1945-1952 - Space Station By Wernher Von Braun - Von Braun Was A Leading Aerospace Engineer First In

“There have been too great a tendency to call anyone ‘impractical’ who dare to look too far in advance of the well beaten path. What is being ‘practical’? One must have imagination in order to be truly practical.

"I know scientific men who have spent years in attempts to do some obviously impossible thing and who yet have been called 'practical’ because if they succeeded in accomplishing that for which they were striving they would make much money.

"The same man would have jeered not long ago at the suggestion that we on the earth might receive signals from Mars. Big things are not 'practical’. They are wonderful. Many scientific minds, like many minds which are not scientific, shy at anything which is wonderful. Yet the simplest things in nature are wonderful almost beyond the limits of the human imagination.

"Men ignorant of the way in which plants grow would jeer at a farmer if suddenly they should be so placed that they saw him planting seeds. They would declare him an impractical creature because the fruition of his efforts if at all possible of realization is so remote. They want immediate results.

"The sending to and reception from Mars of signals would be an achievement by no means as wonderful as Nature’s simple process of making seeds grow in the ground.”

–Nikola Tesla

“Marconi Credits Mystery Flash To Far Planet”New York Sun, January 25, 1920.

Hey dudes! I finally set up an Etsy! 

I’ve got a few items listed right now. Various skulls and natural things. Would be rad if y'all could check it out even if it just means getting a few views haha. 

Ill probably be fixing it up all nice with a custom logo and adding more things soon so Ill update when that happens. 

Correction: even cooler than we thought!

Apparently Ethiopian Baboons are starting to domesticate wolves, which is giving scientists new insights about what it might have been like when early humans did that. That’s cool pretty cool!

retweet if youre a hoe for space

Technology for the blind!

NSF-funded researchers at Texas A&M University have developed STAAR (Situated Touch Audio Annotator And Reader) e-reader that enables blind readers to read the same text sighted readers do. The system allows a user to scan the text with their fingers to hear the words. For more information:  https://bit.ly/2Fm1HSU

Video credit:  Texas A&M University

This slender-snouted crocodile skull in Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Alcohol House was used to determine that each African region had a unique crocodile species. You can see this skull and its story on display at the new We Are Nature. Look for the Alcohol House media interactive in the gallery! 

This post was originally posted on our curatorial assistant’s Instagram, which features specimens in the museum’s historic Alcohol House.

How does the brain learn categorization for sounds?

Photo credit: Xiong Jiang, Georgetown University

Categorization, or the recognition that individual objects share similarities and can be grouped together, is fundamental to how we make sense of the world. Previous research has revealed how the brain categorizes images. Now, researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have discovered that the brain categorizes sounds in much the same way.

To find out how the brain categorizes auditory input, the researchers invented new sounds using an acoustic blending tool to produce sounds from two types of monkey calls. The blending produced hundreds of new sounds that differed from the original calls.

Subjects listened to several hundred calls and categorized them under two arbitrary labels that were created by the researchers. The researchers used functional MRI prior to and following the training to image subjects’ brains while they listened to the sounds, but did not yet label them. The results showed that learning to categorize the sounds had increased the brain’s sensitivity to the acoustic features that distinguished one sound from another.

Researchers believe these findings reveal what may not only be a general mechanism about how the brain learns, but also about how learning changes the brain and allows the brain to build on that learning. The work has potential implications for understanding individual differences in language learning and can provide a foundation for understanding and treating people with learning disorders and other disabilities. 

Learn more here: http://bit.ly/2vri3Ij 

ive been reading a book that basically explains how so-called “brain differences” between the genders is the result of gendered socialization and not the cause of it. i honestly expected the book to be very cis-centric but its actually the opposite, the author stresses that testimony from trans ppl is actually indispensable because we’ve, in a sense, “lived both experiences”

more cis feminists should have this mindset

Nine relief printed original art greeting cards, each with a unique set of curios/specimens.

the thing about organic chemistry is that you finally get to use all the aesthetically pleasing mad scientist looking chemistry apperatuses that you’ve been waiting to use for years but when u finally get to use them they all turn out to do surprisingly boring things