Feminine Science
A woman's view on the world of science.
My name is Andrea, I am 24. All of my posts are science related, and I rarely re-blog.
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Super-powered battery breakthrough claimed by US team
A new type of battery has been developed which its creators say could revolutionise the way we power consumer electronics and vehicles.
The University of Illinois team says its use of 3D-electrodes allows it to build “microbatteries” that are many times smaller than commercially available options, or the same size and many times more powerful.
It adds they can be recharged 1,000 times faster than competing tech.
However, safety issues still remain.
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Finding the next Earth. Using the WASP Telescope.
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Google patent shows laser keyboard for Glasses
A new patent application from Google augments the company’s Glass head-mounted computer with a laser projector, which can be used to project an interface on any nearby surface, including the user’s own hand.
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Supersonic Ping-Pong gun fires balls at Mach 1.2
Purdue University researchers built a Ping-Pong gun, shown here, that fires balls at supersonic speeds.
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Scientists Last Supper
A little ironic.
From left to right: Galileo Galilei, Marie Curie, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Thomas Edison, Aristoteles, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin.
Creator Nick Farrantello, who says: “Each of the people in this picture has accomplished more for humanity then any of the guys in that other painting.”
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As of January 15, 2013, the number of pages in the category of Living People on Wikipedia is 604,174. The total global population is 7,059,837,187. This means that the fraction of living famous people is 0.000086. Using only the total English-speaking population of the world (approximately 1.49 billion), the fraction is 0.00041. So the fraction of famous people, using this rough approximation is somewhere between about 1 in 10,000 and 5 in 10,000 (or 1 in 2,000).
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“At 13 zoos around the world, including the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C., orangutans are playing online games, with the help of Orangutan Outreach and the Apps for Apes program.
According to animal keeper Erin Stromberg, the program stresses the orangutan’s own choices — “If they’re engaged in the app, we’ll keep going,” she said. “If not, they have the choice to walk away.”
Use of the tablet is meant to tap less into critical thinking and more into a creative outlet, Stromberg said. It seems to be working, especially for 36-year-old orangutan Bonnie, who likes to bang on virtual drums, while 16-year-old Kyle prefers to tap piano keys. Meanwhile, 25-year-old Iris (pictured) is happy to just relax to the soothing sounds of the koi pond app while watching animated fish splash.
“Primarily, we want the Apps for Apes program to help people understand why we need to protect wild orangutans from extinction,” Orangutan Outreach founding director Richard Zimmerman said in a statement. “We do that when we show Zoo visitors how similar humans and apes are, be it through observation, talking with wildlife experts or seeing the apes use the same technology we use every day.”“
(Source: pcmag.com)
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This crescent-shape image is the best fit to observations of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, according to a January 2013 study.
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New Evidence Indicates Auroras Occur Outside Our Solar System
“University of Leicester planetary scientists have found new evidence suggesting auroras – similar to Earth’s Aurora Borealis - occur on bodies outside our solar system.
Auroras occur on several planets within our solar system, and the brightest - on Jupiter – are 100 times brighter than those on Earth. However, no auroras have yet been observed beyond Neptune.
A new study led by University of Leicester lecturer Dr Jonathan Nichols has shown that processes strikingly similar to those which power Jupiter’s auroras could be responsible for radio emissions detected from a number of objects outside our solar system.”
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Meteorite may offer clues on asteroid Vesta’s inner life
“The cold, dead asteroid Vesta might have had a very active inner life early in the solar system’s history, according to an unusual analysis of a Saharan meteorite.
Vesta might have had a magma ocean underneath its rocky exterior, allowing bits of mineral to rise and fall between softer and harder layers of material, according to a study published online Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience. If confirmed, that would make it more like Earth and the solar system’s other rocky planets than scientists had realized.
The report provides a fresh look at the protoplanet, supplementing data sent back from Vesta by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft.
“People think asteroids are big, gray, cold, almost potato-shaped lumps of rock that sometimes crash into the Earth and threaten us,” said study leader Beverley Tkalcec, a planetary geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Instead, she said, “it has a dynamic interior similar to what might have been at the beginning of the Earth.”
Hot or not, Vesta is one big potato, about the size of Arizona. It was big enough to have experienced melting inside, causing the heavier material to sink to the center and the lighter stuff to rise to the crust.
Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres — the next target for the Dawn spacecraft — represent planetary embryos that never fully formed. And since their rocks haven’t been chewed up by ongoing tectonic processes, as Earth’s have, they can be nearly as old as the solar system, which came into being more than 4.5 billion years ago.”
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Advances in neuroscience and technology could lead to the mind becoming the ultimate weapon.
“As the sun sets over a desert riddled with enemy fighters, a solitary Special Forces officer slips on his helmet. He chooses his next move, and his thoughts are transmitted silently to the rest of his unit. As he picks up his weapon, his helmet reads his thoughts, directing an autonomous combat robot positioned nearby to cover his advance. A continuous data stream from his brainwave-monitoring helmet transmits feedback on his stress levels and the information load on his brain to his commanding officer. Thanks to a skin patch delivering drugs into the bloodstream, his stress levels are in check, and, despite sleeping for just two of the past 72 hours, he’s still thinking clearly. Besides, when he enrolled for duty he was screened for his ability to manage highly stressful situations, and his brain scans showed him to be a calm, fast-thinking risk-taker – the perfect soldier.
This scenario sounds futuristic, and to some extent it still is. But recent advances in neuroscience are bringing many of these concepts closer to reality, and prototypes of some of these systems are available now. While the 20th century saw a revolution in weaponry, military engagements of the 21st century could be transformed by a new focus on the brain.
Brain-scanning helmets, neural stimulation and drug enhancement are part of this revolution. “We’re on the threshold of all these things,” says Rod Flower, a biochemical pharmacologist at Queen Mary, University of London. “In the future, the scope for neuroscience to give a military advantage could be very large.””
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From year to year, the moon never seems to change. Craters and other formations appear to be permanent now, but the moon didn’t always look like this. Thanks to NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we now have a better look at some of the moon’s history. Learn more in this video! -
Must Watch!
In daylight our big blue marble is all land, oceans and clouds. But the night - is electric.
