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Curious Cat Science and Egineering blog full tag cloud
Astronomers find a planet denser than lead
As a planet (the alternative is classifying it as a brown dwarf - a failed star, not a planet), COROT-exo-3b would be the densest known planet.
Related: COROT discovery stirs exoplanet classification rethink - Planet, Less Dense Than Cork, Is Discovered - Hot Ice Planet - Physics May Need a Revision
Ok, there really isn’t much new since I posted that holographic TV is getting closer. But won’t it be cool when I can have one in my house? And you might need to plan for it in your new house addition 
Also, with the economic news lately a good distraction might be useful - Holographic television to become reality
Dr Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university’s Optical Sciences department, told CNN that scientists have broken a barrier by making the first updatable three-dimensional displays with memory.
“This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images,” he said. The researchers produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.
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According to Peyghambarian, they could be constructed as a screen on the wall (like flat panel displays) that shows 3-D images, with all the image writing lasers behind the wall; or it could be like a horizontal panel on a table with holographic writing apparatus underneath.
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Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found.
However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian. Justin Lawrence, a lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, told CNN that small steps are being made on technology like 3-D holograms, but, he can’t see it being ready for the market in the next ten years.
I would have to say I am with those that think this might take a bit longer to be in place. But I would be glad to be wrong.
Related: Video Goggles - Open Source for LEGO Mindstorms - posts on cool gadgets - Awesome Cat Cam
More appropriate technology from MIT’s D-Lab.
D-Lab-developed device makes corn processing more efficient
The basic concept for the maize-sheller was first developed in Guatemala by an NGO called MayaPedal, and then refined by Wu last semester as a class project in D-Lab: Design, a class taught by Department of Mechanical Engineering Senior Lecturer Amy Smith. Now, thanks to Wu’s efforts, the technology is beginning to make its way around the world.
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Thus, the owner of a bicycle, with a small extra investment, can travel from village to village to carry out a variety of useful tasks. A simple bike thereby becomes an ongoing source of income.
Wu refined the corn-sheller system, which was originally designed as a permanent installation that required a bicycle dedicated solely to that purpose, to make it an add-on, like Kiwia’s tools, that could be easily bolted onto an ordinary bike and removed easily.
Photo shows the prototype of the attachment. Engineering that makes a significant difference in people’s lives (especially those that need it the most) is even cooler than the latest high tech gizmos in my opinion. And those new gizmos are cool.
Related: Design for the Unwealthiest 90 Percent - Appropriate Technology posts - Water Pump Merry-go-Round - Nepalese Entrepreneur Success - Tumaini Cycles blog (by
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
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.
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
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
“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
Cool invention helps tired players bounce back
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
In Our Genes, Old Fossils Take On New Roles
The thousands of human endogenous retroviruses, or HERVs, sketch a history of rough times during the 550 million years of vertebrate evolution. The best-preserved one, HERV-K113, probably arrived less than 200,000 years ago, long after human beings and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor.
But these retroviruses are more than just curiosities. They are some of the most important enemies we ever had. They helped mold the immune system that is one of the evolutionary marvels of life on Earth.
I must say there is tons of amazing stuff I learn about but I still find retroviruses amazing.
Related: Amazing Science: Retroviruses - Old Viruses Resurrected Through DNA - One Species’ Genome Discovered Inside Another’s - Our Genome Changes as We Age - posts on genes and genome
Stanford’s “autonomous” helicopters teach themselves to fly
Very cool. Related: MIT’s Autonomous Cooperating Flying Vehicles - The sub-$1,000 UAV Project - 6 Inch Bat Plane - Kayak Robots
Black Raspberries Slow Cancer by Alter Hundreds of Genes
Pretty cool stuff.
Related: DNA Passed to Descendants Changed by Your Life - Cancer Deaths Increasing, Death Rate Decreasing - People Have More Bacterial Cells than Human Cells - Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Very cool webcast. The ant nest covers 538 square feet and travels 26 feet into the earth. The nest is engineered with vents to promote the flow of air, bringing in fresh air and expelling carbon dioxide created by the large fungus gardens. The scientists filled the ant next with concrete to excavate it: 10 tons of concrete were needed.
Related: Symbiotic relationship between ants and bacteria - Ants on Stilts for Science - Giant Nests of Yellow-jackets
Viruses are generally considered not to be alive (they must use a host cell of something else to reproduce). However, defining exactly what life is, is not as easy as you might think.
“There’s no doubt, this is a living organism,” the journal Nature is told by Prof Jean-Michel Claverie, director of the Mediterranean Institute of Microbiology in Marseilles, part of France’s basic-research agency CNRS. “The fact that it can get sick makes it more alive.”
Related: People Have More Bacterial Cells than Human Cells - Bacteria Feed on Earth’s Ocean-Bottom Crust - Retroviruses - Bacteriophages: The Most Common Life-Like Form on Earth
NPR had a nice story on kids taking risks (a compliment our post from a couple days ago: Kids Need Adventurous Play) Camp Offers Kids A Chance To Play With Fire. Tinkering School gives kids a chance to make real things they use (boats, motorized bikes, bristle bots…). Their blog is awesome.
I started the Tinkering School because it’s the kind of thing I would like to have been able to go to myself.
I wish I could go. Related: National Underwater Robotics Challenge - Science Toys You Can Make With Your Kids - La Vida Robot - Technology and Fun in the Classroom
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Cool video on the uBot-5 from UMass Amherst.
The uBot-5 is dynamically stable, using two wheels in a differential drive configuration for mobility. Dynamically stable robots are well suited to environments designed for humans where both a high center of mass and a small footprint are often required.
via: Pop Culture and Engineering Intersect Toyota has long been interested in personal robot assistants. And the uBot-5, under development at UMass-Amherst, is also looking to meeting that need: Robot developed by computer scientists to assist with elder care: |
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Grupen studied developmental neurology in his quest to create a robot that could do a variety of tasks in different environments. The uBot-5’s arm motors are analogous to the muscles and joints in our own arms, and it can push itself up to a vertical position if it falls over. It has a “spinal cord” and the equivalent of an inner ear to keep it balanced on its Segway-like wheels.
Such robots have a huge market waiting for them if engineers can provide models that can be useful at the right price. The future of such efforts looks very promising.
Related: WALL-E Robots Coming into Massachusetts Homes - Robot Nurse - Toyota iUnit - Another Humanoid Robot
This stuff is cool. Here is the full press release from Penn State, Microbes beneath sea floor genetically distinct
Tiny microbes beneath the sea floor, distinct from life on the Earth’s surface, may account for one-tenth of the Earth’s living biomass, according to an interdisciplinary team of researchers, but many of these minute creatures are living on a geologic timescale.
“Our first study, back in 2006, made some estimates that the cells could double every 100 to 2,000 years,” says Jennifer F. Biddle, PhD. recipient in biochemistry and former postdoctoral fellow in geosciences, Penn State. Biddle is now a postdoctoral associate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The researchers looked at sediment samples from a variety of depths taken off the coast of Peru at Ocean Drilling Site 1229. They report their findings in today’s (July 22) online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The Peruvian Margin is one of the most active surface waters in the world and lots of organic matter is continuously being deposited there,” says Christopher H. House, associate professor of geoscience. “We are interested in how the microbial world differs in the subsea floor from that in the surface waters.”
The researchers used a metagenomic approach to determine the types of microbes residing in the sediment 3 feet, 53 feet, 105 feet and 164 feet beneath the ocean floor. The use of the metagenomics, where bulk samples of sediment are sequences without separation, allows recognition of unknown organism and determination of the composition of the ecosystem.
“The results show that this subsurface environment is the most unique environment yet studied metagenomic approach known today,” says House. “The world does look very different below the sediment surface.” He notes that a small number of buried genetic fragments exist from the water above, but that a large portion of the microbes found are distinct and adapted to their dark and quiet world.
The researchers, who included Biddle; House; Stephan C. Schuster, associate professor; and Jean E. Brenchley, professor, biochemistry and molecular biology, Penn State; and Sorel Fitz-Gibbon, assistant research molecular biologist at the Center for Astrobiology, UCLA, found that a large percentage of the microbes were Archaea, single-celled organisms that look like Bacteria but are different on the metabolic and genetic levels. The percentage of Archaea increases with depth so that at 164 feet below the sea floor, perhaps 90 percent of the microbes are Archaea. The total number of organisms decreases with depth, but there are lots of cells, perhaps as many as 1,600 million cells in each cubic inch.
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Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo
Magnetic Movie was shot in NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratories at UC Berkeley for Chanel 4 in association with the Arts Council of England.
Magnetic Movie is the aquavit, something not precisely scientific but grants us an uncanny experience of geophysical and cosmological forces.
Cool video: I must admit I am confused at how extensive the artistic license taken with the animation is.
Related: SciVee Science Webcasts - The Art and Science of Imaging - Art of Science 2006 - Nikon Small World Photos
Using a light touch to measure protein bonds
With this technique, the researchers can get a precise measurement of the force holding the proteins together, which is on the order of piconewtons (10-12 newtons).
Related: Neuroengineers Use Light to Silence Overactive Neurons - Slowing Down Light - Foldit, the Protein Folding Game
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