Category Archives: Science

Superconducting Surprise

Assistant Professor of Physics Eric Hudson transfers liquid helium to cool the scanning tunneling microscope

Most superconductors only superconduct at temperatures near absolute zero, but about 20 years ago, it was discovered that some ceramics can superconduct at higher temperatures (but usually still below 100 Kelvin, or -173 Celsius). Such high-temperature superconductors are now beginning to be used for many applications, including cell-phone base stations and a demo magnetic-levitation train. But their potential applications could be much broader. “If you could make superconductors work at room temperature, then the applications are endless,” said Hudson.

Superconductors are superior to ordinary metal conductors such as copper because current doesn’t lose energy as wasteful heat as it flows through them, thus allowing larger current densities. Once a current is set in motion in a closed loop of superconducting material, it will flow forever.
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The new MIT study shows that scattering by impurities occurs in the pseudogap state as well as the superconducting state. That finding challenges the theory that the pseudogap is only a precursor state to the superconductive state, and offers evidence that the two states may coexist.

This method of comparing the pseudogap and superconducting state using STM could help physicists understand why certain materials are able to superconduct at such relatively high temperatures, said Hudson. “Trying to understand what the pseudogap state is is a major outstanding question,” he said.

Photo: Assistant Professor of Physics Eric Hudson transfers liquid helium to cool the scanning tunneling microscope he is using in his research on high-temperature superconductivity. Photo by Donna Coveney.

Dead Zones in the Ocean

Oceanic Dead Zones Off West Coast are the ‘New Normal’

Ever since it was first noticed by crab fishermen who hauled up hundreds of dead and dying crabs in 2002, the “dead zone” that popped up in the waters along the northwestern coastal shelf just off the coast of Oregon has claimed unknown millions of lives. This oxygen-depleted region has transformed formerly rich seafloor communities teeming with life into vast graveyards filled with the bodies of crabs, echinoderms, molluscs, sea worms and other creatures.
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a low-oxygen zone appears each spring off the coast of Louisiana due to fertilizers in farm runoff and sewage present in the Mississippi River. When the Mississippi flows into the sea, it creates a nutrient-rich area that triggers huge but short-lived algal blooms that soon die, sink to the seafloor and are decomposed by bacteria that produce toxic sulfide gases.
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the dead zone off the West Coast of North America has another cause: global warming. Here’s how it works: Winds cause the oceanic rivers of nutrients, such as the California Current in this case, to flow upwards from the deep, carrying nutrients and phyoplankton into the sunlight, which triggers the phytoplankton to reproduce, to “bloom”. This is the normal state of things, but since global warming has been causing land temperatures to increase, these winds have become stronger and more persistent. This is not normal because it prolongs the oceanic upwelling, producing a surplus of phytoplankton that isn’t consumed and subsequently dies, and sinks to the seafloor to decay. As the bacterial-mediated breakdown occurs, dissolved oxygen in the surrounding water is depleted to dangerously low levels

China’s Technology Savvy Leadership

China’s Sci-Tech Savvy Leadership by Jocelyn Ford

Until last year, the top nine members of China’s politburo were ALL trained engineers! And guess what? The Communist Party made innovation and global leadership in science and technology national goals.

Ancient China is famous for its early scientific advances, some of which predated western developments by centuries. Its inventions include paper, printing, gunpowder and the compass.
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Leadership does matter, but so does the system. It seems to me it should take a lot longer for China to build a sci-tech friendly system than for the U.S. to bring in sci-tech friendly leadership. That’s where you come in Ira & co.

If I may make one final comment: in my ideal world, borders shouldn’t matter. Victory by the best system, with the best leaders, will hopefully be a victory for all earthlings.
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CHINA’S POLITBURO (2007): Decline of the engineer. Last fall China introduced a new top lineup that included two law graduates, as well as an economist, and graduates in history, journalism, management and business administration.

I agree that the increase in science and engineering investment around the globe is a positive development. But the USA faces loses that it has enjoyed due to past technology leadership.

China benefits greatly from such scientific knowledge at the highest level of government. The top 9 leaders in China are know as the “Politburo Standing Committee,” the new additions in 2007 were:

Xi Jinping, 54, studied chemical engineering at the Qinghua University and later earned a doctorate in law.

Li Keqiang, 52, obtained MA and doctorate of Economics after attending the on-the-job postgraduate program on Economics at the School of Economics of Peking University.

He Guoqiang, 63, B.S. Beijing Institute of Chemical Engineering.

Zhou Yongkang, 64 “Graduated from the Exploration Department, Beijing Petroleum Institute, majoring in geophysical exploration. With a university education. Senior engineer with a rank equivalent to professor. ” Funny, I don’t remember any U.S. politician exalting their experience as “equivalent to a professor.”

They joined the nine-member echelon with the five remaining members of the previous standing committee, namely Hu Jintao, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin and Li Changchun.

The Man Who Unboiled an Egg

Very cool article on HervÃ© This and the science of cooking: The man who unboiled an egg:

HervÃ© has taught at the universities of Tours and Montpellier, and has his own laboratory at the venerable CollÃ¨ge de France, which, today, is also the base for all four of France’s living Nobel prize winners. One of them, Jean-Marie Lehn, invited HervÃ© to join his department in 1995. In HervÃ©’s laboratory, there is a cupboard full of chemical compounds such as sulphuric acid, sodium carbonate and Mercurochrome, while the shelves are stacked with things you’d normally associate with the kitchen: bottles of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, pots of mustard and cinnamon, bags of salt and shallots, and a bar of chocolate.
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‘I go through ancient recipe books, preferably from the 18th and 19th centuries, jot down what they have to say and test it,’ he says.
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On the morning of our second meeting, HervÃ© measures the pressure inside a chip. He’s aiming to disprove a famous scientific paper which states that oil infiltrates chips during cooking. He heats oil to 168Â°C, measures a chip, hooks it up to a manometer and plunges it in the oil. Unfortunately, the experiment goes wrong and ends up with the chip falling to the bottom of the pan. He is unconcerned. ‘In order to come up with conclusive results, I’ll have to carry it out 100 times.’
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He explains that when an egg is cooked, the protein molecules unroll themselves, link up and enclose the water molecules. In order to ‘uncook’ the egg, you need to detach the protein molecules from each other. By adding a product like sodium borohydride, the egg becomes liquid within three hours.

Very fun read, go read the rest of the article. And try out that uncooking an egg thing and post a comment below – it sounds interesting but I doubt I will actually try it.

As I was Saying… More Dinosaur Discoveries

video removed

As I was Saying… Tiny flying reptile with 10 inch wingspan found:

Palaeontologists have found a tiny flying reptile that, with a wingspan of less than 10 inches, is the smallest relative of the largest flying creature ever. Pterosaurs, the first creatures with backbones to take to the air, ruled the skies during the days of the dinosaurs and died out with them some 65 million years ago.

They came in a huge range of sizes: there were gull-sized creatures, such as Anurognathus, giants such as Anhanguera (“Old Devil”) and Tupuxuara with wing spans of about four metres, and massive flyers like Quetzalcoatlus, with wingspans of more than 10 metres. Now a miniature version is described by Xiaolin Wang
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The remains were found in the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation (120 million years ago), western Liaoning, China, and suggest it probably weighed between 30 and 50 grams. “This small pterosaur looked like a sparrow or swallow in size,” adds Dr Wang.” The creature is the smallest toothless pterosaur and the smallest to live during the Cretaceous period.”

Harvard Liberal Arts Faculty Votes to Make Their Research Open Source

Harvard Liberal Arts Faculty Votes to Distribute Research Free

Harvard’s decision lends support to the growing open-access movement in academia, an approach opposed by journal-industry representatives who say bypassing journals and their peer-review process may harm the quality of published research.

“This is a large and very important step for scholars throughout the country,” Stuart Shieber, a computer science professor who sponsored the motion to adopt the new policy, said in a statement released after the vote. “It should be a very powerful message to the academic community that we want and should have more control over how our work is used and disseminated.”

Discussion of a similar move by the faculties of law, medicine and business are “well under way,” and the other faculties, such as education and government, are expected to consider it, Peter Kosewski, a spokesman for Harvard’s library system, said in an e-mail. No other votes are scheduled.

The policy would spur professors to distribute work free on a Harvard Web site, rather than through journals that charge subscribers “enormous amounts of money,” said Harry Lewis, a professor of computer science at the university. Authors could choose not to share their work on the site and could publish in a traditional journal.

Another good step for those that support science. As I have stated publicly funded universities should require open access. Privately funded universities I believe should decide to do so also, but it should be their choice. Government funded research should require open access publication.

Non-Vaccination Risks

I think one nice thing about blogs is that you get personal instead of corporate politically correct speak, at times. If you don’t like that you might not want to read – Vaccination Woo Nutz Are Getting Up My Nose Today:

And here lies the part where I start getting ticked off. First, these knuckleheads took one of their unvaccinated children to a region of the world that apparently fails to meet WHO targets for measles vaccination. Not to mention a country which seems to have had very recent measles “outbreaks”. Seems like you might want an abundance of caution, right? Maybe not jump right back to school with a host of unvaccinated kids. But they did. And all of a sudden it is a public health nightmare. Which has very real consequences for a very large segment of your community.

Freedom has responsibility for those that care about people and society. Choosing to risk others because of your actions is something I find uncivil, callous and disrespectful to those you put at risk. If you choose to take actions which risk others it is your responsibility to mitigate those risks to others.

Bollworm Evolves Resistance to Genetically Engineered Cotton

Bollworm Evolves Resistance to Bt Cotton

The genetically modified cotton that was designed to make the Bt (that’s short for Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium) toxins that kill boll weevils has been thwarted by the bugs, according to new research to be published in Nature Biotechnology. The bollworm is the first pest to evolve resistance in the field to so-called Bt crops, according to University of Arizona entomologists.

Bt-resistant populations of bollworm (Helicoverpa zea) were found in more than a dozen crop fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 and 2006. The first resistant worms showed up just seven years after the genetically modified crops were introduced, in 1996, according to the analysis of monitoring studies.

“What we’re seeing is evolution in action,” said lead researcher Bruce Tabashnik.

Clean Clothes Without Soap

photo of eco washing balls

The Soap-free Green Laundry Revolution by Tania Rabesandratana:

Then, there’s the sheer weirdness of entirely eradicating washing powders in favor of such an intangible washing concept. “The balls are made of a special kind of plastic,” explains Steve Jones, the founder of Ecotopia, which sells a variety of washing balls he believes are top of their league, and a scientific breakthrough. “It is the chemical reaction between the plastic and the agitated water that actually does the washing,” he says. The product’s blurb says the balls “produce ionized oxygen that activates the water molecules naturally and allows them to penetrate deep into clothing fibers to lift dirt away.”

Right. Let’s go back to washing basics. Our machine works by combining three actions. First comes chemical action. Here, detergents act as surfactants: they lower the water’s surface tension, making it more likely to mix with oil, so that yucky grease and grime can be removed during rinsing. Second comes the mechanical action from the spinning of the washing machine drum. And finally, there is heat action, which consists of dunking your laundry in hot water.

The eco balls mostly increase the mechanical action so that you can do without the chemical action, thereby saving money and avoiding the use of evil pollutants. The increase of mechanical action also does away with the need for heat action, which in turn conserves electricity and water, which is good for your wallet and your planet.

Pretty cool, if they actually work. I think I might have to try these out. For the next stage of the process, DryerMax Dryer Balls claim to cut the drying time by 25% and soften the fabric. Some other cool gadgets and gizmos.

Giant Duck-Billed Dinosaur Discovered in Mexico

“‘We only know about 29 percent of all dinosaurs out there to be found,’ said study co-author Peter Dodson, a paleobiologist and anatomy professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.” I found this quote to be surprising when I first wrote about it in 2006: Most Dinosaurs Remain Undiscovered. Yet we keep getting new discoveries announced (New Triceratops Ancestor – Nigersaurus the Mesozoic Cow!) showing, while I was surprised, the scientists knew what they were talking about.

Giant Duck-Billed Dino Discovered in Mexico

The discovery of the 72-million-year-old fossil adds to the rich gallery of dinosaurs that scientists now know lived in western North America during the latter part of the dinosaur era. The new species was dubbed Velafrons coahuilensis in honor of the state of Coahuila in north-central Mexico where the fossil was found.

Reaching lengths up to 35 feet (10.5 meters) long, the newfound dino was a plant-eater belonging to a group of duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs, that roamed the region together with carnivores like tyrannosaurs and velociraptors.