Archive Category: Science & Tech
Symphony of Science
Remember A Glorious Dawn, the awesome auto-tuned Carl Sagan (and Stephen Hawking) video clip that went viral? What could be better than that? Well, John Boswell of Symphony of Science made another song, this time featuring Sagan, Richard Feynman, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube Clip] – via Friends of Tuva
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About Carl Sagan
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Do You Love the Smell of Old Books?
What you smell may be a marker for their slow death. After noticing that professional conservators smelled paper while doing their assessments, researchers from University College London’s Centre for Sustainable Heritage used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify and quantify the substances released by old books.
Their report in the journal Analytical Chemistry identified acetic acid, furfural, and lipid peroxidation products in various proportions depending on the types of paper, binding and inks used, and they suggest that a “sniff test” may be useful to identify books in need of the attention of a conservator.
And how does one describe the smell of old books to a non-chemist? The next time you attend a wine tasting, deftly switch the conversation to books and tell your friends that what you love is…
“…a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.”
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LED Tattoos
Charlie Sorrel has an article at Wired exploring the potential development of LED-lit tattoos. New chips are small enough to be placed under the skin, mounted on a sheet of silk that dissolves into the body:
New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.
The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.
These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example.
Chips are already used inside bodies, most notably the tiny RFID tags injected into pets. But the flexible nature of these “tattooed” circuits means they can move elastically with the body, sitting in places that a rigid circuit board couldn’t.
The electronics company Philips is developing the idea, and you can see a concept video of their work at the link.
Link | Image: flickr user spacemanbobby
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Phasers in Early Product Development
Strong emphasis on the word “early.” A research team at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada was able to temporarily stun worms with an ultraviolet light:
The animals that scientists experimented with — pinhead-sized worms known as nematodes — stayed paralyzed even when the light was turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the paralysis wore off
The researchers fed a light-sensitive material — a “photoswitch” known as dithienylethene — to the transparent worms. When exposed to ultraviolet rays, the molecule turned blue and the worms became paralyzed. Using visible light instead made the chemical turn colorless and the paralysis ended [...]
Branda wanted to make clear that this photoswitch would likely not have the same effect on humans. “You’d have to have a huge amount of it,” he explained. “If you did, you might see the activity of cells shut down, which would eventually kill them. Paralysis is just an intermediate step to death in many cases.”
Video at the link.
Link via Discover | Image: Paramount Pictures
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5 "Oddball" Crocs Found in Sahara Desert
A strange assortment of prehistoric crocodilyform fossils have been found in Africa. Crocodilyforms are ancient cousins of today’s alligators, crocodiles, and caimans.
For instance, the rodent-like RatCroc had buckteeth for rooting through the ground after tubers or simple animals.
The flat-bodied PancakeCroc was the “ultimate sit-and-wait predator,” Sereno said. The animal would lie motionless and “wait for something stupid” to swim into its rail-thin, 3-foot-long (0.9-meter-long) jaws, which were lined with rows of spiky teeth.
DuckCroc had a long, smooth, sensitive nose to poke through vegetation as well as hook-shaped teeth to snag frogs and small fish in shallow water.
And the plant-eating DogCroc had lanky legs that meant it was likely spry enough to run into the water if threatened.
By far the mightiest of the lot, BoarCroc was a 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) “saber-toothed cat in armor” that ate dinosaurs for dinner.
DuckCroc and DogCroc were previously known to scientists, and the rest are new discoveries by a team headed by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago. The expedition found fossils of all five in Niger and Morocco. Link (with video) -via Digg
(image credit: Mike Hettwer/National Geographic)
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2009 Olympus BioScapes Images
The winners of the 2009 Olympus BioScapes Photo Digital Imaging Competition were just announced yesterday. Here are some of the wonderful winning and honorable mention images:
1st Place Winner:
Water flea Daphnia atkinsoni. This specimen has a "crown of thorns," a defensive trait induced in offspring only when the parents sense chemical cues released by one of their main predators, the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis. The water flea´s exoskeleton (exterior structure, green) and subcellular details within the organism (nuclei – tiny blue dots) are both visible – Dr. Jan Michels, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany.
5th Place Winner:
Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin – by David Domozych, Skidmore College.
Ma. Ivy Clemente of Pulilan, Philippines, got an honorable mention in this year’s competition, but I think her entry is the most stunning. Behold, the cancer alphabet:
Spelling out the diagnosis: Glandular structures from fibroadenoma and nodular prostatic hyperplasia cases – by Ma. Ivy Clemente, Pulilan, Philippines
Fetal cat coronal section – by Mike Peres, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.
Squid embryo – by Rachel Fink, Mount Holyoke College, Massachussetts
Link: Winners Gallery of the 2009 Olympus BioScapes
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Be A Martian
NASA needs lots of help sorting through the hundreds of thousands of images they’ve collected from the surface of Mars. What do do? Make it into a game! Be A Martian combines the work of analyzing those images online with the competition of gaming. In this way, NASA hopes to enlist citizens to help with the huge project.
Nasa hopes the mix of real data and fun will also inspire the planetary scientists of tomorrow.
“We really need the next generation of explorers,” says Michelle Viotti, from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees Mars missions.
“And we’re also accomplishing something important for Nasa. There’s so much data coming back from Mars. Having a wider crowd look at the data, classify it and help understand its meaning is very important.”
Link to story. Link to game. -via Metafilter
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Why Do People Live Near Volcanoes?
Photo by Carsten Peter
Perched above the lighted city of Catania, Italy, Mount Etna hurls a fountain of fire skyward as rivers of lava spill down its flanks. In spite of its dazzling displays, Mount Etna is a relatively safe volcano with rare, compact eruptions and slow-flowing lava that gives people a chance to escape. – National Geographic – {More Pics here!}
Lots of people live near a volcano. As for me, I live a relatively safe distance from Mt. St. Helens, but this region was severely affected by the eruption in 1980. I recently returned there, and it while it seems safe now, the devastation still shows. But The Geography Site cites four good reasons why society loves a lava-spewing mountain in their backyard.
Geothermal energy, minerals, fertile soil, and tourism. That last one is interesting, and many tourist attractions involve volcanic activity. And about that geothermal energy?
Countries such as Iceland make extensive use of geothermal power, with approximately two thirds of Iceland’s electricity coming from steam powered turbines. New Zealand and to a lesser extent, Japan, also make effective use of geothermal energy.
It makes sense that we’d be so close to that which can give us something powerful, while risking so much at the same time. Volcanoes rock.
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Bomb-Proof Wallpaper
X-Flex wallpaper is designed to hold together even under extreme stresses, such as a bomb detonation. It’s hoped that this invention by Berry Plastics will make buildings more secure from attack in dangerous places like Iraq and Afghanistan:
[...]this lifesaving adhesive is designed for use anyplace that’s prone to blasts and other lethal forces, like in war or natural-disaster zones, chemical plants or airports. To keep a shelter’s walls from collapsing in an explosion and to contain all the flying debris, you simply peel off the wallpaper’s sticky backing, apply the rollable sheets to the inside of brick or cinder-block walls, and reinforce it with fasteners at the edges. Covering an entire room can take less than an hour.
X-Flex bonds so tightly, it helps walls keep their shape after blast waves. Two layers are strong enough to stop a blunt object, like a flying 2×4, from knocking down drywall. During our tests, just a single layer kept a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall. The wallpaper’s strength and ductility is derived from a layer of Kevlar-like material sandwiched by sheets of elastic polymer wrap.
The video above is a demonstration by Popular Science of the technology’s effectiveness.
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Lung Flute Uses Sound to Dislodge Mucous
People who suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have bronchial cilia in their lungs that produce too much mucous. Acoustics engineer Sandy Hawkins has developed a flute that produces a sound that dislodges excess mucous in the lungs. In Popular Science, Corey Binns writes:
Hawkins began building an electronic sound machine that would produce waves of 16 hertz—the same frequency at which the cilia move—to help break up the mucus. Generating a hum of such a low frequency normally requires van-size subwoofers, and so he spent 15 years honing and shrinking the speakers. Then one day as he was testing a mouthpiece filter for his machine, he noticed that blowing through it sent a slight vibration into his chest. Within five seconds, he sketched out the Lung Flute to amplify the effect. Blowing into the tube flaps a reed-thin sheet of plastic, which vibrates the chest and shakes the mucus until it’s thin and mobile enough for the cilia to usher it up your throat. “I felt so stupid because the answer was so simple,” Hawkins says.
Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it’s used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have shown that it is at least as effective as current COPD treatments. At press time, Hawkins expected the device to receive FDA approval any day, and says the reusable device could also provide home relief for patients with cystic fibrosis, influenza and asthma.
Link | Video of the flute in use | Image: Popular Science
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Leonid Meteor Shower Tonight
Tonight’s event is predicted to be “strong” with a couple dozen meteors per hour visible in the United States, several hundred per hour in Asia. This pales in comparison to some historic Leonid displays -
The meteor storm of 1833 was of truly superlative strength. One estimate is over one hundred thousand meteors an hour, but another, done as the storm abated, estimated in excess of two hundred thousand meteors an hour over the entire region of North America east of the Rocky Mountains.
One favorable factor tonight is that the moon is in its new phase, allowing better detection of the fainter meteors. The best viewing will occur between 1 a.m. and daybreak.
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15 Inventions Inspired by Science Fiction
Some of these are obvious – cell phones, satellites and the atomic bomb – but I had no idea that Home Theaters and EBook readers had anything to do with scifi.
Probably the most famous scene in the second Aliens movie is when Ripley saves a little girl using a hydraulic exoskeleton. Someone in the military seems to have taken notice, since engineers recently unveiled an exoskeleton that helps a person lift 200 pounds like it was nothing at all. One inventor in Japan even went the extra mile and developed a functional suit almost identical to the one in the movie.
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Dr Grymm's Eye Pod Victrola
It may be surprising, but that is a modified iPod, with a working dock and speaker. ”Dr. Grymm” designed the steampunk modification, and has more photos on his Flickr set.
Inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, he has used a motley mix of materials (old typewriters, formed brass and steel, leather and quartz crystals) to put together a contraption that you wouldn’t have envisaged even in your wildest dreams – a gigantic eye popping out from the iPod controller section, and a crystal ball (?) replacing the comparably delectable screen; all resting on a steampunk victrola base with a blaring horn (we certainly hope there are no eerie tunes played for the additional effect). Good news, though. It plays like your regular iPod so you can handpick your own tunes.
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Augmented Reality Lets You Try on Virtual Clothes
Image: Tobi, screen capture by Fast Company
The online clothing store Tobi lets you upload a picture of yourself and then try on different outfits superimposed on that image. In Fast Company, Kit Eaton writes:
It has been redubbed Fashionista (much better than the original Webcam Social Shopper) and it works pretty much how you’d think it would: When you’ve chosen an item of clothing you like the look of, you print out a special AR barcode-like tag and hold it up in front of you while you stand before your Webcam. Zugara’s software then displays an image of the clothing you’re interested in superimposed on your body. By maneuvering the AR tag around you can position the apparel exactly how you want it to match your body–so you get to see a rough image of what you’d look like wearing the actual garment.
It doesn’t stop there: You can take a snapshot of what you look like, and the system includes motion-capture so you can make gestures and selections by waving your arms, much as you do when using Sony’s Eye toy on the PlayStation. You can also give the clothes a thumbs up or thumbs down so it can recommend more for you–something a bit like a physical version of Amazon’s “you might also like” service (or a live personal shopper). And, of course, you can buy the items you select. Not content with using one hot-topic technology, Zugara has also given Fashionista a dash of social media interactivity–you can post the snapshots you take onto Facebook, presumably to garner the opinion of your friends. Or you can add them to your profile on the site where your shopper friends can comment.
Company Website via Fast Company
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Early Sound Amplifiers
Photo: Noise for Airports
Noise for Airports has a gallery of early sound amplifier/locator technologies. He quotes a 1939 issue of Science News Letter about these efforts:
The picturesque triple or quadruple sets of horns, looking like gigantic versions of old-fashioned ear trumpets, that are used by listeners for airplanes, are only artificial external ears that can be cocked in the direction of suspected approach, just as a rabbit or a donkey can tun his ears. Only they are more nearly perfect, mechanically, than any animal ear, because they were made to order along mathematically calculated lines, not slowly evolved out of folds of flesh.
During the World War, many blind men, with ears trained to special acuteness in compensation for loss of sight, volunteered for this service in Britain, and it is likely that such sightless soldiers are again helping their companions to locate enemies in the dark.
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Progress on Space Elevator Technology
For over a century, space exploration enthusiasts have proposed building an elevator into low earth orbit using a very long cable stretching from the surface of the earth into space. Huge technical (particularly material) obstacles have prevented this dream from becoming a reality. But technology marches on, and some researchers have made progress:
Funded by NASA and the Spaceward Foundation, the yearly contest offers a $2 million first prize to any group whose machine can quickly climb a kilometer-long ribbon tethered to a helicopter, while receiving power remotely from the ground. On Tuesday, LaserMotive became the first team in competition history to qualify for the $900,000 second prize.The LaserMotive machine consists of a motor that pulls the device up the 2,953-foot-long ribbon, photovoltaic cells that power the motor, and a ground-based laser that provides the light for the cells. LaserMotive set a new record for the competition, and became the first team to ever reach the top of the ribbon. However, they had to settle for the $900,000 second prize, as securing the $2 million first prize requires not only reaching the top of the ribbon, but doing so at an average speed of 11 miles per hour. Sadly, the LaserMotive machine ran slightly slower than that mark.
Link | Image: NASA
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Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again
Scientists are working on unconventional methods for controlling neurons in the brain. In one such experiment, a mouse’s behavior was controlled by shining a light directly on its brain! But this was no ordinary brain -the mouse had DNA from algae inserted into its neurons, which made them responsive to light. The crucial part of these experiments is making the new genes active in only certain types of neurons, depending on the outcome we are looking for. Stanford psychiatrist Karl Deisseroth and his team are experimenting with optogenetics to help victims of Parkinson’s disease, starting with mice.
Many experts had thought the cure was to stimulate certain kinds of cells within the subthalamic nucleus, which coordinates motion. But when they tried that, it had no effect whatsoever. Then two of Deisseroth’s grad students began experimenting with a dark-horse idea. They stimulated neurons near the surface of the brain that send signals into the subthalamic nucleus — a much harder approach because it meant working at one remove. It was as if, instead of using scissors yourself, you had to guide someone else’s hands to make the cuts.
Their idea worked. The mice walked. In their paper, published in April 2009, they wrote that the “effects were not subtle; indeed, in nearly every case these severely parkinsonian animals were restored to behavior indistinguishable from normal.”
Other experiments on rhesus monkeys show promise. The team is now designing ways to make optogenetics safe and effective for humans. Link
(image credit: Justin Wood)
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Robot Baseball
A couple of weeks ago I posted about the robot that plays volleyball. Add this to the growing list of sporting droids: a robot that can pitch a fastball to another machine that can hit (although that looks like an easy play by the short stop… I bet the mad scientists are working on that one now). Will the Singularity take place in a sports arena?
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Origins of Life
Hulu, which I understand is not available to the whole world (apologies), has a great video by Gerald Calderon. It’s quite possibly the best explanation of the origin of life ever presented on film. The art direction, the narration, the whole 40 minute production really sums up the scientific record, and is full of win.
15 billion years ago the Universe just suddenly was. 5 billion years ago, the Earth and Sun formed a healthy bond. Then things started getting interesting. Single celled organisms, coral, and amazing advancements though the millenia are represented here. 600 million years ago was when transfer of genes through sex became the new fad, and diversity took over. 400 million years ago, life started flourishing on dry land.
This is seriously some of the best underwater footage we’ve ever seen. Highly recommended if you’ve ever wanted to see an octopus eat a same-sized crab.
Link, again apologies if you can’t see this. 
| Image by Steven Hobbs
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The Manhattan Bridge Turns 100
Often overlooked and certainly overshadowed by its more famous neighbor, the Manhattan Bridge will, this December, become a centenarian. Quite a feat, all told, as the bridge’s history has been full of issues to say the least.
Gustov Lindenthal’s first design was thrown out purely for reasons of aesthetics. He came back with another idea – incorporating two thin-profile steel towers. This idea was retained but his main plan – four cables made of immense chains of eye bars (lengths of steel at least ten foot long joined at each end by steel pins) was again rejected. Perhaps the thought of what was essentially a gargantuan bicycle chain put the chills up the spine of the city fathers.
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NASA Confirms "Significant" Water on Moon
So. Yesterday, we heard that the Pope’s astronomer conceded that there may be alien life outside of planet Earth, and today NASA said that it discovered significant water on the Moon.
"The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon," the space agency said in a written statement shortly after the briefing began.
Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said the latest discovery also could unlock the mysteries of the solar system.
He listed several options as sources for the water, including solar winds, comets, giant molecular clouds or even the moon itself through some kind of internal activity. The Earth also may have a role, Wargo said.
"If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data," NASA said in its statement.
Coicidence? I smell a conspiracy. Where’s my tin foil hat? Next stop: microbes on Mars! Link
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Fat? Blame it on the Bacteria!
Are you fat? It may not be your fault, blame the bacteria in your intestines instead:
Ninety percent of the bacteria fall into two major divisions, or phyla: the Firmicutes and the Bacteroidetes. Previous research had shown that obese mice had higher levels of Firmicutes, and lean ones had more Bacteroidetes.
Analyzing the genomes of the bacteria, Gordon and graduate student Peter Turnbaugh concluded that the Firmicutes were more efficient at digesting food that the body can’t.
Animals that have a higher proportion of Firmicutes convert a higher proportion of food into calories that can be absorbed by the body, making it easier to gain weight.
When the researchers transferred bacteria from obese mice into so-called gnotobiotic mice, which were raised in a sterile environment and had no bacteria in their guts, the mice gained more weight than did those receiving a similar amount of bacteria from lean mice, even though they were fed the same diet.
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The Genetic Home of Speech
Why can humans talk and chimpanzees can’t? Scientists at UCLA and Emory University suspect that it comes down to a single gene designated FOXP2. There is only a slight variation in this gene between humans and chimps, as Elaine Schmidt writes in UCLA Newsroom:
“Earlier research suggests that the amino-acid composition of human FOXP2 changed rapidly around the same time that language emerged in modern humans,” said Dr. Daniel Geschwind, Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Chair in Human Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “Ours is the first study to examine the effect of these amino-acid substitutions in FOXP2 in human cells[...]“We found that a significant number of the newly identified targets are expressed differently in human and chimpanzee brains,” Geschwind said. “This suggests that FOXP2 drives these genes to behave differently in the two species.”
The research demonstrates that mutations believed to be important to FOXP2’s evolution in humans change how the gene functions, resulting in different gene targets being switched on or off in human and chimp brains.
Link via io9 | Image: US Department of Energy
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Paralyzed Artist Draws With His Eyes
(Video Link)
Graffiti artist Tony Quan suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and is unable to move any part of his body other than his eyes. But thanks to an open source computer project called EyeWriter, he can still draw. The technology tracks the movements of his eyes, allows him to select different shapes and colors, and then projects his images onto the sides of buildings. The above video is a selection from a documentary about the project.
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Crescent Earth
This beautiful picture of Earth was taken by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft. Rosetta is on a mission to intercept the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which will happen in 2014. The brightest part of this picture is our South Pole. Link
(image credit: ESA)
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The Perfect Coffee Cup
Using a new, high-tech material, German scientists Klaus Sedlbauer and Herbert Sinnesbichler have developed a coffee cup that will keep your drink at the optimum temperature for drinking. Phase change material (PCM) was already in use as a building and clothing material because of its temperature-regulating capability. Now it will keep your coffee from going cold!
CM is able to absorb and maintain heat or cold for long periods of time. It melts when warmed and solidifies when cooled. Different PCMs have different melting points. If a hollow-framed mug were filled with PCM that becomes liquid at exactly 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit (the ideal drinking temperature for warm beverages) and the mug’s reservoir filled with a warm beverage, the PCM would absorb excess heat, bringing the liquid down to drinking temperature and keeping it there long enough for you to enjoy your coffee.
Sedlbauer and Sinnesbichler are looking for a manufacturer and distributor for their coffee cup. Link – via babycreativeblog
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The Shrinky Dink Solution
Remember Shrinky Dinks? Michelle Khine sure does, and has implemented the decorative toys into her research project at UC Irvine.
She was experimenting with tiny liquid-filled channels in hopes of devising chip-based diagnostic tests, a discipline called microfluidics. The trouble was, the specialized equipment that she previously used to make microfluidic chips cost more than $100,000–money that wasn’t immediately available.
Racking her brain for a quick-and-dirty way to make microfluidic devices, Khine remembered her favorite childhood toy: Shrinky Dinks, large sheets of thin plastic that can be colored with paint or ink and then shrunk in a hot oven. “I thought if I could print out the [designs] at a certain resolution and then make them shrink, I could make channels the right size for micro fluidics,” she says.
Technology Review has the story: Link. | Photo by Dave Lauridsen
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Is Your Man a Cheapskate? Blame Testosterone!
Why are men so cheap? Blame testosterone:
"Our broad conclusion is that testosterone causes men essentially to be stingy," says Karen Redwine, a neuro-economist at Whittier College in California [...] To make this case, Redwine and her colleague Paul Zak, at the Claremont Graduate University in California, gave a testosterone-containing gel to 25 male university students, and then tested their generosity.
The students then played a simple economic game with another participant via a computer. One volunteer is tasked with splitting $10 with another volunteer in any way he likes. The other volunteer either accepts the offer or rejects it as unfair, in which case no one gets any money. Each volunteer played this game in both roles, on and off the testosterone gel.
Overall, the testosterone cream caused a 27 per cent reduction in the generosity of the offers, from averages of $2.15 to $1.57, Redwine and Zak found.
The article also described how oxytocin, the so-called cuddle chemical, can actually boost generosity: Link
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Internet Wars: The Ongoing Battle Over How the Web is Run
The people who are making decisions about the internet are, fundamentally, deciding the access of all future generations to come. Forget Afghanistan and Iraq; these are the theaters of war where democracy will live or die. SherWeb has an overview of the most contentious battles over who controls the web.
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Top 10 Reasons Why the World Won't End in 2012
This list from the Discovery Channel might come in handy to give to someone you know who might get too nervous about the 2012 doomsday predictions and the movie about them. Each scenario is debunked with what scientists really know. For example,
1. Changes in the Sun’s magnetic field will lead to powerful flares.
So what else is new under the sun? The sun goes though a well-documented 11-year sunspot cycle that is driven by its magnetic field entangling, reforming and flipping polarity. Yes, the peak of the next cycle is in 2012 (or 2013), and some predictions suggest it might be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last peak.
But experts say it will certainly not be the biggest peak ever recorded.
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