Author Archives: curiouscat

How Does That Happen? Science Provides the Answer

In January I dropped some bricks into my pond, which is a metre deep. In March the pond froze over and an image of the bricks appeared like a hologram in the ice (see Photo – follow link above). What caused this?
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The rough surface of the bricks, particularly around the edges and corners, provides nucleation sites for dissolved gases. Gas molecules collect preferentially around the edges of the bricks, eventually producing bubbles. As these reach a critical size they break away and float straight upwards in the still water. Because there is a layer of ice on the surface, the bubbles become trapped and frozen into it. As the ice layer thickens and bubbles continue to rise from the brick, the 3D shape develops. The rate of bubbling was probably very slow, as was the rate of freezing, so the very detailed effect was able to form.

Cool science answer. Related: Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap – 10 Science Facts You Should Know

CMU Professor Gives His Last Lesson on Life

photo of Randy Pausch

CMU professor gives his last lesson on life by Mark Roth:

“If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you,” said Dr. Pausch, a 46-year-old computer science professor who has incurable pancreatic cancer. It’s not that he’s in denial about the fact that he only has months to live, he told the 400 listeners packed into McConomy Auditorium on the campus, and the hundreds more listening to a live Web cast.
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In his 10 years at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Pausch helped found the Entertainment Technology Center, which one video game executive yesterday called the premier institution in the world for training students in video game and other interactive technology. He also established an annual virtual reality contest that has become a campuswide sensation, and helped start the Alice program, an animation-based curriculum for teaching high school and college students how to have fun while learning computer programming.

It was the virtual reality work, in which participants wear a headset that puts them in an artificial digital environment, that earned him and his Carnegie Mellon students a chance to go on the U.S. Air Force plane known as the “vomit comet,” which creates moments of weightlessness, and which the students promised to model with VR technology.
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“A recent CT scan showed that there are 10 tumors in my liver, and my spleen is also peppered with small tumors. The doctors say that it is one of the most aggressive recurrences they have ever seen.”
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“I find that I am completely positive,” he wrote. “The only times I cry are when I think about the kids — and it’s not so much the ‘Gee, I’ll miss seeing their first bicycle ride’ type of stuff as it is a sense of unfulfilled duty — that I will not be there to help raise them, and that I have left a very heavy burden for my wife.”

An inspirational story. For me personally, it reminds me of my father: Bill Hunter who honestly believed, as he was stricken with cancer, he was luckier than most people that have ever lived. He was able to do many things that no-one, not even Kings, could have dreamed of even a hundred years before. I can’t manage such an outlook most of the time, but I do try and keep that spirit alive in me at times. William G. Hunter: An Innovator and Catalyst for Quality Improvement by George Box.

Scores Ill in Peru after Meteor Strike

Scores ill in Peru ‘meteor crash’

Some 600 people in Peru have required treatment after an object from space – said to be a meteorite – plummeted to Earth in a remote area, officials say. They say the object left a deep crater after crashing down over the weekend near the town of Carancas in the Andes.

People who have visited scene have been complaining of headaches, vomiting and nausea after inhaling gases. A team of scientists is on its way to the site to collect samples and verify whether it was indeed a meteorite.
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The object then hit the ground, leaving a 30m (98ft) wide and 6m (20ft) deep crater. The crater spewed what officials described as fetid, noxious gases. The gases are believed to have affected the health of about 600 people who visited the site.

Blocking Bacteria From Passing Genes to Other Bacteria

Scientists are working on many fronts to keep deadly bacteria in check

Bacteria that cause cholera and bubonic plague turn from harmless to deadly with the flip of a genetic switch. Jam the switch and you might prevent infection, said Vladimir Svetlov, a microbiology research associate at Ohio State University and one of a group of scientists who defined the structure of a protein that appears to be the key. The discovery is one of many this year to identify structures and chemicals crucial to disease. All of this work could lead to new medicines.

At the same time, germs we once fought off with antibiotics are fighting back, forcing governments and health organizations worldwide to spend billions of dollars to find new remedies.
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Redinbo is part of a team that recently discovered that two osteoporosis drugs block a key site on E. coli bacteria, preventing it from passing antibiotic resistance genes to other E. coli.

By their nature, bacteria exchange pieces of their DNA with neighboring bacteria, leading to new forms that are virulent or resistant — or both. “This is not minor evolution,” said Irina Artsimovitch, associate professor of microbiology at Ohio State. “This is a huge genome exchange.”

Very cool stuff. Related: Antibiotic resistance: How do antibiotics kill bacteria? – Disrupting the Replication of Bacteria – Antibiotics Too Often Prescribed for Sinus Woes – Attacking Bacterial Walls

Generating Electricity from the Ocean

British Wave Hub Gets The Go Ahead

The innovative (and controversial) UK “wave hub“, in essence a giant plug on the ocean floor, has received approval. The UK government has will install this plug to allow wave power companies to feed energy back into the grid. The Â£28 million ($56.5 million) project has cleared the last major regulatory hurdle and will begin construction soon.
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Wave and tidal power could provide 3 percent of Britain’s electricity by 2020, according to the government-backed Carbon Trust.
The installation is expected to generate up to 20 megawatts of energy, enough to power 7,500 homes and eliminate 300,000 tonnes of CO2 over 25 years. Four companies have already been selected to build projects at the hub.

The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer

photo by Binky the cat or another cat This article is the result of the first Curious Cat engineer interview. My favorite post detailed the great engineering project Jürgen Perthold undertook to engineer a camera that his cat could wear and take photos. So I decided to interview him.

The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer by John Hunter:

This time I thought about our cat who is the whole day out, returning sometimes hungry sometimes not, sometimes with traces of fights, sometimes he stay also the night out. When he finally returns, I wonder where he was and what he did during his day. This brought me to the idea to equip the cat with a camera. The plan was to put a little camera around his neck which takes every few minutes a picture. After he is returning, the camera would show his day.

The Amazing CatCam is not only a great product but a wonderful engineering story. See our past post for some background on how an engineer allowed you to help your cat become a photographer. On the development of the CatCam Jürgen Perthold says, “More or less it was just a joke, born with a crazy idea.” Such a great sentiment and with wonderful results.

What path led him to the desire and ability to pursue the crazy idea and become the Curious Cat engineer of the year? He was born in Aalen, Germany. He started playing with electronics as he was 13. At 15 he added computer programming and with a friend they programmed games, applications and hardware control over the years. He studied Optoelectronics at the University of Aalen, Germany extending his knowledge further.

For the last few years he has worked for Bosch, an international manufacturing company, in the automotive hardware section. Last summer, he transfered from Germany to Anderson, South Carolina as a resident engineer for transmission control unit in a production plant for automobile parts. On a side note, the United States is still by far the largest manufacturer in the world.
photo by Binkey the cat, from under a car
The demand for the cameras is still higher than his capability to produce the cameras. He has raised the price, to limit the demand. When I first saw the prices I couldn’t believe how inexpensive it was. And, in my opinion, they are still a incredible deal. Order your CatCam now: it is a great gadget for yourself or it makes a great unique, gift. Most orders have been from the UK, Germany and the USA.

Most people don’t have technical background so they buy the full unit. But he reports that some brave souls order a kit because of price or availability although they have not done anything similar before. What a great way to challenge yourself and, if you succeed, end up with a wonderful creation when you finish.

He is in discussion with several different groups to ramp up production. The main problem is that producing the device requires electronics, optics, software, mechanics and logistics expertise. So, for the time being, he continues to modify the cameras by hand because no investments are necessary and the production can be scaled according to the demand. The required soldering, electronics and system knowledge makes it a challenge to outsource. So, for now, CatCam production is adding to the USA manufacturing output total. He is also planning to produce more products.
photo of Jacquie the cat wearing a CatCam
JÃ¼rgen believes that getting the cat camera working was not that challenging. You can take a look at his explanation of how he did so to decide for yourself. He does admit that challenges do arise if you want to produce cameras for others. To do that you must create a product that is foolproof, reliable, and easy to use and manufacture.

“I was surprised how famous one can get with ‘boring’ technical engineering stuff. I like this not only for me but for all other engineers out there who daily work hard on challenges which others don’t even understand. We as engineers make the world moving but usually we are not recognized.” Everyone enjoys the products of the labors of engineers (such as cell phones, MP3 players, cars, planes, bridges, internet connections) but few see the required knowledge, work and the people that bring those products into being.
photo by Jacquie the cat of a vine
JÃ¼rgen “hopes that I made ‘engineering’ a bit more visible to people who did not think about it before, for example, female cat owners who never had a solder iron in the hand and bought plain SOIC chips because they wanted the cat camera…”

I think he has done a great job illustrating the engineering behind the CatCam and making engineering fun. And in so doing hopefully is making more people aware of the engineers that make so many wonderful modern gadgets. Go buy a CatCam now (and if you are adventurous buy the parts and create your own – you will learn a lot about what makes all your modern gadgets work). And then send in the pictures your cat takes so everyone can see the wonderful things engineers make possible.

The photos here show the results of several new cat photographers (Binky the cat [first 2 photos] and Jacquie the cat [last 2]). Only a small percentage of CatCam owners have shared there pictures so far.

Over the next few years he would like to learn to sail, visit Yellowstone national park, walk the Camino de Santiago again, move on to other international assignment (maybe far east) and continuing raising his two children.

The Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog is written by John Hunter and tracks a wide variety of developments, happenings, interesting under-publicized facts, and cool aspects of science and engineering.

Google Lunar X Prize

The Google Lunar Xprize

seeks to create a global private race to the Moon that excites and involves people around the world and, accelerates space exploration for the benefit of all humanity. The use of space has dramatically enhanced the quality of life and may ultimately lead to solutions to some of the most pressing environmental problems that we face on earth – energy independence and climate change.
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we hope to usher in an era of commercial exploration and development, in which small companies, groups of individuals and universities can build, launch and explore the Moon and beyond.

Sergey Brin: “So now, we are here today embarking upon this great adventure of having a nongovernmental, commercial organization return to the Moon and explore. And I’m very excited that Google can play a part in it.”

Thousands of Spiders Build Huge Web

Thousands of spiders worked together to build huge web (site broke link so I removed it) by Anna Tinsley:

But Tuesday afternoon, thousands of Texas spiders were back at it, working to rebuild an immense spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park that at one time stretched about 200 yards, covering bushes and trees to create a creepy canopy.

Researchers say they now believe thousands of spiders from different species worked together to make one huge web — much different from the traditional individual webs that would normally be woven. Together, they’ve built and rebuilt a web that has caught countless bugs and the attention of people nationwide. “These spiders seem to be working together to build it back,” said Zach Lewis, an office clerk at the park. “It’s really something to see.
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“It looked just like a spider would have jumped from tree to tree with a can of silly string.” Researchers say it likely took 1 1/2 to two months to weave such a large web.
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He found spiders from 12 families, with the most prevalent being from the Tetragnathidae family. Identified spiders were funnel web weavers, sac spiders, orb weavers, mesh web weavers, wolf spiders, pirate spiders, jumping spiders and long-jawed orb weavers, according to the researchers’ report.
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“With the amount of rain that has occurred this year and the huge food supply available, it just created the right condition for all of this,” he said. “It’s possible we’ll see it again. But this happened to be a year where the conditions were right.”

Herr wins $250,000 Heinz Award

Professor Hugh Herr, a double amputee whose work has led to the development of new prosthetic innovations that merge body and machine, has won the 13th annual Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment. The award is among the largest individual achievement prizes in the world. Herr, of the Media Lab, was recognized for “breakthrough innovations in prosthetics and orthotics.” He is among six distinguished Americans to receive one of the $250,000 awards presented in five categories by the Heinz Family Foundation.
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At age 17, Herr lost both legs below the knee in a mountain climbing accident, but returned to the classroom after a few years to earn an undergraduate degree in physics, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard. Today, his work at the Media Lab focuses on human amplification and rehabilitation systems – technologies that interact with human limbs, mimicking biological performance and amplifying function. Herr predicts that in 5 to 10 years, leg amputees will be able to run faster and move with a lower metabolic rate than people with biological limbs.

Google 3D Campus Competition

The seven winning teams
Purdue University – Depts of Computer Graphics Technology and Education, Concordia University
Loyola Campus – Dept of Civil Engineering
Stanford University – Dept of Architectural Design
Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne – Depts of Engineering and Computer Science
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering – Dept of Engineering
Dartmouth College – Depts of Computer Science and Digital Art
University of Minnesota – Dept of Architecture
of Google’s Build Your Campus in 3D Competition will get to visit Google’s Mountain View Headquarters. It is nice to see Google continue to provide opportunities for students.

Stanford team puts campus on map; wins Google Earth 3-D modeling contest – view the Standford buildings:

In addition to having their entries displayed on Google Earth, the winners were invited to the Google headquarters for four days, Aug. 6-9. They attended workshops, met with professional 3-D modelers, got a grand tour of the compound and enjoyed the famous free lunch.
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We’d initially planned to do nearly all the buildings on campus,” Lehrburger said. “But we underestimated the time it was going to take. I think we thought the learning curve was going to be a little bit better than it actually was, so we had to readjust our plans.”

Though they were proud of their final outcome and hard work—Lehrburger and Bergen worked late into the night as they got closer to deadline—neither of the team leaders was overly optimistic. They had modeled 94 out of the 300 or so buildings on campus and worried their model of Stanford would be considered incomplete.

Google contest motivates students to ‘rebuild’ WMU (Western Michigan University designs):

A group of seven WMU students answered an invitation by the Internet giant Google to participate in its Build Your Campus in 3-D Competition. The teams’ submission placed among the top 30 out of some 350 entries from across the United States and Canada and will be incorporated on Google Earth, the company’s popular geographic information feature.