Category Archives: Students

Items for students and others, interested in learning about science and engineering and the application of science in our lives. We post many of the general interest items here.

Light-harvesting Bacterium Discovered in Yellowstone

photo of Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, by John Hunter

Surprising new species of light-harvesting bacterium discovered in Yellowstone

In the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, a team of researchers has discovered a novel bacterium that transforms light into chemical energy.
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Remarkably, the new genus and species Cab. thermophilum also belongs to a new phylum, Acidobacteria. The discovery marks only the third time in the past 100 years that a new bacterial phylum has been added to the list of those with chlorophyll-producing members. Although chlorophyll-producing bacteria are so abundant that they perform half the photosynthesis on Earth, only five of the 25 major groups, or phyla, of bacteria previously were known to contain members with this ability.

“The microbial mats give the hot springs in Yellowstone their remarkable yellow, orange, red, brown and green colors,” explained Bryant. “Microbiologists are intrigued by Octopus and Mushroom Springs because their unusual habitats house a diversity of microorganisms, but many are difficult or impossible to grow in the lab. Metagenomics has given us a powerful new tool for finding these hidden organisms and exploring their physiology, metabolism and ecology.”
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Unexpectedly, the new bacterium has special light-harvesting antennae known as chlorosomes, which contain about 250,000 chlorophylls each. No member of this phylum nor any aerobic microbe was known to make chlorosomes before this discovery. The team found that Cab. thermophilum makes two types of chlorophyll that allow these bacteria to thrive in microbial mats and to compete for light with cyanobacteria.

This discovery is particularly important because members of the Acidobacteria have proven very hard to grow in laboratory cultures, which means their ecology and physiology are very poorly understood. Most species of Acidobacteria have been found in poor or polluted soils that are acidic, with a pH below 3. However, the Yellowstone environments are more alkaline, about pH 8.5 (on a scale of 1 to 14). Bryant noted, “Judging from their 16S rRNA sequences, the closest relatives of Cab. thermophilum are found around Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone and hot springs in Tibet and Thailand. As we look more closely, we may find relatives of Cab. thermophilum in the microbial mats of thermal sites worldwide.”

Photo of Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park by John Hunter.

Camera Fashion

Another merging of fashion and technology. Images are printed that are not visible to the eye but are to a camera. It does bring to mind some interesting applications.

Related: Hug Shirt – Gadgets and Gifts

Laser Tool Creates “blueprints” of Archeology Sites

Laser mapping tool traces ancient sites

Born in northern Iraq in 1940, Kacyra developed this laser-mapping tool several years ago to solve a problem in construction — keeping accurate records of the real dimensions of factories and power plants when they deviate from the architect’s plans.

The 67-year-old sold his invention in 2001 and now works with his wife, Barbara, to get the $100,000 tool into the hands of archaeological researchers who are using it to create electronic blueprints so accurate that scientists sitting at computer terminals can glean the secrets of ancient monuments remotely. “We both loved the ancient-built environment and we wanted to put high technology to use saving ancient places,” Kacyra said.

Today the Kacyras have created a Web site, at www.cyark.org, that allows anyone to see these blueprintlike images. But that’s just the start. Down the line they would like to superimpose real graphics on top of these geospatial maps — recreating ancient worlds onscreen.

“Using the latest laser-scanning technology, CyArk collects the most accurate 3D model of cultural heritage sites, stores them safely and provides them freely to the world.” More on the laser tool:
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Robot Hall of Fame

Robot Hall of Fame at Carnegie Mellon

Two categories of robots are honored in the Robot Hall of Fame:

Robots from Science – These are real robots that have served useful or potentially useful functions and demonstrated unique skills in accomplishing the purpose for which they were created. These may also be robots created primarily to entertain, as long as they function autonomously.

Robots from Science Fiction -These are fictional robots that have inspired us to create real robots that are productive, helpful, and entertaining. These robots have achieved worldwide fame as fictional characters and have helped form our opinions about the functions and values of real robots.

The web site is not exactly great yet but the idea seems to have merit and the location is sensible; Tour the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Lab.

Creating a Nation of Wimps

I certainly don’t know if this is true, or the even the consensus of the scientific thought today, but it happens to feel right to me. Not exactly a scientific conclusion but there you go. From, Psychology Today says, A Nation of Wimps:

Parents are going to ludicrous lengths to take the bumps out of life for their children. However, parental hyperconcern has the net effect of making kids more fragile; that may be why they’re breaking down in record numbers.
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In his now-famous studies of how children’s temperaments play out, Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan has shown unequivocally that what creates anxious children is parents hovering and protecting them from stressful experiences. About 20 percent of babies are born with a high-strung temperament. They can be spotted even in the womb; they have fast heartbeats. Their nervous systems are innately programmed to be overexcitable in response to stimulation, constantly sending out false alarms about what is dangerous.

As infants and children this group experiences stress in situations most kids find unthreatening, and they may go through childhood and even adulthood fearful of unfamiliar people and events, withdrawn and shy. At school age they become cautious, quiet and introverted. Left to their own devices they grow up shrinking from social encounters. They lack confidence around others. They’re easily influenced by others. They are sitting ducks for bullies. And they are on the path to depression.

Well for whatever it is worth I think the article is interesting (I am not exactly sure about the introversion part that doesn’t seem to have a strong ring of truth but I do think it is better to experience real failure and overcome it than be too sheltered and without that you don’t learn confidence you just are kept from having to feel discomfort as long as the adults protect you…) even if it is just because it attacks something I find a bit annoying the increasing tendency to act like mistakes are not mistakes, failure to achieve an objective doesn’t matter, kids should not be challenged… I don’t think coddling is a good way to create confident people that function well in the world.

People need to learn that things often don’t work the way you might think or hope, things are not fair, things can hurt you, you can loose things you care about, if you make a decision you have to live with the consequences… It is not that hard to understand these things. Kids might well prefer to just be handed everything they want without an risk or effort on their part. But I believe they will learn how to cope and take pride in actually doing good stuff. Which will work much better than trying to convince them they should take pride in something even they can probably tell is fake, coddling. Of course I don’t have any kids either so my opinions are not only not put into practice by me. Oh well go read the article if you are interested.

Robo Insect Flight

photo of flying robot on a hand

Robotic Insect Takes Off

“Nature makes the world’s best fliers,” says Robert Wood, leader of Harvard’s robotic-fly project and a professor at the university’s school of engineering and applied sciences.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding Wood’s research in the hope that it will lead to stealth surveillance robots for the battlefield and urban environments. The robot’s small size and fly-like appearance are critical to such missions. “You probably wouldn’t notice a fly in the room, but you certainly would notice a hawk,” Wood says.

Recreating a fly’s efficient movements in a robot roughly the size of the real insect was difficult, however, because existing manufacturing processes couldn’t be used to make the sturdy, lightweight parts required. The motors, bearings, and joints typically used for large-scale robots wouldn’t work for something the size of a fly. “Simply scaling down existing macro-scale techniques will not come close to the performance that we need,” Wood says.

Cool. How annoying are those pop up ads after you follow the link though? Extremely yucky usability.

New York Steam Pipes

About a year ago I posted about the civil engineering report that the USA Infrastructure Needs Improvement. Why the heck does New York have steam pipes, anyway?

It turns out that Con Ed has been piping steam–which is a by-product of power generation, naturally–to buildings throughout lower Manhattan since 1882. (The pipe that blew up dates to 1924.) Incredibly, the system, which includes 7 plants, one with a boiler 8 stories tall, produces an average of one million pounds of steam per hour.

The reason that’s interesting, at least to me, is that this is a prime example of what’s known as combined heat and power generation. It’s an old idea, but one that’s making a resurgence as bills for all our petroleum-dependent energy sources–heating oil, natural gas and electricity–continue to climb. As we all know, the easiest way to “generate” more energy per dollar spent is simply to conserve.

You might also wonder, as I did, why the heck these pipes are pressurized even in the middle of July–clearly the steam isn’t being piped into radiators. Here it turns out that an additional cleverness has been introduced into the system: buildings in the financial district use the steam to power the compressors that run their massive air conditioning units.

The whole thing is rather brilliant–a model of re-use and smart urban planning–that is until disaster strikes. Apparently there have been lethal steam pipe explosions before, the most recent in 1989 in Gramercy Park. There’s a movement to bring these kinds of combined heat and power systems to cities small and large throughout the U.S., since it’s more efficient to combine the two functions and reuse the “waste” products of the power generation process.

Interesting. The event has also resulted in several articles on the deteriorating infrastructure: When Cities Break Down – Explosion exposes NYC’s aging systems

Quantum Random Number Generator

Quantum Random Bit Generator Service:

The work on QRBG Service has been motivated by scientific necessity (primarily of local scientific community) of running various simulations (in cluster/Grid environments), whose results are often greatly affected by quality (distribution, nondeterminism, entropy, etc.) of used random numbers. Since true random numbers are impossible to generate with a finite state machine (such as today’s computers), scientists are forced to either use specialized expensive hardware number generators, or, more frequently, to content themselves with suboptimal solutions (like pseudo-random numbers generators).
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To achieve high availability of the service, several network access modes are developed, or shall be developed. These include transparent acquisition of random numbers using C/C++ libraries, web services (access over the SOAP protocol), and Mathematica/MATLAB client add-ons.
To enable high security, in future, SSL protocol shall be supported, i.e. all data shall be encrypted, at users request, with user/service certificates.
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We use ‘Quantum Random Bit Generator’ (QRBG121), which is a fast non-deterministic random bit (number) generator whose randomness relies on intrinsic randomness of the quantum physical process of photonic emission in semiconductors and subsequent detection by photoelectric effect. In this process photons are detected at random, one by one independently of each other. Timing information of detected photons is used to generate random binary digits – bits.

Lifestyle Drugs and Risk

I see taking drugs as risky. Certain drug have long histories and seem safe and even seem to have positive side effect like Aspirin (though even it is not without risks – see below). Even if a drug has a good chance of a positive result in treating some medical condition – assuming it is otherwise safe is not wise. I believe you have have a significant positive known benefit to consider taking drugs given the unknown problems that are likely to be lurking. I find the pop a pill culture for anything that might be a minor annoyance to be foolish – taking risks without consideration. Taking drugs entails taking a risk and the more you take the risks of interactions and cumulative effects increase the risks to you. Business Week (somewhat surprising given the huge amount drug makers pay to advertise lifestyle drugs) has a decent article pointing out some of the foolishness involved in the Lifestyle Drug Binge:

The renewed excitement is most evident in four treatment areas that account for the bulk of lifestyle-drug sales: weight loss, hair loss, sleep, and sexual dysfunction.

This trend is surprising because such treatments can expose patients to risks, sparking criticism of drug companies at a time when patient safety is already under a spotlight. Lifestyle drugs are defined loosely as products used to treat conditions that are not life-threatening. Because people take them over long periods of time, sometimes on a daily basis, they may be more dangerous than they first appear.

We have found amazingly helpful and useful drugs. This is great. But people need to remember these drugs are not without potential negative consequences. Take advantage of them when appropriate but don’t forget the risks each instance has for negative side effects. Related: health care improvement articles – health care blog posts
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Evolution at Work – Blue Moon Butterfly

Butterfly shows evolution at work

The tropical Blue Moon butterfly has developed a way of fighting back against parasitic bacteria. Six years ago, males accounted for just 1% of the Blue Moon population on two islands in the South Pacific. But by last year, the butterflies had developed a gene to keep the bacteria in check and male numbers were up to about 40% of the population.

Scientists believe the comeback is due to “suppressor” genes that control the Wolbachia bacteria that is passed down from the mother and kills the male embryos before they hatch. “To my knowledge, this is the fastest evolutionary change that has ever been observed,” said Sylvain Charlat, of University College London, whose study appears in the journal Science.
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“We’re witnessing an evolutionary arms race between the parasite and the host. This strengthens the view that parasites can be major drivers in evolution,” Mr Charlat said.

It makes a great deal of sense that evolution would have such bursts under the right conditions. This seems an nearly perfect example of such conditions – if males can be produced they are going to have a large opening to reproduce and rapidly pass on a new tool to fight the bacteria. The University of California – Berkeley has a good site on understanding evolution (with lesson plans for k-16 and information for anyone interested in science).

Relates: Two Butterfly Species Evolved Into Third – Evolution in Darwin’s Finches – Evolution In Action – Evo-Devo