on april 16th, 1943 a young swiss chemist named albert hoffman accidentally discovered the interesting effects of lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. it is safe to say that nothing in modern society (from baseball, to the military, to art, to health and science) has been the same since. one small yet big example: francis crick, noble prize winner and geneticist, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the structure of human DNA. more? okay: nobel prize winning chemist dr. kary mullis came up with the idea for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process used in the amplification of specific DNA sequences from an experience he had while under the influence of LSD. quoting albert hoffman from the wired article:
“I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD,” he said at a symposium in 2006, marking the centennial of his birth. “It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.”
so happy birthday LSD! you’re 64 years old today!
more advances in science and health with stem cell research and discoveries. Early reports from study conducted in the UK by a joint team of Brazilian and American scientists has found that diabetics with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again through new stem-cell therapy. quoting Dr. Richard Burt on the study:
“As a research scientist I am always hesitant to speak of a cure, but the initial results have been good and show the importance of conducting more trials.â€
the united states is finally getting its priorities in serious order. you know what i’m talking about. and - no - not those silly things like universal health care for every american, a clean & renewable energy policy, diplomacy, restoration of habeus corpus, electric cars for everybody, or open source voting machines. nope. that’s silly. but dude - we’re going to the moon! totally! we are going, then we’ll build a permanent moon base, and then head off to mars too! sure, it will cost 100’s of billions of dollars. but dude - it’s the moon! yes! i am all for advancing scientific discovery - but - i really think we should fix simple things here on earth first, like levees and pollution. seems easier. i believe david cross summarizes this best …
David Cross - We’re Going To The Moon.mp3
i’d like to buy steve jobs and the folks at EMI a drink! why? Apple and EMI (the world’s third-biggest record label) have made a deal to sell the entire EMI music catalogue as non-DRM & unrestricted mp3s from the iTunes store! this is really great! no locks! thank you! also read EMI’s great press release with links to a podcast of the event. that means that the EMI track you pay for at the iTunes store will play in your ipod and also on any other mp3 player on the market. previously, a track downloaded from the itunes store would ONLY play on an ipod, (which is like buying a CD or a record that only plays on a particular brand of player - not on all players). that’s one of the things DRM does and that’s just silly! glad to see common sense prevailing. in remembering steve job’s letter about removing DRM from the all of the itunes music store library, i am hopeful that more deals like this will be reached. here’s the breakdown of the price structure with the Apple & EMI non-DRM mp3 deal (from the bbc website):
99¢ single = digital locks and at 128kbps quality (DRM! boo! hiss!)
$1.29 single = no digital locks and 256kbps high quality (non-DRM! yay! hi-five!)
Album prices unchanged with no locks and all at 256kbps (non-DRM! yay! hi-five!)
yes, the non-DRM costs more. but it is a much higher quality mp3. and, removing DRM is definitely a step in the right direction.
from boingboing: itunes store will sell entire EMI catalogue DRM-free!
from wired: thank you, uncle steve!
breakfast can be magical and friendly again when you are able to burn any image you want into your toast. i’m talking about DIY laser engraved toast! nice article on how to burn the image of jesus or david hasselhoff or erik estrada onto some bread. the instructions start off with 1) find some time to kill, 2) get access to a laser etching system, and goes from there.
fishermen off the coast of new zealand caught a 990 pound (450 kilogram) colossal squid. wow. measuring a wee bit over 33 feet in length, the colossal squid is the largest cephalopod captured intact. read about the differences between the giant squid and the colossal squid on the giant squid and colossal squid fact sheet at tonmo.com.
the brilliant minds at graffiti research lab (GRL) have come up with another cool way to tag. going beyond their very simple & cool LED throwies (which have gone beyond simple), GRL has made what looks like a laser-tagging/writing system using high end projectors. the system projects laser light onto the sides of buildings in a repeated pattern which spells out words. in the picture, the phrase ‘free berd’ is a word play on the lynyrd skynyrd song and also applies to ‘free berdovsky’, an appeal for the arrest of the 27 year old artist behind the aqua team hunger force LED signs that gave boston reason to descend into madness.
note: about the GRL laser tagging system, it looks like the projectors GRL uses are the very pro yet pricey panasonic PT-D5600’s (please feel free to correct me on that - i recognized the projectors immediately from the pic). these projectors come in at around $6,500+ each. outfitted with a lens, that’s an additional $2,000+ per projector. that would make the complete 2 projector laser tagging system cost around $15,000+ each. the economics of graffiti are definitely changing. AV nerds are taking over! had to happen. link via boingboing.
very cool to read this: scientists at Purdue University have developed a portable generator that turns garbage and trash into electricity. the generator, referred to as a ‘tactical refinery’ (yes, it was developed for the US military) is the roughly the size of a moving van (larger, hi-res picture here). the tactical refinery converts different types of waste and garbage to fuel via two parallel processes and burns the different fuels it creates in a diesel engine. quoting Michael Ladisch, scientist and lead on the tactical biorefinery project: “At any place with a fair amount of food and scrap waste the biorefinery could help reduce electricity costs, and you might even be able to produce some surplus energy to put back on the electrical grid,.” also, much of the generator’s combust/exhaust is carbon neutral. from the article:
The tactical biorefinery first separates organic food material from residual trash, such as paper, plastic, Styrofoam and cardboard. The food waste goes to a bioreactor where industrial yeast ferments it into ethanol, a “green” fuel. Residual materials go to a gasifier where they are heated under low-oxygen conditions and eventually become low-grade propane gas and methane. The gas and ethanol are then combusted in a modified diesel engine that powers a generator to produce electricity.
on a greater scale, i could see these tactical refineries set up in housing districts where people can go to convert their garbage into electricty for their neighborhoods and home. i want it now!
amazing story of claudia mitchell, the woman who was fitted with the first bionic arm, and how she has now regained her sense of touch with the bionic arm. “I just think about moving my hand and elbow, and they move. I think, ‘I want my hand open’ and it happens.” incredible! as with previous posts on all things bionic, we must dedicate this moment to sci-fi becoming reality (or what you can imagine becoming real) by again posting the opening and closing theme music to the Six Million Dollar Man.
The Six Million Dollar Man - Main Titles.mp3
The Six Million Dollar Man - End Credits Theme.mp3
a really cool (meaning: futuristic & sci-fi) looking prototype boat debut on the san francisco bay. check out sfgate’s article on spider ship on the bay. this boat called ‘proteus’ and was invented by ugo conti and is a new prototype of wave adaptive modular vessels, or WAM-V for short. the proteus can carry two tons of cargo, has flexible, spider-like legs, can go thousands of miles, ride on shallow water or lagoons, has a cabin that sleeps 4 and can be lowered into the water, and the flexible legs ride & adjust to the surface of the water. there are more pics of the proteus on the sfgate article. looks more like a water strider than a spider to me. but any giant insect-boat look-a-like is totally winning in my book.
just had a minor earthquake here (northern california) about 45 minutes ago. no worries though - all is well. it was a small shaker. the real-time earthquake maps of the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program of northern california tells me it was a minor quake of 3.5 in magnitude near san martin/morgan hill california at 9:43:22 AM (PST) on Wednesday, January 17, 2007. they’ve even got real-time fault maps too! screengrab of recent usgs earthquake activity in all of california, screengrab of usgs real-time earthquake activity in san martin/morgan hill california. screengrab of usgs real-time map showing the recently active eathquake faults in northern california.
here’s a very nice environmentally friendly vehicle from the french company venturi electric called the eclectic (great pics & forum post on the dexigner website too). deemed the ‘first energy autonomous vehicle‘ it is powered using 100% renewable energy: solar and wind. the eclectic is 1st solar production vehicle and it is the 1st production vehicle that can be directly recharged with a personal wind turbine. this means that the eclectic can access the energy needed to power it by deploying its wind turbine, using solar cells or, if necessary, find a simple electric plug (which can also use solar energy). no oil or fossil fuels (gas, coal) needed. the eclectic will have a range of 31 miles (50 kilometers) and a top speed of 31 mph (50 kph) making it best for urban travel and campus areas. more photos and info on the venturi eclectic website. via treehugger via dexigner.
on the heels of the stem cell legislation passing in missouri, a study published in the journal nature reports that stem cell transplants in blind mice have helped to restore their sight. in the test, the scientists treated mice which had eye damage similar to that seen in many human eye diseases. a stem cell is a cell which can be set or programmed to grow into any type of cell. in this case, retinal stem cells were grown and transplanted onto the eyes of the mice. the eyesight of the mice gradually returned as their pupils contracted when exposed to light. this is a great breakthrough as people (mice too, it seems) who have already gone blind may someday be able to regain and restore their damaged rod and cone photoreceptors and see again.
rather discouraging report on the BBC website titled ‘Only 50 Years Left’ for sea fish, which talks of a report on the declining fish stocks in the earth’s oceans. the report is for the journal Science and is the work of an international team of researchers and scientists. The great decline in fish stocks is largely due to the broader loss of marine biodiversity. quoting steve palumbi from stanford university (one of the scientists on the project):
“Unless we fundamentally change the way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems, then this century is the last century of wild seafood.”
in the report, experiments performed in small, relatively contained ecosystems show that reductions in fish and marine life diversity tend to bring reductions in the size and robustness of local fish stocks. This implies that loss of biodiversity is driving the declines in fish stocks seen in the large-scale studies. But data gathered from areas where fishing has been either banned or heavily restricted was promising, showing that protection of fishing areas though ‘no fish zones’ and marine sanctuaries brings back biodiversity and helps to restore fish populations.
the mighty iTunes mp4 protection has been cracked! from seidai software comes FairGame, software that will convert the songs you purchased on an iTunes store to an unprotected format - keeping all original metadata, artwork, lyric, and album information intact. fairgame has several pre-requisites before it can be used, like having iMovie HD installed and enabling ‘access for assistive devices’ in the universal access control panel. only works on a mac with OSX. but nice to see this happening. buying music from the apple store is like buying a CD that will only play on one specific type of player. kind of nuts, and also kind of a recipe for a monopoly. doesn’t everyone know that the archos media players are worlds better than any ipod (thanks tony!)?. i’m serious. linky via boingboing via thornography.
Also, adrienne sent in this report the other day from BBC, titled itunes copy protection cracked. as music downloaded from an itunes store can ONLY be played on an ipod, the code that prevents music downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store being played on any portable player other than an iPod has been “cracked”. this reverse-engineering has been done by Jon Lech Johansen. his company DoubleTwist hopes to distribute the cracking code to other media player producers. that is great news.
future sci-fi medical advances coming your way in the form of a biodegradeable liquid peptides. it’s pour-on nanotechnology with huge beneficial medical applications. researchers at MIT and the university of hong kong have developed a liquid solution that quickly halts bleeding and promotes and accelerates healing. the discovery of the solution came about through experiments in using the solution as a matrix for regrowing brain cells in hamsters. the nano-solution has been tested on liver, skin, lung, blood vessels, and other tissues. quoting from lead researcher Rutledge Ellis-Behnke:
It isn’t clotting that we’re seeing. We tested for all of the things you find in all blood clots; fibrin, thrombin and platelets and none of them were there, said Ellis-Behnke. Either this is acting as some kind of molecular band aid or we are stopping bleeding via a completely new direction that we have never seen before.
this made it around the bloggy-sphere a while back. but i liked it so much i thought i’d post it anyway. the highly talented artists down at weta have put out some amazing antique ray gun models that look superb. if that’s not enough, there’s always something good to click & see on the weta updates page as well.
good news for longer lasting & better battery power - without the battery. researchers at MIT have placed a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. the tiny engines could ‘power a person’ and all their electronic devices (laptops, cell phones, etc.) up to 10X longer than a battery of the same weight and size. the engine components (compressor, a combustion chamber, etc.) where built by MIT researchers using etched silicon wafers piled up and bonded together. When the wafers are assembled, the surfaces and the spaces in between produce the needed engine features and functions. To make this process more less costly, 60 to 100 components are made on a large silicon wafer which is then cut apart into single units. found via physorg and boingboing.
the good people of pluto are up in arms & other icy appendeges over plutos demotion to non-planet status. pluto used to be a part of our 9 planet solar system. now that pluto is officially a non-union ’scab’ planet & shunned by the International Astronomical Union, it has been placed into a new official category called “dwarf planets.” scientists voted down a resolution that would designate pluto as a “bitch-ass planet” in favor of term dwarf planet. no dwarves residing inside the tiny non-planet of pluto could be reached for comment.
more goodness from treehugger on improvements solar panel technology & efficiency. prism solar technology of new york has developed a solar module that uses 25% to 85% less silicon than a crystalline silicon solar panel of comparable wattage. the technology uses holograms to increase efficiency and concentrate light. this also brings the cost down of solar panel as less photovoltaic material is needed to gather energy.
more on the things are getting teenier front: a rice granule sized wireless memory chip from hewlett packard. HP researchers have developed a memory chip with wireless networking capabilities that is roughly the same size as a grain of rice. that’s tiny! prototypes of the super hella tiny chip developed by HP contain 256 kilobits to 4 megabits of memory and can transfer data wirelessly at speeds up to 10Mbps. and get this, the lil’ memory chips do not require a battery. they get power using a technique called inductive coupling, which allows power to be transferred from one component to another through a shared electromagnetic field.
that’s a lot of space on one DVD. how much? it’s a bit hard to grasp. but 50 terabytes is the same as 51,200 gigabytes, or rather equivalent to 10,893 DVDs (@ 4.7 gigabytes each). completely amazing. these super high capacity DVDs it seems are closer to reality. Professor V. Renugopalakrishnan of the harvard medical school developed a disc with a layer of genetically altered proteins called bacteriorhodopsin that makes the mega-storage 50 terabyte DVDs possible. the proteins are only nano meters across so a lot can fit on the surface of a DVD disc. when light shines on bacteriorhodopsin, it is converted to a series of intermediate molecules - each with a unique shape and colour before returning to its original form or ‘ground state’. this is the basis for the binary code for such storage, with the molecular conversion of intermediate molecules being the one and the ‘ground state’ being the zero. Prof Renugopalakrishnan and his colleagues genetically modified the DNA that produces bacteriorhodopsin protein to produce an intermediate state that lasts for more than several years. the finding were presented at the 2006 International Conference On Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. there is more to read about it from articles on engaget and also digital video guru.
interesting post on treehugger around the hype & subject of who killed the electric car. the article covers a recent post to a usenet group detailing problems with the electric car, indicating it’s death was maybe a mercy killing. the usenet poster allegedly worked for GM while the EV1 was in production and lists the numerous customer complaints and problems with the electric car. some of the issues …
The range of 130 miles is bogus. None of them ever achieved that under normal driving conditions. Running the air conditioning or heater could halve that range. Even running the headlights reduced it by 10%.
Lessees were complaining that their electric bills had increased to the point that they’d rather be using gasoline.
Home electrical systems simply couldn’t handle the necessary current draw for “fast” charging.
ouch. seems to take issue with a lot of the points brought up in the movie Who Killed The Electric Car? still, technology moves forward. taking into account the ability to set up a home solar charging station, better NiMH battery systems and options available, and the cost of gas, i’d very much prefer that ride over my gas car any day. one month after GM bought the Hummer from AM General, they discontinued building the EV1s. i just can’t respect that.
a great brain story in the news yesterday finds us here at giantmonster compelled to put down our fireworks and celebrate with the week of the brain! yes - the brain! read the story of terry wallis & his amazing brain. in 1984 and at the age of 19, terry was in an auto accident and ended up in a coma with massive brain injuries. he stayed that way for 19 more years (!) until in 2003 when terry started to speak, then move, and then communicate. turns out terry’s brain rewired itself, building new axon connections that grew across around the back of the brain, forming structures that do not exist in normal brains. amazing and fascinating! more stories on terry wallis found here and here. there’s also a great post (via metafilter) by jake young of scienceblogs.com that covers details & differences on terry wallis’s brain condition. celebrate brain week! got any brain stories?
the future is here! the future is here! granted, there’s still no fancy jetpacks to use for daily travel. but how about bionic technology that enables artificial limbs to be directly attached to human skeleton? researchers and scientists at the Centre for Biomedical Engineering (UCL) in collaboration with Stanmore Implants Worldwide have developed a technique called Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP). The process involves securing a titanium rod directly into the bone and it allows the prosthesis to breach the skin without risk of infection. very exciting! in celebration, we yet again offer up the opening theme and closing theme to the six million dollar man tv series.
The Six Million Dollar Man - Main Titles.mp3
The Six Million Dollar Man - End Credits Theme.mp3
wow. rad little article on wired found via boingboing on the ‘UFO hacker’ gary mckinnon. be sure to read UFO hacker tells what he found on gary mckinnon’s search for proof of the existence of UFOs. here’s a great excerpt:
I also got access to Excel spreadsheets. One was titled “Non-Terrestrial Officers.” It contained names and ranks of U.S. Air Force personnel who are not registered anywhere else. It also contained information about ship-to-ship transfers, but I’ve never seen the names of these ships noted anywhere else.
it gets better. keep in mind gary mckinnon is facing extradition to the USA for hacking into NASA & is looking at 70 years in prison and a possible $2 million fine. yikes. also, googling gary mckinnon brings up all sorts of pages. some good interviews are scapegoat or public enemy?, where gary talks about the USA’s lack of cyber-security, as is hackers fear UFO cover-up (with a link to an audio interview too) and game over. if i were smoking pot right now, i might be freaking out. luckily, i am just drinking nyquil. so all is safe.
time to escape reality (or at last earth’s orbit) and travel to mars with these amazing pics of apollinaris paldera - an ancient volcano on mars. lots of hi-res jpegs & tiffs and a map too. if you still need more mars, no worries. the european space agency site has some great wallpapers to get mars on your desktop.
interesting article on how pixar reduced rendering time for each frame of the movie Cars from 10 hours to 1 hour. seems they solved it by switching from their “woefully inadequate” NFS (network file system) to a much more practical solution - a linux based SAN (storage area network). the story was found via digg, which has some interesting posts on the topic. i seem to remember something like that taking place at ILM many moons ago on the podrace sequence for phantom menace. but i believe that was solved by john knoll re-writing some code to speed up rendering times specifically for the podracers. but i could be wrong. i was a modelmaker (practical, not digital) back then … your hi-tec CG world still frightens and confuses me …
cool use of technology. i could see this becoming more and more common. check out this story of robots in the classroom: robots keeping hospital-bound boy a presence in his school classes. 13-year-old Achim Nurse suffers from a severe skin rash brought on by a case of bacterial meningitis and must remain bandaged and in a hospital bed until he’s better. Using a pair of robots - one named “Mr. Spike” at his bedside, and another named “Mrs. Candy” in the classroom - Achim can keep up with his schoolwork and his friends for the months he will be hospitalized. Achim can push a button on his control console at his bedside to have his classroom based robot raise it’s hand to answer a question at school. very cool. the program that makes this possible is called PEBBLES (Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students) and was created by telbotics. read more press about the PEBBLES & Teleprescence program via the telbotics news page.
science time! from eepybird comes the The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments. a series of beautiful scientific tests that combines 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos (the freshmaker) mints. the results are lovely and messy. and there’s lots of other videos to watch of experiments (or is it experi-mints?) from eepybird as well. well done lads - well done!
Experiment #6
Experiment #137
