More Groovy Science 6

Big Bear Solar Observatory have the New Solar Telescope (NST) which took the picture you see of our sun. This is the most detailed picture of a sunspot ever taken in visible light. The resolution of the telescope is just 50 miles of the sun's surface. Science and technology are amazingly cool. The NST should help researchers better understand the complexities of solar weather and its impact on the space climate in our neighborhood of the solar system. Found Here.

• Generation X More Loyal to Religion


• Drink Water to Curb Weight Gain? Clinical Trial Confirms Effectiveness of Simple Appetite Control Method


• Capacity for Exercise Can Be Inherited: Finding Suggests Pharmaceutical Drugs  Can Be Used to Alter Activity Levels in Humans


• Do-Gooders Get Voted Off Island First: People Don't Really Like Unselfish Colleagues


• 'Charitable' Behavior Found in Bacteria


• Attention, Couch Potatoes! Walking Boosts Brain Connectivity, Function


• Starvation Keeps Sleep-Deprived Fly Brain Sharp


• Eating Berries May Activate the Brain's Natural Housekeeper for Healthy Aging


• Roots of Gamblers' Fallacies and Other Superstitions: Causes of Seemingly Irrational Human Decision-Making

More Groovy Science 4

Hello everyone! Here is more science to tantalize your synapses and neurons!

• Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance


• More Than Half the World's Population Gets Insufficient Vitamin D, Says Biochemist


• Low Vitamin D Levels Associated With Cognitive Decline


• Team Develops Non-Toxic Oil Recovery Agent


• Smoking Mind Over Smoking Matter: Surprising New Study Shows Cigarette Cravings Result from Habit, Not Addiction


• Light and Moderate Physical Activity Reduces the Risk of Early Death


• New Antibacterial Material for Bandages, Food Packaging, Shoes


• A Blood Test for Depression?


• 3-D Gesture-Based Interaction System Unveiled

Keep Your Fingers Crossed: How Superstition Improves Performance: New research shows that having some kind of lucky token can actually improve your performance -- by increasing your self-confidence. ...Volunteers who had their lucky charm did better at a memory game on the computer, and other tests showed that this difference was because they felt more confident. They also set higher goals for themselves. Just wishing someone good luck -- with "I press the thumbs for you," the German version of crossing your fingers -- improved volunteers' success at a task that required manual dexterity.

~Of course, this is still a form of delusion. Everyone tested in the study was superstitious and had a lucky charm. I'd like to see a study or two that involved people who don't rely on superstition as well. I think if a person understands the delusion of superstition, they will therefore not need the "lucky" feather in their cap. They will have appropriate self-confidence based on their actual abilities. Still, it's an interesting study.

We Need the Science Cops

The Tree Lobsters have said exactly what I was trying to say over a year ago, only much more concisely and with a lol. Don't you hate it when tree lobsters upstage you? I do!

Evolution is a sham! The earth is only 6000 years old, therefore there hasn't been
enough time for all the species to have developed from a single origin. All you have to do is look at the...

Hold it right there!

Science Police. We received complaints that you've been willfully ignoring centuries of scientific progress.
Therefore, in accordance with bylaw 27B/6, you've forfeited your right to benefit from the technology derived from said science.

Liquid Glass Is Groovy!

Happy Darwin Day everyone! Today is Darwin's birthday and in honor of him, I thought I'd post this article about Liquid Glass, which could possibly be the coolest nanotech material I've seen in some time. I think it's so cool mainly because of its versatility and the fact that it's already in use in Germany, the UK and Turkey.

Why am I talking about nanotech on Darwin's birthday? If you think about it, without evolution, we wouldn't be able to manipulate our world so deftly and with such finesse. About 195,000 years ago homo sapiens first appeared in the fossil record. We started leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago, and migrated as far as the Americas 14,500 years ago.

A mere 10,000 years ago, we were mostly hunter-gatherers in nomadic groups. The first proto-states were developed only 6,000 years ago. Think of that! Look how far we've come in such a short time!

Think of how we lived just 100 years ago in 1910.

• By 1910 many suburban homes were wired up with power and new electronic gadgets.


• Vacuum cleaners and washing machines had just become commercially available, though still expensive for middle class folks


• The telephone was new, and millions of American homes were connected by manual switchboard


• People relied on the paper for their news, but radio technology was in its infancy


• The age of the airship was in full swing. Only 7 years previously, the Wright brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk


• Henry Ford introduced the Model T 2 years before and sold about 10,000 of them this year


• Advances in the use of gases meant the first electric refrigerators and air conditioning units.


• Neon lighting was debuted in Paris


• Inventions included: escalators, teabags, cellophane, instant coffee and disposable razor blades


• Women still had another 3 years of corsets

Things they didn't have in 1910:

Scanning Electron Micrograph Of My Toothbrush!

Last month Johnny posted about an offer from ASPEX. They have desktop SEM (Scanning Electron Micrograph) and will scan a sample of anything you send to them.

The offer still stands. Follow the instructions here to get your dead bugs and rotten food scanned for free.

I sent in my toothbrush and they sent me an email with the results the other day! So here it is:



Pretty interesting, huh? They also put up two other toothbrush scans:

FREE Scanning Electron Micrographs of Just About Anything

An interesting offer from ASPEX
November 10, 2009 2:54 PM - by PZ Myers

I had my doubts about this; I got an offer from ASPEX corporation to let people get free scanning electron micrographs of just about anything. They make a desktop SEM (Scanning Electron Micrograph), and all you have to do is fill out a form and mail it in with your sample of a dead bug or a microchip or bacon, and presto, within a few weeks they'll have it scanned in and the image available on their website.

I asked them if they knew how many readers I have, and they said no problem, they can handle it.

Huh.

Well, you heard them. Scavenge your trash cans, dig into your local sources of vermin and oddments, and send them in. I'm thinking this could be really fun for any school teachers out there — you could have the whole class looking for interesting specimens to zoom in on. You can see their current galleries for ideas.

Follow the instructions here to get your dead bugs and rotten food scanned for free.

If you do send something in to get scanned be sure to note that you found them via PZ; and be sure to come back here and share your scan with the rest of us!

WolframAlpha and Google "Fun" While Fixing Computers

Ok, this will be relatively short because I'm very tired and I really have to go downstairs and devote myself to fixing Butch's computer today. You know how it happens, one thing leads to another, and suddenly I am doing a clean install of windows xp for him. Let's hope it fixes most of his problems and he'll be a happy camper again. (He has no internet connection. That's just not bearable these days, you know? Everyone needs and deserves fast internet access!)

So, if you haven't heard, WolframAlpha, the latest, coolest "computational knowledge engine" is out and ready to play with. It still has a long way to go with adding more functionality, but there's a lot in there. I was asking it questions regarding religions and that wasn't really an option yet. Go over and try a few questions, watch the video, and see if you won't at least bookmark the site. It's geektastic, if you ask me. :)

One question I asked it was how many people per church are in my town? Unfortunately it didn't know how many churches were here, so that didn't work. But it told me the population, so that was a start. Also it has handy links down on the right. One was to Wikipedia which had an even newer figure for my town's population. So then I went to Google Maps and asked it to tell me where all the churches are in my town. Here is a summary of what I found:

• Population: 19,096 people


• Area: 8.2 sq. miles


• Churches: 6302

That's 3 people per church. WTF? That can't be right!?

Now, I think some of those 6,302 churches are in the surrounding area outside of town. So I redefined my search to be near the main street of downtown. I got 6,296 churches. Within 8 miles of downtown, I would say the first 10 pages of results would be a fair estimate. That's about 100 churches. Whew.. that's much better. I was freaking out there for a minute.

That still means 191 people per church. That makes more sense, I guess. But seriously, driving through our sleepy little town, there's a church on every corner, it seems. The major denominations competing for the sheeple are catholic and methodist. We have a pentacostal church near our house too.

Well, now that I've wasted an hour of my day, and a few minutes of yours, I'll go work on Butch's computer. Which reminds me, if you're a geek, I'd love to be your new BFF! :D I know just enough about computers to get myself deep into trouble and not be able to get back out of it again. So wish me luck. I'm diving in headfirst!

Random Thoughts About Human Impact On Evolution

Charles Darwin celebrated his 200th birthday February 12 of this year. So of course many of the science podcasts I listen to, as well as many of the science and skeptic sites I visit, have been talking about evolution and Darwin and all that good stuff. Evolution is often paraphrased as the term, survival of the fittest, which is inaccurate. Here is how Dictionary.com defines it, as well as some other terms, just so we're all on the same page:

• Survival of the Fittest
  a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.


• Natural Selection
  n. The process in nature by which, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.


• Evolution
  Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

I've been slowly forming some random thoughts regarding the human population and evolution and I thought I'd write them down. Your input would be most welcome, as usual.

Help Identify This Microscope!

I got my microscope! And I need your help. This thing is awesome (I think), but I have no idea what it is. It has no name on it. I have no idea even what the magnification is. I've dusted it carefully and now I'm waiting for UPS to deliver the slides and slide covers. I am still trying to figure out how to get a temporary light source to work, then I have to figure out a permanent lighting solution.

Oh... at the end of the technical bits, I need to rant a bit, in case you're interested.



OK! The slides arrived. I've looked up Optical Microscopes and I know more than I did already. Don't think you're off the hook though. I still need you.

I Need A PrayerMAX 5000!

I saw this commercial for the PrayerMAX 5000 awhile ago on Pharyngula, but I was busy and never actually watched it. Silly me! This is awesome! I need two of these things!

Dead Cats Into Diesel

Ok, for some reason this struck me as a bit.... odd. Diesel from dead cats? I just had to share it with you, since we're Heaving Dead Cats around here on a regular basis. Now we can save money, heave dead cats and make fuel! Woot!

Dr Christian Koch, 55, from Kleinhartmannsdorf, has a special method for turning household garbage into biodiesel. This leads me to believe you can make biodiesel out of just about anything.

So, his method involves heating stuff like old tires, paper, motor oil, plastic, dead cats, just about anything, to 300 degrees Celsius. Then the hydrocarbons go through a catalytic converter.

Now I'll know what to do with all those dead cats in my freezer! (JUST KIDDING)

Found Here and Here.

Fold It- Play A Game For Science!

This is the neatest idea on so many levels. So you need to unwind and play a game. You're tired of windows solitaire. How about playing a game that could contribute to curing a disease? How about helping science with your big awesome brain!?

You can go here to read about the science behind the "game".

So basically, in a really simple nutshell, you're using your intuitive awesome brain to do something that would take computers a huge amount of time and expense to do.

Proteins are part of lots of diseases, so understanding how they fold on themselves is very important.

A Solar Revolution In Our Future

In a giant leap for clean energy, MIT professor Daniel Nocera and his team, have developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas. This paves the way for large scale use of solar power.

Getting energy from the sun isn't the hard part, it seems. It's storing that energy that has been a problem.

These guys at MIT were inspired by how plants perform photosynthesis. Their revolutionary method uses abundant, non-toxic natural materials.

I won't get into all the details, but I just wanted to share it with you because it seems pretty important and wonderful.

Here's a link to MIT where they have a video of Daniel Nocera describing the new process and a lot more details.

This is just the beginning though. It's still not really cost effective, but other scientists will be able to run with it and we'll see where it all leads us in the near future.

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, we'll be able to power our homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power our own household fuel cell.

Of course, the power companies will not like this. But hopefully it will all happen anyway. :)

Stretchable Silicon Camera "Eye"

[caption id="attachment_332" align="alignleft" width="232" caption="Photograph of the electronic eye camera after integration with a transparent hemispherical cap and a simple, single component imaging lens. - Photo by John Rogers"][/caption]

The University of Illinois and Northwestern University have developed an "eye" camera. It combines stretchable optoelectronics and the design is inspired by nature. The layout is based on the human eye, so this camera is the next step towards an artificial retina, a la The Terminator.

Microchipping Students in Rhode Island

It looks so harmless, doesn't it? A tiny little RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) chip. Its uses are only limited by the imagination, it seems.

Well, Middletown School District in Rhode Island has started a pilot program to monitor students by implanting these little chips in their schoolbags. The district is in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp. and together they are going to tag 80 students. Two school busses will be outfitted readers for the chips and with GPS devices.

Amazing Futuristic Materials

Stumbling around the web, I found this article on Futuristic Materials. This stuff is just amazing, so I wanted to share it with you. Just think where we'll be in 10 years if these materials go into products that are mass produced? I say it that way because I know there must be secret flying cars and robots that fold laundry out there, but still, I am driving my little old Subaru and folding my own laundry. And it's the 21st century!

Anyway, enjoy these groovy new materials. They have awesome potential to change our world. And it makes me think, if I never imagined this stuff, what will they think of next!? Woot!

1. Aerogel: also called "Frozen Smoke"