Upgrade Your Brain: Liquid Hard Drive Implants Could Increase Intellect
Researchers have discovered a novel way of storing data in liquid, potentially paving the way for biocompatible brain implants. Storing photos, documents and other files in brain-implantable liquid could one day be a reality after researchers discovered a new method of storing data in microscopic particles suspended in a solution. Scientists at the University of Michigan realised that digital information could be stored on colloidal clusters after observing them switch between two states - such as the 0s and 1s of traditional bits - when placed in a liquid. A research paper detailing the team's findings, entitled Digital Colloids: Reconfigurable Clusters as High Information Density Elements, was recently published in the journal Soft Matter. Sharon GlotzerUoM Glotzer uses the analogy of a Rubik's cube to describe how the storage works. In theory, a spoonful of water containing these nanoparticles could store up to a terabytes worth of data. Brain implants
Largest ever Ebola outbreak is not a global threat
Sylvain Cherkaoui/Cosmos/eyevine Health-care workers at an Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone. Deadly Ebola probably touched down in Lagos, Nigeria, the largest city in Africa, on 20 July. A man who was thought to be infected with the virus had arrived there on a flight from Liberia, where, along with Guinea and Sierra Leone, the largest recorded Ebola outbreak is currently raging. Is it worrying that the virus reached the largest city of the most populous African country? The World Health Organization still considers the Lagos case a “probable” infection because it has not yet confirmed that the 40-year-old Liberian man had Ebola. What about the risk of air travellers exporting the virus to other cities? The ECDC also says the probability of an infected person getting on a flight in the first place is low, given the small overall number of Ebola cases. Wait, Ebola is hard to catch? So why is the outbreak continuing in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia? What kind of sociocultural factors?
Power Beaming Challenge
NASA and the Spaceward Foundation awarded $900,000 to LaserMotive LLC of Seattle, WA for their winning performance in the Power Beaming Challenge competition at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. NASA Admimistrator Charlie Bolden along with senior NASA officials Doug Comstock and Andy Petro, acknowledges winners and organizers of NASA’s 2009 Centennial Challenges.
If The Earth Stopped Spinning, Some Really Bad Things Would Happen
Sometimes it's easy to forget that the Earth and everything on it are rotating. But it's a good thing that our planet keeps spinning, because if it suddenly stopped it would unleash a torrent of catastrophes. Just listen to what Michael Stevens has to say in this new installment of his Vsauce YouTube series. "First of all, you would gain weight," Stevens says, a reference to the fact the Earth's rotation slightly offsets the effect of gravity. That's because you'd suddenly be facing winds as fast as those created by atomic bomb blasts and tsunamis kilometers high. Things would be especially bad near the equator, where the surface of the Earth rotates fastest. For the full explanation, check out the video above.
Ion Propulsion
The propulsion of choice for science fiction writers has become the propulsion of choice for scientists and engineers at NASA. The ion propulsion system's efficient use of fuel and electrical power enable modern spacecraft to travel farther, faster, and cheaper than any other propulsion technology currently available. Ion thrusters are currently used for stationkeeping on communication satellites and for main propulsion on deep space probes. Ion thrusters expel ions to create thrust and can provide higher spacecraft top speeds than any other rocket currently available. Image left: NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) ion thruster in operation. What Is an Ion? An ion is simply an atom or molecule that is electrically charged. Plasma is an electrically neutral gas in which all positive and negative charges--from neutral atoms, negatively charged electrons, and positively charged ions--add up to zero. Ion Thruster Operation Modern ion thrusters use inert gases for propellant. Past Present
This Computer Knows When "Literally" Isn't Literal
There’s been a literal firestorm in recent years on the proper meaning of “literally” — including the uproar over its non-literal opposite meaning being added to respected dictionaries. Language is funny that way. We say things that are utterly false, but we seem to understand what the other person means, regardless. Intrigued by this quirk in communication, researchers built the first computational model that can predict humans’ interpretations of hyperbolic statements. (Literally.) Modeling Exaggeration Separating literal from figurative speech is actually quite complicated. Researchers from Stanford and MIT set out to create a program that could. The results seemed intuitive: A statement claiming the kettle cost $10,000 was viewed as hyperbolic, but a price tag of $50 was interpreted as a literal statement. Complicated Speech When researchers applied the model to the statements evaluated by human participants they found that it closely matched human judgments of hyperbole.
Soft tissue found on T. Rex explained
The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. According to new research, iron in the dinosaur's body preserved the tissue before it could decay. The research, headed by Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State University, explains how proteins — and possibly even DNA — can survive millennia. "What we found was unusual, because it was still soft and still transparent and still flexible," Schweitzer told LiveScience. T. rextissue? The find was also controversial, because scientists had thought proteins that make up soft tissue should degrade in less than 1 million years in the best of conditions. Then, in 2007, Schweitzer and her colleagues analyzed the chemistry of the T. rex proteins. "The problem is, for 300 years, we thought, 'Well, the organics are all gone, so why should we look for something that's not going to be there?' Iron lady Searching for soft tissue
image uploaded by @Acrocephalus (Acrocephalus |*|)
