Ryan Greene: Science

Curse you Iron man!

The Financial Times reports on recent developments in anti-gravity research. [via Davos Newbies] [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

What especially interests me is this:

Meanwhile, Mr Podkletnov, now based at the Moscow Chemical Scientific Research Centre, has taken his ideas further. Last year he published another paper - backed by Giovanni Modanese, an Italian physicist, detailing work on an "impulse gravity generator" that is capable of exerting a repulsive force on all matter.

Using a strong electrical discharge source and a superconducting "emitter", the equipment has produced a "gravity impulse", Mr Podkletnov says, "that is very short in time and propagates with great speed (practically instantaneously) along the line of discharge, passing through different objects without any observable loss of energy".

The result, he maintains, is a repulsive action on any object the beam hits, that is proportional to its mass. When fitted to a laser pointing device, Mr Podkletnov says, his laboratory installation has already demonstrated its ability to knock over objects more than a kilometre away. The same installation, he maintains, could hit objects up to 200km away with the same power.

Kinda gives new meaning to "Reach out and touch someone." Seriously though, this could serve as a great way to get objects into space, by either equipping a ship with a set of these beams that are focused on a launch pad, or by having the beams ground based, and firing at the ship. That way, no proportion of your payload is dedicated to fuel, and you can save a massive amount of weight (and therefore cost) in terms of what you are putting into space.

Ground based solutions could include (here he goes) a truck based minesweeper that can safely detonate mines from a distance, crowd control, bomb detonation, and building demolition. Improved safety for workers who work at high elevation, by having an instant on area below them that will catch them should they fall. Invisible barriers/fences. New forms of art and sculpture that invisibly suspend objects in the air. The world's quietest gun.

Fun applications: Action figures that really fly, engines for remote control planes, the world's quietest leaf blower, new forms of amusement park rides where there are "areas of lift" that allow people to cross chasms and water without visable means of support.

Magnetic wood blocks mobile phone signals. Theatres and restaurants could use the new wood to stop people using their cellphones without resorting to signal jammers [New Scientist]

First of all, it's not magnetic wood, it's a sandwich of wood and a ferrite substrate. Thank's for teasing me there folks. But what is cool about this is the fact that it can be used to block cell phone signals, allowing a builder to make a signal free zone without installing the illegal signal jammers.

Possible uses mentioned in the article: Theaters, restaurants, residential for limiting access to different networks in a confined area.

My thoughts: Homespun Faraday cages for privacy and for those who don't like the idea of being bombarded with differing wavelengths. Appliance garage for a microwave oven. To minimize intereference when shooting a movie in digital (I seem to recall that Lucas had to make a studio stage into a massive faraday cage as there was a lot of interference form outside sources while he was shooting his latest film.) Sheathe a home in the material to minimize RF intereference from outside devices.

Evidence Found of Lake, Catastrophic Flood on Mars [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]

So where did it all go? Is it trapped beneath the surface? Has there been enough strikes from meteors to bury all that water? Did a huge passing comet (or series thereof) skim the upper atmosphere, wicking away moisture before tearing off into space? We'll never know.

Not to shill for myself needlessly

40 Days And 40 Nights... Oops.

Modafinil - Drug Enables 40 Hours Without Sleep

"Now THIS is what I call better living through chemistry... (well, ok. maybe just more of it.)

Perhaps this is the secret to Jenny's Success.

'Can I have some?

From The Washington Post: With a Pill Called Modafinil, You Can Go 40 Hours Without Sleep -- and See Into the Future.' " [Michael Wilson's Radio Weblog, via Be Blogging, via www.davidwatson.org]

Again, no, but I'm definitely intrigued! That seeing into the future thing would definitely come in handy....

[The Shifted Librarian]

Umm, Jenny, check this out first.

Cool Beans.

Bees Boost Coffee Crop Yield [Scientific American]

Couldn't help it.

IBM's nanotech 'punch card' data storage - South China Morning Post 06-11-2002. IBM back to the future with nanotech 'punch card' - The Namibian
IBM's 'millipede' could be breakthrough in data-storage technology - Nando Times
IBM 'punch cards' make data storage breakthrough - Boston Globe
IBM labs unveil super-dense storage - Yahoo! Headlines [Google Technology News]

Remember punchcards? Well, IBM has managed to make punchcards that are about the size of a postage stamp, with holes that are 10 nanometers across. Said cards can hold about a terabit of data. They should be available by 2005 with a size of roughly 5-10 gigs. Portable storage in a very small size.

Thought: Plug and Play OS that is near impossible to pirate, since it's set to read only. Updates live on your hard drive. I wonder if instead of reading this off a set of physical needles, if this could be set up to read off a laser. Given that dust would be a serious issue wiht this type of media, it would have to be housed in something that kept it clean during transport, as well as keeping the read area clear from any debris/dust that might build up.

Nanotech Products Hitting the Market [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters][Article on SF Gate]

Good gravy. The thing that got me was the new form of battery that they are developing:

One of the most compelling examples of such materials... is a new breed of thin-film lithium-ion batteries... Because these novel batteries are nanotech based, they can absorb and discharge more electricity more frequently and with greater efficiency.
To get a handle on this idea, think, for example, about the relative efficiency of using one large sponge to sop up water versus that of employing thousands of mini-sponges. The water may never get to the center of the large sponge, the outer layer of which quickly becomes saturated. The smaller sponges, on the other hand, can soak up and discharge water more efficiently.
In the case of batteries, this approach translates into a thin, flexible film that can be recharged up to an astonishing 60,000 times. ...use the batteries to power new implantable medical devices... that they can be recharged by radio waves that pass harmlessly through body tissues.
This means that when a patient's pacemaker (or any other implantable device) is running low on juice, all the person will need to do is stand near a recharging device for a little while, instead of undergoing a surgical procedure to replace the battery... The first nano-batteries, which are also under development at several other firms, are expected to be commercially available before the end of this year.

Other applications of nanotech are light bulbs that near %100 efficiency through the use of nanophosphors, compared with the 5% efficiency of the average incandescent bulb.

Instructions for Simple Gauss Rifle. Super simple instructions on making a gauss rifle out of a wooden ruler, some tiny magnets, and some steel ball bearings. Also comes with an excellent explanation of how it works, along with why it can't be modified into a perpetual motion machine. You can order the magnets from the site. Link Discuss (Thanks, Eli the Bearded!) [Boing Boing Blog]

Cool science.

GM mosquito resistant to malaria parasites - New Scientist 05-22-2002. The GM mosquito that stops malaria - South China Morning Post
Gene Researchers Create Malaria-Resistant Mosquito - Yahoo! Headlines
GM mosquito could prevent malaria spread - Ananova [Google Technology News]

So, whay aren't ehy creating a super mosquito that will create a malaria vaccine in it's belly instead?

Bacteria signpost gold deposits. Gold prospectors could use changes in soil bugs to uncover new reserves of the precious metal [New Scientist]

Given that there are life forms that can live on petrochemicals, why shouldn't there be baccili that are indicators of gold in an area? I wonder if the same holds true for the prospecting of other minerals.

If we can determine the likelyhood of finding diamonds by the makeup of the geology of a region (coal seam near an formerly active volcano, so you have a high pressure/temperature field in which to "grow" the diamonds) couldn't we apply the same criteria to finding gold? Likewise, what baccili serve as flags for diamonds? Time will tell.

World: Research on chicken toes raises hopes for replacing human fingers. 05:57 ET - Ananova [NewsBlip.com]

While this could be used to restore human fingers, I think your writing would become chicken scratch.

TRY THE VEAL!

Boston Globe. MIT breakthrough in digital video editing.

>>>In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to a song in Japanese, a language she does not speak. The results were enough to fool viewers consistently, the researchers report.<<<

>>>''This is really groundbreaking work,'' said Demetri Terzopoulos, a leading specialist in facial animation who is a professor of computer science and mathematics at New York University. But ''we are on a collision course with ethics. If you can make people say things they didn't say, then potentially all hell breaks loose.''<<<

>>>MIT's Ezzat said that he would like to develop a more complex model that would teach the computer to simulate basic emotions.<<<

There is also a quicktime video of the technique in action. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

There was a show on back in the early 80's hosted by James Coburn, which was called "The Darkroom" One of the episodes ahd a newscaster who was replaced with a CG version of himself. They had to keep the newscaster locked up so taht no one would ever know that he had either died, or otherwise changed. Happy story.

The point is, some twenty years later we are at the point where this is almost an option.

World: Researchers to study how children interact with their Aibos. 05:44 ET - Ananova [NewsBlip.com]

They are studying how the elderly interact with the robots as well. While this will likely have no impact on what Sony is planning to do with the robots, it is good to see that someone is looking into this.

NYT. Bees on my bomb. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Details: Researchers train bees to go after the scent of exlposives instead of pollen.

So God's Really in the Details?. Last month, Richard Swinburne, a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, invoked probability theory to defend the belief that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. By Emily Eakin. [New York Times: Business]

About a year ago I was reading both C.S Lewis' Miracles, and Elmer Gantry at the same time (how to induce bipolar disorder.) One of the points that Lewis made was that if God was indeed omnipotent, any question as to what he could have done were moot, since he made the rules, and could operate in any way he saw fit. Since we were not privy to all the rules, and only had a limited understanding of how things worked.

Regardless, it is interesting to see a probability formula being used in this manner.

Atmosphere acts as heat shield for solar storms. New data from a NASA spacecraft confirm that a region of the Earth's upper... [spacetoday.net]

Interesting, as debris form solar storms impact the upper magnetosphere, they create electricity that in turn interferes with the functioning of satellites.

Professor Uses Comics to Teach Physics. Is Spider-Man's web really strong enough to support him? The man to ask is University of Minnesota physics Prof. Jim Kakalios. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: Science]

Hey! You got science in my comics! Knock that off! Seriously though, it is very cool to see a teacher force their students to think about how something might work, and if it was feasable or not.

Nanotubes go flash bang wallop. Taking a flash-lit snapshot of carbon nanotubes makes them emit a loud pop and burst into flame [New Scientist]

I love nanotubes. this is just too cool.

Complete tadpole eyeballs grown in lab. Researchers reveal details, saying the eyes work well after transplantation and even when the fry become frogs [New Scientist]

Eye doctor: Does this look better, or this?
Frog: Ribbit.
Doctor: Good!

Serioously though, while this is exciting news on the surface, their work has not been peer reviewed yet, or even published for that matter. Time will tell.

Potential carcinogen revealed in french fries. A single portion could contain many times the WHO's recommended daily limit for acrylamide [New Scientist]

If this were true I would have died long, long ago. More research please.

Are Old Oil Fields Refilling?. Whoa. This Newsday article indicates that the "impossible" may be happening: old, depleted oil fields are refilling with more oil. [kuro5hin.org]

"No one has been more astonished by the potential implications of our work than myself,” said analytic chemist Jean Whelan, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts. "There already appears to be a large body of evidence consistent with ... oil and gas generation and migration on very short time scales in many areas globally,” she wrote in the journal Sea Technology.

Interesting if this is a useable form of petroleum. More interesting is this:

"The clams were the first thing I noticed,” he added. "They were pretty big, like the size of your hand, and it was obvious they had red blood inside, which is unusual. And these long tubes -- 3, 4 and 5 feet long -- we didn't know what they were, but they started bleeding red fluid, too. We didn't know what to make of it.”

The biologists they consulted did know what to make of it. "The experts immediately recognized them as chemo-synthetic communities,” creatures that get their energy from hydrocarbons -- oil and gas -- rather than from ordinary foods. So these animals are very much like, but still different from, recently discovered creatures living near very hot seafloor vent sites in the Pacific, Atlantic and other oceans.

The difference, Kennicutt said, is that the animals living around cold seeps live on methane and oil, while the creatures growing near hot water vents exploit sulfur compounds in the hot water.

Riffage: That's either some serious adaptation going on there, or else there are whole ecosystems living in and near these fields that we've never seen. If there are creatures that burn hydrocarbons for their metabolism, what is their waste product? Could we use them to clean up oil spills? Can we embed them in the soil surrounding gas stations in the hopes that they'll eat up any leaked gasoline? What about using them to clean up superfund sites, if we can get them into the area?

Neural network 'in-jokes' could pass secrets. Using two different neural networks to train each other could provide a unique approach to cryptography [New Scientist]

Interesting... When people get thrown together from different cultures and languages, they slowly form a 'pidgin' language that takes bits and pieces of their own language and mixes it up with their new companions, so that they can communicate. Their children (and grandchildren) take it a step further, forming a 'creole' type of language, that is not materially similar to their parents language, but which they all understand. It appears that nueral networks do the same thing in terms of getting results to and from each other, once each learns how the other is thinking.

Captain Cyborg Lives!. Robots 1: Humans 0 [The Register]

Professor Kevin Warwick, of the University of Reading, is working on a means of capturing the motions of one human and replaying them in another. This was one of the tech concepts in the book Hardwired. It was referred to as "wired reflexes", and was one of the many technologies that lived in that world. One of the issues they had was that the creator's biometrics didn't always match that of the end user, so the moves of a 5'5" 150 lb martial arts expert didn't always translate well into the body of a 6' tall steroid popping 250 lb person. Interesting to see technology finally catching up with a book that came out in 1989.

Possible (ab)uses:

Lockdown in prisons. Get a prisoner to go fetal for a period of time when you need to transport them or during riots.
Teaching muscle memory based skills to large groups of people quickly. By gently guiding them through the moves (who says the impulse has to be set to full strength?) you can get a large group to quickly master basic skills or learn new, more advanced moves.
To directly stimulate the pleasure center, much like the Wire described in Niven's Ringworld series of books.
To remotely control a device that in form matches a human. Researchers have already managed to get monkeys to control cursors with the use of brain implants, why not have people contolling robots, for the ultimate in telepresence.

UPDATE: New Scientist article with counterpoint.

Tone therapy could turn tinnitus off. Patients hearing debilitating ringing or buzzing sounds showed a 35 per cent improvement in just four weeks [New Scientist]

Good news for aging hard rock fans, like myself.

Eyeball squeezing could correct sight. A tap on the side of the head would tighten a band of artificial muscle wrapped round your eyeballs [New Scientist]

Um, no thank you, pass the bifocals please.