This will be a quick post as I still consider myself to be (as made evident by my recent lack of posts) on vacation.

Rick Rosner is recorded as having one of the world’s highest IQ’s. He scored 44 out of 48 on Ron Hoeflin’s Mega Test (47 on a subsequent attempt) and holds the only perfect score on Hoeflin’s Titan Test.

Below are links to a documentary, in which he was featured, that tells the story of his experience with the game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”.

Enjoy!

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

Movies Intelligence, TV

This is one of those nice and easy tutorials that require absolutely no artistic skill in order to achieve the desired result. Just follow the steps and you’ll have your rays of light.

I recently used this technique when creating a background for my Twitter page, you can see it here.

Step 1

First of all, create a new document. Once we’ve finished this tutorial, the light rays will look as if they are being emitted from the center of your page. So keep this in mind when choosing the dimensions; if your intention is to have the light rays coming from the side of an image, you’ll need to create an image that is a little more than twice as wide/tall as it needs to be so that you can crop it later. For example, if the effect that you are trying to achieve is light radiating from the lower left corner of a 728×90 banner, then you’ll need to create a document that is initially roughly 1500×1500 pixels. If this is at all unclear, the reason for doing this will quickly become apparent as we progress through the tutorial.

Step 2

Now, we will need to create a gradient, so choose a color for both your foreground and background. Make sure that the gradient type is set to “Foreground to Background” then create a vertical gradient to fill your layer.

Step 3

Once you’re happy with your gradient, go to Filter > Distort > Wave.

First, change the Type to Square.

Number of Generators is fine at 5. The important thing to know here is that the Min and Max Wavelength values must be the same. You can set them as high or low as you’d like, but they must equal one another. Lower values will create more rays of light whereas higher values will result in fewer.

You can play around with Amplitude until you achieve the result that you’re going for. Basically, lower amplitude values will preserve more of the gradient within each vertical strip while higher values will create much more contrast, essentially giving you bands of color that match your initial foreground and background picks.

Leave Scale untouched.

Step 4

Odds are, once you apply the filter, that you’ll be left with a vertical band on the right side of your image that isn’t quite as wide as the others. This will affect our final image, so crop it out. After having done so, ensure that the vertical band on the far left is the opposite of that which appears on the far right. If it’s not, crop it out.

Step 5

Now that you’ve prepared the image, you can apply the final filter. Choose Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates.

The default setting of Rectangular to Polar is fine, you can apply the filter.

Done! Your final image should look something like this

You can play around with this to get the effect that you’re looking for. Try applying a Twirl or Ocean Ripple filter.

I hope that you find this helpful!

Design Photoshop, Tutorial

Interested in owning your own space shuttle? NASA is offering their slightly used shuttles starting at the low low price of $42 million dollars, or 42,000 easy payments $999.99!

NASA has put the call out to schools, museums, and various other “appropriate organizations” that might be interested. The $42 million dollar price tag includes the estimated $6 million cost of preparing the shuttle and mounting it to the back of a modified jumbo jet for delivery to your local airport. The price, NASA warns, will be largely affected by the distance between the shuttle’s final delivery location and the airport.

Now, I hate to rain on your parade but, before you start trying to figure out how much time a space shuttle could shave off of your daily commute, you should know that NASA will only deliver the shuttles to buyers who will keep them in an indoor climate controlled display. And, just so that you don’t get any ideas, the shuttles will be delivered without any main engines.

Based on Bush’s plan to have astronauts return to the moon by 2020, NASA will retire Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour by September 30, 2010. Obama has, however, hinted at the possibility of keeping the shuttles in use beyond 2010. If that’s the case, I’m sure that there will be a few very disappointed shuttle ownership hopefuls. Although, I’m sure that disappointment will quickly turn to a sense of relief as I can’t imagine anything triggering buyer’s remorse more aggresively than a $24 million space shuttle that does nothing but occupy space (just not quite in the way that you would have hoped).

General Science NASA

As a healthy adult, would you take prescription medication, originally intended for other purposes, in order to enhance your cognitive ability? If so, you wouldn’t be alone: 7 percent of university students on US campuses have admitted to doing so, along with 20 percent of scientists.

In choosing to join the ranks of the enhanced student and scientist, you would be breaking the law. In the US, the use of these drugs without a prescription is a crime and is punishable by prison.

But is this right? People will be quick to draw a comparison to the use of performance enhancing drugs in athletics, the media coverage of which has rendered “enhancement” an ugly word. The difference lies in the fact that, as a competitive athlete, achieving an enhancement in your performance through the use of banned substances is a violation of the rules. These rules are enforced in order to level the playing.

Rules from an ethical or moral perspective have never been established in the academic or professional arenas. And why should they have been? In these fields, is a level playing field really something towards which we should strive? With scientists working towards outcomes that will, among many other things, enrich lives and cure disease, would we not want them to have every possible advantage? To ban the use of these drugs is to potentially deny ourselves innovations and accomplishments that, without cognitive enhancement, might have never been achieved or, at the very least, not realized until much later.

Human intelligence has severe limitations. Our cognitive capabilities are far exceeded by our circumstances, a fact made painfully evident by our limited understanding of the world in which we live and the widespread obstinate acceptance of irrational and childish beliefs. We need to adapt a way of thinking that will not result in restrictions being imposed on those who are willing to dedicate themselves to finding solutions.

The brain-boost shopping list

Intended as treatments for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), both Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) affect the catecholamine system thus increasing executive functions. This can result in an improved ability to focus and to manipulate information in the working memory. Some memory enhancement can also be achieved.

Provigil (modafinil) is prescribed to treat fatigue caused by various sleep disorders. It can help you to stay awake for days without being burdened by the need for sleep. Some tests also show that, when taken by rested adults, certain aspects of executive function are enhanced.

Aricept (donepezil), developed to treat Alzheimer’s disease, raises acetylcholine levels in the brain, resulting in improved memory.

Further reading

Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy
It should be noted that both Barbara Sahakian and Ronald C. Kessler, two of the authors behind the article to which I’ve linked, work as consultants for several pharmaceutical companies. Barbara Sahakian holds shares in CeNes and Ronald C. Kessler has received grants from several pharmaceutical companies. Bias is everywhere; take from it what you will and form your own opinion.

General Science Intelligence

Pictures have just been released of the damaged suffered by the Large Hadron Collider in September which forced it to be shutdown less than 10 days after it started operation. The damage was the result of an electrical fault that punctured a cryogenic liquid helium enclosure. This caused the gas to vaporized which, as it could not escape fast enough, led to an explosion. The blast of pressure damaged the neighboring sections of the machine.

The repair work consists of removing and reinstalling 53 of the 57 magnets used along the machine’s 27km track buried under the Swiss-French border near Geneva. The LHC is a superconducting machine so, in order to complete these repairs, it’s necessary to warm it from it’s operating temperature of -271.3°C. According to CERN, the estimated cost for repairs will be $29 million.

At this point, 28 magnets have been removed and the projected date for completion is March 2009 with testing beginning in June and the first collisions coming sometime in the third quarter. CERN will be meeting tomorrow, December 12, to establish an official date.

General Science CERN, Large Hadron Collider, LHC