Can this be converted to energy savings?
Courtesy size8jeansEager to help the environment? Want to reduce fuel consumption? Well, according to a new study published in the journal Human Ecology, you can do your part by not stuffing so many calories into your face.
On average we Americans just eat too much. We consume about 1200-1500 more calories per day than is recommended. Not only that but most of the 3700 calories we do take in each day comes from junk and processed foods, and animal products, which use up a lot more fuel and resources to produce than simpler foods like potatoes, fruits and vegetables.
Conventional meat and dairy farming require large amounts of energy what with processing, packaging and long-distant distribution, so the study suggests a return to more organic, localized farming methods to help reduce energy usage. Of course, this means the end users – us – will have to reduce our intake of animal fat and processed foods, and shift to simpler, healthier diets, but the impact on fuel consumption would be tremendous.
But wait, there’s more.
The current health trend in the United State is in a rather dismal state. Many of us are overweight , diabetes is on the rise, and now we’ve got doctors recommending cholesterol-lowering drugs for children . A radical shift in our food production methods, and a reduction in our caloric intake such as the study suggests would not only solve some of our current energy woes, but the general health of the US population would benefit, too.
SOURCES AND INFO
ScienceDaily story
NY Times story: Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler
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Hey, wait a second...: How could you ever balance one of those on a pencil? Bad science!
Courtesy Matthieu :: giik.net/blogAll y’all up on graphene?
I knew you were. You’re Buzzketeers, the best of the best, the biggest of the brains, the coolest of the cids.
There’s no need to explain graphene to this team (the Lil’ Professors), so it would be totally unnecessary for me to point out that graphene is a fancy material made of a single layer of carbon atoms attached to each other in a honeycomb pattern. It’s about as flat as can be, and when you roll it up you get those little things Science Buzz is so crazy about: carbon nanotubes.
Nanotubes are awesome, and if you click on the link above you can learn about all the awesome things they can do. But graphene…graphene itself may be pretty awesome too. The problem with testing just how awesome graphene is is that it has been exceptionally difficult to a) make a piece of graphene so small that it hasn’t got any of the imperfections that naturally come in large chunks of things, and b) make a device to actually hold the itty bitty graphene well enough to really test the stuff out.
But science has now done those things! Using a tiny sheet of perfect graphene (about 1/100s the width of a human hair) and a really tiny diamond…poker-thing (about 10 billionths of a meter wide), scientists have finally been able to find out exactly how strong graphene is.
So, how strong is it? It’s the strongest! That is to say, the strongest material measured so far. It’s about 200 times the strength of structural steel, or, says Columbia Professor James Hone, “It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.”
This statement, of course, wins professor Hone July’s “Awesome explanation, Scientist” award. That’s a good mental image, and it shows a non-scientist like me how strong graphene is.
So…awesome explanation, Scientist! More of that, please!
Standing wave on 2D surface
Courtesy Oleg_AlexandrovThe mixture of corn starch and water literally stands up in the video below because of standing waves. If you want to try this, place a mixture of corn starch and water on cookie sheet. Hold the cookie sheet down over a bass speaker with some of your fingers. The speaker should be playing music with low frequencies. By varying the distance an position of your fingers you can alter the standing wave patterns within the cookie sheet.
Ancient wall art at Cave at Lascaux, France: Was music used here to soothe the savage breast?
Courtesy Thag the cavemanDo you enjoy hearing your favorite rock group perform their ear-splitting music in a huge cavernous concert arena with flashing colored lights and giant video imagery? Or listening to hymns and spirituals bounce off the vaulted ceiling of a church full of colorful stained-glassed windows and religious icons? Well, I’ve got news for you. It could be you’re attracted to such things by a deep-seated urge to mix echoing music and art; a practice mankind has apparently been doing since the Stone Age. At least according to a new theory coming out of the University of Paris.
Professor Iegor Reznikoff, a specialist in the resonance of building and spaces, theorizes that the most resonant areas of prehistoric-era caves are also the locations where most of the cave wall paintings appear.
Reznikoff stumbled upon the idea by accident.
"The first time I happened to be in a prehistoric cave, I tried the resonance in various parts of the cave, and quickly the question arose: Is there a relation between resonance and locations of the paintings?"
Reznikoff tested his theory inside various well-known French caves where prehistoric art adorned the walls. As he moved about each space, singing and humming, Reznikoff measured where the optimum resonance occurred.
To his surprise, the most resonant areas of each cave were usually spots where most of the cave art was concentrated. And where the resonance was the greatest, the artwork was the densest. In smaller spaces, such as narrow passages between larger cavern rooms where painting would have been difficult, the walls were marked with red lines.
Bear Bone Flute: Neanderthal-aged flute made from bear's femur
Courtesy WikipediaIt occurred to Reznikoff that perhaps a cave’s acoustics was important to prehistoric culture, and may be the reason why primitive musical instruments, such as a Neanderthal flute made out of the femur of a bear, have been found in similar caves.
"The [prehistoric] tribes could make sounds with stones, pieces of wood, different types of drums and so on," Reznikoff says. "Of course the Paleolithic tribes did sing, as do all cultural groups from other regions. That they did so in the caves is shown by my studies. The ritual purpose appears very convincing."
This may explain why the popularity of cavernous concert halls, and large arena music performances, or even subterranean music clubs continue to be popular to this day. Perhaps the ancestral effects of long ago cave rituals still resonate in us.
The shrinking radio: Courtesy Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley.
Courtesy Zettl Research Group
Tiniest radio yet
A fully integrated radio receiver, orders-of-magnitude smaller than any previous radio, was made from a single carbon nanotube (CNT).
When a radio wave of a specific frequency impinges on the nanotube it begins to vibrate vigorously. An electric field applied to the nanotube forces electrons to be emitted from its tip.
This nanotube radio is over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 times smaller than the Philco vacuum tube radio from the 1930s.
The single nanotube serves, at once, as all major components of a radio: antenna, tuner, amplifier, and demodulator. (Berkely physics research)
See and hear a nano radio
Videos from an electron microscope view of the nanotube radio playing two different songs are linked below.
- Good Vibrations (Quicktime, 8.06 MB)
- Star Wars (Quicktime, 8.68 MB)
High Bridge power plant smokestack: Things are gonna be different around here...
Courtesy tboardAt 7:30 on Saturday morning, the 570-foot-tall, 5770-ton smokestack of the High Bridge power plant will come crashing down. Xcel Energy’s new gas-fired plant is complete, and the old coal-burning plant, built in 1923, is being torn down. If you want to watch, try the bluff across the river. (Traffic will be stopped on the High Bridge, Randolph Avenue, and Shepard Road.) And be on time: the stack is expected to fall in about 10 seconds. Even the dust cloud should dissipate quickly.
More info from the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press.
An icon on the skyline
Courtesy edkohler
3D microchip cooling system: H2O in a cooling container (purple) is pumped through spaces between the chip's layers (orange).
Courtesy IBMIBM scientists in Europe announced this week that they’re working on a 3D stacked microchip that will use water running through tiny micropipes as thin as a human hair to transfer heat away from the circuits.
As integrated circuits get smaller and more sophisticated, cooling becomes a real issue, and so far water-cooling seems to be the most efficient solution.
3D chips have their circuits stacked vertically rather than side-by-side. This allows information to travel much more efficiently between them. But the gain in processing speed also generates a tremendous amount of heat. IBM’s solution is to interweave the chip layers with tiny micropipes that will move water throughout the internal workings and carry the heat elsewhere. Silicon and silicon oxide hermetically seal off the tiny 50 microns-wide pipes from other chip components to prevent against an electrical short.
The water-cooled technology is not a new concept – both IBM and Hewlett-Packard have used the liquid to cool some of their mainframe supercomputers. In fact, just this past April, IBM announced a new supercomputer that cools its processors with water. Here's a video about that.
But the idea is moving now to the desktop PC. (Water-cooled technology has been used in some versions of Apple's Power Mac G5 computer but the microchips were standard configuration, and not arrayed in a three-dimensional vertical formation.)
Scientists from both the IBM Zurich Research Lab and the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin are involved in the project, and the company believes the new micropipe technology could appear in products as early as five years from now.
Carbon nanotubes
Courtesy St StevA new study published in the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology shows that longer fibers of carbon nanotubes seem to mimic asbestos when injected into the abdomens of mice. This raises new safety concerns for the up-and-coming technology.
When the mice were injected with asbestos and with various sizes of carbon nanotube samples, the researchers discovered that the longer nanotubes acted in the same way as the asbestos, causing inflammation and lesions. Exposure to asbestos is considered the main cause of a cancer known as mesothelioma.
Just like nanotechnology today, asbestos was once considered a wonder material until its cancer-causing effects on the protective covering (mesothelium) of the body’s organs were realized.
Read more here.
Oil painting by Vincent Van Gogh (Art Institute of Chicago): Did Vincent know his new way of seeing things was made possible by using an ancient medium?
Courtesy Mark RyanOil painting, long considered a European invention dating from the 15th Century, appears now to have originated in Asia and from as early as the middle of the 7th Century.
Tests done on a series of wall murals discovered in caves in the Afghan region of Bamiyan show that the paint used is composed of resin and oil probably extracted from poppies or walnuts.
"This is the earliest clear example of oil paintings in the world, although drying oils were already used by ancient Romans and Egyptians, but only as medicines and cosmetics," said Yoko 
Gathering samples for analysis: Yoko Taniguchi and team members collect paint samples from one of the cave murals at Bamiyan.
Courtesy National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (Japan), who led a team of scientists from the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Tokyo, the Centre of Research and Restoration of the French Museums, and the California-based Getty Conservation Institute.
The caves are located behind the site of the giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 because they were deemed “un-Islamic”. The Taliban also damaged the cave walls.
Close-up of Buddhas on mural
Courtesy National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (Japan)Many of the cave paintings depict the robed Buddha sitting among mythical creatures, and are thought to have been painted by itinerant artisans traveling along the Silk Road, an ancient trade route linking China and the West.
Pigment layers under the microscope
Courtesy National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo (Japan)Samples of the ancient pigment were tested at the European Synchroton Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France. The team used a combination of synchrotron techniques including mass spectrometry and gas chromatography to analyze several paintings from twelve of the caves and also from fragments of the toppled Buddha statues. The paint turned out to be composed of a mix of layered inorganic pigments and organic binders, such as natural resins, gums and protein. The latter indicates the possible use of egg or hide glue. Concentrations of lead carbonates known as lead whites were also detected.
"The use of drying oils in painting clearly shows an understanding of the properties of this material," said Ioanna Kakoulli, a materials archaeologist at the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program in Los Angeles. Although Kakoulli was not directly involved in the analysis, she confirmed it was of some of the earliest identified examples of drying oils used as a binding media in painting.
"Due to political reasons research on paintings in Central Asia is scarce," said team leader Taniguchi. "We were fortunate to get the opportunity from UNESCO, as a part of conservation project for the World Heritage Site Bamiyan, to study these samples."
Results of the study are published in the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.
LINKS
ESRF site story
What is a Synchrotron?
NewKerala.com (India) story
Reuters.com story
National Geographic story
See?: She's obviously wearing her "no kissing hat," but he just doesn't get it.
Courtesy ElijahMaybe I’ll just tag this one under “Oh… really?” or “you don’t say,” but a new study out of the University of California, Davis, has shown that men are much more likely than women to misinterpret messages attempting to “deescalate sexual intimacy.” And, really, not so much “misinterpret” as “understand the complete opposite of the intended message.”
Let’s try a little non-sexual test:
Person 1: “I’d like another piece of cake, please.”
Person 2: “No, there’s no more cake for you.”
Person 1: “Thanks very much, I love cake.”
Okay, what did everybody think was happening? See, as a man, I totally understood “No, there’s no more cake for you” to mean, “One sec, I’m going to go get some more cake for you.” I mean, I came up with the question, and I still got it wrong. But that’s because I think with my tummy.
The Davis study worked a little differently. 30 female and 60 male UC undergrads were given multiple-choice questionnaires, which asked them to select one of with several options for the meaning behind a variety of statements. The statements ranged from relatively indirect (e.g. “I’m seeing someone else”) to pretty direct (“Let’s stop this”).
The results were…um…what’s the opposite of the word “surprising”? Oh, right, unsurprising.
Men, it seems, were much more likely to interpret a statement like “It’s getting late” to mean “It was a good hit, head for second!” while women thought that the message pretty clearly meant “Hands of, Grabby, I’m going to sleep.”
Men were pretty good at understanding very direct message, like “let’s stop this,” but, embarrassingly, were just as likely to interpret “let’s be friends” to mean “keep going” as to mean “stop.” Any easy mistake to make, am I right? Because, you know, everybody knows that “let’s be friends,” for the whole history of humanity, has meant “let’s do it, weirdo.”
A related study showed that women often use indirect signals out of concern that direct messages will offend or anger men. The same study showed that, on the contrary, most men accepted direct resistance signals easily and without negative reactions.
So, ladies, remember to be direct. Even if it seems obvious. And guys, remember, no always means no.
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