Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Got Science?
First off, sorry to those of you who accidentally got the next question box a day earlier (I misjudged in my scheduling).
Okay, the last question box: I went and looked it up, and apparently there is a National Christmas Tree Association. According to their "Tree Facts," it can take 4 to 15 years to grow a Christmas tree, but the average time is 7 years. It's actually a really interesting website. According to them, artificial Christmas trees are much worse than real ones. The most interesting (and slightly disturbing) fact from their website is that the first artificial Christmas trees were made by a company that made... toilet bowl brushes! Yes, with the same materials and machinery as well. Puts a whole new light on Christmas trees, doesn't it? I certainly thought of our (artificial) Christmas tree a little differently after that. Very interesting website.
Poll: (well, not really) Which is better: real Christmas trees or fake Christmas Trees? Tell why if you wish as well.
Okay, the last question box: I went and looked it up, and apparently there is a National Christmas Tree Association. According to their "Tree Facts," it can take 4 to 15 years to grow a Christmas tree, but the average time is 7 years. It's actually a really interesting website. According to them, artificial Christmas trees are much worse than real ones. The most interesting (and slightly disturbing) fact from their website is that the first artificial Christmas trees were made by a company that made... toilet bowl brushes! Yes, with the same materials and machinery as well. Puts a whole new light on Christmas trees, doesn't it? I certainly thought of our (artificial) Christmas tree a little differently after that. Very interesting website.
Poll: (well, not really) Which is better: real Christmas trees or fake Christmas Trees? Tell why if you wish as well.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Basic Genetics
This is a cool homework assignment!
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/
Before I start looking at the rest of the website, here are the two (okay, four) interesting things I learned:
Traits are a quality or characteristic that we have, and our combination of different traits makes us unique. We get our traits from our parents, and we will pass them on in our children. While our DNA has instructions for our traits, we can easily have our traits changed by environmental factors. For instance, the "tour" said that our hair color can be changed by sunlight and hair dyes. I never really thought of using sunlight to change your hair color!
Being able to bend your thumb back is called the hitchhiker's thumb allele (uh-LEEL), an allele being a trait. Sadly, even though that ability seems cool, I cannot do bend back my thumb (or curl up my tongue).
When someone has two alleles, like one for a hitchhiker's thumb and one for a straight thumb, they interact. One, the "dominant" trait, dominates over the other one and is what people see (hence the name dominant). The "recessive" trait jumps out your ear, never to be seen again! No, it's still there, it's just, to use their word, "masked" by the other trait. Having two of the same allele for a trait is called homozygous, and having two different ones is called heterozygous. Apparently, traits can also combine, called "incomplete dominance"- so taking a red carnation and a white carnation could make a pink carnation.
Some big words (FYI animefreak44, these are hard to spell, not hard to understand):
DNA= Deoxyribonucleic Acid
The "alphabet" of DNA= A pairs with T, C pairs with G
A=Adenine
T=Thymine
C=Cytosine
G=Guanine
I must explore the rest of the site, so I'll stop typing now.
EDIT: This assignment still isn't due, so I suppose it's okay to add stuff to it. :)
I haven't looked at everything because I've been spending time practicing piano and generally being lazy, but I did look at some other things.
I think that the extracting DNA experiment is pretty cool. We don't get to do much since the computer does most of it for you, but it made me remember the time when I got to extract DNA in real life (from some type of dried plant, I think) at a museum. The DNA looked like a bunch of white, whispy strands. Considering how small DNA is, I was surprised (well, shocked really) that we could see it at all. Sunnyd, are we going to get to extract DNA?
One of the other activities I tried was Mouse Party, which talked about the effects of drugs on the brain (of mice). The mice were kind of disturbing, but that's what taking bad drugs does to you. Anyway, drugs can really mess up your brain, and the "game" showed how the drugs disrupted certain recepters, causing the effects of the drug.
The last activity I tried had to do with genetic therapy, I believe. It was called Space Doctor, and you had to use gene therapy to treat your patients. I only got to treat one patient before I had to go eat dinner (yes, I'm typing this several days later) but I did get it right on the first try. Apparently, you insert genes into viruses (you have to be careful about the type of virus, though) and the newly-modified virus inserts the gene, or allele (see! I'm using vocabulary! Yay!) into the cell. The pictures of the aliens and their environments aren't that great, but it's certainly a cool activity.
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/
Before I start looking at the rest of the website, here are the two (okay, four) interesting things I learned:
Traits are a quality or characteristic that we have, and our combination of different traits makes us unique. We get our traits from our parents, and we will pass them on in our children. While our DNA has instructions for our traits, we can easily have our traits changed by environmental factors. For instance, the "tour" said that our hair color can be changed by sunlight and hair dyes. I never really thought of using sunlight to change your hair color!
Being able to bend your thumb back is called the hitchhiker's thumb allele (uh-LEEL), an allele being a trait. Sadly, even though that ability seems cool, I cannot do bend back my thumb (or curl up my tongue).
When someone has two alleles, like one for a hitchhiker's thumb and one for a straight thumb, they interact. One, the "dominant" trait, dominates over the other one and is what people see (hence the name dominant). The "recessive" trait jumps out your ear, never to be seen again! No, it's still there, it's just, to use their word, "masked" by the other trait. Having two of the same allele for a trait is called homozygous, and having two different ones is called heterozygous. Apparently, traits can also combine, called "incomplete dominance"- so taking a red carnation and a white carnation could make a pink carnation.
When an egg cell and a sperm cell join, they form one cell called a zygote, which has all 46 chromosomes that cells usually have.
I don't quite understand this statement: "Traits influenced by just one gene are rare. These are called 'single gene traits' " Perhaps reading (and watching) some more will provide some enlightenment.Some big words (FYI animefreak44, these are hard to spell, not hard to understand):
DNA= Deoxyribonucleic Acid
The "alphabet" of DNA= A pairs with T, C pairs with G
A=Adenine
T=Thymine
C=Cytosine
G=Guanine
I must explore the rest of the site, so I'll stop typing now.
EDIT: This assignment still isn't due, so I suppose it's okay to add stuff to it. :)
I haven't looked at everything because I've been spending time practicing piano and generally being lazy, but I did look at some other things.
I think that the extracting DNA experiment is pretty cool. We don't get to do much since the computer does most of it for you, but it made me remember the time when I got to extract DNA in real life (from some type of dried plant, I think) at a museum. The DNA looked like a bunch of white, whispy strands. Considering how small DNA is, I was surprised (well, shocked really) that we could see it at all. Sunnyd, are we going to get to extract DNA?
One of the other activities I tried was Mouse Party, which talked about the effects of drugs on the brain (of mice). The mice were kind of disturbing, but that's what taking bad drugs does to you. Anyway, drugs can really mess up your brain, and the "game" showed how the drugs disrupted certain recepters, causing the effects of the drug.
The last activity I tried had to do with genetic therapy, I believe. It was called Space Doctor, and you had to use gene therapy to treat your patients. I only got to treat one patient before I had to go eat dinner (yes, I'm typing this several days later) but I did get it right on the first try. Apparently, you insert genes into viruses (you have to be careful about the type of virus, though) and the newly-modified virus inserts the gene, or allele (see! I'm using vocabulary! Yay!) into the cell. The pictures of the aliens and their environments aren't that great, but it's certainly a cool activity.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Got Science?
Anyone curious for ways to time travel? Some ways that I've heard about are:
1. Make an infinitely long spinning cylinder. This cylinder will warp space-time with it, so (I believe) every trip around this cylinder will make you go backwards in time. I don't quite get it, but I read it in a book.
2. From the same book, if you wanted to make a time machine, you could: using negative matter and stuff like that, make two... er... capsules (hard to explain and I read this book a long time ago) and string a wormhole between them (good luck doing that). Then, put one of them on a ship and send that ship zooming off at the speed of light. Time will go differently in each one, and so going in one capsule will send you back in time to the time when it was created (I'm not sure what is which).
3. Going at the speed of light will "stop" time for you, and time slows as you approach the speed of light.
4. Certain drugs will change your perception of time. (i.e. make it seem to speed up/slow down)
5. Life-threatening situations will slow down your perception of time (they did an experiment on it, though I don't quite have the patience now to explain it).
Here are some clips you can watch, and reading the books in this post will also give some more ways. The website that I had hinted at earlier was www.livescience.com, which would have given you some good answers (and possibly some extra credit points!)
EDIT: Congrats to Saffire Goldstone for having the best answer to the first ever question box! And providing wonderful links to articles and videos about time travel. Check it out!
1. Make an infinitely long spinning cylinder. This cylinder will warp space-time with it, so (I believe) every trip around this cylinder will make you go backwards in time. I don't quite get it, but I read it in a book.
2. From the same book, if you wanted to make a time machine, you could: using negative matter and stuff like that, make two... er... capsules (hard to explain and I read this book a long time ago) and string a wormhole between them (good luck doing that). Then, put one of them on a ship and send that ship zooming off at the speed of light. Time will go differently in each one, and so going in one capsule will send you back in time to the time when it was created (I'm not sure what is which).
3. Going at the speed of light will "stop" time for you, and time slows as you approach the speed of light.
4. Certain drugs will change your perception of time. (i.e. make it seem to speed up/slow down)
5. Life-threatening situations will slow down your perception of time (they did an experiment on it, though I don't quite have the patience now to explain it).
Here are some clips you can watch, and reading the books in this post will also give some more ways. The website that I had hinted at earlier was www.livescience.com, which would have given you some good answers (and possibly some extra credit points!)
EDIT: Congrats to Saffire Goldstone for having the best answer to the first ever question box! And providing wonderful links to articles and videos about time travel. Check it out!
Friday, December 18, 2009
Pippin's Question Box
Give three ways to either: slow down time, speed up time, go backwards in time, go forwards (as in going to the future) in time, or stop time. (Best)
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Science Flash: Oil and Water Finally Mix! Gingerbread Men Aren't Worth Chasing!
I felt rather idle, so I looked for the most random articles I could find- and here they are!
How to mix oil and water
Whoever said water and oil don't mix? If you take a drop of water coated in oil and bounce it long enough, then they'll mix together. (That's basically the entire article.) Apparently, scientists in Belgium got the idea (from where is what I'd like to ask) to see what would happen if you bounced an oil coated water droplet for longer than it usually does. They took a drop of soapy water and covered it in oil, and the droplet hung on a wire. Then, they took a (shallow) container of oil, if my interpretation of the video is correct, and bounced the droplet up and down. As it bounced, the outer layer broke up into little globs and went into the water droplet, creating an oil-and-water droplet. They call it the "mayonnaise droplet," a very (cough) official sounding name. Anyway, silliness aside, the significance of this is to try to understand the concepts behind the mayonnaise droplet so they can apply it to other areas like pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
My first questions were how and why. Bouncing little droplets of makeup probably won't be cheap, so the practical applications of this isn't very high. However, research is research, and perhaps they will find something revolutionary based on this concept. Who knows? Also, while I understand the basic way that they did it, I still don't quite understand how the drop "bounced" instead of splattered. Would it simply be because of surface tension or other factors as well? The video was amusing to watch, and explained the experiment much more clearly than the article. Overall, this was definitely an interesting little article.
Case of the toxic gingerbread man
This was a pretty long article compared to the oil and water one. To cut to the chase, there are people out there that try to keep levels of toxic chemicals in the air and water, well, nontoxic. However, there was one stubborn chemical that wouldn't go down: the DCA compound. Basically, what they did was they went into a house (in Utah) and tested every room for the concentrations of this chemical. The hotspot was the basement. Of course, that could be anything: the carpet, walls, paint, the stuff in the basement, and things that go in a basement. Therefore, they took all of the stuff from the basement and put it into the garage. The basement's levels of DCA went down dramactically, and the garage's concentration spiked. A lot. The culprit: a plastic gingerbread man ornament along with some other ornaments. They tested the gingerman's paint, but found little. So, they cut off its legs, and bingo! The chemical is in the plastic. Sadly, ornaments aren't the only culprits. The team who were looking into this also found quite a few other decorative objects that had the exact same problem. On the bright side, the Federal Consumer Product Safety Commission is looking into this, so hopefully it won't get too out of hand.
Personally, I don't really find any reason to panic or throw out all of our Christmas ornaments from reading this. We can't really tell what it is made of, so there's not much really we can do that is practical. Plus, I don't think polyresin is the only material that is emitting toxic fumes into our environment, and trying to rid ourselves of all of those toxins would be nearly impossible. Rather, probably a more rational approach would be to buy new ornaments with care, and perhaps avoid the ones made in China stuffed away in the corner of a dollar store. This material is a cheap plastic, so I'm guessing that cheaper ornaments and decorative stuff would be more likely to be dangerous than the more expensive ones. Overall though, it was an interesting article and nicely written.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Got Science?
I'm a little tired of science articles (there's so many!) so I'm going to take a break from that stuff this week and talk about science and things like that in general. First off, if you do need an article, just click the little label called "Article of the Week" and you'll find enough to satisfy your two-current events minimum. Second, Happy December everyone! Already I can see that this will be a very busy and happy month. I hope that every has had a good Thanksgiving and is doing well.
Now, to the best part: Science! I apologize in advance if I'm a little random, but I'm just saying what comes to mind. I found a great, um, simile to magma bubbling away underneath the earth's crust: freshly baked and bubbling apple pie! What's your favorite biome? I did my project on temperate rain forest, but my personal favorite is marine. There's so much life in the ocean, especially coral reefs. If I had to choose a biome to live in, though, it would probably be in the temperate rain forest (Oregon/Northern California/Washington State) region. I visited the general (not the forest) area once on vacation, and it's really nice and cool. I know some would prefer a hotter climate like Southern California, but I prefer a mild cool that doesn't get too cold. The reason why that area doesn't experience extremes in temperature is because the mountains shelter the region from extremes in temperatures. The mountains also trap moist air masses from the ocean, thus the temperate rain forest. Okay, so I just read an article about anger. Apparently, certain people experience anger more than others. Here's a link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091130131326.htm. Here's another about loneliness (I knew I spelled it wrong, but it's fixed now): http://www.livescience.com/culture/091201-loneliness-spreads-friends.html How many people here like science? Just out of curiosity. And why? We're studying genetics soon, and I'm really excited. I have to wonder, though, when we are studying physics. Hmm.... Anyway, here's a random fact, courtesy of http://www.funology.com/ : Your brain is 80% water. Isn't that comforting to know? Oh well. And that's about it for today!
Now, to the best part: Science! I apologize in advance if I'm a little random, but I'm just saying what comes to mind. I found a great, um, simile to magma bubbling away underneath the earth's crust: freshly baked and bubbling apple pie! What's your favorite biome? I did my project on temperate rain forest, but my personal favorite is marine. There's so much life in the ocean, especially coral reefs. If I had to choose a biome to live in, though, it would probably be in the temperate rain forest (Oregon/Northern California/Washington State) region. I visited the general (not the forest) area once on vacation, and it's really nice and cool. I know some would prefer a hotter climate like Southern California, but I prefer a mild cool that doesn't get too cold. The reason why that area doesn't experience extremes in temperature is because the mountains shelter the region from extremes in temperatures. The mountains also trap moist air masses from the ocean, thus the temperate rain forest. Okay, so I just read an article about anger. Apparently, certain people experience anger more than others. Here's a link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091130131326.htm. Here's another about loneliness (I knew I spelled it wrong, but it's fixed now): http://www.livescience.com/culture/091201-loneliness-spreads-friends.html How many people here like science? Just out of curiosity. And why? We're studying genetics soon, and I'm really excited. I have to wonder, though, when we are studying physics. Hmm.... Anyway, here's a random fact, courtesy of http://www.funology.com/ : Your brain is 80% water. Isn't that comforting to know? Oh well. And that's about it for today!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Got Science?
Happy Turkey Day, everyone! Here are some holiday themed articles for your pleasure:
Splurging a little too much on Black Friday? A bigger Thanksgiving dinner can remedy that.
Pig out More at Thanksgiving and You May Shop Less
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118163210.htm
I only got to skim this (and most of the other articles) quickly, but it seems as though there is a specific molecule that says, "I'm full! No more turkey for me!"
Brain Sense Fatty Food: Molecule Shuts Down Food Intake And Turns On 'Siesta Mode'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081126122207.htm
Hmm... Chugging down your Thanksgiving Dinner seems to a double no-no this holiday season (and at every other instance.)
Eating Quickly Is Associated With Overeating, Study Indicates
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104085230.htm
What does pie have to do with Powerpoint presentations? I don't know, but this interesting article turned up when I looked up "pie" on science daily. It's holiday related by a stretch, isn't it? (okay, I admit, it isn't, but it's still cool!)
Could Power Point Presentations Be Stifling Learning?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090611110829.htm
Well, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Make sure you eat lots of food!
Splurging a little too much on Black Friday? A bigger Thanksgiving dinner can remedy that.
Pig out More at Thanksgiving and You May Shop Less
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091118163210.htm
I only got to skim this (and most of the other articles) quickly, but it seems as though there is a specific molecule that says, "I'm full! No more turkey for me!"
Brain Sense Fatty Food: Molecule Shuts Down Food Intake And Turns On 'Siesta Mode'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081126122207.htm
Hmm... Chugging down your Thanksgiving Dinner seems to a double no-no this holiday season (and at every other instance.)
Eating Quickly Is Associated With Overeating, Study Indicates
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104085230.htm
What does pie have to do with Powerpoint presentations? I don't know, but this interesting article turned up when I looked up "pie" on science daily. It's holiday related by a stretch, isn't it? (okay, I admit, it isn't, but it's still cool!)
Could Power Point Presentations Be Stifling Learning?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090611110829.htm
Well, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Make sure you eat lots of food!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Thoughts for the Week
SunnyD and Kokopelli, where are the Thoughts for the weekend? There isn't anything! Anyway, I have decided to fill that gap in my brain with my own:
"The history of any one part of the Earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror." British geologist Derek V. Ager (from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything)
How long do erasable pens stay erasable? (if you didn't know, some do turn permament)
"The history of any one part of the Earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long periods of boredom and short periods of terror." British geologist Derek V. Ager (from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything)
How long do erasable pens stay erasable? (if you didn't know, some do turn permament)
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Got Science?
Welcome all! This week's lineup seems interesting, so let's check it out.
It's the BEASTIE!! No, it's not, but here is an article on taming the "beastie."
Child Psychology: Tips on Taming the 'Boogie Monster'
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091113083303.htm
What will you be when you grow up? Kids are deciding earlier nowadays, maybe you should too.
Today's Children Decide Their School and Career Path Early http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091115123711.htm
It thinks for itself. (of course, this is about bugs. Again)
Bigger Not Necessarily Better, When It Comes to Brainshttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091117124009.htm
Guess what? The world isn't about to end, the Mayans were just going to celebrate another long cycle or something like that. Good thing that was cleared up.
'Doomsday' 2012 Prediction Explained: Mayan Calendar Was Cyclical
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091113122958.htm
Ooh, ooh, this is the funniest thing about science: most of the really big discoveries in science is made... by accident!! There's this really great quote that goes something like, "The (best or something like that) phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...' " Anyway, they apparently found the perfect blue dye by just fiddling around with some materials.
Accidental Discovery Produces Durable New Blue Pigment for Multiple Applications
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091116143621.htm
Out of all of them, I'd say that the Doomsday article is the best read, the blue pigment a close second. See you next week!
Friday, November 13, 2009
Science Thought For the Weekend 11/13
Sunnyd's Thought for the Weekend is
"In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurred." Sir William Oster (1849-1919)
My first reaction was What a coincidence! The book I happen to be reading loves to point out that very fact- and I think that that is one of truest (and saddest) facts of science. For instance, in the book, A Short History of Nearly Everything (which I'm not done with yet) one very good example of credit not being given is the unlucky Gideon Mantell. This man was a doctor in practice, but an amazing (amateur) paleontologist as well. Here's a short bit of how unlucky this poor man was: his wife discovered a fossilized tooth, and taking it home to her husband who takes interest in this type of thing, Mantell immediately realized that this belonged to a new creature: something we now know as a dinosaur, but nobody knew at that time. After being cautioned by his friend (a rather eccentric person) to be careful as to how he presents this find, he spent three years trying to find evidence to support the fact that this belongs to a new type of very old creature. One expert in Paris said it was from a hippo, another researcher said it beloned to a lizard. Of course, during this time, the very friend who told Mantell to be careful went ahead and discovered a dinosaur himself, and is credited with the first published description of a dinosaur. Of course, this wasn't the least of Mantell's woes, but only one (and definitely not the worst). There are probably millions of tales like these because people weren't lucky enough to be the first, get published, attract attention, or even be alive when people finally realized the discovery's worth (that can happen with really big discoveries). Scientists, clearly, have to be people-smart, science-smart, and have a lot of luck to be successful.
"In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurred." Sir William Oster (1849-1919)
My first reaction was What a coincidence! The book I happen to be reading loves to point out that very fact- and I think that that is one of truest (and saddest) facts of science. For instance, in the book, A Short History of Nearly Everything (which I'm not done with yet) one very good example of credit not being given is the unlucky Gideon Mantell. This man was a doctor in practice, but an amazing (amateur) paleontologist as well. Here's a short bit of how unlucky this poor man was: his wife discovered a fossilized tooth, and taking it home to her husband who takes interest in this type of thing, Mantell immediately realized that this belonged to a new creature: something we now know as a dinosaur, but nobody knew at that time. After being cautioned by his friend (a rather eccentric person) to be careful as to how he presents this find, he spent three years trying to find evidence to support the fact that this belongs to a new type of very old creature. One expert in Paris said it was from a hippo, another researcher said it beloned to a lizard. Of course, during this time, the very friend who told Mantell to be careful went ahead and discovered a dinosaur himself, and is credited with the first published description of a dinosaur. Of course, this wasn't the least of Mantell's woes, but only one (and definitely not the worst). There are probably millions of tales like these because people weren't lucky enough to be the first, get published, attract attention, or even be alive when people finally realized the discovery's worth (that can happen with really big discoveries). Scientists, clearly, have to be people-smart, science-smart, and have a lot of luck to be successful.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Got Science?
Hello to all! We have an interesting lineup of articles here, so let's take a look.
Healthy ice cream? Well, I'm not sure whether I'd buy it, but it seems to be a good idea and some researchers seem to think so too. (Although I have to ask: why would a university have ice cream researchers in the first place? They explain it in the article, but still...)
Erm... This study was about bugs, everyone. Really!
Healthy ice cream? Well, I'm not sure whether I'd buy it, but it seems to be a good idea and some researchers seem to think so too. (Although I have to ask: why would a university have ice cream researchers in the first place? They explain it in the article, but still...)
Ice Cream Researchers Making Sweet Strides With 'Functional Foods'
Who here likes candy and soda? I do. But apparently, one of the ingredients, corn syrup, commonly found in many sweet treats that we like to eat causes high blood pressure. Who would have ever guessed it was *cough cough* unhealthy?
High Fructose Corn Syrup: A Recipe For Hypertension, Study Finds
Erm... This study was about bugs, everyone. Really!
Why Nice Guys Usually Get the Girls
For my dinosaur loving friend, here is an interesting article for your examination and commentation (which is apparently not a word). For everyone else, feel free to read it!
Warm-blooded Dinosaurs Worked Up A Sweat
"EBF3, I want two bicycles and an ipod touch, pronto!" Okay, maybe that's a little too far. Anyway, the machine that I'm talking about can create metal parts, layer by layer, as long as you can provide it a detailed 3-D drawing that's compatible with it's functuality, of course. Pretty cool- probably bordering sci-fi.
Star Trek-like Replicator? Electron Beam Device Makes Metal Parts, One Layer At A Time
And that's it for this week!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Science Flash: A "Black Hole" for Light
I actually learned about this first from my dad, who was reading in an article in Chinese. He said that some Chinese scientists actually made a black hole. Honestly, after reading about "mini black holes" that pop in and out of existence, I wasn't that concerned- until he said that it wasn't super small, like I suggested. That made me (literally) jump out of my seat (well, the couch) because any black hole made on earth that's visible to the naked eye would be really, really bad- rather, we wouldn't be here if it was a true, cosmic, suck-everything-up black hole. To my dad's credit, I must mention that he said it was for light. Still, it's not quite a black hole! To get the real scoop, I yahooed it (with no results) and googled it, to get this article. At least it's in English now.
First black hole for light created on Earth
First, before we start talking about the article, I want to point out what the "black hole" I had in mind was. A black hole occurs when you take something- anything, really,- and squish it down until it's really, really, really (really) small. For instance, I might be wrong, but I believe if you wanted to squish yourself that small, you'd have to be as small as a molecule- which is really small. Once it collapses down to a certain radius (there's a name for it, but I don't know how to spell or say it), it becomes so dense that it's gravity is really strong- so strong that light cannot escape the pull of it. Let's take an example that is almost certainly wrong, but gets the general gist of it. Let's say that I have a very big sheet of unbreakable fabric, which would be the space-time continuum. Now, put a school-bus on it. It creates a sag in the fabric, right? The sag is the gravity (according to Einstein) because if you were a marble on it, you'd roll down, or be "attracted to" the school bus. Next, you have to put on some muscle and compress the entire school bus into a tiny ball the size of a pinhead- no, not taking a little piece, but actually stuffing all that matter into a little ball. Put that little ball on the fabric, and voila! you see that it creates a "hole" that your marble self would just roll into and never come out again. That is a black hole. Such a thing on earth that, even it was a size of an atom, would suck us all up into oblivion if I have it correct, although the good thing would be that we wouldn't even know it (people were worrying about that when they launched the LHC Collider, which smashes atoms to find things like evaporating mini black holes and weird elementary particles. Complicated stuff). Anyway, it's fascinating to think about, but not a good thing to have.
The article is says they have made a "black hole for light." Is it a black hole that will suck us all up? No!! It's almost completely different than what a cosmic black hole is. It is meant to trap electromagnetic radiation (light, microwaves, etc.), not people, so rest easy. It is supposed to work on the principle of black holes in the sense that light spirals towards the center. I think of it more like a labyrinth that forces you to go a certain way. Back to the article- when they do start talking about the device, they say, "The key to making light curve inwards is to make the shell's permittivity – which affects the electric component of an electromagnetic wave – increase smoothly from the outer to the inner surface." If you are having one of those What's that? faces, then you know what I'm thinking. Permittivity, according to to dictionary.com, is "A measure of the ability of a material to resist the formation of an electric field within it." So, I'm guessing that that the outside attracts the light or microwave and the inside, well, keeps it inside- although it all transitions smoothly, of course. Two scientists, Tie Jun Cui and Qiang Cheng at the Southeast University of Nanjing made one of these "black holes" for microwaves (the radiation used to heat up your hot cocoa) with 60 round strips made out of a special material called "meta-materials." Meta-material's acclaim to fame, so to speak, is that they are used to make things invisible. (Quick lesson on invisibility: you bend the rays around the object you want to make invisible so the rays don't bounce off and go into your eye, making you "see" it. Don't count on it too soon though, I'm pretty sure they still have a long way to go. All the good stuff you'll probably have to wait a long time for) The outer 40 rings form the shell that the light/microwaves enter, and the inner 20 actually absorb it. Each of the rings apparently look like a circuit board. In the first version, the absorber converts the microwaves (or is it light? I'm confused) into heat.
Now that the version for microwaves is done, they are hoping to do the same for light. However, since light has smaller wavelengths than microwaves (the electromagnetic spectrum!), they have to make the circuitry on the boards a lot smaller. The purpose for this is that they could hopefully put a solar cell in the middle of the absorber, converting the light into electricity. If so, they could use this black-holeish thing instead of huge mirrors to focus enough sunlight on the cells. (Yes, you need sunlight for solar cells to work, you can't put it in half-shade and expect it to produce a whole bunch of electricity).
In my opinion, this is definitely impressive, but it is not exactly the biggest thing that ever happened. After all, with the ability to bend light and all those smart people (not me, I'm just the critic) out there, somebody probably would have come up with it sooner or later. However, the speed that they work and the neatness is definitely a big accomplishment. Also, I think that they (I don't know who gave the name, so I'm saying they) completely misnamed it. Black holes will make people jump, you know! Couldn't they have named it something like the "light-trapper" or "sun-collector" or "light labyrinth" or even "a device that simulates the effects of a black hole on space-time with meta-materials in order to bend light into a compact thingamajig." Making a black hole in any headline would definitely make people read it, but still, when it's in Chinese (English too) it's hard to get the real scoop without using dictionaries and a lot of prior knowledge that's there because of luck! (Actually, you could argue it's my fault for not learning Chinese properly and that I shouldn't be on a Chinese website in the first place, but it still makes people jump to weird conclusions). Wow, I just realized there are a lot of comments, and a treasure trove of information as well. I like how one person said "it is more of a lens made of meta-materials" because that makes more sense and is not nearly as extreme as a black hole! Plus, some people interpret it as sucking in light, while others think that the light has to hit the thing first, then it navigates its way to the middle. I agree with the latter more, because it says nothing about attracting anything other than the reference to black holes. There are also a lot of people pointing out that meta-materials aren't exactly cheap, so whether this light-trap (as people call it) would be more expensive or cheaper than mirrors is also something to consider. Others point out that this could have other uses. The one that I think was the most interesting (and probably practical) would be to create cheaper versions of this in order to trap excess radio waves and other radiation types from cell phones and wireless devices in the office to reduce exposure. There are also a lot of comments (you can see the varying degrees of "it's a black hole" vs. it's not) that actually take the idea of a black hole literally (one started talking about a black hole bomb! I don't think that would be possible with a light-trap). Overall a good discussion of the article in the comments- and there's a link to another version of the article! Here it is! http://blogs.discovery.com/space_disco/2009/10/first-ever-black-hole-created-on-earth.html Don't read the comments on that one, though, since it's a somewhat nasty discussion. Otherwise, it's definitely a good discovery, but they could have been clearer on the actual device, not just going "it's like a black hole!" because that isn't a good analogy at all- and certainly not good for innocent schoolkids to read, since they can get mixed up.
Science Buzz: A Really Cool Website!
I could not ignore the treasures of this website any longer- this website is amazing!
I played around with this website a couple of years ago, and I rediscovered in my bookmarks a couple of days ago. The main appeal of this website are all the online exhibits and activities- there is an incredible amount of info that you can learn from this website. It is actually a museum's website, but they have a lot of online games and activities. However, I just found today that if you happen to have finished all of those (and that'll take you a big chunk of time), they have a section of the website thoughtfully dedicated to more links about many subjects! I couldn't believe it, but they probably have enough cool links to occupy anyone for a very, very, very long time. If you ask me, this must be one of the most amazing websites on the web! Most websites have one or two things to do and that's it, but this website must have hundreds! I highly reccomend this website, it's great for anything!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Science Flash: Protection for Coral Reefs
When I was in second grade, we spent an enormous amount of time on the ocean (half a year with a teacher that actually appreciates science is a lot of info to soak in) and a large amount of that was spent on coral reefs. Therefore, it was very gratifying to see this particular headline at sciencedaily.
Coral Reefs Inspire Rare Consensus -- Just Save Them
The basic point of this entire article is that people want to save the coral reefs for the sake of saving them even if it means that people will be kept out for a while. For some basic info on coral, coral are little polyps with skeleton (that's the coral that shows up on beaches) and live with algae inside them, which provides the coral with food and their colors. The coral have to live with certain conditions to keep the algae alive: a warm temperature and clear waters so sunlight can reach the algae. Many creatures live in the coral reef (which is basically a whole lot of coral polyps all together), including but not limited to tropical fishes, eels, starfish, rays, and a lot of colorful critters. Here is a picture (I've given up trying to add more):
From: http://openphoto.net//volumes/dkeats/20050705/openphotonet_clownfish_fiji.jpg
The thing about coral reefs is: they're delicate, easy to kill, and take a long (millions of years) time to grow. If the temperature is a little higher or lower, or you accidently step on them, spill some chemicals, and a whole lot of other things, then a piece of coral can die as a result. They are incredibly diverse and beautiful, and having studied them for so long in second grade, I have a bit of an attachment to them. Anyway, they did some surveys, and found that the attitude of people towards coral reefs is that the reef comes first, and we should preserve them even if that means less revenue from the coral reefs. This is just amazing, but consider this: we can barely conserve our forests because we need the paper and timber. The equivalent of "paper and timber" for the coral reefs would be the large amount of money from the tourist industry. However, people agree that coral reefs are something to preserve, and say that if they can't visit it anymore, then they'd be fine with that. I am very, very happy about that, and that's about all I can say. (I know this is brief compared to what I usually do, but it's a simple article with a lot of meaning that's hard to express.) Perhaps our grandchildren and great-grandchildren may be able to witness the stunning beauty of the coral reefs after all.Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Got Science?
Welcome to the second weekly Got Science? post! Today, we shall look at some rather odd science news worth blogging about (and just in time for that homework assignment too!)
Does anyone get irritated at those stickers on fruit that you have to take off before you eat it? Has anyone eaten one of those by accident? (I haven't... yet) Now there seems to be a sticker-free and approved alternative to labeling grapefruit: lasers! Completely random if you ask me, but I suppose that there are scientists and companies out there that just can't stand stickers.
Tick tock, tick tock! We aren't the only ones with clocks, you know. Apparently, they have discovered that hydrogen peroxide could be the main chemical responsible for the rhythms in cells.
Not Just Bleach: Hydrogen Peroxide May Tell Time For Living Cells
Guess what? No matter how many times people say "Don't judge a book by its cover," we seem to anyway! The first one is about how we make judgements about people just by looking at them (or their photo). The second is about how if your teacher ruins his/her first impression(s), there's not much they can do to make up for it. Kind of sad, if you ask me. I know a friend who thinks a really great teacher I know is really mean because the teacher slammed the door once quite hard and tore some person's packet in half (although that person wasn't innocent in any way). I'd suggest you blog these two together because they are related and the first one provides good info and the second is easy to relate to.
First Impressions Count When Making Personality Judgments, New Research Shows
Poor Start Between A Class And Its Teacher Almost Impossible To Rectify
In physics, the ultimate speed limit is the speed of light. Apparently, there seems to be a speed limit for evolution as well. This relates well to what we're learning in class, so if you want something like that, then this would be the one for you.
Speed Limit To The Pace Of Evolution, Biologists Say
Does anyone get irritated at those stickers on fruit that you have to take off before you eat it? Has anyone eaten one of those by accident? (I haven't... yet) Now there seems to be a sticker-free and approved alternative to labeling grapefruit: lasers! Completely random if you ask me, but I suppose that there are scientists and companies out there that just can't stand stickers.
Laser Etching Safe Alternative For Labeling Grapefruit
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Science Class: Ecology
I have so many posts for, it seems, everything but class reflections and I figured I should solve that dilema do one to study for the test tomorrow, so here goes!
In class, we've been studying ecology, or the study of the relationships and interactions between living organisms and their environment. So, here are some vocabulary included in the first section (I know it's boring, but I need to study, so bear with me):
Environment: consists of all the non-living and living things in which an organism may interact.
Ecosystem: All the living and non-living things in a given area. The size of a ecosystem is defined by the ecologist studying it (e.g. a drop of pond water or an entire ocean- big difference there, but it's still up to the ecologist)
Ecologist: someone who studies ecology
Community: Consists of all the living organisms in an ecosystem
Population: A group of organisms of the same species (I think of it as the number of organisms of the same species)
Habitat: Where an organism lives.
Okay, now I will try to discuss this bit in an interesting and amusing manner. All of these technical definitions make my head spin, and it raises some questions: First, if the definition of an environment consists of all of the things that an organism may interact, then what about the things that an organism doesn't interact? Is there even such a thing that we can't interact with? (Dark matter doesn't count because a) nobody knows what it is and b) I don't get what it is!) Also, if an organism dies, is it still an "organism"? So is it taken for granted that organism in all of the definitions refers to a living organism? Are there even "official" definitions for all of these things? Anyway, there is an interesting website called "Kids Do Ecology" that I found. Here's a link: http://kids.nceas.ucsb.edu/ Some of it we learned, some of it we didn't. Apparently, ecology (from Greek) translates into "study of the household," so we are studying the "house" that we live in: Earth. There were also two new vocabulary words: abiotic factors, which are non-living factors, and biotic factors, which are living factors.
The next bit that we learned about were the different energy roles and food chains/webs. There are three main energy roles: producers, consumers, and decomposers. Producers produce their own food. The best example of this are plants: they take sun, air, water, and nutrients from the soil and photosynthesize to make food. However, in the ocean, the producers (surprisingly) aren't plants. Link time! http://kingfish.coastal.edu/biology/sgilman/770PlanktonBenthos.htm Annoyingly, while I did learn quite a bit from it, most of it I didn't get and it didn't answer my original question (which I will get to later). Interestingly, the producers in the ocean are phytoplankton, algae, and seaweed, but those are not plants! I honestly never knew that, I assumed they were plants. Interestingly, phytoplankton is generally not a major source of food. Algae, or mainly diatoms since they're slightly bigger, are eaten a lot. However, I wanted to know what were the producers at the bottom of the ocean, where no sunlight falls. I thought it was the tube worms that feed on sulfur from the vents. However, according to this webpage, http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/oceanography_recently_revealed1.html, it is actually bacteria that convert the sulfur into energy through a process called chemosynthesis. The bacteria live inside the vent worms, nourishing it. Okay, enough about ocean producers, we must move on. Consumers are organism that feeds directly or indirectly on another organism. There are four special types of consumers: herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and scavengers. Herbivores eat producers, carnivores eat consumers, omnivores eat everything, and scavengers eat dead organisms, which is usually meat but sometimes plants as well. However, isn't a scavenger a type of carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore? Also, if scavengers eat dead organisms, then how dead does it have to be? We are omnivores, but our food is most definately already deceased. Moving on! A food chain, by what the textbook says, is a series of events that transfers food and energy from one organism to another. I honestly hope we won't be tested on that specific definition. Food chains always (as we were taught) start with producers, then consumers, then the decomposers link the tail end to the front. An example would be: Grass -> Rabbit -> Fox-> Bacteria. However, shouldn't the resources that producers use be the start of the food chain? A food web is a bunch of interlinked food chains. Here is an example (I never knew uploading pictures could be so difficult):
In class, we've been studying ecology, or the study of the relationships and interactions between living organisms and their environment. So, here are some vocabulary included in the first section (I know it's boring, but I need to study, so bear with me):
Environment: consists of all the non-living and living things in which an organism may interact.
Ecosystem: All the living and non-living things in a given area. The size of a ecosystem is defined by the ecologist studying it (e.g. a drop of pond water or an entire ocean- big difference there, but it's still up to the ecologist)
Ecologist: someone who studies ecology
Community: Consists of all the living organisms in an ecosystem
Population: A group of organisms of the same species (I think of it as the number of organisms of the same species)
Habitat: Where an organism lives.
Okay, now I will try to discuss this bit in an interesting and amusing manner. All of these technical definitions make my head spin, and it raises some questions: First, if the definition of an environment consists of all of the things that an organism may interact, then what about the things that an organism doesn't interact? Is there even such a thing that we can't interact with? (Dark matter doesn't count because a) nobody knows what it is and b) I don't get what it is!) Also, if an organism dies, is it still an "organism"? So is it taken for granted that organism in all of the definitions refers to a living organism? Are there even "official" definitions for all of these things? Anyway, there is an interesting website called "Kids Do Ecology" that I found. Here's a link: http://kids.nceas.ucsb.edu/ Some of it we learned, some of it we didn't. Apparently, ecology (from Greek) translates into "study of the household," so we are studying the "house" that we live in: Earth. There were also two new vocabulary words: abiotic factors, which are non-living factors, and biotic factors, which are living factors.
The next bit that we learned about were the different energy roles and food chains/webs. There are three main energy roles: producers, consumers, and decomposers. Producers produce their own food. The best example of this are plants: they take sun, air, water, and nutrients from the soil and photosynthesize to make food. However, in the ocean, the producers (surprisingly) aren't plants. Link time! http://kingfish.coastal.edu/biology/sgilman/770PlanktonBenthos.htm Annoyingly, while I did learn quite a bit from it, most of it I didn't get and it didn't answer my original question (which I will get to later). Interestingly, the producers in the ocean are phytoplankton, algae, and seaweed, but those are not plants! I honestly never knew that, I assumed they were plants. Interestingly, phytoplankton is generally not a major source of food. Algae, or mainly diatoms since they're slightly bigger, are eaten a lot. However, I wanted to know what were the producers at the bottom of the ocean, where no sunlight falls. I thought it was the tube worms that feed on sulfur from the vents. However, according to this webpage, http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/oceanography_recently_revealed1.html, it is actually bacteria that convert the sulfur into energy through a process called chemosynthesis. The bacteria live inside the vent worms, nourishing it. Okay, enough about ocean producers, we must move on. Consumers are organism that feeds directly or indirectly on another organism. There are four special types of consumers: herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and scavengers. Herbivores eat producers, carnivores eat consumers, omnivores eat everything, and scavengers eat dead organisms, which is usually meat but sometimes plants as well. However, isn't a scavenger a type of carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore? Also, if scavengers eat dead organisms, then how dead does it have to be? We are omnivores, but our food is most definately already deceased. Moving on! A food chain, by what the textbook says, is a series of events that transfers food and energy from one organism to another. I honestly hope we won't be tested on that specific definition. Food chains always (as we were taught) start with producers, then consumers, then the decomposers link the tail end to the front. An example would be: Grass -> Rabbit -> Fox-> Bacteria. However, shouldn't the resources that producers use be the start of the food chain? A food web is a bunch of interlinked food chains. Here is an example (I never knew uploading pictures could be so difficult):
From: http://www.biologycorner.com/resources/foodweb1.gif
The decomposers in this picture are very enthusiastic bacteria, so they have spelled out "Bacteria" and all of the arrows for you, but since they are microscopic, you can't see it. There are many food chains in this food web, like leaves -> mouse -> fox -> bacteria. Food chains are better than food webs for the survival of the community because removing one link in a chain will destroy the chain. However, if we remove one link in a web, then the web can adapt. For instance, if I removed leaves, then it will impact the web but not necessarily destroy it. Why? Because the mouse, which eats leaves, will eat more grasshoppers instead. The grasshoppers, which eat leaves and berries, will simply eat berries only. Of course, chances are the populations of a lot of organisms in this web will shift because of the removal of the leaves, but the web itself will survive. This is also a good time to introduce something else we learned in class: energy pyramids. The basic concept behind an energy pyramid is to show energy transfers and how the amount of energy available decreases as you go up the pyramid. To start, let's begin at the bottom: producers. Producers have the largest amount of energy because they make their own: of course they use some of it, but some of it also goes into the actual producer. Going with the food web above, let's put leaves at the bottom of our food web. Now, let's say a primary consumer, a mouse, comes and eats all of the leaves (let's say six to keep it simple) off of a plant. The plant got more energy than the mouse did because the mouse only got the energy in the plant. However, the plant doesn't just store energy, it also uses it. So, to make up fictional units of energy, let's say the plant received 1,000,000 pippins of energy in its lifetime. It used 990,000 of those pippins to grow, make more energy, and do whatever plants do. There's only 10,000 pippins in the actual plant, which the mouse eats. Therefore, the mouse gets 10,000 pippins from the plant. However, the mouse got eaten by a fox! Through this time, the mouse used up 9,900 pippins from the plant for running, finding more food, chatting with other mice, and doing whatever mice do. The fox only gets 10 pippins indirectly from the plant. Pretty small compared to the 1,000,000 pippins that the plant had!
Finally, the last section talks about different types of interactions, relationships, and adaptations. I am hoping to speed up this process, but I don't think that will happen. A niche is an organism's role in the environment-what it does, needs, where it lives, etc. Two species may not occupy the same niche at the same time because it would create enormous competition. It's like someone coming and saying that they'll be you for a day: you won't like that, and both of you would be competing to see who gets to be, well, you. Competition is when two or more organisms have to struggle (i.e. compete) against each other to get resources to survive. The driving force in competition is survival (but then again, doesn't that drive everything?). Organisms deal with competition by either adapting, dividing up the habitat (I'll eat this flower and you'll eat that flower), moving, reducing the competition, or if they cannot do any of these things, dying. Predation is the type of interaction is when an organism kills another organism for food, although this is a little fuzzy. The predator is the organism that eats the other, and the prey is the organism that's being eaten. However, I say that this is a little fuzzy because if you really pay attention to the wording, that means that almost everything besides producers are predators: after all, we eat dead plants, right? They are already picked and not alive by the time it gets on our plates. Of course, you don't necessarily have to kill to get food, like bees harvest nectar to get honey to eat, but most creatures don't consume things and keep it alive. Organisms can adapt to predators and vice-versa by adapting to run fast, grow hard shells, have different colors, etc. Finally, my favorite (because it's interesting): symbiosis. Symbiosis is a close relationship between two organisms in which one lives on, near, or in the other organism and at least one organism is harmed. There are three types: parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism (they aren't usually listed in that order). Parasitism is the type of symbiosis in which one organism benefits and the other does not. The parasite benefits, the host does not. For instance, the strangler fig tree and the other tree that we saw in class the other day is an example of parasitism (yes, I'm just repeating what was said in class). The strangler fig tree sprouts in the canopy of the rainforest and grows downward, wrapping its roots around its host tree. The host tree, while not really "strangled," cannot grow any larger, and is slowly killed by the strangler fig tree by which point should have reached the ground. Commensalism is when one organism benefits and the other is not affected- nothing good and nothing bad happens. For instance, ravens would hang around wolves because they can get a free meal when the wolves are done eating, since they leave scraps once they're done eating. I found a website that says that the symbiosis between a clownfish and an sea anemone is commensalism, but people could argue that it's mutualism because the clownfish gets protection and attracts prey for the sea anemone. (http://www.owc.org.mn/econet/html/commensalism.htm) Mutualism is when both organisms benefits. For instance, an interesting example that I learned from when I was in second grade was a sea anemone and a crab- that is, the sea anemone rides on the crab. I won't tell why it's mutualism, it's a puzzle for anyone out there to figure out. Another type (we studied the ocean really in-depth in second grade) is coral and algae. The algae is safe inside the coral, which is the benefit for the algae, and the algae provides important resources for the coral. While I did learn this in second grade, here's a link for further reading: http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/corals/coral02_zooxanthellae.html.
Wow, that took a really long time! In ecology overall, though, I find myself thinking a lot about the stuff I learned from second grade, the magic school bus series, and all those science videotapes that I had to watch. I didn't really think I knew much, but there seems to be random facts in the corners of my brain that pop up all the time. It's definitely been quite interesting.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Science Flash: Dark Matter Even More Complicated?
Dark matter and dark energy never really made sense to me, but then again, I think that's because no one really knows much about it. Anyway, it just got more complicated.
The next paragraph then is basically what I said in my first paragraph, but to illustrate my point of what I was saying earlier, here are some citations: It says that "only 4% of the universe is made of known material," which means there's a lot of unknown stuff (gases, stars, quasars, and all of that doesn't count as "unknown") in the universe. It also says that "a solid understanding of dark matter as well as direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive," which basically means they flat out don't know what dark matter is and can't really prove that there is "dark matter" at all.
After that, we really start getting into the hard part of the article. It says that the team researching this thinks that the interactions (but remember, we walk through the stuff all the time without even knowing we are, so this is pretty significant) between normal matter and dark matter "could be more important and more complex than previously thought," or that dark matter isn't just keeping our galaxies together, it could be doing other things as well- or it might not even exist at all, it could be a new force. Dr. Benoit Famaey basically explains, as I see it, that dark matter is doing an intricate balancing act throughout the entire universe, and that the dark matter "acts" in a way that it seems to "know" where the visible matter in the universe. Dr. Zhao allows us to visualize it by saying that it's like going to a zoo with all sorts of animals at different ages and finding that they all have the same backbone weight- so an elephant and a monkey have the same backbone weight. In the universe, even though all the galaxies are like different animals that are at different ages, they seem to all have the "fingerprints" of an "invisible fifth force." Then, it says that this force might solve a mystery I mentioned earlier: dark energy (We're just back to square one). Of course, if you aren't sastified with that craziness, they also say that it could also lead to a revision and a whole new outlook of gravity (quick history: Newton discovered gravity, Einstein revised it to make it better.) I can't quite grasp this (if anyone who knows physics can explain, I'd be very grateful) because, from what I know about the universe, it's hard enough to grasp the size of the universe (let's just say it's so incredibly big I've given up trying to imagine it), let alone what's in it. My opinion summed up on all of this: it's all mind-boggling, really complicated, and immensely bizarre craziness! That's why I like it.
Is Unknow Force in Universe Acting on Dark Matter?
To sum up my history in the pursuit of dark matter and energy, I knew before August 2009 that dark matter basically was unknown "stuff" in the universe (actually, it's the majority of stuff in the universe) and it acted on visible matter, so our galaxies can stay together and not fly apart, since it exerts gravitational effects. Dark energy is like the opposite of gravity, but again, it's called "dark" because they don't really know what to call it-or even what it is, seeing as the "opposite of gravity" is just a wild guess. Then, I read two books by Michio Kaku about all of the bizarrities of physics. He started to throw in negative matter and energy, which is really bizarre, and then I got really confused. All I could glean from that discussion was that nobody really knows what dark matter is, and that we walk through it all the time (it's omnipresent!) yet it doesn't interact with us (that is, while we can catch things like air in a balloon, or "interacting" with it, we can't do the same with dark matter. Bearing this in mind, I shall try my very best to figure out what the article is talking about and explain it as well.
The article starts with saying that there is "an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionise our current understanding of gravity." How gravity got in there is beyond me, because the first part is a whopper in the first place. Dr. Hongsheng Zhao then suggests that there is an unknown force in the universe acting on dark matter. (Although I have to say: aren't there enough complicated forces already? Do we really need another one?) I'll get back to this later, though, because the article describes it more clearly later on.
The next paragraph then is basically what I said in my first paragraph, but to illustrate my point of what I was saying earlier, here are some citations: It says that "only 4% of the universe is made of known material," which means there's a lot of unknown stuff (gases, stars, quasars, and all of that doesn't count as "unknown") in the universe. It also says that "a solid understanding of dark matter as well as direct evidence of its existence has remained elusive," which basically means they flat out don't know what dark matter is and can't really prove that there is "dark matter" at all.
After that, we really start getting into the hard part of the article. It says that the team researching this thinks that the interactions (but remember, we walk through the stuff all the time without even knowing we are, so this is pretty significant) between normal matter and dark matter "could be more important and more complex than previously thought," or that dark matter isn't just keeping our galaxies together, it could be doing other things as well- or it might not even exist at all, it could be a new force. Dr. Benoit Famaey basically explains, as I see it, that dark matter is doing an intricate balancing act throughout the entire universe, and that the dark matter "acts" in a way that it seems to "know" where the visible matter in the universe. Dr. Zhao allows us to visualize it by saying that it's like going to a zoo with all sorts of animals at different ages and finding that they all have the same backbone weight- so an elephant and a monkey have the same backbone weight. In the universe, even though all the galaxies are like different animals that are at different ages, they seem to all have the "fingerprints" of an "invisible fifth force." Then, it says that this force might solve a mystery I mentioned earlier: dark energy (We're just back to square one). Of course, if you aren't sastified with that craziness, they also say that it could also lead to a revision and a whole new outlook of gravity (quick history: Newton discovered gravity, Einstein revised it to make it better.) I can't quite grasp this (if anyone who knows physics can explain, I'd be very grateful) because, from what I know about the universe, it's hard enough to grasp the size of the universe (let's just say it's so incredibly big I've given up trying to imagine it), let alone what's in it. My opinion summed up on all of this: it's all mind-boggling, really complicated, and immensely bizarre craziness! That's why I like it.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Got Science?
Need a topic for current events? I found this insanely amusing (although I have no idea why).
Clean Smells Promote Moral Behavior
Here are some questions that I had when I read it:
Why do clean smells promote moral behavior?
How did anyone seriously consider doing this experiment in the first place?
If humans were made by nature, then where's the Windex in nature?
If you need help with your "opinion," here are some suggestions:
Do you agree that clean smells (or Windex) make you behave better? If it were me, and I was sitting in a room full of Windex, I'd be rather irritated because artificial smells like Windex and perfume make my nose feel funny.
Why would clean smells make people behave better? It doesn't have to be a serious or correct explanation, it's just what you think. Of course, if it were me, I'd say that.... never mind.
Just to make this clear, this article is for people to use for their current events. In other words, I was too lazy to type up my opinion and a summary and all of that for this article, but it was too interesting to pass by. (Okay, okay, it was really because Sunnyd asked me to, but I was lazy too!) It's relatively easy to relate to, doesn't have a whole lot of neurology or the stuff that I usually like, and invites those "Ooh, once there was this time when..." kind of stories that are great for supporting your opinion and connecting them to real life. This is not one of my current events articles, it's for you.
I'm not going to elaborate on these links in great detail, but I'msure someone will be interested in these:
Professor Sees 70 Percent Chance For Yankees to Win 2009 World Series
(Sorry, kokopelli1015) For those baseball (it is baseball, right? Not football?) fans. I didn't even try to make any sense of it.
Changes In Brain Chemicals Mark Shifts In Infant Learning
This has to do with the Maslow that we're learning about in Social Studies. Quite interesting.
Science Articles
I generally go on this website (that's where all of these articles are from) for news. There is an overwhelming amount of articles here on many, many branches of science, so looking here is a surefire way to get a good article.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Thoughts For the Weekend- 10/16 and 10/23
How close to the ceiling does a fly have to be before he flips over and lands on the ceiling?
I highly doubt that a fly (or any living organism) can sustain flying upside for any period of time, so the fly probably has to be really, really close and just grab the ceiling, or it could do a sort of miniature loop-de-loop manuever and land on the ceiling at the peak of the loop.
10/23-
Who tastes dog food when it has a 'new & improved' flavor?
If you ask me, the "new and improved flavor" is just an advertising ploy. Dry dog food is dry dog food, and I don't think dogs really care about tiny differences in the flavor of dog food- unless it's some good old meat, it isn't anything special. Of course, maybe there are actual people who would go through testing the dog food, but "improved" is a relative term and anything put out there can be called "new." My mom suggested that perhaps they do testing in which they put two different types of dog food out for a dog, and the dog would choose what it wants to eat, but again, dogs can't really communicate its opinions of the food, and it probably doesn't matter to them anyways.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Science Book, Take a Look: Going Nuts?
This book is not about psychology, but its somewhat more scientific counterpart: Neurology, or the science of the brain. There are many, many strange tales of patients with diseases of the brain...
Newton's Madness: Further Tales of Clinical Neurology
by Harold L. Klawans, M.D.
I found this a really engaging read. They're basically the stories of patients (well, most) that the author encountered as a neurologist who works in a hospital and diagnoses people. Some of the diseases many people know about, like a stroke, while others aren't so common. He explains how he does things pretty clearly (hey, this isn't for doctors but everyday folk like you and me) although all the chemicals like dopamine and serotonin and other big fancy medical terms (with the exception of morbidly obese, which I think most people know) can make your head spin if you try to keep track of them all (which I didn't). My favorite chapter in the book was chapter 18, "The Girl with the Dancing Eyes," which was simply hilarious- or at least the first half was. I won't tell anything about this chapter except this tidbit: bouncing guinea pigs. An example of the type of diseases, or rather, problems with the brain (by far not the most exotic, though) that the author discusses was a stroke, in the first chapter. While a stroke is pretty basic knowledge, the stroke that the author has to diagnose belongs to none other but one of his mother's very close friends- "Aunt Betty." In this case, the stroke patient was taken to the hospital, but the patient had no idea what was wrong! Aunt Betty had lost all control and feeling in her left arm or hand- in fact, when the author held it up for her to see, she thought it was the neurologist's hand, not her own. The author later goes on to explain this more thoroughly.
Here are some tips if you do read this book:First, read all the quotes that the chapter starts out with. You probably should for all books, but these are really interesting (same goes for the Michio Kaku books, he has some awesome quotes in there).
Second, read all the author's notes at the end of the chapter. There are hidden goodies in there that are definately worth reading, especially in Chapter 18.
Third, and this goes for most of the books I would put up, this is not a quick read. It is a book written for adults, and while it's not super long, it definately needs you to take your time and read it. If you need a book for Lit, don't read this just for the 10 points- or rather, read a fantasy book for the 10 points and read this for the sake of reading (which you should be doing in the first place).
Fourth, I have a question that I would be very grateful if someone could answer: this book has an entire chapter devoted to Sherlock Holmes, his possible drug addiction, and how he probably visited Dr. Sigmund Freud during the three years that he "disappeared." So, considering that Sigmund Freud existed and real people don't really get visits from fictional characters all that often, was Sherlock Holmes real? Kokopelli1015 said that Sherlock Holmes didn't, but that makes everything make less sense. Not that I don't believe Kokopelli1015, but if you happen to read the book or just know about Sherlock Holmes, feel free to share your opinion on this topic (or anything in the book).
Monday, October 19, 2009
Science Book, Take A Look: "Real" Science Fiction!
Calling all lovers of sci-fi, physics, science, and bizarre facts!
Here are two (non-fiction) books worth reading:
Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku
Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku
(For those who watch the science channel, Michio Kaku is the Asian-ish, probably Japanese, guy with the white hair that shows up a lot.)
I put these two books together because they have a bit of an overlap in what they talk about. Physics of the Impossible is primarily about "impossible" technologies. He classifies them into three groups: class one, or something possible in the next couple of centuries, class two, something that's possible but is so far away that it's basically science fiction to us (well, it all seems like sci-fi anyways) and class three, or the truly impossible (although only two things, telling the future and perpetual motion machines, fall into this category). Of course, being the co founder of string theory, he likes to talk quite a bit about the awe-inspiring "theory of everything," aka string theory or M-theory. However, this is primarily about the "impossible"- time travel, invisibility, force fields, and other things that seem magic to us. For those who like Star Trek (I never saw it), he also makes a lot of references to Star Trek as well. I highly recommend this to people who like science-fiction: it's just as weird, but true as well!
Parallel Worlds delves deeper into the "theory of everything" and all the strings (string theory, get it?) attached. He discusses parallel universes, quantum mechanics, baby universes, and of course, string, or rather, M-theory. (Just to clear things up, the "theory of everything" is like the holy grail of physics. M-theory, the m standing for membrane, is the latest version of string theory, which people hope is the new theory of everything.) This is just as bizarre and a little harder to grasp than Physics of the Impossible, so I recommend you read Physics of the Impossible first if you are interested in both of them. This book's bizarreness comes from all of those wacky theories. For instance, just as a little taste, quantum mechanics can imply that there is a slight probability that we could suddenly disappear and reappear on Mars from the uncertainty principle- thankfully, the probability of this is so small that you'd have to wait longer than the lifetime of the universe for this to happen, so saying that your homework disappeared due to the uncertainty principle is not a reasonable excuse for not having your homework.
Overall, these two books are very, very interesting- but two warnings: first, don't read them one after the other, but put a book in between. They have quite a bit of an overlap in material, so while the info will sink in better the next time, it will be repetitive. Also, don't read too much of this stuff: it gave me a weird dream about disappearing into a parallel universe, and I've been wondering about parallel universes and how we would tell the difference between a parallel universe where we originated from and one where the only difference is something like a butterfly not existing- good food for thought, but still really creepy.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Science Flash: Flies with Fake Flashbacks?
I remember discussing with a friend of mine how weird it would be if we could manipulate our own dreams not so long ago. Of course, manipulating dreams implies that we could manipulate other things in our heads as well- not quite a good thing in the wrong hands, but a cool concept. Now, it seems as though scientists are starting to get there.
In the article, they also discuss an interesting point that I find is worthwhile to contemplate: intelligence from something, well, non-intelligent: "the physical interactions between cells and molecules." What they mean is that all of our "intelligence" can be reduced to what happens between our neurons- the capability to create memories, have thoughts, and carry out other advanced functions. So, in a sense, I can type this article because of the reactions and interactions between the neurons in my brain. I think it's kind of like how the computer can do all of the things it does from 1's and 0's, or how we can form so many words from the letters of the alphabet- creating complex things from simple materials. Still, my question is: if we messed with those "physical interactions," would that mean we are messing with our brains?
The article also discusses another point in the last paragraph that has to do with my question: the fly of a brain can probably tell us a lot about how more complicated brains like ours work. As we look more into how brains work, in simple and complex organisms, will there come a time when we can manipulate our own brains? When we can choose what we dream at night, or "delete" memories, or even mess with ourselves so much that we become completely different? While such precise control as choosing our dreams is probably far in the future (hopefully), we are already messing with our minds- and fixing them as well, in some cases. Take drugs, for instance. When people smoke, the nicotine can go to our brain and coat our neurons in an unhealthy layer of the stuff- slowing down our thoughts and messing with our brains, in way. Conversely, when our brain lacks certain chemicals, we can now "fix" ourselves, at least for a while, by supplying that chemical. For instance, people with Parkinson's disease, a disease that slowly destroys neurons in the brain (in a book I read, one patient described it as being a lizard that is cold and frozen, and needs the sun to warm it up to move) making movement more and more difficult. One of the reasons for this is the lack of dopamine, a chemical produced in the brain that isn't being produced as readily in people in Parkinson's disease. Neurologists can prescribe such patients with L-Dopa, which will turn into dopamine when it gets into the brain, fixing it for a while. Of course, as the disease progresses, the L-Dopa will help less and less, until they eventually succumb to the disease. However, we are still fiddling with our brains in that way.
For now, scientists are only creating false memories in flies, so there's no need to worry about whether our memories are genuine or not- although we create false ones ourselves anyways. (I would launch into a story about an online lecture I heard a bit of while doing research for a memory presentation, but I'm afraid I'll put some unwary person to sleep). While the thought of controlling minds scares me, this discovery still excites me: after all, we are just beginning to tap into the power of our minds. Who knows what people will discover in the field of neurology?
Scientists Give Flies False Memories
This article was about a group of scientists who managed to isolate a couple of neurons (12, to be exact) and manipulate them in a fly so that it would create false memories to avoid a specific odor. If you ask me, this is pretty amazing. Think of it this way: usually, if you watch documentaries or look at brain diagrams, you can see only the sections of the brain that is activated when doing a specific task. These sections contain a lot of neurons that all work together. Think of it this way: the brain of a fly (which I'd guess is really, really small, not to offend the fly) has a few thousand neurons. Humans, who are larger, have a large brain in proportion to our bodies, and have pretty sophisticated brains as well, would have a lot of neurons- just to put things in proportion. Memory, especially, is really complex: whenever we recall a memory, it isn't stored in one part of the brain. Rather, if I were to remember, say, what I ate for breakfast, I would remember the taste, smell, feel, sounds, what it looked like, the words associated with those images and other perceptions, and all these different sections contain many, many neurons that work together to "remember" this event (makes you appreciate your breakfast a lot more, doesn't it?). Now, bearing this in mind, these scientists managed to isolate 12 neurons in the entire brain of the fly (bearing a few thousand neurons) and stimulate these neurons to give the fly an unpleasant memory. Doesn't that just blow you away?
In the article, they also discuss an interesting point that I find is worthwhile to contemplate: intelligence from something, well, non-intelligent: "the physical interactions between cells and molecules." What they mean is that all of our "intelligence" can be reduced to what happens between our neurons- the capability to create memories, have thoughts, and carry out other advanced functions. So, in a sense, I can type this article because of the reactions and interactions between the neurons in my brain. I think it's kind of like how the computer can do all of the things it does from 1's and 0's, or how we can form so many words from the letters of the alphabet- creating complex things from simple materials. Still, my question is: if we messed with those "physical interactions," would that mean we are messing with our brains?
For now, scientists are only creating false memories in flies, so there's no need to worry about whether our memories are genuine or not- although we create false ones ourselves anyways. (I would launch into a story about an online lecture I heard a bit of while doing research for a memory presentation, but I'm afraid I'll put some unwary person to sleep). While the thought of controlling minds scares me, this discovery still excites me: after all, we are just beginning to tap into the power of our minds. Who knows what people will discover in the field of neurology?
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Literature: Why are people mean to each other?
Why are people mean to each other? For instance, we saw in class a news clip about a boy that was set on fire by his "friends" because they stole his father's bike. There is no logical reason for such an act of violence, yet it was done. Why?
I believe man is mean to each other because of two reasons: competition and insecurities. First off, competing for survival is an animal instinct that forces us to be aware of our resources, and figure out ways to get them before other people do. Of course, nowadays, most people don't have to compete as vigorously for resources, but it still exists. So, people bully each other to get want they want. It's like the id we're learning about in social studies. People will do anything to satisfy their needs, and don't care about others. For instance, Jack in Lord of the Flies starts to care about nothing but the "hunt," and feels no responsibility for the fire, or the littluns, or the other things that have to get done that don't get done. Also, people do it to relieve themselves of their insecurities: guilt, doubt, regret, worry, stress, etc. Everyone has them: we all regret things, worry about things, but we can usually handle these things. However, when they start to eat at us, people react differently. Some may find ways to deal with it, others do something about it, while others may have more negative reactions: breakdowns, depression, or putting on to someone else's shoulders: the blame game, violence, etc. This is when humanity starts becoming inhuman. For example, Jack in Lord of the Flies probably knows that he needs to be responsible, listen to Piggy and Ralph's reason, and start thinking about things other than the hunt. However, he doesn't: and he probably feels a bit of doubt about that. He deals with it by hating Piggy because Piggy has reason and is a thinker. We also see in one of the meetings that he starts acting violently, fighting with Piggy and hitting him in the stomach. I think that these reasons are why people are mean to each other. However, we can't stop being mean to each other because it is caused by fundamental flaws in human nature: we will always have insecurities, we will always have to compete for ways to survive, and unless we can find more efficient (and nicer) ways to deal with this problems as a whole, bullying will continue to happen. It's part of humanity today, and it won't disappear unless mankind addresses it as a whole.
I believe man is mean to each other because of two reasons: competition and insecurities. First off, competing for survival is an animal instinct that forces us to be aware of our resources, and figure out ways to get them before other people do. Of course, nowadays, most people don't have to compete as vigorously for resources, but it still exists. So, people bully each other to get want they want. It's like the id we're learning about in social studies. People will do anything to satisfy their needs, and don't care about others. For instance, Jack in Lord of the Flies starts to care about nothing but the "hunt," and feels no responsibility for the fire, or the littluns, or the other things that have to get done that don't get done. Also, people do it to relieve themselves of their insecurities: guilt, doubt, regret, worry, stress, etc. Everyone has them: we all regret things, worry about things, but we can usually handle these things. However, when they start to eat at us, people react differently. Some may find ways to deal with it, others do something about it, while others may have more negative reactions: breakdowns, depression, or putting on to someone else's shoulders: the blame game, violence, etc. This is when humanity starts becoming inhuman. For example, Jack in Lord of the Flies probably knows that he needs to be responsible, listen to Piggy and Ralph's reason, and start thinking about things other than the hunt. However, he doesn't: and he probably feels a bit of doubt about that. He deals with it by hating Piggy because Piggy has reason and is a thinker. We also see in one of the meetings that he starts acting violently, fighting with Piggy and hitting him in the stomach. I think that these reasons are why people are mean to each other. However, we can't stop being mean to each other because it is caused by fundamental flaws in human nature: we will always have insecurities, we will always have to compete for ways to survive, and unless we can find more efficient (and nicer) ways to deal with this problems as a whole, bullying will continue to happen. It's part of humanity today, and it won't disappear unless mankind addresses it as a whole.
Literature: Summer Reading
I read A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan for my summer reading assignment. The book was about how Nancy, the main character, has to adapt to her parent's divorce and living in a settled home. She has ESP, or a gift of magic, from her grandmother. Her grandmother also gave some other gifts: the gift of dancing to Kirby, Nancy's sister, the gift of music to Brendon, Nancy's brother, a house to Nancy's mom, and the gift of storytelling to the author, Nancy's "stepsister." I imagine the author to be an interesting person, in a sense. Since she wrote a whole book on a story with the main character having ESP, she probably believes in some type of "magic," or is at least interested in it. In fact, I suppose she could be like kokopelli1015, since people who read/write usually know a fairly decent amount of interesting things, are pretty easy-going, and have a lot of creativity, which is what Lois Duncan seems to have. Also, she probably went through some tough times in her life, since divorce is a pretty rocky topic to write about.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Science Flash: The Nocebo Effect
I know that everyone's heard of the placebo effect: two groups are given a pill, they are both told that it is the real thing, but one group is actually given a sugar pill. The sugar pill group feels better for some reason, which we call the placebo effect. However, there appears to be a reverse for this: the Nocebo Effect.
The Flip Side of Placebos: The Nocebo Effect
By John Cloud
The placebo effect is when something happens, like taking medicine, and we think that we will get better, and we do, even if the medicine wasn't real. It's like fooling yourself into getting better. In fact, placebo in Latin means, "I shall please," as the article says. However, the opposite of this is the nocebo effect, or "to do harm" in Latin.
The article says that "A nocebo response occurs when the suggestion of a negative effect of an intervention leads to an actual negative outcome." In other words, when someone says something negative, like "That flu shot is going to hurt really badly," then the flu shot will seem to hurt really badly. Also, the negative effects will usually be related to the drug taken, like if the "doctor" says it's likely to cause nausea, then a lot of people will say, "I'm feeling sick." Basically, it's mind over matter in a negative way.
Nobody really knows why the placebo and nocebo effect works. There are probably dozens of theories, but any of them could be right- or wrong. One explanation that the article mentions is that perhaps the worry caused by all the warnings causes the brain to issue certain commands, causing, for instance, pains in the stomach. Another explanation of the (positive) placebo effect is that it evokes certain chemicals, starting the body's own "health-care system," as they say. I think that perhaps the real explanation will be a combination of the two. After all, our thoughts do influence our body. For example, there was a documentary about stress that explained how it can cause numerous health problems. For instance, stomach ulcers were originally thought to be caused by stress. However, they later discovered that it was actually a type of bacteria that caused it, to the great relief of many doctors (an amusing clip goes something like this: "Doc, my stomach really hurts." After diagnosing the patient with stomach ulcers, the doctor, faced with the fact that stress caused them, says, "How's your attitude lately?.... You need to work on your attitude." The patient replies, "I should work on finding a new doctor.") After more research many years later, though, they find that stress causes the body to halt or slow down certain functions, since stress was originally the "flee for your life!" response. One of those functions is repairing the stomach wall (after all, if a lion is after you, you don't really care about your stomach lining at the moment) and chronic stress would, in turn, greatly weaken the stomach wall, causing it to be vulnerable to bacteria and ulcers. So, mind over body really is a genuine thing that we should consider.
Mind over matter is an interesting topic, but what do we do when we don't want our "mind" to rule over our body? The article offers a simple solution: placebo and nocebo is simply a trick of the mind. To outwit it, we must be aware of the effects: in other words, it's "mind over mind."
Welcome Scientists
My favorite subject is science because it is interesting and I've loved it since I was little. The best book I've ever read is Dragon Slippers, though I'll probably say other books are the best as well. My favorite food to buy in the cafeteria is pasta. On the weekend, when all the chores and homework are done, I like to read a book. If I won a free airline ticket to anywhere in the world, I would go to China, since I heard there's interesting food there, and the culture is very unique. My favorite color is red, not because it's lucky, but because it's bright and seems energetic. If I had a pet, it would be a dog, and I'd name it Allegra. This year, if I work hard enough, I hope to learn a lot and be ready for the coming year.
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