SciTechBits – Interesting Bits of Science & Technoglogy Served For You!

Fritz Kahn a doctor born in Germany produced several illustrations (1920s) that explained the human physiology using operations of machines. It was a wonderful imagination to think of the human anatomy as a various mechanical components. These illustrations have provided great insight in a simplistic way to understand the human physiology. Recently, Henning Lederer a graphics artist and animator attempted to use modern techniques to convert & adapt the work of Kahn into an interactive product.

Given below is an animation created by Lederer and the original poster (Der Mensch als Industriepalast [Man as Industrial Palace]) created by Kahn in 1926.

You buy a new game and the first step you meet with your game play is the “difficulty” setting. You pick the best estimated difficulty and start playing, to only realize later that this setting is either too easy or too tough. Ever felt, “I wish there was a setting between easy and medium”? Can walkthroughs be made obsolete?


Few games (Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Lego Star Wars II) have tried to handle situations like above by making the game harder according to the gamers success, however they do not respond to specific advanced skill sets possesed by the player or the lack of.

Most non player characters (NPCs) are built with a very limited set of capabilities and navigation. A different or unconventional approach used by a gamer often leaves NPCs lost. For example, in several FPS, advanced gamers would seek a good & safe vantage point which attracts a good number of opponents (NPCs) to take them down off-guard (spawn camping, sniping etc). Gamers engage in this as they see a lot of opponents in the vicinity, they have got a good vantage point and they are sure that the AI of the game would keep sending almost all of the NPCs in the vicinity (in most cases through the same path). How interesting would the game be, if the AI was able to detect that the gamer now has a vantage point, lure him into a different/difficult location rather than sending more NPCs. Considering a novice gamer who lands up with no ammunition very quickly, if the AI could see that the gamer was wasting way too much ammunition, control the power of the autonomous weapons to limit the ammunition wastage when there is no NPC in clear view and thus lessen the frustration the gamer would experience.

Feb 4, 2010 marked the World Cancer Day. The message got out to the world was all in sync – a good percentage of cancers are preventable.


Cancer is a leading cause of death, contributing to about one in every eight deaths worldwide and that is HIV, malaria and TB combined. While the fear for this killer is omnipresent, awareness about prevention is not. While cancer by itself is noncommunicable, about twenty-one percent of cancers are due to infections. Cervical and liver cancers are mainly due to such infections.

When South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was caught red-handed returning from a tryst with his Argentine mistress last June, he told the Associated Press that he had met his “soul mate.” His choice of words seemed to suggest that having a deep emotional and spiritual connection with Maria Belen Chapur somehow made his sexual infidelity to his wife Jenny Sanford less tawdry.

What the two-timing governor didn’t understand is that most women view emotional infidelity as worse, not better, than sexual betrayal. This may explain why Hillary Clinton stayed with Bill Clinton and seemed unconcerned about his sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky. Research has documented that most men become much more jealous about sexual infidelity than they do about emotional infidelity. Women are the opposite, and this is true all over the world. The prevailing theory is that the difference has evolutionary origins: Men learned over eons to be hyper-vigilant about sex because they can never be absolutely certain they are the father of a child, while women are much more concerned about having a partner who is committed to raising a family.

Ask anyone who suffers from migraine headaches what they do when they’re having an attack, and you’re likely to hear “go into a dark room.” And although it’s long been known that light makes migraines worse, the reason why has been unclear.


Now scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have identified a new visual pathway that underlies sensitivity to light during migraine in both blind individuals and in individuals with normal eyesight. The findings, which appear today in the Advance On-line issue of Nature Neuroscience, help explain the mechanism behind this widespread condition.

A one-sided, throbbing headache associated with a number of symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, and fatigue, migraines are notoriously debilitating and surprisingly widespread, affecting more than 30 million individuals in the U.S. alone. Migraine pain is believed to develop when the meninges, the system of membranes surrounding the brain and central nervous system, becomes irritated, which stimulates pain receptors and triggers a series of events that lead to the prolonged activation of groups of sensory neurons.

What would work best against digital piracy, in a country which is culturally very different from the States? This was the question, researchers wanted to address. To no surprise, just as in US, legal options against the pirates do not help at all, but two other factors seem to significantly help.


In a developing Gulf country filled with moderate and conservative Muslims, piracy is just a very normal affair. Pirated CDs and DVDs could be easily obtained, though not on public display after recent pressure from US through WTO etc. The cultural differences between this country and USA are well documented and are several folds. This raised the question to the researchers, if this cultural change will give a different way to approach the fight against digital piracy.

In a business college in Kuwait, researchers recruited 12 classes of students (319 students). They were then split into four groups with each group consisting of a freshman, a sophomore and a junior level class in it. All groups were given a pre-questionnaire at the beginning of the semester, which evaluated their intention to pirate in the near future. At the ending of the semester, except for one group (control group) every other group got a treatment (a statement being read in the class). The legal/law group was informed about the new laws/regulations/enforcements of new laws related to digital piracy. The religion group was informed about a new edict/fatwa which considers digital piracy to be immoral from a religious point of view. The last group, awareness group was informed about the consequences of piracy. Upon the “treatment”, all of the groups were administered the post-questionnaire, which again evaluated their intention to pirate in the near future.

A group of researchers attempted to see “Are people really aroused physiologically when their mind thinks so”. The answer to this question showed clear difference between the sexes. Men really mean it, while women do not.

Human sexual response is a complex of physiological, emotional and cognitive responses. Researchers identified 134 previous studies which dealt with similar research, to perform a meta-analysis. This included 2,500 women and 1,900 men. The participants were exposed to various sexual stimuli and were asked how aroused they felt. At the same time their physiological reaction (erection for men and genital blood flow for women) was measured.

Statistical analysis showed that men were able to clearly sync their mind with the body ie., when they told they were horny, their penis was really erect, however women often reported of being horny, while the physiological measure did not match it.

However, this measurement was done at different time points. When measured during the participants were receiving the stimuli, there was no significant difference between the sexes. The difference was when the participants were asked to rank their arousal at the end of the stimuli.

The researchers believe that, accurate measurement of arousal will play a significant part in the improvement of sexual science.

So guys, she is not only faking her orgasm, she doesn’t even know if she is horny at all!

Journal Reference: doi:10.1007/s10508-009-9556-9

Researchers have found that, people with Alzheimer’s are least likely to develop cancer and people with cancer are least likely to develop Alzheimer’s. Though the reason is unknown, this finding coupled with an earlier research focused on cancer and Parkinson’s disease, shows a clear trend – cancer is linked to neurodegeneration.


A group of researchers recruited 3,020 people aged 65 and older, of which 164 people (5.4%) already had Alzheimer’s disease and 522 people (17.3%) already had a cancer diagnosis. All of them followed up for an average of 5 years to see whether they developed dementia and an average of 8 years to see whether they developed cancer. During the study, 478 people developed dementia and 376 people developed invasive cancer. Surprisingly, for people who had Alzheimer’s disease at the start of the study, the risk of future cancer hospitalization was reduced by 69% compared to those who did not have Alzheimer’s disease when the study started. For Caucasian people who had cancer when the study started, their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was reduced by 43% compared to people who did not have cancer at the start of the study.

The premise that hunger makes food look more appealing is a widely held belief – just ask those who cruise grocery store aisles on an empty stomach, only to go home with a full basket and an empty wallet.


Prior research studies have suggested that the so-called hunger hormone ghrelin, which the body produces when it’s hungry, might act on the brain to trigger this behavior. New research in mice by UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists suggest that ghrelin might also work in the brain to make some people keep eating “pleasurable” foods when they’re already full.

“What we show is that there may be situations where we are driven to seek out and eat very rewarding foods, even if we’re full, for no other reason than our brain tells us to,” said Dr. Jeffrey Zigman, assistant professor of internal medicine and psychiatry at UT Southwestern and co-senior author of the study appearing online and in a future edition of Biological Psychiatry.

We are not sure if this is true or a joke, however this video clip shows an ex-employee from Microsoft claiming that he was fired for not pronouncing “Bing” in a way Stevel Ballmer likes. True or not, it’s funny as hell!