Friday, May 16, 2014
Sunday, May 4, 2014
Monday, April 28, 2014
Graphene
The American Chemical Society said in 2012 that graphene was discovered to be 200 times stronger than steel and so thin that a single ounce of it could cover 28 football fields. Chinese scientists have created a graphene aerogel, an ultralight material derived from a gel, that is one-seventh the weight of air. A cubic inch of the material could balance on one blade of grass. "Graphene is one of the few materials in the world that is transparent, conductive and flexible — all at the same time," said Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan, a lecturer in nanomaterials at the University of Manchester. "All of these properties together are extremely rare to find in one material."
So what do you do with graphene? Physicists and researchers say that we will soon be able to make electronics that are thinner, faster and cheaper than anything based on silicon, with the option of making them clear and flexible. Long-lasting batteries that can be submerged in water are another possibility In 2011, researchers at Northwestern University built a battery that incorporated graphene and silicon, which the university said could lead to a cellphone that "stayed charged for more than a week and recharged in just 15 minutes." In 2012, the American Chemical Society said that advancements in graphene were leading to touch-screen electronics that "could make cellphones as thin as a piece of paper and foldable enough to slip into a pocket."'
http://main.omanobserver.om/?p=74412
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
Fwd: Herbivores
'New research demonstrates how carnivores transitioned into herbivores for the first time on land. Previously unknown, the 300-million-year old fossilized juvenile skeleton of Eocasea martini is less than 20 cm long. Found in Kansas, it consists of a partial skull, most of the vertebral column, the pelvis and a hind limb. By comparing the skeletal anatomy of related animals, scientists discovered that Eocasea martini belonged to the caseid branch of the group Synapsid. This group, which includes early terrestrial herbivores and large top predators, ultimately evolved into modern living mammals. Eocasea lived nearly 80 million years before the age of dinosaurs.'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140416172243.htm
Fwd: Clone
'In a cloning first, scientists create stem cells from adults
Scientists have moved a step closer to the goal of creating stem cells perfectly matched to a patient's DNA in order to treat diseases, they announced on Thursday, creating patient-specific cell lines out of the skin cells of two adult men.
The advance, described online in the journal Cell Stem Cell, is the first time researchers have achieved "therapeutic cloning" of adults. Technically called somatic-cell nuclear transfer, therapeutic cloning means producing embryonic cells genetically identical to a donor, usually for the purpose of using those cells to treat disease.
But nuclear transfer is also the first step in reproductive cloning, or producing a genetic duplicate of someone - a technique that has sparked controversy since the 1997 announcement that it was used to create Dolly, the clone of a ewe. In 2005, the United Nations called on countries to ban it, and the United States prohibits the use of federal funds for either reproductive or therapeutic cloning.
The new study was funded by a foundation and the South Korean government.
If confirmed by other labs, it could prove significant because many illnesses that might one day be treated with stem cells, such as heart failure and vision loss, primarily affect adults. Patient-specific stem cells would have to be created from older cells, not infant or fetal ones. That now looks possible, though far from easy: Out of 39 tries, the scientists created stem cells only once for each donor.'
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Friday, April 11, 2014
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Big Bang Discovery Opens Doors to the "Multiverse"
To cosmologists, our universe looks disturbingly fine-tuned for life. Without its Goldilocks-perfect alignment of the physical constants—everything from the strength of the force attaching electrons to atoms to the relative weakness of gravity—planets and suns, biochemistry, and life itself would be impossible...
If ours was the only cosmos spawned by a Big Bang, these life-friendly properties would seem impossibly unlikely. But in a multiverse containing zillions of universes, a small number of life-friendly ones would arise by chance—and we could just happen to reside in one of them.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140318-multiverse-inflation-big-bang-science-space/NASA: Earth JUST dodged comms-killing SOLAR BLAST in 2012
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03/19/nasa_scopes_show_how_earth_missed_devastating_solar_storm_by_nine_days_in_2012/
Friday, March 14, 2014
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
The Original Sin of Global Warming
That’s a lesson I learned from Carl Sagan, and while he had some role in launching the current global warming orthodoxy, I suspect he would be appalled at the unscientific fanaticism with which it is now enforced. Consider Sagan’s treatment of Immanuel Velikovsky, whose crackpot theories about the development of the solar system enjoyed a brief vogue in the middle of the 20th century. After dissecting the various absurdities of Velikovsky’s theory, Sagan offered this conclusion:
The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that many of his idea were wrong or silly or in gross contradiction to the facts. Rather, the worst aspect is that some scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s ideas. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Articles: Climate Consensus Con Game
"If the science were as certain as climate activists pretend, then there would be precisely one climate model, and it would be in agreement with measured data. As it happens, climate modelers have constructed literally dozens of climate models. What they all have in common is a failure to represent reality, and a failure to agree with the other models. As the models have increasingly diverged from the data, the climate clique have nevertheless grown increasingly confident -- from cocky in 2001 (66% certainty in IPCC's Third Assessment Report) to downright arrogant in 2013 (95% certainty in the Fifth Assessment Report)."
Climate activists seem to embrace faith and ideology -- and are no longer interested in facts.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Health Matters: Your craving may be your addiction - Opinion - WKU Herald
When you first take a bite of sugary cereal, your taste receptors that respond to sweetness, found at the tip of your tongue, send a signal to the portion of your brain called the cerebral cortex.
This signal activates ‘the reward system’ and causes you to want to take another bite. Excessive activation of this reward system, Dr. Avena suggests, can cause ‘loss of control, craving and intolerance to sugar.’
Monday, February 17, 2014
Brilliant deduction
appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he
was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of
gravitation came into his mind. "why should that apple always descend
perpendicularly to the ground," thought he to him self: occasion'd by
the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: "why should
it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre?
assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a
drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter
of the earth must be in the earths centre, not in any side of the
earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the
centre. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its
quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth
draws the apple."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton