“The U.K., Malaysia and Ireland have nice school uniforms, but how come Japanese school attire seemingly takes it to another level, leaving the students looking like little sailors and marching band leaders? Having worked as a public school English teacher in rural Fukushima and downtown Tokyo, I’ve been amazed by the variety of uniforms as well as the ways students customise them as far as they are allowed. PingMag shows you interesting details in fashion and the social performance that accompany this apparel to a point where the traditional Japanese school uniform has developed beyond the schoolyard and into pop culture.” (PingMag)

Scientists create material one atom thick: “The foundations of the universe have been glimpsed in Manchester by scientists who have created the thinnest possible material.

Flat, parallel sheets of carbon atoms in the graphite of pencil lead have been peeled apart by the scientists to yield a sheet a single atom thick that has peculiar properties which made the fundamental feat possible.

…Today, in the journal Science, Prof Andre Geim of Manchester University and his colleagues at The University of Minho in Portugal, say they have used [the material] to measure an important and enigmatic fundamental constant of nature – the fine structure constant.

Working with Rahul Nair and Peter Blake he made large suspended membranes of graphene so that one can easily see light passing through this thinnest of all materials.

The 2.3 per cent of light that it absorbed could then be used to calculate the constant, which shows the interaction between very fast moving electrical charges in the material and light, and it is close to 1/137.” (Telegraph.UK)

“These days, when a kid dies, the world — i.e., cable TV — blames the parents. It’s simple as that. And yet, Trevor Butterworth, a spokesman for the research center STATS.org, said, ‘The statistics show that this is an incredibly rare event, and you can’t protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning.’ ” (NY Sun)

“Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, talks about our new wave of overprotected kids — and spells out five (and really, he’s got six) dangerous things you should let your kids do. Allowing kids the freedom to explore, he says, will make them stronger and smarter and actually safer. This talk comes from TED University 2007, a pre-conference program where TEDsters share ideas.

To sum up, let children:

1. Play with fire
2. Own a pocket knife
3. Throw a spear
4. Deconstruct appliances
5. Break the DMCA / Drive a car”

(DivineCaroline)

“This text is a benchmark volume for an emerging field where mental disorders serve as the springboard for philosophical insights. It brings together current research by Owen Flanagan, Robert Gordon, Robert Van Gulick and others on mental disorders of consciousness, self-consciousness, emotions, personality, and action and belief as well as general methodological questions about the study of mental disorder. Topics include the problem of despair, multiple personality disorder, autism and the theory of the mind debate, and the effectiveness of psychotherapy. An introduction shows how to interpret philosophical psychopathology as an interdisciplinary field and locates the contributions in the book conceptually and in terms of the surrounding literature. Psychopathology promises to clarify and illuminate a host of philosophical issues. The 12 chapters focus chiefly on issues in applied philosophy of mind (personal identity and self-consciousness, voluntary action and self-control, cognition and practical reasoning), in the science of mind (the medical model of mental disorders, philosophy of science and psychiatry, psychopathology and folk psychology), and in the ethical and experimential dimensions of psychopathology.” (Blackwell Press)

“…[W]hat if the very nature of civilisation means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse sooner or later? A few researchers have been making such claims for years. Disturbingly, recent insights from fields such as complexity theory suggest that they are right. It appears that once a society develops beyond a certain level of complexity it becomes increasingly fragile.” (New Scientist)