Wind Power Provided Over 1% of Global Electricity in 2007

Posted on September 30, 2008  Comments (11)

graph of global installed wind power capacity

Data from World Wind Energy Association, for installed Mega Watts of global wind power capacity in 2007. 19,696 MW of capacity were added in 2007, bringing the total to 93,849 MW. Europe accounts for 61% of installed capacity, Germany accounts for 24% and the USA 18%.

The graph shows the top 10 producers (with the exceptions of Denmark and Portugal) and includes Japan (which is 13th).

Related: USA Wind Power Installed Capacity 1981 to 2005 – Wind Power has the Potential to Produce 20% of Electricity by 2030 – Top 12 Manufacturing Countries in 2007 – Sails for Modern Cargo Ships – MIT’s Energy ‘Manhattan Project’

New Neurons are Needed for New Memories

Posted on September 30, 2008  Comments (0)

New neurons are needed for new memories

Around 15 years ago, researchers discovered that the adult rodent brain contains discrete populations of stem cells which continue to divide and produce new cells throughout life. This discovery was an important one, as it overturned a persistent dogma in neuroscience which held that the adult mammalian brain cannot regenerate.
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This study shows that inhibiting neurogenesis has strikingly different consequences in two distinct regions of the brain. In the olfactory bulb, it leads to significant shrinkage but apparently does not alter smell-related behaviour. In the hippocampus, the effect on structure is not so marked, but it is clear that newly-generated neurons are necessary for the processes of learning and memory. Exactly how the new cells contribute to memory formation is still unknown.

More interesting stuff. Related: How The Brain Rewires Itself – Scientists Witness the Birth of a Brain Cell – New Neurons in Old Brains – No Sleep, No New Brain Cells

Tidal Turbine Farms to Power 40,000 Homes

Posted on September 29, 2008  Comments (3)

Scotland Plans World’s First Tidal Turbine Farms

Scottish Power Renewables will apply for planning permission next year to build the two farms in Northern Ireland’s seabed. The turbines will be manufactured in Scotland in an intentional boost to the country’s green-collar job market. The 98-foot structures have been tested to operate in water as deep as 328 feet, and they spin slow enough to allow marine life to avoid the 66-foot blades.
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New York City installed its first turbine for their tidal power farm earlier this month, but the Scottish plan differs in that the farms will be located in the open sea, not a river or straight.

Project aims to harness sea power

Projects on the firth could be operational by 2020… The Scottish and Irish sites would host up to 60 of the turbines – 20 at each site – generating 60 megawatts of power for up to 40,000 homes.

Related: Generating Electricity from the Ocean – Commercial Wave Project – World’s First Commercial-Scale Subsea Turbine – posts on energy

Foreign Cells Outnumber Human Cells in Our Bodies

Posted on September 28, 2008  Comments (0)

This is one of those area I find very interesting: People Have More Bacterial Cells than Human Cells. Colin Nickerson has written an interesting article on the topic: Of microbes and men

Scientists estimate that 90 percent of the cells contained in the human body belong to nonhuman organisms – mostly bacteria, but also a smattering of fungi and other eensy entities. Some 100 trillion microbes nestle in niches from our teeth to our toes.

But what’s setting science on its heels these days is not the boggling numbers of bugs so much as the budding recognition that they are much more than casual hitchhikers capable of causing disease. They may be so essential to well-being that humans couldn’t live without them.

In this emerging view, humans and their microbes – or, as some biologists playfully put it, microbes and their attached humans – have evolved together to form an extraordinarily complex ecosystem.

The understanding of the complex interaction is something I came to through reading on the overuse of antibiotics. And the more I read the more interesting it gets.

“We can’t take nutrition properly without bacteria. We can’t fight bad germs without good germs,” he said. “It may turn out that secretions from bacteria affect not only long-term health, but hour-by-hour moods – could a person’s happiness depend on his or her bugs? It’s possible. Our existences are so incredibly intertwined.”

However, in the opinion of some researchers, this strange union may be headed for trouble because of profligate use of antibiotics and antiseptic lifestyles that deter the transfer of vital strains of bacteria that have swarmed in our systems at least since early humans ventured out of Africa.

Related: Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us – Skin Bacteria – Move over MRSA, C.diff is Here – Cats Control Rats … With Parasites – Beneficial Bacteria

Bonobo Research

Posted on September 27, 2008  Comments (0)

Chimps ‘are people, too’

In a private facility just outside Des Moine, Iowa , primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is conducting an experiment that has lasted 26 years. She’s been rearing a small group of apes as if they are people, to see what happens.

Her results appear to be spectacular, at least to writer Danny Wallace: “Kanzi asked me for a present. I gave him the free toothbrush kit from my flight over. He brushed his teeth. We bonded.”
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Victoria: “This experiment is the first definite evidence that chimpanzees can pass on ideas to each other. That is the basis of culture.”
Danny: “So, are they people then?”
Victoria: “No.”

In Budongo National Park, Uganda. Katie Slocombe from St Andrews University is studying vocalisations with wild chimps…
Katie: “Chimps produce an incredibly wide range of sounds. It appears that they may have a rudimentary language.”
Danny: “So, are they people then?
Katie: “No”

Related: Great Ape Trust – Bonobo Research – Bonobo’s Using Language? – Savanna Chimpanzees Hunt with Tools – Chimps Used Stone “Hammers” – Orangutan Attempts to Hunt Fish with Spear

More Mysterious Space Phenomenon

Posted on September 26, 2008  Comments (1)

One of the things I really hope this blog helps accomplish is to show how science progresses (which explains why I use that tag so often, 3rd most, other popular tags: animals (most used), engineers 2nd, fun and webcasts tied for 4th).

Science is a process of continual learning as curiosity leads us to seek better understanding. On a small scale this can mean a person learning more about knowledge already understood by others. But it also means the scientific community facing new questions and coming up with new explanations for the new questions raised by observations (and testing those new explanations…). Mysterious New ‘Dark Flow’ Discovered in Space

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can’t be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon “dark flow.” The stuff that’s pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude.
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They discovered that the clusters were moving nearly 2 million mph (3.2 million kph) toward a region in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela. This motion is different from the outward expansion of the universe (which is accelerated by the force called dark energy).

“We found a very significant velocity, and furthermore, this velocity does not decrease with distance, as far as we can measure,” Kashlinsky told SPACE.com. “The matter in the observable universe just cannot produce the flow we measure.”

Related: Laws of Physics May Need a Revision – Great Physics Webcast Lectures – Challenging the Science Status Quo – Parasite Rex

The Glove – Engineering Coolness

Posted on September 25, 2008  Comments (1)

photo of The Glove - core control

Cool invention helps tired players bounce back

The device, called the Glove and invented by two Stanford biologists, is used by the Niners during games and at practice for players’ health. But its applications are far broader: from treating stroke and heart attack victims to allowing soldiers to remain in the field longer under intense heat.

It’s also a proven athletic performance enhancer – billed as better than steroids without any ill effects.

“We use the Glove primarily for health reasons,” said Dan Garza, the 49ers’ medical director. “But outside of sports, it has potential for a lot of exciting things. This technology is a much more effective way of cooling the core temperature than what we would typically do – misting, fanning, cold towels, fluids.”

The Glove works by cooling the body from inside out, rather than conventional approaches that cool from outside in. The device creates an airtight seal around the wrist, pulls blood into the palm of the hand and cools it before returning it to the heart and to overheated muscles and organs. The palm is the ideal place for rapid cooling because blood flow increases to the hands (and feet and face) as body temperature rises.

“These are natural mammalian radiators,” said Dennis Grahn, who invented the device with Stanford colleague Craig Heller.

Cool, you can buy your own for only $2,000 :-) (The Glove used to be called Core Control) High resolution image. Related: Research on Reducing Hamstring Injuries – The Science of the Football Swerve – Randomization in Sports – posts on science and athletics

2008 MacArthur Fellows

Posted on September 24, 2008  Comments (0)

photos of Kirsten Bomblies, Marin Soljacic, Rachel Wilson and Andrea Ghez

MacArthur Fellows receive $500,000 is support over 5 years with no strings attached. Unfortunately for me, I was passed over again. However, 25 people have been selected including

Kirsten Bomblies, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Tubingen, Germany. Plant Evolutionary Geneticist opening avenues into the mysteries of how new species originate through her explorations of incompatible hybrids as a mechanism for speciation in shared ecological niches.

Marin Soljacic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Optical Physicist demonstrating both theoretically and experimentally that power can be transmitted wirelessly, potentially leading to a range of electrical devices that can operate without batteries or wall connections.

Rachel Wilson, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts. Experimental Neurobiologist integrating electrophysiology, neuropharmacology, molecular genetics, and anatomy to measure the activity of neurons in the diminutive brain of the fruit fly.

Andrea Ghez, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California. Astrophysicist using novel, ground-based telescopic techniques to identify thousands of new star systems and illuminate the role of super-massive black holes in the evolution of galaxies.

Photos, from the MacArthur Foundation web site left to right Kirsten Bomblies, Marin Soljacic, Rachel Wilson and Andrea Ghez.

Related: 2006 MacArthur Fellows – Wireless Power – 2008 Draper Prize for Engineering – 2005-6 National Science and Technology Medals

$12.5 Million NSF For Educating High School Engineering Teachers

Posted on September 24, 2008  Comments (1)

$12.5 Million National Science Foundation Grant

The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, College of Natural Sciences and College of Education have been awarded $12.5 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to prepare educators to teach engineering to Texas high-school students.

The UTeachEngineering program targets future and current teachers, providing multiple avenues to prepare them to teach high school engineering. University faculty will use half of the five-year grant funding for course development, lab development and salaries. The other half of the grant will provide stipends, scholarships and fellowships to students and teachers working toward engineering teaching certification.

Current teachers will benefit from two curricula developed through the grant: a six-week Engineering Summer Institute for Teachers and a UTeach Master of Arts in Science and Engineering Education, which takes place over three summers. The curriculum for prospective teachers will target undergraduate students in engineering and the natural sciences, and lead to a bachelor’s degree in a scientific or engineering field as well as dual teaching certification in science and engineering. Addressing the need for trained engineering teachers is especially crucial in Texas because of a new law that requires high school graduates starting in 2011 to complete four years of science. One year can be a course in engineering.

Related: Engineering Resources for K-12 Teachers – Leadership Initiatives for Teaching and Technology – Education Resources for Science and Engineering – Ioannis Miaoulis on k-12 Engineering Education – Alumni Return to Redesign High School Engineering Classes

Incident in LHC Sector 34

Posted on September 23, 2008  Comments (0)

Incident in LHC sector 34

During commissioning (without beam) of the final LHC sector (sector 34) at high current for operation at 5 TeV, an incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 September resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel. Preliminary investigations indicate that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure. CERN ’s strict safety regulations ensured that at no time was there any risk to people.

A full investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time for LHC operation. For the same fault, not uncommon in a normally conducting machine, the repair time would be a matter of days.

Related: CERN Pressure Test Failure – At the Heart of All Matter – New Yorker on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider – What Makes Scientists Different :-)

Mars Rover Continues Exploration

Posted on September 23, 2008  Comments (5)

Mars Rover

Ageing Mars rover to embark on epic two-year journey

The ageing but intrepid Mars rover Opportunity is set to embark on a two-year mission it may never complete – a seven-mile journey to a crater far bigger than one it has called home for two years, NASA have revealed.

The golf-cart-sized robot with a wobbly front wheel climbed out of Victoria crater earlier this month and scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are steering the probe toward a crater more than 20 times larger, dubbed Endeavor.
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There are also small rocks strewn about the surface on the route, which appear to have been dug up by meteor impacts farther away. This will give scientists the chance to examine material that otherwise would be too deep to reach. Opportunity still has the use of all six of its wheels, though the right front wheel can no longer be steered.

Related: Mars Rovers Getting Ready for Another Adventure – Mars Rover (2005) – NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander – High resolution photo

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