Stories tagged Structure of Matter
This isn't me: It's some other handsome devil.
Courtesy Max SparberIt’s true! And these facial scars aren’t from chicken pox or acne, no sir. Do you need me to provide a description of each scar and what it’s from? No, it’s no problem at all! Really. Here:
The parallel lines on my left cheek and jaw line: I call them “The Empire Builder” and they’re from the time a tiger bit me in the face. The tiger and I were wrestling, and things got serious when the beast realized that it was losing.
The two small circles on my right cheek: These are from getting shot by the vice-president. Which vice-president? Dan Quayle. He shot me twice in the mouf with a handgun. We were wresting, and things got serious… It was only a .22, though, so I don’t hold it against him. The man has enough problems.
The cheese-grater chin: I don’t know what it’s from, and that’s why I call it “Mr. E.” All I know is that I woke up tied to a snowmobile, underwater, with a sore chin. When I broke the surface, I was surprised to find myself in the Stillwater Junior High School swimming pool.
The lightning bolt running over the right side of my mouth: I call this one “The Harry Potter.” It’s from the other time a tiger bit me in the face.
So… What do y’all think? Pretty attractive, am I right?
Think about your answer carefully—you wouldn’t want to imply that the journal Personality and Individual Differences is a liar.
See, a new study published in the journal seems to indicate that women are attracted to men with facial scars, at least for short-term relationships. The best scars, too, aren’t from surgery or a scarring skin condition; the scars women in the study found the most attractive appeared to have been inflicted through violence of some kind.
The scientists behind the study (and it wasn’t mentioned as it whether or not they had scarred faces) believed that the scars implied that a potential mate was more aggressive, or had a greater risk taking personality. The scars could also suggest “good genes or a strong immune system.” So your scarred guy could have some nice, powerful genetic material, but may not necessarily be the type you want to pair up with for a long-term relationship.
Tags : While electronic devices double their capacity every 18 months or so, battery capacity per volume are lucky to double every ten years. A new breakthrough by materials scientists at MIT promises to drastically decrease the size of batteries. In a battery, only the surfaces of the electrodes create electricity. The key to making lighter batteries is to make lots of surfaces but minimize the material under the surface - in other words make the electrodes as thin as possible.
Living viruses manufacture paper thin batteries
MIT scientists, professors Angela Belcher, Paula Hammond and Yet-Ming Chiang have used genetically engineered living viruses to assemble thin-film nanowires as the anodes and cathodes of a flexible "battery wrap" only 100 nanometers thick. The virus is a derivative the M13 bacteriophage. It is 6 x 880 nanometers in size.
Three dips will do it
The genetically engineered battery wrap is fabricated by dipping a scaffold into three beakers. The first dip picks up a layer of polyelectrolyte which can be as thin as 100 nanometers. The second dip is into a soup of the 6 x 880 nm viruses. The viruses, which are negatively charged, stick to to the positively charged scaffold kind of like the bristles on a hair brush. These viruses, when dipped into third solution, are genetically engineered to pull cobalt-oxide and gold ions onto their surfaces.
After that, the polyelectrolyte is dried out, and the 6-nm-diameter viruses dehydrate, becoming harmlessly entombed inside a sealed compartment of inorganic cobalt and gold.
"Potentially, when we grow a lithium layer on the other side of the polyelectrolyte for the other cathode, we could use this material to make batteries as thin as 100 nm,"
Paper thin batteries eliminate need for battery compartment
Thousands of these battery layers could be stacked on top of each other and still be paper thin. Such a battery could store two or three times more energy for its size and weight than conventional batteries today. Its "wrapability" would also allow the batteries to be placed around objects rather than requiring storage compartments.
Source:Living viruses create flexible battery film EE Times
A gypsum crystal: This crystal, less than a foot tall, can still focus a tremendous amount of chi. Think about what a 36-footer could do!
Courtesy Tjflex2You heard it here first, y’all (unless you heard it somewhere else first): there’s a cave 1000 feet below the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico, full of crystals dozens of feet long, and thousands of pounds in weight. At least one of the crystals, made of gypsum, is 36 feet long, and weighs over 55 tons. Think of all the powerful spiritual energy there!
The massive crystals grew so large thanks to the 138-degree, mineral-rich water that used to flow through the cave. This mineral soup was perfect for making mega crystals, but lead to the deaths of dozens of New Age crystal prospectors and treasure seeking paladins. (This is an assumption based on my somewhat limited knowledge of crystals and caves.)
The caves were uncovered by miners excavating a new tunnel for a lead and silver mine in the Naica mountain. This happened back in 2000, but I only read about it today, because a story on it will appear (or appears) in the November issue of National Geographic. (Check out those links, by the way—they have pictures, and the caves do look awesome.)
The Playstation of the future
in Structure of Matter, Energy Transformations, Scientific Enterprise, and Human Organism
A beta tester tries out the "smuggle" function: It still has a few kinks to be worked out.
Courtesy Chewy ChaCheck it out y’all: this could be the next Playstation Portable!
That model isn’t exactly in production yet, though—it’s a conceptual design of what the next PSP system could be, based on existing technology (or technology that will be practical within a few years). Its designer, Tai Chiem, is exploring how the technology could be implemented in multiple portable electronic devices, including gaming systems.
For those of you unable or unwilling to click on the link above, the new PSP concept is based on a large, flexible screen that can roll up around the cylindrical controller (which looks to be about the same size and shape as a cigar case). Controls would be on the face of the cylinder, and stereo speakers would occupy each end. The screen, when unrolled, would be made stiff by a small electrical charge.
The screen is based on organic light emitting diode technology. The difference from normal LED tech is that the light emitting layers of OLEDs are based on organic compounds. A variety of compounds, which emit different colored light when subjected to electrical current, are deposited on a polymer surface in a similar way to ink being deposited on paper during the printing process. Although there is some concern over the degradation of the light emitting compounds over time, because OLEDs emit light themselves, they don’t need a backlight like LCD screens, and they require less power to run. OLED screens are already being manufactured by Sony, and have been used in demonstrations of flexible display screens.
Because the controls of this future PSP don’t exactly look comfortable to handle, I’m assuming that the impetus of the design was primarily ease of smuggling. You wouldn’t want to try to sneak a whole crate of these anywhere, but just one of them, I’m guessing, would fit pretty well in any one of a number of common smuggling compartments. The location of the speakers on each end could lend itself to some hilarious sound effects too. The potential for a stray electric charge to erect the screen, however, is disturbing. It could make things tremendously uncomfortable for the smuggler, and put an end to any sneakiness previously underway.
What do y’all think? Cool technology for portable gaming? Or is this going in the wrong direction?
Buckypaper is made out of carbon nanotubes
A carbon nanotube composite material called buckypaper promises to be10 times lighter than steel but up to 500 times stronger. Florida Advanced Center for Composite Technologies (FAC2T) under the direction of Ben Wang, is working to develop real-world applications for this super material.
"The U.S. military has shown a keen interest in the military applications of Wang's research; in fact, the Army Research Lab recently awarded FAC2T a $2.5-million grant, while the Air Force Office of Scientific Research awarded $1.2 million." BuckyPaper.com
Buckypaper is a true wonder material
Buckypaper will most likely first be used in military aircraft and cruise missiles. Its electrical conductivity would provide protection from lightning and electromagnetic interference. When the cost of producing buckypaper comes down its strength to weight ratio will help make everything lighter and stronger. Its ability to dissipate heat will also be useful in computer circuits.
Learn more about buckypaper
The Future of Things.com Buckypaper – Nanotubes on Steroids
Research in Review Magazine, Florida State University: Paper Promise
Garrett Lisi uses math to describe everything
E8: the largest and most complex of the exceptional simple Lie algebras
Courtesy Claudio Rocchini Surfer dude, Garrett Lisi lives in his van on a beach in Maui. Using a type of algebra he calls E8, Garrett has developed an exceptionally simple theory of everything -- a grand unified theory that explains all the elementary particles, as well as gravity. (link to pdf of paper found below)
Lisi describes how gravity, the standard model bosons, and three generations of fermions can be unified as parts of an E8 superconnection. This unified field theory attempts to describe all fundamental interactions that physicists have observed in nature, and stands as a possible theory of everything, unifying Albert Einstein's general relativity with the standard model of particle physics.
"I think the universe is pure geometry - basically, a beautiful shape twisting and dancing over space-time. Since E8 is perhaps the most beautiful structure in mathematics, it is very satisfying that nature appears to have chosen this geometry."
"This is an 'all or nothing' kind of theory -- meaning it's going to end up agreeing with and predicting damn near everything, or it's wrong. At this stage of development, it could go either way." Garrett Lisi
This video explains how mathematics predicts reality
Warning, even though I have a degree in physics education, the material presented was way over my head. I will watch it again though, because it does give me a glimpse of how mathematics can lead to understanding, perhaps even someday making possible something like electrogravity. Click this link if the video below does not work
Learn more
Garrett Lisi forum frequently asked personal questions
Garrett Lisi forum frequently asked questions about E8 and Theory of Everything
31 page paper (pdf) An exceptionally simple theory of everything
Bulletproof woman ignored by biased media
in Life Science, Structure of Matter, Flow of Matter and Energy, and Human Organism
They stop bullets: But only—ONLY—after the bullets have had a go at Croatian supercheek.
Courtesy chriskeefeThe news item goes thusly: a Croatian couple gets on the wrong side of a gunfight (the middle side) and is fired upon. A bullet ricochets off the woman’s cheek, and hits her husband in the mouth, striking his false teeth. The man spits out the bullet, terrifying his attacker, who makes like a banana and splits. The couple, uninjured, makes major news outlets. Headline: “Man catches bullet in teeth.”
Indeed, the guy sort of did catch a bullet in the teeth. And I won’t argue that that isn’t kind of awesome, but the local police believe that things worked out so swimmingly for the false-toothed man because the bullet lost so much of its speed after hitting his wife in the cheek. Remember, the woman was uninjured…
What are Croatian women made of? There’s the real story: Bullet bounces harmlessly off woman’s face.
So… Science blog, science blog… Well, we have firearms physics and ballistics in general, as well as material sciences. The composition of the teeth, of course, is relevant, but also what could that cheek be made of that it could repel a bullet so well? I initially assumed that she might be a Kevlar woman, but I believe Kevlar is intended to absorb the force of a projectile to bring it to a stop, and I’m not sure if Kevlar ricochets are common. The cheek may be composed of a similarly impenetrable, yet more bouncy, material.
While we’re here, let us consider this compilation of high-speed footage of various objects being shot. Note that none of the objects are cheeks or teeth, as the results are apparently much less dramatic.
What on earth am I supposed to do with this thing?: A pterosaur considers his situation.
Courtesy John ConwayPaleontology, y’all, paleontology. We’ve got these bones, these fossilized bones. And they’re nice bones, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes they leave a little to be desired when it comes to reconstructing the nitty gritty and sticky details of what living dinosaurs (and pterosaurs, ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, therapsids, etc) were actually like. A skeleton can give us a good idea of a creature’s general shape; it can show where the muscles went (more or less), what sort of food it ate, how it probably moved—that kind of thing. But how did they behave? What color were they? Exactly how strong were they? There are a whole slew of questions that get to be a little tricky.
So, how do paleontologists go about answering these questions? They get creative, they study all the tiniest details of the fossils, and, sometimes, they look to living animals for analogy—that is to say, if an animal alive today that lives in a similar environment to that of an extinct animal, and has a similar body type to the extinct animal, you might be able to base knowledge of the extinct animal on what you know of the living animal.
It’s a valuable avenue of study, but dinosaurs and their ilk were pretty different, after all, so how far do you think can we take analogies to living creatures?
And now on to the news item.
A Japanese researcher has opened up his sass-box and gotten all up in the faces of paleontologists around the world. Pterosaur specialist paleontologists are particularly fired up, and they’re a dangerous bunch. “Peer review” among pterosaur specialists, as I understand it, involves switchblades, and the majority of the community sports eye-patches.
This scientist, Katsufumi Sato of the University of Tokyo, is saying that pterosaurs (all of the huge extinct flying reptiles) probably maybe couldn’t actually, you know… fly.
Oh no you di’en’t!
Says Sato: Yes, yes I did. Specifically, what the scientist did was place accelerometers on the wings of a couple dozen sea birds on the Crozet Islands. The accelerometers measured, more or less, the flapping force and speed of the birds’ wings.
Among the birds studied were wandering albatrosses, which have the largest wingspans of any living birds. Large seabirds like this have often been used as analogies for pterosaurs for their somewhat similar body shapes. Many pterosaurs probably lived in a similar habitat to modern seabirds as well.
Albatrosses fly by riding shifting wind currents, and by flapping their wings when the wind isn’t suitable, or is absent entirely. Sato found that the seabirds he studied have two flapping speeds, a faster speed for taking off, and a slower speed for staying aloft in the absence of wind. He also noticed that, as this flapping speed is limited by the birds’ strength, it decreases in heavier birds with longer wings.
According to the calculations Sato based off of this data, birds (or pterosaurs) weighing more than about 90 pounds would be unable to fly without using wind currents—they simply wouldn’t be able to flap their wings fast enough to stay in the air. There were certainly pterosaurs that size and much smaller, but a lot of flying reptiles were probably a great deal larger than that (a very conservative estimate for the quetzalcoatlus, for example, would have it weighing around 220 pounds).
The article I read on this research doesn’t get into Sato’s hypothesis much more than that, but I’d assume that this means that larger pterosaurs would then also be unable to take off from anywhere other than, say, a cliff face. I wonder if the implication is also that they wouldn’t be doing any flying at all; that medium to large pterosaurs wouldn’t even be gliding on wind currents because, at some point, they’d need to gain some altitude on their own steam.
But, whatever the specifics, them’s fightin’ words, and pterosaur specialists the world over are no doubt sharpening their boot-spikes, and wrapping their fists in chains.
Is it a valid analogy? Maaaaybeeee… But I’m betting against it. There have been some interesting theories lately about how the largest of the pterosaurs may not have flown as much as we used to think, but they don’t imply that they couldn’t fly at all. In fact, the study I’m thinking of would further distance pterosaurs from large seabirds in terms of behavior and their ecological niches (making any analogies a little less apt).
Other scientists argue that in addition to anatomical and physiological differences that should be considered, the atmosphere of the Mesozoic was, on the whole, somewhat denser, and had higher concentrations of oxygen—factors that would have allowed flight for larger, heavier animals. Actually, I recommend checking out the discussion following the article. There are a bunch of explanations of how pterosaurs could have flown, despite what this study suggests. But, if you do go, bring your knives—they’re an angry bunch.
Could it be?: Precious ambergris? Or just beach cheese.
Courtesy saraeOh, Fergie, you’ve ruined my life. And music.
Anyway, New Zealand seems to be a little grosser these days. Several huge, greasy “lumps” have been found on the shores of the North Island in the last week, leaving locals confused, disgusted, and hopeful that a fortune in whale puke is right around the corner. (This may be the default feeling for kiwis, but I don’t follow the news there enough to say for sure.)
The 1000-pound lumps are whitish, lard-like, and a little smelly. The dogs of the beachcombers who first discovered the objects were reportedly reluctant to touch or eat the material, which is a strange thing for a dog that has found something on the beach.
Locals were quick to assume that the lumps could be precious ambergris, highly valuable whale vomit used in cosmetics, and were seen hacking chunks off of the mystery blobs. Their retirements, they reckoned, would be full of featherbeds and yams. (Again, I’m sorry, I just don’t know what New Zealanders are into.)
Ambergris’ name comes from the French for “grey amber” (as opposed to “brown amber,” fossilized tree sap), and is in fact, for those of you behind on your cetology, sperm whale puke. Sperm whales, like the rest of us, love to puke. And it’s important that your average sperm whale gets a good puke in now and again to eject any sand or stones they might have taken in over the course of… you know, I don’t really understand sperm whales any more than New Zealanders. But somehow they get grit in them, and they regularly and easily hurl it out. It seems, however, that some materials, like the beaks of cuttlefish and squid, are particularly irritating to whale guts, and something different happens—a special puke. It’s not known if the ambrein (the fragrant main ingredient in ambergris) comes from the beaks themselves, or if the chemical comes from the whale’s digestive process acting on the offending materials, but eventually a big ball of pasty goo is formed inside the whale, ready to be puked out. The ambergris initially smells pretty foul, but after floating around for a while, and being hardened and broken down by sunlight, it becomes a very complex and valuable material. Depending on the quality, it can fetch up to $15,000 per kg from perfume makers, to be used as a high-quality fixative.
Giant squids come in, I like to think, as an appropriate source for this bizarre, valuable material. Sperm whales are, after all, the prime predators of the giant squid, and giant squid have awfully big, gut-irritating beaks. It’s a link I like to make.
Anyhow, a lot of New Zealanders were set on making their fortune with this so-called whale puke. Ambergris, however, is said to burn with a blue flame when lit, and give off a pleasant aroma. When the mystery material was subjected to this test “it just melted and really stank.” Ooh. Ouch.
After this revelation, guesses on the material compositions were downgraded from ambergris to lard or cheese—“possibly brie.” The lumps are, it should be noted, about the size and shape of 44-gallon drums, which should have been a tip-off. But whatever.
Genitals genitals genitals! Also: spiders and stuff.
in Life Science, Structure of Matter, Scientific Inquiry, Interdependence of Life, and Human Organism
A brown recluse: What do you suppose it's thinking about? I think I know.
Courtesy Mean and PinchyYou know what we love? Genitals. And I think you know which brand I’m talking about: the funny kind. And we just can’t get them out of our minds!
Take, for instance, some new research on spider venom. In addition to its long-established killing stuff properties, it turns out that some spider venom contains compounds that could aide the development of treatments for health issues ranging from arthritis to erectile dysfunction.
Whoa! Did I just type what I think I typed? “Erectile”? “Erectile dysfunction”? Whoa ho ho ho! Ha ha ha! Erectile dysfunction! That means that, you know, the elevator isn’t reaching the top floor! That, like, junk isn’t… Ha ha! Man, I love spiders! They are hilarious! Let’s see where else this research into comedy gold will take us.
It seems that some scientists at Cornell University have developed a new way of analyzing the molecular makeup of spider venom. Using “nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy,” the scientists were able to obtain detailed information on the molecular composition of spider venom, and, especially exciting, found entirely new molecules that had been overlooked in previous analysis of venom. The venom of the brown recluse spider, in particular, yielded some remarkable compounds.
“Remarkable compounds”? What is this? Get back to the erectile dysfunction! What happened to that stuff?
Hiding behind some larger molecules, the brown recluse venom was found to have some very small and interesting molecules called “sulfated nucleosides.” These molecules are quite similar to RNA, a basic component of our genetic material. Studying the sulfated nucleosides could lead to a better understanding of how brown recluse venom works.
Works at what? Curing impotence? Something like that? Gosh, it actually seems like this research was mostly about a new method of chemical analysis. But remember the part about, you know, wieners? Ah ha ha! Good stuff. Love it! In fact, the headline of any article about this research should focus on that incidental piece of information.
You’re welcome, scientists. We weren’t interested in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, so we changed the focus a little. Now you’ve given us what we want. (Genitals.)
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