Discover, November 10 2010.
Devices that use the wasted mechanical energy from clothing movements or even a heartbeat seem far out, if not just a bit creepy, but new advances in nanogenerators are making such energy-scavenging electronics possible.
Now researchers at Georgia Tech have made the first nanowire-based generators that can harvest sufficient mechanical energy to power small devices, including light-emitting diodes and a liquid-crystal display. Read More >
Discover, November 9 2010.
The Story of Electronics has made its debut today (teaser above), following the form of the original Story of Stuff video in 2007. The Story of Stuff, written and narrated by Annie Leonard, created waves of discussion about the environment and consumption in classrooms, homes, and workplaces around the country.
She [created the movie], she said, after tiring of traveling often to present her views at philanthropic and environmental conferences. She attributes the response to the video’s simplicity. “A lot of what’s in the film was already out there,” Ms. Leonard said, “but the style of the animation makes it easy to watch. It is a nice counterbalance to the starkness of the facts.” Read More >
Discover, November 9 2010.
Pee-on-a-stick sexually transmitted disease tests could be making their way onto pharmacy shelves and bathroom vending machines in the UK soon. And in this system, a cell phone can take the place of a clinic doctor. The country’s burgeoning STD problem has got doctors thinking about ways to make testing quicker, easier, and less embarrassing. One answer: A pee-on-a-stick test that could be connected to your computer or mobile phone to provide results, and treatment advice, within minutes.
This has been heralded as a “pee on your phone” test, but of course it would be neater and better for your electronics if you pee first, then plug in. If this new home testing procedure could make diagnosis and treatment of these all-too-common ailments easier, it would hopefully reduce their spread and prevalence, said Dr. Tariq Sadiq, who is leading the group developing the new testing strategies. Read More >
Discover, November 9 2010.
Some may say it as a joke, others might find it offensive, but it turns out there’s some truth to the idea that people of other races “all look alike.” A new study demonstrates that people have more trouble recognizing faces of people of other races. While this effect has been observed for almost a hundred years, scientists still don’t fully understand why it happens and who it happens to, explains Ars Technica:
It has been suggested that the other race effect is simply a result of differing amounts of facial variation between races, or varying observational abilities of particular races. However, in this study, subjects of both races showed the same trends, suggesting that the other race effect is a generalized phenomenon experienced by people of more than one race. Read More >
Discover, November 8 2010.
In some monkey species, monkey moms use snuggle time with their babies as a commodity. Mothers will “sell” time with their children to other females in their colony for the price of several minutes of grooming. As Science News puts it, they have a “do my hair before you touch my baby” rule. The research team who made this discovery, which was described in the journal Animal Behaviour, studied vervet monkeys and sooty mangabeys in the Ivory Coast’s Tai National Park.
Newborn infants draw crowds of female monkeys who want to touch, hold, and make lip-smacking noises at the babies. Touching of the baby can be had for a price of a few minutes spent grooming its mother, though it’s not really known why female monkeys are so drawn to the young of others. The researchers use the idea of a “market” to understand this behavior because the time put into the grooming fluctuates with the youth of the baby and the availability of other babies. The younger babies get more grooming time for their mothers, and if there are few other babies around for competition the “price” is driven up, explains Science News. Read More >
Discover, November 8 2010.
Being a computer nerd just keeps getting worse. Not only can being addicted to the interwebz make it hard to meet chicks, but now research is showing that a man’s relationship with his laptop computer can affect even his most intimate of areas. The study, titled “Protection from scrotal hyperthermia in laptop computer users,” studied how laptop positioning affected testicle temperature.
Participants were asked to sit with a laptop on their knees while the research team monitored the temperature of their scrotum (both the left and right sides). The three positions they tried were: sitting with the laptop on the lap with legs together, the same position with a laptop pad under the computer, and sitting with legs spread 70 degrees apart. They found that the open legged position was the best at lowering testicle temp (a total of about half a degree on the left, and a little less on the right). Read More >
Discover, November 8 2010.
It may not be as miraculous as turning water into wine, or as wealth-generating as turning dirt into gold, but we still think this is a very cool trick: Researchers have transformed mature skin cells directly into mature blood cells. Crucially, this was done without reverting the cells to a flexible, “pluripotent” stage in which the cells can grow into any form. The technique, described in Nature, could lead to lab-grown blood cells for transfusions and transplants for people with bone marrow diseases. Researchers think this new process may be safer than previous methods.
By skipping the pluripotent step, the researchers believe they have skirted the risk that the replacement cells might form dangerous tumors. Read More >
Discover, November 5 2010.
In anthropology departments, the debate has long simmered: Was it an improvement in manual dexterity or intelligence that allowed our human ancestors to begin making sophisticated stone tools? According to one group of scientists, figuring out the answer required only a pair of high-tech gloves and a trained craftsman who could make both simple stone knives and more complicated hand axes. The craftsman wore gloves studded with electronic sensors that tracked his his hand movements. Lead researcher Aldo Faisal of Imperial College London found that simple and complex tools required the same amount of dexterity to produce.
“From these results, dexterity can be ruled out, and we can infer it has something to do with the complexity of the task,” says Faisal. Axes are made in several stages, which requires switching between tasks, suggesting that a higher level of complexity is required in the brain. Read More >
Discover, November 5 2010.
The planet’s tumult never ceases. Hurricane Tomas is bearing down on Haiti right now, and an erupting volcano continues to wreak destruction on Indonesia.
At 8 a.m. EDT on Nov. 5, Tomas’ center was about 80 miles south-southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba and 160 miles west of Port Au Prince Haiti…. Tomas is moving to the northeast near 10 mph, and is expected to speed up over the next couple of days. Read More >
Discover, November 5 2010.
Microsoft researchers in Beijing are trying to best Google maps by culling knowledge from a mythical beast known as the taxi driver. The Microsoft folks are trying to improve their online maps using the cabbies’ deep knowledge of Beijing.
The problem with typical maps and the directions they offer is that the shortest route isn’t always the fastest route. In big cities, cabbies know which side streets offer shortcuts, and what areas of the city to avoid at which times. The researchers are trying to rake that data out of the cabbies’ habits by analyzing the GPS data from over 33,000 taxis in Beijing. Read More >