Tractor beam can pull as well as push | TG Daily

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Tractor beam can pull as well as push | TG Daily Clipped from: http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-features/63616-tractor-beam-can-pull-as-well-as-push

Scientists have for the first time created a ‘tractor beam’ that can pull objects as well as push them.

While the words ‘tractor beam’ have been bandied about in the past – and we have to put up our own hands here – it hasn’t until now been possible to reel objects in with a single beam as the Enterprise does so effortlessly.

"Our work demonstrates a tractor beam based only on a single laser to pull or push an object of interest toward the light source," says Haifeng Wang of the A Star Data Storage Institute.

Thanks to Albert Einstein and Max Planck, we know that light carries momentum that pushes objects away. In addition, the variation in intensity across a laser beam can be used to push objects sideways, for example to move cells in biotechnology applications.

But the nearest anyone’s come before to a true tractor beam was in 2011, when researchers theoretically demonstrated a mechanism where light movement could be controlled using two opposing light beams.

Wang’s team based their work on lasers with a particular type of distribution of light intensity across the beam, or so-called Bessel beams.

Usually, if a laser beam hits a small particle in its path, the light is scattered backwards, which in turn pushes the particle forward.

But Wang and his co-workers have now shown theoretically that for particles that are sufficiently small, the light scatters off the particle in a forward direction, meaning that the particle itself is pulled backwards towards the observer. The power of the beam depends on the electrical and magnetic properties of the particles.

Although the forces are small, such tractor beams do have real applications, says Wang.

"These beams are not very likely to pull a human or a car, as this would require a huge laser intensity that may damage the object," he says.

"However, they could manipulate biological cells, because the force needed for these doesn’t have to be large."

http://www.tgdaily.com/trendwatch-features/63616-tractor-beam-can-pull-as-well-as-push

New sensory organ discovered in whales | TG Daily

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New sensory organ discovered in whales | TG Daily Clipped from: http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/63588-new-sensory-organ-discovered-in-whales

Scientists at the University of British Columbia and the Smithsonian Institution have discovered a new sensory organ in rorqual whales that appears to tell it when it’s worth taking a big gulp.

Rorquals are a subgroup of baleen whales with a special, accordion-like blubber layer that goes from the snout to the navel. The blubber expands to allow the whales to engulf large quantities of water and filter out krill and fish.

Samples were collected from recently-killed whale carcasses derived from Icelandic commercial whaling operations, and examined using X-ray computed tomography.

And the scientists discovered a grapefruit-sized sensory organ at the tip of the whale’s chin, lodged in the ligamentous tissue that connects its two jaws and supplied by neurovascular tissue.

"We think this sensory organ sends information to the brain in order to coordinate the complex mechanism of lunge-feeding, which involves rotating the jaws, inverting the tongue and expanding the throat pleats and blubber layer," says Nick Pyenson, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution. "It probably helps rorquals feel prey density when initiating a lunge."

One type of rorqual, the fin whale, can engulf as much as 80 cubic metres of water and prey – often a greater volume than that of the whale itself – in each gulp, in less than six seconds. Each gulp captures 10 kilograms of krill.

"In terms of evolution, the innovation of this sensory organ has a fundamental role in one of the most extreme feeding methods of aquatic creatures," says University of British Columbia zoology professor Bob Shadwick.

"Because the physical features required to carry out lunge-feeding evolved before the extremely large body sizes observed in today’s rorquals, it’s likely that this sensory organ – and its role in coordinating successful lunging – is responsible for rorquals claiming the largest-animals-on-earth status."

Giant prehistoric turtle from Colombia chomped everything in sight–including croco diles! | Smithsonian Science

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Giant prehistoric turtle from Colombia chomped everything in sight–including crocodiles! | Smithsonian Science Clipped from: http://smithsonianscience.org/2012/05/giant-prehistoric-turtle-from-colombia-chomped-everything-in-sight-including-crocodiles/

Picture a turtle the size of a Smart car, with a shell large enough to double as a kiddie pool. Paleontologists from North Carolina State University, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Florida Museum of Natural History have just described such a specimen from the fossilized remains of this 60-million-year-old South American giant that lived in what is now Colombia.

Image right: Artist’s conception of Carbonemys eating a small crocodylomorph (Artwork by Liz Bradford)

The turtle in question is Carbonemys cofrinii, which means “coal turtle,” and is part of a group of side-necked turtles known as pelomedusoides. The fossil was named Carbonemys because it was discovered in 2005 in a coal mine that was part of northern Colombia’s Cerrejon formation. The specimen’s skull measures 24 centimeters, roughly the size of a regulation NFL football. The shell which was recovered nearby – and is believed to belong to the same species – measures 172 centimeters, or about 5 feet 7 inches, long. That’s the same height as Edwin Cadena, the NC State doctoral student who discovered the fossil.

Cadena; Dan Ksepka, N.C. State paleontologist and research associate at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences; paleontologist Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and paleontologist Jonathan Bloch of the Florida Museum of Natural History are co-authors of the scientific description of the turtle which appears in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

Image left: Edwin Cadena, the scientist who discovered the fossil of Carbonemys poses next to its reconstructed fossil shell. (Photo courtesy Dan Ksepka, NC State University)

“We had recovered smaller turtle specimens from the site. But after spending about four days working on uncovering the shell, I realized that this particular turtle was the biggest anyone had found in this area for this time period – and it gave us the first evidence of giantism in freshwater turtles,” Cadena says.

Smaller relatives of Carbonemys existed alongside dinosaurs. But the giant version appeared five million years after the dinosaurs vanished, during a period when giant varieties of many different reptiles – including Titanoboa cerrejonensis, the largest snake ever discovered – lived in this part of South America. Researchers believe that a combination of changes in the ecosystem, including fewer predators, a larger habitat area, plentiful food supply and climate changes, worked together to allow these giant species to survive. Carbonemys’ habitat would have resembled a much warmer modern-day Orinoco or Amazon River delta.

In addition to the turtle’s huge size, the fossil also shows that this particular turtle had massive, powerful jaws that would have enabled the omnivore to eat anything nearby – from mollusks to smaller turtles or even crocodiles.

Thus far, only one specimen of this size has been recovered. Palentologist Ksepka believes that this is because a turtle of this size would need a large territory in order to obtain enough food to survive. “It’s like having one big snapping turtle living in the middle of a lake,” he says. “That turtle survives because it has eaten all of the major competitors for resources. We found many bite-marked shells at this site that show crocodilians preyed on side-necked turtles. None would have bothered an adult Carbonemys, though – in fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth.”–Source: NC State University

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Tags | amphibian, biggest turtle, Colombia, giant turtle, Tropical Research Institute

Engine Could Boost Fuel Economy by Half

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Engine Could Boost Fuel Economy by Half Clipped from: http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/40422/?p1=A3

Trial run: Delphi researchers tested a new combustion strategy in this single-cylinder test engine.
Mark Sellnau, Delphi

Delphi says its diesel-like engine runs cleanly on gasoline.

Delphi, a major parts supplier to automakers, is developing an engine technology that could improve the fuel economy of gas-powered cars by 50 percent, potentially rivaling the performance of hybrid vehicles while costing less. A test engine based on the technology is similar in some ways to a highly efficient diesel engine, but runs on gasoline.

The company has demonstrated the technology in a single-piston test engine under a wide range of operating conditions. It is beginning tests on a multicylinder engine that will more closely approximate a production engine. Its fuel economy estimates suggest that engines based on the technology could be far more efficient than even diesel engines. Those estimates are based on simulations of how a midsized vehicle would perform with a multicylinder version of the new engine.

The Delphi technology is the latest attempt by researchers to combine the best qualities of diesel and gasoline engines. Diesel engines are 40 to 45 percent efficient in using the energy in fuel to propel a vehicle, compared to roughly 30 percent efficiency for gasoline engines. But diesel engines are dirty and require expensive exhaust-treatment technology to meet emissions regulations.

For decades, researchers have attempted to run diesel-like engines on gasoline to achieve high efficiency with low emissions. Such engines might be cheaper than hybrid technology, since they don’t require a large battery and electric motor.

In conventional gasoline-powered engines, a spark ignites a mixture of fuel and air. Diesel engines don’t use a spark. Instead, they compress air until it’s so hot that fuel injected into the combustion chamber soon ignites. Several researchers have attempted to use compression ignition with gasoline, but it’s proved challenging to control such engines, especially under the wide range of loads put on them as a car idles, accelerates, and cruises at various speeds.

Delphi’s approach, which is called gasoline-direct-injection compression ignition, aims to overcome the problem by combining a collection of engine-operating strategies that make use of advanced fuel injection and air intake and exhaust controls, many of which are available on advanced engines today.

For example, the researchers found that if they injected the gasoline in three precisely timed bursts, they could avoid the too-rapid combustion that’s made some previous experimental engines too noisy. At the same time, they could burn the fuel faster than in conventional gasoline engines, which is necessary for getting the most out of the fuel.

They used other strategies to help the engine perform well at extreme loads. For example, when the engine has just been started or is running at very low speeds, the temperatures in the combustion chamber can be too low to achieve combustion ignition. Under these conditions, the researchers directed exhaust gases into the combustion chamber to warm it up and facilitate combustion.

Mark Sellnau, engineering manager of advanced powertrain technology at Delphi Powertrain, says the engine could be paired with a battery pack and electric motor, as in hybrid cars, to improve efficiency still more, although he notes that it’s not clear whether doing that would be worth the added cost.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/40422/?p1=A3#

Giant Galaxy-Packed Filament Revealed

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Giant Galaxy-Packed Filament Revealed Clipped from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120517143639.htm

A star-bursting filament. The Herschel Space Observatory has discovered a giant, galaxy-packed filament ablaze with billions of new stars. The filament connects two clusters of galaxies that, along with a third cluster, will smash together in several billion years and give rise to one of the largest galaxy superclusters in the universe. (Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/CXC/McGill Univ.)

A McGill-led research team using the Herschel Space Observatory has discovered a giant, galaxy-packed filament ablaze with billions of new stars. The filament connects two clusters of galaxies that, along with a third cluster, will smash together and give rise to one of the largest galaxy superclusters in the universe.

The filament is the first structure of its kind spied in a critical era of cosmic buildup when colossal collections of galaxies called superclusters began to take shape. The glowing galactic bridge offers astronomers a unique opportunity to explore how galaxies evolve and merge to form superclusters.

"We are excited about this filament, because we think the intense star formation we see in its galaxies is related to the consolidation of the surrounding supercluster," said Kristen Coppin, a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics at McGill and lead author of a new paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"This luminous bridge of star formation gives us a snapshot of how the evolution of cosmic structure on very large scales affects the evolution of the individual galaxies trapped within it," said Jim Geach, a co-author also based at McGill.

The intergalactic filament, containing hundreds of galaxies, spans 8 million light-years and links two of the three clusters that make up a supercluster known as RCS2319. This emerging supercluster is an exceptionally rare, distant object whose light has taken more than seven billion years to reach us.

RCS2319 is the subject of a huge observational study, led by Professor Tracy Webb and her group at McGill’s Department of Physics. Previous observations in visible and X-ray light had found the cluster cores and hinted at the presence of a filament. It was not until astronomers trained Herschel on the region, however, that the intense star-forming activity in the filament became clear. Dust obscures much of the star-formation activity in the early universe, but telescopes like Herschel can detect the infrared glow of this dust as it is heated by nascent stars. (The Herschel Space Observatory is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions.)

The amount of infrared light suggests that the galaxies in the filament are cranking out the equivalent of about 1,000 solar masses (the mass of our sun) of new stars per year. For comparison’s sake, our Milky Way galaxy is producing about one solar mass-worth of new stars per year.

Researchers chalk up the blistering pace of star formation in the filament to the fact that galaxies within it are being crunched into a relatively small cosmic volume under the force of gravity. "A high rate of interactions and mergers between galaxies could be disturbing the galaxies’ gas reservoirs, igniting bursts of star formation," said Geach.

By studying the filament, astronomers will be able to explore the fundamental issue of whether "nature" versus "nurture" matters more in the life progression of a galaxy. "Is the evolution of a galaxy dominated by intrinsic properties such as total mass, or do wider-scale cosmic environments largely determine how galaxies grow and change?" Geach asked. "The role of the environment in influencing galactic evolution is one of the key questions of modern astrophysics."

The galaxies in the RCS2319 filament will eventually migrate toward the center of the emerging supercluster. Over the next seven to eight billion years, astronomers think RCS2319 will come to look like gargantuan superclusters in the local universe, like the nearby Coma cluster. These advanced clusters are chock-full of "red and dead" elliptical galaxies that contain aged, reddish stars instead of young ones.

"The galaxies we are seeing as starbursts in RCS2319 are destined to become dead galaxies in the gravitational grip of one of the most massive structures in the universe," said Geach. "We’re catching them at the most important stage of their evolution."

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www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120517143639.htm

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Aspirin: New Evidence Is Helping Explain Additional Health Benefits and Open Potential for New Uses

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Aspirin: New Evidence Is Helping Explain Additional Health Benefits and Open Potential for New Uses Clipped from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419142932.htm

New evidence is helping explain additional health benefits of aspirin. (Credit: © Veniamin Kraskov / Fotolia)

New evidence is helping explain additional health benefits of aspirin. Researchers in Canada, Scotland and Australia have discovered that salicylate, the active ingredient in aspirin, directly increases the activity of the protein AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase), a key player in regulating cell growth and metabolism. AMPK which is considered a cellular fuel-gauge is switched on by exercise and the commonly used anti-diabetic medication metformin.

The research from scientists at McMaster University, the University of Dundee and the University of Melbourne will be published in the April 20 issue of the journal Science.

"We’re finding this old dog of aspirin already knows new tricks," said Dr. Greg Steinberg, a co-principal investigator of the study. "In the current paper we show that, in contrast to exercise or metformin which increase AMPK activity by altering the cells energy balance, the effects of salicylate is totally reliant on a single Ser108 amino acid of the beta 1 subunit.

"We show that salicylate increases fat burning and reduces liver fat in obese mice and that this does not occur in genetically modified mice lacking the beta1 subunit of AMPK," he said. Steinberg is an associate professor of medicine in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and the Canada Research Chair in Metabolism and Obesity.

These findings are important as a large clinical trial is currently underway testing whether salsalate (a well-tolerated aspirin derivative), can prevent Type 2 diabetes.

Salicylate, which is derived from willow bark, and is the active ingredient in aspirin, is believed to be one of the oldest drugs in the world with first reports of its use dating back to an Egyptian papyrus in 1543 BC.

An anti-inflammatory drug first used as a painkiller more than a century ago, aspirin is now given to people at risk of heart attacks and strokes as well as patients with vascular disease. McMaster scientists played a key role in that previous research.

Three studies published last month in the medical journal The Lancet reported that taking an aspirin every day may significantly reduce the risk of many cancers and prevent tumors from spreading. The unanswered question was how this anti-cancer benefit occurs.

With many recent studies showing that metformin may be important for cancer prevention the authors’ study raise the interesting possibility that aspirin may also be working in a similar manner; however, further studies are needed as the concentrations of salicylate used in the current study were higher than the cancer trials. Nonetheless, the researchers’ results show the one thing that salicylates and metformin hold in common is their ability to activate AMPK.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419142932.htm

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Meat Eating Behind Evolutionary Success of Humankind, Global Population Spread, Study Suggests

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Meat Eating Behind Evolutionary Success of Humankind, Global Population Spread, Study Suggests Clipped from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120420105539.htm

Image from Hands Cave, World Heritage in Patagonia. Carnivory is behind the evolutionary success of humankind. (Credit: © Eduardo Rivero / Fotolia)

Carnivory is behind the evolutionary success of humankind. When early humans started to eat meat and eventually hunt, their new, higher-quality diet meant that women could wean their children earlier. Women could then give birth to more children during their reproductive life, which is a possible contribution to the population gradually spreading over the world. The connection between eating meat and a faster weaning process is shown by a research group from Lund University in Sweden, which compared close to 70 mammalian species and found clear patterns.

Learning to hunt was a decisive step in human evolution. Hunting necessitated communication, planning and the use of tools, all of which demanded a larger brain. At the same time, adding meat to the diet made it possible to develop this larger brain.

"This has been known for a long time. However, no one has previously shown the strong connection between meat eating and the duration of breast-feeding, which is a crucial piece of the puzzle in this context. Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births, to be shortened. This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution," says Elia Psouni of Lund University.

She is a developmental psychologist and has, together with neurophysiologist Martin Garwicz (also in Lund) and evolutionary geneticist Axel Janke (currently in Frankfurt but previously in Lund) published her findings in the journal PLoS ONE.

Among natural fertility societies, the average duration of breast-feeding is 2 years and 4 months. This is not much in relation to the maximum lifespan of our species, around 120 years. It is even less if compared to our closest relatives: female chimpanzees suckle their young for 4-5 years, whereas the maximum lifespan for chimpanzees is only 60 years.

Many researchers have tried to explain the relatively shorter breast-feeding period of humans based on social and behavioral theories of parenting and family size. But the Lund group has now shown that humans are in fact no different than other mammals with respect to the timing of weaning. If you enter brain development and diet composition into the equation, the time when our young stop suckling fits precisely with the pattern in other mammals.

This is the type of mathematical model that Elia Psouni and her colleagues have built. They entered data on close to 70 mammalian species of various types into the model — data on brain size and diet. Species for which at least 20 per cent of the energy content of their diet comes from meat were categorised as carnivores. The model shows that the young of all species cease to suckle when their brains have reached a particular stage of development on the path from conception to full brain-size. Carnivores, due to their high quality diet, can wean earlier than herbivores and omnivores.

The model also shows that humans do not differ from other carnivores with respect to timing of weaning. All carnivorous species, from small animals such as ferrets and raccoons to large ones like panthers, killer whales and humans, have a relatively short breast-feeding period. The difference between us and the great apes, which has puzzled previous researchers, seems to depend merely on the fact that as a species we are carnivores, whereas gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees are herbivores or omnivores.

A few years ago, the Lund group published an acclaimed study on the point at which the young of various animals start to walk. Here too, similar patterns were discovered between mammalian species that diverged in evolution millions of years ago. A particular stage in brain development seems quite simply to be the time to start to walk, independently of whether you are a hedgehog, a ferret or a human being.

"That humans seem to be so similar to other animals can of course be taken as provocative. We like to think that culture makes us different as a species. But when it comes to breast-feeding and weaning, no social or cultural explanations are needed; for our species as a whole it is a question of simple biology. Social and cultural factors surely influence the variation between humans," says Elia Psouni.

She is careful to emphasize that their results concern human evolution. The research is about how carnivory can have contributed to the human species’ spreading on earth and says nothing about what we should or should not eat today in order to have a good diet.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120420105539.htm

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Solar cell that also shines: Luminescent ‘LED-type’ design breaks efficiency record

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Solar cell that also shines: Luminescent ‘LED-type’ design breaks efficiency record Clipped from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419113034.htm

A high-efficiency Alta Devices solar cell. (Credit: Joe Foster, Alta Devices.)

To produce the maximum amount of energy, solar cells are designed to absorb as much light from the Sun as possible. Now researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have suggested — and demonstrated — a counterintuitive concept: solar cells should be designed to be more like LEDs, able to emit light as well as absorb it.

The Berkeley team will present its findings at the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics (CLEO: 2012), to be held May 6-11 in San Jose, Calif.

"What we demonstrated is that the better a solar cell is at emitting photons, the higher its voltage and the greater the efficiency it can produce," says Eli Yablonovitch, principal researcher and UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering.

Since 1961, scientists have known that, under ideal conditions, there is a limit to the amount of electrical energy that can be harvested from sunlight hitting a typical solar cell. This absolute limit is, theoretically, about 33.5 percent. That means that at most 33.5 percent of the energy from incoming photons will be absorbed and converted into useful electrical energy.

Yet for five decades, researchers were unable to come close to achieving this efficiency: as of 2010, the highest anyone had come was just more than 26 percent. (This is for flat-plate, "single junction" solar cells, which absorb light waves above a specific frequency. "Multi-junction" cells, which have multiple layers and absorb multiple frequencies, are able to achieve higher efficiencies.)

More recently, Yablonovitch and his colleagues were trying to understand why there has been such a large gap between the theoretical limit and the limit that researchers have been able to achieve. As they worked, a "coherent picture emerged," says Owen Miller, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and a member of Yablonovitch’s group. They came across a relatively simple, if perhaps counterintuitive, solution based on a mathematical connection between absorption and emission of light.

"Fundamentally, it’s because there’s a thermodynamic link between absorption and emission," Miller says. Designing solar cells to emit light — so that photons do not become "lost" within a cell — has the natural effect of increasing the voltage produced by the solar cell. "If you have a solar cell that is a good emitter of light, it also makes it produce a higher voltage," which in turn increases the amount of electrical energy that can be harvested from the cell for each unit of sunlight, Miller says.

The theory that luminescent emission and voltage go hand in hand is not new. But the idea had never been considered for the design of solar cells before now, Miller continues.

This past year, a Bay area-based company called Alta Devices, co-founded by Yablonovitch, used the new concept to create a prototype solar cell made of gallium arsenide (GaAs), a material often used to make solar cells in satellites. The prototype broke the record, jumping from 26 percent to 28.3 percent efficiency. The company achieved this milestone, in part, by designing the cell to allow light to escape as easily as possible from the cell — using techniques that include, for example, increasing the reflectivity of the rear mirror, which sends incoming photons back out through the front of the device.

Solar cells produce electricity when photons from the Sun hit the semiconductor material within a cell. The energy from the photons knocks electrons loose from this material, allowing the electrons to flow freely. But the process of knocking electrons free can also generate new photons, in a process called luminescence. The idea behind the novel solar cell design is that these new photons — which do not come directly from the Sun — should be allowed to escape from the cell as easily as possible.

"The first reaction is usually, why does it help [to let these photons escape]?" Miller says. "Don’t you want to keep [the photons] in, where maybe they could create more electrons?" However, mathematically, allowing the new photons to escape increases the voltage that the cell is able to produce.

The work is "a good, useful way" of determining how scientists can improve the performance of solar cells, as well as of finding creative new ways to test and study solar cells, says Leo Schowalter of Crystal IS, Inc. and visiting professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who is chairman of the CLEO committee on LEDs, photovoltaics, and energy-efficient photonics.

Yablonovitch says he hopes researchers will be able to use this technique to achieve efficiencies close to 30 percent in the coming years. And since the work applies to all types of solar cells, the findings have implications throughout the field.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419113034.htm

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Eating buckyballs by the pawful nearly doubles lifespan of rats | DVICE

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Eating buckyballs by the pawful nearly doubles lifespan of rats | DVICE Clipped from: http://dvice.com/archives/2012/04/eating-buckybal.php

Eating buckyballs by the pawful nearly doubles lifespan of rats

Rodents are typically the immediate beneficiaries of new medical tech, which is only fair as they deal with the other end of things, too. Usually just trying random stuff doesn’t yield much in the way of benefits, but as it turns out, stuffing rats full of carbon 60 molecules increases their lifespan. By a lot.

We’ve known for a long time that buckminsterfullerene (little molecular soccer balls made up of sixy atoms of carbon) isn’t especially toxic or reactive in biological models. And that’s good, but we haven’t been able to figure out a way in which this stuff can be particularly helpful over the long term, either.

A paper currently in press in the journal Biomaterials investigates what happens when you feed rats gobs of buckyballs suspended in olive oil for extended periods of time. Six sets of 10 rats got to partake in 1.7mg of C60 per kg of body weight on a daily, weekly, and bi-weekly basis for seven straight months. Not only did the C60-fed rats manage not to keel over, but by the time a control group of rats who got a placebo had all died, and a group of rats who had just been fed olive oil had mostly died, the C60 rats were still going strong, ultimately exhibiting an increase in lifespan of 90% over the control group.

The study suggests that "the effect on lifespan is mainly due to the attenuation of age-associated increases in oxidative stress," which is something that is thought to contribute to a lot of different age-related ailments, so even if buckyballs aren’t targeting a disease specifically, it’s clear that they provide some substantial medical benefits. At least, in rats. A few rats. In this one study. Unfortunately, a lot of the medical breakthroughs that happen in mouse and rat models just don’t translate into humans, but with promising results at this stage, there’s no reason not to be at least a little bit optimistic.

Paper, via NBF

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Wind turbine farms clean water from desert air | TG Daily

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Wind turbine farms clean water from desert air | TG Daily Clipped from: http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/62823-wind-turbine-farms-clean-water-from-desert-air

Wind turbine farms clean water from desert air

Posted on April 18, 2012 – 10:21 by Beth Buczynski, EarthTechling
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As climate change continues to become more apparent, scientists say we are in for lots more hot, very dry weather in some regions of the world.



Since it’s highly likely that many fresh water supplies will continue to disappear, it’s essential that new water producing technologies are developed—and quickly.

Plants and animals living in the desert have evolved to utilize even tiny bits of moisture in their quest for survival. The ability to capitalize on natural condensation inspired a French technology startup to develop a wind turbine with similar traits. 



Eole Water is working on a wind turbine that can produce hundreds of liters of water every day, using nothing but dry desert air.

The Eole WMS 1000 wind turbine features a 13-meter diameter rotor with a 12-metric-ton nacelle housing a direct-drive permanent-magnet generator protected by sand-shutters. It starts by drawing wind through air regulators. 



The moisture in the air is then transformed into steam by heat from the turbine’s generator. The steam is then compressed, the moisture condenses, and the resulting water droplets flow down pipes within the turbine and into stainless steel tanks for purification.



According to one report, Eole CEO Marc Parent, an engineer, got the idea for this amazing turbine back in the 1990s, when he began reducing his bottled water costs by siphoning the condensation from his air conditioner.

Early tests show that the device is capable of creating 500-800 liters of clean water every day through the process of condensation. And that’s in the arid climate of the United Arab Emirates where the prototype is being tested. 

Eole hopes that installing the turbine offshore or near the coast where there are higher humidity and wind conditions could produce even more.

* Beth Buczynski, EarthTechling

http://www.tgdaily.com/sustainability-features/62823-wind-turbine-farms-clean-water-from-desert-air