Friday 3 April 2015

Researchers Pattern Magnetic Graphene

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Graphene, an atomically thin sheet of carbon, has been intensively studied for the last decade to reveal exceptional

The post Researchers Pattern Magnetic Graphene has been published on Technology Org.

 
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I Need More Space Astronaut Poster

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This astronaut wants to have a serious talk. Basically, he needs more space. He's feeling smothered. But it's not you, it's him.

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Why we gossip, according to science

Science Focus

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Did you hear what happened at yesterday's meeting? Can you believe it?

If you find those sort of quietly whispered questions about your co-workers irresistible, you're hardly alone. But why are we drawn to gossip?

A new study suggests it's because the rumors, innuendo, and hearsay are ultimately all about us — where we rate in the unofficial local hierarchy, and how we might improve our standing.

"Gossip recipients tend to use positive and negative group information to improve, promote, and protect the self," writes a research team led by Elena Martinescu of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "Individuals need evaluative information about others to evaluate themselves."

Writing in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,the researchers describe two experiments testing the personal value gossip recipients derive. The first featured 178 university undergraduates who had all previously worked on at least one course assignment with a group of four or more students.

Participants "were asked to recall and write a short description of an incident in which a group members shared with them either positive or negative information about another group member's confidence," the researchers write. (Eighty-five received a positive report, 93 a negative one.)

They then reported their level of agreement with a series of statements. Some of these measured the self-improvement value of the gossip ("The information received made me think I can learn a lot from X"); others measured its self-promotion value ("The information I received made me feel that I am doing well compared to X"). Still others measured whether the gossip raised personal concerns ("The information I received made me feel that I must protect my image in the group").

In the second experiment,122 undergraduates were assigned the role of "sales agent" at a major company. They received gossip from a colleague that a third person either did very well or very badly at a performance evaluation, and were then debriefed about the emotions that information evoked. They also responded to the aforementioned set of statements presented to participants in the first experiment.

In each experiment, participants found both negative and positive gossip to be of personal value, albeit for different reasons. "Positive gossip has self-improvement value," they write. "Competence-related positive gossip about others contains lessons about how to improve one's own competence."

On the flip side, "negative gossip has self-promotion value, because it provides individuals with social comparison information that justifies self-promoting judgments, which results in feelings of pride."

"Contrary to lay perceptions," the researchers assert, "most negative gossip is not intended to hurt the target, but to please the gossiper and receiver."

In addition, the results "showed that negative gossip elicited self-protection concerns," the researchers write. "Negative gossip makes people concerned that their reputations may be at risk, as they may personally become targets of negative gossip in the future, which generates fear."

Fear is hardly a pleasant sensation, of course, but it can be a motivating one. As Martinescu and her colleagues put it: "Gossip conveniently provides individuals with indirect social-comparison information about relevant others."

In other words, if you don't want to be viewed as a goof-off like Charley, you'd better get your act together.

It's worth noting that this study did not look at who-is-sleeping-with-who gossip, which presumably has a somewhat different function — although news that an illicit couple has gotten caught could certainly serve as a cautionary tale.

But it does show that beyond providing "emotional catharsis and social control," confidentially treaded information about the competence, or lack thereof, of a co-worker can be "an essential resource for self-evaluation."

Pass the word.

Pacific Standard grapples with the nation's biggest issues by illuminating why we do what we do. For more on the science of society, sign up for its weekly email update or subscribe to its bimonthly print magazine.

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/articles/442686/why-gossip-according-science
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Monogram - Sculpted Region of the Orion Nebula Sticker

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tagged with: peel off, envelope sealers, galaxies and stars, orion nebula detail, sculpted gas clouds, sgcion, stellar winds, sculpting trapezium stars, messier 42, messier 43

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A region within the Orion Nebula showing the sculpting effect that stars can have on any surrounding gas clouds. This glowing region reveals arcs and bubbles formed when stellar winds - streams of charged particles ejected by the nearby Trapezium stars - collide with material.

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image code: sgcion

Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

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Sun and Moon Halo

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Two pictures captured on April 1 are combined in this creative day and night composite. Separated in time by about 10 hours the images otherwise match, looking along the coast at Östersund Sweden. The relative times were chosen to show the Sun and a nearly full Moon at the same place in the cold, early springtime sky. In the night scene Jupiter also shines above the waterfront lights, while Sun and Moon are both surrounded by a beautiful circular ice halo. The Sun and Moon halos really do align, each with an angular radius of 22 degrees. That radius is a constant, not determined by the brightness of Sun or Moon but only by the hexagonal geometry of atmospheric ice crystals and the reflection and refraction of light. Of course tomorrow, April 4, will find the Sun and Moon on opposite sides of planet Earth for a total lunar eclipse.
Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

Ethereal ghosts

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Hubble finds phantom objects near dead quasars

via ESA Space Science

http://sci.esa.int/hubble/55732-hubble-finds-ghosts-of-quasars-past-heic1507/

Crab Nebula iPad Air Case

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This is a mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers recorded this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans.

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A better method for making perovskite solar cells

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Researchers at Brown University have developed a new method for making solar cells from perovskite — a faster,

The post A better method for making perovskite solar cells has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Out There: Earth, the Marvelous Blue Orb

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The International Space Station, about 250 miles away, allows a view of the planet that shows geology has become destiny.















via New York Times

Monogram, Butterfly Nebula, Scorpius Constellation Round Sticker

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series NGC 6302, more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula, lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius.
The central dying star cannot be seen because it's hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the centre. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.
The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. The white-coloured regions are areas where light is emitted by sulphur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star).

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image code: btbgneb

image credit: NGC 6302 was imaged on 27 July 2009 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur were used to create this composite image.

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Purple Galaxy Cluster Powis iPad Air 2 Case

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Galaxy Cluster MACS J0717 thanks to NASA and Hubble program.

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Supernova 'crime scene,' shows single white dwarf to blame

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Astronomers have determined the pre-explosion mass of a white dwarf star that blew up thousands of years ago. The measurement strongly suggests the explosion involved only a single white dwarf, ruling out a well-established alternative scenario involving a pair of merging white dwarfs.

via Science Daily

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