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iPad App Offers Detailed Images of Einstein's Brain
puddingebola writes in with news of a new app that might be of interest to those studying Einstein's brain, or just looking for something neat for Halloween. "Albert Einstein's brain, that revolutionized physics, can now be downloaded as an iPad app for USD 9.99.
The exclusive application, which has been just launched, promises to make detailed images of Einstein's brain more accessible to scientists than ever before.
The funding to scan and digitize nearly 350 fragile and priceless slides made from slices of Einstein's brain after his death in 1955 were given to a medical museum under development in Chicago, website 'Independent.ie' reported.
The application will allow researchers and novices to peer into the eccentric Nobel winner's brain as if they were looking through a microscope.
'I can't wait to find out what they'll discover,' Steve Landers, a consultant for the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, who designed the app, was quoted as saying by 'Press Association.'"
So this is an advert for a $9.99 iPad app?
I don't get it.
It's pretty disgusting that you can monetize images of someone's brain. I wonder how Einstein would feel about that.
Not even in the secular sector can people avoid their bizarre attraction to the macabre relics of mythically aggrandized heros.
The application will allow researchers and novices to peer into the eccentric Nobel winner's brain as if they were looking through a microscope.
This summary's stated premise is so incredibly fucking retarded. Why not just post the slides online or release high-res formats, rather than charge a $9.99 premium for an application that displays images on a sub par interface for image manipulation and analysis? (rhetorical question) Aside from the press release FUD, can any researcher honestly tell me that the ability to view historical slides on an ipad is in anyway superior to the thousands of other mechanisms of viewing pictures of things?
There is no way in hell any tablet is going to provide a superior interface in terms of technology employed for viewing data of this sort for in-depth analysis.
As with much of the tablet market these days...gimmick after gimmick after gimmick. This.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I wonder how true that is. Not that this is his brain nor that he revolutionized physics. I just wonder if THIS is the brain that did it.
You see, London has a strenuous test for Taxi drivers. Their streets are not like New York, where many are numbered in sequential order and relatively easy to learn. London has 25,000 roads, with no real rhyme or reason, and perspective taxi drivers - to get licensed - needs to memorize them and takes several years. The test is called the Knowlege, iirc, and it takes an average of a dozen attempt to pass:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/12/08/acquiring-the-knowledge-changes-the-brains-of-london-cab-drivers/
The hippocampus of these drivers is substantially larger and stay so throughout their working life. But it shrinks back down after retirement:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/75th-anniversary/WTVM052023.htm
This is Einsteins brain after, what, 40 some years after his best achievement? Is it the same brain anymore? Wouldn't it be like poking at the Schwarzenegger's remains whenever he dies to see what makes a bodybuilder at his peak? Just something to ponder.
Nothing. It's some pictures of a cut up brain. Although LG/Samsung did a pretty good job in making that Retina screen, I don't think there will be enough resolution in the scans to show the synaptic connections between Einsteins neurons.
I also find the idea that there was something unique about Einstein's brain that made him a genius. IMHO what set him apart wasn't his academic brilliance, which was nothing special going by his school performance, it was his ability to think up daft questions like "if I were riding a light beam and shone a torch in front of me, how fast would the light from the torch travel?".
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets