Fwd: Left and Right turns for light

'How can a beam of light tell the difference between left and right? Tiny particles have now been coupled to a glass fiber. The particles emit light into the fiber in such a way that it does not travel in both directions, as one would expect. Instead, the light can be directed either to the left or to the right. This has become possible by employing a remarkable physical effect – the spin-orbit coupling of light. This new kind of optical switch has the potential to revolutionize nanophotonics.'

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141006084915.htm

 

Looks like a Diode for light

 

--
Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Fwd: Affordable Fusion

'Fusion energy almost sounds too good to be true -- zero greenhouse gas emissions, no long-lived radioactive waste, a nearly unlimited fuel supply.

 

Perhaps the biggest roadblock to adopting fusion energy is that the economics haven't penciled out. Fusion power designs aren't cheap enough to outperform systems that use fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas.

 

University of Washington engineers hope to change that. They have designed a concept for a fusion reactor that, when scaled up to the size of a large electrical power plant, would rival costs for a new coal-fired plant with similar electrical output.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141008131156.htm

Fwd: Cerebellum

'A new study published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 2 could rewrite the story of ape and human brain evolution. While the neocortex of the brain has been called "the crowning achievement of evolution and the biological substrate of human mental prowess," newly reported evolutionary rate comparisons show that the cerebellum expanded up to six times faster than anticipated throughout the evolution of apes, including humans.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141002123629.htm

 

Why the NSA Wants a Quantum Computer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPY4CklJbzY

This Physicist Says She Has Proof Black Holes Simply Don't Exist

http://huffpost.com/us/entry/5885940

The problem is that we have pretty good evidence that black holes do
exist. If they don't exist then we have some explaining to do.

Years ago I saw how a few scientific dissenters theorized that black
holes were really just neutron stars, which is kind of like "black
hole-lite". However neutron stars couldn't account for the evidence
of billion solar mass black holes at the center of every galaxy.

John Coffey

Turning Algae into oil

'We think it is a really elegant solution," said Matt Atwood, the chief executive. At its heart is a "hydrothermal liquefaction" system that heats the algae and other solids in the sewage to more than 550 degrees Fahrenheit, at 3,000 pounds per square inch, turning out a liquid that resembles crude oil from a well.

 

The company sent the liquid to Auburn University, where scientists added hydrogen (a common step in oil refining) to produce diesel fuel. An independent laboratory, Intertek, confirmed that the diesel fuel met industry specifications. The thermal processing has caught the attention of independent scientists. The Department of Energy recently awarded a $4 million grant to a partnership led by SRI International for further work on Algae Systems' hydrothermal processing system…

 

Some companies have tried gene-altered algae, but Algae Systems uses naturally occurring forms drawn from the bay. Whichever strain flourishes in the bags is what the company uses. "We call it the Hunger Games," Mr. Atwood said.

 

The early results were promising enough for IHI, a Japanese conglomerate, to invest $15 million.'

  

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/science/not-letting-algae-just-float-around.html?_r=0

 

India/Mars

'This is a mission that has been budgeted at 4.5bn rupees ($74m), which, by Western standards, is staggeringly cheap.

 

The American Maven orbiter that arrived at the Red Planet on Monday is costing almost 10 times as much.

 

Back in June, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even quipped that India's real-life Martian adventure was costing less than the make-believe Hollywood film Gravity.'

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29341850

 

Newlight Technologies is turning carbon into plastic

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/innovationnation/2014/09/23/plastic-made-from-air.cnnmoney/index.html?iid=GM

Fwd: Water vapor exoplanet

'Astronomers have detected water vapour in the atmosphere of a planet that orbits a star far beyond our solar system.

 

Observations of the Neptune-sized planet, which lies 120 light years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus, revealed that its atmosphere was mostly hydrogen with around 25% made up from water vapour.

 

Until now, researchers have been frustrated in their efforts to study the atmospheres of planets much smaller than Jupiter because their skies were thick with clouds. The problem was so persistent that astronomers had begun to think that all warm, small planets formed with substantial cloud cover.

 

But writing in the journal Nature, scientists in the US describe how they found a Neptune-sized planet with cloud-free skies, enabling them to make detailed measurements of a small planet's atmosphere for the first time.

 

The planet, named HAT-P-11b, is about four times the diameter of Earth. It orbits so close to its star that surface temperatures reach more than 600C and a year passes in five Earth days. Like our own Neptune, the planet lacks a rocky surface – it's a ball of gas – and is thought to be lifeless'

 

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/24/water-small-warm-planet-atmosphere

Phases of Water

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~hsg/363/table-images/water-phase-diagram.html

Liquid Universe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RfU5N5m89I

Why Are Things Cute?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0zConOPZ8Y

25 Cool And Absolutely Extraordinary Elephant Facts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieMyVKXSd7k

Skip Morrow's answer to Outer Space: Can other animals see space and the stars? - Quora

http://www.quora.com/Outer-Space-1/Can-other-animals-see-space-and-the-stars/answer/Skip-Morrow

Quantum Theory - Full Documentary HD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBrsWPCp_rs

Lithium in Drinking Water

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should-we-all-take-a-bit-of-lithium.html

This is too good not to share.

This shows the scale of all objects in the Universe from the very smallest to the very largest, which is the Universe itself.

There is a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen.  Slide the dot left or right to zoom in or out.  It is also interesting to click on objects to get more information.

http://htwins.net/scale2/

Fwd: Diabetes

'Researchers have developed a way to use a laser to measure people's blood sugar, and, with more work to shrink the laser system to a portable size, the technique could allow diabetics to check their condition without pricking themselves to draw blood. In a new article, the researchers describe how they measured blood sugar by directing their specialized laser at a person's palm.'

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140821141610.htm

... We live in interesting times.

 

Fwd: IBM brain-like processor

'This includes an ambitious project inside tech giant IBM, and today,
Big Blue released a research paper describing the latest fruits of
these labors. With this paper, published in the academic journal
Science, the company unveils what it calls TrueNorth, a custom-made
"brain-like" chip that builds on a simpler experimental system the
company released in 2011.

TrueNorth comes packed with 4,096 processor cores, and it mimics one
million human neurons and 256 million synapses, two of the fundamental
biological building blocks that make up the human brain. IBM calls
these "spiking neurons." What that means, essentially, is that the
chip can encode data as patterns of pulses, which is similar to one
of the many ways neuroscientists think the brain stores information.'

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/ibm-unveils-a-brain-like-chip-with-4000-processor-cores/?mbid=social_twitter

A New Thruster Pushes Against Virtual Particles! ...or is a Lab Error

http://space.io9.com/a-new-thruster-pushes-against-virtual-particles-or-1615361369

ALS

Although respiratory support can ease problems with breathing and prolong survival, it does not affect the progression of ALS. Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure, usually within three to five years from the onset of symptoms. The median survival time from onset to death is around 39 months, and only 4% survive longer than 10 years. Physicist Stephen Hawking has lived with the disease for more than 50 years, though he is an unusual case.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic_lateral_sclerosis

 

Fwd: Aging

'There's a good reason people over 60 are not donor candidates for
bone marrow transplantation. The immune system ages and weakens with
time, making the elderly prone to life-threatening infection and other
maladies, and a UC San Francisco research team now has discovered a
reason why.


"We have found the cellular mechanism responsible for the inability of
blood-forming cells to maintain blood production over time in an old
organism, and have identified molecular defects that could be restored
for rejuvenation therapies," said Emmanuelle Passegué, PhD, a
professor of medicine and a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center
of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF. Passegué, an
expert on the stem cells that give rise to the blood and immune
system, led a team that published the new findings online July 30,
2014 in the journal Nature.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uoc--kta073014.php

Alzheimer's

'Researchers have discovered a new drug compound that reverses the brain deficits of Alzheimer's disease in an animal model. The compound, TC-2153, inhibits the negative effects of a protein called STtriatal-Enriched tyrosine Phosphatase (STEP), which is key to regulating learning and memory.'

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140805150832.htm

 

Fwd: Steam

'A new material structure developed at MIT generates steam by soaking up the sun. The structure -- a layer of graphite flakes and an underlying carbon foam -- is a porous, insulating material structure that floats on water. When sunlight hits the structure's surface, it creates a hotspot in the graphite, drawing water up through the material's pores, where it evaporates as steam.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140724213957.htm

Fwd: Cancer Test

'A simple blood test that can be used to diagnose whether people have cancer or not has been devised by researchers. The test will enable doctors to rule out cancer in patients presenting with certain symptoms, saving time and preventing costly and unnecessary invasive procedures such as colonoscopies and biopsies being carried out. Alternatively, it could be a useful aid for investigating patients who are suspected of having a cancer that is currently hard to diagnose.'

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140728094410.htm

 

15 Times World War 3 Nearly Started

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJwwurU-HqM

25 Alarming Reasons That Sitting Down All Day (AKA Your Office Job) Is Killing You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMQWqW4r7xo

25 Ways The World Around You Isn't What You Think It Is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vFR0yBm8x0

YOU LIVE IN THE PAST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTOODPf-iuc

This is not yellow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3unPcJDbCc