Little Forest Path wallpaper, Future smart phones will project images-video, SFU researchers test sugary solution to Alzheimer’s

Little Forest Path wallpaper

 

Future smart phones will project images on the wall

Mobile phones currently on the market are capable of showing high quality images and video, but the phones’ small size sets insurmountable limits on screen size, and thus the viewing experience. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, EpiCrystals Oy and the Aalto University are developing a better laser light source for projectors that will be integrated into mobile phones, which will enable accurate and efficient projection of, for example, photographs and movies on any surface. Mobile phones equipped with the laser light source can be within the ordinary consumer’s reach already in a few years time.

Small-size laser projectors 1-2 centimetres in length can be integrated into many kinds of electronic appliances, such as digital or video cameras, gaming devices and mobile phones. Integrated micro projectors could, in practice, project images the size of an A3 sheet of paper on a wall.

It should be easy to imagine both the educational applications and the potential to share video and photos with friends without passing your camera around. EpiCrystals Inc. and researchers seem to have overcome the two daunting challenges to making smart phones into real world media systems that can take advantage of laser technology, size and costs. Very small lasers that project images or video have been possible for a while, but getting them down to a size that costs less than the phone itself was a problem they seem to have ironed out.

 

Happy Leap Day. Why we have leap days

We have two basic units of time: the day and the year. Of all the everyday measurements we use, these are the only two based on concrete physical events: the time it takes for the Earth to spin once on its axis, and the time it takes to go around the Sun. Every other unit of time we use (second, hour, week, month) is rather arbitrary. They’re convenient, but not based on independent, non-arbitrary events.

It takes roughly 365 days for the Earth to orbit the Sun once. If it were exactly 365 days, we’d be all set! Our calendars would be the same every year, and there’d be no worries.

But that’s not the way things are. There are not an exactly even number of days in a year; there are about 365.25 days in a year. That means every year, our calendar is off by about a quarter of a day, an extra 6 or so hours just sitting there, left over. After four years, then, the yearly calendar is off by roughly one day:

For those who like numbers the math portion of the explanation is at the link.

SFU researchers test sugary solution to Alzheimer’s

Slowing or preventing the development of Alzheimer’s disease, a fatal brain condition expected to hit one in 85 people globally by 2050, may be as simple as ensuring a brain protein’s sugar levels are maintained.

That’s the conclusion seven researchers, including David Vocadlo, a Simon Fraser University chemistry professor and Canada Research Chair in Chemical Glycobiology, make in the latest issue of Nature Chemical Biology.

The journal has published the researchers’ latest paper Increasing O-GlcNAc slows neurodegeneration and stabilizes tau against aggregation.

Vocadlo and his colleagues describe how they’ve used an inhibitor they’ve chemically created — Thiamet-G — to stop O-GlcNAcase, a naturally occurring enzyme, from depleting the protein Tau of sugar molecules.

“The general thinking in science,” says Vocadlo, “is that Tau stabilizes structures in the brain called microtubules. They are kind of like highways inside cells that allow cells to move things around.”

…Research prior to Vocadlo’s has shown that clumps of Tau from an Alzheimer brain have almost none of this sugar attached to them, and O-GlcNAcase is the enzyme that is robbing them.

Such clumping is an early event in the development of Alzheimer’s and the number of clumps correlate with the disease’s severity.

In short, inhibiting O-GlcNAcase might be one of the keys to stopping Alzheimer’s or at least making the effects less severe.

The Cutest Slow Loris Ever

As you may or may not know, these animals are endangered. Slow Loris’ are wild animals, they are NOT pets. The ones being kept as pets are suffering. Please try to do something that will help them or educate others. Here is the link to a documentary that BBC made. A viewer asked if I would post the link, so here it is :

It is illegal and very harmful to the Slow Loris’ to keep them as pets.

there is an good entry at Wikipedia about Slow Lorises. The part on their use as traditional medicine and illegal trade in depressing.

New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America, Big New Zealand fossil penguin reconstructed, Half the public favors stronger environmental regulations

New evidence suggests Stone Age hunters from Europe discovered America

New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World.

A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land.

The new discoveries are among the most important archaeological breakthroughs for several decades – and are set to add substantially to our understanding of humanity’s spread around the globe.

The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000 years ago – long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago – and are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European material.

What’s more, chemical analysis carried out last year on a European-style stone knife found in Virginia back in 1971 revealed that it was made of French-originating flint.

One reason such an expedition sounds so probable is that around 3 million years ago during the peak of the Ice Age, around three million square miles of the North Atlantic was covered in thick ice for all or part of the year. That kind of terrain would have been able to supply food such as migrating seals and sea birds, in addition to fish.

Big New Zealand fossil penguin reconstructed

A large extinct penguin has been reconstructed from fossil remains discovered in New Zealand.

Researchers used bones from two separate examples of the ancient birds, using the skeleton of a modern king penguin as a guide.

They show the 25 million-year-old Kairuku penguin was tall at 1.2m (4ft 2in), with an elongated beak and large flippers.

The ancient penguins are shown in this artist's impression - via the BBC

As is usually the case several news wires are carrying this story. Unfortunately some of them imply or outright state that the Kairuku would have been the tallest penguin ever. That is not the case. Skeletons of penguins dating from about the same time have been found in South America which would have been taller.

The Sturgeon’s Looming Endangered Listing

Restrictions could vary with each fishery, according to a NOAA biologist, Kim Damon-Randall, who said that while the listing would take effect soon, the limits could take effect over a period of years. “We’re consulting with industry representatives now,” she said.

The ruling by the agency’s National Marine Fisheries Service covers sturgeon in the New York Bight, which includes the Hudson and Delaware rivers, and the Chesapeake, Carolina and South Atlantic populations. The Gulf of Maine population is designated as threatened, a less severe category than endangered.

Sturgeon numbers have plummeted by as much as 99 percent in some areas of the East Coast, and while NOAA has not yet developed a recovery plan, the new listing could affect as many as 42 fisheries, particularly those that support the gillnetting of monkfish and spiny dogfish, pound-netting of striped bass and trawling for flounder.

The new restrictions – which largely consist of avoidance techniques – will include improvement in fishing equipment and on satellite and telemetry data. The latter will help commercial fishers avoid fishing in waters where the Atlantic sturgeon is migrating.

That 99% figure is an average of all the surveyed areas where sturgeon were once plentiful. As awful as that number is, it is worse when one considers that in some areas along the east coast where it was not unusual to bring up a 400 or 500 pound sturgeon, they are now completely vanished.

“Harvest of sturgeon was like clear-cutting a forest,” Dr. Fox said. “In the late 1800’s, there were four to five railroad cars a day bringing caviar into New York City.” That collapsed the fishery in Caviar Point, N.J., in less than a decade, he said.

The Industrial Revolution added to the damage by damaging the sturgeon’s spawning habitat on many rivers, he said.

Numbers improved a little after the Clean Water Act of 1973. Yet while sturgeon can live for 50 years or more, they are late bloomers when it comes to reproduction, which makes population recovery slow.

The Clean Water Act has made a difference. Though the difference in river water quality is that many rivers had become not much more than running sewers by the late 1800s. So of course any improvement on that looks good on paper. The trade-off has always been clear, you save some small company a few dollars in waste disposal, in exchange for exterminating the kind of biological diversity that destroyed other people’s ability to make a living and a source of high quality protein. Human beings, the animals with opposable thumbs and a shocking case of short sightedness.

Scientists reveal secret of how ‘monkey fish’ were made

An investigation by St George’s University and Horniman Museum in London has finally revealed how mermen and mermaid relics (sometimes referred to as monkey fish) may have been made.

…Early 20th century scientists were baffled by the specimens, with some claiming them to be mummified mermaids.

They were later believed to be made from the head and body of a monkey sewn on to the tail of a fish, giving rise to the term “monkey fish”.

It was not until March 2011 that an x-ray of the Horniman merman (affectionately known as Herman), revealed that the monkey half was in fact made from papier mache.

Mermaids aren’t real? That a shame. If they were, judging by the photo, they’re a disappointment in terms of appearance compared to Pixar.

The history of the sturgeon makes this news and the public policy implications all the more striking, Our Anti-Government Hypocrisy

But this split between abstract beliefs and the concrete needs of daily life doesn’t just apply to government programs: It applies to government regulations as well. Last Thursday, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a survey that revealed what Pew termed “Mixed Views of Government Regulation.” But “mixed,” in this case, means anti-regulatory in matters of ideology and pro-regulatory in practice. Asked whether they believed that government regulation of business was necessary to protect the public or that such regulation usually does more harm than good, just 40 percent answered that regulation was necessary, while 52 percent said it did more harm than good.

But then came the specifics. Pew asked whether federal regulations should be strengthened, kept as is, or reduced in particular areas. When it came to food production and packaging, 53 percent said strengthen, 36 percent said keep as is, and just 7 percent said reduce. In environmental safeguards, the breakdown was 50 percent strengthen, 36 percent keep as is, 17 percent reduce. In car safety and efficiency, the split was 45, 42, and 9 percent. In workplace safety and health, it was 41, 45, and 10 percent. And with prescription drugs, it was 39, 33, and 20 percent.

The oceans, and the food and jobs they provide are thought of as the commons. There is an old theory that just will not die, that people will see the commons as a resource, and without any interdiction on the part of government, will act rationally to preserve the commons in their own rational self-interests. Time and again that does been proven false.

Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area wallpaper, Stone Age pebble may be oldest engraving ever, Spectrum Deal Could Unleash Super Wi-Fi

Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area wallpaper

 

Wireless Spectrum Deal Could Unleash Super Wi-Fi

Imagine Wi-Fi that spans two kilometers; or a car safety system that beams news of an accident, vehicle to vehicle, from far ahead on a lightly traveled road; or a mobile phone whose calls almost never drop.

These and other new communications technologies could be helped along by a deal announced in Washington last week that permits the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to sell off unused TV spectrum in two years.

The agreement covers frequencies that had been set aside for analog TV broadcasts. They keep delaying it, but eventually the only broadcast or cable signals will be high def digital signals. The change will be some hardship for people as many Americans will have to buy a TV capable of receiving those new signals. That the trade-off will include some new longer range Wi-Fi may make he change easier to swallow. Making use of those new frequencies will require further development of technology that can operate rapidly between different frequencies at high-speed. So don’t break out the champagne yet. With the potential to make millions, if not billions with the rapidly expanding use of portable smart devices that use the net, there is every reason for private and public R&D to push ahead for solutions.

Nearly 5000 Acres of Farmable Land in New York City

The Report “The Potential for Urban Agriculture in New York City” reveals that there’s a lot more open land even in one of the most densely packed places in the US than most people think. This simply backs up what we know from other cities around the world which do much more urban farming than New York City – that while no major city will ever feed itself, there’s enormous potential to raise food in urban areas.

“We have identified almost 5,000 acres of vacant land likely to be suitable for farming in the five boroughs, the equivalent of six times the area of Central Park. In addition to this land, there are many other potential sites, including over 1,000 acres of NYCHA green space, underutilized open spaces, and Greenstreets.

5000 acres can make a difference in terms of the food supply chain. If whatever percentage of food is eventually produced locally in New York or any other city with untapped urban space, that means less transported in. That in turn means less impact on the environment. There might also be the side benefit of putting people back in touch with where their food comes from.

Stone Age pebble may be oldest engraving ever

“Associated human remains indicate that the engraved piece was certainly made by Homo sapiens,” co-author Riaan Rifkin of the University of Witwatersrand’s Institute for Human Evolution told Discovery News.

Rifkin and colleagues Francesco d’Errico and Renata Garcia Moreno performed extensive non-invasive analyses of the object. Methods like X-ray fluorescence and microscopic analysis enabled the researchers to examine every minute detail of the ochre pebble, which appears to have split off from a once larger piece.

The scientists conclude that humans intentionally made the sub-parallel linear incisions on the Middle Stone Age pebble.

“Upon engraving the piece with a sharp lithic implement, it is likely to have produced a markedly bright and dark red-maroon powder,” Rifkin said. “The design may therefore have been strikingly visible shortly after it was produced.”

Scientists concluded that humans intentionally made the sub-parallel linear incisions on this Middle Stone Age ochre pebble. Photo: Riaan Rifkin

Some mystery remains. Do those lines mean something in the way that writing or math mean something. Both of those were major advances in human development – being able to communicate concrete and abstract ideas with symbols. All human cultures have develop these communication skills to various degrees.

Does Conservative Rick Santorum think the pope is a ‘radical environmentalist’?

Here’s what Santorum had to say at a campaign event on Feb. 6:

[Climate change is] an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life. … I for one never bought the hoax.

Pope Benedict XVI has been consistent and clear [PDF] in saying that global leaders need to confront the challenge of climate change. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, also called for climate action, as have many other leaders within the church hierarchy. Last year, the Vatican issued a report warning about the “serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases.”

Most recently, Pope Benedict called for coordinated global action on climate change before the start of the U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa, in November 2011:

I hope that all members of the international community can agree on a responsible, credible and supportive response to this worrisome and complex phenomenon, keeping in mind the needs of the poorest populations and of future generations.

Santorum does what a lot of people do – they believe something, sometimes counter to the official position of their religious denomination. That’s OK or not spending on one’s personal beliefs. Where Santorum and others fail is in terms of humility and honesty. He wraps everything he believes in religious doctrine, but will not acknowledge that much of what he believes is his personal twist and not official doctrine. The Catholic Church acknowledges that fact of evolution and supports food assistance programs for those in need. Santorum is an evolution denialist and does not think we should have food assistance programs. So Santorum sees his very own beliefs as a buffet table from which he can pick and chose what it likes and does not. That puts him, in terms of logic, in the same boat as the majority of U.S. Catholics who use and want access to contraception. It is a shame that he is not mature enough to admit as much.

Capacitor discovery may lead to more powerful electric cars, New skink discovered, New blood types confirmed

Capacitor discovery may lead to more powerful electric cars

Researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered the means by which a polymer known as PVDF enables capacitors to store and release large amounts of energy quickly. Their findings could lead to much more powerful and efficient electric cars.

Capacitors are like batteries in that they store and release energy. However, capacitors use separated electrical charges, rather than chemical reactions, to store energy. The charged particles enable energy to be stored and released very quickly. Imagine an electric vehicle that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour at the same rate as a gasoline-powered sports car. There are no batteries that can power that type of acceleration because they release their energy too slowly. Capacitors, however, could be up to the job – if they contained the right materials.

NC State physicist Dr. Vivek Ranjan had previously found that capacitors which contained the polymer polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF, in combination with another polymer called CTFE, were able to store up to seven times more energy than those currently in use.

“We knew that this material makes an efficient capacitor, but wanted to understand the mechanism behind its storage capabilities,” Ranjan says.

In research published in Physical Review Letters, Ranjan, fellow NC State physicist Dr. Jerzy Bernholc and Dr. Marco Buongiorno-Nardelli from the University of North Texas, did computer simulations to see how the atomic structure within the polymer changed when an electric field was applied. Applying an electric field to the polymer causes atoms within it to polarize, which enables the capacitor to store and release energy quickly. They found that when an electrical field was applied to the PVDF mixture, the atoms performed a synchronized dance, flipping from a non-polar to a polar state simultaneously, and requiring a very small electrical charge to do so.

I was going to put up an abstract “green” car as an illustration, but I came across the old Oldsmobile pic. Wouldn’t it be cool to have new generation capacitor driven cars that were updated designs of old classics. They would need better break-lights and the new read window warning lights. Car companies could give the interiors an updated clean look but one inspired by old school instruments dials and upholstery. These styling cues might help overcome some consumer resistance to buying hybrids and electrics.

Slide show at link, The week in wildlife – in pictures – A shark-eating shark, a fox chasing cranes and sleeping otters are among this week’s images from the natural world

A hummingbird perches on a bird of paradise flower in Hollywood, California Photograph: Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Image

 

Tiny, Shiny Lizard Discovered in Asian Forest

A new lizard species has been uncovered in Cambodia, a remarkable creature with a long, snakelike body, tiny legs and scales that shimmer with a rainbow-hued iridescence.

The disco-ready lizard is tiny, about 3 inches (7 centimeters) long from snout to tail, and researchers found only a single specimen.

L. veunsaiensis is tiny and elusive. The single specimen discovered was captured, euthanized and taken to the lab for study. CREDIT: Gabor Csorba.

L. veunsaiensis is a type of skink. For having such short legs skinks are famously quick to run and find cover if they feel threatened. There are some genera of skinks, the second largest lizard family after geckos, that have no legs. Those are often confused with small snakes. If you don’t like spiders and insects around the house skinks make good neighbors since they fed on beetles, roaches and spiders. Some of the bigger skinks fed on the occasional rodent.

The Blue-tailed Mole Skink Eumeces egregius lividus – found in Florida is a threatened species. With its iridescent blue tail, it is one of the world’s most beautiful lizards.

Blood Mystery Solved

You probably know your blood type: A, B, AB or O. You may even know if you’re Rhesus positive or negative. But how about the Langereis blood type? Or the Junior blood type? Positive or negative? Most people have never even heard of these.

Yet this knowledge could be “a matter of life and death,” says University of Vermont biologist Bryan Ballif.

While blood transfusion problems due to Langereis and Junior blood types are rare worldwide, several ethnic populations are at risk, Ballif notes. “More than 50,000 Japanese are thought to be Junior negative and may encounter blood transfusion problems or mother-fetus incompatibility,” he writes.

But the molecular basis of these two blood types has remained a mystery — until now.

In the February issue of Nature Genetics, Ballif and his colleagues report on their discovery of two proteins on red blood cells responsible for these lesser-known blood types.

This discovery may help understand why some organ transplants are mysteriously rejected. The antigens for the Junior and Langereis (or Lan) blood types had been discovered long ago, it is only now that the genetic basis for their uniqueness has been confirmed. Research continues as researchers suspect as many as 10 to 15 more of these unknown blood type systems.

The Periodic Table Wooden Table Featuring Theo Gray

Some people collect stamps. Wolfram Research co-founder and author Theo Gray collects elements. Step into his office, and you’ll see a silicon disc engraved with Homer Simpson, a jar of mercury, uranium shells and thousands of other chemical artifacts. But his real DIY masterpiece is the world’s first “periodic table table.” Within this masterfully constructed table-top lay samples of nearly every element known to man, minus the super-radioactive ones.

Slinky wallpaper, Humboldt squid Dive to Astounding Depths, Video lecture – Coral Reefs: Past, Present and Future

Slinky wallpaper

Actually some coiled bare wire that looks like a Slinky. The Slinky was invented by a naval engineer named Richard James in the early 1940s.

Huge Squid Dive to Astounding Depths, Tracking Reveals

Large squid that live in the Pacific Ocean regularly dive to astounding depths, according to new research. The revelation has researchers scratching their heads over how the big cephalopods manage to stay active in the harrowing conditions in the deep waters.

Humboldt squid, creatures that that can grow to more than 6 feet (2 meters) in length and weigh as much as 100 pounds (45 kilograms), dive to low-oxygen waters a mile (1.5 kilometers) below the ocean surface, according to a report from the BBC.

Humboldt Squid swimming about 1,000 feet (300 meters) below the ocean's surface in waters off the central California coast. Credit: Courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institution

Humboldt squid live in the eastern Pacific Ocean and are known both for their ability to change into beautiful in an instance (white to red to deep purple) and their aggressive behavior. They have beaks about the size of baseballs in addition to some tentacles capable of shredding their prey.

What Reporters Are Getting Wrong About Gas Prices

In addition to the New York Times, reporters at CNN, Politico, ABC News, and the Associated Press have served as a vehicle for politicians to link the pipeline to rising gas prices. And of course, Fox News is making the claim outright on an almost hourly basis now. Fox anchor Bill Hemmer said on Monday: “So long as gasoline is getting higher, that’s all the Republicans have to say is ‘Keystone.’” And that’s from the purportedly “straight news” side of the network.

But does this narrative have any merit?

Ray Perryman, the economist hired by TransCanada to assess the economic benefits of the pipeline, told me that his analysis — the methodology of which has been questioned — points to an impact of “around 3.5-4 cents per gallon of gasoline at current prices” once the pipeline “was fully implemented and flowing reasonably close to capacity.” Moody’s economist Chris Lafakis estimates that when balancing out the different regional impacts, “the pipeline would lower US gas prices by 1.6 cents per gallon.”

For comparison, the U.S. average gasoline price has increased nearly 30 cents in the past two months. Perryman, a supporter of the pipeline, added: “I should also point out that a modest change of this nature will often be swamped by the day-to-day factors that impact market prices.”

Fox News is just so much propaganda from Rupert Murdoch and company so misinformation, distortions and outright lies are the order of the day. The other media seem to like playing faux populists. Joining in the national hobby of complaining about gas prices – see we’re one of you, we’re complaining too. They seem to fail in terms of putting the reasons for increased pump prices in context. Some of it, if not most in the current cycle is due to traders speculating on oil futures. Then there is always the oil companies themselves where executives are paid millions for being not much more than desk jokey paper pushers.

Dr. Nancy Knowlton Part 1: Coral Reefs: Past, Present and Future

Dr. Knowlton begins her talk by explaining what coral are and how they build reefs. Using many spectacular photographs, Knowlton illustrates the decline of most of the world’s coral reefs over the past 30-40 years. She describes the effects of direct destruction such as dynamite fishing, as well as the more indirect, but equally catastrophic, effects of invasive species, excessive nutrients due to terrestrial run off, and ocean warming. She ends on a more hopeful note, showing how stringent conservation efforts in some places have resulted in healthier, more resilient reefs.

The cost of this particular vehicle puts it out of the range of the average buyer, but does demonstrate to some degree that the auto industry is not giving up on hydrogen fuel – Mercedes sedan with zero-emissions propulsion, thanks to a hydrogen-electric-hybrid engine