Mystery of the Prince Rupert's Drop at 130,000 fps - Smarter Every Day 86

Facebook Turns Red as SCOTUS Marriage Equality Hearings Begin Marriage equality activists are protesting outside the Supreme Court Tuesday, as the nation's highest court begins two days of hearings about two same-sex marriage laws. As can be expected in this day and age, the demonstrations are not only taking place in Washington. Facebook has become a hotbed for marriage equality supporters, as profile pictures change to a red version of the Human Rights Campaign's logo. The HRC, the largest lobby group for LGBT rights, shared a pink and red version of its navy blue and gold equality symbol logo on Facebook Monday. SmarterEveryDay Twitter SmarterEveryDay Loading... Visualizing Size in Biochemical Systems I decided to waste a few hours and make a Blender image based on my post on the relative size of common elements in biochemical systems. Using 1 blender unit = 1 nm, I modeled a gold nanoparticle, an antibody, albumin, an iron oxide nanoparticle, a 10 amino acid length peptide, and salicylic acid. The nanoparticles were created using dupliverts on Icospheres in Blender. Albumin and the Antibody were created by rendering them as STL files in VMD using the surf representation. Once imported into Blender, a decimate modifier followed by remesh (octree depth of 7, smooth) fixed the STL meshes nicely. A 5 iteration smooth modifier fixed any artifacts after the remeshing.

Grass Roofs Across the Globe [54 PICS] Grass roofs on wooden houses in Tysfjord, Norway. Sod roofs, or grass roofs, were traditional types of Scandinavian green roofs. Photo #1 by hqwalls Not all houses with sod roofs are in Norway. For example, this grass-roofed bed and breakfast is located in Romania and the Carpathian Mountains. Photo #4 by CameliaTWU About PhysicsQuest PhysicsQuest is a story-based activity that exposes middle school students to the fun and relevance of science. APS provides a free PhysicsQuest kit to registered 6-9th grade physical science classes, home school groups, science clubs, and after-school programs. The kit includes a user's manual and materials for four physics experiments. PhysicsQuest aims to teach middle school students physics concepts, but its overarching goal is to give them a positive experience with physics. APS is focusing this program on middle school students because these grades have been identified as the point when many students lose interest in math and science. PhysicsQuest began as a World Year of Physics 2005 project with a kit based on Albert Einstein.

tallguywrites: The Facts In The Case Of Dr. Andrew Wakefield A fifteen page story about the MMR vaccination controversy. As ever, I'm sure a few spelling errors have slipped past me. Feel free to point any out so I can correct them. The reference links for the strip are in the next blog entry. Now! KK's blog – ArmA Scripting Tutorials: GUI (Part 2) So where was I? Let’s start from the top. description.ext The description.ext is kind of abridged version of config.cpp for use in a mission instead of an addon. You can define new classes in it just like in config.cpp but it is limited in what you can define. The Science of Predicting the Future - Starts With A Bang “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” -Niels Bohr What’s going to happen next?

A Revolutionary Idea in Semiconductor Manufacturing: Lose the Substrate Flipping through journal headlines, your heart may not skip a beat when you read a title like “Continuous gas-phase synthesis of nanowires with tuneable properties.” But that article, published in the latest issue of Nature, actually points to something very exciting indeed: a novel method that could revolutionize the manufacture of semiconductors. Semiconductors, of course, are those materials whose in-between properties–they don’t conduct electricity as well as metal; they don’t stop a current as well as an insulator–allow us to control their conductive capacity, making them useful ingredients in everyday products like transistors, solar cells, and LEDs. There already exists a highly intuitive manufacturing process for semiconductors, usually beginning with a silicon wafer or other substrate.

Nanomaterial Duplicates Self-Regulation of Living Organisms Bio-inspired nanomaterials seem to be the rage this week, at least on this blog. Adding to the furor, researchers at Harvard University have developed a nanomaterial that can actively self-regulate depending on environmental changes. While living organisms have developed sophisticated systems for responding to the external environment, the Harvard team believe this to be the first instance in which artificial materials have been able to self-regulate themselves in response to external factors, such as temperature or pH. The research, which was published in the July 12th issue of Nature, aimed initially at making the material regulate itself based on temperature. But the researchers believe in principle that the material can be made to regulate itself according to pH, pressure or some other parameter.

A golden antenna turns an insulator into a metal Most normal metals are conductors from very low temperatures up to their melting point, or are insulating under all normal conditions. Vanadium dioxide (VO2) is a weird substance that can suddenly transition from an insulator to a conductor. The rapid shift in the behavior of VO2 can be induced by increasing the temperature, exposing the material to strong light, placing it in an electric field, and other stimuli. But the exact mechanism underlying the transition is unknown. Demarche calcul rdm.svg Cancel Edit Delete Preview revert Text of the note (may include Wiki markup) Could not save your note (edit conflict or other problem). Please copy the text in the edit box below and insert it manually by editing this page. Upon submitting the note will be published multi-licensed under the terms of the CC-BY-SA-3.0 license and of the GFDL, versions 1.2, 1.3, or any later version.