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NASA's
infrared Spitzer Space Telescope has just spotted light coming out of
the alien "super-Earth" exoplanet 55 Cancri e, 41 light-years
from our own world.
It's an amazing technical accomplishment, but before you get your hopes up that we've found alien civilization, you should know that the planet is not habitable:
The new Spitzer observations revealed that the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e is extremely hot, with temperatures reaching up to 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,726 degrees Celsius). The planet is likely a dark world that lacks the substantial atmosphere needed to warm its nighttime side, researchers said.
And to top it all off, the planet is oozing.
Past observations of the planet by the Spitzer Space Telescope have suggested that one-fifth of 55 Cancri e is made up of lighter elements, including water. But the extreme temperatures and pressures on 55 Cancri e would create what scientists call a "supercritical fluid" state.
The
carnivorous pitcher plant Nepenthes bicalcarata isn't that terrifying
of a deathtrap: its pitcher leaf isn't slippery and it doesn't have
the corrosive slime that kill its victims quickly.
But it does have something that makes up for all those weaknesses: vicious bodyguard ants!
The carnivorous plant has swollen tendrils at the base of each pitcher that serve as homes for the insects, and a food source in the form of nectar secreted on the pitcher rims.
In return, the ants apparently provide a host of services for the pitcher plants. They clean the pitcher mouth to keep it slippery enough to help catch prey. They attack weevils that would otherwise munch on the plant. They cart off the remains of large prey from the pitchers that would otherwise rot. They lie in ambush under pitcher rims and systematically attack any of the plant's prey that attempt to escape the traps. And their droppings fertilize the plants.
Link (Photo: Vincent Bazile)
If there is alien life, then they'd live in an exoplanet like these four that scientists have found. Visual.ly has the scoop of the four candidates in this nifty little infographic: Link - Thanks Tal!
This is impressive: Kenji Ishida and JS Robotics have created a robot (his eight in the Brave Robot series, actually) with 22 servo motors that can transform itself from car to robot and back again.
Let's see your version, Hasbro! Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Engadget
The bride is a mechanical engineer who helped design the Dragon Runner unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). So when Laura got married, it was only appropriate for the little robot to take part. As the ring bearer! The Dragon Runner wore a tiny tuxedo and carried the ring in while the song “Mr. Roboto” played. A grand time was had by all. You can see a video about the robot (but not the wedding) at Electronic Design. Link -via Gizmodo
Hummingbirds are beautiful, but they move way too fast to actually get to see up close for the most part.With the Wearable Hummingbird Feeder though, you can now see the stunning birds closer than ever.
Let's find out! Adrian Paenza schools us in the lesson of exponential growth with this enjoyable TED-Education video clip about folding a piece of paper.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Previously on Neatorama: Fold a Paper in Half More Than 8 Times
What (bacon) is your dog (bacon) thinking (bacon)? Scientists from Emory University decided to find out by putting a dog in an MRI machine:
In a new study, scientists report that they have for the first time successfully trained dogs to lie awake and still in an MRI machine for 10 to 15 seconds, long enough to complete a scan.
“We can actually capture brain images and see what parts of the brain are activating when we have hand signals or when we talk to [the dog] or when we point this way or that way. Now we can really begin to understand what a dog is thinking,” said researcher Gregory Berns, a professor of neuroeconomics at Emory, in a video about the study.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve always found the idea of wax seals being used to ensure privacy to be rather romantic. Unfortunately, as we are becoming increasingly technological, use of these types of antiquities is becoming more and more rare. But the new Top Secret USB combines modern functionality and vintage sensibilities by allowing you to stamp your USB drive shut with a wax seal so you know no one else has opened it.
Link Via Geekosystem
Salt Lake City is known for many things-a deep connection to Mormonism, the 2002 Winter Olympics, their NBA team the Utah Jazz, and now as the home of pet mummification company Summum.
Summum offers a unique service to grieving pet owners-mummification of your dead pet via traditional methods, so you can bring home a bit of ancient Egypt without having to walk funny or learn how to read hieroglyphics.
It costs tens of thousands of dollars (from $6k to $128k according to the website) and takes four to six months to complete the process, but isn’t it worth all that to know that your beloved pet’s corpse is now permanently encased in a nifty looking statue?
Link –via Geekologie
Image: NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center
Nom nom nom, said the black hole, which was caught eating a star by a team of astrophysicists:
Geeks Are Sexy has the video clip: LinkUsually when we get to see a star being swallowed by a black hole, we’ll end up turning to take a look at it only after the destruction has already begun. “What makes this so special was the fact that they actually caught the black hole as it was ripping the stellar core apart,” says Dr. David Floyd from the Monash Centre for Astrophysics in Melbourne.
The fact that we’ve managed to observe this event from beginning to end means that there is a lot more information available than ever before. We know the size of the black hole (approximately the same as the Milky Way’s central black hole), the fact that the star was probably a late-stage Red Giant and that it suffered its terrible fate because it got to within about 150 million kilometres of the supermassive black hole (about the same distance from the Sun to the Earth).
When the Robopocalypse begins, you’ll need some pointers for survival. Epipheo Studios brought in an expert: author Daniel H. Wilson. -via Blame It On The Voices
High school chemistry teacher Scott Byrum found a brilliant way to catch the attention of his students. When it was time to renovate his classroom, he made vinyl letters and numbers and attached them to the tiles of his drop ceiling. When arranged properly, they formed the periodic table of elements. It got just the effect that Byrum was looking for:
“My students love it,” Byrum says of his new ceiling. “It makes them feel more connected to my instruction.” The artwork is also an instant conversation starter. “Even faculty members, when they walk in and see it,” want to talk about it, he says.
Byrum no longer worries about his students daydreaming in class. When their minds start to wander, and they look up at the ceiling, well, there’s the periodic table. “Even though they may be daydreaming, they’re daydreaming science,” he says.
Link -via Make | Photo: Allie Knight
Why did the Earth got warmer in the Mesozoic Era 150 million years ago? Science has the answer: dino fart.
By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs - as a whole - produced 520 million tonnes of [methane] gas annually.
Scientists
have discovered a way to halt neurodegeneration in mice affected by prion diseases: by rebooting
their dying brain cells.
"We think it worked because we hit the executioner of the cells," says Mallucci. One challenge now, she says, is to find drugs that reboot normal protein production in the same way. A second challenge is to see if the same "production line closures" are what kill cells in patients with Alzheimer's and other dementias. If they are, then finding a drug to halt them might work in several diseases.
Link (Photo: Shutterstock)
If
you think your computer has got bugs in it, wait till you hear this: scientists
are working with a strain of magnet-making bacteria that may one day become
part of a biological computer.
When the bacteria ingest iron, proteins inside their bodies interact with it to produce tiny crystals of the mineral magnetite, the most magnetic mineral on Earth.
Having studied the way the microbes collect, shape and position these nano-magnets inside themselves, the researchers copied the method and applied it outside the bacteria, effectively "growing" magnets that could in future help to build hard drives.
"We are quickly reaching the limits of traditional electronic manufacturing as computer components get smaller," said lead researcher Dr Sarah Staniland of the University of Leeds.
"The machines we've traditionally used to build them are clumsy at such small scales.
"Nature has provided us with the perfect tool to [deal with] this problem."
Remember the Neatorama post about the sweat bees in New York that use humans as giant salt licks?
Well, turns out that's not as creepy as these bees in Thailand that drink human tears:
And yes, the scientists captured these tear-drinking bees using their own eyes as bait: Link - via NerdcoreOn landing, automatic blinking with the eye often prevented the bee from getting a firm hold, causing it to fall off the eyelashes. If so, the bee persistently tried again and again until it was successful, or finally gave up and flew off. In a very few cases the approach was so gentle that the host (H.B.) did not realize he had a Lisotrigona attached to his lid, imbibing his tears. After landing and whilst sucking tears, H.B. often could barely feel the presence of a bee; indeed, checking by mirror was then required to make sure whether it was still there or had left.
However, when several bees were involved, the experience was rather unpleasant, causing strong tear flow. Once a bee had settled and more were approaching, these tended to settle near each other in a row. Closing the eye did not necessarily dislodge bees but some continued to suck at the slit. They were even able to find and settle at closed eyes.
Capacitive touch on your smartphone's screen (like the ones on your iPhone) is neat, but you know what's REALLY neat? Sensing touch interactions on every day objects.
Here's Touché from Disney Research (yes, that Disney): Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Wired
Scientists are concerned about spilled coffee, because long hours of research require coffee, and a spill can ruin your train of thought, if not your valuable notes. Mechanical engineer Rouslan Krechetnikov of the the University of California, Santa Barbara, and graduate student Hans Mayer did some experiments after noticing coffee being sloshed at a fluid dynamics conference (of all places).
Back at the lab, Krechetnikov and Mayer set up an experiment: They asked a person to walk at different speeds along a straight path with a filled coffee mug in hand. The volunteer did this in one of two ways-either focusing on the coffee mug, or looking straight ahead. A camera recorded the person’s motion and the mug’s trajectory, while a tiny sensor on the mug recorded the instant of spillage.
A fluid’s back-and-forth movement has a certain natural frequency, and this is determined by the size of its container. In their paper published last week in Physical Review E, Krechetnikov and Mayer show that everyday mug sizes produce natural frequencies that just happen to match those of a person’s leg movements during walking. This means that walking alone, without any other interference, is tuned to drive coffee to oscillate in a mug. But the researchers also found that even small irregularities in a person’s walking are important: These amplify the wilder oscillations, or sloshing, which bumps up the chance of a spillage.
“This is a very cool study,” says Lei Ren, a specialist in the biomechanics of walking at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. “It reveals the sophisticated interplay between human body dynamics and the fluid mechanics of spilling coffee.”
Their advice? Don’t walk too fast while carrying coffee, don’t fill the cup to the brim, and watch what you’re doing. There’s more, which you can read at Science Now. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: H.C. Mayer and R. Krechetnikov)
Reach
back into the deep recesses of your mind and recall the bell
curve from that statistics class.
That Gaussian distribution is what most people think when they measure human performance (be it a school test or athletic performance). The bell curve posits that most of us are average, with a few extremely good and a few extremely bad people.
It turns out, however, that is wrong: most of us are actually well below average:
The bell curve powerfully shapes how we think of human performance: If lots of students or employees happen to show up as extreme outliers — they're either very good or very bad — we assume they must represent a skewed sample, because only a few people in a truly random sample are supposed to be outliers.
New research suggests, however, that rather than describe how humans perform, the bell curve may actually be constraining how people perform. Minus such constraints, a new paper argues, lots of people are actually outliers.
Human performance, by this account, does not often fit the bell curve or what scientists call a normal distribution. Rather, it is more likely to fit what scientists call a power distribution.
NPR's Morning Edition explains: Link
Image: Remember Half the People You Know Are Below Average T-Shirt from the NeatoShop
Much
to the chagrin of my high school English teacher, my classmates and I
always got our metaphors and similes mixed up.
But take heart, Mrs. Potter! It turns out that our brains did understand that there are differences between the two:
LinkMidori Shibata and colleagues at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, asked 24 men and women to indicate, while in an functional MRI scanner, whether they could understand a series of metaphors or similes.
In keeping with previous fMRI research, participants' brains were active in the left inferior frontal gyrus. But Shibata's team also found that, when processing similes, there was an increase in activity in the medial frontal region, which may be linked to processes of inference. The right inferior frontal gyrus was more active for metaphors.
Never Grow Up
Axolotl T-shirt - $14.95
The axolotl "Never Grow Up" T-shirt by Nathan Mazur of Scared of Bees is my new favorite Science T-Shirt from the NeatoShop. Get it? Hah, neoteny has never looked so cute!
Check out more Funny T-Shirts and Science T-Shirts from the NeatoShop.
Photo: Cytograft
You're looking at a "rope" made from braided human parts. No, it's not a premise for a new Syfy movie, rather a new tissue engineering technique by biotech firm Cytograft:
... the biological strands could be used to weave blood vessel patches and grafts that a patient's body would readily accept for wound repair. The process is faster and could be more cost-effective than other methods of producing biological tissue replacements. [...]
Cytograft's technique draws upon a long history of medical textiles, which are typically produced with synthetic fibers like polyester. "Creating textiles is an ancient and powerful technique, and combining it with biomaterials is exciting because it has so much more versatility than the sheet method," says Christopher Breuer, a surgeon, scientist, and tissue engineer at the Yale School of Medicine. "The notion of making blood vessels or more complex shapes like heart valves, or patches for the heart, is much easier to do with fibers," he says. "If you can make fibers of any length, then there is no limit to the size or shape that you can make."
And that's a better than any science fiction tale you can weave: Link - via Kurzweil
The
eye is so useful that it evolved
multiple times, so perhaps blondes just more fun that blond hair also
evolved more:
That's my theory and I'm sticking by it. Well, at least the second part is true. Science has just solved the mystery of why many Solomon Islanders have blonde afros:
Pay a visit to Melanesia's Solomon Islands, 1800 kilometers northeast of Australia, and you'll notice a striking contrast: about 10% of the dark-skinned islanders sport bright blond afros. Hypotheses about the origins of this golden hair have included bleaching by sun and saltwater, a diet rich in fish, and the genetic legacy of Europeans or Americans. But a new study fingers a random mutation instead, suggesting that blond hair evolved independently at least twice in human history.
Link (Photo: Sean Myles)
All is fair in love and war, and especially the warfare of love. Locke Rowe of the University of Toronto discovered that male water striders have evolved its antennae into a specialized hook to grab onto a female's eyes in order to mate:
As the female skates over the surface of ponds and lakes, males will try to force themselves upon her. She resists by struggling vigorously. But in some species, males can avoid being thrown off with antennae that have evolved into antler-shaped restraints. They bend in on themselves and are loaded with an array of prongs and spikes that perfectly fit to the shape of a female’s head. [...]
The females have normal antennae. The males however, have “spectacularly modified grasping devices”, says Rowe. “They’re large, muscular, and fitted with spines and spikes exquisitely adapted for grasping – a long way from an insect feeler.”
Ed Yong of Discover Magazine's Not Exactly Rocket Science has the story: Link
Previously on Neatorama: 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits
Pssshh…using your iPhone to call, text and surf the web is so 2011. The real hip iPhone users are eating theirs…or at least the hip people in China who are able to get their hands on the iPhone 5 popsicle. Oddly, while there are mango and pear flavored options, there’s no apple flavor.
Photo: David Hughes/Penn State University
In 2011, scientists discovered a species of fungus that turns ants into zombies. Aptly called the zombie-ant fungus (Ophiocordyceps unilateralis s.l.), the organism invades an ant's brain and causes it to march to its death at a mass grave near the ant colony. There, fungus spores erupt out of the ant's head to infect more ants.
As if that's not weird enough, David Hughes of Penn State University has discovered that some ant colonies survive this zombie infestation ... with a little help from another predator: another species of fungus that attacks the zombie-ant fungus!
"In a case where biology is stranger than fiction, the parasite of the zombie-ant fungus is itself a fungus -- a hyperparasitic fungus that specializes in attacking the parasite that turns the ants into zombies," Hughes said.
"The hyperparasitic fungus effectively castrates the zombie-ant fungus so it cannot spread its spores," said Hughes, who is an assistant professor of entomology and biology, and a member of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State. "Because the hyperparasitic fungi prevents the infected zombie-ant fungus from spreading spores, fewer of the ants will become zombies."
Link - via The Two-Way
Would you entrust your head to a hair washing robot? Even if it has "24 finger tips [that] can be finely moved through independent mechanisms, creating a comfortable fit for any individual, enabling it to hand wash an individual's hair and scalp"?
Panasonic wants to know: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Gadget Review
No, that’s not a scene from the best role playing game of 2011, it’s actually a photo of an auroral storm over Arctic Henge in northern Iceland. Sure video game programers are talented artists, but pictures like this remind us that they have to get their inspiration somewhere.
Image: Albert Zink
You're looking at the world's oldest red blood cell: it was found in the body of the 5,300-year old Ötzi the Iceman mummy.
LinkAlbert Zink, a biological anthropologist at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano, was the leader of the study that uncovered the elusive cells. "It was very surprising, because we didn't really expect to find compete red blood cells," Zink said. "We hoped to find maybe some remnants or shrunken red blood cells, but these are looking like a modern-day sample; the dimensions are the same."
Zink and his colleagues took tissue samples from Ötzi's arrow wound and from an earlier wound on the mummy's hand. Using a light microscope, they identified round objects that looked a bit like red blood cells, Zink said. But to be sure, the researchers needed more advanced technology.
They turned to a device called an atomic force microscope, which works by "feeling" rather than "seeing" an object. The minuscule probe, itself invisible to the naked eye, runs over the object like a needle on a record player. As the probe bumps up and down along the object's contours, a laser measures the movement. The result is a three-dimensional "tracing" of the object.
In the case of the mysterious Ötzi contents, an exciting picture emerged: The roundish shapes were indeed red blood cells.
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