Dr. Michio Kaku's Playlist: Five Science Videos You Must See. 10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week. Photo Credit: Sabino Parente/Shutterstock.com July 20, 2012 | Like this article?
Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. We’ve talked about this before. 1. This week saw a lot of encouraging news on the disease-eradication front: the FDA approval of Truvada , the first HIV preventative drug and the possibility that a peptide in spider venom -- specifically that of the Chilean rose tarantula -- could thwart the progression of muscular dystrophy. Did I lie? Most cases occur in South Sudan and people who get it try to stem the pain of the exit by putting their feet in water -- and guess what happens? But through the efforts of the Carter Center and other groups the guinea worm is on its way out…of the world. “We are approaching the demise of the last guinea worm who will ever live on earth,” says former US president Jimmy Carter, namesake of the Carter Center.
One thing’s for sure. 2. A2I Labs in Boise, Idaho has come up with a pair of glasses called 02AMPS. Extinguish a fire by blasting it with sound. Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV Forget blasting out your favourite tunes, you could now use speakers to put out a fire. A new video from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) shows how to extinguish burning fuel by trapping it in an acoustic field generated by surrounding speakers. By using specific frequencies, a fire is killed in a two-pronged attack. First, sound increases the air speed, thinning the layer where combustion occurs and thus making it easier to disrupt the flame. But the acoustics also disturb the surface of the fuel which increases vaporisation, widening the flame and cooling its overall temperature. Whereas typical firefighting techniques disrupt chemical reactions involved in combustion, DARPA has been looking at approaches like this one that exploit physics.
If you enjoyed this post, watch a knitted suit resist 1000 ˚C flames or see how to fight a fire in space. Magnets in a copper pipe. Meteorite Hunter Discovers New Mineral. Hidden within a rock from space is a mineral previously unknown to science: panguite.
The new mineral was found embedded in the Allende meteorite, which fell to Earth in 1969. Since 2007, geologist Chi Ma of Caltech has been probing the meteorite with a scanning electron microscope, discovering nine new materials, including panguite. Ma and his team have determined that panguite was one of the first solid materials to coalesce in our solar system, roughly 4.567 billion years ago. The mineral’s name is a reference to Pan Gu, a primitive, hairy giant from Chinese mythology who separated yin and yang with a swing of his enormous axe, thereby creating the Earth and sky.
Panguite’s primordial nature means that it was actually around before the Earth and other planets formed, meaning it can help scientists learn more about the conditions in the cloud of gas and dust that gave rise to our solar system. 10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week. Photo Credit: Faiz Zaki/Shutterstock.com June 29, 2012 | Like this article?
Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Bad things may happen to you this week. 1. It’s true: ABC News blogs reported on a paper from the Journal of Parasitology (which is an awesome name for a very bitter love story) that a 63-year-old Korean woman bit into a piece of par boiled squid and felt “severe pain” and a “pricking and foreign body sensation in her oral cavity.”
But wait! “Twelve small, white spindle-shaped, bug-like organisms stuck in the mucous membrane of the tongue, cheek, and gingiva were completely removed. " Eep indeed. Enter io9 with a wonderfully detailed story by Danna Staaf of the Squid a Day blog, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of squid sperm.