The 13 Most Important Numbers in the Universe - James D. Stein's Cosmic Numbers In the 17th century, scientists understood three phases of matter—solids, liquids and gases (the discovery of plasma, the fourth phase of matter, lay centuries in the future). Back then, solids and liquids were much harder to work with than gases because changes in solids and liquids were difficult to measure with the equipment of the time. So many experimentalists played around with gases to try to deduce fundamental physical laws. Robert Boyle was perhaps the first great experimentalist, and was responsible for what we now consider to be the essence of experimentation: vary one or more parameter, and see how other parameters change in response. It may seem obvious in retrospect, but hindsight, as the physicist Leo Szilard once remarked, is notably more accurate than foresight.
World's First Perpetual Motion Machine? Can this machine operate forever? Since at least the 12th century, man has sought to create a perpetual motion machine; a device that would continue working indefinitely without any external source of energy. A large scientific contingent thinks such a device would violate the laws of thermodynamics, and is thus impossible. Could it be that as a race, we don’t fully understand the laws of physics and such a device may indeed be possible? Norwegian artist and mathematician Reidar Finsrud is an outside the box thinker that has devised a machine that he believes achieves true perpetual motion. The dream is that if we’re able to produce perpetual motion machines, that we’d have tapped into the holy grail of sustainability: an infinite energy source. A device that requires no input to run that could be affixed to a generator would harvest free energy to power whatever we so pleased. What are your thoughts? Source: Finsrud Comments comments
Researchers develop soft memory with the consistency of Jell-O As technology progresses there are a number of ways that tech will be able to help people recover from illness and accidents that compromise the function of a part of the body. Often the sort of tech that can help repair damaged body systems has to be implanted. The problem with implanting electronic in the body today is that most of the gear is ridged and the body tends to reject anything it sees as foreign leading to the need for all sorts of drugs to prevent rejection in many instances. A group of researchers at North Carolina State University has developed a new type of soft memory that opens the door to new biocompatible electronics that could be implanted into the human body. The teams says that the new memory has the consistency of Jell-O and is designed to function extremely well in a wet environment such as the brain. The devices use a liquid alloy of gallium and indium metals that are set into water-based gels. [via Eurekalert]
Focus Focus on the Red Dot and give us a like if the blue circle disappeared. This is a practical demonstration of the word 'focus'; when you focus on a thing, the remaining thoughts and objects should disappear. E. coli could convert sugar to biodiesel at 'an extraordinary rate,' say Stanford researchers By Louis Bergeron L.A. Cicero Xingye Yu, a graduate student in chemical engineering, and Professor Chaitan Khosla examine a culture of e. coli bacteria. When it comes to making biodiesel cheaply and efficiently enough to be commercially feasible, E. coli may prove to be "the little bacterial engine that could," say Stanford researchers. Biodiesel can be made from plant oil or animal fat – usually the former. The bacteria, often discussed in terms of the human digestive tract, also act as a catalyst in generating biodiesel by converting inexpensive sugars into fatty acid derivatives that are chemically similar to gasoline. But E. coli's natural conversion capability is not up to snuff, commercially speaking, and researchers tinkering with its internal machinery have yet to boost its capability enough to cross the commercial threshold. A powerful engine "The good news is that the engine that makes fatty acids in E. coli is incredibly powerful," Khosla said. Precursor to biodiesel Media Contact
The Ruins of Detroit – - PlogPlog Photo Blog Posted Feb 07, 2011 Share This Gallery inShare850 Up and down Detroit’s streets, buildings stand abandoned and in ruin. French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre set out to document the decline of an American city. Their book “The Ruins of Detroit“, a document of decaying buildings frozen in time, was published in December 2010. From the photographers’ website: Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension. The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires. Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state. William Livingstone House # Michigan Central Station # Atrium, Farwell Building # 18th floor dentist cabinet, David Broderick Tower # Bagley-Clifford Office of the National Bank of Detroit # Ballroom, American Hotel # Melted clock, Cass Technical High School # Detroit?
Cosmic smashup predicted, but Earth will survive WASHINGTON (AP) — Don't worry about when the world as we know it might end. NASA has calculated that our entire Milky Way galaxy will crash into a neighboring galaxy with a direct head-on hit — in 4 billion years. Astronomers in a NASA news conference Thursday said that years of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope provide grisly details of a long-anticipated galactic smashup. Astronomers had seen the Andromeda galaxy coming at us, but thought there was a chance that its sideways motion would make it miss or graze the Milky Way. Hubble readings now indicate that's not the case. "This is pretty violent as things go in the universe," said Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore that operates Hubble. Scientists say the sun and Earth are unlikely to be hit by stars or planets from Andromeda because of the vast emptiness of the two galaxies. Once it's over, our solar system would be in a different place in the cosmos. ___ Online:
Can Steam Trains Get Clean Energy on Track? View gallery Cellulosic biomaterial is turned into carbon neutral biocoal as a fuel for the clean energy future. What happens when you combine a steam locomotive from the past century with a new "biocoal" energy source? The result echoes the transformation of Marvel's superhero The Hulk — a powerful beast that is greener and packs more punch than many modern trains. That combination of old train technology and a new biofuel could lead to a locomotive that requires less fuel, costs less and still has more horsepower than diesel-electric locomotives. "Once perfected, creating the world's first carbon-neutral locomotive will be just the beginning for this technology which, we hope, will later be used for combined heat and power energy in the developing world as well as reducing the United States' dependence on fossil fuels," said Rod Larkins, special projects director at the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment.
Avoid these words to prevent Homeland Security from spying on your social networks | Technology News Blog With the FBI reportedly forming a new internet surveillance unit and the National Security Agency building a data center in Utah that will be able to sift through communications between private citizens, you can assume that the government can readily spy on you whenever it wants to. Another agency, Homeland Security, began its social media monitoring program a few months ago. But you don't have to worry about being included in its watch list, so long as you avoid using any word found in its list of keywords. The agency was recently forced to release its list after a freedom of information request was submitted by privacy watchdog, Electronic Privacy Information Center. Some of the words like "Al Qaeda" and "Taliban" are pretty much self-explanatory. Of course, if your Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking profiles are set to private, you don't have anything to worry about. Whatever you do, don't use these words online (Source) More from Tecca:
Seeing the future? First-ever video taken with Google's Project Glass techno-goggles shows a Googler on a trampoline Glasses have built-in camera, GPS and offer email and web searches on surface of glassesPrototypes now being tested outside Google's officesPictures taken while running and on trampolineHi-tech Android glasses 'layer' computer information over the world By Rob Waugh Published: 17:46 GMT, 25 May 2012 | Updated: 19:58 GMT, 25 May 2012 Google has shown off the first video taken with its 'Project Glass' techno-glasses - hi-tech specs that 'layer' computer information over the world. The glasses also have a camera built into the arm - and the glasses are starting to be seen increasingly outside the Google offices, with co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin both wearing the techno-specs at public events. 'This one makes us a little queasy, but our prototype nailed what it's like to be on a trampoline,' says Google via - what else? 'We¿d love to hear about the types of moments you'd capture if you didn¿t have to wait to pull out a camera or your phone,' says the team Enlarge
Daniela Rus's Robotic Sand History holds lessons, even for those designing futuristic robots. Daniela Rus, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found inspiration in Michelangelo’s statue of David. “David came out of the marble, and we thought we could also make things appear out of a block,” she says. That germ of an idea inspired Rus, a 2002 recipient of the MacArthur “genius” award, to begin work on a project that will eventually allow someone to reach into a bag of sand and pull out any device or structure imaginable. It’s like Harry Potter meets The Matrix, since the “bag of sand” is actually a collection of tiny robots. The robots can sense their neighbors, receive commands, and attach to each other to form objects. The idea is that workers—especially those in remote or extreme conditions, such as scientists in Antarctica—could leave behind bulky toolboxes and instead bring along the high-tech sand. The project has a long way to go, but Rus, 48, already has a working prototype.
Researchers create rewritable digital storage in DNA Scientists at Stanford have invented a way to store, erase and code digital data in the DNA of living cells. Bioengineers used enzymes from bacteria to flip sequences of DNA one direction, then another. The back and forth represent the ones and zeros of digital information. By coding a section of DNA that determines if the cells fluoresce red or green, the researchers easily visualized the switch (see photo). The team, led by Drew Endy, PhD, calls the flipping device a “recombinase addressable data” module, or RAD. Programmable data storage within the DNA of living cells would seem an incredibly powerful tool for studying cancer, aging, organismal development and even the natural environment. In developing the system, researchers had to control the precise dynamics of two opposing proteins, integrase and excisionase, within the microbes. [First author Jerome Bonnet, PhD] has now tested RAD modules in single microbes that have doubled more than 100 times and the switch has held.
Berkeley Laser Fires Pulses Hundreds of Times More Powerful Than All the World's Electric Plants Combined BELLA laser. Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Blink and you ll miss it. Imagine a device capable of delivering more power than all of the world s electric plants. How is that even possible? BELLA s laser is not the first to pack so much power a laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, just an hour s drive inland from Berkeley, reached 1.25 petawatts in the 1990s. Simulated image of laser accelerating electrons in a plasma. The Department of Energy plans to use the powerful laser to drive a very compact particle accelerator via a process called laser wakefield acceleration, boosting electrons to high energies for use in colliders or for imaging or medical applications. BELLA director Wim Leemans says that the project s first experiments will seek to accelerate beams of electrons to energies of 10 billion electron-volts (or 10 GeV) by firing the laser through a plasma-based apparatus about one meter long.