Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic. It's not your average science fair when the 16-year-old winner manages to solve a global waste crisis. But such was the case at last May's Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa, Ontario, where Daniel Burd, a high school student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, presented his research on microorganisms that can rapidly biodegrade plastic. Daniel had a thought it seems even the most esteemed PhDs hadn't considered. Plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, does in fact eventually decompose. It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing. Editor's note: There are two high school students who have discovered plastic-consuming microorganisms. The first was Daniel Burd. The second was Tseng I-Ching (last month), a high school student in Taiwan. Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster? Www. Intellect and Academic. Denisova Cave and the Mystery of the mtDNA Phylogenetic Tree « Rokus Blog.
Nobody expected a great surprise. Genetic testing of the little finger of an early hominin child found in the Siberian Denisova Cave, Kostenki, in the middle of archeological remains pertaining to Upper Paleolithic culture, would almost for sure confirm DNA similar to ours. There was a slim change that the pinky belonged to a Neanderthal from the neighborhood that got lost, but everything pointed at a an unequivocal member of the advanced group of hominins responsible for introducing symbolic art all over the world, the so-called anatomically modern humans (AMH). The collection of personal adornments and artifacts suggestive of symbolic behavior from the Early Upper Paleolithic deposits of Denisova Cave, Altai, is one of the earliest and the most representative of the Upper Paleolithic assemblages from Northern and Central Asia.
Humans spend more time gathering around the campfire to celebrate their victory on Nature, only to challenge evolution in an entirely new way. Dr. Internet Directory for Botany - Alphabetical List. The Official String Theory Web Site. Physics. Quantum Mechanics. College Physics. Nanotechnology Basics. Home > Introduction > Nanotechnology Basics Nanotechnology Basics Last Updated: Friday, 14-Jun-2013 09:28:04 PDT What is Nanotechnology?
Answers differ depending on who you ask, and their background. Coined as "nano-technology" in a 1974 paper by Norio Taniguchi at the University of Tokyo, and encompassing a multitude of rapidly emerging technologies, based upon the scaling down of existing technologies to the next level of precision and miniaturization. Foresight Nanotech Institute Founder K. In the future, "nanotechnology" will likely include building machines and mechanisms with nanoscale dimensions, referred to these days as Molecular Nanotechnology (MNT). Click image for larger version. This image was written using Dip-Pen Nanolithography, and imaged using lateral force microscopy mode of an atomic force microscope. It uses a basic unit of measure called a "nanometer" (abbreviated nm).
There are one billion nm's to a meter. One thousandth of that is a millimeter. Video. Artificial Robotic Hand Transmits Feeling To Nerves. Astro Teller has an unusual way of starting a new project: He tries to kill it. Teller is the head of X, formerly called Google X, the advanced technology lab of Alphabet. At X’s headquarters not far from the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., Teller leads a group of engineers, inventors, and designers devoted to futuristic “moonshot” projects like self-driving cars, delivery drones, and Internet-beaming balloons. To turn their wild ideas into reality, Teller and his team have developed a unique approach. It starts with trying to prove that whatever it is that you’re trying to do can’t be done—in other words, trying to kill your own idea. As Teller explains, “Instead of saying, ‘What’s most fun to do about this or what’s easiest to do first?’
The ideas that survive get additional rounds of scrutiny, and only a tiny fraction eventually becomes official projects; the proposals that are found to have an Achilles’ heel are discarded, and Xers quickly move on to their next idea. Video. Video. Space. Voyager Golden Record. 50-years-exploration-huge.jpg (JPEG Image, 3861x1706 pixels) Map-of-mars.jpg (JPEG Image, 1280x782 pixels) - Scaled (83%) The Ultimate Field Guide to Subatomic Particles. This is, for the most part, an accurate article, except for a few statements. "Exactly what makes a fermion a fermion is a bit complicated, but suffice it to say that fermions are all the particles that deal with matter. So what about the last group of elementary particles, the ones that don't deal with matter? These are the bosons, and they deal with the fundamental forces of the universe. " The statements above can be misinterpreted as suggesting that fermions are defined as particles that deal with matter and bosons are defined as particles that deal with forces.
And that is not true. It's actually the other way around. Particles that deal with matter are fermions and particles that carry the fundamental forces are bosons. What fermions and bosons really are have to do with two apparently unrelated (but actually related) particle properties: spin and statistics. "There are four known bosons" See, this is an example of the misconception I just mentioned. Actually, that isn't true. 7 Man-Made Substances that Laugh in the Face of Physics. Odds are pretty good that some of you are reading this on an LCD screen while the rest of us are trying to make it out on the 13-inch monochrome monitor that came with our garage sale Commodore 64.
But even with the LCD, some laptops still weigh over 10-pounds. And while that doesn't seem like much, the level of muscle atrophy experienced by the average Warcraft addict makes that weight a thousand times heavier. However, elastic conductors could fix that and make smuggling your porn collection into church even easier. Also, oooohhh. Elastic conductors are made of "ionic liquid" mixed with carbon nanotubes. We shrugged when we read that too, but scientists are very excited about it because you can run a current through it and it will stretch to double its original length, and snap back into place as if nothing happened.
The point being you can wind up with the roll out, paper thin computer pictured above. What the Hell is it Used For? Also, something with lasers. Amazing Fact Generator. List of common misconceptions. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Each entry on this list of common misconceptions is worded as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated. These entries are concise summaries; the main subject articles can be consulted for more detail. A common misconception is a viewpoint or factoid that is often accepted as true but which is actually false. They generally arise from conventional wisdom (such as old wives' tales), stereotypes, superstitions, fallacies, a misunderstanding of science, or the popularization of pseudoscience. Some common misconceptions are also considered to be urban legends, and they are sometimes involved in moral panics. Arts and culture[edit] Business[edit] Federal legal tender laws in the United States do not require that private businesses, persons, or organizations accept cash for payment, though it must be treated as valid payment for debts when tendered to a creditor.[1] Food and cooking[edit] Food and drink history[edit] Music[edit]
40 Things That Will Make You Feel Old: Pics, Videos, Links, News. The Worlds of David Darling. What would happen if I drilled a tunnel through the center of th" Want to really get away from it all? The farthest you can travel from home (and still remain on Earth) is about 7,900 miles (12,700 kilometers) straight down, but you'll have to journey the long way round to get there: 12,450 miles (20,036 kilometers) over land and sea.
Why not take a shortcut, straight down? You can get there in about 42 minutes -- that's short enough for a long lunch, assuming you can avoid Mole Men, prehistoric reptiles and underworld denizens en route. Granted, most Americans would end up in the Indian Ocean, but Chileans could dine out on authentic Chinese, and Kiwis could tuck into Spanish tapas for tea [sources: NOVA; Shegelski]. Of course, you'd be in for a rough ride. First, you'd have to pass through 22-44 miles (35-70 kilometers) of continental crust (3-6 miles/5-10 kilometers on the ocean floor) followed by 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) of mantle. For sake of argument (and survival) let's pretend the Earth is a cold, uniform, inert ball of rock. If you reload an inkjet cartridge with human cells, can you print skin? YES! : bioephemera.
Why are past, present, and future our only options? But things get awkward if you have a friend. (Use your imagination if necessary.) Low blow, Dr. Dave. Low blow... But seriously, I always figured if there was more than one dimension of time, that moving "left" or "right" would be the equivalent of moving to a parallel universe where things were slightly different.
That is to say, maybe time really is 2 dimensional, but for all the reasons you mention, we're normally only aware of one of them—and for the most part, the same one that most of the people we meet are aware of. But take, say, a schizophrenic person—maybe they're tuned in differently; moving sideways through time instead of forward... or maybe moving through (and aware of) both simultaneously.
They can't form coherent thoughts because they're constantly confronted with overlapping and shifting realities. I dunno... that's all just speculation, of course, but I find that thought fascinating. Robert Lanza, M.D.: Does the Past Exist Yet? Evidence Suggests Your Past Isn't Set in Stone. Recent discoveries require us to rethink our understanding of history. "The histories of the universe," said renowned physicist Stephen Hawking "depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history.
" Is it possible we live and die in a world of illusions? Physics tells us that objects exist in a suspended state until observed, when they collapse in to just one outcome. Paradoxically, whether events happened in the past may not be determined until sometime in your future -- and may even depend on actions that you haven't taken yet. In 2002, scientists carried out an amazing experiment, which showed that particles of light "photons" knew -- in advance −- what their distant twins would do in the future.
They tested the communication between pairs of photons -- whether to be either a wave or a particle. Of course, we live in the same world. But what about dinosaur fossils? 525347_scale_of_universe_ng.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object) Liquid universe. Public release date: 13-Oct-2004 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] UK CONTACT - Claire Bowles claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk 44-207-611-1210New Scientist Press Office, London US CONTACT – Toni Marshalltoni.marshall@newscientist.com617-558-4939New Scientist Boston office The cosmos was born in a churning fluid 300 million times hotter than the sun. We've recreated this hell, and it's not just hot, it is also very, very strange, says Amanda Gefter ( science writer based in London).
TO LOOK deep into the fundamental structure of matter is to look billions of years back in time, to the moment when matter first blinked into being. Recreating the conditions of that moment has long been an aim for physicists wanting to understand how the universe evolved from the cosmic fireball that existed a fraction of a second after the big bang. In QCD, it is the vacuum that imprisons the quarks. "There's no doubt. This makes the plasma more similar to a liquid than a gas.
. [ Print | E-mail. Amazing Electron Microscope Shots... - melodymaker's posterous. 10 Strange Things About The Universe. Space The universe can be a very strange place. While groundbreaking ideas such as quantum theory, relativity and even the Earth going around the Sun might be commonly accepted now, science still continues to show that the universe contains things you might find it difficult to believe, and even more difficult to get your head around. Theoretically, the lowest temperature that can be achieved is absolute zero, exactly ?
273.15°C, where the motion of all particles stops completely. However, you can never actually cool something to this temperature because, in quantum mechanics, every particle has a minimum energy, called “zero-point energy,” which you cannot get below. One of the properties of a negative-energy vacuum is that light actually travels faster in it than it does in a normal vacuum, something that may one day allow people to travel faster than the speed of light in a kind of negative-energy vacuum bubble. Relativity of Simultaneity Antimatter Retrocausality. LHC Detects Evidence of New Physics | Wired Science. After nearly 6 months of smashing particles, the Large Hadron Collider has seen signs of something entirely new. Pairs of charged particles produced when two beams of protons collide seem to be associated with each other even after they fly apart. “It is a small effect, but it is very interesting in itself,” said physicist Guido Tonelli, spokesperson for the LHC’s CMS experiment.
Tonelli and colleagues announced the results in a seminar at CERN September 21 and in a paper submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physics. The LHC finally got up and running in March after more than a year of false starts. Beams of protons were smashed together in the 17-mile-long ring at energies of 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV) — three times the energy that had been achieved before. When two protons collide, they produce a flurry of smaller, short-lived charged particles that fly away from each other at certain angles and speeds. “We are here today because we didn’t succeed to kill it,” Tonelli said. See Also: NASA and NSF-Funded Research Finds First Potentially Habitable Exoplanet. NASA and NSF-Funded Research Finds First Potentially Habitable Exoplanet A team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of a planet with three times the mass of Earth orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone.
" This discovery was the result of more than a decade of observations using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, one of the world's largest optical telescopes. The research, sponsored by NASA and the National Science Foundation, placed the planet in an area where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one. To astronomers, a "potentially habitable" planet is one that could sustain life, not necessarily one where humans would thrive. Related Links: Meteorite older than Solar System. Organic globules found in the Tagish Lake meteorite fragments may predate the solar system, according to a new U.S. study Credit: University of Calgary SYDNEY: A meteorite discovered in Canada may be older than the Solar System, according to a new U.S. study.
Samples taken from the Tagish Lake meteorite, discovered in 2000, have revealed evidence of organic matter that predates our Sun and Solar System, according to the study, published in today’s edition of the U.S. journal Science. According to the researchers, the meteorite most likely originated at the outer regions of the Kuiper Belt or in the cold molecular cloud that gave birth to the Solar System. When analysing the meteorite, the team, led by Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, of the NASA/Johnson Space Center in Texas, discovered “globules” inside it consisting of simple organic compounds with carbon-rich outer layers. The isotopic ratios showed that the globules formed at temperatures of about minus 260°C – close to absolute zero. Physics Flash Animations. Scirus - for scientific information. Chronology of Events in Science, Mathematics, and Technology. Simple mechanisms explained. PolarClock. Emergency and Disaster Information Service. World Sunlight Map.
Earth View. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Download Graphic Images from the Hillis/Bull Lab. Mycologist's So-Called Life Box - Environment. Top 10 Most Dangerous Plants in the World. 15 houseplants for improving indoor air quality. 'Life as we don't know it' discovery could prove existence of aliens. The platypus knows 80 different ways to poison you. Birth of a chicken (30 photos. Molecular secrets of the "iron-plated snail" …free your imagination… Joshua Klein on the intelligence of crows. Video. Video : first cyborg of the world - İzle - Vidivodo. Video. Video. Interactive 3D model of Solar System Planets and Night Sky. Orion Nebula | Alien Worlds: Shedding light on our unearthly universe. Scientists Disrupt Moral Reasoning With Magnets To The Skull.
10 Amazing Tricks to Play with your Brain / Mind. Radiation Dosage Chart. What Caffeine Actually Does to Your Brain. Video. Penn study shows why sleep is needed to form memories. HMS Press Release - Newly discovered RNA steers brain development. Eric Weisstein's World of Chemistry. Hi-Res Images of Hydrogen.