this scene's serene

Maybe I need to get out more.. but has anyone heard of this new industry, space tourism?

Apparently for the past decade or so, NASA has been thinking of using extra seats on space shuttles to send up tourists in order to raise funding for future missions. There have been occurrences in the past where the Russian Space Agency has sent a few people into space, for example, Guy Laliberté, founder of Cirque de Soleil, paid $40 million to fly into space for an eight-day station at the International Space Station. Seeing that astronauts that live at the ISS have living quarters about the size of telephone booths, it would seem unlikely that this would become a booming industry. Some space airlines have stepped up their game to offer a trip to the moon for a mere $100 million dollars.

The popular airline Virgin Atlantic, also in conjunction with Virgin America, have recently released their own space airline titled “Virgin Galactic” that aims to make space travel “more affordable” and less limited for the general public. It is unknown how much longer it will take to complete the project but it is estimated to begin within the next few years. Over 300 people have already made their reservations.

Tickets start at $200,000 and require a $20,000 deposit. The site does not specify exactly how long travelers experience the atmosphere but it doesn’t seem much longer than a few hours.

You need to check out their website.

Does anyone remember that episode of Rugrats when Chuckie eats a watermelon seed and becomes afraid that a watermelon is going to grow inside of him? I don’t know about you, but for the next year or so after watching that I became extremely conscious about my fruit consumption. My dad would tell me that it was ridiculous and that something like that could never happen… well apparently 75 year old Ron Sveden has conquered the impossible.

On Memorial Day, Sveden was placed into the emergency room for having a hard time breathing. At the time he had Emphysema and had expected to develop lung cancer. When trying to diagnose him, they had a rough time figuring out the problem but after some x-rays their conclusion was a bit shocking. It had turned out Sveden had swallowed a pea that somehow lodged itself into his lung. Because of the Emphysema, it was impossible for him to cough out the pea so the seed had planted and actually sprouted inside of the lung. The sprouting caused a lot of the surrounding tissue to become swollen and infected so it was hard to find initially.

When seeds begin to sprout, they actually don’t need sunlight for the first 2-3 days, so the warmth and moisture of the lung contained all of the conditions necessary to produce a half-inch sprout. Luckily, after removing the sprout he turned out fine. The doctor pointed out that this phenonmenon can only happen with raw peas, beans or peanuts and it has happened in the past.

Crazy huh? I swear I didn’t make this up, check out the CNN article.

I went to a seminar earlier this week about sleep, and it seriously rocked my world. I took notes and I figured I’d share what I learned with all of you because I found it really interesting. First off, answer these four questions:

Do you need an alarm to wake up?
Do you constantly hit snooze multiple times before actually waking up?
When you go to bed, do you instantly fall asleep?
Do you find it easy to get drowsy when sitting through class, or after eating a meal?

If you answered yes to two of these, you are sleep deprived, along with about 75% of all college students. Don’t worry, I answered yes to all four of these too.

College students need about 9.25 hours a sleep each night. I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely do not sleep that much. 

Sleep is vital to everything. It controls our moods, our physical capabilities, anxiety, humor, hormones, social skills and pretty much everything that makes us function. People who get only 6-7 hours a night on average are 50% more likely to get a viral infection. Also, a person that goes two weeks straight only getting 6 hours a night has literally the same reasoning and motor skills as someone with a .1% BAC level. Crazy right?

Also, people who think that pulling all-nighters is the best way to study have got it all wrong. During your sleep, you enter different cycles that allow different parts of your mind to rest. Sleep is the only time your brain takes new information and places it into neural networks for long term storage. The memories of events that take place throughout the day enter the hippocampus and then the information is transfered to the cerebral cortex in order to form connections and help you understand concepts. If you don’t get enough rest before an exam, you’re gonna have a much harder time remembering what you learn. 

A study was done in a sleep laboratory where they made a bunch of students do math problems while having machines scan their brain for cognitive action. One day the students slept eight hours, correctly answered most of the problems, and had scans that showed certain parts of the brain that lit up—meaning that these parts were in use. A few days later, the scientists took the same group of students, had them only sleep six hours, and although some of them still got problems right, the scans showed that none of the parts of the brain were lighting up. Meaning that they weren’t putting any thought into their work and functioning almost on auto-pilot. 

I don’t want to make this long, but point being, sleep is important. It’s not something that you can just make up on the weekends. When you’re sleep deprived, you literally have to make up each of those hours you missed in order to be restored to where you should be. Think of it almost like a bank account. Just because you slept 10 hours on Saturday doesn’t mean you could make up for sleeping 6 hours every other night that week. You’re still about 8 hours deprived because you should have been sleeping at least 8 hours each of those nights.

Also, sleep is one of the largest predictors of life length.

I’m definitely considering getting one of these:

&

Will To, if you happen to be reading this. I’m sorry, but I had to. :)

(Telegraph News) “The girl, from the southern town of Knin, had only just started studying German at school and had been reading German books and watching German TV to become better, but was by no means fluent, according to her parents.

Since waking up from her 24 hourcoma however, she has been unable to speak Croatian, but is able to communicate perfectly in German.

Doctors at Split’s KB Hospital claim that the case is so unusual, various experts have examined the girl as they try to find out what triggered the change.

Hospital director Dujomir Marasovic said: “You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react. Obviously we have some theories although at the moment we are limited in what we can say because we have to respect the privacy of the patient.”

Psychiatric expert Dr Mijo Milas added: “In earlier times this would have been referred to as a miracle, we prefer to think that there must be a logical explanation – its just that we haven’t found it yet.

“There are references to cases where people who have been seriously ill and perhaps in a coma have woken up being able to speak other languages – sometimes even the Biblical languages such as that spoken in old Babylon or Egypt – at the moment though any speculation would remain just that – speculation – so it’s better to continue tests until we actually know something.”

So we all know about solar energy, right?  Solar technologies are able to capture, convert and distribute energy just by collecting sunlight through panels. Scientists have developed a new type of plastic solar cell that can harness the sun’s infared rays even on a cloudy day. Like paint, the cells can be sprayed onto materials and used as a form of portable electricity. Molecular electronic devices called organic semiconductors can now be used to directly convert light energy to electic energy using a flexible compound called poly(3-hexylthiopene), or P3HT. Right now, most solar cells and electronic displays are made with silicon. Although the technology is effective, it is costly. Making solar cells and displays from an organic semiconductor is cheaper, requires less power and it allows products to bend and fold.

Think about the possibilities. One item that can already be considered to be placed on the market is solar cellphones. With new solar cell paint, you may never have to recharge your cellphone again. Engineers predict there is a very high chance of seeing this new spray technology on products by the end of 2011.

“The sun that reaches the Earth’s surface delivers 10,000 times more energy than we consume,” said Ted Sargent, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Toronto. Sargent is one of the inventors of the new plastic material. 

Imagine a world with solar-painted skyscrapers and automobiles. This has to be one of the best inventions I’ve heard of yet.