With billions of people in developing and under-developed nations still in need of a few watts to illuminate their homes, designers all over the world have started developing machines that are small, cheap and could generate electricity with a minimum of fuss. Katarzyna Bazylczyk is one such inventor who has tried to solve the energy problems of people living in the rural areas of Africa, with a product she calls the RollStick.
The concept is based on the use of an aluminum stick with a wheel at its base. The product has been created as a toy and wants children of these rural areas to play with it by making the wheel roll as they run with the RollStick. The wheel carries a dynamo that converts the kinetic energy of rotation into electricity. A set of LEDs lets the user know the amount of charge present in the batteries. Once fully charged, the wheel can be separated from the stick and used to power a few bulbs or to charge a wide variety of devices.
WindTronics’ Latest Creation Converts The Slowest Of Winds Into Electricity
Wind energy does offer a promise to power your home with green electricity provided your house is on the countryside where skyscrapers don’t put breaks on speeding wind. Residents of the urbanities of today make use of wind generators that mostly don’t provide as much energy as is needed because of the high-rise buildings in the vicinity. WindTronics, based in Muskegon, Mich., has developed a new wind turbine that is specifically sized for individual urban homes.
The company claims that this wind turbine is so efficient that it can operate at speeds as low as 2mph. Designed in the form of a table fan, the turbine will be sold for $4,500 and can generate 2,000KWh of electricity in a year at decent wind speeds, which is about 20% of the energy an average home in the U.S. requires.
The turbine weighs 95 pounds and has a 6-foot diameter, which allows the homeowner to install it easily on rooftops, chimneys or on a pole as well. The novel design, according to the company, is the secret behind the turbine’s capability to generate electricity at wind speeds between 2mph and 45mph.
Giant Inflatable Tower Could Reach The Edge Of Space
A giant inflatable tower could carry people to the edge of space without the need for a rocket, and could be completed much sooner than a cable-based space elevator, its proponents claim.
Inflatable pneumatic modules already used in some spacecraft could be assembled into a 15-kilometre-high tower, say Brendan Quine, Raj Seth and George Zhu at York University in Toronto, Canada. If built from a suitable mountain top it could reach an altitude of around 20 kilometres, where it could be used for atmospheric research, tourism, telecoms or launching spacecraft.
Pneumatic modules already used in some spacecraft could be assembled into a 15-kilometre-high towerThe team envisages assembling the structure from a series of modules constructed from Kevlar-polyethylene composite tubes made rigid by inflating them with a lightweight gas such as helium. To test the idea, they built a 7-metre scale model made up of six modules. Each module was built out of three laminated polyethylene tubes 8 centimetres in diameter, mounted around circular spacers and inflated with air.
To stay upright and withstand winds, full-scale structures would require gyroscopes and active stabilisation systems in each module. The team modelled a 15-kilometre tower made up of 100 modules, each one 150 metres tall and 230 metres in diameter, built from inflatable tubes 2 metres across. Quine estimates it would weigh about 800,000 tonnes when pressurised - around twice the weight of the world’s largest supertanker.
“Twenty kilometres up is about as dark as outer space. You can see about 600 kilometres in any direction,” Quine says. Tourists could get a view almost like that from space, but without the difficulties of coping with zero gravity. He calculates the tower could be extended up to low Earth orbit at 200 kilometres.
The tower does a similar job to the much-vaunted space elevator. But while the elevator envisages using ribbons woven from superstrong nanotubes - a material that is as yet non-existent - the tower would use materials that are already available. And should something go wrong with the tower, failure of a few modules would not cause the whole structure to collapse.
9,000-Year-Old Brew
This summer, how would you like to lean back in your lawn chair and toss back a brew made from what may be the world’s oldest recipe for beer? Called Chateau Jiahu, this blend of rice, honey and fruit was intoxicating Chinese villagers 9,000 years ago-long before grape wine had its start in Mesopotamia.
University of Pennsylvania molecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern first described the beverage in 2005 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences based on chemical traces from pottery in the Neolithic village of Jiahu in Northern China. Soon after, McGovern called on Sam Calagione at the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del., to do the ancient recipe justice. Later this month, you can give it a try when a new batch hits shelves across the country. The Beer Babe blog was impressed, writing that it is “very smooth,” and “not overly sweet.”
But that’s not the only strange brew Dogfish is shipping out this summer. Next week, the brewery will be bottling up the first large batch of Sah’tea for the general public-a modern update on a ninth-century Finnish beverage. In the fall, The New Yorker documented the intricate research and preparation that went into making the beer, which was first offered on tap at the brewery in May. In short, brewmasters carmelize wort on white hot river rocks, ferment it with German Weizen yeast, then toss on Finnish berries and a blend of spices to jazz up this rye-based beverage. Reviewers at the BeerAdvocate universally praised Sah’tea, comparing it to a fruity hefeweizen. One user munched on calamari as he downed a pint and described the combo as “a near euphoric experience.”
And Dogfish is also bringing back one of their more unusual forays into alcohol-infused time travel. Called Theobroma, this cocoa-based brew was hatched from a chemical analysis of 3,200-year-old pottery fragments from the Cradle of Chocolate, the Ulua Valley in Honduras. Archaeologist John Henderson at Cornell University first described the beverage in 2007 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pushing the first use of the chocolate plant back by 600 years. Dogfish first sold Theobroma in May 2008, and the next batch-made from a blend of cocoa, honey, chilies, and annatto-will be on shelves and in taps in July. The chocolate beer was apparently too sweet for Evan at The Full Pint, who writes that it contained “a ton and a half of sugary sweetness” with “an insane amount of gooeyness left behind on the roof of your mouth.”
From
Sundown Lounge No. 179
Geeknotes:
Printers Row Lit Fest
Espresso Book Machine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Printers Row Lit Fest (formerly Book Fair)
With all the great poetry programming happening at Printers Row one has to wonder
why they felt compelled to take Gwendolyn Brooks' name off the tent.
In any case, the weekend promises to be an exciting one with readings and workshop.
Espresso Book Machine
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Purple Tomatoes
Scientists have developed purple tomatoes which they hope may be able to keep cancer at bay.
The fruit are rich in an antioxidant pigment called anthocyanin which is thought to have anti-cancer properties.
A team from the John Innes Centre, Norwich, created the tomatoes by incorporating genes from the snapdragon flower, which is high in anthocyanin.
The study, published in Nature Biotechnology, found mice who ate the tomatoes lived longer.
This offers the potential to promote health through diet by reducing the impact of chronic disease
Anthocyanins, found in particularly high levels in berries such as blackberry, cranberry and chokeberry, have been shown to help significantly slow the growth of colon cancer cells.
They are also thought to offer protection against cardiovascular disease and age-related degenerative diseases.
There is also evidence that the pigments have anti-inflammatory properties, help boost eyesight, and may help stave off obesity and diabetes.
The John Innes team is investigating ways to increase the levels of health-promoting compounds in more commonly eaten fruits and vegetables.
Tomatoes already contain high levels of beneficial antioxidant compounds, such as lycopene and flavonoids.
Professor Cathie Martin, from the centre, said: “Most people do not eat five portions of fruits and vegetables a day, but they can get more benefit from those they do eat if common fruit and veg can be developed that are higher in bioactive compounds.”
It is too early to say whether anthocyanins obtained through diet could help to reduce the risk of cancer
The John Innes team took two genes from snapdragon that induce the production of anthocyanins in snapdragon flowers, and turned them on in tomato fruit.
Anthocyanins accumulated in tomatoes at higher levels than anything previously achieved in both the peel and flesh of the fruit, giving them an intense purple colour.
Tests on mice bred to be susceptible to cancer showed that animals whose diets were supplemented with the purple tomatoes had a significantly longer lifespan compared to those who received only normal red tomatoes.
Professor Martin said: “This is one of the first examples of metabolic engineering that offers the potential to promote health through diet by reducing the impact of chronic disease.
“And certainly the first example of a GMO [genetically modified organism] with a trait that really offers a potential benefit for all consumers.”
She said the the next step would be test the tomatoes on human volunteers.
Dr Lara Bennett, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: “It is exciting to see new techniques that could potentially make healthy foods even better for us.
“But it is too early to say whether anthocyanins obtained through diet could help to reduce the risk of cancer.
“We do know that eating a healthy, balanced diet that is rich in fibre, fruit and vegetables - and low in red and processed meat - is an important way to reduce your cancer risk.”
Dr Paul Kroon, of the Food Research Institute in Norwich, said the research was an “important study”.
“The technology offers great scope for altering colours of fruits and vegetables, and their content of potentially health-protective compounds.”
However, he said it would be wrong to assume the effects seen in mice would necessarily occur in humans.
Anna Denny, a nutrition scientist for the British Nutrition Foundation, stressed there was no “magic bullet” against diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
“Fruit and veg with higher levels of health-promoting compounds should not been seen as a replacement for eating a healthy balanced diet.”
Scientists Engineer Cellular Circuits
That Count Events
MIT and Boston University engineers have designed cells that can count and “remember” cellular events, using simple circuits in which a series of genes are activated in a specific order.
Such circuits, which mimic those found on computer chips, could be used to count the number of times a cell divides, or to study a sequence of developmental stages. They could also serve as biosensors that count exposures to different toxins.
The team developed two types of cellular counters, both described in the May 29 issue of Science. Though the cellular circuits resemble computer circuits, the researchers are not trying to create tiny living computers.
“I don’t think computational circuits in biology will ever match what we can do with a computer,” said Timothy Lu, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and one of two lead authors of the paper.
Performing very elaborate computing inside cells would be extremely difficult because living cells are much harder to control than silicon chips. Instead, the researchers are focusing on designing small circuit components to accomplish specific tasks.
“Our goal is to build simple design tools that perform some aspect of cellular function,” said Lu.
Ari Friedland, a graduate student at Boston University, is also a lead author of the Science paper. Other authors are Xiao Wang, postdoctoral associate at BU; David Shi, BU undergraduate; George Church, faculty member at Harvard Medical School and HST; and James Collins, professor of biomedical engineering at BU.
To demonstrate their concept, the team built circuits that count up to three cellular events, but in theory, the counters could go much higher.
The first counter, dubbed the RTC (Riboregulated Transcriptional Cascade) Counter, consists of a series of genes, each of which produces a protein that activates the next gene in the sequence.
With the first stimulus — for example, an influx of sugar into the cell — the cell produces the first protein in the sequence, an RNA polymerase (an enzyme that controls transcription of another gene). During the second influx, the first RNA polymerase initiates production of the second protein, a different RNA polymerase.
The number of steps in the sequence is, in theory, limited only by the number of distinct bacterial RNA polymerases. “Our goal is to use a library of these genes to create larger and larger cascades,” said Lu.
The counter’s timescale is minutes or hours, making it suitable for keeping track of cell divisions. Such a counter would be potentially useful in studies of aging.
The RTC Counter can be “reset” to start counting the same series over again, but it has no way to “remember” what it has counted. The team’s second counter, called the DIC (DNA Invertase Cascade) Counter, can encode digital memory, storing a series of “bits” of information.
‘See Through’ Bikini Lets You Tan All Over
It is the curse of sun-kissed holidays - the dreaded zebra crossing look caused by wearing swimwear on the beach. But tanlines could become a thing of the past after a firm developed a range of ’see-through’ swimming costumes.
Although the human eye cannot penetrate the fabric in the Tan Through range from Kiniki, UV rays which cause the skin to darken will pass through, allowing wearers to bronze all over.
Thousands of microscopic holes in the stretchy patented Transol yarn - described by the company as ‘chicken-wire mesh material’ - allows 80 per cent of sunlight to reach the skin.
The raw material is transparent when held up to the light but the wearer’s modesty is preserved by special animal prints and abstract patterns which confuse the eye, so onlookers can only see a solid block of fabric.
The range, which is available from www.kiniki.com, includes an all-in-one swimsuit, bikinis and wraps for women, plus briefs, hipsters and tangas for men.
Costs range between £17.43 for the briefs and wrap to £34.68 for the swimsuit or full bikini set. Women’s sizes start at eight and go up to 20, while men can choose from small to XXL.
John Walker, 58, who owns the Staffordshire-based firm and has been manufacturing underwear and swimwear for over 35 years, said: ‘They are selling like hot cakes. We only officially launched four weeks ago but we cannot keep up with demand at the moment.’
Explaining how he stumbled on the idea six years ago, he added: ‘I had some fishnet material in the cutting room and light was coming in from the overhead skylights.
‘I realised using a fabric with holes would be brilliant for taning through - if it wasn’t totally inappropriate.
‘Then I came up with the idea of prints to confuse the eye and have been working on design for the last six years.
‘If you hold it up to a window you can see right through it but once on the body it looks just like a normal swimsuit.’
Mr Walker said sunbathers were guaranteed a smooth all-over tan as long as they remembered one piece of advice.
‘There is an elastic seam on every garment which we advise customers to move regularly because the sun cannot penetrate it. If you’re not careful it will get in the way of a tan,’ he said.
However, there was concern from skin cancer campaigners who are already tackling an increase in cases of malignant melanoma.
The number of people who have been diagnosed with the condition is expected to reach 10,000 this year.
Richard Clifford, secretary the Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Charity, said: ‘By virtue of the fact they are putting a swimsuit over the skin it would be very difficult to apply sun cream underneath.
‘I think it is a dangerous idea and in the interests of vanity. We recommend UV protected clothing and this is the very opposite.
‘Five people a day are diagnosed with malignant melanomas. It is a killer and affects more people here than in Australia.’
A spokesman for the British Skin Foundation added: ‘Although this may sound like an attractive idea to many people looking to get a tan this summer, the fact that it lets through 80 per cent of sunlight should be the worrying factor.
‘This will mean that people can still damage their skin from UV light, as seemingly the swimsuit will not offer any type of cover to the skin.
‘If people are looking to get that tanned look, there are safer alternatives to sitting out in the sun, like spray tanning.’
But Mr Walker insisted customers were advised to use sun block all over.
‘We recommend that you put the same sun protection on underneath the swimsuit as you would on the exposed parts of your body,’ he said.
Kiniki applied for a worldwide patent on Transol fabric two years ago and are expecting it to be approved next year.
The Tan Through range uses a common yarn, polybutylene terephthalate known as PBT, a synthetic material with an elastic stretch that does not contain any lycra.
This makes it more resistant to suncream, chlorine and seawater and is more breathable for the wearer.
John Walker said it is the way in which his firm has used PBT to construct the Transol fabric for their swimsuits which is ground-breaking.
He added: ‘No one else in the world has developed the yarn in this way. ‘Imagine a fish net or string vest material. We have made a very very minute form of that by shrinking any holes right down.’
Third Of World’s Gas Reserve Found Beneath Arctic
Tensions over the Arctic’s untapped energy reserves are expected to build after a survey has found substantial mineral riches under the ice.
The analysis, by researchers at the U.S. Geologic Survey, found that a third of world’s remaining natural gas and 13 per cent of its oil are trapped beneath the oceans of the North Pole.
The precious supply has remained largely untouched until now because of the impenetrable ice sheets.
The study’s lead author Donald Gautier predicts that the findings will spur Russia to strengthen its control over the gas resources. It has already actively asserted its claim to parts of the Arctic.
Russia already is the world’s leading natural gas producer, noted Gautier.
Two-thirds of the undiscovered gas is in just four areas - South Kara Sea, North Barents Basin, South Barents Basin and the Alaska Platform - the report said.
Indeed, the South Kara Sea off Siberia contains 39 per cent of the Arctic’s undiscovered gas, the researchers said.
It first submitted a claim to the United Nations in 2001, but was rejected for lack of evidence. The United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway also have sought to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic.
Now, Russia is working to prove that an underwater mountain range crossing the polar region is part of its continental shelf.
In 2007, two Russian civilian mini-submarines descended to the seabed to collect geological and water samples and drop a titanium canister containing the Russian flag.
Arctic oil reserves are significantly smaller than those of natural gas and are unlikely to lead to any shift in world oil balance, Gautier said in a recorded briefing provided by Science.
But they could be of importance locally if developed by individual countries, he said, citing in particular the United States and Greenland, which is governed by Denmark.
However, Gautier pointed out that the study looked only at the geological setting and the chance that energy resources are present.
‘If these resources were to be found they would not be found all at once. They would be found incrementally, and they would be produced incrementally,’ he said, urging caution about assuming that the oil might extend world production significantly.
Gautier said the study focused on geological conditions in the Arctic and how they compared to other parts of the world where oil and gas have been found.
Because so much of this territory is unexplored and data is so limited the researchers had to develop a new method to do assessments, Gautier said.
They collected the best information they could for the region and then subdivided it into geological areas.
Those areas were compared with geological regions around the world where gas or oil have already been found in order to predict where more resources are likely to be located.
Gas and oil tend to be found in sedimentary basins, he said, and ‘each one of these basins has a story, a geologic story.’
‘As new data become available, our understanding of the resources in the Arctic will change,’ he added.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 178
Geeknotes:
Astronauts of Antiquity
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click for band info...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Common Cancer Drug Destroys Patients Fingerprints
Thousands of cancer patients face delays at airport security because a common drug can destroy their fingerprints, it has emerged.
One man was held by U.S. immigration officials for four hours before they allowed him into the country.
Now a senior doctor is telling patients taking the drug, capecitabine, to carry medical documents when they travel abroad.
It is taken to treat a number of cancers, but has an inflammatory side effect linked to long-term use.
The chronic inflammation, on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet, can lead to peeling, blistering and bleeding of the skin - leading in the worst cases to the eradication of fingerprints.
The case of the patient, identified only as Mr S, was reported in the journal Annals of Oncology. The 62-year-old had head and neck cancer which had spread, but had responded well to chemotherapy.
He was put on a low dose of capecitabine to prevent the disease returning. In December 2008, after three years taking the drug, he flew to the U.S. to visit relatives, unaware that his fingers had lost all their identifying marks.
The patient’s doctor, Eng-Huat Tan, based at the National Cancer Centre in Singapore, said: ‘He was detained at the airport customs for four hours because the immigration officers could not detect his fingerprints.
‘He was allowed to enter after the customs officers were satisfied that he was not a security threat. He was advised to travel with a letter from his oncologist stating his condition and the treatment he was receiving to account for his lack of fingerprints to facilitate his entry in future.’
Dr Tan said all patients taking the drug should carry a note from their oncologist when they travel.
‘Patients taking long-term capecitabine may have problems with regards to fingerprint identification when they enter U.S. ports or other countries that require fingerprint identification and should be warned about this,’ he said.
Martin Ledwick, of Cancer Research UK, said capecitabine was used to treat head and neck cancers, as well as breast, stomach and colon cancers.
He said: ‘In a minority of cases, some chemotherapy drugs can cause hand and foot syndrome, where the skin can begin to peel on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. For most people, this is reasonably mild.’
The U.S. began demanding fingerprints from visitors after the September 11 terrorism attacks in 2001. These are checked against millions of records to detect whether the traveller has another visa under a different name.
HIV Vaccine Turns Muscle Into Antibody Factories
by Andy Coghlan
How do you deal with a virus which attacks the immune system that is trying to fight it off? It's a question HIV researchers have been trying to solve for years, and now they may have come up with a solution: bypass the immune system altogether.
Nine macaques have been protected against the monkey version of HIV with a novel vaccine that sidesteps the monkey immune system. Instead, the vaccine turns monkey muscles into factories for churning out antibodies which kill simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) - the monkey equivalent of HIV.
The vaccine is a departure from the usual approach, which is to prime the body's immune system for attack by exposing it to a harmless version of the real pathogen. Thus primed, the immune system prepares for a real invasion by building its own stockpile of antibodies that target the pathogen.
Instead, Philip Johnson of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania and his colleagues injected the monkeys' muscles with a harmless virus carrying genes for making immunoadhesins, antibody-like molecules pre-selected to attack SIV.
The viruses load the genes into the nuclei of muscle cells, which produce and churn out the immunoadhesins, potentially indefinitely. "Instead of expecting the person's own immune system to do the job, we're giving them their own supply of 'off-the-peg' antibodies," Johnson says.
"It is now 85 weeks since all nine macaques received their jabs, followed by injections of SIV, and they still haven't suffered any infections," he says. "By contrast, four of six unvaccinated animals died of monkey AIDS" (Nature Medicine, DOI: 10.1038/nm.1967).
Johnson says the approach is especially suitable for combating HIV, which overwhelms the immune system that is supposed to fight it. With all conventional vaccines so far "the virus always wins in the end", he says.
Given such a strong proof of principle, the team is already gearing up for clinical trials, with four potential "superantibodies" from people who are HIV-resistant.
"Within two to three years, we would hope to have this in the clinic," says Wayne Koff, senior vice-president of research and development at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which is collaborating with Johnson on this next phase. "It will be a tremendous test of the concept to see if what has protected the monkeys pans out into people," he says.
Sharp Debuts World’s Thinnest Solar Panels For Mobile Devices
Sharp has announced the global release of the world’s thinnest solar panels, especially designed for next-gen devices of the future, which have to be slimmer, lightweight and above all, green. The LR0GC02 Solar Panel module is just 0.8mm thick and would be able to increase the life of the battery and hence users would be able to use the built-in systems with ease.
The panels would generate about 300mW of juice for the handset, which won’t end the battery dominance, but would ensure that the batteries are continuously recharged whenever the device is used in the sun. With Samsung and LG already showcasing their solar-powered cell phones, this new launch is expected to start a new era of cellphones charged by solar energy.
Can Animals Tell The Difference Between Right And Wrong?
Animals possess a sense of morality that allows them to tell the difference between right and wrong, according to a controversial new book. Scientists studying animal behaviour believe they have growing evidence that species ranging from mice to primates are governed by moral codes of conduct in the same way as humans.
Until recently, humans were thought to be the only species to experience complex emotions and have a sense of morality.
But Prof Marc Bekoff, an ecologist at University of Colorado, Boulder, believes that morals are “hard-wired” into the brains of all mammals and provide the “social glue” that allow often aggressive and competitive animals to live together in groups.
He has compiled evidence from around the world that shows how different species of animals appear to have an innate sense of fairness, display empathy and help other animals that are in distress.
His conclusions will provide ammunition for animal welfare groups pushing to have animals treated more humanely, but some experts are sceptical about the extent to which animals can experience complex emotions and social responsibility.
Prof Bekoff, who presents his case in a new book Wild Justice, said: “The belief that humans have morality and animals don’t is a long-standing assumption, but there is a growing amount of evidence that is showing us that this simply cannot be the case.
“Just as in humans, the moral nuances of a particular culture or group will be different from another, but they are certainly there. Moral codes are species specific, so they can be difficult to compare with each other or with humans.”
Prof Bekoff believes morals developed in animals to help regulate behaviour in social groups of animals such as wolves and primates.
He claims that these rules help to control fighting within the group and encourage co-operative behaviour.
Recent neurology work has also revealed that distantly related mammals such as whales and dolphins have the same structures in their brains that are thought to be responsible for empathy in humans.
Other findings have also suggested that some animals may even be capable of showing empathy with the suffering of other species.
Prof Bekoff, who co-wrote the book with moral philosopher Jessica Pierce, also from the University of Colorado, added: “There are cases of dolphins helping humans to escape from sharks and elephants that have helped antelope escape from enclosures.
“While it is difficult to know for certain that there is cross species empathy, it is hard to argue against it.”
His ideas have met with some controversy in the scientific community, but many admit it is difficult to argue that animals do not share many of the psychological qualities previously only attributed to humans.
Professor Frans de Waal, a primate behaviourist at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, said: “I don’t believe animals are moral in the sense we humans are - with well developed and reasoned sense of right and wrong - rather that human morality incorporates a set of psychological tendencies and capacities such as empathy, reciprocity, a desire for co-operation and harmony that are older than our species.
“Human morality was not formed from scratch, but grew out of our primate psychology. Primate psychology has ancient roots, and I agree that other animals show many of the same tendencies and have an intense sociality.”
WOLVES
Wolves live in tight-knit social groups that are regulated by strict rules. If a pack grows too large, members are not able to bond closely enough and the pack disintegrates. Wolves also demonstrate fairness.
During play, dominant wolves will “handicap” themselves by engaging in roll reversal with lower ranking wolves, showing submission and allowing them to bite, provided it is not too hard.
Prof Bekoff argues that without a moral code governing their actions, this kind of behaviour would not be possible. If an animal bites too hard, it will initiate a “play bow” to ask forgiveness before play resumes.
COYOTES
In other members of the dog family, play is controlled by similar rules. Among coyotes, cubs which bite too hard are ostracised by the rest of the group and often end up having to leave entirely.
“We looked at the mortality of these young animals who disperse from the group and they have four to five times higher mortality,” said Bekoff.
Experiments with domestic dogs, where one animal was given a treat and another denied, have shown that they posses a sense of fairness as they shared their treats.
ELEPHANTS
Elephants are intensely sociable and emotional animals. Research by Iain Douglas Hamilton, from the department of zoology at Oxford University, suggests elephants experience compassion and has found evidence of elephants helping injured or ill members of their herd.
In one case, a Matriarch known as Eleanor fell ill and a female in the herd gently tried to help Eleanor back to her feet, staying with her before she died.
In 2003, a herd of 11 elephants rescued antelope who were being held inside an enclosure in KwaZula-Natal, South Africa.
The matriarch unfastened all of the metal latches holding the gates closed and swung the entrance open allowing the antelope to escape.
This is thought to be a rare example of animals showing empathy for members of another species - a trait previously thought to be the exclusive preserve of mankind.
DIANA MONKEYS
A laboratory experiment trained Diana monkeys to insert a token into a slot to obtain food.
A male who had grown to be adept at the task was found to be helping the oldest female who had not been able to learn how to insert the token.
On three occasion the male monkey picked up tokens she dropped and inserted them into the slot and allowed her to have the food.
As there was no benefit for the male monkey, Prof Bekoff argues that this is a clear example of an animal’s actions being driven by some internal moral compass.
CHIMPANZEES
Known to be among the most cognitively advanced of the great apes and our closest cousin, it is perhaps not surprising that scientists should suggest they live by moral codes.
A chimpanzee known as Knuckles - from the Centre for Great Apes in Florida - is the only known captive chimpanzee to suffer from cerebral palsy, which leaves him physically and mentally handicapped.
Scientists have found that other chimpanzees in his group treat him differently and he is rarely subjected to intimidating displays of aggression from older males.
Chimpanzees also demonstrate a sense of justice and those who deviate from the code of conduct of a group are set upon by other members as punishment.
RODENTS
Experiments with rats have shown that they will not take food if they know their actions will cause pain to another rat. In lab tests, rats were given food which then caused a second group of rats to receive an electric shock.
The rats with the food stopped eating rather than see another rat receive a shock. Similarly, mice react more strongly to pain when they have seen another mouse in pain.
Recent research from Switzerland also showed that rats will help a rat, to which it is not related, to obtain food if they themselves have benefited from the charity of others. This reciprocity was thought to be restricted to primates.
BATS
Vampire bats need to drink blood every night but it is common for some not to find any food. Those who are successful in foraging for blood will share their meal with bats who are not successful.
They are more likely to share with bats who had previously shared with them. Prof Bekoff believes this reciprocity is a result of a sense of affiliation that binds groups of animals together.
Some studies have shown that animals experience hormonal changes that lead them to “crave” social interaction.
Biologists have also observed a female Rodrigues fruit-eating bat in Gainesville, Florida, helping another female to give birth by showing the pregnant female the correct birthing position - with head up and feed down.
WHALES
Whales have been found to have spindle cells in their brains. These very large and specialised cells were thought to be restricted to humans and other great apes and appear to play a role in empathy and understanding the feelings of others.
Humpback whales, fin whales, killer whales and sperm whales have all been found to have spindle cells in the same areas of their brains.
They also have three times as many spindle cells compared to humans and are thought to be older in evolutionary terms.
This finding has suggested that complex emotional judgements such as empathy may have evolved considerably earlier in history than previously thought and could be widespread in the animal kingdom.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 177
Geeknotes:
Google Chrome (meh)
The Cat Who Went To Heaven
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I tried Google's Chrome browser this week, and, yeah, it's fast and all, but I ultimately came away feeling a little creeped out. Google knows too damn much about me already; I'd rather not give them my total browsing history and habits on a platter. And the 'Incognito' browsing feature is a joke; that list of URL's, separated out, now makes a jucier target for hackers.
Besides, the damn browser kept claiming my webspace had Chinese malware on it (some crap called 'jl.chura.pl'), when my webhost replied 'we know about that bug, you're not infected.'
I'm doing just fine with Firefox, and I even like Seamonkey as a backup, but Google Chrome, meh...
And, because last week's show got canceled, I'm including a short set for the jazz puppet show "The Cat Who Went To Heaven," by Elizabeth Coatsworth. It's in this section of the podcast.
A recent study showed that cats control an alarming 42% of the Internet. The largest portion of this being controlled by Keyboard Cat, Maru the cat, and LOLCats.
Investigators traced many of the popular cat Web sites through a series of holding companies and blind trusts. All led back to Moneypuss Industries, a company started by Mr. Moneypuss, a Maine Coon cat, who started the company after being left a fortune of over $25 million dollars by his longtime owner Sally Dorsmith in 1997.
”All popular cat videos and images can be traced back to Moneypuss Industries,” said South Carolina attorney general Henry McMaster. “We’re filing several suits to stop this unhealthy monopoly of cat videos and pictures on the Internet.”
At the current rate of growth every video on YouTube will have a cat by April 2011, and that means big bucks for Mr. Moneypuss. In a deal struck with YouTube parent Google, Moneypuss Industries receives a percentage of revenue from all cat videos.
McMaster’s investigations shows that Moneypuss Industries has funneled lots of cash to Universities to fund research on the neuroscience of viral memes. “They’ve used that research to develop the keyboard cat andLOLcats memes. They then turn these memes into brands, and start milking the cash cow,” said McMasters.
Dogs are the big losers. The dog analog to Moneypuss Idustries, Barker Holdings, only controls 3% of Internet traffic.
“Cats are far ahead of dogs on the Internet. Due to their early investments in the Internet, and also because cat people tend to stay at home and surf the Internet all day,” said McMasters.
A representative for Moneypuss Industries said the company has several other memes ready to flood the market including Doughnut Cat and Crazy Japanese Tango Cat. Moneypuss Industries isn’t limiting itself to the Internet, the company’s Caturday Studios has two cat-based shows on the fall schedule of NBC and one on ABC.
Mr. Moneypuss ranked 35th on Forbes list of richest living entities in the world.
Microbes Turn Organic Waste
Into Eco-Friendly Plastics
“Organic waste from agriculture, industries and households forms a very large resource that is currently discarded or at best transformed into biogas. From a sustainability point of view it is desired to convert these organic resources in chemicals,” said Mark van Loosdrecht of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
van Loosdrecht has been working on using bacteria to transform this waste into bioplastics known as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs).
PHAs are linear polyesters produced by bacterial fermentation of sugar or lipids (fats). They are produced by the bacteria to store carbon and energy.
More than 150 different monomers can be combined within this family to give materials with extremely different properties.
These plastics are biodegradable and are used in the production of bioplastics.
However, the high cost of PHA production compared to conventional plastics has limited their use in a wide range of applications.
Using technology derived from wastewater treatment systems, van Loosdrecht and his lab have developed a process using open microbial cultures to convert organic wastes to PHAs.
This new process is able to produce just as much PHA as existing processes at specific rates that are up to three times faster.
Kevin O’Connor at the University College in Dublin, Ireland, has also developed a new process using bacteria to produce PHAs from waste, only the waste is not organic.
O’Connor has found a way to transform traditional plastics into biodegradable plastics.
Using a process called pyrolysis, the waste plastics are heated in the absence of air, causing a breakdown of the molecular bonds.
What’s left is an oil that is then fed to natural soil bacteria that use it to produce PHA.
In another research, Richard Gross from the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York, is using bacteria that produce a building block from vegetable oils that can be used to make a plastic that is very much like polyethylene.
However, unlike polyethylene, when it becomes waste, it can be converted by mild enzymatic methods to biodiesel fuel.
“We are now looking for a really efficient enzyme that can convert the plastic back to its building blocks. We have found microbes and enzymes that do break it down completely, but we still need to improve their efficiencies,” said Gross.
Wind Turbines Using Electrical Transmission Towers
Metropolis Magazine officially announced the winner of their 2009 Next Generation prize! Titled Wind-it, the brilliant project aims to give our existing energy grid a much needed boost by installing wind turbines in ailing electrical transmission towers. The project is designed for France, but creators Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin, and Raphael Menard believe it could be integrated everywhere, from China’s Sichuan Province to the streets of New York City.
The French design team proposes inserting wind turbines into broken electrical towers, thereby turning the towers into wind energy powerhouses and providing an energy boost to a ready-made grid. Wind-it could also be placed in newly built electrical towers. The design, available in three sizes, could provide enough energy to power one room in a house or even 20 whole houses depending on size and wind speed. According to Delon, if a third of France’s electrical towers were outfitted with turbines, they could rival the energy production of two nuclear reactors-that’s 5% of the country’s total electrical demand.
The project comes at the right time for France, which hopes to expand its wind power capacity to five times the current level by 2020. “There are a lot of people who are against wind turbines because they say it disfigures the landscape,” Delon says. But the Wind-it nullifies that argument by adding wind power to structures that are a familiar part of landscapes everywhere.
Air-Fueled Battery Lasts 10 Times Longer
A new type of air-fueled battery could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available. This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.
The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.
The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.
Improved capacity is thanks to the addition of a component that uses oxygen drawn from the air during discharge, replacing one chemical constituent used in rechargeable batteries today. Not having to carry the chemicals around in the battery offers more energy for the same size battery. Reducing the size and weight of batteries with the necessary charge capacity has been a long-running battle for developers of electric cars.
The STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell should be cheaper than today’s rechargeables too. The new component is made of porous carbon, which is far less expensive than the lithium cobalt oxide it replaces.
This four-year research project, which reaches its halfway mark in July, builds on the discovery at the university that the carbon component’s interaction with air can be repeated, creating a cycle of charge and discharge. Subsequent work has more than tripled the capacity to store charge in the STAIR cell.
Principal investigator on the project, Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, says: “Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries. Our results so far are very encouraging and have far exceeded our expectations.”
“The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery,” says Bruce.
The oxygen, which will be drawn in through a surface of the battery exposed to air, reacts within the pores of the carbon to discharge the battery. “Not only is this part of the process free, the carbon component is much cheaper than current technology,” says Bruce. He estimates that it will be at least five years before the STAIR cell is commercially available.
The project is focused on understanding more about how the chemical reaction of the battery works and investigating how to improve it. The research team is also working towards making a STAIR cell prototype suited, in the first instance, for small applications, such as mobile phones or MP3 players.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 176
Geeknotes:
Jazz Puppet Show at The Harlem School of The Arts
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Jazz singer and songwriter Nancy Harrow has teamed up with the Culture Project, to present a jazz puppet show based on the Newbery Award-winning book, The Cat Who Went To Heaven, by Elizabeth Coatsworth. Harrow is best known for recording jazz albums inspired by literary subjects; her album The Lost Lady was dubbed one of the best jazz albums of the year by both the Village Voice and Boston Globe. In this live production of her children’s book-inspired album, she tells the story through 26 contemporary jazz tracks and the traditional Japanese art of Bunraku puppetry.
A team led by researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory has now pinpointed the exact gene responsible for a 2007 breakthrough in which mice with symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease regained long-term memories and the ability to learn.
In the latest development, reported in the May 7 issue of Nature, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience, and colleagues found that drugs that work on the gene HDAC2 reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s and boost cognitive function in mice.
“This gene and its protein are promising targets for treating memory impairment,” Tsai said. “HDAC2 regulates the expression of a plethora of genes implicated in plasticity — the brain’s ability to change in response to experience — and memory formation.
“It brings about long-lasting changes in how other genes are expressed, which is probably necessary to increase numbers of synapses and restructure neural circuits, thereby enhancing memory,” she said.
The researchers treated mice with Alzheimer’s-like symptoms using histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors. HDACs are a family of 11 enzymes that seem to act as master regulators of gene expression. Drugs that inhibit HDACs are in experimental stages and are not available by prescription for use for Alzheimer’s.
“Harnessing the therapeutic potential of HDAC inhibitors requires knowledge of the specific HDAC family member or members linked to cognitive enhancement,” Tsai said. “We have now identified HDAC2 as the most likely target of the HDAC inhibitors that facilitate synaptic plasticity and memory formation.
“This will help elucidate the mechanisms by which chromatin remodeling regulates memory,” she said. It also will shed light on the role of epigenetic regulation, through which gene expression is indirectly influenced, in physiological and pathological conditions in the central nervous system.
“Furthermore, this finding will lead to the development of more selective HDAC inhibitors for memory enhancement,” she said. “This is exciting because more potent and safe drugs can be developed to treat Alzheimer’s and other cognition diseases by targeting this HDAC specifically,” said Tsai, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Several HDAC inhibitors are currently in clinical trials as novel anticancer agents and may enter the pipeline for other diseases in the coming two to four years. Researchers have had promising results with HDAC inhibitors in mouse models of Huntington’s disease.
Remodeling structures
Proteins called histones act as spools around which DNA winds, forming a structure in the cell nucleus known as chromatin. Histones are modified in various ways, including through a process called acetylation, which in turn modifies chromatin shape and structure. (Inhibiting deacetylation with HDAC inhibitors leads to increased acetylation.)
Certain HDAC inhibitors open up chromatin. This allows transcription and expression of genes in what had been a too tightly packaged chromatin structure in which certain genes do not get transcribed.
There has been exponential growth in HDAC research over the past decade. HDAC inhibitors are currently being tested in preclinical studies to treat Huntington’s disease. Some HDAC inhibitors are on the market to treat certain forms of cancer. They may help chemotherapy drugs better reach their targets by opening up chromatin and exposing DNA. “To our knowledge, HDAC inhibitors have not been used to treat Alzheimer’s disease or dementia,” Tsai said. “But now that we know that inhibiting HDAC2 has the potential to boost synaptic plasticity, synapse formation and memory formation, in the next step, we will develop new HDAC2-selective inhibitors and test their function for human diseases associated with memory impairment to treat neurodegenerative diseases.”
A group of thrill-seekers have developed a ‘hot’ new adrenaline sport called ‘volcano boarding’, in which participants race at speeds of up to 50mph down the side of an active volcano.
Dressed in protective jump suits, knee-pads and helmets, the boarders visited the foothills of Nicaragua’s Cerro Negro mountain, and climbed 726 metres (2,382ft) to travel down on specially-constructed plywood boards.
Cerro Negro is Central America’s youngest volcano and appeared in April 1850.
It has been one of the most active volcanoes in Nicaragua, last erupting in 1999 - the 20th time in its history.
Yet despite its unstable reputation, Phillip Southan, owner of Bigfoot Hostel and Green Pathways Tours, which developed the sport, said all safety precautions are taken.
“The volcano is very active,” he said. “But the biggest risk is the risk is getting some scratches if you fall off.
“What we offer is a tour for everyone with absolutely no experience necessary. One of the greatest attractions of the tour is that you get a bit of everything.
“Nicaraguan rural culture, hiking, amazing views, walking in an active volcano and then of course the high adrenaline boarding down the volcano.”
Despite only starting the tour four years ago, volcano boarding has attracted over 10,000 participants.
Women may be more vulnerable than men to the cancer-causing effects of smoking tobacco, according to new results reported this week at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), Lugano, Switzerland.
Swiss researchers studied 683 lung cancer patients who were referred to a cancer centre in St Gallen between 2000 and 2005 and found women tended to be younger when they developed the cancer, despite having smoked on average significantly less than men.
"Our findings suggest that women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens," report Dr Martin Frueh and colleagues.
Dr Enriqueta Felip from Val d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, conference co-chair, notes that the results support a growing awareness that smoking presents greater risks to women than men.
"In the early 1900s lung cancer was reported to be rare in women, but since the 1960s it has progressively reached epidemic proportions, becoming the leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States," Dr Felip said.
"Lung cancer is not only a man's disease, but women tend to be much more aware of other cancers, such as breast cancer," she said. "Several case-control studies seem to suggest that women are more vulnerable to tobacco carcinogens than men."
On the positive side, other research presented at the conference suggests that women tend to do better than men after surgery to remove lung tumors.
Irish researchers led by Dr Bassel Al-Alao studied 640 patients whose non-small-cell lung cancer was surgically removed over a 10-year period, 239 of whom were women.
They found that median survival after surgery was 2.1 years for men, and 4.7 years for women.
Eco Architecture - Phyte, An electricity generating ‘epiphytic’ mobile tower
Concept tower generates electricity from mechanical energy.
Phyte, the brainchild of Nicolas Mouret, recently won a competition held by “The Foundation Societe Tour Eiffel,” which later was given to someone else because the designer wasn’t an architect. However, the concept and its feasibility tempted us to showcase the design, which is self-sufficient and “green” to its core.
The tower is designed using eight blocks, each of which is 50 m high and made from fiber concrete to keep it lightweight. These blocks are then articulated using gimbals and guys which ensure stability but also allow rotating movement. The mechanical energy generated in this rotation is harnessed to provide electricity needed to illuminate the tower. The designer states that the “epiphytic” tower lights up to the rhythm of its movements and is inspired from the phenomenon commonly found in certain planktons, glow-worms or fish.
It promises to bring the world of literature to the ordinary book-buyer at the touch of a button. In the time it takes to brew a cappuccino, this machine can print off any book that is not in stock from a vast computer database.
The innovation, launched by book chain Blackwell yesterday, removes the need to order a hard-to-find novel, or the wait to buy one that has sold out. Even out-of-print works can be printed off in minutes.
The Espresso Book Machine will also benefit aspiring novelists who can walk in to a shop with a CD of their work and have their book professionally printed in minutes. The cost of buying a book will be generally the same as if it were in stock. Currently there are 400,000 books ready to be be downloaded. Blackwell hopes that by summer, one million will be available.
It has bought one of the machines for its store on Charing Cross Road in Central London, but if it is a success then more could appear at shops across the country. The machine is able to bring many rare and out-of-print texts back into production in under five minutes. The machine, which resembles an industrial photocopier and printer, prints 105 pages a minute, or one book every five minutes or so.
Blackwell’s aim is that the customer will be able to browse a catalogue in a kiosk next to the machine then press ‘Make Book’ and watch as their novel is created. First the cover is run off, then the pages are printed and collated. The pages are then clamped and glue applied to the spine. In the final stage, the pages are stuck to the cover before being trimmed to size from A4. The completed book then pops out of a slot in the side of the machine.
Blackwell believes the EBM will allow it to exact revenge on the supermarkets and online retailers.
Tesco, for example, offers aggressive discounting while Amazon has teamed up with second-hand shops and independent sellers to provide an enormous variety of books at knock-down prices. Five years ago, only 7 per cent of books were bought online. By last year, that was 14 per cent. In December, the value of books sold on the high street was down 12.7 per cent year on year.
Andrew Hutchings, of Blackwell, said: ‘Companies such as Amazon have been offering a very competitive service but you still have one or two days to wait from ordering the book until it arrives.
‘With the Espresso Book Machine you can order it and have it in your hand within a few minutes. Having books printed on-demand also reduces the carbon footprint and cuts down on the number that are pulped or sent back.’
Out-of-copyright books will be sold at 10p a page, meaning a 300-page book would be £30, although Mr Hutchings hopes the cost will come down. All other books will cost the same as if they were bought off the shelf.
Fungal Compound With Anti Cancer Activity
Ten years ago, William Fenical of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography isolated from an ocean-living fungus a compound that has since shown the ability to kill cancer cells in the lab. Now, for the first time, MIT chemists have synthesized the compound, an advance that could open the door to new drug treatments for cancer.
The compound, known as (+)-11,11-Dideoxyverticillin A, is one of the most structurally complex members of a family of naturally occurring alkaloids.
Mohammad Movassaghi, associate professor of chemistry, graduate student Justin Kim and former postdoctoral associate James Ashenhurst reported the synthesis in the April 10 issue of Science.
Their 11-step synthesis, which starts with commercially available amino acids, provides ample quantities of the natural alkaloids and gives access to a wide range of related compounds, enabling thorough biological evaluation of these types of alkaloids as anticancer agents.
“If you want to only rely on the natural substance, you often have to go back to the natural source and extract more material for further study. This is certainly OK if getting to the natural source is easy and if the extraction yield is acceptable,” said Movassaghi. “However, with a chemical synthesis you can rely on commercially available starting material, scale up the synthesis as needed, and make designed derivatives of the compound of interest.”
Movassaghi said his team was drawn to the compound not just for its anti-cancer potential but also for its fascinating chemical structure. The (+)-11,11′-Dideoxyverticillin A molecule has 10 rings and eight stereogenic centers, or carbon atoms that have four different chemical groups attached to them.
“Because of the interesting structures, these compounds provide an ideal arena for exploring and developing new chemistry,” said Movassaghi. “As you try to make the molecule, you become aware of its chemistry and oftentimes it’s very informative in terms of it’s possible mode of action.”
When carbon atoms have four different groups attached to them, they can take on two possible arrangements, which are mirror images of each other. Producing the correct arrangement for all stereocenters was particularly challenging, said Movassaghi.
As large chemical structures are attached to each carbon, it also becomes more difficult to perform additional reactions at the same carbon atom, because the extra bulk makes the carbon less accessible.
Movassaghi says that while each step of the synthesis was difficult to figure out, the hardest task was designing the overall order of the synthesis. The molecule has several bonds that are very sensitive to oxidation or cleavage, so each reaction must occur in a precise order that will not expose those bonds to degradation.
“Justin and James had the solutions to each of the independent steps much earlier, but the major challenge was recognizing what would be the optimal sequence for each of these events to occur,” said Movassaghi.
Now that the chemical synthesis has been demonstrated, researchers can tinker with it to produce similar compounds that may also have potential pharmacological activity.
The natural function of (+)-11,11′-Dideoxyverticillin A is not known, but it is likely to be involved in either natural defense or signaling mechanisms — “chemical warfare at the microbial level,” as Movassaghi describes it.
In other words, a colony of fungus might secrete the substances, toxic to competing species, to prevent invaders from stealing the same food and other resources.
“While the natural source may use this compound for defense or signaling, other scientists have shown this compound as having potential for treatment of cancer due to its antiangiogenic activity and efficacy against human breast cancer cell lines,” Movassaghi said.
Movassaghi is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and a Beckman Young Investigator. The research was supported in part by non-restricted funds from Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Lilly.
Scientists Discover Northern Lights Caused By Electrical Tornadoes
The secrets of the Northern Lights, one of the world’s greatest natural spectacles, have been unlocked by scientists.
The ghostly displays that illuminate the skies above the Arctic have inspired myths and captivated onlookers for centuries, but now researchers have discovered more about how they are created.
The lights, also known as Aurora Borealis, are generated when electrical tornadoes hurtle towards Earth and come into contact with the ionosphere, one of the upper layers of the atmosphere.
These tornadoes, spinning at more than a million miles an hour, are produced by vast clouds of solar particles.
They gather 40,000 miles above the planet’s surface, releasing whirlwinds when they become destabilised by the strength of their own electrical charge.
Astronomers have long known that the lights are created when streams of particles from the sun - known as solar winds - come into contact with the Earth’s magnetic field.
But a team including Professor Karl-Heinz Glassmeier of the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics in Braunschweig, Germany, has now established how the field traps the particles on the planet’s sun-facing “day” side, before deflecting them to the “night” side, where they gather in clouds and then dive towards the surface.
The researchers used five Nasa satellites sent up as part of the Themis programme to monitor the Northern Lights - and their equivalents at the south pole - to produce the first images of these tornadoes, and discussed their findings at a European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna last week.
“The Themis satellites have given us our first opportunity to see the process that generates the aurorae in three dimensions and show just what spectacularly powerful events they are,” Prof Glassmeier said.
‘Lunar Oasis’ - Growing Flowers
and Vegetables on the Moon
Astronauts’ meals have come a long way from the freeze-dried powders and semi-liquid pastes of decades ago: now US scientists want to grow vegetables in mini-greenhouses on the Moon.
Although space fare has steadily improved over time, a team of scientists says the best is yet to come.
They look forward to when residents of future lunar or even Martian outposts can dine on luxuries such as fresh vegetables.
Paragon Space Development Corporation has unveiled what it called the first step toward growing flowers - and eventually food - on the Moon.
Paragon, an Arizona company that has partnered with NASA in previous experiments on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station, calls it a “Lunar Oasis”.
This is a sealed greenhouse that looks like a bell jar encased in a 46-centimetre tall triangular aluminium frame.
It is designed to safely land a laboratory plant on the lunar surface, and protect it while it grows.
The miniature greenhouse is to be launched into space by Odyssey Moon Ltd, a participant in the Google Lunar X Prize. This competition offers $20-million to any entrant who can launch, land and operate a rover on the lunar surface.
Paragon officials say future testing of the “Lunar Oasis” will be driven by Odyssey’s flight schedule, which will not happen until 2012 at the earliest.
When it does lift off the greenhouse will contain the seeds of Brassica, a hardy plant related to Brussels sprouts and cabbage and used in the production of cooking oil and livestock feed.
Because Brassica goes from seed to flower in just 14 days, it can complete its life cycle in a single lunar night.
“Colonising the Moon or Mars seems so far away, but it is important that we do this research now,” Paragon president Jane Poynter told AFP.
“It takes a long time to get a lot of research, and to get integrated, reliable efficient systems” before colonists move in, she said.
NASA, which will retire its Space Shuttle fleet at the end of 2010, has committed to two new goals: returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020, and a manned mission to Mars by 2030.
“I was pleased to see this (project) put together by Paragon,” said Gene A. Giacomelli, a professor at the University of Arizona Department of Plant Sciences.
“NASA has pulled back on funding for bio-regenerative life support systems, and most of the centres in the US that had been doing that research had stopped.”
Giacomelli and students at the university’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Centre (CEAC) are working on their own as-yet-unfunded lunar greenhouse.
The agriculture centre also makes remote operational improvements to its existing, state-of-the-art hydroponic “growth chamber” at the National Science Foundation’s new Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.
Conditions at the South Pole, which include a high-altitude, low air-pressure environment, and wind-chill factors of minus 100 C, make the project a “good analogue” to conditions at a lunar outpost, Giacomelli said.
The South Pole greenhouse, now in its fifth year, allows workers living in the coldest place on Earth to dine on tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, strawberries and fragrant herbs.
It produces about 27 kilos each week, enough to provide each of the 75 scientists there with two salads per day.
“This isn’t science fiction,” Giacomelli said. “We have the technology to sustain life on the other planets right now, if we could get there.”
There are many challenges to growing plants in space, but the biggest is finding enough water on site to support a permanent outpost.
An expedition to Mars will take three years to complete, so plants must multi-task: remove toxins from the space facility air, recycle wastes, generate oxygen, provide nutrients for future crops, and produce food.
“Colonies need a bio-regenerative program,” Poynter emphasised. “A colony is there to stay. It’s not like you can just pack up your picnic basket and go home.”
From
Sundown Lounge No. 174
Geeknotes:
Pwidgets Team Lineup
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Ok, this week we have just one item, actually a recap and a full accounting for Pwidgets, the desktop widgets application for Puppy Linux users. The last time I gave a shoutout for the cool app, I mentioned only one member of the Pwidgets development team, 01micko, so now I give props to the full crew - cats named MinHundHettePerro, trio, tasmod, and of course zigbert, the codemaster of the Pwidgets team. But that's not all; there's also a crew writing translations - Jean-Jacques Moulinier, Angelo Gemmi, Shigekazu Satou, Dejan Racković, Néstor Jiménez, and zigbert, AKA Sigmund Berglund doing double duty.
If you're running Puppy 4.2 back to Puppy 3, give Pwidgets a tryout, especially the TV widget, which handles my podcast very well.
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Quikey – A four-wheeled bike for
a transcontinental adventure
How far can pedal-power really drive humanity? Ask Australian adventurers’ Roger Chao and Megan Kerr and the answer will be – across the continents. The duo is planning to span the continents through Russia and Asia covering a distance of about 12,000 km. The plan is to pedal from Astana, Kazakhstan, across the Eurasian steppes, on a four-wheeled bike they call “Quikey”.
The Quikey was designed by the couple after carefully considering all that nature can throw at them during the trip. The bike had to have wheels that best suited it, brakes that could stop it on a downward slope, comfortable seating to support their backs on the 12 month trip and above all the capacity to haul about 450kg of supplies the duo would have to carry. If all goes according to plan, the duo would begin their adventure this month and return home this time next year.
On the way, Chao and Kerr would spend some time living with local rural communities so they can learn about different cultures, traditions and lifestyles.
They do expect some hard times when they’ll lose satellite coverage, but all their navigation equipment has the redundancy to not be reliant on satellite coverage. As for now they’ll have satellite coverage from three different companies, which could be increased according to requirement.
Solar Roof Tiles
SRS Energy will be launching Solé Power Tile at the American Institute of Architects 2009 National Convention and Design Exposition to be held in San Francisco later this month. The Solé Power Tile is the company’s first building-integrated photovoltaic product that might convert your roof into a personal power grid. The tile has been developed for homeowners for whom conventional solar cells aren’t visually appealing.
Based on Thin-Film solar technology, the tiles enable homeowners to easily replace clay tiles with curved solar tiles without sacrificing both function and the visual appeal of the roof. The company claims that the tile generates more energy than comparable products on the market today. The tiles can be installed just as a normal clay tile, but the company wants the tiles to be installed by an authorized contractor.
Scorpion Venom Slows Brain Cancer
At the University of Washington, where researchers were already studying the effects of scorpion venom as a treatment for brain cancer, one group found that they could enhance the effectiveness of the venom by preparing a compound including nanoparticles. This venom/nanoparticle compound cut the cancer spread rate by 98 percent, compared to 45 percent from the venom alone.
The lead researcher on this study, Migin Zhang, professor of materials science and engineering, said the results of the study were surprising to everyone. “People talk about he treatment being more effective with nanoparticles, but they [didn’t] know how much — maybe 5 percent or 10 percent.”
An almost 100 percent improvement of the scorpion venom treatment alone was quite a bit more than expected.
Scientists have been studying the effects of a peptide called chlorotoxin that is extracted from scorpion venom to target and treat cancer cells. It binds to certain cancer cells, particularly those with MMP-2 cells. MMP-2 cells normally spread the cancerous cells to other parts of the body, but when the chlorotoxin attaches itself, it actually causes the MMP-2 to go inside of the cell, keeping the cell from exiting its immediate area.
The nanoparticles intensify the effects of the chlorotoxin because several chlorotoxin cells can bind to one nanoparticle and, as the compound is introduced to the cancer site, the chlorotoxins can attach to several MMP-2s, not just one. Additionally, nanoparticles help keep the chlorotoxins active longer, giving them additional time to do their work.
In addition to treatment for the spread of brain cancer, there are other cancers
in which MMP-2 cells are active, including cancers of the breast, colon, skin, lung, prostate and ovaries. It is believed that the scorpion venom and nanoparticle treatment could also curb the spread of those tumors as well as the brain cancer tumors. Human trials of the compound have not begun as yet.
Pirate Hunting Drone Boat
Mechanical engineering students from ETH Zurich have developed an unmanned sailing boat in a focus project that can reach any given destination completely autonomously. The Avalon robot sailing boat is due to set sail from Ireland in the fall and head for the Caribbean.
The Caribbean is still a long way off. But at least Avalon has already had a taste of the water on Lake Zurich. Admittedly, the first run ended on a sandbank, but that – and everyone agrees – can happen to any sailor. And Avalon has a good excuse: the software program that really enables it to sail by itself is still very much in its infancy. However, the “Students Sail Autonomously” team (SSA) is confident that they can overcome the teething problems.
Now they are just happy that the boat is ready and in the water. After all, Avalon is not just a normal boat that has been souped up, no; Avalon has been an in-house development from A to Z, tailored to suit all the conditions an unmanned boat will be exposed to on the open seas. “We believe that this will give us a crucial advantage over many of the other contenders in the International Microtransat Challenge,” explains Hendrik Erckens, who heads the project together with Gion-Andri Büsser.
Atlantic crossing the biggest challenge
In the fall, the students are looking to enter Avalon in the International Microtransat Challenge 2009, where it is supposed to sail from the west coast of Ireland to the Caribbean entirely under its own steam. Nearly all of them have sailing experience, but none of them has been to the Caribbean. That’s why they have been talking to sailors who know the region from stem to stern about their experiences. After all, as yet no robot sailing boat has successfully crossed the Atlantic. The International Microtransat Challenge 2009 is therefore a chance to really make some waves. “We are in with a real shot of setting a world record”, says Gion-Andri Büsser. “That’s a real incentive.”
The mechanical engineering students have already proven how motivated they are: they have been working meticulously on their boat since last September. The eight ETH Zurich students designed Avalon using state-of-the-art techniques and, to a great extent, built it themselves during the winter. The only requirement stipulated by the Challenge organizers was the length of the boat, which should not exceed 4 meters. The students were pretty much given a free hand in the rest: the choice of material, the shape of the hull and keel, right down to the shape, mounting and helm of the mast and sail – everything was reassessed and optimized for an unmanned robot sailing boat. At the same time, the students determined which individual components they would use for the necessary electronic sensors and subsystems, and developed the controlling circuit, solar power supply, batteries and fuel cells. Now all that remains is for the corresponding computer programs to be completed and tested.
Tests on domestic lakes and in Portugal
The first test runs are currently being conducted on Lake Zurich. Avalon is then to be optimized further under tougher conditions on Lake Lucerne in May. It won’t get to test its sea legs until the summer, however, when it is due to take part in the World Robotic Sailing Championship in Portugal. But that’s all plain sailing compared to the challenge that awaits it in the fall. The race to the Caribbean will take Avalon 7000 kilometers across the Atlantic. The SSA students then have a particularly hard time in store for them. For weeks, they will only be able to watch Avalon on the computer, without being able to intervene. The route it takes and how it steers clear of calm areas and weathers storms will all be decided by Avalon itself.
The organizers of the Microtransat Challenge expect that it will take somewhere between two to three months for the boats to reach the tropical waters on the Atlantic crossing and that they will be subjected to enormous strain: an acid test for Avalon itself, and maybe even more so for the nerves of its creators and various sponsors, without whom the project would never have left port. Avalon is a prime example of what persuasive ETH Zurich students and dedicated industrial partners can achieve together: the project budget will be covered almost entirely by industrial sponsors.
Congratulations go out to the 29 poets selected for inclusion in CRAM 5,
which will be given away free at The Poetry Explosion and at the
Harold Washington Library Poetry Fest.
Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Festival, Saturday April 18.
Urban Twang
This Saturday @ 10 p.m.
Uncommon Ground on Devon
1401 W. Devon Ave
Chicago
To get a table, it's best to call for reservations but you don’t have too (773-465-9801).
Leave your ID’s at home. It’s all ages plus there's no cover charge.
We're leaving the amps at home because it's an acoustic set.
Uncommon Ground is an extremely nice place. We even like playing there.
From Pati deVries over at deviousplanet for blues rocker Michelle Malone, who just released her 10th album, “Debris.” If you’re unfamiliar with Michelle, think early Bonnie Raitt meets The Rolling Stones circa ‘Exile on Main Street.’Nice sound.
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Humans and Aliens Might Share DNA Roots
By Brandon Keim
The building blocks of life may be more than merely common in the cosmos. Humans and aliens could share a common genetic foundation.
That's the tantalizing implication of a pattern found in the formation of amino acids in meteorites, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and simulations of primordial Earth. The pattern appears to follow basic thermodynamic laws, applicable throughout the known universe.
"This may implicate a universal structure of the first genetic codes anywhere," said astrophysicist Ralph Pudritz of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
There are exactly 20 standard amino acids — complex molecules that combine to form proteins, which carry out instructions specified by RNA and DNA, its double-stranded and self-replicating descendant.
Ten were synthesized in the famous 1953 Miller-Urey experiments, which modeled conditions believed to exist in Earth's early atmosphere and volcano-heated pools. Those 10 amino acids have also been found in meteorites, prompting debate over their role in sparking life on Earth and, perhaps, elsewhere.
Pudritz's analysis, co-authored with McMaster University biophysicist Paul Higgs and published Monday on arXiv, doesn't settle the former debate, but it does suggest that basic amino acids are even more common than thought, requiring little more than a relatively warm meteorite of sufficient size to form. And that's just the start.
If the observed patterns of amino acid formation — simple acids require low levels of energy to coalesce, and complex acids need more energy — indeed follow thermodynamic laws, then the basic narrative of life's emergence could be universal.
"Thermodynamics is fundamental," said Pudritz. "It must hold through all points of the universe. If you can show there are certain frequencies that fall in a natural way like this, there is an implied universality. It has to be tested, but it seems to make a lot of sense."
Pudritz and Higgs tabulated the types and frequencies of amino acids found in primordial Earth experiments, then correlated the results on a graph of temperature versus atmospheric pressure at which the acids likely formed.
The 10 amino acids synthesized in primordial Earth experiments tended to arise at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and are chemically simple. Other, more complex acids formed less frequently, and require more temperature and pressure. Their distribution follows a clear, possibly thermodynamic, curve.
"The most frequent amino acid that forms is the one that's least-demanding, energetically. There's less and less amino acids that require more energy to form. That's very sensible, from a thermodynamic point of view," said Pudritz.
Internal conditions of meteorites are unknown, but some scientists believe that certain large meteorites are both warm and hydrated, making them roughly analogous to the relatively temperate environment of Earth's youth.
"There's a theory," said Pudritz, "that they could be made in the warm interiors of large-enough meteorites."
This is necessarily speculative, but it would explain why the 10 amino acids most common in primordial Earth experiments are also the most common acids found in meteorites.
Pudritz and Higgs speculate that these 10 common amino acids met the needs of the earliest replicating molecules, with other, rarer acids used by the nascent genetic code as they formed or arrived — a process called "stepwise evolution," culminating in the genes that gathered 3.6 billion years ago in a common ancestor of all complex life.
If simulations of interactions between these 10 acids indeed support molecules that can copy themselves, said Pudritz, then it's possible that they could support an ur-genetic code on Earth and elsewhere.
"There's a possible universality," he said, "for any code that would use amino acids."
Harvard University systems biologist Irene Chen, who specializes in the evolution of molecules, called the work "interesting," but noted that "in the absence of some experimental backup, it's generally difficult to know if this kind of analysis is a Panglossian argument."
The ultimate experimental backup, of course, is finding aliens. In the meantime, the ending of Battlestar Galactica seems a bit less implausible.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0402
Citation: "A thermodynamic basis for prebiotic amino acid synthesis and the nature of the first genetic code." By Paul G. Higgs, Ralph E. Pudritz. arXiv, April 6, 2009.
Batteries Built By Viruses
Researchers have genetically engineered biological viruses to form the anode and cathode of a battery. MIT researcher Angela Belcher and her colleagues manipulated the genes of a harmless virus so that the bug coats itself in tiny iron phosphate particles and connects to highly-conductive carbon nanotubes. From Science News…
"Ions and electrons can move through smaller particles more quickly. But fabricating nano-sized particles of iron phosphate is a difficult and expensive process, the researchers say.
So Belcher’s team let the virus do the work. By manipulating a gene of the M13 virus to make the viruses coat themselves in iron phosphate, the researchers created very small iron phosphate particles.
“We’re using a biological template that’s already on the nanoscale,” Belcher says.
Tweaking a second gene made one end of the virus bind to carbon nanotubes, which conduct energy well. The resulting network of iron phosphate-coated viruses and carbon nanotubes formed a highly conductive cathode, one that ions and electrons could move through quickly."
‘Kyoto Box’ Solar Powered Cooker Wins Climate Prize
A $6 cardboard box that uses solar power to cook food, sterilize water and could help 3 billion poor people cut greenhouse gases, has won a $75,000 prize for ideas to fight global warming.
The “Kyoto Box,” named after the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol that seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, is aimed at billions of people who use firewood to cook.
Costing 5 euros ($6.60) to make, it can also make it easier to boil polluted water.
“We’re saving lives and saving trees,” the Kyoto Box’s developer Jon Boehmer, a Norwegian based in Kenya, said in a statement.
The FT Climate Change Challenge was backed by the Financial Times, technology group Hewlett-Packard, which sponsored the award, and development group Forum for the Future.
The other four finalists were a garlic-based feed additive to cut methane emissions from livestock, an indoor cooling system using hollow tiles, a cover for truck wheels to reduce fuel use and a “giant industrial microwave” for creating charcoal.
A statement said that Boehmer would carry out trials in 10 countries, including South Africa, India and Indonesia. He would then collect data to back an application for carbon credits.
The United Nations is discussing giving credits to developing countries that preserve tropical forests, which soak up carbon as they grow. Those credits could then be traded.
Many countries are looking for cheap green ways to stimulate economies mired in recession. More than 190 nations have agreed to work out a new U.N. climate pact to succeed Kyoto at a meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.
Ancient Diatoms Lead To New Technology
For Solar Energy
Engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a way to use an ancient life form to create one of the newest technologies for solar energy, in systems that may be surprisingly simple to build compared to existing silicon-based solar cells.
These tiny, single-celled marine life forms have existed for at least 100 million years and are the basis for much of the life in the oceans, but they also have rigid shells that can be used to create order in a natural way at the extraordinarily small level of nanotechnology.
By using biology instead of conventional semiconductor manufacturing approaches, researchers at OSU and Portland State University have created a new way to make “dye-sensitized” solar cells, in which photons bounce around like they were in a pinball machine, striking these dyes and producing electricity. This technology may be slightly more expensive than some existing approaches to make dye-sensitized solar cells, but can potentially triple the electrical output.
“Most existing solar cell technology is based on silicon and is nearing the limits of what we may be able to accomplish with that,” said Greg Rorrer, an OSU professor of chemical engineering. “There’s an enormous opportunity to develop different types of solar energy technology, and it’s likely that several forms will ultimately all find uses, depending on the situation.”
Dye-sensitized technology, for instance, uses environmentally benign materials and works well in lower light conditions. And the new findings offer advances in manufacturing simplicity and efficiency.
“Dye-sensitized solar cells already exist,” Rorrer said. “What’s different in our approach are the steps we take to make these devices, and the potential improvements they offer.”
The new system is based on living diatoms, which are extremely small, single-celled algae, which already have shells with the nanostructure that is needed. They are allowed to settle on a transparent conductive glass surface, and then the living organic material is removed, leaving behind the tiny skeletons of the diatoms to form a template.
A biological agent is then used to precipitate soluble titanium into very tiny “nanoparticles” of titanium dioxide, creating a thin film that acts as the semiconductor for the dye-sensitized solar cell device. Steps that had been difficult to accomplish with conventional methods have been made easy through the use of these natural biological systems, using simple and inexpensive materials.
“Conventional thin-film, photo-synthesizing dyes also take photons from sunlight and transfer it to titanium dioxide, creating electricity,” Rorrer said. “But in this system the photons bounce around more inside the pores of the diatom shell, making it more efficient.”
Tree Houses - Nature With Architecture
Nature with architecture is not an odd pairing by any means, but it’s never been done quite like this. But another factor plays heavily on this contemporary, flowing style - music. Architect Robert Harvey Oshatz has created this awesome, artistic piece of architecture in the woods of Portland, Oregon, for a client who’s love of music would be translated into a modern home.
This impressive design was seven years in the making, from the drawing board to its completion in 2004, and it was worth every last second of the wait. The main living level of this contemporary tree house sits in the canopy, among lush green leaves with the dewy earth rolling out below. It’s one of those designs that’s difficult to describe
According to the architect, “One has to actually stroll through the house to capture its complexities and its connection to the exterior with the use of a natural wood ceiling floating on curving laminated wood beams which pass through a generous glass wall which wraps around the main living room.” Architect Robert Harvey Oshatz.
If you thought you’ve outgrown your treehouse, guess again. Those who appreciate modern architecture with an unconventional twist will want to plan their next trip to North-West Germany, where you’ll find this contemporary treehouse perched between an alder and an oak in Osnabruck. Designed by architectural firm Baumraum, a company specializing in tree-top dwellings, the treehouse stands out with its curved roof and many windows. Although this modern home carries a totally sophisticated design, it still boasts those traditionally playful elements that make it a true treehouse - a rope ladder, plenty of outdoor deck space, and of course, nature-inspired interiors.
Three cheers for Pwidgets, a cool app for Puppy Linux version 4 (and reportedly works in Puppy 3 also). Specifically, the TV widget, that lets you watch NASA TV or the SciFi Channel, but also lets you listen to podcasts. One of the Pwidgets developers, clever bloke named 01micko down in Australia, got the last show, an ogg vorbis file, to fire up nicely so other Puppy people could listen to the show. Cool.
Check out the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum for my topic 'Pod Puppy' to delve further...
Even though I'm still mired in the podcast novel, on a whim I decided to sign up for the creative insanity of Script Frenzy, which is a lot like NaNoWriMo, except instead of writing 50K words in a month's time, you only have to write 100 pages of a Movie or TV script in 30 days, which starts on April 1st. Now, I'm not gonna turn my novel 'Banjo Strings' into a screenplay (I'm not done yet), but I do have a crazy-assed SciFi/Horror movie idea I want to play with... Stay tuned.
The Terrafugia Transition is a two-seat aircraft that converts into a Volkswagen Beetle-like automobile. The vehicle successfully completed its first test flight earlier this month. (Videos)
Aircraft maker Terrafugia has successfully flown its “flying car,” taking the vehicle a step closer to becoming commercially available.
Officially called the Transition Roadable Aircraft Proof of Concept, the two-seat aircraft had its maiden flight March 5 at Plattsburgh International Airport in Plattsburgh, N.Y. It was a runway flight, which means the aircraft only flew above the runway. The fight from takeoff to landing lasted only about 30 seconds.
Nevertheless, Terrafugia said the test proved that the Transition is ready for more advanced flying. Test pilot retired U.S. Air Force Col. Phil Meteer said in a video on the company’s Web site that the flight was smooth and the aircraft performed well.
“Stability is always a question on your first flight,” Meteer said. “It was just rock solid.”
Meteer said the Transition handled like a normal plane and there were no surprises. “It was remarkable for being unremarkable,” he said. “It just flew like a really nice airplane.”
The four-wheel aircraft resembles a Volkswagen Beetle with wings and a propeller in the back. The Transition is capable of flying 450 miles at more than 115 mph. On the road, the front-wheel drive vehicle runs on unleaded gasoline, has a top speed of 65 mph and gets 30 miles to the gallon.
The Transition takes less than 30 seconds to transform from plane to car, which essentially is accomplished by folding the wings. In the car position the vehicle is 6 feet 9 inches tall, 80 inches wide, and 18 feet 9 inches long, and fits into a standard house garage.
Categorized as a light sport aircraft, buyers will need a sport pilot license to fly the Transition legally. The vehicle is meant to give pilots a “convenient ground transportation option.”
“Travel now becomes a hassle-free integrated land-air experience,” Carl Dietrich, chief executive of Terrafugia, said in a statemenet. The company plans to begin selling the vehicles, which cost $194,000, in 2010, said Richard Gersh, Terrafugia’s vice president of business development. Would-be buyers will have to put a $10,000 deposit. The company has taken deposits for 40 vehicles already, Deitrich said.
British Scientists Could Become First
To Create Synthetic Human Blood
British scientists are on course to become the first to create synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells, it emerged today.
The ground-breaking project could provide an unlimited supply of blood for emergency transfusions free of the risk of infection.
Because stem cells multiply indefinitely, it would be possible to enormous quantities, researchers said..
The cells can be made from universal donor embryos - the O-negative type - and can be guaranteed to be free of infections because they have never been inside a human.
The three-year project will be led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) and includes NHS Blood and Transplant and the Wellcome Trust, the world’s biggest medical research charity.
SNBTS director Professor Marc Turner has been involved in studies investigating how to ensure donated blood is free of the infectious agent behind variant CJD, the human form of ‘mad cow’ disease, the report said.
Several vCJD patients are thought to have contracted the disease by blood transfusions.
Prof Turner, of Edinburgh University, was unavailable for comment...
Neutron Tracks Revive Hopes for Cold Fusion
Twenty years to the day that two electrochemists ignited controversy by announcing signs of cold fusion at an infamous press conference in Utah (watch a video of the 1989 event), a separate team has made a similar claim in the same US state. But this time, the evidence is being taken more seriously.
Back in 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons at the University of Utah announced the tantalising prospect of abundant, almost-free energy, but their claims of fusion reactions in a tabletop experiment were dismissed by nuclear physicists, not least because such reactions normally occur inside stars. The few watts of extra energy they found were widely considered a fluke.
Now Pamela Mosier-Boss and colleagues at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego, California, are claiming to have made a "significant" discovery – clear evidence of the products of cold fusion.
On 23 March, the team presented its work at the American Chemical Society's spring conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, a few months after the study was published in a peer-reviewed journal
Scientists Develop New Capacitor
for Ultra-Efficient Electric Cars
A team of scientists from US and Korea have developed a new capacitor that can be used to develop ultra-efficient electric cars of the future. The capacitor developed is much more powerful that any existing batteries and if finally developed, the capacitors will not just benefit electric cars, but all portable gadgets we use in our daily lives.
The capacitor stores energy at a great density just like a supercapacitor, but releases it quickly similar to an electrostatic capacitor. The inventors hope to use the technology as a part of hybrid battery-capacitor system for electric cars to increase their efficiency without adding much weight.
The secret to the prototype’s awesome performance is the use of 10 billion tiny capacitors, which are crammed into every square centimeter of the final capacitor. Working at atomic precision, the inventors hope that the resulting capacitor can deliver energy at a rate that would allow a 1kg to deliver 1MW of power.
The Dark Side:
The research is in its infancy and the researchers don’t make a statement on the time by which the capacitors can actually reach the shelves.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 171
Geeknotes:
Not this week - still testing...
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"Understanding the Financial Crisis" - dardoush
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5 Ways Your Brain Is Messing With You
We accept on a regular basis the premise that our minds are being screwed with. Advertisers, politicians, magicians; we accept that they know the tricks to pull the wool over our eyes. But as it turns out, the ways in which your head is being truly and royally messed with the most, are coming from inside.
Please be advised that your brain does not want you reading the following list, and may kill you to protect its secrets. These include…
#5.
Change Blindness
What is it?
It’s your inability to notice changes that happen right in front of you, even if they’re hugely obvious… as long as you don’t see the actual change take place.
What’s truly amazing is just how often your brain isn’t paying attention. Scientists decided to take the idea to a ridiculous extreme. They ran experiments where they’d have a guy manning the counter at an office serving students, while another guy was hidden below the counter. A student would walk up and request a form, and the guy would say sure and duck down behind the counter to get it.
But then second guy, the one who had been hiding, would pop up and say, “ah, here it is.” This second guy would look completely different, and would be wearing completely different colored clothing, and most of the students would not freaking notice it was a different guy than the one they had been talking to five seconds ago...
A very bright bunch at the Music Technology Group of the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, might have discovered the future of music.
They came up with a concept that is simply amazing - and then developed the technology to go with it. The result is the Reactable, a new type of electronic music instrument.
The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.
The instrument was developed by a team of digital luthiers (Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger and Marcos Alonso), working in the Music Technology Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain. Their main activities concentrate on the design of new musical interfaces, such as tangible music instruments and musical applications for mobile devices. The reactable team was recently awarded with various prizes such as the “Ars Electronica Golden Nica”, the “Premi de la Cuitat de Barcelona 2007" and two “D&AD Yellow Pencils” and the Icelandic singer Björk has successfully used the reactable during her last “Volta” world tour.
Nanoball Batteries Could Recharge Electric Cars In Minutes
Researchers at MIT have designed a new battery that can recharge devices about 100 times faster than conventional lithium ion batteries. The design could lead to electric car batteries that charge in 5 minutes (compared with 8 hours in today’s electric cars) and cell phone batteries that charge in just 10 seconds.
Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder of MIT have improved the design of a “nanoball battery,” which has a cathode that is composed of nanosized balls of lithium iron phosphate. As the battery charges, the nanoballs release lithium ions that travel across an electrolyte to the anode. As the battery discharges, the opposite occurs, and the lithium ions are reabsorbed by the nanoballs in the cathode.
The key to the nanoball battery’s quick charge time is the speed at which the lithium iron phosphate nanoballs in the cathode can release and absorb lithium ions. In conventional lithium ion batteries, detaching the ions from the normal cathode takes a relatively long time. By coating each nanoball with a thin layer of lithium phosphate, Kang and Ceder showed that they could detach the lithium ions from the nanoballs even quicker than previous studies have found.
To demonstrate the technology, the researchers fabricated a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds, which would otherwise have taken six minutes. The scientists’ tests showed that the new material degrades less than other battery materials after repeated charges and discharges. This means that the battery could be made with less material, which could possibly lead to smaller, lighter batteries.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 170p2
Geeknotes:
Creative Chicago Expo
Podcast Peer Awards Farewell
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From Chicagopoetry.org:
CREATIVE CHICAGO EXPO
Saturday, April 4, 10 am-4 pm
Throughout the Chicago Cultural Center
Now in its sixth year, the Creative Chicago Expo
is a free, day-long event that connects Chicago's
arts community - individual artists, businesses
and organizations working in dance, music, film,
fashion, theater, visual arts, literary and design
- with the services, spaces, information and
networks that they need. Last year 3,500 artists
attended the Expo, participating in 23 workshops
and connecting with more than 100 vendors,
including arts services, community organizations,
arts education, space and housing providers,
health care and financial consultants and more.
(Media: kennon.brown@cityofchicago.org or 312.744.8948)
Podcast Peer Awards Farewell
I've decided to retire the Podcast Peer Awards.
I had envisioned this becoming a big splashy award with excitement in
the air and goodie bags full of swag from sponsors. I figured that as
the public became more enamored of podcasts interest in the PPA would
build too. But podcasts haven't caught on the way I expected –
they're a popular niche, but still a niche. Sponsors weren't
interested, and the enthusiasm for the Awards has dwindled instead of
building. Requests for new membership dropped from a deluge to a
trickle. At the award ceremony at DragonCon in '08 the room was
fairly full and everyone hung around afterward and partied. For
DragonCon '09 attendance was sparse, and the room cleared immediately
afterward.
I was thinking of giving it one more shot this year, but the awards
take an enormous amount of time, time I need to devote to other
things. (Like
this)
I'd rather end with a bang, or at least a loud pop, than a whimper,
so it's time move on.
I'm not complaining. I tried something, it worked for a while, and
then kind of petered out. I had a lot of fun with it, learned a lot,
helped increase the audience for some great shows and made a lot of
new friends. It was a blast.
I'll leave the site up for at least a few years. It should still send
some traffic to the winners and runner-ups, and will serve as a bit of
history in the podcasting world. I'll take the forum down in a month
or so, but will leave it up for now for anyone who wants to stop by
for a final word or three.
I'd like to thank everyone who participated for being part of the
awards. A big thanks to everyone who contributed to the Trophy Fund –
because of your generosity there are about a hundred trophies sitting
in various offices and studios all over the world. And I'd like to
especially thank Clinton Alvord of Comedy4Cast, who went out of his
way many times to lighten my work load.
Someday, perhaps, we'll get together in the 3-d world, clink our
glasses together and say "Hey, remember the Podcast Peer Awards? That
was fun, wasn't it?" Until then, thanks so much for being a part of
it.
Regards and Thanks,
Dave Hitt
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'Interplanetary Internet' Passes First Test
by Rachel Courtland
NASA has finished its first deep-space test of what could become an 'interplanetary internet'. The new networking commands could one day be used to automatically relay information between Earth, spacecraft, and astronauts, without the need for humans to schedule transmissions at each point.
Spacecraft beyond Earth's orbit usually communicate directly with Earth - the first to do so through an intermediary were the Mars Explorations Rovers, which launched in 2003. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers transmit data to orbiters, which then send the data back to Earth.
But human intervention is still required to schedule communications sessions for orbiters and landers. "The traditional method of operations is largely manual," says Jay Wyatt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "People get in a room and decide when they can send data."
A new method would automate and streamline this process by sending data through an interplanetary 'internet'. Just as data is sent from one point to another on the internet via a linked network of hubs, or nodes, spacecraft scattered throughout the solar system could be used as nodes to transmit data through space.
Last week, NASA completed a month-long test of a simulated network of Mars landers, orbiters and mission operations centres on Earth.
For the test, dozens of images of Mars and its moon Phobos were transmitted back and forth between computers on Earth and NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. The craft, which sent an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, has been renamed "Epoxi" now that it its mission has been extended to search for extrasolar planets...
(Image: NASA/JPL)
Glaciers In China And Tibet Fading Fast
Glaciers that serve as water sources to one of the most ecologically diverse alpine communities on earth are melting at an alarming rate, according to a recent report.
A three-year study, to be used by the China Geological Survey Institute, shows that glaciers in the Yangtze source area, central to the Qinghai-Tibet plateau in south-western China, have receded 196 square kilometres over the past 40 years.
Glaciers at the headwaters of the Yangtze, China’s longest river, now cover 1,051 square kilometres compared to 1,247 square kilometres in 1971, a loss of nearly a billion cubic metres of water, while the tongue of the Yuzhu glacier, the highest in the Kunlun Mountains fell by 1,500 metres over the same period.
Melting glacier water will replenish rivers in the short term, but as the resource diminishes drought will dominate the river reaches in the long term. Several major rivers including the Yangtze, Mekong and Indus begin their journeys to the sea from the Tibetan Plateau Steppe, one of the largest land-based wilderness areas left in the world.
“Once destroyed it will be extremely difficult to restore the high-altitude ecosystems,” said Dr Li Lin, head of Conservation Strategies for WWF-China. “If industrialized and developing countries do not focus their efforts on cutting emissions, some of this land will be lost forever and local populations will be displaced.”
Glacier retreat has become a major environmental issue in Tibet, particularly in the Chang Tang region of northern Tibet. The glacier melting poses severe threats to local nomads’ livelihoods and the local economy.
The most common impact is that lakes are increasing due to glacier melting and some of the best pastures are submerged. Meanwhile small glaciers are disappearing due to the speed of glacier melting and drinking water has become a major issue.
“This problem should convince governments to adopt a ‘mountain-to-sea’ approach to manage their rivers, the so-called integrated river basin management, and to ratify the UN Water Convention as the only international agreement by which to manage transboundary rivers,” said Li Lifeng, Director of Freshwater, WWF International.
“It should also convince countries to make more effort to protect and sustainably use their high altitude wetlands in the river source areas that WWF has been working on.”
Lab-made Proteins
Scientists have identified a small family of lab-made proteins that neutralize a broad range of influenza A viruses, including the H5N1 avian virus, the 1918 pandemic influenza virus and seasonal H1N1 flu viruses.
These human monoclonal antibodies, identical infection-fighting proteins derived from the same cell lineage, also were found to protect mice from illness caused by H5N1 and other influenza A viruses.
“Because large quantities of monoclonal antibodies can be made relatively quickly, after more testing, these influenza-specific monoclonal antibodies potentially could be used in combination with antiviral drugs to prevent or treat the flu during an influenza outbreak or pandemic.
A report describing the research, supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appears online in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. Wayne Marasco, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston led the research team, which included collaborators from the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, Calif., and the CDC in Atlanta.
“This is an elegant research finding that holds considerable promise for further development into a medical tool to treat and prevent seasonal as well as pandemic influenza,” notes NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “In the event of an influenza pandemic, human monoclonal antibodies could be an important adjunct to antiviral drugs to contain the outbreak until a vaccine becomes available.”
Using standard methods of production, initial doses of a new influenza vaccine to fight pandemic influenza would be expected to take four to six months to produce.
Key to their research, Dr. Marasco and his colleagues discovered and described the atomic structure of an obscure but genetically stable region of the influenza virus to which their monoclonal antibodies bind. The hidden part of the influenza virus is in the neck below the peanut-shaped head of the hemagglutinin (HA) protein. HA and neuraminidase are the two main surface proteins on the influenza virus.
The scientists also identified a new mechanism of antibody action against influenza: Once the antibody binds, the virus cannot change its shape, a step required before it can fuse with and enter the cell it is attempting to infect.
Dr. Marasco, Jianhua Sui, M.D., Ph.D., and other Dana-Farber colleagues began their study with avian flu viruses. They scanned tens of billions of monoclonal antibodies produced in bacterial viruses, or bacteriophages, and found 10 antibodies active against the four major strains of H5N1 avian influenza viruses. Encouraged by these findings, they collaborated with Ruben O. Donis, Ph.D., of the CDC Influenza Division, and found that three of these monoclonal antibodies had broader neutralization capabilities when tested in cell cultures and in mice against representative strains of other known influenza A viruses.
Influenza A viruses can include any one of the 16 known subtypes of HA proteins, which fall into two groups, Group 1 and Group 2. Their monoclonal antibodies neutralized all testable viruses containing the 10 Group 1 HAs–which include the seasonal H1 viruses, the H1 virus that caused the 1918 pandemic and the highly pathogenic avian H5 subtypes–but none of the viruses containing the six Group 2 HAs.
Simultaneously, Dr. Marasco’s group teamed up with Robert C. Liddington, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Infectious and Inflammatory Disease Center at Burnham, to determine the atomic structure of one of their monoclonal antibodies bound to the H5N1 HA. Their detailed picture shows one arm of the antibody inserted into a genetically stable pocket in the neck of the HA protein, an interaction that blocks the shape change required for membrane fusion and virus entry into the cell.
When they surveyed more than 6,000 available HA genetic sequences of the 16 HA subtypes, they found the pockets to be very similar within each Group but to be significantly different between the two Groups. The genetically stable pockets, they note, may be a result of evolutionary constraints that enable virus-cell fusion. This could also explain why they did not detect so-called escape mutants, viruses that elude the monoclonal antibodies through genetic mutation.
Class Project: Find bin Laden
By Thomas H. Maugh II and Karen Kaplan
UCLA geographers think they have a good idea where Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been hiding.
Using standard geographical tools routinely employed to locate endangered species and fugitive criminals, the group said there is a high probability that Bin Laden has been hiding in one of three buildings in the northwestern Pakistani city of Parachinar, a longtime hide-out for mujahedin fighters.
"He may be sitting there right now," said UCLA biogeographer Thomas W. Gillespie, who led the study published online Tuesday in the MIT International Review, an interdisciplinary journal of international affairs.
Gillespie said he and his students contacted the FBI's local field office -- walking distance from the Westwood campus -- before publishing their paper, but they haven't heard back.
Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman for the agency's Los Angeles bureau, said the information was forwarded to two people working on the case, but "because it is an active investigation, it would not be appropriate" to comment on the information's fate.
The study relies on two geographic principles used to predict the distribution of wildlife. The first, known as distance-decay theory, holds that as an animal -- or person -- moves farther away from its preferred habitat, the probability of finding a compatible environment decreases exponentially.
The second principle, called island biogeographic theory, holds that the animal or person is most likely to move into the largest, closest area that can fulfill all its needs.
Gillespie and his students started with a satellite map centered on Bin Laden's last known location, in Tora Bora, in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. The group eliminated areas in Afghanistan because they were under the control of U.S. forces at the time of Bin Laden's disappearance. Then the group evaluated the cities and towns in the remaining territory and calculated the likelihood that Bin Laden would have relocated to them.
They concluded that he must have trekked nearly 2 miles over mountainous terrain to the Pakistani tribal area of Kurram and settled in Parachinar, the largest city in the region, with a population of half a million.
The class zeroed in further by searching satellite images for buildings with walls at least 10 feet high (for safety), at least three rooms (to house Bin Laden's bodyguards) and electricity (to power his kidney dialysis machine), among other features.
The sleuths settled on two compounds that are thought to be residences, and a third, with crenelated towers on the corners, that may be a prison or an army officers club.
"You develop a testable hypothesis that can be accepted or rejected just like in any other type of science," Gillespie said. In this case, the testing would require checking the buildings to see who is there. Getting that ground truth "is the hardest part," he said.
Such geographic profiling techniques have been used to capture lesser criminals, including Raymond Lopez, who committed 139 burglaries in Orange County between 2003 and 2005, said Kim Rossmo, director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation at Texas State University.
The approach might also help identify general regions where investigators should search for America's most-wanted terrorist, though not necessarily the specific buildings pinpointed in the study.
"This is a paper that should be paid attention to by the military and intelligence agencies for some of the ideas," Rossmo said. "But it's not going to be a case of, 'X marks the spot, there's Osama bin Laden.' "
One conclusion the group is fairly confident about is that Bin Laden is not living in a cave. A cave would have to have a sealed entrance, be heated and ventilated, and have supplies trucked in regularly. Those physical manifestations could be easily detected from space, they said.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 170p
Geeknotes:
Brad Wilson
LA Pod Meetup
Pod Puppy
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The next LA Podcasters meetup on Mar. 3rd at the Border Grill, 1445 4th St, Santa Monica, 6 - 8pm.
"No plan. No agenda. Just people getting together for cocktails (or coffee or soda or water) and conversation."
Since going on Puppy Linux full time, I started a forum topic called "Pod Puppy" on the Puppy Linux Discussion Forum called 'Pod Puppy.' Go down to the section called 'Taking the Puppy out for a walk' and click the subsection called 'Puppy Power.'
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Solar-Powered Radio Stations in Rural Africa
Residents in certain remote areas of Africa still lack access to grid electricity, and instant communication is still a distant dream for them. Orange Guinea Conakry and Ericsson have now teamed up to change the conditions of people living in these areas. Both companies are planning to deploy over a hundred base stations that will be completely off-grid and depend on the power of the sun along with a diesel generator to act as a backup.
These base stations will connect remote parts of Africa to the world so that they can call their relatives in an instant. Apart from increasing Orange’s cellphone coverage in both rural and urban areas, these towers will help reduce carbon emissions considerably. Orange is planning to have more than 1000 solar-powered base stations in its African operations by the end of this year.
The Dark Side:
A solar-powered base station in places where there is no electricity is great only for urban visitors. However, with no cheap solar cellphones currently being developed, these towers would just be a piece of future technology for people living in remote areas, which they can just see and hope.
Transgenes Found In Wild Corn
NOW it's official: genes from genetically modified corn have escaped into wild varieties in rural Mexico. A new study resolves a long-running controversy over the spread of GM genes and suggests that detecting such escapes may be tougher than previously thought.
In 2001, when biologists David Quist and Ignacio Chapela reported finding transgenes from GM corn in traditional varieties in Oaxaca, Mexico, they faced a barrage of criticism over their techniques. Nature, which had published the research, eventually disowned their paper, while a second study by different researchers failed to back up their findings.
But now, Elena Alvarez-Buylla of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City and her team have backed Quist and Chapela's claim. They found transgenes in about 1 per cent of nearly 2000 samples they took from the region (Molecular Ecology, vol 18, p 750).
"They are out there, but it's hit-and-miss," says Paul Gepts of the University of California, Davis, a co-author of the new study. The escaped transgenes are common in a few fields and absent in others, he says, so gene-monitoring efforts must sample as broadly as possible.
What's more, not every detection method - or laboratory - identified every sample containing transgenes. Monitors should use many methods to avoid false negatives, says Gepts.
(Image: Marco Ugarte/AP/PA)
Stem Cells In Hair Follicles
Most people consider hair as a purely cosmetic part of their lives. To others, it may help uncover one of nature’s best-kept secrets: the body’s ability to regenerate organs. Now, new research from Rockefeller University gets to the root of the problem, revealing that a structure at the base of each strand of hair, the hair follicle, uses a two-step mechanism to activate its stem cells and order them to divide.
The mechanism provides insights into how repositories of stem cells may be organized in other body tissues for the purpose of supporting organ regeneration.
“The hair follicle is like a mini-dispensable organ,” says Elaine Fuchs, head of the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development. “Throughout our lifetime, each hair follicle undergoes cyclical bouts of growth, destruction and rest through an intrinsic stem cell population. It provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the molecular process of tissue regeneration and stem cell self-renewal.”
For a new round of hair growth to begin, stem cells in the hair follicle must receive a signal to divide. In response to this signal, the hair follicle regenerates first by growing downward through the skin’s middle layer, the dermis, and then producing the specialized cells that form the hair. After a period during which the hair grows longer, stem cells stop dividing, and the hair follicle gradually retracts again. There is then a period of rest and the cycle repeats.
Fuchs and her team have for several years been exploring the infrequently dividing stem cells located near the base of the hair follicle in a compartment known as the bulge. This time they focused on a much smaller cluster of often-ignored cells called the hair germ, located at the very bottom of this structure. Although little is known about the hair germ, scientists postulate that it emerges from the bulge at the end of the destructive phase of the hair cycle.
In their work, to be highlighted in the February 6 issue of Cell Stem Cell, Fuchs and her team scrutinized the hair cycle through the resting phase and discovered that during most of this time, both the bulge and the hair germ remain dormant. By isolating cells from both the hair germ and the bulge, they also confirmed that the two are molecularly very similar, suggesting that the germ does indeed originate from the bulge. The researchers believe, however, that toward the end of the resting phase, the hair germ gets activated to proliferate before the bulge. Moreover, the team showed that the activating signal comes from a structure known as the dermal papilla.
“We discovered that the dynamics of the hair follicle regeneration is a two-step process,” says Valentina Greco, a visiting postdoctoral fellow who, along with postdoctoral associate Ting Chen, spearheaded the project. “The hair germ, which is in constant contact with the dermal papilla, gets activated first and the bulge is then called to contribute later during growth.”
“Because the germ is in closer proximity to the dermal papilla, it may achieve a threshold of stimulatory signals sooner than the bulge,” explains Fuchs, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Previous work by her team has shown that two inhibitory signals, known as Wnts and BMP, are needed for hair follicle stem cells to activate. They have now identified an additional activation signal, a growth factor called FGF7, that is made by the dermal papilla and steadily increases throughout the resting phase. “We think that FGF7 might contribute, along with the Wnts and BMP inhibitory signals, to coax the hair germ to divide and proliferate,” says Fuchs.
Did Google Earth Find Atlantis?
Google is officially denying widespread Internet rumors that its Google Earth software located the mythical sunken city of Atlantis off the coast of Africa. Either that, or Google is totally trying to hide something. Since I always appreciate a nice juicy conspiracy theory, I’m going to go with the latter.
Is this Atlantis? Apparently not, according to those meanies at Google.
From what it sounds like, a British aeronautical engineer was playing around with the new Google Earth 5.0, which includes undersea data, and noticed something funny off the coast of Africa, about 600 miles west of the Canary Islands, that resembled a pattern of a street grid. According to the United Kingdom’s Press Association, the pattern of streets equated to an area the size of Wales.
In case you’ve had more important things to read about for the past few thousand years, Atlantis was a legendary island city first mentioned by Plato, allegedly a hard-core naval power located somewhere near North Africa that disappeared when it sank into the ocean. Guess global warming was a problem back then, too.
Anyway, most people think that Plato made it up, kind of like how those guys in Georgia made up the story about shooting Bigfoot, but others just won’t stop believin’.
So this guy is trawling the ocean floor with Google Earth–ah, if only we had that kind of free time on our hands–and was quick to announce his discovery. It looks like The Telegraph reported the story first, adding that the exact coordinates are 31 15'15.53N, 24 15'30.53W.
Recently, Google’s mapping products have revealed everything from a creepy dude walking around with a sniper rifle to what appear to be U.S. drones in Pakistan.
But when it comes to Atlantis, Google totally had to rain on everyone’s parade. “It’s true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth, including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species and the remains of an ancient Roman villa,” a statement from Google read. “In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process. Bathymetric (or sea floor terrain) data is often collected from boats using sonar to take measurements of the sea floor. The lines reflect the path of the boat as it gathers the data.”
I smell a cover-up!
From
Sundown Lounge No. 170
Geeknotes:
PSH Great Poetry Exchange
Cram 4
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The 8th Annual Poetry Super Highway Great Poetry Exchange
In February 2009, the Poetry Super Highway will coordinate a great free exchange of poetry publications amongst poets worldwide. It's not a contest. There are no judges, entry fees, winners, or losers.
Last year, 94 poets participated both sending their book and receiving another poet's book from a randomly selected other participant. By agreeing to participate, someone will be exposed to your poetry, and you will be exposed to someone else's poetry.
Go to PoetrySuperHighway.com. Make sure you've read all the guidelines and click on "ONLINE SUBMISSION FORM" to enter your book's information.
In early March, we will randomly assign the books to each participant and email to you the name and address of the person you are supposed to send your book to.
We will also list your book and description on this web page - http://poetrysuperhighway.com/pshgpe.html - along with the link to your website for all to see. In addition we will list the new books in our weekly e-mailed update which goes out to thousands of people.
Exciting News! Cram 4 is now available. Every poet featured in Cram 4 will soon have a free copy sent by mail, so there is no need to order additional copies unless you will not be in Chicago for the release events. Dozens of advance copies have already been given away free to people attending the Woodland Pattern Marathon Poetry Reading in Milwaukee. More advance copies will be given away on Friday, February 6, at the Chicago Poetry Love-In, 4229 N. Lincoln Ave, from 8 to 10 PM. And then the official release of Cram 4 will take place during the weekend of the AWP Conference, February 11 thru 14; hundreds of copies of Cram 4 will be distributed free to the public at the conference and at selected off-site events.
Cram 4 features work by 33 talented poets
Only a select amount of copies have been put aside for mail orders. They
are only available while supplies last.
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Electricity From Straw
Researchers have developed the first-ever biogas plant to run purely on waste instead of edible raw materials ? transforming waste into valuable material. The plant generates 30 percent more biogas than its predecessors. A fuel cell efficiently converts the gas into electricity.
?Corn belongs in the kitchen, not in biogas facilities? ? objections like this can be heard more and more frequently. They are protesting against the fermentation of foodstuffs in biogas plants that generate electricity and heat. One thing the opponents are afraid of is that generating electricity in this way will cause food prices to escalate. In collaboration with several small and medium-sized enterprises, research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS in Dresden have developed the first-ever biogas plant that works entirely without edible raw materials. ?In our pilot plant, we exclusively use agricultural waste such as corn stalks ? that is, the corn plants without the cobs. This allows us to generate 30 percent more biogas than in conventional facilities,? says IKTS head of department Dr. Michael Stelter. Until now, biogas plants have only been able to process a certain proportion of waste material, as this tends to be more difficult to convert into biogas than pure cereal crops or corn, for instance.
This is not the only advantage: The time for which the decomposing waste material, or silage, is stored in the plant can be reduced by 50 to 70 percent. Biomass is usually kept in the fermenter, building up biogas, for 80 days. Thanks to the right kind of pre-treatment, this only takes about 30 days in the new plant. ?Corn stalks contain cellulose which cannot be directly fermented. But in our plant, the cellulose is broken down by enzymes before the silage ferments,? Stelter explains.
The researchers have also optimized the conversion of biogas into electricity. They divert the gas into a high-temperature fuel cell with an electrical efficiency of 40 to 55 percent. By comparison, the gas engine normally used for this purpose only achieves an average efficiency of 38 percent. What is more, the fuel cell operates at 850 degrees Celsius. The heat can be used directly for heating or fed into the district heating network. If the electrical and thermal efficiency are added up, the fuel cell has an overall efficiency of up to 85 percent. The overall efficiency of the combustion engine is usually around 38 percent because its heat is very difficult to harness. The researchers have already built a pilot plant with an electricity output of 1.5 kilowatts, enough to cover the needs of a family home. The researchers will present the concept of the biogas plant at the Hannover-Messe on April 20 to 24 (Hall 13, Stand E20). In the next phases of the project, the scientists and their industrial partners plan to gradually scale up the biogas plant to two megawatts.
Vertical Wind Turbine
Imagine spending your life savings on an invention you are sure will someday be successful, even if skeptics think it is impossible. It?s pretty risky right? Well Adam Fuller from Racine, Wisconsin has done this very thing. He has spent his life savings designing an invention he believes in, a vertical wind turbine. Will it work?
In 2007, the first reports (Gazette Extra) of his invention mentioned that his windmill consists of 8-stacked turbines. Each turbine has 4 structural steel wind scoops. In total the vertical turbine has 32 scoops. It stands 36 feet tall and has a 12-foot diameter. Because his wind turbine has multiple points of contact the smallest breeze, from whichever way the wind blows will make the blades spin. Adam Fuller?s vertical wind turbine prototype has worked successfully so far.
If funding becomes available once again he would like to build a larger version, 120-foot model. Fuller estimates it can produce up to 75,000 kWh each month. This is estimated to power up to 30 to 70 homes. Whether his invention will work or not is up for debate, but its clear that Fuller wants to make a difference and is giving it his all to do it.
One neat topic Fuller mentions in the video is the safety of the birds around his invention. Considering the hot topics about the death of birds due to windmills, because of the size and shape of Fuller?s vertical wind turbine is it possible that it could be safer for the birds compare to the alternative? That?s definitely something to think about. What do you think about his invention, how it works and bird safety because of it?
Attention guitar heroes: your path to becoming a real guitar player may be on the way. Strap this Maestro contraption onto any guitar, load a music file of the song you?d like to learn into it, and using laser lights, it points out the frets you need to hit to play that song. Wow, guitar tech marches on.
Let?s face it. If you don?t have any talent, you?re probably not going to be a very good guitar player, no matter how many lasers you bring into the equation. Unless this Maestro design concept can also strum the strings, finger the frets, inject your soul with sweet rock and roll, and shoot you full of rhythm and blues, it might not do much good.
Even so, if this seemingly miraculous machine is ever actually manufactured, it might give real guitar players a quick way to build up a new repertoire. Times are tough, and this invention could come in handy if you suddenly find yourself playing on street corners because your day gig fell through. Hmm.
Is The Solar System Unique?
by David Shiga
Since the first discovery of a planet orbiting another star in 1992, some 280 alien solar systems have been identified. Most look quite unlike ours, and for good reason. Planets are mainly spied by the way their gravity makes their host star wobble as they orbit. The smaller the planet, the smaller the wobble: lightweight planets like Earth produce effects too small to detect with current technology.
Most known extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, are gas giants similar in size to Jupiter or Neptune, but orbiting close in, within a few AU (Earth-sun distances) of their stars - 6 or 7 per cent of sun-like stars seem to have such satellites. The prevalence of giant planets orbiting at greater, Jupiter-like distances from their parent star is unknown. They would take a decade or more to complete an orbit, and few gravity-wobble surveys have been watching long enough to detect them.
According to the standard picture of solar system formation (see "How was the solar system built?"), gas giants should not form that close to their host stars, as the heat means not enough solid material is present to make a sufficiently large rocky core. However, while the orbits of the planets in our solar system are almost circular, those of many of these giant exoplanets are often highly elliptical. This might provide a solution to the mystery: most solar systems seem to have had more chequered histories than our own, with initially distant giant planets competing for living space and bouncing each other into strange orbits closer in.
Definitive conclusions are difficult until we know the limitations of our observations. "It might be that we see solar systems with very violent histories because those are the only ones we can see," says Phil Armitage of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Results from two sensitive space-based planet hunters should help reduce the uncertainty: the French-led COROT mission, which launched in December 2006, and NASA's Kepler, scheduled to blast off in March this year.
A foretaste of what they might find is given by the 10 or so known "super-Earths" - planets with just a few times Earth's mass. If the picture of planet formation gleaned from our solar system is correct, these are rocky worlds like our own. Two of them, Gliese 581 c and d, are at the sort of distance from their parent star at which liquid water might exist on their surfaces, depending on the warming effects of greenhouse gases and cooling effects of clouds in any atmospheres they might possess.
There are other hints that rocky planets are more common than our first observations suggest. Dust close in to young stars, reported in 2008 by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, points to collisions connected to planet formation, and suggests that rocky worlds form around 20 to 60 per cent of stars.
But other evidence from Spitzer of dust circling much older stars dampens the prospects for tranquil rocky worlds that could harbour life. Nine in 10 solar systems seem to be more dusty than our own, in some cases by a factor of 20 or more. As planet formation is expected to be a relatively cursory process within the first 100 million years or so of a star's existence, that dust is probably the remnant of catastrophic comet collisions later in the life of these solar systems.
Fortunately, our inner solar system is an exclusive club with heavyweight bouncers on the door. The powerful gravity of the more distant giant planets - Jupiter in particular - often ejects comets before they have a chance to penetrate the solar system's inner sanctum.
That's another reason to be glad our solar system is how it is. Ultimately, whether it is uniquely so will remain a mystery until we get down to seeing Earth-sized exoplanets, as well as giant planets farther out from their stars, says Jonathan Lunine at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "The simple, honest answer is that we still don't know."
From
Sundown Lounge No. 169
Geeknotes:
WallStats.com Posters
Verge of LA on Amazon
Panorama
"A representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected representatives in Congress. Basically, your federal income taxes. The data is from the President's budget request for 2009. It will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress by October 1st to begin the fiscal year.
The poster provides a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster."
"I created the initial concept of this poster on the night of November 4th. Inspired by Barack Obama's victory and struck with a sense of awe when realizing the amount of hard fought progress that has been achieved in this country, I wanted to pay homage to this centuries long journey. The original graphic which can be seen here, became very popular and spread all over the internet. Many people loved it and ask me to make a print. While I initially created it rather spur of the moment and with no desire to sell it as a poster, the graphic needed to be completely overhauled in order to make it practical for printing. The original would have been 12 feet long. So I took the opportunity to really refine the design and create a lasting piece. There were also many additions to the time line that people suggested. This poster is not a tally of African American achievements, rather it is a record of progress and setbacks. While Obama's election is not the endgame of equality, it is a magnificent example of what is truly possible. I hope you enjoy it and that it reminds you of the shoulders we all stand upon and the stained greatness of this nation and its people who have indeed, overcome."
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Verge of LA mixed media mag, now on Amazon:
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"Panorama: What now Mr President?"
Description: "Barack Obama takes over as US President with a promise to dramatically change America and make it a fairer place. He is inheriting the worst economic crisis in almost a century, and a country so unequal that 23,000 people die every year because they cannot afford basic healthcare. To close the gap between rich and poor Obama will have to take on the might of the corporate world, which wields enormous influence in Washington. Can he change the world's most powerful country, and should he?"
Due to licensing restrictions, the episode is only officially available to view online from connections within the United Kingdom. However, it has also been uploaded to YouTube:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
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Birds Survived Mass Extinction
The Cretaceous?Tertiary mass extinction 65 million years ago may have wiped out the dinosaurs, but those that survived ? the ancestors of today?s birds ? may have done so because of their bird brains.
Analysis of computer tomography (CT) scans of fossilised bird skulls shows they had a more developed, larger brain than previously thought.
?Birds today are the direct descendents of the Cretaceous extinction survivors, and they went on to become one of the most successful and diverse groups on the planet,? says Natural History Museum palaeontologist (fossil expert), Dr Stig Walsh.
?There were other flying animals around, such as pterosaurs and older groups of birds,? says Dr Walsh, ?but we?ve not really known why the ancestors of the birds we see today survived the extinction event and the others did not. It has been a great puzzle for us ? until now.?
A larger and more complex brain may have given them a competitive advantage over the other more ancient birds and pterosaurs, helping them to better adapt when the environment changed after the mass extinction event.
Species of living birds that have larger brains are more likely to live in more socially complex groups and exhibit more complex and flexible behaviour than those with smaller brains.
For instance, members of the crow family have large brains, and some make and use tools, inventing cunning ways to find food.
Previous research has suggested birds with larger brains are more likely to survive if introduced to new environments than those with smaller brains.
These results suggest that this kind of behavioural flexibility was already a characteristic of the ancestors of modern birds before the Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event.
Newborn Infants Detect The Beat
In Music
Researchers at the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation of the University of Amsterdam demonstrated that two to three day old babies can detect the beat in music.
This phenomenon - termed ?beat induction? - is likely to have contributed to music?s origin. It enables such actions as clapping, making music together and dancing to a rhythm. Beat induction is also considered to be uniquely human. Even our closest evolutionary relatives, such as the chimpanzee and bonobo, do not synchronise their behaviour to rhythmic sounds.
The findings, which have just been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge some earlier assumptions that beat induction is learned in the first few months of life, for example by parents rocking the infant.
Instead, the results of this collaborative European study demonstrate that beat perception is either innate or learned in the womb, as the auditory system is at least partly functional as of approximately three month before birth. It should be noted that the auditory capabilities underlying beat induction are also necessary for bootstrapping communication by sounds, allowing infants to adapt to the rhythm of the caretaker?s speech and to find out when to respond to it or to interject their own vocalisation.
Therefore, although these results are compatible with the notion of the genetic origin of music in humans, they do not provide the final answer in this longstanding debate.
Since it is not feasible to observe behavioural reactions in newborns, the researchers used scalp electrodes to measure electrical brain signals. The babies wore self-adhesive ear-couplers (see photo) through which a simple, regular rock rhythm was delivered, consisting of hi-hat, snare, and bass drum. Several variants of the basic rhythm were constructed by omitting strokes on non-significant positions of the rhythm (i.e. ?non-syncopated? in music theoretical terms). These variants were played to the infants, with a ?deviant? segment, missing the downbeat (i.e. ?syncopated?), occasionally interspersed. Shortly after each deviant segment began, the babies? brains produced an electrical response indicating that they had expected to hear the downbeat but had not.
This research was conducted within the EmCAP (Emergent Cognition through Active Perception) collaborative project funded by the European Commission?s 6th Framework Programme for ?Information Society Technologies?.
Crack Babies - The Epidemic That Didn?t Happen
One sister is 14; the other is 9. They are a vibrant pair: the older girl is high-spirited but responsible, a solid student and a devoted helper at home; her sister loves to read and watch cooking shows, and she recently scored well above average on citywide standardized tests.
There would be nothing remarkable about these two happy, normal girls if it were not for their mother?s history. Yvette H., now 38, admits that she used cocaine (along with heroin and alcohol) while she was pregnant with each girl. ?A drug addict,? she now says ruefully, ?isn?t really concerned about the baby she?s carrying.?
When the use of crack cocaine became a nationwide epidemic in the 1980s and ?90s, there were widespread fears that prenatal exposure to the drug would produce a generation of severely damaged children. Newspapers carried headlines like ?Cocaine: A Vicious Assault on a Child,? ?Crack?s Toll Among Babies: A Joyless View? and ?Studies: Future Bleak for Crack Babies.?
But now researchers are systematically following children who were exposed to cocaine before birth, and their findings suggest that the encouraging stories of Ms. H.?s daughters are anything but unusual. So far, these scientists say, the long-term effects of such exposure on children?s brain development and behavior appear relatively small.
?Are there differences? Yes,? said Barry M. Lester, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University who directs the Maternal Lifestyle Study, a large federally financed study of children exposed to cocaine in the womb. ?Are they reliable and persistent? Yes. Are they big? No.?
Cocaine is undoubtedly bad for the fetus. But experts say its effects are less severe than those of alcohol and are comparable to those of tobacco - two legal substances that are used much more often by pregnant women, despite health warnings.
Surveys by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2006 and 2007 found that 5.2 percent of pregnant women reported using any illicit drug, compared with 11.6 percent for alcohol and 16.4 percent for tobacco.
?The argument is not that it?s O.K. to use cocaine in pregnancy, any more than it?s O.K. to smoke cigarettes in pregnancy,? said Dr. Deborah A. Frank, a pediatrician at Boston University. ?Neither drug is good for anybody.?
But cocaine use in pregnancy has been treated as a moral issue rather than a health problem, Dr. Frank said. Pregnant women who use illegal drugs commonly lose custody of their children, and during the 1990s many were prosecuted and jailed.
Cocaine slows fetal growth, and exposed infants tend to be born smaller than unexposed ones, with smaller heads. But as these children grow, brain and body size catch up.
At a scientific conference in November, Dr. Lester presented an analysis of a pool of studies of 14 groups of cocaine-exposed children - 4,419 in all, ranging in age from 4 to 13. The analysis failed to show a statistically significant effect on I.Q. or language development. In the largest of the studies, I.Q. scores of exposed children averaged about 4 points lower at age 7 than those of unexposed children.
In tests that measure specific brain functions, there is evidence that cocaine-exposed children are more likely than others to have difficulty with tasks that require visual attention and ?executive function? - the brain?s ability to set priorities and pay selective attention, enabling the child to focus on the task at hand.
Cocaine exposure may also increase the frequency of defiant behavior and poor conduct, according to Dr. Lester?s analysis. There is also some evidence that boys may be more vulnerable than girls to behavior problems.
But experts say these findings are quite subtle and hard to generalize. ?Just because it is statistically significant doesn?t mean that it is a huge public health impact,? said Dr. Harolyn M. Belcher, a neurodevelopmental pediatrician who is director of research at the Kennedy Krieger Institute?s Family Center in Baltimore.
And Michael Lewis, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., said that in a doctor?s office or a classroom, ?you cannot tell? which children were exposed to cocaine before birth...
New Way To Produce Hydrogen Discovered
Scientists at Penn State University and the Virginia Commonwealth University have discovered a way to produce hydrogen by exposing selected clusters of aluminum atoms to water.
The findings are important because they demonstrate that it is the geometries of these aluminum clusters, rather than solely their electronic properties, that govern the proximity of the clusters? exposed active sites. The proximity of the clusters? exposed sites plays an important role in affecting the clusters? reactions with water.
The team?s findings will be published in the 23 January 2009 issue of the journal Science.
?Our previous research suggested that electronic properties govern everything about these aluminum clusters, but this new study shows that it is the arrangement of atoms within the clusters that allows them to split water,? said A. Welford Castleman Jr., Eberly Family Distinguished Chair in Science and Evan Pugh Professor in the Penn State Departments of Chemistry and Physics. ?Generally, this knowledge might allow us to design new nanoscale catalysts by changing the arrangements of atoms in a cluster. The results could open up a new area of research, not only related to splitting water, but also to breaking the bonds of other molecules, as well.?
The team, which also includes Penn State graduate students Patrick Roach and Hunter Woodward and Virginia Commonwealth University Professor of Physics Shiv Khanna and postdoctoral associate Arthur Reber, investigated the reactions of water with individual aluminum clusters by combining them under controlled conditions in a custom-designed flow-reactor. They found that a water molecule will bind between two aluminum sites in a cluster as long as one of the sites behaves like a Lewis acid, a positively charged center that wants to accept an electron, and the other behaves like a Lewis base, a negatively charged center that wants to give away an electron. The Lewis-acid aluminum binds to the oxygen in the water and the Lewis-base aluminum dissociates a hydrogen atom. If this process happens a second time with another set of two aluminum sites and a water molecule, then two hydrogen atoms are available, which then can join to become hydrogen gas (H2).
The team found that the aluminum clusters react differently when exposed to water, depending on the sizes of the clusters and their unique geometric structures. Three of the aluminum clusters produced hydrogen from water at room temperature. ?The ability to produce hydrogen at room temperature is significant because it means that we did not use any heat or energy to trigger the reaction,? said Khanna. ?Traditional techniques for splitting water to produce hydrogen generally require a lot of energy at the time the hydrogen is generated. But our method allows us to produce hydrogen without supplying heat, connecting to a battery, or adding electricity. Once the aluminum clusters are synthesized, they can generate hydrogen on demand without the need to store it.?
Khanna hopes that the team?s findings will pave the way toward investigating how the aluminum clusters can be recycled for continual usage and how the conditions for the release of hydrogen can be controlled. ?It looks as though we might be able to come up with ways to remove the hydroxyl group (OH-) that remains attached to the aluminum clusters after they generate hydrogen so that we can reuse the aluminum clusters again and again,? he said.
The team plans to continue their research with a goal of refining their new method. This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 168
Geeknotes:
Elizabeth Alexander Inaugural Poem
Brad Wilson Jan. Schedule
Tardust Liberated
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Elizabeth Alexander reads Inaugural poem for Barack Obama, January 20, 2009
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Tardust Liberated
We have overcome.
Except those of us now in Gaza. Except those of us whom police kill. Except those of us who are suspects. Except those of us whom the church hate. Except those of us damned to taste good. Except those of us held by fate. We are meeting in the capitol. Word is, freedom will not wait.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New Family Of Antibacterial Agents Uncovered
As bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics continue to increase in number, scientists keep searching for new sources of drugs. One potential new bactericide has now been found in the tiny freshwater animal Hydra.
The protein identified by Joachim Grötzinger, Thomas Bosch and colleagues at the University of Kiel, hydramacin-1, is unusual (and also clinically valuable) as it shares virtually no similarity with any other known antibacterial proteins except for two antimicrobials found in another ancient animal, the leech.
Hydramacin proved to be extremely effective though; in a series of laboratory experiments, this protein could kill a wide range of both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including clinically-isolated drug-resistant strains like Klebsiella oxytoca (a common cause of nosocomial infections). Hydramacin works by sticking to the bacterial surface, promoting the clumping of nearby bacteria, then disrupting the bacterial membrane.
Grötzinger and his team also determined the 3-D shape of hydramacin-1, which revealed that it most closely resembled a superfamily of proteins found in scorpion venom; within this large group, they propose that hydramacin and the two leech proteins are members of a newly designated family called the macins.
The Wall Paper House
The property market is in the doldrums, mortgages are elusive but there is still some hope for the first-time buyer: the paper house.
Retailing for about $5,000 (£3,375), the house is supposed to brighten up Third World shantytowns and provide quick shelter for long-term refugees. The Universal World House can be used almost anywhere: light, easily assembled, environmentally friendly, earthquake-proof and, crucially in the age of recession, a bit of a bargain.
Gerd Niemoeller, its inventor, says that the 36sq m paper house weighs barely 800kg (1,763lb) - lighter than a VW Golf. ?Without the foundation block, the whole house actually weighs in at about 400kg,? says the design engineer. It will not, however, simply blow away. The basic material is resin-soaked cellulose recovered from recycled cardboard and newspapers.
Add heat and pressure and the paper becomes extremely stable. The interior of the prefabricated building panels resemble honeycombs; an air vacuum fills each of the units. The result: a strong and stable exterior wall, well insulated. A similar construction technique is used in aircraft and high-speed yachts.
?But they are working with aluminium and other alloys, which is expensive, time consuming, energy intensive,? said Mr Niemoeller, who has patented the invention under the name of his Swiss-based company The Wall AG. ?That?s not suitable for the Third World.? The prime purpose is to create intelligent housing settlements almost instantly for the displaced and the urban poor.
?People don?t want to flee their countries, they?ve been driven to leave their homes out of the need to survive,? said the 58-year-old engineer. ?The number of migrants, refugees living in improvised housing, is going to grow with climate change, and we offer an alternative.? An alternative, that is, to the corrugated-iron sheds and lean-tos so often seen in the slums of the developing world.
The house has eight built-in single and double beds and a veranda with a sealed-off area housing a shower and a lavatory. It has been designed together with the German development aid agency GTZ, and with the architect Dirk Donath, from the Bauhaus University in Weimar.
Apart from the sleeping area, there are shelves, a table and benches. ?It has been designed so that a family can slaughter an animal on the veranda, wash it in the shower and hang it, along with fish, on an integrated washing line.? The whole wall of the kitchen can be tipped open to let air in and to blur the distinction between inside and outside.
First inquiries have come from the Delta State oil developers in Nigeria, and from Angola. More than 2,000 houses have been ordered by another Nigerian company. Development aid agencies are considering whether the houses could be used to accommodate those fleeing from the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. South America, too, is interested.
The aim is to build the machines in northern Germany, near Kiel, and then send them, along with the raw materials, to the target country. The houses are then put together on the spot, creating local jobs and reducing transport costs.
But there is no reason why the paper houses should not be used in Europe.
The panels are rain resistant - and it is not compulsory to butcher a goat on the veranda.
Water Pollution Linked With Infertility
A group of testosterone blocking chemicals is finding its way into rivers that can erode virility and feminize males.
New research has linked water pollution to the rising incidence of male infertility. The study, by Brunel University, the universities of Exeter and Reading and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology identified a new group of chemicals that act as ?anti-androgens?.
These compounds inhibit the function of the male hormone, testosterone, reducing male fertility. Some of these are contained in drugs, including cancer treatments, pharmaceutical treatments and pesticides used in agriculture.
The research suggests that when they get into the water system, these chemicals may play a pivotal role in causing feminizing effects in male fish.
Earlier research by Brunel and Exeter universities has shown how female sex hormones (oestrogens), and chemicals that mimic oestrogens, are leading to feminization of male fish.
Found in some industrial chemicals and the contraceptive pill, they enter rivers via sewage treatment works. This causes reproductive problems by reducing fish breeding capability and in some cases can lead to male fish changing sex.
Other studies have also suggested that there may be a link between this phenomenon and the increase in human male fertility problems caused by testicular digenesis syndrome.
Until now, this link lacked credence because the list of suspects causing effects in fish was limited to oestrogenic chemicals whilst testicular digenesis is known to be caused by exposure to a range of anti-androgens.
Co-author of the study Susan Jobling at Brunel said ?we have been working intensively in this field for over 10 years?, according to an Exter release.
Bob Burn, principal statistician at the University of Reading, said: ?State-of- the-art statistical hierarchical modelling has allowed us to explore the complex associations between the exposure and potential effects seen in over 1,000 fish sampled from 30 rivers in various parts of England.?
The research was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Mars May Still Be A Living Planet
A team of NASA and university scientists has achieved the first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. This discovery indicates the planet is either biologically or geologically active.
The team found methane in the Martian atmosphere by carefully observing the planet throughout several Mars years with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility and the W.M. Keck telescope, both at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The team used spectrometers on the telescopes to spread the light into its component colors, as a prism separates white light into a rainbow. The team detected three spectral features called absorption lines that together are a definitive signature of methane.
"Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas," said Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif." Mumma is lead author of a paper describing this research that will appear in Science Express on Thursday.
Methane, four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom, is the main component of natural gas on Earth. Astrobiologists are interested in these data because organisms release much of Earth's methane as they digest nutrients. However, other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane.
"Right now, we do not have enough information to tell whether biology or geology -- or both -- is producing the methane on Mars," Mumma said. "But it does tell us the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It is as if Mars is challenging us, saying, 'hey, find out what this means.' "
If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface where it is warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water is necessary for all known forms of life, as are energy sources and a supply of carbon.
"On Earth, microorganisms thrive about 1.2 to 1.9 miles beneath the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa, where natural radioactivity splits water molecules into molecular hydrogen and oxygen," Mumma said. "The organisms use the hydrogen for energy. It might be possible for similar organisms to survive for billions of years below the permafrost layer on Mars, where water is liquid, radiation supplies energy, and carbon dioxide provides carbon. Gases, like methane, accumulated in such underground zones might be released into the atmosphere if pores or fissures open during the warm seasons, connecting the deep zones to the atmosphere at crater walls or canyons."
It is possible a geologic process produced the Martian methane, either now or eons ago. On Earth, the conversion of iron oxide into the serpentine group of minerals creates methane, and on Mars this process could proceed using water, carbon dioxide and the planet's internal heat. Although there is no evidence of active volcanism on Mars today, ancient methane trapped in ice cages called clathrates might be released now.
"We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane," said co-author Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America in Washington. "The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons, spring and summer, perhaps because ice blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air."
According to the team, the plumes were seen over areas that show evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water. Plumes appeared over the Martian northern hemisphere regions such as east of Arabia Terra, the Nili Fossae region, and the south-east quadrant of Syrtis Major, an ancient volcano about 745 miles across.
One method to test whether life produced this methane is by measuring isotope ratios. Isotopes of an element have slightly different chemical properties, and life prefers to use the lighter isotopes. A chemical called deuterium is a heavier version of hydrogen. Methane and water released on Mars should show distinctive ratios for isotopes of hydrogen and carbon if life was responsible for methane production. It will take future missions, like NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, to discover the origin of the Martian methane.
The research was funded by the Planetary Astronomy Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington and the Astrobiology Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The University of Hawaii manages NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 167
Geeknotes:
Obamicon Me
Happy Birthday CJ!
Event Plugs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Obamicon Me
Meanwhile, in Chi-Town,
CJ Laity celebrates!
Today is my birthday; I've made it to 44.
Give me a couple of dollars and we'll be pals for
life (or until I say something you don't like)...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Event Plugs (and stuff I forgot):
Rabbit Fighter Productions presents...
BITCHES BREW
An Evening of Bitchin' Rock!
10pm pILLOW tHEORY
11pm SOPHIA RAMOS
12am SWEAR ON YOUR LIFE
Hosted by PRECIOUS METAL CID!
$10, 21+
Arlene's Grocery
95 Stanton Street
NYC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Barack Obama on the Inauguration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hazards Of Severe Space Weather Revealed
A NASA-funded study describes how extreme solar eruptions could have severe consequences for communications, power grids and other technology on Earth.
The National Academy of Sciences in Washington conducted the study. The resulting report provides some of the first clear economic data that effectively quantifies today?s risk of extreme conditions in space driven by magnetic activity on the sun and disturbances in the near-Earth environment. Instances of extreme space weather are rare and are categorized with other natural hazards that have a low frequency but high consequences.
?Obviously, the sun is Earth?s life blood,? said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ?To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun?s activity.?
Besides emitting a continuous stream of plasma called the solar wind, the sun periodically releases billions of tons of matter called coronal mass ejections. These immense clouds of material, when directed toward Earth, can cause large magnetic storms in the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere. Such space weather can affect the performance and reliability of space-borne and ground-based technological systems.
Space weather can produce solar storm electromagnetic fields that induce extreme currents in wires, disrupting power lines, causing wide-spread blackouts and affecting communication cables that support the Internet. Severe space weather also produces solar energetic particles and the dislocation of the Earth?s radiation belts, which can damage satellites used for commercial communications, global positioning and weather forecasting. Space weather has been recognized as causing problems with new technology since the invention of the telegraph in the 19th century.
A catastrophic failure of commercial and government infrastructure in space and on the ground can be mitigated through raising public awareness, improving vulnerable infrastructure and developing advanced forecasting capabilities. Without preventive actions or plans, the trend of increased dependency on modern space-weather sensitive assets could make society more vulnerable in the future.
NASA requested the study to assess the potential damage from significant space weather during the next 20 years. National and international experts from industry, government and academia participated in the study. The report documents the possibility of a space weather event that has societal effects and causes damage similar to natural disasters on Earth.
Worlds First Biofuel Flying Car
Presenting the world?s first bio fueled flying car; a machine that can drive like a car and fly like an aeroplane; capable of beating congestion for the commuter or providing a low cost and practical method of reaching remote regions. On 14th January 2009 the team will embark on an incredible maiden voyage from London to Tombouctou, across the Sahara desert.
The Parajet Skycar is the first, two seater, high performance, road legal, bio-fuelled flying car; capable of providing rally car performance on and off road, and light aircraft performance after just a few minutes of wing preparation.In ?fly mode? the car will have:
* a take-off speed of 60 kmph
* a top speed of 110 kmph
* a range of 300 km.
* a cruising altitude of 2000 ? 3000 ft
* a maximum altitude of 15,000 ft.
In ?road mode? the car will have:
* independent 4 wheel suspension
* rear wheel drive
* acceleration from 0-100 kmph in 4.5 seconds
* a top speed of 180 kmph
* a range of 400 km.
Parajet Skycar Expedition Leader Neil Laughton (L) and Chief Pilot Giles Cardozo pose with their flying car during a photocall in London, on January 13, 2009. A team of adventurers launched an expedition of fairytale scope Tuesday - from London to Timbuktu by flying car. The group, led by Neil Laughton, will make the 6,000km (3,600-mile) journey by land and air in the Parajet Skycar, effectively a dune buggy with a fan motor and paragliding wing attached. AFP PHOTO/Shaun Curry
A Pill To Curb Smoking Damage
Finding it hard to quit cigarettes? Fret not, for researchers are close to developing a pill which they claim could mitigate some of the negative health effects of smoking.
According to a report in the ?New Scientist?, a team at Boston University School of Medicine has already identified 28 molecules known as microRNAs, that are produced in abnormal amounts in cells lining the airways of smokers.
And, if the levels of these molecules could be restored to that of non-smokers it might allow chronic smokers to improve their health prospects as well as enable people to puff without any significant damage to their health.
?These microRNAs serve to regulate the gene expression changes occurring in people who smoke and who get smoking related diseases, including cancer,? lead researcher Avrum Spira was quoted as saying.
In fact, in their study involving ten smokers and ten non-smokers, the researchers have found one of the microRNAs, called mir-218, controls a group of genes that usually protect lung and airway cells from oxidative damage caused by smoke.
?We think the level of activity of mir-218 is crucial in how a smoker defends his or herself against any injury and potential development of lung disease,? Spira said.
And, giving supplements of mir-218 to smokers, or developing a drug that restores levels of disrupted microRNAs to normal could help mitigate some of the damaging effects of smoking, the researchers believe.
?We might be able to alter the host?s response to tobacco smoke so that it is a protective one,? Spira said.
The findings of the study have been published in the latest edition of the ?Proceedings of the National Academy of Science? journal.
Astronomers Discover New Radio
Signal Using Large Balloon
A team of NASA-funded scientists, including two from UC Santa Barbara, have discovered cosmic radio noise that they find completely unexpected and exciting.
The finding came from data collected from a large helium-filled NASA balloon, big enough to fit a football field inside. The scientists discovered cosmic radio noise that is blasting six times louder than expected.
"It seems as though we live in a darkened room and every time we turn the lights on and explore, we find something new," said team member Philip M. Lubin, professor of physics at UCSB. "The universe continues to amaze us and provide us with new mysteries. It is like a large puzzle that we are slowly given pieces to so that we can eventually see through the fog of our confusion."
The findings will be presented today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif. The mission, named ARCADE, was to search the sky for heat from the first generation of stars. Instead, it found a cosmic puzzle.
A mysterious screen of extra-loud radio noise permeates the cosmos, preventing astronomers from observing heat from the first stars. The balloon-borne ARCADE instrument discovered this cosmic static on its July 2006 flight. The noise is six times louder than expected. Astronomers have no idea why.
"The universe really threw us a curve," says team leader Alan Kogut team leader from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted." Detailed analysis ruled out an origin of primordial stars or known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy. The source of this cosmic radio background remains a mystery.
ARCADE stands for the Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission. The instrument launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Tex., and flew to an altitude of 120,000 feet, where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.
IMAGE: From left, Jack Singal, Dale Fixsen, and Philip Lubin.
The problem, notes team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland, is that there don't appear to be enough radio galaxies to account for the signal ARCADE detected. "You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," he said. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."
The radio static ARCADE detected is much brighter than the combined radio emission of all of the galaxies in the universe. This suggests something new and interesting must have occurred as galaxies first formed, when the universe was less than half its current age.
Many objects in the universe emit radio waves. In 1931, American physicist Karl Jansky first detected radio static from our own Milky Way galaxy. Similar emissions from other galaxies create a background hiss of radio noise.
ARCADE is the first instrument to measure the radio sky with enough precision to detect this mysterious signal. To enhance the sensitivity of ARCADE's radio receivers, they were immersed in more than 500 gallons of ultra-cold liquid helium. The instrument's operating temperature was just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.
###
Besides Philip Lubin, at UC Santa Barbara, and his former graduate student Jack Singal, now with Stanford University, the NASA-funded project includes scientists and engineers from several other institutions. They are: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; and the University of Maryland. More than a dozen high school and undergraduate students participated in the payload's development.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 166
Geeknotes:
Cabin Fever Musicfest
Event Plugs
The Rough Waters of Two Rivers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
CABIN FEVER MUSICFEST
Friday, Jan. 30th, 2009
Davison Country Club, Davison, MI. (6 mi. E of Flint)
$10 in advance $13 at the door.
Event Plugs:
Caleb is playing The Troubador in London, Wednesday, Jan. 14 from 8:00 to 11:00pm..
Jamie Lynn Fletcher is playing at Cheffetta's in Green Bay, WI Saturday, Jan. 10th at 6:30pm....
Posted by: cj on Sunday, December 05, 2004 - 06:53 PM at Chicagopoetry.com
(The following is the complete, unedited "author's version" of the "Two-Rivers Tape" transcript. It appears here uncensored, and contains some language not intended for those under the age of 17. Although based on a true story, all incriminating statements are pure fiction and some of the incidents described have been fictionalized. Don't drink and drive.)
E. Donald Two-Rivers, from "Absolutely Nothing: Chicago Poets Against The War" (ChicagoPoetry.com Press).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Turn Your Clothes Into Fabric Speakers
Transforming your clothes into speakers sounds weird, but science is working hard to bring fiction to reality. Like most of the technological breakthroughs these days, this one also seems possible with the help of nanotechnology. Researchers at Beijing?s Tsinghua University noticed that sending an audio frequency current through carbon nanotubes resulted in good quality sound.
These ?fabric loudspeakers? can work in a wide frequency range, without the requirement of any movable parts or magnets. The basis of operation here is the Thermoacoustic effect. Alternating current heats up the surrounding air, which then expands and contracts, creating the desired audio wave.
Capella: The Electric Backpack Bicycle
What?s white and orange, can get you anywhere in the city in a jiffy and folds up like a Swiss Army Knife?
It?s the new Capella backpack electric bicycle developed by Vietnamese industrial design student Truong Minh Nhat. The vehicle was created for Nhat?s graduation thesis, but the student?s next-gen bike was met with so much approval he has decided to take the creation commercial by snapping up the official intellectual property rights. No word on pricing or release date but if this is the future of bikes in Asia it may be time for the West to step up to the two-wheeled challenge.
For students, designing a concept vehicle usually means producing lots of renderings, but an industrial design student at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture actually built one that runs.
Truong Minh Nhat's Capella is a lightweight, compact electric bike that folds into a backpack. Truong sourced the parts from local manufacturers, convincing several of them to make the bespoke components demanded by his design: "I had to convince and explain a lot to bike component makers, although I was making only one and offered them high prices."
The Capella was Truong's senior thesis and has a 12-kilometer range. Now that it's complete and functioning, Truong has obtained intellectual property rights and is fine-tuning the design, hoping to get the weight down to just 10 kilograms, before seeking a Vietnamese-market manufacturer.
Coral Massive Bleaching Event
A widespread and severe coral bleaching episode is predicted to cause immense damage to some of the world?s most important marine environments over the next few months.
A report from the US Government?s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts severe bleaching for parts of the Coral Sea, which lies adjacent to Australia?s Great Barrier Reef, and the Coral Triangle, a 5.4 million square kilometre expanse of ocean in the Indo-Pacific which is considered the centre of the world?s marine life.
?This forecast bleaching episode will be caused by increased water temperatures and is the kind of event we can expect on a regular basis if average global temperatures rise above 2 degrees,? said Richard Leck, Climate Change Strategy Leader for WWF?s Coral Triangle Program.
The bleaching, predicted to occur between now and February, could have a devastating impact on coral reef ecosystems, killing coral and destroying food chains. There would be severe impacts for communities in Australia and the region, who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods.
The Coral Triangle, stretching from the Philippines to Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, is home to 75 per cent of all known coral species. More than 120 million people rely on its marine resources.
?Regular bleaching episodes in this part of the world will have a massive impact on the region?s ability to sustain local communities,? said Leck. ?In the Pacific many of the Small Island Developing States, such as the Solomon Islands, rely largely on the coast and coastal environments such as coral reefs for food supply. This is a region where alternative sources of income and food are limited.
?Time is crucial and Australia needs to step up to the plate. Following the government?s lack of resolve to seriously reduce future domestic carbon emissions, Australia has a huge role to play in assisting Coral Triangle countries and people to adapt to the changes in their climate.?
The Australian government this week announced a 2020 target for reducing its greenhouse gas pollution by 5 per cent, which WWF criticised as completely inadequate. Reductions of at least 25 per cent by 2020 are needed to set the world on a pathway to meaningful cuts in greenhouse pollution.
Australia?s Coral Sea, which will also be affected by coral bleaching and climate change, is a pristine marine wilderness covering almost 1,000,000 square kilometres and is extraordinarily rich in marine life, including sharks and turtles, with a series of spectacular reefs rising thousands of metres from the sea floor.
WWF is urging the Australian government to declare the Coral Sea a marine protected area, as well as working to establish a network of marine protected areas that will assist ocean environments to adapt to the changes caused by rising temperatures, and to absorb the impacts from human activity.
Transparent Electronics
by Katie Gatto
Researchers at the University of Southern California have created a a clear, colorless disk about 5 inches in diameter that bends and twists like a playing card, with a lattice of more than 20,000 nanotube transistors. It is capable of having high-performance electronics printed on it using a potentially inexpensive low-temperature process.
The research has a wide range of potential applications. It could be used as affordable ?head-up? car windshield displays. The lattices could also be used to create cheap, ultra thin, low-power ?e-paper? displays. They might even be incorporated into fabric that would change color or pattern as desired for clothing or even wall covering, into nametags, signage and other applications. Imagine being able to change the color of your walls with the click of a remote, instead of getting out the rollers and paint. Also, if you find that you are under dressed you can change your outfit to suit the situation on the fly.
Another possible application is ultra thin and see through applications. ?Our results suggest that aligned nanotubes have great potential to work as building blocks for future transparent electronics,? say the researchers.
Study Finds Big Butts Protect Against Diabetes
Do you worry about having a big butt or those unsightly ?thunder thighs?? Researchers state that having a little extra weight in the butt and hips may protect you against type 2 diabetes.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that subcutaneous fat, which is fat found just beneath the skin, actually aided in improving sensitivity to the hormone insulin, which regulates blood sugar.
Researchers injected the abdomens of mice with subcutaneous fat and found that the mice lost weight and their fat cells also shrank. No changes had been made to their diet or activity levels.
?It was a surprising result,? said Ronald Kahn of Harvard Medical School in Boston. ?We actually found it had a beneficial effect, and it was especially true when you put it inside the abdomen.?
The study was started to find out why fat located in different parts of the body tend to have varying health effects. This study showed them that subcutaneous fat may actually be protecting people from metabolic diseases such as diabetes.
Researchers hope that they can do more research and possibly one day create a drug that has this same effect.
?I think it's an important result because not only does it say that not all fat is bad, but I think it points to a special aspect of fat where we need to do more research,? Kahn said.
So the next time you're wondering if those jeans make your butt look big, just remember that your massive caboose may be saving your life.
This study was published in the journal Cell Metabolism.
Titanium Golf Clubs Could Cause Hearing Loss
Playing golf can make you deaf, say doctors, who warned that golfers using latest generation of titanium drivers should wear earplugs to protect them from noise.
Those at risk are the players who use a new generation of thin-faced titanium drivers to propel the ball further and make the game easier, the scientists said. According to ear specialists who studied the case, the booming noise the metal club head makes when it strikes the ball was found to have reduced the hearing of a 55-year-old golfer. The study has been published in the latest edition of the British Medical Journal. In the study, tests of six titanium clubs against six thicker-faced stainless steel models revealed that the former all produced greater sound levels. The authors say: ?Our results show that thin-faced titanium drivers may produce sufficient sound to induce temporary or even permanent cochlear damage in susceptible individuals.? Andrew Coltart, one of Scotland?s leading professional golfers, said: ?If you are wearing earplugs you might not hear the shouts of ?fore?, be hit by a ball on the head and get brain damage.? The doctors, based at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, decided to conduct the tests after a 55-year-old golfer attended their clinic with unexplained tinnitus and reduced hearing in his right ear.
