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I love disruptive technologies, and 3D printing is undoubtedly one of the leading such movements in the 21st century. This kind of tech will democratize manufacturing, moving it away from 3rd world sweatshops to your own garage. And no, you don't have to be a geek to own one. Ten years from now, it should be as easy to use and as widespread in homes as a regular ink printer. But for now, 3D printing is limited, particularly as far as electronics are concerned. Usually, you have to print the plastic parts, then order electronic parts like circuits, chips or motors, before finally assembling it all together yourself. You can't have a global manufacturing revolution if you need to be a lab wiz to print a new TV remote control to replace the one the dog just shred to pieces. But this is all changed. We're just now seeing the first steps that might one day lead people to print their own smartphones.
The Great Barrier Reef, which stretches 2,000km (1,200 miles) along the coast, is the world’s largest living ecosystem. Yet it's being threatened and every year the coral retreats at the hand of pollution, tourism, farming and pests. One such pest is the crown-of-thorns starfish which attaches itself to the coral and destroys it with its venomous thorns. Various pest control measures have been tried, but none proved more effective than injecting the animals with vinegar. James Cook University researchers tried out various concentrations of vinegar, needle size and injection locations until they found the sweet spot for a 100% kill rate within 48 hours of contact. Widespread and sustained (you have to control the starfish every year following breeding season) could thus help save the Great Barrier Reef, or at least buy time until we address the more serious causes leading to its destruction.
A while ago I wrote about how the fossil fuel divestment movement is gathering a huge momentum, as more and more funds, universities and companies are choosing to migrate their financial assets away from fossil. The movement is spearheaded by Bill McKibben, one of the founders of the 350.org group, who first organized rallies and lobbied key partners. "Almost from the start, academics have called it the fastest growing such anti-corporate campaign in history, and it’s clearly accelerating by the day,” said McKibben. But I don't even think McKibben himself predicted how far divestment would go. It was launched more like an awareness campaign on the dangers of global warming. It's grown fast, for sure, but this fast? Let me run some numbers: according to a report released by Arabella Advisors, $2.6 trillion in assets have moved away from fossil portfolios or 50 times more than last year. That's not just a dent anymore - that's serious cash!
No kidding, Stanford researchers actually showed it's possible to cool solar panels by applying a special coating that reflects some of the heat back into space. The coating, called a photonic crystal cooling system, is transparent. This allows the light to reach the PV cells so these can generate energy, but - crucially - some of the heat is reflected back in space. It's so good that the researchers showed their PV panels can even stay below ambient temperature, which is incredible by itself. If you know a thing or two about solar panels, then you'll remember their efficiency is directly related to temperature. The cooler a panel is, the more of the sun's energy it can convert into electricity. And we're talking about a mere coating, which shouldn't be too difficult to scale. Bit by bit, you if you multiply the extra efficiency by millions of panels you end up with a huge useful energy gain. This may be a game changer.
Some researchers have made an interesting connection: if you measure the complexity of life or how big the genome is you find it increases at a rate that seems exponential. It's very similar to Moore's law, which suggests the number of transistors over the same surface area on a chip doubles almost every two years. You can extrapolate both forward and background. Eventually, if you extrapolate down enough you'll find the point of origin. In other words, it's possible to estimate when life first appeared based on life's complexity graph.
Computer chips today have billions of tiny transistors just a few nanometers wide (a hair is 100nm thick), all crammed up in a small surface. This huge density allows multiple complex operations to run billions of times per second. This has been going on since the '60s when Gordan Moore first predicted that the number of transistors on a given silicon chip would roughly double every two years. So far, so good - Moore is still right! But for how long? There's only so much you can scale down a computer chip. At some point, once you cross a certain threshold, you pass from the macroworld into the spooky domain of quantum physics. Past this point, quantum fluctuations might render the chips useless. Moore might still be right, though. Or he could be wrong, but in a way that profits society: computer chips could increase in computer power at a far grater pace than Moore initially predicted (if you still keep Moore's law but replace transistors with the equivalent computing power). This doesn't sound so crazy when you factor in quantum computers or, more practical, a 3D computer architecture demonstrated by a team at Stanford University which crams both CPU and memory into the same chip. This vastly reduces the "commuting time" electrons typically have to go through while traveling through conventional circuits and makes them more efficient. Such a 3D design could make a chip 1,000 faster than what we typically see today, according to the researchers.
The biggest pariah of the century, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, had a "geek to geek" hour long talk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, part of the StarTalk radio show. The two had an interesting discussion about lots of stuff from science, to chemistry, to space. Even 9/11. It's worth mentioning that Snowden made his presence felt through a robotic telecomm machine which he remotely controlled from Moscow, his asylum. Perhaps, the most interesting moment from the episode is their chat on encryption, a topic where Snowden is particularly an expert. It's so obvious I'm surprised I've never heard this idea before: the reason why we've yet to pickup any messages from an intelligent extraterrestrial species might be because this data is encrypted.
Veteran astronaut Scott Kelly launched in March, 2015 aboard a Soyuz rocket for a record breaking one-year stay at the ISS. Instead of three to six months, Kelly along with his Russian colleague, Mikhail Korniyenko, will spend 12 months so scientists can assess how his body responds to the stress. For instance, we know that living in microgravity atrophies muscles and deteriorates vision. Kelly isn't too worried, though. When not busy operating the International Space Station, Kelly is engaged in one of the most pleasing hobbies (for those of us living back on Earth, that is): space photography. Here are just a couple of his most amazing shots shared by Kelly on his facebook or twitter account. He updates these very frequently, even a couple of times a day, so be sure to tune in for some more gems.
A team working at the Francis Crick Institute in London applied to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a permit that would allow them to edit genes in a human embryo. If allowed, this would lead to the very first genetically modified embryo in the UK. The scientists claim they need approval to do basic research that may " improve embryo development after in vitro fertilization (IVF) and might provide better clinical treatments for infertility,” and not for clinical research. Either way, the controversial practice is banned in all Western countries and virtually banned, although not explicitly, in the US.
Syrian refugees are making headlines all over the world, but while their story is worth covering, there are millions other refugees in Asia, Central America or Africa that are in the same boat. According to the U.N., 59.5 million people were displaced due to “persecution, conflict, generalized violence, or human rights violations” in 2014 or 8.3 million more than the year before. To escape persecution, refugees take hidden routes out of their own country which are often controlled by smugglers and can be extremely dangerous to cross. Everybody was heartbroken to learn about the story of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who was found washed ashore in Turkey, but few know that 2,900 other people died drowned or asphyxiated on their way to a safe haven this year alone. National geographic just released five great maps that explain the global forced migration patterns
A dubious pharmaceutical startup recently bought the rights to a drug that treats a parasitic infection, then raised the price 500-fold seemingly over night. The drug targets a somewhat rare condition that affects immune compromised pregnant women, but also malaria and AIDS. Ironically enough, it was developed by a much hated big pharma company, GlaxoSmithKline, in 1953 and used to cost $1 a pill only a couple years ago. It has since traded hands twice, before coming under the control of Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager.
Such materials combine the best properties of glass and metals into one amazing product.
This Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker were engaged in a two hour long debate on CNN. In 120 minutes, climate change was only treated for three minutes, which to me is saddening since it shows the moderators care as little about the effects of climate change on this country and the world at large as the Republican Presidential candidates.
This may be the most annoying video game in history.
The most detail study of its kind found air pollution is responsible 3.3 million premature deaths. Based on current trends of agricultural and industrial expansion, the study projects 6.6 million will succumb to soot and smog in 2050, or double today's death toll. Most of these fatalities will be registered in developing nations like India, Pakistan and China.
Every year, the Ig Nobel Prize is awarded to ten lucky winners. To qualify, you need to publish research in a peer-reviewed journal that is considered "improbable": studies that make people laugh, but think at the same time.
While the name might fool you at first glace, black holes are anything but empty.
By 'tickling' select membrane channels you can effectively control neurons, by activating or deactivating cells. You can do this using electrical currents, like we see very well illustrated in brain-computer interfaces; light (the field of optogenetics); and sound (sonogenetics). Yes, sound. This was only recently demonstrated by researchers at Salk's Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory who used ultrasounds to control neurons in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
A team of Dutch and Belgian researchers demonstrated an electric circuit coupled with a magnetic insulator. The circuit uses so-called 'spin waves' instead of electrons to transmit information, something that was considered unpractical until not too long ago. The findings could help lead to a new class of electronics which are far more efficient since there's less heat loss.
Corn farmers around the world owe bats at least $1 billion, seeing how they ward off pests like insects. The findings were made by a group at Southern Illinois University who devised an experimental exclosure in order to estimate bats' contribution to pest control.
Saturn's moon, Enceladus, is covered in a thick icy crust, but beneath it might lie an ocean of liquid water despite there are minus 201 degrees Celsius on the surface. This is a theoretical assumption, which is however backed by very solid indirect evidence. Gushing plums of water from the moon's south pole also point to this conclusion. If this is true, Enceladus can be envisioned like a gourmet candy: a hot core (maybe chocolate?), surrounded by a layer or water, and all covered in a crunchy crust of ice.
Reconstructive surgery just got an upgrade after a patient who had lost four ribs and part of his sternum had a 3-D printed titanium replica fitted instead. This was the first such procedure. Although the operation was a sound success with the replica matching like a glove, doctors say that this sort of intervention is only for really extreme cases. You can't become Wolverine overnight, not exactly at least.
Hydrogen is a great medium for storing energy. It can be used as an alternative to batteries to store the excess energy from renewable energy systems like solar panels or wind turbines, and can be released from a tank to power a vehicle equipped with fuel cells. More than a decade ago, these prospects hyped the so called "hydrogen economy". Governments and funding agencies drew up ambitious plans to develop cheaper fuel cells and to enable cars to store practicable quantities of hydrogen. In 2003, President George Bush committed $720 million to the research effort. But eventually... it all turned out to be a pipeline dream mostly because of two shortcomings: hydrogen is very expensive to store and make; from renewable sources at least.
Love is complicated enough, even without intense scrutiny from scientists. Do we fall in love with someone because we find our partner's genetic makeup to be satisfying and thus improve the chance of having better offspring? Or is it a bit more mysterious than this - a lot more personal? For humans, the latter looks like the case, but we're far from being alone. Zebra finches, which are also monogamous, choose their mates for idiosyncratic reasons as shown by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology. The finches who chose their partners based on behavioral compatibility were less likely to shrug from their parental duties and had offspring which had the best chance of reaching adulthood. This elegant experiment proves that choosing a mate isn't all about who has the brightest plumage or the biggest stomach - love has a huge part to play as well. The similarities to humans are uncanny.
We all need a bit of quiet in our lives sometimes, but have you ever took a minute to ponder what 'total silence' might feel like? It's scary. Every bodily function, otherwise unnoticed, now sounds like a freight train. Feels like it, anyway. You can even hear your heart beats. Though not exactly 'perfect silence', a team of researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have come mighty close. They report 99.7% absorption of low frequency pressure waves (sound) using subwavelength structures or materials.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the slumping price of oil - the lowest in six years - and what this entails for the industry: half a trillion in debt collectively owed by 168 companies, more than $200 billion in shelved exploration and research projects, and hundreds of thousands of jobs sacked. You'd think that producers, pressured by these tough times, would cut production. The laughing matter is that, in fact, the whole ordeal is caused by producers (*cough Saudis) who have flooded the market with oil. In the short run, everybody is bound to lose money. On the long run.. well, we might be in for some dramatic shifts no sooner than two or three years from now. There will definitely be some sore losers.
Humans are naturally lazy, as they'll always find a way to execute a movement, even a simple act like walking, with the least expenditure of energy. Our nervous system, it seems, is hot-hired to find the optimal energy balance for any movement. It's so good at it, that it adapts to a new gait or environment within a matter of minutes.
According to a report issued by the Pew Research Center, American adults have a sub-par knowledge of basic science. The organization surveyed 3,278 Americans of various social, racial and academic backgrounds. The questionnaire involved a simple set of 12 questions that assessed basic science competencies. Despite the quiz was far from demanding, most test-takers answered only 7.9 questions out of 12 correctly. That's 66% or a big fat 'D'.
This fashionable triangle-shaped glassware isn't an office decoration, but a true vestige of the early analytical chemistry. It's called the kaliapparat, a hollow glass tubular device used to measure carbon content in substances in 1830 by German chemist Justus Liebig, widely considered the father of organic chemistry.After it first appeared, because it was so reliable, it spread throughout labs in Europe and North Africa within a matter of years. Look at this device again. Does it look familiar? It's none other than the American Chemical Society's logo - the same logo still in use today more than a century later. As such, the kaliapparat is one of the most important chemistry vessel and analytical tool in history. It's also one of the most obscure. Few chemists know about it. Most ACS members have no clue what it is or what the logo means for that matter.
A promising diagnosis test can accurately detect cancer in 7 out of 10 patients just by reading telltale genetic mutations found in the blood. While it will not replace invasive biopsies when the test runs negative, the procedure could help identify tumours earlier. When cancer is involved, the faster you find it, the better the chance of surviving it.
An innovative 'kirigami' design allows solar cells to flex and twist to follow the sun throughout the day. This means 20 to 40 percent more energy per year generate than cells stacked in fixed panels you see on rooftops. The design is based on origami, with the addition of cutting besides from folding.
Shipping cyanobacteria to Mars or dumping greenhouse gas into its thin atmosphere might be too slow. Elon Musk is in a hurry, considering he wants to see an 80,000 people colony on Mars during his lifetime. A more drastic, quick fix way of terraforming Mars might be nuking its poles, Musk suggested on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, this Wednesday. "You're a supervillain!" Colbert said. "That's what a supervillain does!"
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who owns among other things Fox News, also known as the most despicable garbage journalism outlet in the whole world, bought National Geographic.
A daring team of researchers squeezed themselves through a long vertical chute and descended some 40 meters beneath the surface. It was here inside the Rising Star cave, located in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northwest of Johannesburg in South Africa, that the researchers discovered one of the most important collection of hominins in the world - 1,500 bone fragments belonging to 15 skeletons. The remains clearly belonged to a human ancestor, and the team involved claims we're talking, in fact, about a totally new hominin.
On an explosive growth trajectory, the total operational solar photovoltaic capacity in the US just passed the 20 GW milestone after 1,393 megawatts of PV were installed last quarter.
Basques - an ethnic group from modern day Spain - were thought to be direct descendants of hunter-gatherers who had managed to remain isolated during the initial wave of migration of early farmers in Western Europe. A comprehensive genetic analysis performed by scientists at Uppsala University suggests the Basques are more related to early farmers than hunter gatherers. Instead, what likely happens is that these early farmers kept to themselves and resisted breeding with later migratory waves.
A insightful incursion into the lives of sperm whales shows just how similar these gentle marine giants are to us. Not only do these highly social animals communicate through a language, made up of patterned sets of clicks called codas, but they also have dialects. These dialects may be unique to each clan of sperm whales, which may include thousands of individuals. Moreover, the language is learned and not inherently transmitted - a prime example of culture, if anything else.
Researchers detected unusually high levels of toxic metals, including the dangerous neurotoxin methylmercury, in a pristine coastal area and lake. This was surprising given there were no nearby industrial sites or other runoff pollution sites. They found that the toxic substances were leached by two unexpected sources: moulting elephant seals and bacteria.
Networked gadgets and gizmos embedded in every day items - collectively known as the Internet of Things - are beginning to permeate our way of life. In your very own kitchen, a smart, networked refrigerator that identified items could give you suggestions on what you could cook or what was your calorie intake for the past week. The more data, the better the network effect and there might be no better place to reap the most rewards from the Internet of Things than sports. We're just beginning to discover how networked devices could change sports, for better or worse, and the first baby steps have been taken by the NFL.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope jointly used their instruments to identify the oldest galaxy yet seen. Dubbed EGS8p7, this unusually luminous galaxy was formed just 600 million years after the Big Bang. When you peer that far into space and time, you're bound to find some freaky stuff. EGS8p7 did no disappoint. Already, the 13.2 billion-year-old galaxy is raising questions about how we think the Universe evolved during its infancy.
It's been only a decade since the Human Genome Project finished its task of mapping all the code that makes up our DNA. The hard part came later, though - identifying what each piece of code does or, oddly enough, does not. According to the most recent estimate for instance, only 8.2% of the code embedded in the human genome is actually useful, in the sense that it performs a function whether activating a gene, regulating it, and so on. The rest is what scientists class as "junk DNA".
There's no cure for Alzheimer's - the devastating neurodegenerative disease which causes progressive dementia in 5.3 million Americans - only treatments that help slow down a certain outcome. A milestone research may have finally broken the dry spell in Alzheimer's research looking for the much sought after cure. While current drugs help mask symptoms, a intravenous drug developed by US researchers actually treats the disease itself with patients showing marked improvements in memory and cognition. At the brain level, new blood vessel formation and an increase in neuronal cell counts was registered. The bad news is that the Alzheimer's patients are rats and experience has taught us that Alzheimer's research seldom translates to humans. Seldom, not never though.
This is the biggest news that no one seems to notice. Sunvault Energy and the Edison Power Company quietly announced they're incorporating a new company called the the Edison Motor Cars Corporation which will focus on selling hydrogen powered cars running on a graphene-based fuel cells. Based on the press release, this is the dream vehicle the world was promised by the now disappointing hydrogen economy: a car that only runs on water and a bit of electricity, is lightning fast, has a high autonomy, is safe and charges within minutes to be ready to hit the road again. To top everything over, the car will allegedly be ready in 2016. That's less than a year from now. But we don't know how the car looks like and considering all these bombastic claims, it all looks like a bunch of star dust in the eyes.
The rate of growth in the number of high paying jobs in the US has steadily declined since 2000, which some attribute to automation. Historically, analytical skills like mathematics, physics or other STEM variations have been rewarded with much revered "dream jobs" - steady, high pay and status. Computers today, however, have become ever more apt at solving complex analytical tasks. You still need competent people plugging in the numbers, programming the computers and so on, but you no longer need a whole team of engineers to crunch numbers. Instead, social skills have become increasingly important according to David Deming, an associate professor of economics at Harvard who studied how the labor market has changed since the 1980s and built a model that showed which are the desired traits employers look for today.
The right music can evoke powerful emotions seemingly out of the blue, but under the influence of LSD the musical experience is enhanced even further. This according to the Beckley/Imperial Psychedelic Research Programme which tested this long held assumption under a modern placebo-controlled study for the very first time.
A wormhole - a tunnel that connects two distant region in space by creating a shortcut through the spacetime - is thought as the only viable way to visit far away worlds and galaxies. Otherwise, you're stuck with traveling at the speed of light which, considering the vastness of interstellar space, is arduously slow. While for all practical reasons gravitational wormholes remain a staple of science fiction, the same can't be said about magnetic wormholes which were demonstrated for the first time by a group of Spanish physicists.
Americans' love affair with coffee has turned into an obsession. More than half report drinking coffee at least 3.1 cups each day, totaling a $40 billion market. For some, regular coffee isn't enough so they go for the extract: powdered caffeine. The drug is unregulated and can be sold over the counter in any pharmacy. You can even buy a one kilo bag (2.2 pounds) off Amazon and have it delivered to your doorstep. So, what's the problem? It's caffeine right? Well, to problem is that even a few teaspoons of the powdered caffeine mixed with a drink can potentially kill you. It's really, really easy to overdose and, case in point, two teenagers passed away last year in separate incidents. They had no idea what they were doing, and the confusing labeling might have had something do with it. Now, the FDA has officially sent warning letters to the biggest US producers of powdered caffeine that they should change their labeling in 15 days from the issued order.
When your plastic device breaks, there's basically nothing else to do but shrug, try to glue it then go on with your life. But wouldn't it be useful if the plastic itself could fix itself? Let me illustrate with the latest creation to come off the Pennsylvania State University lab: a bioplastic containing a novel mix of proteins derived from squid sucker ring teeth that can fuse back together when water is added. Once its 'healed', the bulk bioplastic return to its previous compression and tensile strength, so its not fragile.
It's ludicrous, but it might just be crazy enough to work. On Monday, during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SPACE conference, Masahiro Ono unveiled one of NASA's most recent concepts: hitching a ride on a comet. In short, once a spacecraft is close enough it would launch a tether with a harpoon on the other side, attach to the comet or asteroid then basically reel in until touch down. Once there the probe stays put, recharging its batteries by harvesting energy all while performing some science experiments. When it's done, the probe can detach in search of a new piggyback ride.
An innovative concentrated solar power design called the "Solar Sunflower" was recently demonstrated by Swiss researchers at Airlight Energy and IBM Research in Zurich. The energy generator concentrates 5,000 suns onto a semiconductor chip to generate both electricity and heat at 80% efficiency. This meas roughly 60 times more power generated over the same surface area than a typical roof-mounted solar panel - granted, the parabolic dish array, which is quite big, isn't included. The electricity and hot water generated by one single Solar Sunflower can meet the needs of a couple homes.
