Pseudo Science and Real Discovery

Samsung Smart Window

2012-01-15T01:03:00.002+08:00

Water Has Memory

2011-12-21T00:47:00.001+08:00

Broadstar Wind Systems

2011-12-21T00:39:00.002+08:00

Amazing Material Withstands 7k Degree OxyAcetylene Torch To Hand!!

2011-12-18T14:06:00.001+08:00

The Future Of Glass & Screens

2011-12-08T20:11:00.000+08:00

Tesla the lost wizard

2011-11-22T00:25:00.001+08:00

5 Energy Crisis Solutions Clearly Designed by a Supervillain

2011-11-04T08:55:00.003+08:00

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As humanity is getting increasingly desperate for power sources, it's time to think outside the box, even if that means turning to methods that would previously have only been employed by supervillains. Who thinks outside the box more than they do? Sure, these potential power sources we're tapping into would normally be considered ridiculous, cartoony or just plain evil. But are they worse than coal?

#5. A Battery That Runs Off of Human Blood

After trying for years to perfect a way to get power from stealing people's souls and then, when that didn't work, their tears, mad scientists have finally settled on getting electricity from human blood.

Scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have invented a battery that is strong, flexible and, yes, powered by blood. And it even looks like a curled up old scab!

howstuffworks
We didn't have to resist the urge to eat it, because we were never that kid.

This is actually just the latest step in a series of batteries called bio-batteries. They can run off of a number of bodily fluids, like sweat, urine or -- ah, there it is -- tears. So they can get power from all of the bodily fluids humans release in response to extreme terror. It's really a fear-powered battery, we guess. Hey, Monsters, Inc. was real!

Oh, also, it has to be implanted under the skin to work.

Even if it looks like a hunk of charred skin from a hot dog, it's actually an amazingly advanced little device. It has the texture of paper, but it draws electrolytes from your fluids and channels them through nanotech carbon tubes to create a usable energy supply.

newscientist
Still, it's cooler than the alternative, which uses blood-feeding yeast.

The goal is not, apparently, to make a huge one and power it with a lake of blood from conquered human victims, but rather to help power medical implants. The papery nature of the batteries means they could be printed in sheets and easily cut to the size and shape needed for the patient. Then, once the thing is drawing juice from your natural fluids, you don't have to worry about changing the battery. It also seems like you could replace the mat in a UFC ring with this stuff and power the whole stadium with the sweat and blood from fighters, but we haven't heard of any prototypes for that yet.

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Apparently broken teeth short circuit the whole thing.

By the way, as creepy as this seems, it's still less hardcore than the old way of powering devices like pacemakers: they used to use nuclear power. They would have a little hunk of plutonium inside the battery, and as it decayed, it released enough heat to power the device. Whenever a patient passed away, they'd have to ship her freaking pacemaker to Los Alamos to safely dispose of the nuclear material inside.

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"Should you worry about the radioactivity? I wouldn't say so. Not with a heart like that."

#4. Harvesting Human Body Heat

Whatever else you may think about The Matrix, you have to admit there weren't all that many useful lessons to be learned (too many of us have found out that dodging bullets is WAY harder than the movie makes it look, for instance). But in Sweden, a group of engineers watched it and said, "Hey, that's right! We should harvest human body heat for our own needs! Thanks, movie!"

Turns out dystopian sci-fi is just an elaborate instruction booklet.

They don't need to round up crowds of people and shove them into a power plant, however -- the people do it themselves. The Stockholm Central Station is a huge train station that acts as a hub for travel all over Sweden, and some 250,000 people pass through it every single day. And, as we learned from The Matrix, the human body generates about 400 BTUs of heat an hour, or 117 watts.

Multiply that by a quarter of a million people and you have a building that stays hot -- too hot -- even in frigid Stockholm.

Wikipedia
The lights are powered by smug passengers who got on the train you just missed.

So instead of just opening a window and wasting all of that energy, they installed heat converters in the ventilation system that would suck all of that extra body heat from the air, use it to heat water, and then send it across the street to heat an office building. We're assuming you can't just pump the air directly over there because it would smell like sweaty train travelers and Swedish hobos.

It worked; it wound up knocking 25 percent off the other building's heating bill. The best part? There's no reason that this method couldn't be used elsewhere. Energy costs are soaring, and it's not like our cities are short on packed buildings full of moving crowds.

Wikipedia
Although when we start taking photos of these places, we often get our bags searched for explosives.

Maybe you could even hire unemployed people to sit in a small container, or "pod" if you will, and just provide free energy. Of course you wouldn't want them to get bored, so you could provide them with some VR entertainment. You could even get robots to guard them and make sure they don't leave.

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And then just, like, cover them with goo. No reason.

#3. Volcano Power

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No supervillain is complete without his volcano super base, where he hides from the law while harnessing energy to fuel his death ray. Volcanoes have thus become the symbol of supervillains from Sauron to L. Ron Hubbard.

But it turns out that the volcano base, even one carved into the shape of a skull, is a really smart idea when it comes to power generation. Most power plants today operate by heating up water and making steam. Well, hell, if it's heat that you need, why not go to a giant hole spewing molten rock from the center of the Earth?

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How can we make the fires of hell work for us?

Green energy claims are notoriously inflated, but even by modest projections, it's estimated that the United States could power 25 percent of the country using just this method. And for volcanic-activity-heavy places like Indonesia where 35 percent of the population lacks electricity, this could be a godsend. That's why they are harnessing their volcanoes to produce 4,000 megawatts (or if you prefer, "four shitloads") of power by 2014. To put that in context, the world's largest solar plant produces just 400 megawatts a year, and the largest wind plant clocks in at a measly 800 megawatts.

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What the hell is wind good for, if not to harness it like a God?

Iceland managed to provide power to 95 percent of their population using this method, and this method alone, and they have plans to start selling power garnered from volcanoes to other countries. These guys are taking the same volcanoes that screwed up everyone's air travel just months ago and making them work for us instead of against us.

Wikipedia
Another problem caused by wind. Screw you, wind.

Of course, it wouldn't be a good supervillain plan if there wasn't some risk. Power has been interrupted before when the volcanoes they were trying to tap into erupted, which volcanoes are apt to do. And even when it's not exploding in your face, there are still risks, like drilling into the ground and releasing a cloud of super-heated steam that makes your equipment explode and forms a crater 100 feet deep and 100 feet wide (yes, it's happened a few times). But you're trying to subdue a freaking volcano and make it your servant here, it's going to fight back.

InfiniteUnknown
First we tamed the lightning, now we take on the volcanoes, then we blow up the sun.

#2. Unleashing the Electric Eels

This is more "cartoon supervillain" than actual supervillain. Looking at an electric eel and saying, "I'll just put a bunch of them in a tank and use them to power my lair!" is the kind of thing a 12-year-old would think works. Or the Japanese.

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It's the kind of person who would run a sound system on the static from cat fur.

At the Kamakura Aquarium south of Tokyo, they've set up a demonstration of a single, huge electric eel powering -- wait for it -- a Christmas tree. Yes, they used the evil henchmen from The Little Mermaid to power a freaking Christmas tree, the epitome of all that is good and right.

Wikipedia
Our happy, tingling feeling smells like burnt flesh.

Electric eels generate electricity similar to batteries, wherein sodium and other components such as electrolytes are lined up in such a manner that they are capable of producing an actual electric shock. The eel-powered Christmas tree works in as straightforward a manner as you'd think: They put an eel in a tank, and each time it moves it generates power. Some electrodes feed the current to a Christmas tree, and just like that you've got ... a somewhat erratically powered Christmas tree.

In perhaps the most uncreative vision of the future in the history of mankind, the eel tree's inventor is quoted as saying, "If we could gather up all the electric eels from all around the world we would be able to light up an unimaginably large Christmas tree." Solve the global energy crisis? Naaah. Huge Christmas tree.

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"I wish I had all the money in the world. Think of the size of wallet I would get to make!"

Still, we guess it's better than the alternative, like if he dreamed of a ten thousand square mile pit of electric eels. Or, breeding one Godzilla-sized eel. Of course if you were working your way up to either of those things, you probably wouldn't admit it. You'd probably cover it up by saying you were doing it for the greatest cause of all, something no one would question. Like, say, Christmas.

#1. The Giant Invisible Energy Death Ray

Let's face it, wires are pretty old technology. Having to physically connect your charger to a power station through a series of cords, power lines and transformers is an overly complicated system that is essentially the same method they were using 100 years ago. Shouldn't we be able to, you know, just beam the energy to where we need it?

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While you're at it, Scotty, beam us a beer.

Yes, and on a small scale you already have harmless products like this that let you charge your phone without plugging it in, and here's another one that uses the same technique for a computer mouse. Surely somebody out there is thinking much, much bigger, right?

The 2009 Space Elevator Games
"And then Ted was like, 'Why don't we make a giant laser that's also a dick?"

Yep. That's why these scientists have built a laser that can transfer power nearly a mile into the sky, maybe one day making America's crumbling power grid (and yes, is it crumbling -- the American Society of Civil Engineers gave it a D+) even more obsolete. That project was done as part of a NASA contest, awarding teams for innovations in beaming invisible power over distances. The winning team was able to wirelessly beam enough power to command a robot to climb a 4,300 foot cable up to a helicopter.

lasermotive

The article doesn't say if the robot then climbed into the helicopter and threw out the pilot like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2. What matters is that the experts are already thinking of ways to proceed directly to the supervillain doomsday scenario stage.

For instance, another team of researchers has outlined plans for a gargantuan solar sail in space or a Dyson-Harrop satellite that, in theory, would pick up solar winds from outer space and beam them to Earth -- there's enough such energy flying through space to power the Earth many times over. They just need to perfect the beaming technology to transmit the mind-boggling amount of energy toward the planet, and to get somebody to fly a bunch of missions into orbit to build the thing. And then it will be revealed to actually be a Death Star.

inhabitat
Or at least a Death Pop-Tart.

Quantum Levitation

2011-10-19T01:33:00.000+08:00

Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid

2011-10-19T00:30:00.002+08:00

Telekinesis

2011-10-17T19:15:00.000+08:00

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By Katia MoskvitchTechnology reporter, BBC News

The inner workings of the brain can now be read using low cost hardware

You don't have to be a Jedi to make things move with your mind.

Granted, we may not be able to lift a spaceship out of a swamp like Yoda does in The Empire Strikes Back, but it is possible to steer a model car, drive a wheelchair and control a robotic exoskeleton with just your thoughts.

"The first thing is to clear your mind…to think of nothing," says Ed Jellard; a young man with the quirky title of senior inventor.

We are standing in a testing room at IBM's Emerging Technologies lab in Winchester, England.

On my head is a strange headset that looks like a black plastic squid. Its 14 tendrils, each capped with a moistened electrode, are supposed to detect specific brain signals.

In front of us is a computer screen, displaying an image of a floating cube.

As I think about pushing it, the cube responds by drifting into the distance.

Admittedly, the system needed a fair bit of pre-training to achieve this single task. But it has, nonetheless, learned to associate a specific thought pattern with a particular movement.

The headset, which was developed by Australian company Emotiv for the games industry, has been around for some time. But it is only now that companies such as IBM are beginning to harness the wealth of data that it can provide.

Using software developed in-house, researchers have linked the Emotiv to devices such as a model car, a light switch and a television.

Control signals come from two main sources; electroencephalography (EEG) measurements of brain activity, and readings of nerve impulses as they travel outwards to the muscles.

There is now a variety of brainwave-reading headsets on the market, mostly used for video gaming

Restoring movement

New techniques for processing such information are enabling sophisticated real world applications.

Already the team has used the system to help a patient with locked-in syndrome, whose healthy, active mind became trapped in a motionless body following a stroke.

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We linked the headset to the IBM middleware, and when he pushed the cube on the screen, that behaved like a click of the mouse”

Kevin BrownIBM

"We linked the headset to the IBM middleware, and when he pushed the cube on the screen, that behaved like a click of the mouse - so he was able to use the computer," explained IBM's Kevin Brown.

Many commercial mind control technologies are designed to restore physical ability to those who have lost it.

At Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), researchers have applied brain-computer interface technology to create thought-controlled wheelchairs and telepresence robots.

"A disabled patient who can't move can instead navigate such a robot around his house to participate in the social life of the family," explains the team leader, Professor Jose del Millan.

"To do that, a helmet detects the intention of some physical movement and translates it into action."

Brain-controlled Cyberdyne's Hal suit allows disabled patients to walk again

Japanese company Cyberdyne is helping people who cannot walk to regain mobility by dressing them in a full-body robotic suit called Hal.

Just as some of IBM's readings come from nerve impulses, rather than brain waves, Cyberdyne uses tiny sensors on the limbs to measure the subject's intention to move, even if the physical act is impossible.

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A disabled patient who can't move can instead navigate such a robot around his house to participate in the social life of the family”

Prof Jose del MillanEPFL

The robot body responds by moving its arms or legs. Webcams and computer screens enabling the user to pilot their machine and communicate with friends and family through their proxy body.

Outside the healthcare field, another implementation, being developed by EPFL in partnership with car maker Nissan, is an intelligent vehicle that can use brainwave data.

Supported by numerous external sensors and cameras, brain wave sensors read what the driver is planning to do next.

Having anticipated their intentions, the car takes over, eliminating the need for tedious and time consuming physical movement.

For those who prefer pedal power, Toyota is working with Saatchi & Saatchi, Parlee Cycles and DeepLocal to develop a bicycle which can shift gear based on its rider's thoughts.

In future, cars might be able to assist the drivers by reading their brainwaves

Suits and microchips

Headsets and helmets offer cheap, easy-to-use ways of tapping into the mind. But there are other, more invasive techniques being developed.

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Imagine some kind of a wireless computer device in your head that you'll use for mind control - what if people hacked into that”

Prof Noel SharkeyUniversity of Sheffield

At Brown Institute for Brain Science in the US, scientists are busy inserting chips right into the human brain.

The technology, dubbed BrainGate, sends mental commands directly to a PC.

Subjects still have to be physically "plugged" into a computer via cables coming out of their heads, in a setup reminiscent of the film The Matrix. However, the team is now working on miniaturising the chips and making them wireless.

BrainGate is developing ways of using the output to control a computer cursor, on-screen keyboard, and even manipulate robotic arms.

After testing it on monkeys, the scientists have now started human trials. Lead researcher Prof John Donoghue hopes that one day, his groundbreaking research will help people with spinal cord injuries or locked-in syndrome to walk again just by thinking of moving their limbs.

Mind controlled bikes would change gear at the flick of a thought

Robot warriors?

But extracting information from the brain, be it by internal or external sensors, is only part of the story.

Much of the current research effort is looking at how to efficiently process and utilise the vast streams of data that the brain produces.

Turning analogue thoughts into digital information links human beings directly to electronic information networks, such as the internet. The brain becomes becomes yet another sensor to be analysed and interrogated.

And as techniques for crunching that output get more sophisticated, the technology it drives will move beyond simple device control.

"People like data," said IBM's Ed Jellard. "So if you can see patterns of data, the geekier people will be very interested to see what is going on in their brain and how it is changing over time.

"I would be interest to know if my brain is getting stronger and if I have more intense thoughts. Things like that could be useful."

“Start Quote

If you can see patterns of data, the geekier people will be very interested to see what is going on in their brain and how it is changing over time”

Ed JellardIBM

While it is possible to translate brain waves into machine processable data, there remains something unique and special about those signals that rocket around inside our skulls.

They are not the same as lasers in a fibre optic cable or electrons in a microprocessor, and tapping the mind will raise philosophical and ethical questions, according to Prof Noel Sharkey.

"Once the military get a hold of it, they will push it very hard," he explains.

"At the moment they are filling the airspace in Afghanistan with drones that only one person can control - but if they get the helmets well enough developed, they'll be able to control a number of planes or robot warriors directly with their thoughts."

There are also questions about what form cyber crime would take in the age of the wired mind?

"Imagine some kind of a wireless computer device in your head that you'll use for mind control - what if people hacked into that, what could they do to you and your property?," continues Prof Sharkey.

"And what if you are forced to wear a device and someone controls you with his thoughts, making you do things?..."

The possibilities, both positive and negative, are literally mind boggling.

People Power

2011-10-17T19:12:00.001+08:00

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By David CohenTechnology Reporter

The biofuel cell, uses glucose and oxygen at concentrations found in the body to generate electricity.

Plugging gadgets into a socket in the wall, or loading them with batteries - or maybe even unfurling a solar panel - is how most of us think of getting electricity. But what about plugging them into your body?

It may sound far fetched, but under the shadow of the Alps, Dr Serge Cosnier and his team at the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble have built a device to do just that. Their gadget, called a biofuel cell, uses glucose and oxygen at concentrations found in the body to generate electricity.

They are the first group in the world to demonstrate their device working while implanted in a living animal. If all goes to plan, within a decade or two, biofuel cells may be used to power a range of medical implants, from sensors and drug delivery devices to entire artificial organs. All you'll need to do to power them up is eat a candy bar, or drink a coke.

Biofuel cells could kick-start a revolution in artificial organs and prosthetics that would transform tens of thousands of lives every year.

A new range of artificial, electrically-powered organs are now under development, including hearts, kidneys, and bladder sphincter, and work has begun on fully-functioning artificial limbs such as hands, fingers, and even eyes. But they all have one Achilles heel: they need electricity to run.

Batteries are good enough for implants that don't need much power, but they run out fast, and when it comes to implants, that is more than just an inconvenience, it is a fundamental limitation.

Even devices that do not use much power, such as pacemakers, have a fixed lifespan because they rely on batteries.

They usually need their power packs replaced 5 years after implantation. One study in the US found that one in five 70 year-olds implanted with a pacemaker, survived for another 20 years - meaning this group needed around 3 additional operations after the initial implant, just to replace the battery.

Each operation is accompanied by the risk of the complications of surgery, not something anybody should have to face if it is avoidable.

Other devices such as artificial kidneys, limbs or eyes, would have such high energy demands that users would have to change their power source every few weeks to keep them working. It is simply impractical to use batteries in these devices.

That is where biofuel cells come in. Dr Cosnier and his team are one of a growing number of researchers around the world developing the technology in an attempt to side-step this inherent limitation.

Bodily fluids

The fuel cells are made from a compressed push of enzymes and carbon nanotubes.

At heart, biofuel cells are incredibly simple. They are made of two special electrodes - one is endowed with the ability to remove electrons from glucose, the other with the ability to donate electrons to molecules of oxygen and hydrogen, producing water.

Pop these electrodes into a solution containing glucose and oxygen, and one will start to rip electrons off the glucose and the other will start dumping electrons onto oxygen. Connect the electrodes to a circuit and they produce a net flow of electrons from one electrode to the other via the circuit - resulting in an electrical current.

Glucose and oxygen are both freely available in the human body, so hypothetically, a biofuel cell could keep working indefinitely. "A battery consumes the energy stored in it, and when it's finished, it's finished. A biofuel cell in theory can work without limits because it consumes substances that come from physiological fluids, and are constantly being replenished," said Dr Cosnier.

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A bio fuel cell in theory can work without limits because it consumes substances that come from physiological fluids.”

Dr Serge CosnierJoseph Fourier University

The idea of powering fuel cells using glucose and oxygen found in physiological fluids was first suggested in the 1970s, but fell by the wayside because the amount of energy early prototypes produced was too little to be of practical use.

However, in the 2002, advances in biotechnology spurred Itamar Willner, a researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to dust down the idea and give it a fresh look.

In a paper published in the prestigious journal Science, he speculated that thanks to advances in biotechnology, the day would come when devices such as artificial limbs and organs would soon be powered by biofuel cells that create electricity from bodily fluids.

"Since then biofuel cells have received a huge amount of attention," said Dr Eileen Yu, a researcher at Newcastle University, who is part of UK-wide multi-university project to develop biofuel cells.

Nano technology

The key to the recent breakthroughs has been our understanding of rather special biological molecules called enzymes. Enzymes are naturally occurring molecules that speed up chemical reactions. Researchers studying bio fuel cells have discovered that one particular enzyme, called glucose oxidase, is extremely good at removing electrons from glucose. "It is very efficient at generating electrons," said Prof Willner.

Spurred by new developments in enzyme manipulation, and the growth in availability of carbon nanotubes - which are highly efficient electrical conductors - many groups around the world have developed bio fuel cells capable of producing electricity.

Dr Cosnier and his team decided to take things one step further. "In the last 10 years there has been an exponential increase in research, and some important breakthroughs in enzyme research," he said.

He decided it was time to make the first attempt to take the cumulative knowledge of the last decade of research and engineer it into a device the size of a grain of rice that could generate electricity while implanted inside a rat.

Tiny bio fuel cells sit inside the body turning glucose and oxygen into power.

In 2010, they tested their fuel cell in a rat for 40 days and reported that it worked flawlessly, producing a steady electrical current throughout, with no noticeable side effects on the rat's behaviour or physiology.

Their system is surprisingly straightforward. The electrodes are made by compressing a paste of carbon nanotubes mixed with glucose oxidase for one electrode, and glucose and polyphenol oxidase for the other.

The electrodes have a platinum wire inserted in them to carry the current to the circuit. Then the electrodes are wrapped in a special material that prevents any nanotubes or enzymes from escaping into the body.

Finally, the whole package is wrapped in a mesh that protects the electrodes from the body's immune system, while still allowing the free flow of glucose and oxygen to the electrodes. The whole package is then implanted in the rat.

"It is an important step towards demonstrating the translation of basic research into a practical device," said Willner. "It shows the feasibility of making an implantable package."

Implantation in a rat was a good proof of concept, said Dr Cosnier, but it had drawbacks. "Rats are so small that the production of energy is insufficient to power a conventional device."

Next he plans to scale up his fuel cell and implant it in a cow. "There is more space, so a larger fuel cell can be implanted, meaning a greater current will be generated."

Dr Cosnier hopes it will be enough to power a transmitter that will be able to beam out of the cow information about the device and control sensors inside the animal.

More power

Fuel cells are wrapped in a mesh to prevent the body rejecting them.

There is still a long way to go. Prof Willner explains that, while the enzyme glucose oxidase has performed optimally, the efficiency of the electron-donating enzymes could still be dramatically improved. He is optimistic that breakthroughs will be made.

"Based on the current rate of progress, I am confident we will see exciting developments in the next decade," said Prof Willner.

Dr Cosnier agrees that there is a lot of room for improvement. "Today we can generate enough power to supply an artificial urinary sphincter, or pacemaker. We are already working on a system that can produce 50 times that amount of power, then we will have enough to supply much more demanding devices," he said.

Implants aren't the only place you may find bio fuel cells in the future. The electronics giant Sony recently announced that it had created a biofuel cell fuelled with glucose and water that was capable of powering an MP3 player. "In 10 years time you may see bio fuel cells in laptops and mobile phones," said Prof Willner.

Dr Cosnier points out that bio fuel cells would be especially useful in places where there is no electricity supply to recharge your batteries. "If you were in a country without electricity, and needed to re-charge a bio fuel cell, all you would have to do is add sugar and water."

Harald Haas: Wireless data from every light bulb

2011-10-03T23:32:00.000+08:00

Zombie Squid Explained

2011-09-20T13:07:00.002+08:00

A restaurant in Japan is serving up some very fresh sushi. The "dead" squid begins to squirm as soy sauce is poured over it, but why? Martin Berman speaks with a chemist to find out what's going on.

Weird Noises From Under The Earth

2011-09-16T00:31:00.001+08:00

Invisibility Serum

2011-09-13T22:46:00.003+08:00

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Left: Mouse embryo soaked in just saline solution. Right: Mouse embryo washed in Scale

Soaking the tissues in the chemical substance made them biologically transparent.

Maybe in the near future, doctors can say “I can see what’s going on inside your brain.” Literally.

A chemical known as Scale, which is in its experimental stage, turns brain tissue totally crystal clear. In other words, transparent. It’s like looking into a brain tissue with ”X-ray vision.”

Atsushi Miyawaki, scientist at Japan’s RIKEN Brain Science Institute said that their current experiments are “focused on the mouse brain” but the application could be limitless. They envision using Scale on other organs like muscles, heart, and kidneys and other biopsy samples from tissue taken from primates and humans.

Soaking the tissues in the chemical substance made them biologically transparent.

A neurologist at the UCLA School of Medicine, Dr. Paul Thompson, is a 20-year veteran in the field of brain imaging and he is extremely impressed at this discovery and its potential applications. He mentioned that photos of embryonic mice treated with Scale and transparent organs are absolutely amazing. “Seeing something like this truly had a wow factor,” he said.

The chemical solution, Scale, is made from just 2 simple compounds: urea-the dominant compound in urine-glycerol and Triton-X, a detergent.

One exciting application that experts are thinking about in the future is being able to see if medication is really getting to parts of the brain or other organs that are being treated. Also, one advantage of using this chemical is that it’s less expensive than CT scans or MRI.

Scale is currently too toxic for living creatures, so you won’t be worrying about the “invisible mouse” running around your house any time soon.

UFO Crashlands in the desert

2011-09-13T15:11:00.001+08:00

Earth's gold and platinum arrived in a meteor shower that lasted 200MILLION years

2011-09-10T08:17:00.001+08:00

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There's enough gold and platinum on Earth for a 4m-thick layer that covers the entire surface

All the world's gold and platinum ore came from outer space after a mammoth meteorite shower battered the Earth more than four billion years ago, scientists revealed today.

Researchers also discovered there is enough gold and platinum in the Earth's core to plate the surface of the globe with a layer of priceless bling four metres thick.

These huge gold deposits appeared during the Earth's formation when molten iron sank to its centre, dragging with it vast quantities of precious metals.

Rock on: Gold and platinum arrived on Earth from space, claim scientists

This left the Earth lacking gold and platinum until a cataclysmic meteor shower bombarded the earth 200 million years later.

A staggering 20 billion billion tonnes of meteorite matter, including gold and platinum, slammed into the earth during the 200million-year-long shower.

Geologists at the University of Bristol have discovered this mammoth meteorite shower replenished the earth's lost reserves of precious metals.

Rock samples found in Greenland - which were formed at the Earth's formation - contained a marginally higher ratio of the tungsten isotope 182W compared to more modern rock.

Therefore, modern rock must have come from a meteorite shower which proves today's gold and platinum deposits came from outer space.

Spaced out: Gold arrived on Earth during a monster meteor shower lasting 200 million years

Dr Matthias Willbold and Professor Tim Elliott, of the Bristol Isotope Group in the School of Earth Sciences, led the research.

Dr Willbold said: ‘Extracting tungsten from the rock samples and analysing its isotopic composition to the precision required was extremely demanding given the small amount of tungsten available in rocks.

‘In fact, we are the first laboratory world-wide that has successfully made such high-quality measurements.

‘Our work shows that most of the precious metals on which our economies and many key industrial processes are based have been added to our planet by lucky coincidence when the Earth was hit by about 20 billion billion tonnes of asteroidal material.’

The metals from these earth-shattering meteorites were stirred into the planet's mantle by gigantic convection processes.

These later emerged in newly formed continents, concentrated in the ore deposits which are mined today.

The research, published in Nature, was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

5 Most Mysterious Ancient Discoveries

2011-08-23T14:25:00.000+08:00

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James Massoud | Jun 05, 2010 | 4 Comments

Some of the most fascinating ancient discoveries in our history were found by complete chance. These accidental findings have left researchers puzzled for years and many of them remain shrouded in complete mystery. It is this mystery surrounding them though that makes them so fascinating. Here we’ll take a look at five of the most mysterious ancient discoveries that will leave you as baffled as those who discovered them and those who have tried studying their backgrounds.

1. Horned Human Skulls

Image source - mysteriousworld

In the 1880s very strange human skulls were found in a burial mound in Sayre, Bradford County, Pennsylvania. What makes them so strange of course were those horns protruding two inches above the eye sockets. To me personally the skull looks like it belongs to Donnie Darko’s giant bunny friend, Frank. It is believed the skulls, found along with seven foot tall skeletons, were buried around AD 1200. The discoveries were made by respectable men: the state librarian, a dignitary of the Presbyterian Church, and two professors. Little else is known about the skulls or skeletons because after they were sent to the American Investigating Museum in Philadelphia they were stolen and never seen again.

2. The Dropa Stones

Image source - Cosmic Conspiracies

Archaeologists in 1938 were investigating an area of the Baian-Kara-Ula Mountains on the border that divides China and Tibet when they came across a series of caves in the mountains. Inside the caves were graves that contained three feet tall skeletons with abnormally large skulls. The walls of the caves were decorated with drawings of the sun, moon, stars…and beings with elongated heads. Further to their strange discoveries were these 12 inche discs, which became known as the Dropa Stones.716 of them were recovered from the caves. Professor Tsum Um Nui of the Beijing Academy for Ancient Studies studied these weird objects and later revealed that the discs were covered in a secret alien language. He translated the language and claimed that an alien spacecraft crashed in the Bayan Har Shan region 12,000 years ago. The occupants were aliens called Dropa or Dzopa. The Dropa could not repair their craft, so they tried to adapt to the conditions on Earth. Meanwhile, the local Ham tribesmen hunted down and killed most of the aliens. Supposedly, the aliens had intermarried with the locals, making identification of the origins of the skeletons more difficult. Under extreme objections the professor was forced to resign, yet whether he was right or simply just crazy remains as much a mystery as the stones, skeletons and caves themselves.

3. Giants of North America

Image source - boingboing

A twelve foot tall human skeleton was unearthed in at Lompock Rancho, California, in 1833 by soldiers digging a pit for a powder magazine. The skeleton had a double row of teeth and was surrounded by stone axes, carved shells, and porphyry blocks with abstruse symbols. In 1856 another giant human skeleton was found, this one measuring at 10 feet 9 inches. Labourers found this skeleton when they were plowing a vineyard in what is now West Virginia. In 1895 in Toledo, Ohio 20 giant skeletons were found seated with jaws and teeth twice as large as a normal skeleton’s. Yet another giant skeleton was unearthed in 1928 by a farmer in Louisiana. This skeleton was 9 feet 11 inches. Many claims have been made about these abnormal skeletons, the majority of people claiming they belong to the mysterious Sasquatch. Decide for yourselves…

4. Piri Reis Map

Image source - Wikipedia

A pre-modern world map that was put together by the Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. This much we know. The mystery surrounding the half of the map that has survived though is the accuracy in detail that shows the western coasts of Europe, North Africa, and the coast of Brazil. Various Atlantic islands, including the Azores and Canary Islands are shown, as is the mythical island of Antillia and possibly Japan. More puzzling yet though is the inclusion of Antarctica. History books say that Antarctica was not discovered until 1820 by the Russian expedition of Mikhail Lazarev and Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen. Piri Reis’ map was drawn up in 1513. Drawn up on gazelle skin, the map was found in 1929 while Topkapı Palace , in Istanbul, was being converted into a museum.

5. The Shroud of Turin

Image sourcee - Wikipedia

A life-size linen cloth that bears the bears the image of Jesus Christ at rest. There is so much mystery surrounding this shroud that it has been at the centre of debate between scientists, theologians, historians and researchers for years. Some argue that it was the actual cloth that was placed over the dead body of Jesus while others state that it was created in the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church has sat on the fence over this one for years, but in 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the Roman Catholic devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus. In 1988 samples of the cloth were tested in three different universities: the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. All drew the same conclusion that the artifact came from the Middle Ages. Since then though even the testings have come under scrutiny by those who still believe. Since 1578 the shroud has been wrapped in red silk and kept in a silver chest in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. Make up your own minds on this one.

You can buy a 3DS Printer Now!

2011-08-20T23:12:00.002+08:00

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MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® Kit (3 week lead time)

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The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D Printer kit you assemble to create the latest in cutting edge personal manufacturing technology. Includes the new StepStruder® MK6 Plus Complete Upgrade!

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***User Assembled Kit***Availability: Ships with a 3 week lead time when listed as "In stock".***

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer is a breakthrough in 3D printing technology. We've named it the Thing-O-Matic® because it is an automatic 3D printer. All other 3D printers can only do one thing at a time while the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer prints thing after thing! Buy it, assemble it, and enjoy being the first on your block to live in the cutting-edge personal manufacturing future of tomorrow!

Fully Automatic

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer comes with a new larger MakerBot® Automated Build Platform v2.0 that will keep printing and printing... Automatically!

The MakerBot® Automated Build Platform is truly a revolution in 3D printing. Updated to be larger for the Thing-O-Matic®, it allows you to have a print queue where your machine will clear the build surface between builds by printing, then ejecting. It prints objects one after another, turning your MakerBot® into a little high-production factory that sits on your desktop. Best of all, this is completely automated: you hit print, and the machine does all the work. Want to print 100 butterflies? Easy. Want to print an entire chess set? No problem. Want to start a business selling printed things that you've designed? Awesome. Have the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer do all the work while you design new things.

Extremely Reliable Extrusion System

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer comes with the upgraded MakerBot StepStruder® MK6 Plus which will give you thousands of hours of trouble-free printing. We've invested many hours into designing, testing, and tweaking the StepStruder® MK6 Plus. The result is an extruder that is extremely reliable, and very simple to maintain. The hot end on this extruder is essentially unbreakable and the filament drive system is one of the strongest on the market. We've updated the kit to include our new high-torque NEMA 17 stepper motor to power the Thing-O-Matic® extruder. This change substantially improves print quality and reduces post-processing of your builds. The hot end has been updated as well, and now includes a redesigned Aluminum Thermal Core, 40W Cartridge Heater, and Safety Cutoff Switch. Changing the filament is a breeze with the filament pressure thumb screw. You can even hot-swap the filament mid-print!

Higher Quality

We've completely overhauled the drive system to give the optimum positioning accuracy. The entire system has been upgraded to sturdy 3/8" diameter linear shafting, which is overkill, but you can trust that the axes will be sturdy and straight. We've also switched to self-aligning, sintered brass bearings. These are very forgiving to DIY assembly and provide a nice, smooth motion on the steel shafts. Last, but not least we've completely replaced the Z axis with a stepper driven, cantilevered stage. Guided by two of the linear shafts, this completely eliminates any Z wobble and results in nicely aligned layers. Using a high-angle lead screw, we were able to increase the speed of the Z axis from 150mm/minute to 1000mm/minute. That's more than 6 times the speed! This means the layer changes are almost completely imperceptible and blobbing is significantly reduced for smoother prints.

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Connect to the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer over USB and hit print—the machine will self-detect its position and start printing!

The new MakerBot® Gen4 Electronics have been designed to make the printing experience easier than ever. The motherboard now sports an integrated USB port, so you simply plug the MakerBot® in with a standard USB cable. We've also added full endstop support so that you never need to touch the XYZ axes ever again. When you hit print, the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer will automatically home itself, heat up, and begin printing. All you have to do is sit back and relax while your MakerBot® does all the work. Living in the future is awesome. Oh yeah, and the electronics are all inside, so you don't have wires dangling everywhere. This also makes traveling on the subway with your MakerBot® stress-free.

The MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer kit is available for $1299 and has a 4 week lead time. Order a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic® 3D printer and get the latest in personal manufacturing technology!

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Some tech specs on the Thing-O-Matic®:

* Interface: Print through USB or print from SD card

* Size: 300 x 300 x 410 mm (12″ W x 12″ D x 16″ H)

* Build Area: 96 x 108 mm

* Build Height: 115 mm

* Generation 4 Electronics

* Supports up to 5 stepper drivers (XYZ + A/B)

* Connect over USB (no more FTDI cable)

* Optional LCD interface support (Not included)

* Full mechanical endstop support

* High current mosfets to drive heated build platform and extruder heater

* Thermocouple support for more accurate temperature sensing

* Upgraded, extra strength ATX power supply

* Works with both 110v and 220v power

* Theoretical XY Positioning resolution of 0.02mm (20 microns or 0.0008″)

* Theoretical XY Maximum Feedrate of up to 5000mm/minute (roughly 200 IPM)

* Theoretical Z Positioning resolution of 0.005mm (5 microns / or 0.0002″)

* Theoretical Z Positioning Feedrate of up to 1000mm/minutes (roughly 40 IPM)

* Capable of printing with ABS and PLA

***Availability: Ships with a 3 week lead time***User Assembled Kit***

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Growing Plants on Thin Films

2011-08-16T22:42:00.000+08:00

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Growing Plants on Thin Films
Filmed on August 11, 2011

Growing Plants on Thin Films

- 15 AUGUST 2011

Imec
Mebiol

Mebiol has developed Imec, a technology for growing plants on special films just tens of microns thick, called hydro-membranes.

Hydro-membranes make it possible for plants to take up only water and nutrients, without letting harmful bacteria, nematodes, or viruses through.

"As you can see here, roots grow directly on the film surface, and they absorb the water and fertilizer in the film, so they grow large. No soil is needed, as the film plays the role of soil. The only problem is, it's hard for plants to take up the water in the film, so they don't grow very big. The plants are subjected to stress, so they have very high quality, but they don't become large. If you give them some liquid nutrients from above the film, then they do grow very large. So with this technology, plants are grown by applying liquid fertilizer from above and below the film."

Hydro-membranes are made from water-absorbent hydro-gel, which is used in diapers. They prevent water leaking to the outside. This characteristic is also used in research by NASA on plant cultivation in space.

Currently, Mebiol has succeeded in cultivating tomatoes, musk melons, and cucumbers using Imec. In the future, the company wants to make the film stronger, so the film can be used to grow plants with stronger roots, such as trees.

"Right now, it's essential to increase food production, to cope with population growth and global warming, but water shortages and poor soils make it impossible for production to keep up with population growth. So in agriculture, we must grow plants more efficiently, using fewer resources and less energy. In industry, such technologies are becoming very advanced. So if we apply technologies from industry to agriculture, we may obtain advantages from industrial production. For about a decade, we've been working to utilize advanced technology from Japan, to increase plant production and obtain high-quality plants efficiently. And this product arose from that work."

An Imec model plant will be installed at Miyagi JA in mid-August. Mebiol is planning further R&D, with a view to enabling this technology to be used in areas suffering from soil contamination and water shortages.

Finally water run cars

2011-08-06T21:54:00.000+08:00

Nuclear Warfare in Ancient India

2011-07-22T20:07:00.001+08:00

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Julius Robert Oppenheimer is remembered as “The Father of the Atomic Bomb”. During a college lecture, a student asked “‘Was the atomic test at Alamagordo the first nuclear blast?”

(The student meant: Was there a U.S. program before Alamagordo?)

Oppenheimer answered: ‘Yes, in modern times.’

(The creator of the A-Bomb meant: Our atomic program was the first, not counting the ancient nuclear wars of the distant past. Oppenheimer was a student of the old books of India; such as the Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita.)

[A little bit about Oppenheimer:

In his first year as an undergraduate at Harvard, Oppenheimer was admitted to graduate standing in physics on the basis of independent study. As an undergraduate he never took a class in physics. In 1933 he learned sanskrit and met the Indologist Arthur Ryder at Berkeley. He read the Gita in sanskirt. He later developed a keen interest on ancient texts of India. Later he cited his visit to india as the most influential thing in his life.

Post World War, his lectures were considered to be some of the best. For every Theory he gives a quote from Mahabharata or Gita. He speaks about Shiva and Krishna, even during the 'Trinity' he quoted a verse from Mahabharata]

They are not fictional stories. They are history. They speak of flying vimanas. Vimanas were real vehicles and the origin of the ‘Aeroplanes .’ Great wars were described in these early texts. Weapons could literally level the land like a moving force field. In ancient India, we find words for certain measurements of length; one was the distance of light-years and one was the length of an atom. Only a society that possessed nuclear energy would have the need for such words. When Oppenheimer said ‘I am become the destroyer of worlds,’ he was quoting from these ancient books. Believe it or not, the deserts on a number of continents today are the result of (prehistoric) nuclear warfare. Historian Kisari Mohan Ganguli says that Indian sacred writings are full of such descriptions, which sound like an atomic blast as experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He says references mention fighting sky chariots and final weapons. An ancient battle is described in the Drona Parva, a section of the Mahabharata. “The passage tells of combat where explosions of final weapons decimate entire armies, causing crowds of warriors with steeds and elephants and weapons to be carried away as if they were dry leaves of trees,” says Ganguli.

Consider these verses from the ancient Mahabharata: …a single projectile Charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame As bright as the thousand suns Rose in all its splendour… a perpendicular explosion with its billowing smoke clouds… …the cloud of smoke rising after its first explosion formed into expanding round circles like the opening of giant parasols… ..it was an unknown weapon, An iron thunderbolt, A gigantic messenger of death, Which reduced to ashesThe entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas. …The corpses were so burned As to be unrecognisable. The hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, And the birds turned white. After a few hours All foodstuffs were infected… …to escape from this fire The soldiers threw themselves in streams To wash themselves and their equipment.

Until the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, modern mankind could not imagine any weapon as horrible and devastating as those described in the ancient Indian texts. Yet they very accurately described the effects of an atomic explosion. Radioactive poisoning will make hair and nails fall out. Immersing oneself in water gives some respite, though it is not a cure. When excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro reached the street level, they discovered skeletons scattered about the cities, many holding hands and sprawling in the streets as if some instant, horrible doom had taken place. People were just lying, unburied, in the streets of the city. Excavations down to the street level revealed 44 scattered skeletons, as if doom had come so suddenly they could not get to their houses. All the skeletons were flattened to the ground. A father, mother and child were found flattened in the street, face down and still holding hands. And these skeletons are thousands of years old, even by traditional archaeological standards. What could cause such a thing? Why did the bodies not decay or get eaten by wild animals? Furthermore, there is no apparent cause of a physically violent death.

These skeletons are among the most radioactive ever found, on par with those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At one site, Soviet scholars found a skeleton which had a radioactive level 50 times greater than normal. Other cities have been found in northern India that show indications of explosions of great magnitude. One such city, found between the Ganges and the mountains of Rajmahal, seems to have been subjected to intense heat. Huge masses of walls and foundations of the ancient city are fused together, literally vitrified! And since there is no indication of a volcanic eruption at Mohenjo-Daro or at the other cities, the intense heat to melt clay vessels can only be explained by an atomic blast or some other unknown weapon. The cities were wiped out entirely.

There is evidence that the Rama empire (now India) was devastated by nuclear war. The Indus valley is now the Thar desert, and the site of the radioactive ash found west of Jodhpur is around there. A heavy layer of radioactive ash in Rajasthan, India, covers a three-square mile area, ten miles west of Jodhpur. Scientists are investigating the site, where a housing development was being built. For some time it has been established that there is a very high rate of birth defects and cancer in the area under construction. The levels of radiation there have registered so high on investigators’ gauges that the Indian government has now cordoned off the region. Scientists have unearthed an ancient city where evidence shows an atomic blast dating back thousands of years, from 8,000 to 12,000 years, destroyed most of the buildings and probably a half-million people. One researcher estimates that the nuclear bomb used was about the size of the ones dropped on Japan in 1945.

Another curious sign of an ancient nuclear war in India is a giant crater near Bombay. The nearly circular 2,154-metre-diameter Lonar crater, located 400 kilometres northeast of Mumbai and aged at less than 50,000 years old, could be related to nuclear warfare of antiquity. No trace of any meteoric material, etc., has been found at the site or in the vicinity, and this is the world’s only known “impact” crater in basalt. Indications of great shock (from a pressure exceeding 600,000 atmospheres) and intense, abrupt heat (indicated by basalt glass spherules) can be ascertained from the site.

Lizard Man Reportedly Mauls And Bites Through South Carolina Couple's Car

2011-07-16T08:16:00.002+08:00

Source

He stands 7 feet tall with glowing red eyes, a scaly body and three-fingered hands, and has a nasty habit of biting, ripping and pulling apart car fenders, hood ornaments and radio antennas. Some local citizens think it could be the work of the infamous Lizard Man of South Carolina.

"Whatever it is, somebody needs to find out what's mauling these cars because if it can do that kind of damage to a vehicle, look what it could do to a person," former Lee County, S.C., Sheriff Liston Truesdale told The Huffington Post.

After an automobile had a run-in last week with something mysterious in the rural area of the state, the car owners, Leon and Ada Marshall, discovered that their vehicle was riddled with what appeared to be teethmarks that went completely through the fender, according to WLTX television.

It had all the earmarks, or toothmarks, of similar occurrences in the county that began in 1988.

"I can remember it just like it was yesterday," said Truesdale. "We got a call that something had mauled a car, and whatever it was did a good job on it.

"We dispatched two deputies to go see what had happened. Then they called me, saying, 'Sheriff, we've never seen anything like this before,' and you know what? I never have seen anything like that before!"

Truesdale recalled that the chrome on the front car fender "was snapped in two, like you would snap a toothpick. It tore off sides, other pieces of chrome and the radio antenna -- it was all over the car. While we were there, we learned there had been a big strange creature seen lurking around a nearby swamp."

The 82-year-old retired sheriff told the story of a 17-year-old eyewitness who claimed to have a very close encounter with the creature in 1988, dubbed locally as Lizard Man. Truesdale added that the young man came from a responsible, respectable family and he even passed a polygraph test.

"He never changed his story," said Truesdale. "He was coming home from work and putting his tools back in his car after fixing a flat tire. He saw something running toward him which he described having red eyes and three-fingered hands. When he jumped in his car, he felt a bump on the back of it as he drove out of there like a bat out of hell.

"The creature went from the trunk to the top of the car, looking down at him through the windshield, and he was able to move his car back and forth to throw it off the car. His parents said he was so afraid, it took two hours to settle him down."

Two years ago, Truesdale was called in again to help with the investigation of another case because of the similarities to the 1988 reports, when something mauled a van by biting through the metal and bending the fenders.

"Back in 1988, I tried to find out if anywhere else in the southeast had anything that had mauled cars, and nobody came up with anything," he said.

Not to be outdone by what could be considered his competition, Erik "Lizardman" Sprague is familiar with the reports of his South Carolina counterpart. Counterpart? Well, Sprague has actually become a lizard man in his own right.

What began as a conceptual art project in college, and has evolved via a body modification process, Sprague has transformed himself into a green, scaly, well, lizard man.

"It was an art piece about exploring what it means to be human and it's developed beyond that," Sprague told The Huffington Post with a forked tongue. "The tattooing covers my entire body right now, so I'm kind of like a coloring book where we're filling in the scales green. The only actual surgery was my tongue bifurcation, but there were other intensive procedures like the implants on my forehead."

If you happen to do an Internet search for lizard man, you'll most likely either come up with items about the South Carolina beast or about Sprague.

"Yeah, that's my main competition for search results -- it's my nemesis," Sprague said.

He scoffed at the notion that another guy might be out there with similar body modifications, going around the countryside mauling cars.

"I don't think anybody would manage to do that, especially not somebody who's 7 feet tall and only has three fingers [on each hand]. I think we would've spotted him somewhere beforehand.

"The skeptic in me says 'No, it's not real.' The artist-prankster in me really hopes that it's somebody's very cool project, that somebody's out there with a costume and they're doing this for fun in a great spirit.

"Finally, the cynic in me wishes that people would just appreciate it in that vein of classic hoaxes and stop making crappy T-shirts and exploiting it as a tourist thing."

So now, South Carolina has two potential lizard men in its jurisdiction. The one reportedly mauling cars is sticking close to swamps, and the one making publicity appearances is heading to theRipley's Believe It Or Not! Odditorium in Myrtle Beach to display his lizardness in all its glory between July 17-24.

Xiao Yeren (Little Wild Man)

2011-07-09T15:07:00.002+08:00

While camping with his family in the spring of 1987, ten year-old Wang Yi Tao went missing in a remote forest in the heart of China. He was found three weeks later. The tale of his mysterious disappearance and miraculous survival once captured the imagination of a nation, but has now become the stuff of urban legend. Over twenty years later, documentary filmmakers follow Wang and others in an attempt to uncover the truth behind the events that forever changed their lives.

3D Printing

2011-07-08T20:48:00.000+08:00

Misa Digital Kitara- The Digital Kaos Style Guitar

2011-07-06T14:32:00.001+08:00

One Wheeled Motorbike

2011-06-22T13:37:00.000+08:00

Although the vehicle will also remain stable when motionless, with two small front wheels deployed at speeds below 20 kilometres per hour (12.5 mph). To move forward, the rider activates a trigger on the left handlebar. At a speed of 20 kilometres per hour (12.5 mph) the front wheels or “landing gear” retracts so the rider is balancing on the large single wheel. To turn the rider leans to the left or right. The brake is activated by a trigger on the right handlebar. Fuel cells running on hydrogen provide electricity for the electric motor which drives the single wheel.

Pretty cool I guess, but it just reminds me of

SWITL Picks Up Semi-Liquid Materials

2011-06-20T13:44:00.000+08:00

The TR-3B

2011-05-22T13:45:00.000+08:00

New Organic Materials

2011-05-12T20:24:00.000+08:00

Silk

Bananas Could Make Cars Leaner, Greener

2011-03-31T16:12:00.000+08:00

Source

Updated: Additional information from Alcides Leão was added to this story March 28 at 8:05 p.m. EDT.

Researchers are going bananas in the quest to build cleaner, greener cars.

Brazilian scientists have developed a way of using fibers from bananas, pineapples and other plants to create plastic that is stronger and lighter than the petroleum-based stuff. So-called nanocellulose fibers rival Kevlar in strength but are renewable, and the researchers believe they could be widely used within a couple of years.

“The properties of these plastics are incredible,” Alcides Leão, a researcher at Sao Paulo State University, said in a statement. “They are light, but very strong — 30 percent lighter and three to four times stronger.”

That could reduce the weight of new vehicles, which would increase fuel economy. Several automakers are cutting weight in their campaigns to maximize mpg. Ford, for example, hopes to trim 250 to 750 pounds from its vehicles and is exploring nanotechnology to do so.

Beyond being lighter and stronger, Leão says nanocellulosic plastic is more resistant to heat, gasoline and water. He sees it being used for dashboards, bumpers and some body panels.

Cellulose comprises the primary cell wall of green plants. Intensive processing of wood and other plant materials yields nanocellulosic fibers so small that 50,000 fit within the diameter of a human hair. These fibers can be added to other raw materials to produce reinforced plastic.

Leão tells us the nanocellulosic plastic is made entirely of renewable materials and is biodegradable. The nanocellulose could be combined with petroleum-based plastic if a specific application required it, he says, but the resulting product would not be biodegradable.

Pineapple may be the most promising source of nanocellulose, Leão says. Others include bananas, coconut shells, agave and curaua, a plant related to pineapple. The leaves and stems are cooked in a device similar to a pressure cooker, yielding something resembling talcum powder.

It’s expensive stuff, but there’s no word on just how much the nanocellulosic plastic costs because Leão and his team are working in small quantities in the laboratory. Leão says the cost would come down as the scale of production rose, especially if the auto industry embraced the technology. One pound of nanocellulose can produce 100 pounds of plastic.

“So far, we’re focusing on replacing automotive plastics,” Leão says. “But in the future, we may be able to replace steel and aluminum automotive parts using these plant-based nanocellulose materials.”

Leão presented his findings today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, California.

Earth's Second Moon

2011-03-30T17:34:00.000+08:00

Discovery

Cruithne was discovered on October 10, 1986, by Duncan Waldron on a photographic plate taken with the UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, Coonabarabran, Australia. The 1983 apparition (1983 UH) is credited to Giovanni de Sanctis and Richard M. West of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. It was not until 1997 that its unusual orbit was determined by Paul Wiegert and Kimmo Innanen, working at York University in Toronto, and Seppo Mikkola, working at the University of Turku in Finland.

The asteroid is named after the Cruithne or Cruthin, a people of early medieval Ireland.^[3]

Dimensions and orbit

Cruithne is approximately 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) in diameter, and its closest approach to Earth is approximately thirty times the separation between Earth and the Moon (12 Gm or twelve million kilometres). From 1994 through 2015, Cruithne makes its annual closest approach to Earth every November.^[4] Although Cruithne's orbit is not thought to be stable over the long term, calculations by Wiegert and Innanen showed that it has probably been synchronized with Earth's orbit for a long time. There is no danger of a collision with Earth for millions of years, if ever. Its orbital path and Earth's do not cross, and its orbital plane is currently tilted to that of the Earth by 19.8°. Cruithne, having a maximum near-Earthmagnitude of +15.8, is fainter than Pluto and would require at least a 12.5-inch (320 mm) reflecting telescope to be seen.^[5]^[6]

Cruithne is in a normal elliptic orbit around the Sun. Its period of revolution around the Sun, approximately 364 days at present, is almost equal to that of the Earth. Because of this, Cruithne and Earth appear to "follow" each other in their paths around the Sun. This is why Cruithne is sometimes called "Earth's second moon".^[2] However, it does not orbit the Earth and is not a moon.^[7] In 2058, Cruithne will come within 0.09 AU (13.6 million kilometres) of Mars.^[4] Cruithne's distance from the Sun and orbital speed vary a lot more than the Earth's, so from the Earth's point of view Cruithne actually follows a kidney bean-shaped horseshoe orbit ahead of the Earth, taking slightly less than one year to complete a circuit of the "bean". Because it takes slightly less than a year, the Earth "falls behind" the bean a little more each year, and so from our point of view, the circuit is not quite closed, but rather like a spiral loop that moves slowly away from the Earth.

After many years, the Earth will have fallen so far behind that Cruithne will then actually be "catching up" on the Earth from "behind". When it eventually does catch up, Cruithne will make a series of annual close approaches to the Earth and gravitationally exchange orbital energy with Earth; this will alter Cruithne's orbit by a little over half a million kilometres (whilst Earth's orbit is altered by about 1.3 centimetres (0.51 in)) so that its period of revolution around the Sun will then become slightly more than a year. The kidney bean will then start to migrate away from the Earth again in the opposite direction — instead of the Earth "falling behind" the bean, the Earth is "pulling away from" the bean. The next such series of close approaches will be centred on the year 2292 — in July of that year, Cruithne will approach Earth to about 12,500,000 kilometres (7,800,000 mi).

After 380 to 390 years or so, the kidney-bean-shaped orbit approaches Earth again from the other side, and the Earth, once more, alters the orbit of Cruithne so that its period of revolution around the Sun is again slightly less than a year (this last happened with a series of close approaches centred on 1902, and will next happen with a series centered on 2676). The pattern then repeats itself.

Cruithne appears to make a bean-shaped orbit from the perspective of Earth

Cruithne and Earth seem to follow each other in their orbits

Ultimate Anti Zombie Gun

2011-03-27T23:37:00.000+08:00

Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling science

2011-03-22T00:01:00.001+08:00

Japan Earthquake Predicted. Comet Elenin?

2011-03-13T00:02:00.002+08:00

"Comet Elenin, Earth, and the Sun were in exact alignment last year on February 27th. That is when the Chile Earthquake happened, and Earth's axis shifted. This year, the same alignment happens March 11-15, and the comet is much closer. PLEASE move away from fault areas during this time!"

Scientists Use Sunlight to Make Fuel From CO2

2011-03-12T10:24:00.001+08:00

Source

By Chuck Squatriglia 01.04.08

Sandia researcher Rich Diver checks out the solar furnace which will be the initial source of concentrated solar heat for converting carbon dioxide to fuel. Eventually parabolic dishes will provide the thermal energy.
Photo: Randy Montoya / Sandia National Laboratories

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using sunlight to recycle carbon dioxide and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline.

The Sunlight to Petrol, or S2P, project essentially reverses the combustion process, recovering the building blocks of hydrocarbons. They can then be used to synthesize liquid fuels like methanol or gasoline. Researchers said the technology already works and could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, although large-scale implementation could be a decade or more away.

"This is about closing the cycle," said Ellen Stechel, manager of Sandia's Fuels and Energy Transitions department. "Right now our fossil fuels are emitting CO2. This would help us manage and reduce our emissions and put us on the path to a carbon-neutral energy system."

The idea of recycling carbon dioxide is not new, but has generally been considered too difficult and expensive to be worth the effort. But with oil prices exceeding $100 per barrel and concerns about global warming mounting, researchers are increasingly motivated to investigate carbon recycling. Los Alamos Renewable Energy, for example, has developed a method of using CO2 to generate electricity and fuel.

S2P uses a solar reactor called the Counter-Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator, or CR5, to divide carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen.

"It's a heat engine," Stechel said. "But instead of doing mechanical work, it does chemical work."

Lab experiments have shown that the process works, Stechel said. The researchers hope to finish a prototype by April.

The prototype will be about the size and shape of a beer keg. It will contain 14 cobalt ferrite rings, each about one foot in diameter and turning at one revolution per minute. An 88-square meter solar furnace will blast sunlight into the unit, heating the rings to about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, cobalt ferrite releases oxygen. When the rings cool to about 2,000 degrees, they're exposed to CO2.

Since the cobalt ferrite is now missing oxygen, it snatches some from the CO2, leaving behind just carbon monoxide -- a building block for making hydrocarbons -- that can then be used to make methanol or gasoline. And with the cobalt ferrite restored to its original state, the device is ready for another cycle.

Fuels like methanol and gasoline are combinations of hydrogen and carbon that are relatively easy to synthesize, Stechel said. Methanol is the easiest, and that's where they will start, but gasoline could also be made.

However, creating a powerful and efficient solar power system to get the cobalt ferrite hot enough remains a major hurdle in implementing the technology on a large scale, said Aldo Steinfeld, head of the Solar Technology Laboratory at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, in an e-mail.

He and Stechel said the technology could be 15 to 20 years from viability on an industrial scale.

The Sandia team originally developed the CR5 to generate hydrogen for use in fuel cells. If the device's rings are exposed to steam instead of carbon dioxide, they generate hydrogen. But the scientists switched to carbon monoxide, so the fuels they produce would be compatible with existing infrastructure.

Stechel said the Sandia team envisions a day when coal-fired power plants might have large numbers of CR5s, each reclaiming 45 pounds of carbon dioxide using reclamation technology currently under development and producing enough carbon monoxide to make 2.5 gallons of fuel. The Sunlight to Petrol process also raises the possibility that liquid hydrocarbon fuels might one day be renewable – provided CO2 reclamation reaches a point where the greenhouse gas can be snatched directly from the air. Such a process is being explored by Global Research Technologies and Klaus Lakner of Columbia University, among others.

Zombie Creating Fungus

2011-03-04T07:59:00.001+08:00

Water-Powered Jetpack

2011-02-16T01:02:00.002+08:00

Waterskiing is so passé. This summer, you’ll be able to fly with Raymond Li’s water-powered jetpack, which is going on sale in March. It’s only $99,500!

The JetLev jetpack consists of a lightweight fiberglass backpack connected to a hose that sucks up water. By separating the engine and its fuel from the backpack, Li was able to drastically reduce the backpack’s weight and therefore the amount of thrust needed to get airborne. The device’s thrust-to-weight ratio is three times better than that of a fighter jet, according to New Scientist.

The jetpack produces 430 pounds of thrust, letting its pilot fly forward at 22 mph and reach heights up to 30 feet. “It's the same reaction force a firefighter experiences when he points a water jet at a fire,” says Li.

But it’s much more easily controlled — the pilot can use hand controls to adjust the water pressure to make precise movements.

The jetpack was on display this week at a boat show in Germany, and it will be available for purchase starting in March, with a $99,500 price tag. New Scientist says initial sales will likely come from resorts and rental agencies. But it could prove useful for water rescues, marine inspections and even peackeeping missions, Li says.