Discover magazine

Oct

2010

How & Why to Write a Bacterial Opera for the Ig Nobel Awards

Discover, October 12 2010.

Marc Abrahams enjoys writing operas, but until a few years ago had never even been to one. Abrahams is the editor and co-creator of the Annals of Improbable Research, the science humor magazine that gave birth to the Ig Nobel awards, a marvelous celebration of quirky but intelligent scientific breakthroughs.

For the last 15 years Abrahams has been tasked with writing a scientific opera for the ceremony. This year’s theme was bacteria, so naturally Abrahams wrote an opera about the bacteria living on a woman’s tooth, and their (eventually tragic) efforts to escape. The video of this year’s Ig Nobel ceremony is below (skip to the following times to view the four acts of the bacterial opera: Act I at 54:30, Act II at 1:07:20, Act III at 1:29:10, and Act IV at 1:52:00). Discoblog talked with Abrahams to get the scoop on the bacterial-opera-writing business. Read More >

Oct

2010

Um… That “Goldilocks” Exoplanet May Not Exist

Discover, October 12 2010.

A group of Swiss astronomers announced yesterday at the International Astronomical Union’s annual meeting in Turin, Italy, that they couldn’t detect the “goldilocks” exoplanet found by U.S. researchers a few weeks ago. That news of that planet, dubbed Gliese 581g, generated much excitement, since researchers said it was only three times the size of Earth, and it appeared to lie in the habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface. It didn’t take long for some cold water to be thrown on the astronomical community and the space-loving public. Presenter Francesco Pepe and his colleagues claim that it will be years before the data is clear enough to see such a planet.

“We do not see any evidence for a fifth planet … as announced by Vogt et al.,” Pepe wrote Science in an e-mail from the meeting. On the other hand, “we can’t prove there is no fifth planet.” No one yet has the required precision in their observations to prove the absence of such a small exoplanet, he notes. Read More >

Oct

2010

Study: A “Pessimistic” Dog Is More Likely to Destroy Your Slippers

Discover, October 12 2010.

Doggie separation anxiety–the whining, scratching, and general misbehaving that happens when some dogs are left home alone–is somehow linked to the dog’s general outlook on life, new research says. Coauthor Emily Blackwell explains that she wondered whether the behavior she’d observed during high school in her own anxiety-prone dog was normal.

“So many people think [separation-related behavior] is just something dogs do.” … They think the dog is angry the owner is leaving, say, and exacting its revenge on the owner’s slippers. Read More >

Oct

2010

Offshore Wind Farming Gets a Giant Google Boost

Discover, October 12 2010.

A huge offshore wind energy project took a leap forward today with the announcement that Google and the investment firm Good Energies are backing the mammoth underwater transmission lines that would carry clean electricity up and down the East Coast. The $5 billion dollar project would allow for wind farms to spring up all along the mid-Atlantic continental shelf.

Google and Good Energies will both be 37.5 percent equity partners in the clean energy infrastructure project; the Japanese industrial, energy, and investment firm Marubeni will take a 15 percent share. The project, proposed by a Maryland-based company called Trans-Elect, would set up a 350-mile long energy-carrying backbone from Virginia to northern New Jersey, first allowing the transfer of the south’s cheap electricity to the northern states, and later providing critical infrastructure for future offshore wind projects. Read More >

Oct

2010

Google’s Self-Driving Cars Are Cruising the California Highways

Discover, October 11 2010.

Google announced this weekend that it has been driving automated cars around California’s roads, and that the vehicles have already logged about 140,000 miles. A fully automated car just finished a big trip–all the way from Google’s campus in Mountain View, California to Hollywood.

Larry and Sergey founded Google because they wanted to help solve really big problems using technology. And one of the big problems we’re working on today is car safety and efficiency. Our goal is to help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use. Read More >

Oct

2010

“Whale Wars” TV Show Leads to Real-Life Feud Between Activists

Discover, October 11 2010.

It’s not so surprising that the violent destruction of a $1.5 million boat would lead to an argument. But you would expect the argument to be between the owners of the boat and the vessel that rammed it. Instead, members of the activist group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the group at the center of the Animal Planet TV show Whale Wars, are arguing amongst themselves and are making their he said/he said argument public business.

The group’s expensive and high-tech speedboat, called the Ady Gil, was damaged in a collision with a Japanese whaling ship in early January. The boat, worth $1.5 million, was used to chase down and harass whaling ships. After the crash, the Sea Shepherd crew tried to tow the boat with another vessel for over 36 hours, failing twice, before the salvage effort was given up and the boat was scuttled (deliberately sunk).

After the crash the Ady Gil’s skipper, Pete Bethune, boarded the Japanese ship to confront the captain, but the whalers detained him and Bethune ended up in Japanese court, where he was found guilty of trespassing and assault. Read More >

Oct

2010

Paint + Sound Waves + High Speed Cameras = Mind-Boggling Beauty

Discover, October 8 2010.

Who would think a printer would inspire such beautiful art?

A collaboration between the ad company Dentsu London, Canon printers, and photographer/biochemist Linden Gledhill created these “sound sculptures” which use high speed cameras to catch tiny droplets of paint as they splatter under the force of sound waves. The resulting videos were used in an ad that celebrates Canon printers’ color quality, but honestly, who cares what they’re selling when the images are so pretty. Read More >

Oct

2010

Digital Retouching Reaches a Whole New Level, and a New Cup Size

Discover, October 8 2010.

Dudes: are you looking to get that Baywatch body without all the pumping of iron? All you need is a little “MovieReshape” and you can be virtually buff! Just don’t let anyone see you in person. MovieReshape is a program created by Christian Theobalt at the Max Plank Institute in Germany.

The program will digitally alter your appearance (including height, weight, and muscle tone) in any movie clip. Women can even get a digital boob job or liposuction to automatically enhance body size and shape on the fly. Earlier approaches to body manipulation on film required retouching of every frame, a very laborious process when you’re talking about 30 frames per second. Read More >

Oct

2010

A New Exoskeleton Allows Paralyzed People to Walk Again

Discover, October 8 2010.

Hugging someone standing up. Going on a hike. Making eye contact with someone at their level, instead of always being looked down upon. These are simple things that people stuck in wheelchairs don’t have a chance to experience in daily life.

Berkeley Bionics is giving those experiences back to paraplegics with the introduction of an exoskeleton suit called eLEGS–a battery powered, artificially intelligent, wearable outer skeleton that gives these people back their freedom. People wearing these devices won’t be a common sight just yet–a suit is currently priced at about $100,000 a pop, and they’ll only be available for use in clinics at first–but it’s an exciting step forward. Read More >

Oct

2010

Green Living Meets Vertical Farming in Wacky “Edible House” Design

Discover, October 7 2010.

In our buzzword world we hear a lot about things like green living, but the architectural firm Rios Clementi Hale Studios wants to really bring the hype home. Spurred by a challenge from The Wall Street Journal to build the “Green House of the Future,” RCHS started designing the Incredible Edible House. They were so inspired by the idea that they continued working on the project, trying to bring the concept to reality.

In their press release, the company claims that “all technologies required to build the house currently exist,” and they are searching for a partner to build a full scale prototype and commercialize the pre-fabbed green house design. Read More >