How radioactive exposure affects your health

Hi all,

I’m sure you’re all aware of the tsunami in Japan with all its consequences. It is difficult to imagine the impact of radioactive exposure. Yesterday, Singapore has reported finding low levels of radioactivity in four vegetable samples imported from Japan. Singapore has stopped imports of milk, meat and related products from the affected area. The European Union also increases control on food imports from Japan.

How does radioactive exposure affects your health?
Symptoms of radiation illness occur when the body has been in contact with a large dose of radiation over a short period of time. The more the body is in contact with radiation, the sicker this person gets.

The symptoms of radiation illness vary depending on the exposure. Certain symptoms become visible immediately after the exposure, followed by a period of approximately four weeks when the patient will feel better. More symptoms will materialize later, if the patient survives there is a higher chance of developing cancer, most likely a form of leukemia.

For the Dutch:

Twitter Facts

What started as a confusing project 5 years ago has become one of the best ways to share and find information on the Internet. Twitter has been created in March 2006, and launched in July 2006 by a man named Jack Dorsey. This 34 years old man previously worked as a flower artist and masseur, nowadays he is creator, co-founder and chariman of Twitter and CEO of Square. Last Monday Twitter celebrated its 5^th anniversary.

In September 2010, Twitter had 175 million registered users, 95 million tweets per day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day. On the 6^th of July the fist Dutch person signed up on Twitter. In July 2010, Twitter had 191.000 Dutch users, on Februari 18 2011 this number has increased up to 418.621 Dutch users.

The popularity of Twitter especially becomes visible during events like ‘superbowl’. On particular moments during this event, the number of Tweets per second was 4.000. New Year’s Eve, on the stroke of 12 o'clock, Japan was a record-breaker with 6.000 tweets per second.

In spite of Twitter runs at a loss, the value of Twitter is estimated at 4,5 miljard dollar (2,9 miljard euro).

I started using Twitter 1,5 years ago, at that time most of my friends weren’t using it. The reason I signed up was to follow politicians and the news. Nowadays most of my friends signed up.

For me, Twitter is a great medium to increase the number of visitors of my blogs, thanks to Google Analytics I know that most of you find me through Twitter.

Most debated topics 2010:

1. Gulf Oil Spill

2. FIFA World Cup

3. Inception

4. Haiti Earthquake

5. Vuvuzela

6. Apple iPad

7. Google Android

8. Justin Bieber

9. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows

10. Pulpo Paul

Nice video about Twitter in plain English:

Sources: NRC Next, Twitter and Youtube

Brainpower

The image below of Einstein appears to protruding out of the background, but is it? How sure are you?

Believe it or not, this image is a concave mask, a hollow face.

Previous semester at the University of Tilburg I got introduced to the Hollow-Face illusion, also known as Hollow-Mask illusion. This optical illusion gives you the perception of a concave mask of a face appears as a normal convex face.

The first time I had seen the video in class I could not believe my eyes, I thought it was simply not possible my brain could fool me like that. At home I searched on the Internet and discovered that, unfortunately, my brain is capable of fooling me.

Scholars suggested that the illusion arises because our brain ‘knows’ that we are seeing a face. We human have only seen convex faces in our life so this knowledge trumps other visual cues that suggest it’s not convex like real faces we have seen in life.

Watch the video below and see it for yourself. After watching you probably will fully understand why I had to share this with you.

Don't hesitate to leave comments :).

Online communication

Dear followers,

As you all know the Internet has grown fast, only a few years ago the Internet was used for text-based discussions via chat or e-mail, these systems were devoid of nonverbal cues. At that time there were many scholars which maintained that people misbehaved oneself on the Internet. According to Kraut et al. (1998); “Greater use of the Internet is associated with declines in participants’ communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness”. However, the complaint that online communication is bad communication was often made by early scholars, the Internet has changed a lot through the years.

Enough history !

Today, the Internet provides numerous communication spaces in which people meet others. Newshounds find sources of information via blogs. People using social networking sites, such as Facebook, Hyves and others, to see what their friends are doing and with whom they are associating.

Research shows that people like each other more through online communication than face-to-face communication. “Online contact is more social, personal and more intimate”, according to Walther (1996).

HOW COME?

- People optimize their self presentation, because of the positive self presentation we feemore comfortable and relaxed therefore the communication passes off smoothly

- The positive things leaves us a pleasant first impression, we hold on to first impressions therefore a lot needs to happen to get disappointed afterwards .

- Because people feel more comfortable contacting others online than face-to-face, they are more open to answer questions and give more personal information.

- People have more time to respond which result into better answers.

- People often have a shared group membership, such as ‘I-Love-Vacation’ or ‘Football-Fan’, they can end up thinking that they have more in common than they might actually have.

pls, feel free to leave a message J