PolyThinkers Pad

Rest your weary eyes and give your ears a chance to absorb some knowledge for a change. The National Academies provides a weekly podcast series, The Sounds of Science:

This informative and entertaining weekly series of audio podcasts puts the spotlight on the high-impact work of the National Academies. Focusing on a wide range of critical issues in science, engineering, and medicine, these short 10 minute episodes are a quick and easy way to tune in to all the key findings and important recommendations made by the Academies.

Not familiar with podcasts? Podcasts are audio files that are delivered directly to your desktop computer, and can be listened to on your computer or transferred to your iPod or other MP3 player. Learn more about podcasts on wikipedia.

Whoever says playing video games is a waste of time hasn’t seen this informative video: How to Use Video Games To Improve Your Brain. While mental exercise games like Nintendo’s Brain Age might seem as appealing as doing your math homework, some games can actually flex your brain muscles and still be fun.

Armadillo Run is a puzzle game that incorporates the laws of physics. You have to build a Rube Goldberg-like machine to transport an armadillo (which looks an awful lot like a basketball) to a target area using all types of materials such as metal, rope, rubber, and rockets. The game accurately models the behavior of the different materials so you’ll be learning about tensile strength, gravity, and tension without even realizing it. You can read a review of the game and view a demo at Fun-Motion.

UC Berkeley has begun posting entire course lectures on YouTube this month, including a lecture on search-engine technology given in 2005 by Google cofounder Sergey Brin.

The lecture, Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business, is approximately 40 minutes long and covers topics such as search and privacy, search ranking, internationalization, anti-spam efforts, local search, peer-to-peer search, and search of blogs and online communities.

Check out youtube.com/ucberkeley for more videos on topics including chemistry, physics, biology and more.

Need to get inspired? Check out the Conversation Network, a listener-supported non-profit podcast network. Currently the network offers three channels IT Conversations, Social Innovation Conversations (from the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford Business School) and Media Conversations. The idea behind the Conversation Network is to offer full recording of presentations or interviews by inspiring minds of our times which are “educational, inspirational and entertaining conference sessions, lectures, debates and other spoken-word presentations.

SciVee, billed as a YouTube for scientists, is a new web site providing scientists an opportunity to upload technical research papers along with accompanying video presentations to provide quicker, more approachable access to their work. The National Science Foundation, Public Library of Science, and the San Diego Supercomputing Center, have created the site to promote the dissemination and comprehension of science.

The website explains, “SciVee, created for scientists, by scientists, moves science beyond the printed word and lecture theatre, taking advantage of the Internet as a communication medium where scientists young and old have a place and a voice.”

Although content on the site is still fairly sparse and biology focused, SciVee is attracting worldwide interest and looks like it could be a valuable tool for the scientific community.

Watch a sample SciVee Pubcast: Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published