Gap Year (TV series)

In english class we watched the first chapter of a TV serie called Gap Year. Gap Year is a comedy about young boys and girls who are into a gap year, starting in China and travelling through Asia. It tries to capture the feelings of the young people who travels innto an unknown place, specially young people, because young people discovers things about themselves and not just about the world. The series has moments of happiness, of crazyness, of pain and of disperation.

Here there are two reviews of the series: 

Theguardian

Ugh, travellers. As in young people who go off round Asia or South America or wherever, with their Lonely bloody Planet guides, in search of mind-broadening new experiences. Like these people in Gap Year (E4).
I had one once, a gap year – actually about five years – and I hated myself, too, as well as all the other people doing it. But I have often thought that it’s been neglected as a source of comedy. Now Plebs (huge guilty pleasure!) writer Tom Basden is putting that right.

“You’re all into the same shit,” the older, drunker travel writer lady tells Dylan and Sean on the plane to Beijing. Exactly, though some things have changed since my travelling days. There are mobile phones and the internet, so everyone is basically in touch wherever they are.

Some things seem to be the same though, reassuringly – such as travellers are still obsessed with their own bowel movements, literally into the same shit, the consistency and frequency thereof. And ticking stuff off, attractions, experiences. And finding the real India, Vietnam or Bolivia; so it becomes a kind of competition about how far you can get away from other people just like you in search of authenticity. I once spent a night in a filthy hovel on a very untouristy (possibly because of the adjacent oil refinery) island off Venezuela while a burly, rummed-up fisherman attempted to have sex with me. All night. Very real, but also really horrible. And his boat was the only way off the island … Anyway, that’s a different story.

Basden has put together a nice cast of characters. Sean’s an amiable English lad, on a lad’s trip, with his old mate, escaping from the humdrum of his life at home. He’s actually a wheely suitcaser, as opposed to a backpacker, and would be better off in Thailand than China, as the travel writer on the plane said. But Dylan has brought him to Beijing, on false pretences as it happens: he’s stalking his ex (on her “track my run” app, ha, nice touch).

Read more at Theguardian

Chortle

Part of the reason they end up unfamiliar places is because Dylan (Anders Hayward) is going to quite extreme lengths to stalk his ex-girlfriend, dragging his unaware pal Sean (Ade Oyefeso) halfway around the world under false pretences. The pair quickly encounter a couple of girls, May (Alice Lee) and Ashley (Brittney Wilson), and the central characters are set… although there’s a little more fleshing out to be done.

If you didn’t know the people behind Gap Year, E4’s new comedy about students backpacking around East Asia, you might expect a broad parody of some upper-class Tarquin blundering around like a culturally insensitive tornado.

But Tom Basden’s script feels a little more like the genuine experiences of twentysomethings setting out on their first big adventure. The fact it was genuinely shot on location adds a travelogue element, and further underlines the authenticity of the scripts and the largely unknown cast.

If clichés are present, it’s more along the lines of these youngsters vowing to experience the ‘real’ Asia and keep off the beaten track – ‘it’s not a holiday, we're travelling’ they insist – only to find themselves at exactly the same places as everyone else. They get irate at the tourists spoiling their perfect shot of the Great Wall of China, unaware of the irony of being part of the same problem, and substitute missing Glastonbury by attending their own rave.

Read more at Chortle





I absolutely agree with Sam Wollaston, the writer of this page of : silly and puerile, but in a good way. Gap Year is totally not the TV series I could watch at home, because it's just like losing time, you learn nothing new, and all with absurde situations, that couldn't happen in real life. Well, depite of all the bad thing I can tell about it, it has a point. I ca think that watching it is just losing time, but at the same time it's funny. I say that's like losing time because you can have fun doing something more productive than watching Gap Year, but if you just want to relax, it's OK. (I wouldn't do it, but I accept that I'm a bit weird about this thing of losing time like this). The craziness of the serie can get you out of your world for a while, and this is the objective of a TV sries (even if it's sad).

OMG, the Earth is flat!!!

Internet has a lot of good things: almost instant communication arround the world, improvement of organization, improvement of business, access to information... But Internet's advantages must be used wisely, because all this potential can be used to a wrong purpose.

One little wrong usage of internet is something called "conspiracy believers", or stuff like this. It's not a big problem compared to other problems of internet, but it's important as well. This is about people that spread rumors or fake information arround internet, based on one idea. They, generally, say that most of thing that we believe are false, that the governments lie to us. Well, this is not foolish, maybe they lie. But things go further and further and they take profit of some usual thoughts of the people, for example that men were never on the Moon. In this example, they add firewood to the fire. But then, they start saying NASA isn't real, and then, what I'm going to focus on: Earth is flat and we live in a lie of the governments!

Well, well... This sound totall crazy, people on the XXI century who believes that the Earth is flat... But they really believe this. Well, some do, others just are looking for money on internet (this kind of publications has a lot of views). They think south pole is blocked by the governments to hide the truth, that all the space images are just virtual, that the Sun and the Moon move just above us... They believe in the Aristotelic cosmovision, of the VI century bC! There are some who follow llitterally the Holy Bible description of the Earth.

And this is how they imagine the Earth. The worse is that people who don't know nothing of science, they can believe all this stuff. Because the human mind, in our society, tends to believe that someone is lying to us. The feeling that you know more than the other people about how is the world, the feeling that you've been wakened up and you know the truth, is a feeling of superiority that we, humans, like. But the ones who start this kind of fake information, they don't even deserve to be mentioned. They are spreading fake knowledge arround the world, to people that have faith on them, and all they say is based on lies and eschepticism. Lying to ignorant people just to earn some money should be punished. They change how people see the world! This is just despicable.

If you don't believe that there's people who believes this, just click here.

PD: I do NOT believe that the Earth is flat. 

2Cellos

Usually every day I spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube. Well, watching videos and listening to music. The thing I look for on YouTube change drastically, one day I just watch street musicians, the next day all is about the James Webb Space Telescope... Well, few weeks ago it gave me for the cellos, an instrument that, before, I didn't use to listen to. Cellos if played right, make so beautiful music, from the classical to the electric one. 

I found a channel on YouTube that astonished me. It's called 2Cellos, and this is the name of a musical groups composed by 2 croatian boys that, obviously, play the cello. And they play damn good. Their videos are so good as well. In their videos, they usually play classical cellos, but in concerts they use to play electric cello. Here I let you two of their videos:

They have 3 CDs, with covers and their own compositions too. They perform toors as well, and in the shows they use to play well known pop songs, and they have played sometimes with orchestras too.

I like them so much, their way of playing, the edition of the videos with the stories, the funny they are sometimes... And how they introduce the cello to people who just listens pop music, but then, seeing those two boys, maybe starts looking for more music.

Acid base tritation

An acid base evaluation of a solution is a method that allows us to know how much acid or basic is a solution. First of all, it's needed to have a known and trustworthy acid or basic solution, because it's needed to know its molarity.

The acid base titration procedure starts placing the solution we want to study in an erlenmeyer flask. The next step is adding a pH indicator to the solution. A pH indicator is a substance that changes his color depending on the pH of its surroundings. Then, when this is prepared, we start working with the other needed solution, the basic solution. We spill it into a flask and we measure its volume. Then, with a dropper we add this solution to the one we want to study. When the color of all the solution we're studying starts to change, we start adding the basic solution more slowly and carefully, until the color gets fixed. In that moment, we measure how much basic solution we've spent, so we'll be able to calculate how many -OH molecules the starting solution has needed to get to the right pH for the indicator to change of color.

From here, knowing that every -OH molecule neutralizes an acid termination (it's needed to know which acid contains the starting solution) it's possible to calculate how many acid terminations were there in the starting solution. With this information, we just have to apply an easy calculation to find out the molarity of the starting solution that we wanted to study.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

About two weeks ago, I heard about a TV series. When I heard about it i remebered a video I had when I was little called Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan. In the video, Carl Sagan explained things abouut the universe, and maybe it was the first documentary about the universe that I've seen, the first of hundreds. So I looked for it on internet, and I discovered that on 2014 they published a new Cosmos, so I started to look for more information.

The original Cosmos: A Personal Voyage was started in 1980 and was hosted by Carl Sagan. The show has been watched by at least 400 million people across 60 different countries, and until the 1990 documentary The Civil War, remained the network's highest rated program.

Following Sagan's death in 1996, his widow Ann Druyan, the co-creator of the original Cosmos series with Steven Soter, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson created a new version of the series, aimed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not just to those interested in the sciences.

So I started to watch the new Cosmos: a spacetime odissey. I've seen four chapters, and I have to say that they are so good. Sometimes Neil explains thing that I know, but even in those moments I don't get bored, because of the way he explains it all. The animatios and the visual effects help too, they had money enough to do it right. And I like too the chronologyof the chapters, and how he explains the live of some scientists who don't are well known even if they did important discoveries. What is even better is the vision of the universe it gives, of history, time, knowledge, faith and science, without avoiding philosophical questions.

There Is A Man-Made Barrier Surrounding Our Planet

18/05/2017 iflscience

We have accidentally created a barrier around our planet, and while it might not be a futuristic force field, it is still damn cool.

NASA researchers have discovered that certain radio communications, known as VLF (very low frequency), are capable of interacting with particles in space, moving them in certain directions. We know we can affect the space weather around our planet, but this discovery might lead to ways that we could actually manipulate it. The study is published in Space Science Reviews.

“A number of experiments and observations have figured out that, under the right conditions, radio communications signals in the VLF frequency range can in fact affect the properties of the high-energy radiation environment around the Earth,” said co-author Phil Erickson, assistant director at the MIT Haystack Observatory, in a statement.

The study is a comprehensive review on the human effects around our planet. It discusses the impact of high-altitude nuclear tests, chemical release experiments, and high-frequency wave heating in the ionosphere. The review goes into the physics behind all those events and reveals the latest analysis of the VLF interaction.

Earth is surrounded by regions filled with charged particles, known as the Van Allen Belts. It was traditionally assumed that there were two such regions, but it turns out that the picture is a lot more complex. They are a consequence of Earth’s magnetic field and act as an almost impenetrable barrier, keeping the most energetic electrons from reaching our planet.

Using data from NASA’s Van Allen Probe, the researchers have discovered that the VLF-induced bubble extends up to the inner edge of the Van Allen Belt and not further. The team speculate that the VLF bubble is pushing the Van Allen Belt outwards.

This idea is strengthened by data from the 1960s, which shows the Van Allen Belt to be much closer to our planet than it currently is. Back then, VLF transmissions were a lot more limited, which could explain the difference. The researchers speculate that if there were no VLF, the boundary would stretch closer to Earth.

The team suggests that with further study, we might discover if we can remove excess particles from lower Earth’s orbit. This might help during extreme space weather events that might damage satellites and other instruments.

There are already plans in place to test VLF from higher in the atmosphere to see exactly what we can achieve with them.

Summary

The fact that the edge of the humanmade VLF electromagnetical waves (very low frequence) is exactly wher the Van Allen radiation belt starts is not a coincidence. With many experiments, scientists have discovered that VLF radiation is able to interact with highly energy charged particles, and with this radiation we, the humans, have created a second shield against radiaton from the space. This has been discovered by the MIT while studiyng the effects of our actions on the Earth.

Opinion

This is an unexpected good new! Firstlym because they've discovered that we've been protecting us without knowing it, and then because now we know a new way of protecting us of the space radiations. Of course, we don't know how it works yet, but this discovery opens a new field of research. But not all about it is good. Well, I'll just say we've been lucky and that has helped us. But now imagine that VLF was doing just the opposite, we would have not noticed it untill it was too late. This new gives us an advice, that sometimes we don't know the consequences of what we're doing with science.

Gay Vultures Successfully Hatch An Egg In Amsterdam

02/06/2017 IFLSCIENCE

For the first time, a pair of gay vultures have become parents after successfully hatching a surrogate egg at a zoo in Amsterdam.

The pair of male griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) were given the abandoned egg by zookeepers at Artis Amsterdam Royal Zoo. For two months, the couple nursed and incubated the egg in the nest they both helped build. The chick successfully hatched, and now the new dads both take care of the chick, regurgitating food into its mouth. "We have had them for some years. They always build a nest together, bond and mate together," Zookeeper Job van Tol told BBC News. "But, as two males, the one thing they could not do was lay an egg."

"It was a bit of risk as we had no guarantees of success, but we thought, finally, this is their chance."

Homosexuality in birds is actually relatively common. At least 130 bird species have been reported to engage in homosexual behavior, whether that’s sex, courtship, affection, pair bonding, or parenting. Nearly a third of all long-term pairs in Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) are female-female and over a fifth of graylag geese (Anser anser) pairs are male-male.

"As in some penguin species, vultures do everything the same, they alternate all the jobs. Females lay the eggs, but they breed together, they forage for food together. Males are programmed to have that duty of care," said Mr Van Tol.

The zoo also had other vulture egg news this week, with the hatching of another vulture egg, whose parents were rescued from a road accident in Spain.

Since this vulture species tends to only lay one egg a year, this is great news for the conservation of the species. The zoo is part of a European breeding program for griffon vultures, so they are keen to investigate whether it is feasible for them to return these two chicks to the wild.

The griffon vulture is a large bird of prey, native to fragmented mountainous regions across southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Although some populations in North Africa and Turkey are in decline due to overhunting, the species as a whole is actually growing in number. Just like other vultures, this species is a scavenger, so it mainly eats the dead carcasses of animals, such as rabbits, rats, and pretty much any other meat it spots.

Opinion

It's a good new, and not just for the new bird. I've liked it mostly because I did't thought homosexuality is possible in animals, and this changes my conception of the animal world. I think this new should be known, just to those who say that homosexuality is not natural and that it is an illness; well, here they have a clear answer. First of all, because there are more animals that do this, not just birds, and we can see that homosexuality is natural.

Third gravitational waves detected

Thursday 1 June 2017 16.41 BST - The Guardian

Third gravitational wave detection gives hints on dark matter and black holes
Latest observation by Ligo brings scientists closer to goal of using gravitational waves to see ancient events invisible to optical and radio telescopes
Numerical simulation of binary black hole merger. Gravitational wave strength is indicated by elevation as well as colour; blue is weak and yellow strong. Illustration: Simulation: S Ossokine, A Buonanno/Visualisation: T Dietrich, R Haas

Ripples in the fabric of spacetime triggered by the cataclysmic merger of two black holes more than 3bn years ago have been detected by physicists.
The observations mark the third occasion that scientists have spotted gravitational waves – the compression and stretching of space itself that was first predicted by Einstein.
Analysis Gravitational waves: why it's impossible not to be thrilled by this discoveryNot only was building this experiment a towering achievement but its success is both stunning and the results totally convincing
The latest detection, by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or Ligo, has produced intriguing hints on the nature of black holes and, potentially, dark matter.
The faint hum, picked up by Ligo’s twin instruments on 4 January 2017, could be traced back to the violent collision more than 3bn years ago of two black holes with masses of more than 31 and 19 times the mass of the sun, respectively. The two combined to form a single black hole with a mass slightly less than 49 times that of the sun and the leftover energy spilled out as deformations that spread outwards across spacetime like ripples across a pond.
Ligo scientists made the first historic observation of gravitational waves in September 2015, using a pair of 4km-long perpendicular pipes, one in Hanford, Washington state, the other in Livingston, Louisiana. A second detection occurred three months later.

Read more

Summary

Gravitational waves were detected on January and the paper was published weeks ago. It was again at LIGO laboratories. The detection of gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of spacetime that propagate at the speed of light and are caused by the sudden acceleration of massive objects, was, and continues to be a big deal in the cosmological community — it helps to further verify the predictions produced by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Gravitational waves also give cosmologists and astronomers a new sense, an ability to detect cosmological events that would otherwise go unobserved. Black holes are a little camera shy with being so massive that even light can’t escape their gravity and whatnot.

Opinion

This is important because this wave was again produced by the fusion of two supermassive black holes, and now we know that this kind of fusion happens more often than we thought before. This gives us a new tool to study the universe, because gravitational waves can tell us about ancient events that we can't study using electromagnetic waves. The theory would require these two black holes that collapsed to have been formed in the early universe, from patches of material– rather than stars – collapsing inwards. The latest observations reveal the existence of black holes in a “mass window” that would be consistent with this theory.