If you're into garage physics experiments, then this website's for you: Tesla Downunder. It has tons of cool pictures of awesome electronics, laser, ferrofluid and other DIY experiments.
This is Disk Combobulation I, an assemblage of thirty 3.5 inch floppy diskettes, slotted and slid into each other gluelessly, embodying a precise five-color pattern. Each diskette is penetrated by diskettes of the other four colors. Twelve five-sided openings are each bordered by the five different colors in a different cyclic order. The six of any one color are arranged in the form of an exploded cube. For any choice of three different colors, there is one point where all three touch in a clockwise order; at the opposite point, they touch in a counterclockwise order. There are exactly two possible arrangements of the 30 disks with all the above properties, giving rise to Disk Combobulation I and Disk Combobulation II. They are not mirror images of each other. Above is the first one, currently on display at the Goudreau Museum in New Hyde Park, NY. The second one of the set was sent to someone as a house-warming present.
Scientists have finally confirmed the origin of HIV: a chimpanzee virus called the SIVcpz, isolated from wild chimps in southern Cameroon, Africa.
It is thought that people hunting chimpanzees first contracted the virus - and that cases were first seen in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo - the nearest urban area - in 1930. ...
But SIVcpz has not been found to cause any Aids-like illnesses in chimpanzees, so researchers are investigating why the animals do not suffer any symptoms, when humans - who are so genetically similar - do.
Geneticist Minoo Rassoulzadegan at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France and colleagues discovered something very strange: an inheritance of genetic traits, mediated not by DNA, but by RNA!
A team led by developmental geneticist Minoo Rassoulzadegan of the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis in France, made the discovery while working with mice that carry a mutant version of the Kit gene, which plays a role in coat color. Mice that are homozygous for the mutant gene--that is, animals with two copies--die shortly after birth. But heterozygotes, with one mutant and one normal Kit gene, do fine, although their feet and the tips of their tails are white rather than gray. Heterozygotes can be mated to produce offspring with two normal copies of Kit, but to the researchers' surprise, most of these progeny also had white patches, even though the mutant gene was no longer present.
The effect appears to be due to RNA. In the 25 May issue of Nature, Rassoulzadegan and her colleagues report that the tissues of the heterozygous mice and their progeny had accumulated significant amounts of abnormally small RNA molecules. Recent research has shown that abnormal RNA can interfere with the function of normal RNA--a key player in the cell's protein production machinery. Because levels of normal RNA involved in producing the Kit protein were reduced in these mice, the team hypothesized that the abnormal RNA was altering the expression of the normal Kit gene. These disruptive RNA molecules may originally come from Kit mutant fathers, who harbor them in their sperm ...
Susan Witmore wrote a step-by-step guide on how to build your own igloo. You should read it, just in case...
Construction begins with the cutting of snow blocks. In most areas snow falls without compacting enough to allow blocks to be cut. Tramp an area the size of your intended snow block quarry for at least 15 to 30 minutes, then let it rest a half hour. Compaction causes the small ice crystals of snow to melt. These quickly refreeze, forming a more solid building material. The size of the blocks you cut will depend upon two things:
1. How heavy a block are you able to comfortably handle? Your strength and the moisture content of the compacted snow will provide some practical limits to the size of the block.
2. How strong is the compacted snow? In areas where layers of snow have thawed and refrozen, there may be ice layers in the snow. These layers make the snow blocks fragile. If such blocks must be used, they will have to be thicker than those cut from blocks without ice layers. Well compacted, low moisture snow can be cut into large thin blocks.
Andrea Koschinsky of the International University in Bremen, Germany and colleagues discovered a supercritical hydrothermal vent on the Atlantic seabed:
Scientists working in the southern Atlantic Ocean have found a 407 °C hydrothermal vent, the hottest yet known on an ocean floor. Although only 5 °C hotter than the previous deep-sea high of 402 °C, recorded in the Pacific Ocean, the new hotspot bumps seawater into the strange state of being a supercritical fluid.
Such fluids can diffuse through solids a bit like a gas and dissolve materials more like a liquid. In industrial applications, supercritical carbon dioxide and water are used as solvents thanks to these unusual properties. On the ocean floor, supercritical seawater could dissolve and transport minerals from the surrounding rocks differently than at other hot vents.
Rob Gonsalvez is a Canadian artist whose artwork features his trademark seamless, surrealistic transformation of objects aptly dubbed "Magic Realism". As you can tell, Rob's influences include Salvador Dali, René Magritte, and M.C. Escher.
This one above is called "Flight Plan".
See more of Rob Gonsalvez' artwork: http://www.progressiveart.com/gonsalves_page.htm | Link (Thanks vurdlak!)
Richard Cotton took a photo of this very scary looking spiny orb weaver spider during his travels to Angkor Wat, Cambodia. He's a brave man, because it that were me, I'd be running the other way!
http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/richardkellycotton/detail?.dir=fbc1&.dnm=9823.jpg&.src=ph (Thanks Richard!) | If you like spiders, then you'll like Richard Seaman's website: Spiders of Vietnam
Apollo Diamond, a start-up company founded by a former Bell Labs scientist in his garage, has succeeded in making big, flawless diamonds for jewelry and technical applications.
Linares built machines in his garage, superheating carbon in suburban Boston while his neighbors went about their lives. He got the CVD process to work, at first making tiny diamond chips. He formed Apollo and started down the path to industrial diamonds. Then Linares inadvertently left a diamond piece in a beaker of acid over a weekend. The acid cleaned up excess carbon — essentially coal — that had stayed on the diamond.
"When I came in Monday, I couldn't see the (stone) in the beaker," Linares says. The diamond was colorless and pure. "That's when I realized we could do gemstones."
NASA will launch a new mission dubbed Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) to study a mysterious glowing cloud that has been spreading around the world:
The Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission will be the first satellite dedicated to studying this enigmatic phenomenon. Due to launch in late 2006, it should reveal whether the clouds are caused by global warming, as many scientists believe.
"Noctilucent" clouds, which glow at night, form in the upper atmosphere, at an altitude of about 80 kilometres, and their glow can be seen just after sunset or just before sunrise.
