Author Archives: curiouscat

Friday Fun: Dolphins Play with Air Bubble Rings

The bubble is the most stable situation for an amount of gas phase in water (liquid phase). A surface tension is associated with the surface between the gas phase and the liquid phase, the surface tension tends to minimize the surface area. This is also described in the section on bubbles in bubble models. Given a volume of gas, the sphere (bubble) shape is the shape that has the smallest surface area with respect to the containing volume.

The situation of a bubble in water is comparable to a balloon. The balloon surface is elastic. The tension of it tries to minimize the surface: if you don’t tie a knot in the balloon after blowing it up, air escapes and the surface of the balloon is minimized to the initial unstretched situation.
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Bubbles do not turn into rings naturally. Something has to be done for that. However, they have long lives and often make it up to the surface. Hence they are stable structures.
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Dolphins create bubble rings by blowing air in a water vortex ring: by flipping a fin they create a vortex ring of water. The then blow air in the ring, which goes to the center of the vortex ring. In the water vortex ring the natural location of the air is in the center of the vortex. When air and water move in a circular path like they do in the vortex ring, air and water are separated due to the centripetal force. Since density of water is larger than air, water moves at the outside, while the air ends up in the middle.

Follow the link for much more on the physics of bubble rings.

Teen diagnoses her own disease in science class

Her doctors, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t figure out the cause of Jessica’s abdominal distress. Then one day in January, Terry, 18, figured it out on her own.

In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue — slides her pathologist had said were completely normal — and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn’s disease.

“It’s weird I had to solve my own medical problem,” Terry told CNN affiliate KOMO in Seattle, Washington. “There were just no answers anywhere. … I was always sick.”
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Crohn’s disease is often misdiagnosed or diagnosed very late, says Dr. Corey Siegel, director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. “Granulomas are oftentimes very hard to find and not always even present at all,” Siegel said. “I commend Jessica for her meticulous work.”

How To Become A Software Engineer/Programmer

my advice for budding software engineers is this.

1) Know that you love software before you commit to it. You’ll know when you take your first pseudocode class: a clear division forms between the people who get it and the people who don’t. If you’re in the “don’t” section, choose another career.

2) If you don’t like teaching yourself new things, the skills you learn today will be irrelevant in less than a decade. Accept the commitment to learn throughout your career as a coder, or accept your eventual fate as a has-been.

3) College degrees matter less than hands-on knowledge and time spent at the keyboard. I outpaced my entire class in college because I bought my own programming books that deviated from the coursework, and as a result I learned things they were not teaching in school.
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5) Early on, decide if you want to focus on application development or software engineering. Application development deals with making user interfaces, interfacing different systems together, solving business process problems, and exposing applications to the outside world (i.e. web services and other remoting techniques). Software engineering deals with creation of utilities and processes that support information processing, tends to be more math intensive, requires a lower-level understanding of the trade, and rarely deals with the systems that expose the software to an end user. There are core differences in these two disciplines and 100 shades in between, so figure out what you like.

Good blog post; those thinking of a career in software development should read the whole thing. By the way if you are a programmer already that loves it and looking for a new position: my work is hiring a Ruby on Rails developer.

Rutgers Initiative to Help Disadvantaged Children

Praise for ambitious Rutgers initiative to help disadvantaged youths

It’s been a year since Rutgers University launched one of the country’s most ambitious education experiments, a campaign to change the fortunes of urban teenagers
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Adolescents, their parents and public school administrators uniformly praise the Future Scholars Program. Last June, the initiative started 200 disadvantaged seventh-graders along a five-year path of summer workshops, tutoring, social support and cultural outings. Their reward if they keep a B average and meet other requirements: a full ride to Rutgers.

The Rutgers Future Scholars Program is not targeting science, it focuses on all academic areas.

The goal of the Rutgers Future Scholars program is to increase the numbers of academically ambitious high school graduates who come from low-income backgrounds, help them meet the standards to be admitted to colleges and universities, and then provide tuition funding to those who are admitted and choose to attend Rutgers University.

By improving educational opportunities, in general, more disadvantaged children will have the opportunity to become scientists and engineers. They are highlighting what recent high school graduates from the Camden school are doing, such as Aspiring Physician, Stem Cell Researcher, Rutgers-Camden Student

Most students don’t conduct stem-cell research and sit on a national board with a $3 million budget. Tej Nuthulaganti isn’t like most students.

After earning his undergraduate degree in biology from Rutgers-Camden in 2007, Tej is on track to earn his graduate degree in biology this May, thanks to the five-year combined bachelor and master degree program in biology at Rutgers-Camden.
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For the past two years the 2003 graduate of Highland High School has been working with Daniel Shain, an associate professor of biology at Rutgers-Camden and one of the nation’s leading experts on leech research. Nuthulaganti has furthered Shain’s research on identifying key genes that are pivotal in the stem cell formation in the leech, which gives a simple model system for more complicated research. Their research could be beneficial in the early detection of cancerous cells.

In addition to presenting his research at major conferences, including one at the University of California-Berkeley, Nuthulaganti has also made sure that his fellow students who are considering careers in medicine also have a forum to ask questions and think deeply about what kinds of doctors they’d like to be.

There are many great programs underway that are aimed at improving education performance. And this seems like another good effort.

Agricultural Irrigation with Salt Water

Irrigation system can grow crops with salt water

A British company has created an irrigation system that can grow crops using salt water. The dRHS (Dutyion Root Hydration System) irrigation system consists of a network of sub-surface pipes, which can be filled with almost any water, whether pure, brackish, salted or polluted. The system can even take most industrial waste-water and use it without the need for a purification process.

The pipes are made from a plastic that retains virtually all contaminants while letting clean water through to the plants’ roots.
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The dRHS system, which has been in development for ten years, was initially trialled in the UK using tomato plants, and has since been tried out in the US. The next trials will take place in Chile, Libya, Tanzania, Mauritius and Spain. Tonkin says 20,000 metres of pipe are on their way to the Middle East, where it will be tested with water that’s more saline than sea water.
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It has also won international recognition for its work, most recently at the international Water Technology Idol event in Switzerland, organised by Global Water Intelligence magazine and the International Desalination Association.

Christopher Gasson from Global Water Intelligence magazine says that the competition was a three-way tie last year but this year, the winner stood out. “The dRHS irrigation system addressed a bigger problem than the other technology that it was competing against,” he said. “Agriculture water is where 70 per cent of water goes. By 2025 two thirds of the world’s population will experience water shortages and so farming will be badly hit.

This is good news. I am still skeptical that this is as good as the article makes it sound. Just as simple as “flushing out the pipes.” But I am hopeful we will find desalination-type solutions. Clean water is a huge problem facing the world now, basically I just figure with enough engineers focused on finding workable solutions we will find several that have a huge impact. If not, we are in real trouble.

Buy Your Own Electron Microscope

Buy your own electron microscope from the state of South Carolina, USA.

You will be bidding on a Hitachi Electron Microscope and Accessories Lot (detailed info below). The agency is reporting the basic scope worked when last operated about two years ago. The x-ray detector computer is broken but that is an add-on accessory feature that does not affect operation as an electron microscope. Also, the forepumps and air compressor are missing. These two items will need to be replaced before someone attempts to use it. This is an old electron microscope but is good for basic microscopy. The electron microscope has been disassembled and palletized by the Medical University of South Carolina. This equipment was used by the Medical University of South Carolina and is located in North Charleston, South Carolina. The overall condition of this property is unknown to the Surplus Property Office.

Detailed Lot Info:

Hitachi H7000 Electron Microscope
Kevex Computer (model Delta)
Kevex Monitor
Okidata Printer (model 320)
Hitachi KS55 Camera

Current bid: $460. Auction expires 5 June 2009 at 3 PM USA Eastern Time. Getting the equipment to your location will likely cost much more than that.

This item is for pickup only at the Medical University of South Carolina in North Charleston, South Carolina. The winning bidder is responsible for the loading and removal of this property. MUSC will try to assist if employees are available during the loading.

Extremophile Hunter

NSF has begun publishing a new web magazine: Science Nation. The inaugural article is Extremophile Hunter

Astrobiologist Richard Hoover really goes to extremes to find living things that thrive where life would seem to be impossible–from the glaciers of the Alaskan Arctic to the ice sheets of Antarctica.
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“It may be that when we ultimately get a chance to bring back samples of ice from the polar caps of Mars, we might find biology that looks just like Earth life and it might be that it originated on Earth and was carried to Mars,” said Hoover. “Of course, if it can happen that way, it could have happened the other way. So we may never know the ultimate answer to how did life originate.”
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Some of the structures he has imaged from these meteorites are intriguing, bearing striking similarities to bacteria here on Earth. Could these be the fossilized remains of extraterrestial life?

“I am convinced that what I am finding in the carbonaceous meteorites are in many cases biological in nature, and I think they are indigenous and not terrestrial contaminants,” said Hoover.

It is a highly controversial interpretation. “We have for a long time thought that all life, as we know it, originated on Earth. And there isn’t any life anywhere else,” he said. “That’s an idea, it’s a hypothesis, it’s a totally unproven hypothesis.”

EngineerGirl Essay: The Cure to Vitamin D Deficiency

Kate Yuhas, an eighth-grader at Brighton’s Scranton Middle School, Michigan. Photo courtesy Kate Yuhas.

Brighton eighth-grader rewarded for her love for science

Thirteen-year-old Kate Yuhas, who plans to be an environmental engineer someday, has loved science since she was little.
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Yuhas received an honorable mention certificate from the National Academy of Engineering’s EngineerGirl! Web site Imagine That! Engineering Innovation Essay Contest for her essay on a tanning booth that helps people produce vitamin D. “My whole life I’ve been interested in science,” Yuhas said. “I really like helping the environment and eating organic.”

“Kate has a talent for science and math, and she’s won medals at Science Olympiad,” said her mom, Johanna, who coaches the team. “Kate has always had science-themed parties. My husband and I are both engineers, and we talk a lot about science at home.”

The essay contest asked participants to consider one of three images on the EngineerGirl! site and to discuss its potential purposes and functions using engineering creativity.
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Read Kate’s essay: The Cure to Vitamin D Deficiency

What can help prevent MS, high blood pressure, and several autoimmune diseases? The answer to that question would be Vitamin D, which you can get in three ways: food, supplements, and the sun. 70 percent of Americans lack adequate amounts of Vitamin D. The reason is that people just don’t get enough sun. That’s why my invention would be so helpful. It is a special tanning booth that only gives out the specific amount of UVB rays, the type of UV rays that is needed to produce Vitamin D, which you need.
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The Engineer Girl website has done a smart thing and posted all the essays online. It is a simple act but one so often other organizations fail to do in similar circumstances.

Google Wave Developer Preview Webcast

Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year. The presentation was given at Google I/O 2009. The demo shows what is possible in a HTML 5 browser. They are developing this as an open access project. The creative team is lead by the creators for Google Maps (brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen) and product manager Stephanie Hannon.

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Very cool stuff. The super easy blog interaction is great. And the user experience with notification and collaborative editing seems excellent. The playback feature to view changes seems good though that is still an area I worry about on heavily collaborative work. Hopefully they let you see like all change x person made, search changes…

They also have a very cool context sensitive spell checker that can highlight mis-spelled words that are another dictionary word but not right in the context used (about 44:30 in the webcast).

For software developer readers they also highly recommended the Google Web Development Kit, which they used heavily on this project.

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.
Continue reading →

The First Web Server

photo of the first web server

Photo by sbisson from Geneva, Switzerland, November 2006 .

In a glass case at CERN is an unpreposessing little NeXT cube. It’s hard to believe that this little workstation changed the world, but it did. It’s Tim Berners Lee‘s original web server, the world’s first.

NeXT is the computer company Steve Jobs founded after he left Apple. Then he left NeXT to buy out Pixar. And then, of course, went back to Apple.