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.

Google Uses Only Outside Air to Cool Data Center in Belgium

Another example of what makes Google such a good engineering company. They do some spectacular things but as importantly they take many, many, many, many individual steps which when taken together make a big difference. Google’s Chiller-less Data Center

Rather than using chillers part-time, the company has eliminated them entirely in its data center near Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, which began operating in late 2008 and also features an on-site water purification facility that allows it to use water from a nearby industrial canal rather than a municipal water utility.

Year-Round Free Cooling
The climate in Belgium will support free cooling almost year-round, according to Google engineers, with temperatures rising above the acceptable range for free cooling about seven days per year on average. The average temperature in Brussels during summer reaches 66 to 71 degrees, while Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees.

So what happens if the weather gets hot? On those days, Google says it will turn off equipment as needed in Belgium and shift computing load to other data centers. This approach is made possible by the scope of the company’s global network of data centers, which provide the ability to shift an entire data center’s workload to other facilities.

Washing Machine Uses 90% Less Water

We wrote about the nearly waterless washing machine from Xeros previously, here are some additional details. The nearly waterless washing machine (which uses 90% less water) was developed by transferring known science to another application. After extensive R&D by University of Leeds scientists a nylon polymer was selected to absorb stains and dirt due to its unique property to become highly absorbent in humid conditions. Better still, it is highly resilient so can be re-used time after time without losing its strength.

The power of polymer cleaning
The nylon polymer has an inherent polarity that attracts stains. Think of how your white nylon garments can get dingy over time as dirt builds up on the surface despite constant washing. However, under humid conditions, the polymer changes and becomes absorbent. Dirt is not just attracted to the surface, it is absorbed into the center.

Such research in university settings, then transferred to products are a great source of economic growth and environmental improvement.

Roger Tsien Lecture On Green Florescent Protein

Nobel Laureate Roger Tsien discusses his research on green florescent protein. From the Nobel Prize web site:

n the 1960s, when the Japanese scientist Osamu Shimomura began to study the bioluminescent jelly-fish Aequorea victoria, he had no idea what a scientific revolution it would lead to. Thirty years later, Martin Chalfie used the jellyfish’s green fluorescent protein to help him study life’s smallest building block, the cell.
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when Anton van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope in the 17th century a new world opened up. Scientists could suddenly see bacteria, sperm and blood cells. Things they previously did not know even existed. This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry rewards a similar effect on science. The green fluorescent protein, GFP, has functioned in the past decade as a guiding star for biochemists, biologists, medical scientists and other researchers.
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This is where the third Nobel Prize laureate Roger Tsien makes his entry. His greatest contribution to the GFP revolution was that he extended the researchers’ palette with many new colours that glowed longer and with higher intensity.

To begin with, Tsien charted how the GFP chromophore is formed chemically in the 238-amino-acid-long GFP protein. Researchers had previously shown that three amino acids in position 65–67 react chemically with each other to form the chromosphore. Tsien showed that this chemical reaction requires oxygen and explained how it can happen without the help of other proteins.

With the aid of DNA technology, Tsien took the next step and exchanged various amino acids in different parts of GFP. This led to the protein both absorbing and emitting light in other parts of the spectrum. By experimenting with the amino acid composition, Tsien was able to develop new variants of GFP that shine more strongly and in quite different colours such as cyan, blue and yellow. That is how researchers today can mark different proteins in different colours to see their interactions.

Crows Can Recognize People

Crows can recognize people and remember them for years. Listen to this interesting report from NPR. Researchers alienated a crow, and then were razzed and harassed by its family and neighbors wherever they go.

Dangerous Infinity

In this BBC documentary, Dangerous Knowledge, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians – Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt GÃ¶del and Alan Turing – whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide.

The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. He believed he was God’s messenger and was eventually driven insane trying to prove his theories of infinity.

They explore, among other things, varying levels of infinity. With Ludwig Boltzmann they explore challenges to the understanding of physics.

Bear Defeats Combination Bear Lock

Bear-Proof Can Is Pop-Top Picnic for a Crafty Thief

Yellow-Yellow, a 125-pound bear named for two yellow ear tags that help wildlife officials keep tabs on her, has managed to systematically decipher a complex locking system that confounds even some campers.
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“She’s quite talented,” said Jamie Hogan, owner of BearVault, based in San Diego. “I’m an engineer, and if one genius bear can do it, sooner or later there might be two genius bears. We’re trying to work on a new design that we can hopefully test on her.”

His company and New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation have cautioned campers in the Adirondacks against using the BearVault because of its vulnerability here. There have been no reports of the BearVault being regularly broken into anywhere else in the country.

So last year Mr. Hogan introduced the 450, a two-pound cylinder costing about $60, and a larger version, the 500, each with a second tab. On them, a camper must press in one tab, turn the lid partway, then press the second tab to remove the lid. “We thought, ‘O.K., well, one bump didn’t work so maybe two bumps will thwart her,'” he said.

But Yellow-Yellow figured that lid out, too.

Home Experiment: Tape Makes Frosted Glass Clear

Interesting result. A comment on Reddit seems plausible to me:

The surface of frosted glass is etched so that it scatters light when it hits this rough surface. The glue on the tape fills in any irregularities, letting the light pass through with much less scatterring (notice, the image is still not perfect).

Additional experimenting could include, what the view is like from the other side of the glass. What the view is like if you also put tape on the other side of the glass.

Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring

Project Exploration wins a presidential award for science education

This week, Project Exploration received one of 22 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, a prize that carries a $10,000 grant and an award ceremony this fall at the White House.
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So Project Exploration started summer and after-school programs to expose students underrepresented in the sciences, primarily girls and minorities, to scientists and their real-life work. Students design research projects and test them in the field, or work summers at museums demonstrating science to young children.

One group of girls is currently tracking coyotes in Yellowstone National Park, Lyon said. “Over time, they find they’re making discoveries not just about science but about themselves,” she said.

SUNY Plattsburgh professor earns presidential honor

Her students have been working to unlock the mysteries of the past as they analyze the DNA from skeletons of ancient Maya. They are trying to answer questions like did the disorder Beta-Thalassemia, a type of anemia, really exist in the Americas before Columbus set sail? What accounts for differences in burial among some of the Maya? Were some from more aristocratic family lines? What route did the Maya take across the Bering Strait? And are there other Native American tribes that share a common ancestry?

Her students are also working to unlock mysteries of the present, studying a newly found gene that exists in paramecium (single-celled organisms) that may tell them more about evolution.

Others have just completed a joint project, working with Elwess, Adjunct Lecturer Sandra Latourelle and members of the college’s psychology department – SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor Jeanne Ryan and Professor William Tooke. They searched for links between an individual’s genes, aggressive behavior and the ratio of one finger to another. Their results will be released soon.

This sort of work has led to SUNY Plattsburgh undergraduates winning top honors for poster presentations at both the National Association of Biology Teachers and International Sigma Xi conferences four years in a row. In addition, many of Elwess’ students have also gone on to pursue higher degrees in the field, being accepted into schools like Yale and the University of Oregon.

President Obama today named more than 100 science, math, and engineering teachers and mentors as recipients of two prestigious Presidential Awards for Excellence. The educators will receive their awards in the Fall at a White House ceremony.

The Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, awarded each year to individuals or organizations, recognizes the crucial role that mentoring plays in the academic and personal development of students studying science or engineering and who belong to minorities that are underrepresented in those fields. By offering their time, encouragement and expertise to these students, mentors help ensure that the next generation of scientists and engineers will better reflect the diversity of the United States.
Continue reading →

1979 “iPod” Music Player

1979 music player patent application by Kane Kramer

1979 music player patent drawings by Kane Kramer, from Gizmodo

Suspiciously Prescient Man Files Patent for iPod-Like Device in 1979 by Dan Nosowitz

Kane Kramer, an inventor by trade, came up with a gadget and music distribution service almost eerily similar to the iPod-iTunes relationship that predates it by three decades. The guy predicted details down to DRM and flash memory’s dominance.

Kramer’s device, the IXI, was flash-based, even though flash memory in 1979 only could have held about three minutes of audio, and featured a screen, four-way controls, and was about the size of a cigarette pack. Even weirder, he envisioned the creation and sale of digital music and foresaw all the good and bad that would come from this: No overhead, no inventory, but a great push for independent artists, with the risk of piracy looming large.

He predicted DRM, though he didn’t go into many specifics, and in his one concession to the time, guessed that music would be bought on coin-operated machines placed in high-traffic areas.

The Calorie Delusion

The calorie delusion: Why food labels are wrong

Nutritionists are well aware that our bodies don’t incinerate food, they digest it. And digestion – from chewing food to moving it through the gut and chemically breaking it down along the way – takes a different amount of energy for different foods. According to Geoffrey Livesey, an independent nutritionist based in Norfolk, UK, this can lower the number of calories your body extracts from a meal by anywhere between 5 and 25 per cent depending on the food eaten.
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Dietary fibre is one example. As well as being more resistant to mechanical and chemical digestion than other forms of carbohydrate, dietary fibre provides energy for gut microbes, and they take their cut before we get our share. Livesey has calculated that all these factors reduce the energy derived from dietary fibre by 25 per cent
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“Cooking gives food energy,” says Wrangham. It alters the structure of the food at the molecular level, making it easier for our body to break it up and extract the nutrients.

In plants, for example, much of the energy from starch is stored as amylopectin, which is semi-crystalline, does not dissolve in water, and cannot be easily digested. Heat starchy foods with water, though, and the crystalline forms begin to melt. The starch granules absorb water, swell, and eventually burst. The amylopectin is shattered into short starch molecules called amylose, which are easily digested by the enzyme amylase.

It seems pretty obvious, just looking around, as you walk around in any city that people are much fatter, on average, than we were 20 years ago. And the data shows people were much larger (taller, but also fatter) 20 years ago than they were 100 years ago. And we know obesity causes many human health issues. The failure to address the obesity problem in the USA is another example of the failed “health care” system. Instead of a working health care system we just manage diseases that result for unhealthy living. We should be do better at providing information to people on healthy eating (including more accurate calorie counts as it concerns food we eat) and healthy lifestyle choices.