The Official Science Thread

Originally Posted by Raymond42262

I thought that used water. I was thinking about putting a turbine at the bottom of a very deep hole and just using the heat from the Earth to turn the turbine.

Generally, when I think of geothermal I think of running pvc under the ground about 10 feet deep with water and antifreeze through it and circulating through a heat pump.

I know Iceland generates a tremendous amount of their energy with geothermal but they is obviously done on a large industrial scale.

I was thinking of something of a smaller scale for independent home use, the same way people put wind turbines and small hydro projects in their yards.

You can totally get this for your house depending on if you are close enough to a hot spot to be economically feasible. There are a lot of people installing this sort of thing in their homes now.

The turbine isn't lowered into the earth, it remains on the surface. The water is pumped down, heated, and forced back up as steam to turn the turbine to make electricity. Iceland does this on a large scale because they are essentially sitting on a very thin part of the Earth's crust and have easy access to the hot spot below.

Source: Phys.org
http://phys.org/news/2012-11-astrono...net-space.html

(Phys.org)—A planet that is not orbiting a star, effectively making it homeless, has been discovered by a team of University of Montreal (UdeM) researchers working with European colleagues and data provided by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT). "Although theorists had established the existence of this type of very cold and young planet, one had never been observed until today," said Étienne Artigau, an astrophysicist at UdeM. The absence of a shining star in the vicinity of this planet enabled the team to study its atmosphere in great detail. This information will in turn enable astronomers to better understand exoplanets that do orbit stars.

Free-floating planets are planetary-mass objects that have no gravitational link to a star. "Over the past few years, several objects of this type have been identified, but their existence could not be established without scientific confirmation of their age," explained Jonathan Gagné, a doctoral student of physics at UdeM. "Astronomers weren't sure whether to categorize them as planets or as Brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are what we could call failed stars, as they never manage to initiate nuclear reactions in their centres."

Gagné and Artigau, along with Lison Malo and Loïc Albert, all of whom are astrophysicists with UdeM and the Centre for Research in Astrophysics of Quebec (CRAQ), were able to find this planet with the assistance of French astronomers. Philippe Delorme, of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de l'Observatoire de Grenoble, was lead researcher. The planet is in fact called CFBDSIR2149 and appears to be part of a group of very young stars known as the AB Doradus Moving Group. "This group is unique in that it is made up of around thirty starts that all have the same age, have the same composition and that move together through space. It's the link between the planet and AB Doradus that enabled us to deduce its age and classify it as a planet," Malo explained.

First of all, the researchers obtained a series of infrared images of CFBDSIR2149 using the 3.6 metres in diameter CFHT. They then used the full strength of the 8 metres in diameter VLT to deduce its mass, its temperature, and of particular note, its age. The planet was found to be between 50 and 120 millions years old, with a temperature of approximately 400 degrees celsius, and a mass four to seven times that of Jupiter. Objects more than 13 times the mass of Jupiter are not considered to be planets but rather Brown dwarfs, as it is this is the minimum amount of mass required for the deuterium at the heart of a star to achieve fusion.

As an aside, it is interesting to note the significance of the finding in terms of the roots of the word "planet." "Planet as a word originates from the Latin word planetus, which originally comes from the Greek words planeta or planêtês, meaning moving or wandering celestial bodies, as opposed to stars which appeared to be in a fixed position in the sky," said Oliver Hernandez, an astrophysicist at UdeM.

In short, this is the first isolated planet – perhaps flung away during its formation – that is not tied by gravity to a star and whose mass, temperature and age meet the relevant criteria. This discovery, which has been sought after for more than a decade, supports theories relating to the formation of stars and planets. Moreover, it supports theories that suggest that these kinds of isolated objects are much more numerous than currently believed.

"This object was discovered during a scan that covered the equivalent of 1000 times the surface of the full moon," Artigau explained. "We observed hundreds of millions of stars and planets, but we only found one homeless planet in our neighbourhood. Now we will be looking for them amongst an astronomical number of sources further afield. It's like looking for a single needle in amongst thousands of haystacks."

Source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/b...s-cancer-cells

BOSTON, MA-A research team at Brigham and Women's Hospital has developed a novel device that may one day have broad therapeutic and diagnostic uses in the detection and capture of rare cell types, such as cancer cells, fetal cells, viruses and bacteria. The device is inspired by the long, elegant appendages of sea creatures, such as jellyfish and sea cucumbers.

The study will be published online on November 12, 2012 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The device, a microchip, is inspired by a jellyfish's long, sticky tentacles that are used to capture miniscule food flowing in the water. The researchers designed a chip that uses a three-dimensional DNA network made up of long DNA strands with repetitive sequences that-like the jellyfish tentacles-can detect, bind and capture certain molecules.
The researchers, led by Jeffrey Karp, PhD, BWH Division of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, senior study author, and Rohit Karnik, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-author, created the chip using a microfluidic surface and methods that allowed them to rapidly replicate long DNA strands with multiple targeting sites that can bind to cancer cells, but also custom tailor critical characteristics, such as DNA length and sequence which would allow them to target various cell types.

In this study, Karp and his team tested the chip using a DNA sequence that had a specific affinity to a cell-surface protein found abundantly in human cancer cells.

The researchers engineered the device to efficiently capture a higher quantity of cancer cells from whole blood patient samples at much higher flow rates compared to other methods that use shorter DNA strands or antibodies.

"The chip we have developed is highly sensitive. From just a tiny amount of blood, the chip can detect and capture the small population of cancer cells responsible for cancer relapse," said Weian Zhao, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow from the Karp lab who is now faculty at the University of California, Irvine, and first study author.

In addition to using the device for blood-based cancers, it may find application to isolate cells that break away from solid tumors and travel through the bloodstream.

"What most people don't realize is that it is the metastasis that kills, not the primary tumor," said Karp. "Our device has the potential to catch these cells in the act with its 'tentacles' before they may seed a new tumor in a distant organ."

Moreover, unlike other methods, the device was able to maintain a high purity of the captured cells that could easily be released and cultured in the laboratory.

"One of the greatest challenges in the treatment of cancer patients is to know which drug to prescribe," said Karp. "By isolating circulating tumor cells before and after the first round of chemotherapy is given, we can determine the biology behind why certain cells are resistant to chemotherapy. We can also use the isolated cells to screen drugs for personalized treatments that could boost effectiveness and hopefully prevent cancer relapse."

Einstein wasn't just uniquely intelligent, his brain was physically different from anyone else's. It's pretty surprising that the physical size was smaller, but not surprising at all that there were more folds in his brain than the average person.
http://www.nature.com/news/snapshots...-brain-1.11836

...

Sick of your produce going south before you get a chance to eat? Fenugreen FreshPaper--the brain child of Kavita Shukla, who patented the idea while still in high school--is an herb-infused sheet of paper that naturally keeps us from wasting food.


We've all done it: We come home from the grocery store with armfuls of fresh fruits and veggies, only to sadly throw out whatever's wilting in the crisper a week later. Or we excitedly collect our produce box from the local CSA, then suffer a massive anxiety attack while trying to eat everything before it goes bad. In countries where refrigeration is scarce, the problem of how to keep the available produce fresh from farm to fork is obviously much, much worse. All in all, spoilage contributes to about a third of the global food supply going to waste each year, stuffing landfills while leaving hungry mouths empty.


Kavita Shukla didn't set out to solve this problem. In fact, she was in middle school when she had the brainstorm that led to the invention of Fenugreen FreshPaper, small squares of spice-infused paper that can extend the shelf life of produce up to four times longer than usual. Like so many innovations, this one has a great origin story: Shukla, who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents as a toddler, had gone back to India to visit her grandmother, and accidentally drank some tap water while brushing her teeth. "I really started to freak out that I would get sick," she says. "My grandma went in the kitchen, and she mixed up this solution of different herbs and spices, and she said, 'Just drink this and you'll be fine.' I was really skeptical, but I drank it. And I didn't get sick.


And then I got really curious about how it worked." Shukla spent high school "meticulously" rotting fruits and vegetables ("which obviously made me really popular," she laughs), and eventually came up with the idea of fusing the preventative mixture into paper. She patented the concept of FreshPaper her senior year.


The exact blend of herbs and spices used in FreshPaper is proprietary, of course, and the only ingredient Shukla will reveal is fenugreek, a spice commonly used in Indian cooking. (It also provides the name of her company.) So how does it work? "It basically works by inhibiting bacterial and fungal growth, as well as the enzymes that cause fruit to over-ripen," Shukla explains. "The concept is that you can just drop a sheet into a drawer or carton. Sometimes people put it into a fruit bowl. Our customers call it a 'dryer sheet for produce.'" Each certified organic and biodegradable sheet lasts about two to three weeks, until its distinctive maple-like scent begins to fade. "That's how you know it's no longer active," Shukla explains.


Initially, Shukla toyed with the idea of turning FreshPaper into a nonprofit focused on food spoilage in the developing world, but as a college student inexperienced in the complexities of philanthropic work, she had little success. "I started to doubt myself," she says. "Even people with the best intentions were saying, you know, 'Maybe you should move beyond what you worked on in high school.'" After graduation, she got a job doing research, but she couldn't stop thinking about FreshPaper, and in 2010, she decided to launch Fenugreen as a social enterprise. "My co-founder and I set up a stall at a farmer's market," she says. "We handmade a batch of FreshPaper, and started handing out sheets. And although not a lot of people stopped by and listened to us that first time, we were amazed by the reaction of the few people who did. I think we realized that spoilage is a big problem even in our own backyard, which is something I never understood."


FreshPaper recently became available at Whole Foods, a significant jump in distribution that's allowed Shukla to start something she's dreamed of all along: A "get one, give one" program benefiting local food banks, starting with those affected by Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey. Shukla says the brand has grown entirely by word of mouth, and credits much of this grassroots energy to increased environmental awareness in consumers. "As we start to learn more about what's going on with food waste, we realize that there's water involved, there's energy costs, land, resources, that go into creating the food that we eat," she says. "And with the economy, people are becoming much more conscious of being wasteful at home, because they know not only are they struggling, but there are people in the U.S. that have no access to fresh food at all. It seems that everyone is coming to understand the importance of buying less or conserving what we have, and how that fits into the larger food crisis."

Next, Shukla would like to expand into school lunch programs, and eventually start working with NGOs and small-scale farmers in developing nations. "We're starting to understand just how much a one- to two-day extension of shelf life could change the lives of people in those regions," she says. She especially relishes the notion of bringing FreshPaper "full-circle" to India, and although her grandmother passed away a few years after sharing her secret blend, Shukla says she's been amazed at the support she's gotten from her family in India, as well as other ethnic communities around the world. "It's really incredible how many people have come up to me and said, 'Oh, my grandmother in China ...' or 'My grandma in Africa would have these mixtures, and now I'm thinking I should have paid attention!'" she says. "My grandma didn't even have a high school education. She came from a pretty poor background. I just remember I thought it was remarkable that she had this knowledge that had been passed down through her family, and I was fascinated by the idea that something so simple could have actually kept me from getting really sick.

"Sometimes," she says, "simple can be so powerful."

Computers are well on their way to creating art that elicits emotion from humans. They're already able to predict with 80% accuracy how most people will respond to a painting
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...t-move-us.html

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

Einstein wasn't just uniquely intelligent, his brain was physically different from anyone else's. It's pretty surprising that the physical size was smaller, but not surprising at all that there were more folds in his brain than the average person.

It is interesting that there are differences in his brain. But it is still creepy that they preserved his brain and studied it with the belief physical brain characteristics would influence his behavior or his success in life. It sounds a bit Naziesque. It reminds me of when the Nazis would measure noses , heads and eyes to determine who was Aryan. I know that was not the intention, but it almost validates what the Nazis were doing. Granted, they did not have 3D MRI machines in his era that would have answered many of their questions but it is still creepy thinking that his brain is sitting on a shelf in a glass jar at Princeton. It reminds me of Frankenstein, when Frankenstein's helper dropped the jar of the smart guy and grabbed the one that said (Abby- Normal).

Eventually, geneticists are going to figure out a way to design kids with more folds in the brains of children to make them smarter.

At any rate they have done all they are going to do with it, they need to bury it/him instead of keeping it on a shelf like a carnival curiosity.

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

Computers are well on their way to creating art that elicits emotion from humans. They're already able to predict with 80% accuracy how most people will respond to a painting
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...t-move-us.html

That would be cool. Imagine if the took it to another level and they made you feel happy if you are sad and made you sleepy if it was late at night. Or imagine if they could communicate with you like the paintings in Harry Potter.

This is just downright awesome

^^ have you watched the BBC's Planet Earth and Life series in high def?

Cowmoo, how come you have so much time to spend on the internetz? What's secret?

Originally Posted by Master Po

^^ have you watched the BBC's Planet Earth and Life series in high def?

Cowmoo, how come you have so much time to spend on the internetz? What's secret?

Content density. If I'm going to waste time I make it count.

edit:
Some badassery from IBM's brain research labs

Maybe Mash can come in and simplify things, but if I'm reading this correctly I think they've experimentally proven that time does have a direction
http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/11/ba...-reversal.html

I know its been posted many times, but this reading is downright interesting: http://www.futuretimeline.net/

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

Maybe Mash can come in and simplify things, but if I'm reading this correctly I think they've experimentally proven that time does have a direction
http://motls.blogspot.com/2012/11/ba...-reversal.html

I'll write up something about the actual experiment when I get a chance (maybe later tonight). I just read the first few paragraphs before they explained exactly what they did. I'll try and explain that one a little better than the article.

In particle physics, there are 3 symmetries, Charge (c), Parity (p), and Time (t). In a reaction in particle physics, if you take one of these symmetries and make it opposite, the reaction still works. That is, if you take charge for example, if you change all of the charges of the particles in the reaction (make + to - and - to +), the reaction still works. If you run the clock backwards (time), it still works. If you change +x to -x, +y to -y, and +z to -z (parity), it still works.

However, when I say the reaction still works, I mean that it usually still works. In some cases, the symmetry is violated and it doesn't work exactly the same way. They realized this when they were checking the parity symmetry. Some decays work differently if you look at different spins of the particles. However, they realized that if you change the charge AND parity (called cp), it turns out the be the same.

Well, not exactly still. In some cases, even cp can be violated, so that if you change the charge and the parity, it still will work differently. BUT, if you change charge, parity, and time (cpt), then it will ALWAYS be the same, and the cpt symmetry is not violated. Now, when they say that cp is violated, it is equivalent to saying that the t symmetry (time) is violated. Up until now, even though the cp and the t symmetry violations are equivalent, they could only check the cp symmetry. It looks like now they've been able to directly probe the t symmetry.

Editted for some accuracy.

any info on this?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...discovery.html

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

Content density. If I'm going to waste time I make it count.

Nice illustration.

I'll have to remember that one.

Originally Posted by DylloS

any info on this?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...discovery.html

Unfortunately not, I've read about it on 3 or 4 sites today though.

I really hope it's oil.

Originally Posted by Gheybe

I really hope it's oil.

That would be the best case scenario. We would see a manned mars mission in no time.

Originally Posted by cowmoo32

That would be the best case scenario. We would see a manned mars mission in no time.

We can't get an oil pipeline from Canada, imagine one from Mars.