities, which causes feelings of tension

If the dot of a letter is situated high above the base it suggests the writer has a great imagination. If the dot is close to the base, they are organised and empathetic. Procrastinators tend to dot their 'i's and 'j's to the left of the base letter, while child-like personality types will draw their dots as circles Long crosses on 't's suggests someone who is determined and enthusiastic, but also stubborn. Short crosses tend to be written by someone who is lazy.

Is Einstein’s speed limit theory right?

In the past 100 years, Albert Einstein’s assertion that there’s an ultimate speed limit – the speed of light – is widely accept and withstood countless tests. But recently some argue that that is not absolutely right. Postdoc Michael Hohensee and graduate student Nathan Leefer from University of California, Berkeley again cheched whether some particles break this law.

The team’s first attempt to test this fundamental tenet of the special theory of relativity demonstrated once again that Einstein was right, but Leefer and Hohensee are improving the experiment to push the theory’s limits even farther – and perhaps turn up a discrepancy that could help physicists fix holes in today’s main theories of the universe.

The team’s first attempt to test this fundamental tenet of the special theory of relativity demonstrated once again that Einstein was right, but Leefer and Hohensee are improving the experiment to push the theory’s limits even farther – and perhaps turn up a discrepancy that could help physicists fix holes in today’s main theories of the universe.

Hohensee, Leefer and Dmitry Budker, a UC Berkeley professor of physics, conducted the test using a new technique involving two isotopes of the element dysprosium. By measuring the energy required to change the velocity of electrons as they jumped from one atomic orbital to another while Earth rotated over a 12-hour period, they determined that the maximum speed of an electron – in theory, the speed of light, about 300 million meters per second – is the same in all directions to within 17 nanometers per second. Their measurements were 10 times more precise than previous attempts to measure the maximum speed of electrons.

The UC Berkeley physicists and colleagues at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who provided crucial theoretical calculations, published their results this week in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Oalib

Solitary confinement causes psychology problems

Prisoners in solitary confinement almost spend all day in solitary units with no contacting with others. Because solitary confinement is wildly adopted at the discretion of prison administration, many inmates spend years, even decades, cut off from any real social interaction.

Inmates who are sent to solitary are not all the “worst of the worst”, like rapists and murders who continue their violent way even behind bars. But in fact many are placed in solitary for nonviolent offenses, and some are not even criminals, having been arrested on immigration charges. Others are thrown into isolation cells “for their own protection” because they are homosexual or transgendered or have been raped by other inmates.

Whatever the reasons, such extreme isolation and sensory deprivation can take a severe, sometimes permanent, toll on emotional and mental health. Researchers have found that prisoners in solitary quickly become withdrawn, hypersensitive to sights and sounds, paranoid, and more prone to violence and hallucinations. Craig Haney, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has documented several cases of individuals with no prior history of mental illness who nonetheless developed paranoid psychosis requiring medical treatment after prolonged solitary confinement. As damaging as the consequences are for otherwise healthy adults, they are even worse for adolescents, whose brains are still in their final stages of development, and the mentally ill, who already struggle to maintain a solid grasp on reality. About half of all prison suicides occur in isolation cells.

The mystery of molecules control through potassium channels

The mystery how the functions of potassium ion channels transform from inactivate state into activate state has been unveiled. This discovery will have various affections ranging from fundamental biology to the design of pharmaceuticals

The findings were published online July 28 in Nature.

"Our research clarifies the nature of this previously mysterious inactivation state. This gives us better understanding of fundamental biology and should improve the rational design of drugs, which often target the inactivated state of channels" said Benoît Roux, PhD, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Chicago.

Potassium channels, present in the cells of virtually living organisms, are core components in bioelectricity generation and cellular communication. Required for functions such as neural firing and muscle contraction, they serve as common targets in pharmaceutical development.

These proteins act as a gated tunnel through the cell membrane, controlling the flow of small ions into and out of cells. After being activated by an external signal, potassium channels open to allow ions through. Soon after, however, they close, entering an inactive state and are unable to respond to stimuli for 10 to up to 20 seconds.

The cause of this long recovery period, which is enormously slow by molecular standards, has remained a mystery, as structural changes in the protein are known to be almost negligible between the active and inactivated states -- differing by a distance equivalent to the diameter of a single carbon atom.

To shed light on this phenomenon, Roux and his team used supercomputers to simulate the movement and behavior of every individual atom in the potassium channel and its immediate environment. After computations corresponding to millions of core-hours, the team discovered that just 12 water molecules were responsible for the slow recovery of these channels.

They found that when the potassium channel is open, water molecules quickly bind to tiny cavities within the protein structure, where they block the channel in a state that prevents the passage of ions. The water molecules are released slowly only after the external stimulus has been removed, allowing the channel to be ready for activation again. This computer simulation-based finding was then confirmed through osmolarity experiments in the laboratory.

"Observing this was a complete surprise, but it made a lot of sense in retrospect," Roux said. "Better understanding of this ubiquitous biological system will change how people think about inactivation and recovery of these channels, and has the potential to someday impact human health."

oalib via ScienceDaily

Overweight students are less likely to be accepted to university than their thinner counterparts

A long time preparation is the key to enter universities, and now American scientists believe how much you weigh could influence whether you are accepted.

Researchers at Bowling State University found that overweight students, especially girls, are less likely to get into university than thinner students.

The group of psychologists studied almost a thousand applications for postgraduate courses and found that academics favoured thin candidates in face to face interviews.

However, there was no significant difference in success rates when conversations were carried out over the phone or when credentials were assessed remotely.

Psychologist Jacob Burmeister and colleagues at the university asked 97 applicants for psychology graduate programmes at more than 950 universities in the US whether they had an interview in person or on the phone, and whether or not they received an offer.

Dr Burmeister said: 'When we looked at that we could see a clear relation between their weight and offers of admission for those applicants who had had an in person interview.

'The success rate for people who had had no interview or a phone interview was pretty much equal, but when in-person interviews were involved, there was quite a bit of difference, even when applicants started out on equal footing with their grades, test scores and letters of recommendation.'
The study, which was published in the journal Obesity, also suggested the weight bias was stronger for female applicants.

Oalib

World’s first flying bicycle was made

Almost every child in his or her childhood dreams of driving a vehicle down the street, over your house and past the sky. Well, that fantasy can be reality with the invention of the Paravelo flying bicycle.

A pair of flight enthusiasts, John Foden, 37, and Yannick Read, 42, have devised a two-wheeled bike -- christened the XploreAir Paravelo -- that transforms into an aircraft. The British inventors say it is the world's first fully functional flying bicycle.

The machine can travel at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour on the road and 25 miles per hour in the air, reaching altitudes of up to 4,000 feet.

"The Wright brothers were former bicycle mechanics so there's a real connection between cycling and the birth of powered flight that is recaptured in the spirit of the Paravelo," says so-creator John Foden.

The flying bicycle looks like a conventional bike connected to a lightweight trailer, which houses a giant fan, fuel for the contraption's engine and the flexible fold-away wing. Both the airframe and bike are made from aircraft grade aluminum.

The bicycle can be disconnected from its trailer for inner city use, then docks to form a 'para-trike' for take-off. In order to fly, the bike and trailer are fastened together, the wing is unfurled and an electric starter fires the biofuel-powered 249cc motor. Tired Tour de France competitors might want to consider this option before taking on a particularly daunting hill climb.

The Paravelo needs a long stretch of open ground, clear of obstructions for takeoff. Once airborne, it can stay in the air for up to three hours. Once it's in the air, the flying bicycle's inventors say that it controls like a conventional fan-powered paraglider.

The fan can also be detached entirely from its housing and strapped directly onto your back. Worn like this, no license is required to fly it in many countries -- including the U.S. and the UK -- but the United States Powered Paragliding Association strenuously recommends proper training.

So unless you have done it before, jumping off the closest cliff in your new Paravelo is not recommended.

The bicycle is small enough to be taken on public transport, and the entire vehicle can be stowed in a garage or carried up stairs and stored at home.

Oalib via CNN

Arguments on designation of big nonbanks to be SIFIs

Normally a policy just published is controversial because a variety of people beneficially involved. But this list which has not been actually a policy attracts wide attention among people.

Recently AIG and Prudential, two insurers confirmed they are designated as “systemically important financial institutions” (SIFIs) by the new Financial Stability Oversight Council, a regulatory department. And so did GE Capital, the big group GE’s financial arm. These firms and perhaps others, have joined America’s largest banks and clearinghouses in being labeled as “SIFIs”. These on the list of being designated SIFIs will be regulated by the Fed and subjected to tougher capital and operational requirements. Jack Lew, the treasury secretary, said the designations would “protect taxpayers, reduce risk in the financial system, and promoted financial stability."This signals because they are thought to be significant to effect America’s economy, they should get special attention. Some are worried about it. Putting these institutions in the charge of the Fed will inevitably undermine their ability to innovate, says Peter Wallison, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. And joining the group of entities perceived to be too big to fail means they will enjoy an implicit government guarantee. That will put them at a funding advantage against smaller companies, he says, and imply that their products are government-backed, a huge help for insurers in particular.

Oalib