Here are my picks from the most interesting articles that have come my way since last time. Quite a lot of astronomy this time (which is as likely to be due to my mood as due to the science), so I’ve split it in two. Also some linguistics and biology and other usual suspects.

Astronomy and Physics (large bodies):

• Using Kepler to detect moons. (This is more detailed than the report I linked to in September.) Speaking of Kepler, not all is well with the telescope.
• Replicating exotic ice made by meteors.
• Evidence of solar systems in other galaxies.
• Young neutron star has carbon atmosphere.
• 2002 supernova is new, theoretically predicted, type.

Astronomy and Physics (particles):

• LHC update. (And now here’s the bad news.)
• Summary of dark matter candidates. (Contains some options I didn’t know about.)
• On theoretical dark matter stars.

Health and Ecology:

• Limits on the amount of muscle made per meal.
• Monitoring patient health with a special patch.
• Photographs of dead birds that ate plastic.

History and Naivity:

• A brief history of creationism.
• Letter to a top scientist.

Language:

• Classifying clicks. The actual phonetic details are missing, but I’d love to know exactly what patterns have been found.
• Babies produce foreign babble after a few hours exposure.
• Claims that French and German babies cry differently have been met with scepticism.

Palaeontology:

• Fossil of a weird fly.

I’ve written about my calendar collection here and here, but to summarise, I make a point of choosing a different theme for my wall calendar each year since 2006.

Today I chose my calendar for 2010. There were a lot of themes to choose from – fractals, violent weather, treehouses, and much more – but in the end I chose a calendar that features paintings by Thomas Kinkade. Cottages and gardens are prominent, with colours brighter than life and a strong fairy-tale atmosphere.

I thought it would be fun to record some videos showcasing the calendars in my collection, using my mobile phone. Here is a link to the playlist I’ve created on Youtube. The video for just the new calendar is embedded below

Here is a look back at some of the things I posted to this blog in Novembers of 2006, 2007 and 2008.

In 2006, I published four posts (one, two, three, four) on music that I’ve composed over the years, with some links going to audio samples and others to printable sheet music. Also from 2006, my post on Conlanging and Phonetics is the only item on this blog ever to be linked from a Wikipedia article.

In 2007, I described how I’ve customised my computer with Monty Python quotes for system notifications. Recently I updated that post by adding a copy of the image I use as my desktop wallpaper.

Here are some of the most interesting news-in-science articles that I linked to in November 2008:

• Direct optical image of an exoplanet orbiting Fomalhaut.
• The wide hips of homo erectus women.
• Macroscopic single-celled organisms that leave trails.

Naturally, comments are welcome on any of the 2006/2007 posts that I’ve linked to.

Astronomy:

• I like this picture. So much better than a silly face.
• Energetic space ribbon shows that the heliosphere is not understood.

Biology and Animal Behaviour:

• Large-scale 3D structure of DNA. I’ll give you the press release and also Ed Yong’s take on the story.
• Monkeys have an Uncanny Valley of their own.
• Repelling insects by making their feet slippery.

General Science:

• Catalyst ran an article about the new Royal Institution Australia, here in Adelaide. I must keep an eye on that.

Palaeontology and Anthropology:

• Archaeopteryx grew slowly, like dinosaurs.
• A claim that 1/3 of supposed dinosaur species, including Nanotyrannus, were really just juveniles. [Update: more]
• Another article on Ardipithecus, with a point about the evolution of bipedalism.

Psychology and Brain Science:

• Using computer games to study autism.
• New insight into how the brain generates speech.

Social and Cultural:

• Recently uploaded on the TED Talks Youtube video, a very well-presented talk about stories and culture.
• An article about the history of Islam.

By the way, I’m well aware that the link to my Elemental solitaire game has not been working for some time. Probably the quickest way for me to solve that problem would be to switch to another web space provider.

Thing is, my ISP is in the process of being taken over by a larger company, demand having grown beyond what a small company can handle. Some services, web hosting among them, seem to be in a weird state of transition whereby it’s unclear who’s supposed to be responsible for them, and in any case, nothing ever gets done.

I am keeping my options open, but seriously considering alternative webspace hosting arrangements. Among my core requirements would be: (1) suitable for Australians; (2) PHP support; (3) webspace hosting only: don’t need a new email address or other ISP services; (4) opportunity to try before committing, e.g. ‘free for first six months’ deal. I am not sure, however, about the best way to go looking.

For a long time, my blogging has mostly been limited to collections of links, largely because I never feel I have time for thoughtful, introspective blogging when there are a thousand other things I feel guilty about not getting around to. However, I recently passed some important milestones in getting those other things done, so now I’m going to indulge in a blog post of the old style, wherein I take a topic and write about it from a personal perspective.

This one’s about sleep. More specifically, it’s about treatments for insomnia: things to try while waiting for your brain to switch off at the end of the day. I’m not interested in generic advice that you can get from a random website, but rather, in the imaginative and quirky treatments that get invented because when you’re lying awake in bed feeling bored, inventing a new and original cure for insomnia gives you something to do. Of course, when you do eventually drop off, it usually has nothing to do with the experimental treatment you were trying out, confirmation bias and all that.

I’m talking visualisation exercises, breathing exercises, that sort of thing. My goal is more about being interesting than being useful, and I find the diversity of quirky insomnia cures interesting. I’ve developed one of my own (which I’ll describe in a moment), and if you’ve invented one too then please consider sharing it in a comment.

Before I describe my own technique, I want to put it in a broader context. This visualisation exercise is not my first port of call when I can’t sleep at night, but more like a last resort when everything else has failed. Such exercises are not magic spells, and in my experience they will not work if your mind is not ready. Moreover, if you make a habit of resorting to them too early, then it wouldn’t surprise me if frustration with the technique prevents it from working for you in the future. The most counter-productive attitude would be to go to bed thinking, “I can’t wait to try out the new insomnia cure I read about on the Internet“, because excitement and sleep do not mix even when it’s the treatment itself that you’re excited about. The attitude I recommend is that you are prepared to use a visualisation technique if you need to, but  sincerely hope it won’t come to that.

My first port of call is to deal with any physical barriers to sleep. My second port of call is to wait. Only after that do I resort to a visualisation technique to help my mind over the brink of unconsciousness.

Here are some examples of the physical barriers I have in mind. If you’re thirsty, get yourself a glass of water. If your toenails are scraping uncomfortably against the blankets, get up and trim them. If your leg muscles are sore and need to be stretched, do some exercises under the covers. If the muscles of your belly are too tense, give them a massage. A good belly massage does wonders for me when I want to relax, and I keep a particular coffee mug by my bed as a tool for that purpose – so that I can press down hard into my intestines and hear them squelch. For obvious reasons I use a mug with smooth, rounded edges to its base; here’s a picture.

When I’m satisfied that I’ve overcome any physical barriers as well as I can, I wait, and give my mind a decent chance to get to sleep of its own accord. Only when I’m aware that I feel frustrated with myself for not managing to sleep – when I hear myself thinking thoughts like, “Dammit, why the hell can’t I bloody well sleep!” – do I move on to the visualisation exercise.

That exercise involves a number of stages, each of which is effectively a distinct exercise in itself. Between one stage and the next, I repeat the whole process of dealing with any physical barriers (e.g. with another massage), and then waiting until I once again hear myself thinking frustrated thoughts over my failure to sleep. Even during the various stages, if I suddenly feel the need to give myself another massage or to give my legs another stretch under the blankets, I put the visualisation on hold while I deal with my body’s needs.

Here is stage one of my technique.

• Imagine the letter ‘A’ being drawn in the air in front of your closed eyes. (I actually visualise the letters in lower-case, but I’ll type them in capitals to make this description easier to read; I shouldn’t think it matters.) See it as a point of light tracing out the shape of the letter in the same way that you would draw it with a pen. Feel free to move your eyeball under the lid, but resist any urge to trace the shape of the letter with your finger (this is more of a temptation in later stages). Also, when you’re tracing letters of the alphabet, don’t breathe, but trace them in between breathing out and breathing in again.
• Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Feel your body relaxing as you breathe out.
• Do the same thing with the letter ‘B’. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Continue all the way to the end of the alphabet.

Then relax, and remember what I said about giving yourself a chance to sleep between stages. When you’re ready for stage two, here it is.

• Repeat the alphabet visualisation as per stage one, but this time, imagine the letters to be tilted at a 45 degree angle (I usually tilt them anticlockwise, but it doesn’t matter.)

This is harder, because you have to mentally rotate the letters, and with any luck this will help to wear out your over-active brain. As for the remaining stages:

• Repeat the alphabet thing, but each time you do so, tilt the letters 45 degrees further around from where they were in the previous stage. For example, in stage three they will be sideways and in stage five they will be upside down.
• If you get all the way around (eight stages) and you still haven’t fallen asleep, get up and do something, e.g. check your email. When you go back to bed, consider doing the whole exercise again, but rotating the letters clockwise instead of anticlockwise.

If you still can’t sleep, then your insomnia is too severe for my method. Now, a couple of comments in conclusion.

As you’ll have noticed, my visualisation technique is a process, with a beginning, middle and end. It comes with its own measure of how long you’ve been doing it, and how long you’ve got left. The alternative would be an exercise that involves doing something over and over until it works, but that, in my experience, is a bad idea because it only leads to me getting bored and impatient and desperate to look at a clock. Psychologically, knowing exactly where I am on a well-defined journey is far more conductive to my peace of mind. This might be different for other people.

Finally, the killer question. When all is said and done, does my technique actually work?

That depends on what is meant by the question. Does visualising rotated letters of the alphabet get me to sleep any faster than simply waiting it out? I can’t honestly say that it makes a great deal of difference. But to me, the true measure of whether the technique is useful is this. By saving me from lying there feeling frustrated and angry with myself for failing to switch off, does it make the journey toward sleep more pleasant than it otherwise would be, so that subjectively it seems faster, irrespective of how long it really takes? Yes, it does. Definitely.

I call that a success.

I recently noticed that my passport had expired, so I’m now in the process of having it renewed. Because I don’t drive, a passport is often the most convenient way to prove my identity.

This means that I can finally get rid of my old passport picture, which could, I’ve always thought, easily be entered into a gallery of the world’s worst passport photographs. For a start, my hair was way overdue for a trim back then in 1999, and things were far too hectic to do anything about it.

I offer you a scan of the offending picture. If you’ve got one that’s even less complimentary, you may link to it in the comments.

The new one – to damn it with faint praise – is better.

(There is a website worstpassportphotos.com, by the way, but the copyright notice says 2008 and it’s still under construction, so I wouldn’t count on it ever being constructed.)

Here are some things that have struck me as particularly interesting recently.

Astronomy:

• Equinox shows Saturn’s rings to be bumpier than expected.
• Phoebe gives Saturn a super-ring.
• Augmented reality for astronauts.
• Raining rocks: weather on really hot planets.
• Nice picture showing relative sizes of solar system bodies (2007).
• Studying crystallisation in low gravity.

Biology:

• How pruning works.
• Nanotubes as fertiliser? Even if impractical, still cool.
• Hyenas cooperate to solve puzzles.
• Back in February, I linked to a fascinating article about bacteria without cell walls. Here is a blog post on the research, which includes pictures. [Update: I have since learned that L-form bacteria have been known since the 1930s, and that it is only the method of reproduction that is news.]

Palaeontology and Archaeology:

• Tyrannosaurus rex suffered from bird disease.
• Komodo dragon fossils in Australia.
• One of this month’s big stories was about Ardipithecus, a pre-Australopithecus human ancestor.
• Emperor Nero’s banquet hall discovered.

Video:

• Advanced origami (2008)

Many bloggers occasionally repost items that they originally blogged some time ago, or else post in order to link to such items. If you’re like me, though, then you usually skip over such old material that the blogger, with little rhyme or reason, has chosen to bring to the attention of new readers. I don’t react this way simply because the material is old (that would be silly), but more because the exercise generally seems meaningless. Why that particular article? Why bring it to our attention now? When bloggers provide answers to these questions, I find I’m much more motivated to read the material that they choose to revisit.

In 2008, Yehuda Berlinger published a series of posts which, to my mind, demonstrate the right way to showcase your own old material. From the first week of the year to the fifty-second, Yehuda linked to selected articles from his own blog that he had written in the same week but in previous years. This technique doesn’t seem to have caught on in the blogging world, but as a way of motivating me to actually read the old posts, it worked, because the anniversarial angle gave the whole thing a meaning and relevance that it would not otherwise have had.

I decided at the time that this was a model I could copy, except that I would do it monthly rather than weekly, and only when the blog had been around long enough to accumulate sufficient material. For the next twelve months, then, I will link to old material from the same month in previous years, beginning in October 2006 when this blog began. I will also repost links to items outside of the blog that I originally linked to in the same month.

You are certainly very welcome to post comments on the articles I showcase in this series. Here is my first selection.

October 2006:

• I wrote a number of posts about my childhood, using old memorabilia such as photographs and old schoolbooks as my primary sources. Among these was a brief post on fictional diseases that I invented when I was nine years old. If you want something longer, I wrote another post with excerpts from stories I wrote at around the same age.

October 2007:

• I wrote a report on my family’s houseboat holiday on the Murray River.

October 2008:

• I celebrated the second anniversary of this blog, linking back to many of my posts from October 2006. In my Interesting Stuff series, I linked to a report about bonobos hunting and eating chimpanzees, a Catalyst article exploring the link between happiness and compassion, and the outstanding SBS documentary miniseries about Aboriginal Australia, entitled First Australians.

I’ve been running the Interesting Stuff series for more than a year now, and I thought it would be good to look back and revisit the best of the best that I linked to in August and September of 2008. I hope you enjoy this peek back in time.

Feel free to talk about topics relevant to the items I mention, or else tell me about the most interesting thing you learned during that period. Here is my selection.

Astronomy:

• NASA reported the discovery of the Dark Flow – a strong gravitational pull from beyond the Cosmic Horizon.
• An article in the online Smithsonian Magazine reported on an early biography of Galileo.

Biology:

• A fascinating video about the unexpected side-effects of breeding tame foxes was doing the rounds on the Internet. [Update: I recently read an article with a sceptical perspective on this, which I might as well link to.]
• It was found that European magpies can recognise themselves in a mirror, the first non-mammal to be recorded as doing so.

Linguistics:

• On Language Log, Mark Liberman mused on a method for training people to distinguish sounds in a foreign language.

Music:

• I linked to Benjamin Zander’s TED talk about classical music.
• I also linked to a lovely folk music video on Youtube.

Technology:

• An advanced (and very expensive) type of hologram was reported, one that responds realistically to light.

Starting in October, I plan to write a monthly series of reminiscent posts, looking back at selected blog posts that I wrote in that month in earlier years. For example, in October I’ll link back to selected posts from October 2006, October 2007 and October 2008. I’m planning to use the Dickensian title The Ghost of October Past (and likewise for other months). Any thoughts on that?

Here are the most interesting things I’ve learned about on the Internet in the last fortnight.

Astronomy:

• Update on the Planck space telescope. (For a reminder on why Planck is important, see this article that I originally linked to a few months ago.)
• New theory on gamma ray bursts.
• Studying chirality of molecules in space.
• You can make Mars red dust with enough shaking.

Biology and Animal Behaviour:

• Chimps catch yawns from cartoons.
• Gene therapy lets monkeys see colour.
• Rover to study life on the sea floor.
• Weird animal of the month. The species isn’t named, but it seems there’s another one that’s more or less the same.

Brain Science:

• Neuroscience study of people cured of blindness.
• Juvenile delinquents tend to misinterpret disgust as anger.

History and Culture:

• Want some heavy reading? Try this history of philosophy article and learn what Kant had to say about space and time.
• An article on medieval punctuation.
• It’s well-known that C.S. Lewis was a proponent of theistic evolution, but I came across an article that muddies the waters.
• An online exhibition of native Australian art. Look at this one and this one and then browse the site for more.
• Women growing on trees.

Palaeontology:

• New dinosaur, like Tyrannosaurus but older and smaller.

Physics:

• Watching how frequently atoms move in metal. (Not much about how, though.)
• Studying friction in carbon nanotubes.
• New technology for the lightbulbs of the future.

Video:

• I meant to link to this 2008 TED video about ocean exploration in my previous installment, but I forgot.

Here in Australia we’ve recently been exposed to a number of TV documentaries about America. The series Stephen Fry in America was broadcast here recently, and is probably the best overview of United States geography that I’ve ever seen (though it also reinforced the impression that I could never feel comfortable living there). A couple of other documentaries are currently being broadcast, one on the Wild West (Tuesday nights) and one on Yellowstone (Sunday nights).

I’ll post my next installment of Interesting Stuff in early October. As always, I’ll use Twitter to bookmark candidate articles in the meantime. (Most of them, anyway: I don’t tweet every article that I end up using in this series, and I certainly don’t use every article that I tweet.)

Early October is also the anniversary of this blog, and I have some ideas about that.