How an Engineer Folds a Shirt
(YouTube link)
Of course, an engineer would build a simple machine to do the task! -via Geek Like Me
Original post by Miss Cellania
Archive for Science & Tech
The Man Who Stuck His Head Inside a Particle Accelerator
So with all the recent news about the Large Hadron Collider, many of you may have this nagging question: what, exactly, would happen if you stick your head in the particle accelerator?
Well, actually, we know the answer to that because someone did stick his head into a particle accelerator. Here’s the story of Anatoli Bugorski:
Bugorski, a 36-year-old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, was checking a piece of accelerator equipment that had malfunctioned - as had, apparently, the several safety mechanisms. Leaning over the piece of equipment, Bugorski stuck his head in the space through which the beam passes on its way from one part of the accelerator tube to the next and saw a flash brighter than a thousand suns. He felt no pain.
From what we know about radiation, about 500 to 600 rads is enough to kill a person (though we don’t know of […]
Original post by Alex
The 2008 Ig Nobel Prize Goes To …
The 2008 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded last night, and Steve Nadis of the science journal Nature was there to blog about it. Here’s his report on some of the most dubious achievements in science:
7:55 p.m. At last, the first 2008 Ig Nobel Prize is handed out, recognizing the field of nutrition. The award goes to a pair of researchers who showed that manipulating the sound made by eating Pringles crisps can fool people into thinking a stale crisp is perfectly fresh.
8:21 p.m. Dan Ariely of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, accepts the Medicine Prize for research showing that expensive fake medicine works better than cheap fake medicine. Which makes a lot of sense, in a warped way. Twelve years ago, Ariely vowed "to be on this stage". Now that he’s reached "this peak", he says, he’s not sure where to go next — thereby summing up the dilemma […]
Original post by Alex
Scientists Found that HIV Has Been Infecting Humans For More Than 100 Years
Scientists studying decades-old tissue samples from African hospital samples have found a preserved specimen of HIV that let them estimate when the virus first evolved:
Using a technique called molecular clock analysis, they were able to plot the two viral sequences’ evolutionary path back in time to determine when they diverged.
They concluded the strains evolved from a common ancestor that emerged in Africa near the beginning of the twentieth century around 80 years before the disease appeared in western populations.
Link
Original post by Alex
Chimps Never Forget a Face … or a Behind!
Modified from photo by Cyril Ruoso/Minden PIctures
Chimpanzees don’t forget a face - or for that matter, a behind as well. A new study by Frans de Waal of Emory University and colleagues showed that chimps have butt-recognition ability:
In a recent experiment, captive primates were able to identify photos of their acquaintances’ rears and match them with the right faces.
The ability suggests that the animals possess mental "whole body" representations of other chimps they know.
Each participating chimp was flashed a picture of another’s bum, with visible genitals, then shown the face of the derriere’s owner and another face of the same gender.
Both males and females were successful in this anatomical match game, pairing faces and posteriors with much greater frequency than chance alone—but only if the photos showed chimps they already knew.
Link - Thanks Jessica Wolf!
Original post by Alex
Snow Falls on Mars
The Phoenix Mars Lander was expected to work for three months, but has passed the four-month mark. That’s fortunate for us, because the lander has observed snow falling in the Martian atmosphere!
Using lidar (analogous to radar, with pulses of laser light standing in for radio waves), Phoenix picked up signs of snow drifting down from clouds some 2.5 miles (four kilometers) overhead. It has not been seen reaching the Martian surface; it appears to vaporize before landfall.
“Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars,” James Whiteway of York University in Toronto said in a statement. Whiteway is lead scientist for Phoenix’s Meteorological Station (MET), the Canadian Space Agency’s contribution to the mission. He added that the MET team will now seek to discover “signs that the snow may even reach the ground.”
The Martian winter is approaching, and soon there will be inadequate sunlight to power the lander. Link
Original post by Miss Cellania
World’s First Wave Farm Opens
The world’s first commercial wave farm is operational three miles off the shores of Portugal. The three 140-meter generators were built by British company Pelamis. The “sea snakes” convert the kinetic energy of wave motion into electricity -enough to power 1,000 homes.
Each of semi-submerged Pelamis devices is 142m long, has a diameter of 3.5m and is made from 700 tonnes of carbon steel. A single wave converter is composed of four articulated sections that move up and down as the waves pass along it. At each of the hinges between the sections, hydraulic rams use the wave motion to drive generators to produce up to 750KW of power at peak output.
The electricity generated by the three Pelamis devices will be carried by undersea cable to a substation in Aguçadoura, which will then feed the power into the Portuguese national grid.
The wave farm will eventually add another 25 generators, enough […]
Original post by Miss Cellania
