Video either broken by bigthink or their system is extremely poor causing minutes of failure to load đ Removed.
The science behind cooking is very interesting. I would have been more interested in cooking if I was exposed to more of this early on in my life.
Related: The Man Who Unboiled an Egg – Donât Eat What Doesn’t Rot – Rethinking the Food Production System – The Calorie Delusion – Tracking the Ecosystem Within Us
Giant rats put noses to work on Africa’s land mine epidemic by Eliott C. McLaughlin
Prejudice against rats is “deep in our psyche” and has roots in the Middle Ages when the rodents were blamed for the plague, Weetjens said. He quickly cited Black Death’s rightful culprit: fleas.
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The International Campaign to Ban Landmines says land mines and related devices were responsible for 73,576 casualties worldwide from 1999 to 2009. Campaign data from 2007 say there were 5,426 recorded casualties, with almost a fifth of them in 24 African countries.
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The cost to train a rat is 6,000 euros ($7,700), roughly a third of what it costs to train a dog. Where dogs need expansive kennel facilities and regular veterinary care because of African climates, APOPO’s kennel facilities at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Tanzania, can house up to 300 rats. The rats see a single vet once a week and are much easier to transport than dogs, Weetjens said.
It is very sad what people do to each (setting up land mines to blow each other up for example). Thankfully we also do great things. I particularly like the engineering mindset behind appropriate technology solutions as I have written many times. They are also looking to have rats help detect tb and cancers. You can fund a rat for 5 Euros (about $6.5) a month to help free the world of landmines.
Related: applying the technology well – Engineering a Better World: Bike Corn-Sheller – Water Pump Merry-go-Round – High School Inventor Teams @ MIT
See a video of a rat at work:
Continue reading
On July 23, 2010, a severe thunderstorm struck Vivian, South Dakota, USA, a quiet rural community of less than 200. While there was nothing unusual about a violent summer storm, the softball (and larger)-sized hail that accompanied it was extraordinary. In fact, it led to the discovery of the largest hailstone ever recorded in the United States.
Once the thunderstorm passed, Vivian resident Les Scott ventured outside to see if there was any damage as a result of the storm. He was surprised to see a tremendous number of large hailstones on the ground, including one about the size of a volleyball. Scott gathered up that stone, along with a few smaller ones, and placed them in his freezer.
How does hail form?
According to NOAA, the Kansas City hail storm on April 10, 2001 was the costliest hail storm in the U.S. which caused damages of an estimated $2 billion.
Related: 500 Year Floods – Clouds Alive With Bacteria – Rare âRainbowâ Over Idaho – Why is it Colder at Higher Elevations?
Are you ready for a world without antibiotics?
And this is the optimistic view â based on the assumption that drug companies can and will get moving on discovering new antibiotics to throw at the bacterial enemy. Since the 1990s, when pharma found itself twisting and turning down blind alleys, it has not shown a great deal of enthusiasm for difficult antibiotic research. And besides, because, unlike with heart medicines, people take the drugs for a week rather than life, and because resistance means the drugs become useless after a while, there is just not much money in it.
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“The emergence of antibiotic resistance is the most eloquent example of Darwin’s principle of evolution that there ever was,” says Livermore. “It is a war of attrition. It is naive to think we can win.”
I have been writing about the huge risks we are talking with our future for years. The careless misuse of antibiotics is very costly (in human lives, in the future). Bacteria pose great risks to us. We need to take antibiotics to fight serious threats. The misuse of antibiotics by doctors, patients, agri-business… is the problem. And we are all living a much riskier future because far to little is being done to reduce the misuse of antibiotics.
More and more antibiotic treatments are losing effectiveness as bacteria evolve resistance. The evolution is accelerated by misuse. This costs lives today, but is likely to costs many thousands and hundreds of thousands and possible more in the next 50 years.
The NDM-1-producing bacteria were highly resistant to all antibiotics except tigecycline and colistin. In some cases, isolates were resistant to all antibiotics. The emergence of NDM-1 positive bacteria is potentially a serious global public health problem as there are few new anti-Gram-negative antibiotics in development and none that are effective against NDM-1.
Related: Antibiotics Breed Superbugs Faster Than Expected – Antibiotics Too Often Prescribed for Sinus Woes – Bacteria Race Ahead of Drugs – FDA May Make Decision That Will Speed Antibiotic Drug Resistance – Raised Without Antibiotics – Waste Treatment Plants Result in Super Bacteria – How Bleach Kills Bacteria – CDC Urges Increased Effort to Reduce Drug-Resistant Infections
A new the theory does away with the big bang and dark energy by having space, time and energy and no beginning and no ending.
Big Bang Abandoned in New Model of the Universe
Shu’s idea is that time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other. In his formulation of the geometry of spacetime, the speed of light is simply the conversion factor between the two. Similarly, mass and length are interchangeable in a relationship in which the conversion factor depends on both the gravitational constant G and the speed of light, neither of which need be constant.
So as the Universe expands, mass and time are converted to length and space and vice versa as it contracts. This universe has no beginning or end, just alternating periods of expansion and contraction. In fact, Shu shows that singularities cannot exist in this cosmos.
It’s easy to dismiss this idea as just another amusing and unrealistic model dreamed up by those whacky comsologists.
That is until you look at the predictions it makes. During a period of expansion, an observer in this universe would see an odd kind of change in the red-shift of bright objects such as Type-I supernovas, as they accelerate away. It turns out, says Shu, that his data exactly matches the observations that astronomers have made on Earth.
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That’s not to say Shu’s theory is perfect. Far from it. One of the biggest problems he faces is explaining the existence and structure of the cosmic microwave background, something that many astrophysicists believe to be the the strongest evidence that the Big Bang really did happen. The CMB, they say, is the echo of the Big bang.
How it might arise in Shu’s cosmology isn’t yet clear but I imagine he’s working on it.
Science is useful in letting us understand the world better. But it also is an evolving understanding as we learn more and search for answers to more questions. Many attempts to put forth new ideas and have them gain acceptance are made. Most fail to gain traction. But even many of the ideas that are not accepted are interesting.
Read Cosmological Models with No Big Bang by Wun-Yi Shu (on the wonderful open access arXiv).
Related: Why Wasnât the Earth Covered in Ice 4 Billion Years Ago, When the Sun was Dimmer – Why do we Need Dark Energy to Explain the Observable Universe? – The State of Physics
With a little help from your friends you can live longer
Being lonely and isolated was as bad for a person’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day or being an alcoholic. It was as harmful as not exercising and twice as bad for the health as being obese.
Open access paper: Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review.
Related: How to build and maintain essential relationships – CDC Urges Reduction in Salt Intake to Save Hundreds of Thousands of Lives – Why People Often Get Sicker When Theyâre Stressed
Monarch butterflies – renowned for their lengthy annual migration to and from Mexico – complete an even more spectacular journey home than previously thought.
New research from the University of Guelph reveals that some North American monarchs born in the Midwest and Great Lakes fly directly east over the Appalachians and settle along the eastern seaboard. Previously, scientists believed the majority of monarchs migrated north directly from the Gulf Coast.
Unfortunately the press release doesn’t provide a link to the study – maybe it is not open science. Often organization focused on closed science don’t do well providing web links (though even open science organizations fall down on this more than they should).
“It solves the long-standing mystery of why monarchs always show up later on the east coast compared to the interior,” he said. “Importantly, it means that the viability of east coast populations is highly dependent upon productivity on the other side of the mountains.”
Monarchs travel thousands of kilometres each year from wintering sites in central Mexico back to North America’s eastern coast, a journey that requires multiple generations (in the same year) produced at various breeding regions.
Biologists had suspected that monarchs fly back from Mexico west-to-east over the Appalachians, but no evidence existed to support the theory. “Ours is the first proof of longitudinal migration,” Miller said.
For the study, the researchers collected 90 monarch samples from 17 sites between Maine and Virginia in June and July of 2009. They also collected 180 samples of milkweed (the only plant monarch larvae can eat) from 36 sites along the eastern coast between May and July of that year.
They then used hydrogen and carbon isotope measurements to determine when and where the monarchs were born. Isotope values in milkweed vary longitudinally and can be measured in monarch wings, Miller said. The researchers discovered that 88 per cent of the monarchs sampled originated in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions.
“This means that the recolonization of the east coast is by second-generation monarchs that hatched around the Great Lakes and then migrated eastward over the Appalachians,” Miller said. “We must target the Great Lakes region to conserve the east coast monarch populations.”
Full press release
Related: Monarch Butterfly Migration – Monarch Travels – Backyard Scientists Aid Research – Two Butterfly Species Evolved Into Third
Google Faculty Research Awards, support full-time faculty pursuing research. The most recent quarterly funding totals over $4 million in 75 awards across 18 different areas. The areas that received the highest level of funding for this round were systems and infrastructure, human computer interaction, multimedia and security. In this round, 26 percent of the funding was awarded to universities outside the U.S.
Some examples
Smart companies realize great research is done in universities that should be adlopted by companies. Many companies listen to fools that talk of academic research as not “real world.” Companies like Google do well for many reasons but one is they pay more attention to scientific research than wall street research. More companies would benefit from adopting this leadership style from Google. Google also continues to fund and support research.
Related: posts on science and engineering funding – Energy Secretary Steve Chu Speaks On Funding Science Research (with Google CEO) – Google.org Invests $10 million in Geothermal Energy – Larry Page and Sergey Brin Interview
Hans Rosling provides another interesting TED talk. As he mentions economics plays a huge role in whether we will slow population growth. The economic condition plays a huge role in child survival which he calls “the new green.” Meaning the fate of the environment is tied to increasing child survival (and decreasing poverty). There are many important factors that will impact the fate of the environment but a big factor is world population.
Related: Data Visualization Example – Statistics Insights for Scientists and Engineers – Very Cool Wearable Computing Gadget from MIT – Understanding the Nature of Compounding – Population Action
Most people know we eat far too much salt and that it is killing lots of us. It is still amazing that we have over 100,000 people in the USA every year die this way and yet we barely pay attention. Doesn’t it seem like we should care more about life?
Excessive dietary sodium consumption increases blood pressure, which increases the risk for stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and renal disease. Based on predictive modeling of the health benefits of reduced salt intake on blood pressure, a population-wide reduction in sodium of 1,200 mg/day would reduce the annual number of new cases of coronary heart disease by 60,000—120,000 cases and stroke by 32,000—66,000 cases.
Fewer than 10% of all adults in the USA met their recommended limit. U.S. adults consumed an average of 3,466 mg/day of sodium. Most of the daily sodium consumed came from grains (1,288 mg; 36.9%) and meats, poultry, fish, and mixtures (994 mg; 27.9%).
In the United States, an estimated 77% of dietary sodium intake comes from processed and restaurant foods and approximately 10% comes from table salt and cooking. More details from the CDC.
Related: CDC: Reduce Salt in Your Diet – Food Rules: An Eaterâs Manual – Eat Less Salt and Save Your Heart – Another Strike Against Cola
