Mysterious light (C8 Speech by Charles Lu)

Albert Einstein is perhaps the most famous scientist of the 20th century. One of his most well-known accomplishments is the formula E=mc^2. It means that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light.

Einstein realizes that mass and energy are really different forms of the same thing. Mass can be turned into energy and energy into mass. For example, here is one kilogram of pure water. If it could be suddenly turned into energy, it would become:

E=mc^2
=1x 300,000,000x300,000,000
=90,000,000,000,000,000 Joules(焦耳) (ninety thousand trillion Joules)

This is the equivalent of the energy that we burn 10 million gallons of gasoline. That’s really unbelievable. Here in the formula, “c” represents the speed of light because light speed is a constant. It is always 300,000,000 meters per second invacuum under any circumstances.

Now let me try to explain it.

Suppose we are now riding a car and trying to chase a train. The speed of the train is 100 miles per hour and the speed of our car is 99 miles per hour. Then we can see the train is running away from us by the speed of 1 mile per hour. Now let’s replace the train with a beam of light, or suppose that the train’s speed has the same property with light. Then what we see is that the light beam is not running away from us by the speed of 1 mile per hour. It is still running away from us by the speed of 100 miles per hour. In that case, we don’t believe our eyes and try to accelerate our car to the speed of 99.99999 miles per hour. We consider that we are going to catch up with the beam of light, but when we look out of the window, the light beam is still flying away from us by the speed of 100 miles per hour. It seems like we are not moving.

It is very weird. How can it happen this way?

Einstein himself is very shocked when he finds out this phenomenon. He studies it more, and finally comes to an amazing conclusion. For the people riding in the car, TIME BECOMES SLOWER. If there is a bystander on the road and he uses a telescope to watch us, he can see that everyone in the car moves very slowly and he can see the car is squeezed into a flat thing like an accordion.

Scientists have proved this theory. Whatever our speed is, the light speed is always a constant-- that is, 300,000,000 meters per second. This is because when we move faster, the clock runs slower and the tool we use to measure the distance becomes shorter. Therefore, the result of the measurement is always the same.

Can we see or feel this effect? No. Because when we move near the speed of light, our minds would think with a slower process, and our bodies become thin in size. So we cannot perceive the change. Nature plays tricks on us. This is called “Special Relativity.”(狹義相對論). With further studies, Einstein finally figures out the distinguished formula E=mc^2.  This formula has completely changed our world.

Love (C4 Speech by Trinity Cao)

Without love, life is the seasons with no summer. Without love, life is like rock ‘n’ roll with no drummer. Without love, we have nothing. Have you ever thought what love is? Now Hollywood wants to make you think they know what love is, but I'm telling you what true love is. Love is not what you see in the movies. It is not the ecstasy. It is not what you see in that scene. Do you know what I mean? I'm telling you right now. True love is sacrifice. Love is thinking about others before you think about yourself. Love is selfless not selfish. Love is laying down your life for another whether for your brother, your mother, your father or your sister. It is even laying down your life for your enemies. That's unthinkable, but I’ve heard a touching story about this kind of true love.

When I studied in elementary school, there came a transferred student. Her name is Amy. She was quiet. Amy laughed and ate less than most classmates. She sometimes suddenly cried loudly in class and made everyone shocked. Most of my classmates thought that Amy was a freak. Someday I heard two of my teachers whispering about Amy. Amy was one of the survivors in 921 earthquakes.

My teacher asked me to take care of her because I was the class leader at that time. I tried my best to chat with her and eat lunch with her. At last, she told me what happened about her horrible experience of 921 earthquakes. In the midnight of twenty-first September in 1999, Amy fell asleep. She was woken by a severe shake. She heard many people shriek because of fear and despair. Amy’s grandmother took her hand and rushed out of their houses. Amy meant to save her pet cat in their house, so she struggled to go back. Amy’s grandmother stopped Amy to do so, she herself dashed into the caving house without hesitation. After Amy’s grandmother ran into the house, the earthquake became more and more violent. All of a sudden, Amy’s home collapsed. Her grandmother didn’t escape from their house in time. Amy broke down at once because she thought that she killed her grandmother. Fortunately, Amy’s parents survived this devastating disaster because they worked in other county. After the earthquake, she felt guilty deeply for her grandmother’s death. Although Amy’s parents tried their best to comfort her, she still wept every day. Finally, Amy’s parents sent Amy to another elementary school in order to help her to forget the misery.

Amy also told me that she was a stubborn girl before the earthquake. She rebelled her parents and didn’t care about if she hurt her parents’ feelings or not. She often argued everything with her grandmother though her grandmother

brought her up hard. Amy was a picky eater, so she was skinny. When she was little, her grandmother needed to use a spoon to feed her during the meal. She took her grandmother’s love for granted. Amy didn’t understand how much her grandmother loved her until she lost her grandmother. Amy also realized that her grandmother loved her so much that she went back to the crumbling building to save the pet for Amy. After earthquakes, Amy learned that she has to cherish her people around her. Amy is not selfish anymore. She is considerate now. She is also willing to help others.

What is love? Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered; it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, it always perseveres. Love never fails. Love is everlasting. It is eternal, it goes on and on, it goes beyond time. Love is the only thing that will last when you die. But ask the question why? Do you have love?

The Discovery Files: Brain Feed

According to researchers at Caltech deciding what to eat forces your brain to figure out how it feels about a food's taste versus its health benefits versus its portion size or even its packaging, and it needs to determine the importance of these attributes relative to each other.

Credit: NSF/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

Think Healthy, Eat Healthier.
(Sound effect: theme music) I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.

Decisions, decisions. When it comes to making food choices, your brain is in charge of weighing all the options. Almost instantaneously, complex neurological processes kick in, based on everything from palatability to portion-size to packaging. New research out of Caltech indicates that we may be able to sway the brain toward making healthier choices.

The study involved 33 hungry adult volunteers being shown pictures of various foods while brain activity was monitored. Each looked at 180 different food items, from chips and candy bars to chicken and broccoli. With three seconds to decide whether or not they'd want to eat the food shown. They knew they could be served any one of the foods from their "yes" or "strong yes" list at the end of the experiment.

One more thing: before every 10 food choices, one of three instructions appeared on the screen "consider the healthiness," "consider the tastiness" or "make decisions naturally."

When asked to think about healthiness, subjects were less likely to choose unhealthy foods. Just getting the health instruction increased activity in the part of the brain responsible for self-control -- helping them to make better choices.

Jeez, all this food for thought is making me hungry.

For the discovery files, I'm Bob Karson.

The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.

The Discovery Files: Wing Talkers

When African Grey parrots talk, do they mimic sounds or consciously understand their speech? Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at both Brandeis and Harvard universities believes African Greys actually know what they're talking about.

Credit: NSF/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

Grey Area (Sound effect: parrot squawk)

I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.

Since 1977 when she bought an African grey parrot named Alex at a pet store, Dr. Irene Pepperberg has been investigating the premise that with the right training, these creatures can do a lot more than just 'parrot' back words and phrases. She believes that they can understand concepts and actually communicate. Before her prize student Alex died of natural causes in 2007, he had mastered the meanings of over 100 English words and he knew his colors and shapes.

(Sound effect: sound byte)

In addition to the verbal exercises and shape recognition, she's had the parrots correctly respond to tests involving color, material, number concepts, similarity, difference and absence. Pepperberg is always careful not to tip off the birds with subtle clues demonstrating that it's not simply rote learning.

These training techniques may reach far beyond our fine-feathered friends to human communication. Some of the methods are being tested to help autistic children better communicate.

Although I couldn't get to interview any of the parrots directly about Dr. Pepperberg (Sound effect: parrot audio: "I'm sorry."), I'm sure they speak highly of her.

The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.

Decoding Disasters: Are We Prepared for Another 9-11?

Disaster Research Center scientists study world's worst disasters in hopes of saving more lives in the future.



At the site of a terrorist attack, an earthquake or a tsunami, emergency responders are focused on search and rescue, and saving lives.

Some disaster sites provide an opportunity for experts with different skills than the police, firefighters and aid organizations that are first on the scene.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), sociologist Tricia Wachtendorf and teams from the Disaster Research Center (DRC) go to devastated locations to learn more about how lives may be saved in the future.

The DRC started in 1963 at the Ohio State University, and moved in the mid-1980s to the University of Delaware in Newark.

"We try to learn from disasters, not only to make a contribution to science, but also to try to take our findings and find out how we can apply that to better emergency management practice more generally," says Wachtendorf.

"We also have a very strong educational component," she adds. "We involve graduate and undergraduate students in all of our research."

Wachtendorf spent several weeks near ground zero after the 9/11 attacks in New York City. She spent time in command centers, watching how critical decisions unfolded.

Wachtendorf says DRC had a good working relationship with New York City emergency personnel before the terrorist attacks and this allowed the center important access even in the chaos.

"They lost friends, they lost family members, and they were very willing to have us shadow them, answer questions, and to actually say, 'Come here, you need to hear this, you need to learn from this,' and tell us what's going right and what's going wrong," says Wachtendorf.

Over the years, DRC research has recommended better ways to recover and handle human remains, streamline accounting of donations and supplies, and ways for small businesses to quickly reopen after a disaster. Through outreach to practitioners, many of their recommendations find their way into practice.

One specific study of the 9/11 response focused on the evacuation of half a million people from lower Manhattan the day of the attacks, including a spontaneous and successful effort by tug, ferry, dinner cruise and sightseeing boats. DRC Director James Kendra had a major part in that research.

"The mariners have a very particular culture and having worked in that environment in different kinds of ships, I think it was very helpful for us in being able to speak their language," says Kendra, who, in addition to a doctorate in geography, also has an undergraduate degree in marine transportation and a Merchant Marine Master Mariner license.

It was a case of ordinary people springing into action, making good decisions in spite of the danger and uncertainty surrounding them.

"We talked to 100 people who were involved in the evacuation," says Kendra.

"Many of them were mariners. They knew there was a terrible calamity at the World Trade Center, and they figured boats would be helpful in some way. That largely stems from what seafarers have to do ordinarily, which is to be creative, to be improvisational, to be ready for anything, even if you don’t know what the danger is going to be. They always have to be alert for surprises. That experience and that training carried over into their ability to take part in this evacuation."

Along with a library containing 60,000 publications related to disasters, at DRC, there are also several display cases that contain items from both ancient and recent disasters. Wachtendorf showed some items from the 2008 China earthquake. These objects, she says, are powerful teaching tools.

"A little bit from a teacup and a mah-jongg piece are very indicative of the daily life of what was going on when the earthquake happened. People were engaged in cooking and playing games and sometimes, it's these very small items that we pick off the ground that helps resonate how much this impacted daily life," she explains.

"It's one thing to read a paper about the disruption of a disaster on daily life; it's another to actually take a piece of an item that was scattered on the ground and to bring that message home; to be able to touch it, to feel it and use that in our conversations about the impact of disaster events."

One recurrent observation from DRC field studies is the kindness of strangers.
Kendra documented that compassion when analyzing some responses to the 9/11 attacks.

"People will delay their own evacuation in an effort to help somebody else," says Kendra. "That was reported to us over and over. The crowds were orderly and basically respectful even though they were obviously very shaken up."

And Wachtendorf found a similar sense of community after the 2004 Asian tsunami, meeting with residents of devastated fishing villages in India and Sri Lanka.

"In one village, we found over 50 fishermen who needed to get back to sea. They only had seven boats they were able to get donated to them. They made an arrangement that those boats became the community boats, so they took turns sharing the catch. It was a way to make sure everybody was able to get back in the sea and begin working again," she says.

But Wachtendorf also found inequality in the distribution of resources following some disasters. Often, she says, it's simply the result of access.

"Sometimes we also end up seeing that there are particular areas that get a lot of media attention. They are sometimes the areas that are easy to get into. They might have areas for journalists. And we hear a lot about those communities.

Unfortunately, what sometimes happens is, aid flows to those communities and doesn't always reach neighboring communities that are equally impacted, but don’t make it on TV," she explains.

Field study is important for graduate students at the DRC. Rochelle Brittingham is a doctoral student in the School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. She has studied evacuation and sheltering projects in North Carolina. She's also doing field work in Japan, following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster there.

"After such a large-scale disaster in Japan, we want to see, what did the Japanese government do, were non-governmental organizations involved, basically how did it all work? We're going to go and see if there are any answers there," says Brittingham.

Lucia Velotti is also a doctoral student in the School of Public Policy and Administration. She says an understanding of local cultures is critical when spending time in a disaster zone. She did research in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

"Listening is very, very important and so is listening to different perspectives. You need to have the whole picture. You need to try to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. When I went to Haiti, we interviewed people from UN agencies. We also talked to non-governmental organizations and grassroots community leaders. We really wanted to understand different perspectives," says Velotti.

DRC's work involves input from many social and physical scientists. Civil engineer Rachel Davidson finds the collaboration critical.

"If you are looking from only one disciplinary domain, you can't see the big picture," says Davidson, who does modeling and analysis of building codes and evacuation strategies.

Speaking of her social science colleagues, she says, "I've learned a lot from them. In a way they kind of keep us honest. Because (in) developing engineering models, sometimes we're tempted to make assumptions about how the world works. And they'll often tell us, 'No, that's not actually how people make decisions.' Or 'No, that's not how people actually behave'. And so, we want to try to work together to develop better models and better understanding to improve the decision making in the long run. And hopefully, they've learned something from us as well."

Wachtendorf says compared to 50 years ago, there's been a tremendous emphasis on emergency management planning in the United States. Both federal agencies like FEMA--the Federal Emergency Management Agency--and state and local emergency managers have invested in facilities and planning.

But she also notes disaster planning is constantly changing.

"As we have a combination of new threats that face us--natural and technological--as we have changes in climate, as we have changes in population density, in where people are living, people are put at risk and new issues are created. It's never a stagnant field. So something that we might know back in the 1960s, we need to learn again in the 1980s to see how much of that is still relevant, and what has changed. (It's) the same thing now as we look back at that historical research, how do we need to adapt our plans in terms of political context or economic context?" says Wachtendorf.

From Science Nation

The Discovery Files: Golden Y-Ears

A growing body of research finds musical training gives students learning advantages in the classroom. Now a Northwestern University study finds musical training can benefit the grandparents, too, by offsetting some of the deleterious effects of aging.

Credit: NSF/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

Music--the Anti-aging Supplement.

I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.

A Northwestern University study shows that musical training could have beneficial effects in your later years. Groups of musicians and non-musicians, ages 45 thru 65 were tested. The team found those with lifelong musical training were better at recalling what they heard and could more easily discern speech in a noisy environment.

According to the researchers, the musicians train themselves to be able to remember complicated sound sequences, and to extract meaningful sounds from a complex soundscape--hearing their own instrument in a symphony and working with harmonies and rhythms.

As we age, our memory declines. At the same time, being able to hear a single voice in a crowded room often becomes next to impossible. The team believes a lifetime of musical training 'fine-tunes' the nervous system, sharpening our abilities to take in sound, hold it in memory, and process it. All of the musicians tested have been playing since age 9 at the latest.

The study shows that had you kept up with those lessons, your golden years[1] would have provided you with a better sense of hearing. So kids, tell your parents you want to join a band so you'll have better hearing when you get older. Yeah--that should go over.

The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.
------------
Notes:
[1]golden years
-The time of life after retirement from active work.

Discovery Files: Flaw Dropper

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University and in Switzerland have developed a polymer-based material that can heal itself with the help of a widely used type of lighting. Imagine repairing unsightly scratches on your car or dining room table quickly, easily and inexpensively.

Credit: NSF/Karson Productions

Audio Transcript:

Just (Sound effect: key scratch sound) Scratching the Surface.

I'm Bob Karson with the discovery files -- new advances in science and engineering from the National Science Foundation.

Aarghhh -- I hate that sound, the unmistakable key scratch on the finish of my new, not-yet-paid-for car. Thanks to researchers here at Case Western Reserve University and in Switzerland, soon there could be a way for that scratch to completely heal itself in under a minute.

(Sound Byte :07.5) "We came up with this idea to basically develop a coating that, if it was scratched, you could simply take out a light and heal the scratch."

Stuart Rowan, one of the lead researchers, on "metallo-supramolecular polymers" -- that when exposed to UV light, become liquid at the site of the damage, and fill the crevasse. Switch off the light and the polymers resolidify, leaving the surface as good as new.

(Sound Byte :11) "We took out a razor blade and deliberately scratched the material and then put it under a UV light and within 30 seconds the scratch had disappeared."

The team had previously developed this material for a different application. It just took the right modifications to give it its "flaw-dropping" power. And if you think it's only for cars, scratch that.

(Sound Byte :06) "This could be a new varnish for your dining room table, where if you get a scratch on your table, it can be easily removed."

There are probably endless applications. "Scratch 'n sniff"[1] was cool, but just wait 'til we enter the world of "scratch 'n fix."

The Discovery Files" covers projects funded by the government's National Science Foundation. Federally sponsored research -- brought to you, by you! Learn more at nsf.gov or on our podcast.
------------
Notes:
[1] Scratch 'n sniff
Scratch 'N Sniff™ is the trade name for a special kind of perfume or scent saturated printing in which the scent is enclosed in minute capsules, which can be broken open by friction. Read more:
http://www.answers.com/topic/scratch-and-sniff