Clipmarks | rmowery's Science collection

Speed of Light Exceed

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 16:54:08 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

PreacherTom writes "Scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ are reporting that they have broken the speed of light. For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapor of laser-irradiated atoms, causing a pulse that propagates about 300 times faster than light would travel in a vacuum. The pulse seemed to exit the chamber even before entering it." This research was published in Nature, so presumably it was peer-reviewed. It's impossible from the CBC story to determine what is being claimed. First of all they get the physics wrong by asserting that Einstein's special relativity only decrees that matter cannot exceed the speed of light. Wrong. Matter cannot touch the speed of light in vacuum; energy (e.g. light) cannot exceed it; and information cannot be transferred faster than this limit. What exactly the researchers achieved, and what they claim, can only be determined at this point by subscribers to Nature.

Tags: physics, speed of light, princeton

Steve Kurtz -On trial for art

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 04:11:48 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.couchprojects.com

Steve Kurtz Waiting (2006)
By Jim Fetterley and Angie Waller | Running Time 15:32

On May 11, Steve Kurtz phoned 911 to report his wife of 20 years was unresponsive. When paramedics came to his house, one of them noticed that Kurtz had laboratory equipment, which he used in his art exhibits. The paramedics reported this to police and the FBI sealed off his house.

Authorities later said that Kurtz's wife had died of "heart failure," but he wasn't allowed to return to his home for two days while the FBI confiscated his equipment, and biological samples. They also carted off his books, personal papers and computer.

The contradiction between the charges for possessing harmful substances and the county health commissioner assessing that no hazardous substances were found in the house leaves only the conclusion - that ideas, when misunderstood or disagreeable, are toxic.

Kurtz is one of the founders of the Critical Art Ensemble, a group whose beginnings in filmmaking over a decade ago have evolved into public performances and videos that educate the public about the politics of biotechnology. All of CAE's museum and public performances are meant to not only inform the public about the ways their lives are affected by biotechnology, but also to dispel public paranoia that is generated by the media and a lack of understanding.

Steve became the victim of this paranoia, and through the extended powers of the US Patriot Act, he still awaits trial for mail fraud. If found guilty, could face up to twenty years.

"Steve Kurtz Waiting" by Jim Fetterley and Angie Waller is a video portrait of Steve Kurtz during a moment of indefinite anticipation as routine court litigations continue. Through a series casual interviews, Kurtz reveals an admirable calmness, spirited humor and a strong will to continue his role as a cultural producer after months of close surveillance, black vans, continued government scrutiny, and notably in addition to, the mourning of his close partner.

Tags: kurtz, biotech, buffalo, artist

Going for a blast into the real past: Time Travel Experiment

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:20:45 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: seattlepi.nwsource.com

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Going for a blast into the real past
If the experiment works, a signal could be received before it's sent

By TOM PAULSON
P-I REPORTER

If his experiment with splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, the next step will be to test for quantum "retrocausality."

That's science talk for saying he hopes to find evidence of a photon going backward in time.

"It doesn't seem like it should work, but on the other hand, I can't see what would prevent it from working," Cramer said. "If it does work, you could receive the signal 50 microseconds before you send it."

Uh, huh ... what? Wait a minute. What is that supposed to mean?

Roughly put, Cramer is talking about the subatomic equivalent of arriving at the train station before you've left home, of winning the lottery before you've bought the ticket, of graduating from high school before you've been born -- or something like that.

Tags: time travel, time, subatomics, quantum retrocausilty

Is Time Travel Possible?

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:25:32 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.firstscience.com

Is Time Travel Possible?

Not all scientists agree but according to Einstein and quantum theory, time travel could be possible.

Imagine sitting by the Statue of Liberty and watching dinosaurs play in Manhattan or walking on the headland round Botany Bay as Captain Cook arrives to claim the new land for King George and England. Would you keep quiet at the slave markets of Savannah or save Martin Luther King from the assassin's bullet? Time travel is everywhere in the media from Star Trek to Dr Who but what can science tell us about it? Is time travel possible?

Actually, time travel is happening all around us. Hold out your hand and every second a dozen or so tiny nuclear particles called cosmic ray muons will pass straight through you. These particles are too small to feel and sometimes do damage which your body repairs. Astronauts in space can die from too much cosmic ray damage which causes radiation sickness.

Is time travel possible? According to Einstein and quantum theory it could be.

Tags: time travel, time, past, present, future, hawking, einstein

invitro mini brains control robots and more....

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:25:23 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.discover.com

Brain in a Dish

This is not your average petri dish: minibrains grown in vitro.

DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 11 | November 2006 | Mind & Brain

By Jennifer Barone

In a lab dish, a culture of rat brain cells grows on an array of different-size electrodes arranged in a hexagonal pattern.

In an Atlanta lab, minibrains in dishes can control robots and computer-simulated animals. They may provide a simple model to study how the brain changes as it learns. Georgia Tech researcher Steve Potter calls his biological-mechanical hybrids Neurally Controlled Animats. Each Animat's "brain" consists of cultured rat neurons growing on a plate of electrodes. This live culture is linked to an artificial body—either a robotic animal or a computer-simulated one.

The brain cells can receive input from the synthetic critter's environment, process information, and stimulate behavior. For example, one of the Animats is linked to a robot with light-detecting sensors. Information from the sensors is sent to the brain culture, which sends a signal back to the robot instructing it to move toward the light. Other Animats can chase a target around a room, scribble simple drawings, and move around obstacles. Until recently, training Animats had been tough. The cultured brain cells kept firing in synchronized bursts that disrupted learning. Potter suspected this bursting was a symptom of sensory deprivation, since the neurons weren't receiving constant electrical input as they would in a living body. He was able to quiet the neural fireworks by applying soothing background stimulation. "Now we've seen reliably detectable changes. We think we're on the right track." Animats won't be taking over the world anytime soon, but Potter acknowledges that these "semiliving objects" are smarter than your average petri dish. "They can process information from their environment and respond to it. It's not human consciousness, but it's something."

Tags: robots, robotics, biotech, brain, hmi

Cardiologist questioning heart stents

Sun, 22 Oct 2006 11:21:17 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The medical community is having second thoughts about stents.

Tiny metal sleeves placed in arteries to keep blood flowing, stents have become such a popular quick fix for clogged coronary vessels that Americans will receive more than 1.5 million of them this year.

And stents are a big business, generating $6 billion a year in sales for their makers and thousands of dollars in fees for each procedure performed by the specialists implanting them.

But now stent sales are falling and some doctors are rethinking their faith in the devices, driven by emerging evidence that the newest and most common type — drug-coated stents — can sometimes cause potentially fatal blood clots months or even years after they are implanted.

The Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that it would hold hearings in early December to consider whether to issue new stent safety guidelines.

The evidence indicates that overuse of stents may be leading to thousands of heart attacks and deaths each year, whether because stents are being used in relatively mild cases where drugs should be prescribed instead, or because patients are receiving drug-coated versions where simpler, cheaper bare-metal devices might work just as well.

There is no question that stents have saved countless lives in the short term by preventing impending heart attacks or opening arteries while an attack is being treated. But neither type of stent, no matter how much better it may make a patient feel, has been shown in rigorous clinical trials to improve long-term survival compared with other forms of treatment.

“In the past we’d say, ‘Why not?,’ ” said Dr. William O’Neill, a well-known cardiologist at the University of Miami and longtime advocate of using drug-coated stents. But the new safety data, he said, amounts to “a big why not” for many patients.

Tags: medical, health, heart stents, technology

These bacteria use radiated water as food

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:59:01 GMT

clipped by: rmowery
clipper's remarks: Incredible!

Clip Source: newsinfo.iu.edu

These bacteria use radiated water as food

Deep exploration of Earth's biosphere raises excitement about the potential for life on Mars

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, Oct. 19, 2006

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Researchers from Indiana University Bloomington and eight collaborating institutions report in this week's Science a self-sustaining community of bacteria that live in rocks 2.8 kilometers below Earth's surface. Think that's weird? The bacteria rely on radioactive uranium to convert water molecules to useable energy.

The discovery is a confirmed expansion of Earth's biosphere, the three-dimensional shell that encompasses all planetary life.

The research has less Earthly implications, however. It will likely fuel optimism that life exists in other deep subsurface environments, such as in groundwater beneath the permafrost on Mars.

"We know surprisingly little about the origin, evolution and limits for life on Earth," said IUB biogeochemist Lisa Pratt, who led IU Bloomington's contribution to the project. "Scientists are just beginning to study the diverse organisms living in the deepest parts of the ocean. The rocky crust on Earth is virtually unexplored at depths more than half a kilometer below the surface. The organisms we describe in this paper live in a completely different world than the one we know at the surface."

Bacteria living in groundwater or in other subsurface environments is not news. Until now, however, it was not known whether subterranean microorganisms were recent arrivals bound for extinction or whether they were permanent fixtures of an unlikely habitat. Also, many scientists have been skeptical of subsurface bacterial communities being completely disconnected from surface ecologies fed by the sun's light.

Tags: bacteria, radioactive, unranium, sunlight absence

Physics Games

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:43:49 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.fun-motion.com

List of Physics Games

Tags: education, physics, games, learning, science

'DNA computer' is unbeatable at tic-tac-toe

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:23:18 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.newscientisttech.com

'DNA computer' is unbeatable at tic-tac-toe

Tom Simonite

NewScientist.com news service

10:35 17 October 2006

A computer that uses strands of DNA to perform calculations has mastered the game tic-tac-toe.

MAYA-II, developed by researchers at Columbia University and the University of New Mexico in the US, uses a system of DNA logic gates to calculate its moves.

A DNA logic gate consists of a strand of DNA that binds to another specific input sequence. This binding causes a region of the strand to work as an enzyme, modifying yet another short DNA sequence into an output string.

Scientists have already developed DNA computers capable of various similar simple calculations. But the researchers behind MAYA-II say their design should prove particularly useful for exploring ways to identify the genetic markers associated with certain diseases.

Another level

A human plays MAYA-II by adding a DNA sequence that represents their chosen move at a particular point in the game. This is added to all 8 wells that correspond to the outer squares on a tic-tac-toe grid. One limitation of the system is that the human player must always go second, after the centre square has been filled by the machine.

The previous version of MAYA, unveiled in 2003, was even more limited. The human opponent’s first move was restricted to one of two squares (see First game-playing DNA computer revealed).

Tags: dna, dna computing, bio-computing, bitech, dna computation, tic-tac-toe

New Device Reveals Hidden Blood Vessels

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:05:45 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

New Device Reveals Hidden Blood Vessels

By Ker Than
LiveScience Staff Writer

NEW YORK—A new device that projects the position of veins directly onto a patient's skin is helping take the guesswork out of medical pricks and injections.

VeinViewer shines harmless near-infrared light onto a patient's skin. The light photons are absorbed by red blood cells inside vessels but bounced back by surrounding tissue.

The reflected photons are captured by a digital video camera and a computer creates a digital image of the vasculature, which is then projected back onto the patient's skin. The hidden veins appear on the skin as colorless lines that crisscross a rectangular patch of neon green [photo].

Tags: veins, vein viewer, health, science

Amazing Animal: Vogelkop bowerbird nest

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 18:43:53 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: youtube.com

Vogelkop bowerbird nest

to eripsa

Added September 03, 2006
From eripsa

David Attenborough films the elaborate n David Attenborough films the elaborate nest of the Vogelkop bowerbird ... (more) (less)

Category Pets & Animals

Tags: vogelkop bowerbird, bowerbird, smart animals, intelligent birds

Early to bed, early to rise: Sleep Genetics

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 05:24:23 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

Early to bed, early to rise

Genetics of the morning lark

In an upcoming G&D paper, a team of German scientists presents a genetic basis for understanding human morning lark behavior. Dr. Achim Kramer (Charité Universitaetsmedizin Berlin) and colleagues have uncovered a genetic cause for the human familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS), which causes people to both go to sleep and wake up very early.

"Being a morning lark or a night owl is something encoded in people's genes and we here made substantial progress to uncover the molecular basis for that," explains Dr. Kramer.

FASPS is a dominantly inherited circadian rhythm disorder in which patients' inborn biological clock (or circadian clock as it is known by scientists) runs ahead of normal. Circadian clocks are found in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. They keep our bodies' daily activities, like sleeping and eating, on a roughly 24 hour schedule, or period. FASPS patients' periods are about 4 hours advanced, causing the patients to retire at 6 or 7pm and rise by 4am. In 1999, it was discovered that a mutated gene, called PERIOD2 (PER2) is mutated in many cases of FASPS.

Dr. Kramer and colleagues mapped phosphorylation sites on the PER2 protein. They identified 21 sites, one of which (Serine 659), was implicated in FASPS. By monitoring the bioluminescence cycles of cell lines, the researchers demonstrated that mutation of Serine 659 causes a shortening of the luminescence period and recapitulates the FASPS phenotype. The researchers determined that the mutated form of Serine 659, which does not get phosphorylated, leads to PER2's destabilization and earlier clearance from the cell nucleus.

Tags: sleep, science, genetics, circadian clock, biology

Fish Help Prevent Terrorism

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 12:49:00 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

When a fish becomes a canary

POSTED: 12:47 a.m. EDT, September 19, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A type of fish so common that practically every American kid who ever dropped a fishing line and a bobber into a pond has probably caught one is being enlisted in the fight against terrorism.

Bluegill swim in a tank at the Millbrae water treatment plant in Millbrae, California.

San Francisco, New York, Washington and other big cities are using bluegills -- also known as sunfish or bream -- as a sort of canary in a coal mine to safeguard their drinking water.

Small numbers of the fish are kept in tanks constantly replenished with water from the municipal supply, and sensors in each tank work around the clock to register changes in the breathing, heartbeat and swimming patterns of the bluegills that occur in the presence of toxins.

"Nature's given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there," said Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation Corporation, a Southern California company that makes and sells the bluegill monitoring system. "There's no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the bluegill."

Tags: blue gill, fish, biology, biological testing, fish chemical testing

Future space devices inspired by spider legs

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 08:51:34 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: So cool.

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

In a recent issue of Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, Menon and Lira explain how most animals use muscles to bend their joints, but spiders don’t possess such extensors. Instead, these boneless arachnids have legs that are attached to the prosoma, or the main body, which pumps out fluid into the legs by contracting and expanding. Although spiders don’t have veins or even true blood, a pressurized liquid called haemolymph fills the open spaces throughout a spider’s body.

“Space applications require structures, mechanisms and systems that are able to fulfill challenging tasks, while keeping their volumes and masses to a minimum,” wrote the scientists, emphasizing the importance of gossamer structures in the space field. “By folding and deforming the mini-tube, mechanical connectors are avoided, making the system simple, reliable and light.”

Tags: spider, spiders, space, technology, future, science, haemolymph

Scientists Erase Memories in Rat Brains

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 07:09:08 GMT

clipped by: rmowery

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Scientists Erase Memories in Rat Brains

Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com Fri Aug 25, 9:15 AM ET

Scientists have for the first time erased long-term memories in rats and also directly seen how the brain is changed by learning.

The research points to potential human benefits.

These findings could prove key "to understanding how memories can be augmented, for example in diseases that affect memory, like Alzheimer's," said neuroscientist Mark Bear at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.

The research could also help treat pain that does not go away, "like neuropathic pain, where people have a moderately severe injury, typically to the hands or feet, and instead of going away in a couple of hours just perpetuates," neurologist and molecular biologist Todd Sacktor at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn said in a phone interview.

Tags: rat brains, long term memory, erase long-term memory, alzheimers

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