SciNewsBlog

Interesting: Tests find Rossi's E-Cat produces more heat than would be expected from any known chemical source of energy

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 24 May 2013 09:59:00 +0000

Hmm...

(Phys.org) —In the ongoing saga of Andrea Rossi's energy catalyzer (E-Cat) that promises clean, cheap power for the world, the latest events continue to bring as many questions as answers. Several scientists have performed supposedly independent tests of two E-Cat prototypes under controlled conditions and using high-precision instrumentation. In a paper posted at arXiv.org, the researchers write that, even by the most conservative of measurements, the E-Cat produces excess heat with a resulting energy density that is at least 1 order of magnitude—and possibly several—higher than any other conventional energy source, including gasoline.

Of the seven scientists who authored the paper, two are from Italy (Giuseppe Levi at Bologna University and Evelyn Foschi of Bologna, Italy) and five are from Sweden (Torbjörn Hartman, Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson and Lars Tegnér at Uppsala University; and Hanno Essén at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm).

Essén, who submitted the paper, is an associate professor of theoretical physics at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and former chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society.[snip]

The paper presents the results of two separate tests on two different prototypes, called E-Cat HT and E-Cat HT2. The first test was carried out by Levi and Foschi in December 2012, while the second was carried out by all seven authors in March 2013. Although the E-Cat HT2 had several improvements over the E-Cat HT, both tests revealed the same important result: more heat was produced by the device than would be expected from any known chemical source of energy.

Read more here...

Astronomers find "missing link" galaxy...

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 23 May 2013 08:43:00 +0000

Fragile mega-galaxy is astronomical missing link.

Science Daily — Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, according to UC Irvine-led research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Capturing the creation of this type of large, short-lived star body is extremely rare -- the equivalent of discovering a missing link between winged dinosaurs and early birds, said the scientists, who relied on the once-powerful Herschel space telescope and observatories around the world. The new mega-galaxy, dubbed HXMM01, "is the brightest, most luminous and most gas-rich submillimeter-bright galaxy merger known," the authors write.

HXMM01 is fading away as fast as it forms, a victim of its own cataclysmic birth. As the two parent galaxies smashed together, they gobbled up huge amounts of hydrogen, emptying that corner of the universe of the star-making gas.

"These galaxies entered a feeding frenzy that would quickly exhaust the food supply in the following hundreds of million years and lead to the new galaxy's slow starvation for the rest of its life," said lead author Hai Fu, a UC Irvine postdoctoral scholar. Keep on reading...

Mission Trailer: IRIS Readies For a New Challenge (Video)

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 22 May 2013 10:03:00 +0000

Very cool video...

Mission Trailer: IRIS Readies For a New Challenge (Video)

Via NASA:

NASA is getting ready to launch a new mission, a mission to observe a mysterious region of the solar atmosphere that may be crucial to understanding what powers space weather. In late June 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. IRIS will tease out the rules governing the lowest layers of the solar atmosphere -- historically some of the hardest to untangle. Known as the solar interface region, this is one of the most complex ...

Does practice really make perfect?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:56:00 +0000

Does practice really make perfect? New research casts doubt on that long accepted adage...

Science Daily — Turns out, that old "practice makes perfect" adage may be overblown. New research led by Michigan State University's Zach Hambrick finds that a copious amount of practice is not enough to explain why people differ in level of skill in two widely studied activities, chess and music.

In other words, it takes more than hard work to become an expert. Hambrick, writing in the research journal Intelligence, said natural talent and other factors likely play a role in mastering a complicated activity.

"Practice is indeed important to reach an elite level of performance, but this paper makes an overwhelming case that it isn't enough," said Hambrick, associate professor of psychology.
The debate over why and how people become experts has existed for more than a century. Many theorists argue that thousands of hours of focused, deliberate practice is sufficient to achieve elite status.

Hambrick disagrees.

"The evidence is quite clear," he writes, "that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice."

Hambrick and colleagues analyzed 14 studies of chess players and musicians, looking specifically at how practice was related to differences in performance. Practice, they found, accounted for only about one-third of the differences in skill in both music and chess.

So what made up the rest of the difference? Keep on reading...

Slow motion video of 3D printed of 12 gauge projectile

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:43:00 +0000

3D printing is rapidly making gun control laws irrelevant...

World's First 3D Printed BULLETS?

Delicate flower structures have been formed on the scale of microns...

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Mon, 20 May 2013 09:41:00 +0000

Delicate flower structures have been formed on the scale of microns...

(Science Daily) ...With the hand of nature trained on a beaker of chemical fluid, the most delicate flower structures have been formed in a Harvard laboratory -- and not at the scale of inches, but microns.

These minuscule sculptures, curved and delicate, don't resemble the cubic or jagged forms normally associated with crystals, though that's what they are. Rather, fields of carnations and marigolds seem to bloom from the surface of a submerged glass slide, assembling themselves a molecule at a time.

By simply manipulating chemical gradients in a beaker of fluid, Wim L. Noorduin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and lead author of a paper appearing on the cover of the May 17 issue of Science, has found that he can control the growth behavior of these crystals to create precisely tailored structures.

"For at least 200 years, people have been intrigued by how complex shapes could have evolved in nature. This work helps to demonstrate what's possible just through environmental, chemical changes," says Noorduin.

The precipitation of the crystals depends on a reaction of compounds that are diffusing through a liquid solution. The crystals grow toward or away from certain chemical gradients as the pH of the reaction shifts back and forth. The conditions of the reaction dictate whether the structure resembles broad, radiating leaves, a thin stem, or a rosette of petals. Keep on reading...

Video: After Earth - Trailer #2

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:40:00 +0000

Were Victorian era people smarter than we are?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sat, 18 May 2013 11:45:00 +0000

A European research team suggests Victorian era people were more intelligent than we are...

(Phys.org) —In a new study, a European research team suggests that the average intelligence level of Victorian-era people was higher than that of modern-day people. They base their controversial assertion on reaction times (RT) to visual stimuli given as tests to people from the late 1800s to modern times—the faster the reaction time, they say, the smarter the person.

The Victorian era has been highly touted by historians as one of the most productive in human history—inventions, observations and highly acclaimed art and music from that time still resonate today. The era was defined by Queen Victoria's reign in England which ran from 1837 until her death in 1901. Comparing the average IQ of people from that time with that of modern-day people is, of course, impossible—at least using traditional methods. The researchers suggest that reaction times to stimuli can be used as an alternative way to compare relative IQ levels.

IQ tests themselves have come under scrutiny of late because they quite often reflect bias, such as education levels, societal norms, and other not-easily defined factors. Other research has shown that overall health, nutrition levels and degree of fatigue can impact IQ scores as well. For this reason, the team has turned to RT as a means of evaluating what they call general intelligence, which they claim to be a measure of elementary cognition.

Read more here...

Who is up for brain stimulation to improve math ability...

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:36:00 +0000

Where do I sign up?

Science Daily — In the future, if you want to improve your ability to manipulate numbers in your head, you might just plug yourself in. So say researchers who report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 16 on studies of a harmless form of brain stimulation applied to an area known to be important for math ability.

"With just five days of cognitive training and noninvasive, painless brain stimulation, we were able to bring about long-lasting improvements in cognitive and brain functions," says Roi Cohen Kadosh of the University of Oxford.

Incredibly, the improvements held for a period of six months after training. No one knows exactly how this relatively new method of stimulation, called transcranial random noise stimulation (TRNS), works. But the researchers say the evidence suggests that it allows the brain to work more efficiently by making neurons fire more synchronously.

Cool Story: Blind dog gets seeing eye cat

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:42:00 +0000

Best story of the day...

Blind dog gets seeing eye cat...

When 8-year-old Labrador mix Terfel started losing his eyesight, he was diagnosed with cataracts and began confining himself to his bed to avoid bumping into things.

But then his owner, Judy Godfrey-Brown, let a stray cat into their North Wales home and something amazing happened.

The cat, named Pwditat, approached Terfel and seemed to sense that he couldn't see. Using her paws, she coaxed him out of his basket and led him out into the garden.

NASA Video: First X-Class Flares of 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:24:00 +0000

Awesome...

New exoplanet discovered using method that relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:59:00 +0000

New exoplanet discovered using method that relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity

(Phys.org) —Detecting alien worlds presents a significant challenge since they are small, faint, and close to their stars. The two most prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling stars) and transits (looking for dimming stars). A team at Tel Aviv University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has just discovered an exoplanet using a new method that relies on Einstein's special theory of relativity.

"We are looking for very subtle effects. We needed high quality measurements of stellar brightnesses, accurate to a few parts per million," said team member David Latham of the CfA.

"This was only possible because of the exquisite data NASA is collecting with the Kepler spacecraft," added lead author Simchon Faigler of Tel Aviv University, Israel.

Although Kepler was designed to find transiting planets, this planet was not identified using the transit method. Instead, it was discovered using a technique first proposed by Avi Loeb of the CfA and his colleague Scott Gaudi (now at Ohio State University) in 2003. (Coincidentally, they developed their theory while visiting the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where Einstein once worked.)

Read more here...

The Moon's Water came from Earth?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sun, 12 May 2013 11:01:00 +0000

Analysis shows Earth and moon share a common water source...

Science Daily — Researchers used a multicollector ion microprobe to study hydrogen-deuterium ratios in lunar rock and on Earth. Their conclusion: The Moon's water did not come from comets but was already present on Earth 4.5 billion years ago, when a giant collision sent material from Earth to form the Moon.

Water inside the Moon's mantle came from primitive meteorites, new research finds, the same source thought to have supplied most of the water on Earth. The findings raise new questions about the process that formed the Moon.

The Moon is thought to have formed from a disc of debris left when a giant object hit Earth 4.5 billion years ago, very early in Earth's history. Scientists have long assumed that the heat from an impact of that size would cause hydrogen and other volatile elements to boil off into space, meaning the Moon must have started off completely dry. But recently, NASA spacecraft and new research on samples from the Apollo missions have shown that the Moon actually has water, both on its surface and beneath.

By showing that water on the Moon and on Earth came from the same source, this new study offers yet more evidence that the Moon's water has been there all along. Keep on reading...

What will the first Mars colonists eat?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sat, 11 May 2013 09:28:00 +0000

What will the first Mars settlers eat?

(Discover Magazine)- There’s no fresh fruit on Mars. We don’t have fresh vegetables, either, and our food is nowhere near “local.” Most of our meals are made of freeze-dried and dehydrated ingredients that we either rehydrate or just eat crunchy.

There are a couple of reasons that dehydrated and freeze-dried foods reign on the HI-SEAS simulated Mars mission. First, weight. If you take out water, food stuff is nearly as light as air. And payload weight is a crucial factor when you consider it costs about $10,000 to blast a pound of anything into space. Second, preservation. A trip to the Red Planet could take anywhere from about 150 to 300 days, depending on the planetary alignment and speed of the ship. The green beans will need to last.

Pelmeni (Russian dumplings) and a modified Russian cabbage soup. Photo by Sian Proctor.

But despite of our lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, I’m pleased to report the HI-SEAS crew has been eating quite well. Seriously. We’ve had Russian cabbage pie, Peurto Rican arroz con pollo, Morroccan beef tagine, homemade vanilla ice cream, a Tibetan porridge made of milled, roasted barley, and cheese and broccoli omelets, just to name a few tasty dishes.

Burnt-out stars show evidence rocky planets are common...

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:06:00 +0000

Burnt-out stars show evidence rocky planets are common...

Science Daily — The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found signs of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out stars in a nearby star cluster. The white dwarf stars are being polluted by debris from asteroid-like objects falling onto them. This discovery suggests that rocky planet assembly is common in clusters, say researchers.

The stars, known as white dwarfs -- small, dim remnants of stars once like the Sun -- reside 150 light-years away in the Hyades star cluster, in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull). The cluster is relatively young, at only 625 million years old.

Astronomers believe that all stars formed in clusters. However, searches for planets in these clusters have not been fruitful -- of the roughly 800 exoplanets known, only four are known to orbit stars in clusters. This scarcity may be due to the nature of the cluster stars, which are young and active, producing stellar flares and other outbursts that make it difficult to study them in detail.
A new study led by Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge, UK, instead observed "retired" cluster stars to hunt for signs of planet formation [1].

Hubble's spectroscopic observations identified silicon in the atmospheres of two white dwarfs, a major ingredient of the rocky material that forms Earth and other terrestrial planets in the Solar System. This silicon may have come from asteroids that were shredded by the white dwarfs' gravity when they veered too close to the stars. The rocky debris likely formed a ring around the dead stars, which then funnelled the material inwards. Keep on reading...

Video: NASA's Many Eyes On the Sun

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:26:00 +0000

NASA's Many Eyes On the Sun
Several missions within NASA’s Heliophysics observatory captured images of a gigantic eruption on the sun on May 1, 2013. Working together, such missions provide excellent coverage of a wide variety of solar events, a wealth of scientific data -- and lots of beautiful imagery. › Download video

Hump Day Fun Video: Spock vs Spock: the ultimate car commercial

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:49:00 +0000

Zachary Quinto vs. Leonard Nimoy: "The Challenge"

Lake-resembling mound on Mars formed by wind...

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Tue, 07 May 2013 09:58:00 +0000

Credit: Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS

Lake-resembling mound on Mars formed by wind...

Science Daily — A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet's famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the mound's features suggests. If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound holds evidence of a large body of water, which would have important implications for understanding Mars' past habitability.

Researchers based at Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology suggest that the mound, known as Mount Sharp, most likely emerged as strong winds carried dust and sand into the 96-mile-wide crater in which the mound sits. They report in the journal Geology that air likely rises out of the massive Gale Crater when the Martian surface warms during the day, then sweeps back down its steep walls at night. Though strong along the Gale Crater walls, these "slope winds" would have died down at the crater's center where the fine dust in the air settled and accumulated to eventually form Mount Sharp, which is close in size to Alaska's Mt. McKinley.

Interesting Video: Guy straps cam to falcon. Falcon captures duck in midair.

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:33:00 +0000

Dora's BackCam - Peregrine taking a Duck

If you can't wait, skip to the 2:45 mark.

Baboons understand numbers...

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:23:00 +0000

Surprisingly, monkeys get math...

Science Daily— Opposing thumbs, expressive faces, complex social systems: it's hard to miss the similarities between apes and humans. Now a new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait -- the ability to understand numbers -- also is shared by humans and their primate cousins.

"The human capacity for complex symbolic math is clearly unique to our species," says co-author Jessica Cantlon, assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. "But where did this numeric prowess come from? In this study we've shown that non-human primates also possess basic quantitative abilities. In fact, non-human primates can be as accurate at discriminating between different quantities as a human child."

"This tells us that non-human primates have in common with humans a fundamental ability to make approximate quantity judgments," says Cantlon. "Humans build on this talent by learning number words and developing a linguistic system of numbers, but in the absence of language and counting, complex math abilities do still exist." Keep on reading...

Astronomers may be able to witness the birth of a black hole...

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Sat, 04 May 2013 10:12:00 +0000

A distinct burst of light that may allow astronomers to witness the birth of a new black hole...

(Phys.org) —When a massive star exhausts its fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and produces a black hole, an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational grip. According to a new analysis by an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), just before the black hole forms, the dying star may generate a distinct burst of light that will allow astronomers to witness the birth of a new black hole for the first time.

Tony Piro, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, describes this signature light burst in a paper published in the May 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. While some dying stars that result in black holes explode as gamma-ray bursts, which are among the most energetic phenomena in the universe, those cases are rare, requiring exotic circumstances, Piro explains. "We don't think most run-of-the-mill black holes are created that way." In most cases, according to one hypothesis, a dying star produces a black hole without a bang or a flash: the star would seemingly vanish from the sky—an event dubbed an unnova. "You don't see a burst," he says. "You see a disappearance."

But, Piro hypothesizes, that may not be the case. "Maybe they're not as boring as we thought," he says.

According to well-established theory, when a massive star dies, its core collapses under its own weight. As it collapses, the protons and electrons that make up the core merge and produce neutrons. For a few seconds—before it ultimately collapses into a black hole—the core becomes an extremely dense object called a neutron star, which is as dense as the sun would be if squeezed into a sphere with a radius of about 10 kilometers (roughly 6 miles). This collapsing process also creates neutrinos, which are particles that zip through almost all matter at nearly the speed of light. As the neutrinos stream out from the core, they carry away a lot of energy—representing about a tenth of the sun's mass (since energy and mass are equivalent, per E = mc2).

Read more here...

NASA Video: Circular Coronal Mass Ejection

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Fri, 03 May 2013 09:52:00 +0000

Circular Coronal Mass Ejection
A coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from just around the edge of the sun on May 1, 2013, in a gigantic rolling wave. CMEs can shoot over a billion tons of particles into space at over a million miles per hour. This CME occurred on the sun’s limb and is not headed toward Earth. The video, taken in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), covers about two and a half hours.

Credit: NASA/SDO

Does the body's "fountain of aging" reside in the brain region known as the hypothalamus?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Thu, 02 May 2013 09:41:00 +0000

Does the body's "fountain of aging" reside in the brain region known as the hypothalamus? Researchers thing so...

Science Daily — While the search continues for the Fountain of Youth, researchers may have found the body's "fountain of aging": the brain region known as the hypothalamus. For the first time, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University report that the hypothalamus of mice controls aging throughout the body. Their discovery of a specific age-related signaling pathway opens up new strategies for combating diseases of old age and extending lifespan.

The paper was published today in the online edition of Nature.

"Scientists have long wondered whether aging occurs independently in the body's various tissues or if it could be actively regulated by an organ in the body," said senior author Dongsheng Cai, M.D., Ph.D., professor of molecular pharmacology at Einstein. "It's clear from our study that many aspects of aging are controlled by the hypothalamus. What's exciting is that it's possible -- at least in mice -- to alter signaling within the hypothalamus to slow down the aging process and increase longevity."

The hypothalamus, an almond-sized structure located deep within the brain, is known to have fundamental roles in growth, development, reproduction, and metabolism. Dr. Cai suspected that the hypothalamus might also play a key role in aging through the influence it exerts throughout the body.

"As people age," he said, "you can detect inflammatory changes in various tissues. Inflammation is also involved in various age-related diseases, such as metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, neurological disease and many types of cancer." Over the past several years, Dr. Cai and his research colleagues showed that inflammatory changes in the hypothalamus can give rise to various components of metabolic syndrome (a combination of health problems that can lead to heart disease and diabetes).

Keep on reading...

NASA Video: Mysterious Hurricane at Saturn's North Pole

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:35:00 +0000

Mysterious Hurricane at Saturn's North Pole
Narrated video about a hurricane-like storm seen at Saturn's north pole by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Men with stubble are most attractive to women?

noreply@blogger.com (Bluegrass Pundit) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:43:00 +0000

Credit: Evolution and Human Behavior

I though women preferred clean shaven men. Hmm...

(Medical Xpress)—A research team from the Evolution and Ecology Research Centre at the University of New South Wales has found that women find men most attractive when they have approximately ten days of beard growth. In their paper published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, the team describes how volunteers asked to look at pictures of men with various stages of beard growth, found men with ten days growth to be the most attractive and those with five days growth to be the least.

To gain a better understanding of male attractiveness from the perspective of both men and women, the team enlisted the assistance of 351 women, 177 heterosexual men, and 10 other men to serve as models. Each of the models was photographed in four ways: fully shaven, with 5 days of beard growth (light stubble), with 10 days of beard growth (heavy stubble), and with a fully grown beard. The photographs were then shown to each of the male and female volunteers who were asked to rate the men in them according to degree of attractiveness. Read more here...