Wounds suck. No, wait, suck on your wounds. This funky vacuum device applies suction to minor wounds and reportedly speeds up healing. Neat. It was invented by MIT student Danielle Zurovcik. She says the device will only cost $3 U.S. to make. She’s testing it right now in Haiti and hopes to get it to Rwanda in the near future.
How does it work? Scientists aren’t totally sure, but they think the negative pressure draws bacteria and puss away from wounds, making healing easier. I think it may also draw extra blood to the wound, feeding cells more oxygen and building materials. But I’m no biologist.
Those strips of pretty gold ribbon were made to “melt” onto the surface of your brain, forming a customized network of electrodes that can be used to monitor or even control functions of the brain. The real question is: Will it let you play Pong with your mind?
The implant was actually developed to monitor and control seizures and eventually send signals around damaged spinal cords to the rest of the body. It’s mostly made of silk, with fine electrodes embedded in polymide (a type of plastic). This new implant has an order of magnitude more electrodes than older needle-like implants (yowza). That means neurologists can monitor more brain functions and see interactions between vast networks of neurons.
The new implant can be set to dissolve over time or remain in the skull as long as needed.
Neurologists are excited about the implant, hoping it can lead to better treatments for seizures and spinal injuries. I just keep thinking about mind-computer interfaces, fully immersive VR environments, and electronic cognitive enhancements. Bring on the cyborgs! I’m ready for post-humanity!
In Frank Herbert’s masterpiece Dune, Spice is life. The mysterious drug extends life, provides immunity to certain poisons, and much, much more. It’s a mystery, a complex chemical that can’t be synthesized and can only be found within the giant worm-infested sands of the desert planet Arrakis. Now scientists have found something like it in the soil of Easter Island.
Rapamycin is a biproduct of soil bacteria. It reportedly extends life in mammals, and could even reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. From a study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry:
Rapamycin treatment lowered levels of amyloid-beta-42, a major toxic species of molecules in Alzheimer’s disease. These molecules, which stick to each other, are suspected to play a key role in the early memory failure of Alzheimer’s . . . The fact that we are seeing identical results in two vastly different mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease provides robust evidence that rapamycin treatment is effective and is acting by changing a basic pathogenic process of Alzheimer’s that is common to both mouse models. This suggests that it may be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s in humans, who also have very diverse genetic makeup and life histories.
Rapamycin is already approved for treating organ rejection in transplant patients, but this discovery means it could be prescribed for those who suffer from Alzheimer’s. I wonder if I could get a prescription. It might make me a better blogger.
Biologists at Arizona State University have tweaked some cyanobacteria—aka algae—to produce and exude biofuel.
The genetically modified bacteria overproduce oily lipids that seep out through pores in their cell walls. The oil floats to the top of the vat, where it’s scooped up for refinement.
The two masterminds behind the algae, Xinyao Liu and Roy Curtiss, are working on increasing the algae’s output for better efficiency.
Either this whole algae biofuel thing is going to save us, or it’s just another way to distract us from the impending Peak Oil apocalypse. I want to do some more digging to find out, but things look bright for now.
We’ve know for a long time that single-cell organisms like bacteria can survive without oxygen. But multicellular life, we thought, always needed good old O2. Au contraire mon frère! A team of scientists have discovered some creepy little multicellular lifeforms thriving in the oxygen-free muck of the Mediterranean Ocean. The mud at the bottom of the L’Atalante basin is so salty that there’s no oxygen to be found. Despite this, Danish researchers discovered these funky critters living and thriving. From sciencemag.org:
The animals took up radioactively tagged leucine (an amino acid), and a fluorescent probe that labels living cells, evidence that they were alive when they were collected. The researchers also found examples of individuals that contained eggs and evidence of apparent molting, which led them to conclude that the animals spend their whole lives in the harsh sediments. The creature’s cells apparently lack mitochondria, the organelles that use oxygen to power a cell. Instead they are rich in what seem to be hydrogenosomes, organelles that can do a similar job in anaerobic (or oxygen free) environments. The find could help scientists understand what life might have looked like in the earth’s early oceans, which also had very little oxygen.
No mitochondria?! Gadzooks! The discovery has given scientists and Sci-Fi geeks new hope that complex life is surviving and thriving in other harsh environments out there in the universe.
Engineers at California startup Transonic Combustion say they’ve found a way to more than double gas mileage—without a hybrid system. Their solution? Supercritical fluids.
The engineers at Transonic have developed a new fuel injection system that takes advantage of an in-between state of matter called supercritical fluid. Supercritical fluids straddle the line between liquid and gas. They can diffuse through a solid like a gas, yet dissolve substances like a liquid. And—this is key—they have very low surface tension. So when liquid gasoline goes supercritical, it doesn’t form droplets and can mix with air almost instantly. That means drastically improved combustion and efficiency.
The injection system, called TSCi, has a catalyst that breaks fuel into simple hydrocarbons. The fuel is then squeezed through a heated injector that puts the fuel in a supercritical state. This reduces the time it takes to vaporize the fuel, which means it can be burned earlier and in the center of the combustion chamber. The flame burns fast and clean, and doesn’t transfer as much heat to the cylinder walls.
Transonic has a 3,200-pound test car outfitted with its TSCi system running on a dyno at 50 miles per hour. It’s getting 98 miles per gallon. In highway testing, another one of their test cars gets 64 mpg. The system also dramatically decreases emissions.
The company wants to hook up with major auto manufacturers to get its system on the road by 2014.
See that? It’s a shrimp. Swimming in a hole. Under 600 feet of ice. Twelve miles from the ocean. NASA scientists found it in Western Antarctica, and they’re totally freaking out about it.
The shrimp is a complete surprise. Scientists didn’t expect to find anything more than bacteria that deep in the ice. Instead, they found not one, but two three-inch-long shrimp. From the AP:
“We were operating on the presumption that nothing’s there,” said NASA ice scientist Robert Bindschadler, who will be presenting the initial findings and a video at an American Geophysical Union meeting Wednesday. “It was a shrimp you’d enjoy having on your plate.”
“We were just gaga over it,” he said of the 3-inch-long, orange critter starring in their two-minute video. Technically, it’s not a shrimp. It’s a Lyssianasid amphipod, which is distantly related to shrimp.
It’s in incredible discovery, and it immediately got everybody thinking about the possibility of life in other hostile habitats. If a complex animal like a shrimp can survive under 600 feet of ice, there might be life on Europa, Jupiter’s big frozen moon. Or on other planets in other solar systems.
The scientists have no idea how the shrimp is able to survive, yet. They plan to study the animal and its ecosystem to see what it eats and how ekes out a living. They have a lot of ground to cover. The Antarctic ice sheet is 14 million square kilometers and contains 30 million cubic kilometers of ice. It holds 60 percent of the earth’s fresh water.
NASA just found 600 million gallons of water in craters on the Moon’s north pole. Can you say MOON BASE?
The water was discovered by an Indian radar probe. Scientists say it could be used for fresh drinking water or oxygen. For a Moon base.
“The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought,” said Paul Spudis, a NASA engineer who works with the Mini-SAR radar equipment.
Too bad we’ve cut funding to NASA and are abandoning the Moon. Looks like we’ll have to depend on corporate sponsorship . . .
In case you missed it, the geniuses at Stanford have created super batteries using carbon nanotube ink and silver nanowires. They basically spread the carbon nanotube/silver goop on paper and it’s ready to store energy. The paper batteries are capable of storing 10 times as much energy by weight as lithium-ion batteries and are conceivably good for 40,000 charge-discharge cycles. From the Stanford article:
“These nanomaterials are special,” [assistant professor Yi] Cui said. “They’re a one-dimensional structure with very small diameters.” The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles – at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries. The nanomaterials also make ideal conductors because they move electricity along much more efficiently than ordinary conductors, Cui said.
Cui says that the thin, lightweight, flexible batteries could be used in everything from consumer electronics to cars. He also says the technology is basically ready for action. Just a few refinements and the batteries could go into production.
Behold the Ferrari 599 Hybrid! Despite its wicked metallic green paint, it’s not all that environmentally friendly. The V-12 rocket ship reportedly uses a variation of Ferrari’s KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) setup used on F-1 cars. No, Gambit has nothing to do with it. The system captures energy from braking in the form of electricity. That energy can then be released with the push of a button, powering an electric motor for extra boost. The motor is mated directly to the transmission and delivers 100 horsepower. The whole hybrid system weighs about 220 pounds.
This spy shot was taken during setup at this year’s Geneva Auto Show. It appeared on Autoblog and a few other sites, but was pulled at Ferrari’s request. Because only seven people read this blog and I think the photo is damn pretty, I’m posting it anyway. Really, the 599 just looks luscious in that green, doesn’t it?
