Serial Podcast Season 1 Updates

Serial Podcast: Season 1 Update.

“This week, Sarah Koenig ducks back into the Adnan Syed case for a few days. There’s a hearing in Baltimore—a court proceeding that’s been nearly sixteen years in the making. Syed’s attorney will introduce new evidence, and present a case for why his conviction should be overturned. Sarah and producer Dana Chivvis will discuss what happens, day by day.”

So far Day 1 and Day 2 are available for download.

Zwar noch keine Kernfusion…

… aber ein erfolgreich gezündetes Wasserstoff-Plasma. Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung berichtet heute im Ressort Wissen:

Fusionsanlage Wendelstein 7-X: Sonnenfeuer mit Wasserstoffplasma entzündet. Von Manfred Lindinger.

“In Greifswald ist es gelungen, ein Plasma aus Wasserstoff in der Fusionsanlage Wendelstein 7-X zu zünden. Damit hat der eigentliche wissenschaftliche Betrieb begonnen.”

Photos from Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu rover camera

A few days ago Emily Lakdawalla posted some images from the moon on her weblog at the Planetary Society: Fun with a new data set: Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu rover camera data.

“Here, for the first time in a format easily accessible to the public, are hundreds and hundreds of science-quality images from the Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu rover.”

Links to the original data and the mirror at the Planetary Society are at the top of the article.

Link via MetaFilter.

… like riding a bike

It’s common knowledge that there are some things that you cannot unlearn once you’ve learnt them, like riding a bike. Right?

Destin Sandlin, creator of the educational video series Smarter Every Day, learnt how to ride a bike that goes left when steered right and vice versa. It took him eight months until it “clicked” – but then he found that he couldn’t ride normal bikes any more!

I’d love to try riding his Backwards Brain Bicycle. When I first tried to ride a recumbent bike I had a similar experience because on a normal bike, you steer mostly by shifting your body weight and only turn the handlebars a little bit to help. On a recumbent, you can’t really shift your weight much, so you have to steer by making lots of tiny movements with the handlebars. (This is especially hard if your recumbent has under-seat steering, though I’ve heard that pivot steering is even harder). It took me a few tries until I managed stopped my brain from trying to shift my weight, but once it clicked, riding the recumbent was not too difficult. Since the directions are not reversed, I can still ride an upright bike like before.