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Image: IBM
Take a look at the image above and tell us what do you see. A field of mushrooms? A series of tubes a la Super Mario Bros.? Actually they’re a crop of silicon nanowires, grown by IBM researcher Frances Ross. The gray columns are the wires and the black blob are liquid droplets that catalyze the growth of the nanowires.
One day, these mushroom-shaped wires just may replace today’s transistors:
In Dr. Ross’s laboratory at I.B.M., researchers are concentrating on more near-term technology. They are exploring the idea of constructing FinFET switches in a radical new process that breaks away from photo etching. It is a kind of nanofarming. Dr. Ross sprinkles gold particles as small as 10 nanometers in diameter on a substrate and then suffuses them in a silicon gas at a temperature of about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. This causes the particles to become “supersaturated” with silicon from the gas, which will then precipitate into a solid, forming a wire that grows vertically.
I.B.M. is pressing aggressively to develop this technology, which could be available commercially by 2012, she said. At the same time she acknowledged that significant challenges remain in perfecting nanowire technology. The mushroom-shaped wires in her laboratory now look a little bit like bonsai trees. To offer the kind of switching performances chipmakers require, the researchers must learn to make them so that their surfaces are perfectly regular. Moreover, techniques must be developed to make them behave like semiconductors.
John Markoff of The New York Times has the fascinating story: Link – via Make
It has been a question that has long perplexed people: why are some individuals seemingly immune to mosquito bites, while others suffer endless attacks?
Scientists at Rothamsted Research in the U.K. have made progress in identifying which of the approximately 300-400 chemical odors produced by the human body attracts or repels insects (insects have very keen sense of smell they use to guide them to their prey).
Using two groups of test subjects, one ‘attractive’ to mosquitoes and one ‘unattractive, the scientists were able to isolate and identify 7-8 distinct chemical odors which repelled mosquitoes. Some of these odors were thought to be related to stress.
Dr. Logan and his team have found only a small number of body chemicals—seven or eight—that were present in significantly different quantities between those people who were attractive to mosquitoes and those who weren’t. They then put their findings to the test. For this they used a so-called Y-tube olfactometer that allows mosquitoes to make a choice and fly toward or away from an individual’s hand. After applying the chemicals thought to be repellant on the hands of individuals known to be attractive, Dr. Logan found that the bugs either flew in the opposite direction or weren’t motivated by the person’s smell to fly at all.
The group’s latest paper, published in March in the Journal of Medical Entomology, identified two compounds with “significant repellency.” One of the compounds, 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-one, is a skin-derived compound that has the odor of toned-down nail-polish remover, according to George Preti, an organic chemist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, who is involved in a separate line of research into insect-biting behavior. The other, identified in the paper as geranylacetone, has a pleasant odor, though there is some question about whether the chemical is formed by the human biochemical process or is picked up in the environment, Dr. Preti says.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
(Illustration: Michael C. Witte)
Behold the blessings of technology:
After learning in class how breathalyzers work, Robert Clain and Miguel Salas assembled a fart detector from a sensitive hydrogen sulfide monitor, a thermometer and a microphone and wrote the software that would rate the emission. A “slight perturbance in the air” near the detector sets it to work measuring the three pillars of fart quality: stench, temperature and sound. Temperature, Clain explains, is critical. The hotter a fart, the faster it spreads. “It beeps faster if it’s a high ranker, and a voice rates it on a scale of zero to nine,” he says. “If it ranks a nine, a fan comes on to blow it away. It even records the noise so you can play it back later.” After a few months of construction, they began field tests. “Well, the sample data wasn’t the entire school, but we definitely tested it,” Salas says.
The developers suggest that their invention could be used to evaluate the health of livestock, detect hydrogen-sulfide-producing bacteria in hospitals, or test for bad breath.
Photo credit: Robert Clain and Miguel Salas
British nuclear engineer Allen Millyard is known for building huge motorcycles, often using car engines to replace the factory engines. His latest creation is this motorcycle, which uses a 500-hp, 8,400cc engine from the Dodge Viper sports car. That’s as impressive as his prior feat of mounting two 6-cylinder engines on one bike.
Dutch teenager Jesse van Kuijk designed and built a crude but functional human-powered aircraft:
Dates pour out of him as he relates the history of human-powered flight. The year 1979 was another landmark: Another craft, dubbed the Gossamer Albatross, made a successful flight over the English Channel, flying over 35 kilometers in less than three hours. The Gossamer Albatross was flown by American Bryan Allen, who now works in California as a software engineer for the Mars exploration project. Van Kuijk contacted Allen and the two exchanged emails about van Kuijk’s dream of self-powered flight.
In 2006, with his calculations complete, van Kuijk began to collect building materials. For over three years he gathered extremely light balsa wood, polyurethane and the light, rip-resistant foil that would eventually line the craft’s 26-meter-wide (85 feet) wings. And then he built what he had designed….
And then suddenly, unbelievably, “the earth under my feet slipped away,” van Kuijk exclaimed afterwards. He was flying! Alone, under his own power and in the aircraft he had designed and built. His aircraft flew, he had always known it would. But he could barely believe he had actually managed to defeat gravity’s pull.
I’m happy to announce that we’ve started a new collaboration with Very Funny Ads, a website by Turner Broadcasting System that aims to bring you the world’s funniest commercials (motto: "ads that were too hot for tv").
We’ll do a regular weekly round of the best of the best funny ads (though you can easily lose hours watching every single clip over at VFA) – and you can see the Neatorama-branded Out There Ads on VFA.
This one is by "Clap" by Good Knight, which shows that even one mosquito can be deadly … Link
Photo: Michael Yon
Reporter and former Green Beret Michael Yon took a series of intriguing photos of glowing rotor blades as a helicopter lands in a military base in Afghanistan. The eerie "halo" is caused by static electricity generated as the titanium/nickel blades move through a field of dust (which is kicked up from the ground as the heli lands).
The phenomenon, striking as it is, has no name – and Michael decided to name it the Kopp-Etchells Effect, as a tribute, after Corporal Benjamin Kopp and Corporal Joseph Etchells, who died in battle.
The full story at Michael’s blog: Link via TYWKIWDBI
John of Super Punch Blog has a really neat post showing mashed up characters
from Disney and Marvel to mark the recent purchase of the comic book publisher by The Mouse.
The Galactus/Goofy (Gooflactus) is by our pal Adam Koford, Venom/Mickey is by Serge Kliavaing, and MODUCK by Chris Samnee.
Link – Thanks John!
Previously on Neatorama: Disney to Acquire Marvel Comics
In contrast to horses, which can walk within an hour of being born, or newborn baboons, which can cling to their mothers as they swing through the trees, human babies are unusually helpless and vulnerable. Anthropologist John Bock explains why:
One of the first traits that differentiated humans from our ancestors was upright gait. There are several hypotheses about the emergence of this trait, but it seems to have offered a way to move more efficiently in open environments such as the savanna. Although our earliest human ancestors were very apelike in terms of their brains, their upright gait had changed their pelvis to look much like our modern one. This reshaped pelvis came with a narrower birth canal, making childbirth more difficult.
Meanwhile the new roaming grounds afforded advantages in acquiring resources and negotiating social relationships to those with flexible, problem-solving behavior. Over time, natural selection increased brain size in these early humans. But at some point, the selection for bigger and bigger brains collided head-on, so to speak, with the narrow pelvis. If babies’ heads got any bigger, they would get stuck in the birth canal and kill both mother and child. Although natural selection worked to maximize what could be done—for instance, babies’ heads compress as they twist their way around the bones in the pelvis—there simply is not enough room for a big, mature brain to pass through.
Therefore, Bock explains, human baby brains continue to develop substantially after birth and it takes longer for them to learn how to walk.
Image by flickr user BadrNaseem used under creative commons license
An Indonesian man named Muntowib can cure all sorts of ailments with a unique medical treatment: bee stings. Yes, bee stings.
By the way, this video is from Diagonaluk, a Youtube user where you’ll find lots of interesting videos such as Laughing cops from Thailand, Cuzco extreme downtown downhill moutain biking, or the 7ft beard guy. Be prepared for a short afternoon of work…
– via youtube
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Christophe.
Got doodles? Here’s a blog called Doodurls that wants to display your doodles. Most people doodle during boring meetings, interminable classes, while waiting on hold… Doodurls wants to show them off, and they aren’t picky about your talent level either. On Doodurls, everyone’s got talent!
It’s easy to submit your latest margin masterpiece – take a pic of it or scan it, upload it somewhere (anywhere) and tweet the link to them on Twitter. They do the rest. It’s a lot of fun to send your own in or just see the weird things that go on inside people’s heads when they’re bored!
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Melia.
Taxonomy: Keeping the family in order
Got a loved one who loves to monkey around? Do you have an ardent Creationist friend who you’d love to poke a little fun at? Here’s a new T-shirt from the Neatorama Shop that will fit him or her nicely.
The Taxonomy: Keeping the Family in Order T-shirt is designed by the super-talented (and available for hire) Chris Murphy of ChrisM70 Graphic Design. Words by our very own national treasure, Neatoramanaut Kalel.
For more geeky science T-shirts, check out the Neatorama Shop: Link
A 65-year-old amateur pilot was arrested for flying drunk after a rescue helicopter had to guide him to the airfield in Schoengleida, Germany. He had drunk wine and beer before taking off, and continued to drink while flying.
”Come on, I know you’re down there,” he radioed. ”Where the bloody hell have you hidden yourself?”
Control tower staff say he also sang a few songs, cracked a mother-in-law joke and told them to ”pull their fingers out as I’ve got a party to go to”.
Fearing instrument failure, the tower scrambled a rescue helicopter, which homed in on the man in clear-blue skies west of the airport, and gave instructions for the pilot to follow it back.
The unnamed man was able to land the Cessna, and “wobbled” to his car. Airfield authorities called police, who arrested the man on his way home. He tested over four times the legal limit for driving. Link -via Arbroath
(image credit: Flickr user jon gos)
This morning, Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar announced they are expecting their 19th child in March. 42-year-old Michelle Dugger was surprised to find she is pregnant only eight months after the birth of her 18th child. The Duggars have a show on The Learning Channel (TLC) called “18 Kids and Counting”. Their first grandchild is due in October. Link -via J-Walk Blog
72-year-old Dawn Fraser confronted two teenage home intruders at her daughter’s home in Noosaville, Australia. One attacked her, thinking a little old lady wouldn’t resist much. What he didn’t realize was that Frazer has always been a tough lady.
“Out came this guy who then grabbed me around the throat and said ‘I will kill you’, and with that I grabbed him around the ear and hair and kneed him in the groin,” she told Channel Seven television late Monday.
“I was threatened by the way he spoke to me and I’d never been spoken to like what he called me … I think I lost it. I have got a titanium knee so it must have hurt him,” she said.
The two youths were referred to child services. Fraser {wiki} won eight Olympic medals for swimming in 1956, 1960, and 1964, including four gold medals for Australia. Link
Last year, the state of Utah mandated a four-day work week for state employees. The salaries and number of hours each worker put in remained the same as the workday became longer, but offices were closed on Fridays.
After 12 months, Utah’s experiment has been deemed so successful that a new acronym could catch on: TGIT (thank God it’s Thursday). The state found that its compressed workweek resulted in a 13% reduction in energy use and estimated that employees saved as much as $6 million in gasoline costs. Altogether, the initiative will cut the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 12,000 metric tons a year. And perhaps not surprisingly, 82% of state workers say they want to keep the new schedule.
Even those who do not work for the state have benefitted since offices are open later Monday through Thursday. Other states and businesses are looking at the results and may possibly try the schedule out. Link -via Digg
Iraq’s missing Air Force jets have been traced to Serbia, where they are mostly in pieces. They have been cannibalized, parted out, or left to deteriorate over he past twenty years.
Iraqi officials said they found the planes in the process of trying to trace what Saddam, the former dictator, did with the country’s military assets. The 19 planes, all Soviet-built, were sent in 1989 to a Yugoslav maintenance plant in Zagreb, in what is now Croatia, but never got the overhauls they needed.
In 1991, when the Croatian war for independence broke out, the jets were transported to Serbia in parts. And there they remained.
A delegation from Iraq will go to Belgrade to negotiate the return of the jets, but they are unlikely to help Iraq rebuild its air defenses. The Iraqi Air Force currently has no jets. Link -via Fark
Rambo, Mr. Spock, The Joker. One thing they all have in common is that the characters were almost discarded before they had a chance. Read the stories of 7 Iconic Characters They Saved from The Cutting Room Floor and the people who believed in them. This article from Cracked is worth a read just for the early concept drawing of Batman, but all the stories are interesting. Link -via Gorilla Mask
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Israeli scientists have invented a breathalyzer-type device that can detect chemical markers for lung cancer in a patient’s breaths.
The sensor relies on a film of gold nanoparticles, which conducts electricity, layered over a carbon-based substrate. When a patient breathes into the device, particulates in the breath accumulate on the carbon layer and the sensor swells pushing the gold nanoparticles further apart, which, in turn, alters the resistance of the film. Each type of particulate has a unique effect on the resistance which can be measured by having a current flow through the sensor. “The user gets a figure on the device’s display panel that indicates whether the person is healthy or has cancer” [Physics World], says lead researcher Hossam Haick.
The new device can detect smaller amounts of the target chemicals and therefore diagnose lung cancer earlier, when treatments can be more successful. Link
