Researchers Grow Organs In The Lab

Lab Grown Ears

In 1996 scientists built a human bladder and since then, they have been building increasingly more complex organs. There have been five windpipe replacement operations so far. Lab-grown tear ducts and an artery have been transplanted into patients.

This article in the Wall Street Journal highlights scientists that are working on a heart, among other organs. Growing a heart is much more difficult than a windpipe, as the heart is larger and has several types of cells, including those that beat, those that form blood vessels, and those that help conduct electrical signals.

A shortage of human organs for transplant has spurred research into "building" them.

Fun Time! Arctic Force Snow Crossbow By Wham-O!

The name Wham-O has great meaning for folks my age. The purveyor of some of the most wonderful toys of my childhood. Whether it was a Slip-n-Slide or a Frisbee, Wham-O had the goods.

Behold their next great achievement: the Arctic Force Crossbow!

Imagine getting smacked with a snowball shot from one of these.

Yeah, it's spring and it will just sit unused until next winter (here in the northern hemisphere, at least), but I'd grab one now before there's a run on them next November.

4-Billion-Pixel Mars Panorama

A Car That Runs On Air And Water

From Bloomberg TV. Go for a ride in a car that is powered by air and water and gets 1,000 miles per tank.

Travel Photo of the Week

St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City

World's First Electric Tilt Rotor Aircraft

Oh, now doesn't this look sexy? With all the hoopla about flying cars, it's understandable that this beauty might not get noticed.

From AugustaWestland comes this gorgeous, tilt-rotor aircraft. Vertical take off and landing, check. Sci-fi styling, check. Powered by rechargeable batteries, check.

Only thing we need now is an affordable two-seater.

We Have Grossly Underestimated Both The Scope And Scale Of Animal Intelligence

This article in the Wall Street Journal brings to light research that shows animals are FAR more intelligent than we've ever imagined. One of the main issues is that we test animal intelligence in ways that work well for  humans, but not so much for the animals.

From the article..."Elephants are a perfect example. For years, scientists believed them incapable of using tools. At most, an elephant might pick up a stick to scratch its itchy behind. In earlier studies, the pachyderms were offered a long stick while food was placed outside their reach to see if they would use the stick to retrieve it. This setup worked well with primates, but elephants left the stick alone. From this, researchers concluded that the elephants didn't understand the problem. It occurred to no one that perhaps we, the investigators, didn't understand the elephants. Think about the test from the animal's perspective. Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary. But as soon as an elephant picks up a stick, its nasal passages are blocked. Even when the stick is close to the food, it impedes feeling and smelling. It is like sending a blindfolded child on an Easter egg hunt."

Perhaps my favorite line from the article states it best.

"Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude."

Yeah, but isn't that the source of almost all our problems?

Human Powered Helicopter Project

There's a competition going on to develop the world's first human powered helicopter. The Sikorsky Company is sponsoring it and there's a $250,000 prize for winning. The vehicle has to fly for 60 Seconds, make it 9.8 feet above the ground and stay within a 10-Square meter area. For more information, here's a link.

Kenneth Huff, Neal Fischer and William Edwards want to win that prize. With a $5,000 development grant from Middle Georgia State College they have built several prototype craft. To raise the rest of the needed funds to complete the helicopter, they've gone to Kickstarter.

With only seven days and $19,681 to go, their Kickstarter project might not get funded, but it's an idea that will still eventually get off the ground someday.

Fun Time! Animated Calvin and Hobbes Short!

Jeremy Grantham Says Billions Are Going To Starve To Death

Almost 200 years ago Thomas Malthus opined about the effects of unchecked population growth. He worried that human populations, which grow exponentially, would eventually crash and go back to subsistence conditions because food production would grow at a linear pace. "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man," he wrote.

Jeremy Grantham believes that we have finally and permanently outstripped the planet's ability to support us. For the last hundred years or so, we have cheated that by using fertilizer, phosphorus in particular. Now, just like oil, we are about to reach peak phosphorus production.

Here's a link to the article in Business Insider. There are lots of charts to bolster Grantham's view.

Fish Cannot Smell In Polluted Water

From Scientific American comes an article reporting that heavy metal pollution of our waterways is causing fish to loose their sense of smell, which is necessary to find food, mates and helps them avoid being eaten.

Untreated, this is a problem that could cause affected fish populations to crash.

Travel Photo of the Week



Dal Lake, Kashmir

Make The Future Happen Faster

"Make the future happen faster" appears to be the motto of Christopher Chappel, who has put together a kickstarter campaign to build inexpensive, 3D printed, fully jointed robotic hands. His desire is to open up robotics "to a far wider market of makers and researchers than has ever been possible. This should then trigger an explosion of creativity in the areas of robotics, telepresence and ultimately prosthetics."

Nine Ways To Boost Creative Thinking

This creative goosing from Lifehacker is spot on. I use these techniques (and a few others) when I'm in a creative pickle.

My favorite among these is to re-conceptualize the problem. We usually work from methods and approaches that are tried and true. In that way we try to guarantee success from proven models. But that only guarantees the same old stuff. If you really want to be original, think out; outside the box and outrageously. You want to paint a horse? Imagine doing it with light. Want to write a story? Try doing it with crayons. Want to stage a performance? Do it with LEGOs.

That's what imagination's for, anyway.

The Rolling Hut Is The Best Alternative To An RV

From Gizmodo comes this article on rolling huts as an alternative to recreational vehicles. These particular shelters were designed by Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig Architects and are grouped in "herds" of six units at a campground in Washington's Methow Valley.

Beautifully designed, the somewhat spartan  interiors boast wood paneling, a small refrigerator, microwave, fireplace and Wi-Fi. There is a sleeping platform for two, and modular furniture in the living area that can be reconfigured to sleep two more. Each hut has an adjacent portable toilet.

Fun Time! Welcome To Your Awesome Robot! Cardboard Robots For Kids!

Children's writer Viviane Schwarz has come up with this wonderful book illustrating how easy it is to make a cardboard robot complete with gears, dials, internal chutes, storage, and brightly colored warnings labels.  It is stuffed with lots of ideas to customize your robot with hoses, typewriter keys, straps and other items to lend just the right touch to your robot overlord.

Ice Sheet Regenerating Skyscraper

"Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."
   - Charles Dudley Warner

Well those days are over. Due to global warming and the destructive affects of the climate changes that has brought, more and more people are devising ways to ameliorate those effects.

Enter the eVolo 2013 Skyscraper Competition. It is an annual contest that investigates the future of tall buildings. This year's winner is Derek Pirozzi from the United States. His project is a giant floating canopy that prevents the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice while harvesting solar energy.

When Did We Get Here?

For as long as I've been on the planet, we've been taught that humans reached the American continents some 10,000 years ago from Asia across the Bering Straight. The South American part of that is now being challenged by ongoing field work currently  being done in Brazil.

Stone tools have been found at a Brazilian rock-shelter may date back as far as 22,000 years ago.  This article on the Science News website discusses the controversial evidence found at various sites and the work being done to find out exactly when humans reached this hemisphere.

Travel Photo of the Week

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris

Insect Wings Shred Bacteria To Pieces

Here's another interesting piece from Scientific American. It seems that cicada wings have the ability to shred bacteria.The wings are covered by a vast hexagonal array of 'nanopillars' - blunted spikes on a similar size scale to bacteria.

"When a bacterium settles on the wing surface, its cellular membrane sticks to the surface of the nanopillars and stretches into the crevices between them, where it experiences the most strain. If the membrane is soft enough, it ruptures."

Monkeys Stay Away From Mean People

This comes from Scientific American. It seems that monkeys can use human body language and behavior to decide whether people are nice or not, then the monkeys avoid contact with people they deem as "not nice."

The article states that capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) tend to avoid individuals who refuse aid to others, according to a study published in Nature Communications.

“Humans can build up an impression about somebody just based on what we see,” says author James Anderson, a comparative psychologist at the University of Stirling, UK. The capuchin results suggest that this skill “probably extends to other species.”

The article goes on to say that similar biases have been shown in chimpanzees and in 3-month-old humans and adds that "the capuchin study suggests that being able to identify undesirable social partners has ancient evolutionary roots."

Now if only adult humans could learn this trick.

A Billboard That Creates Drinkable Water Out Of Thin Air

Facts: The billboard pictured to the right is real. It’s in Lima, Peru. It produces around 26 gallons of water a day from nothing more than humidity, a little electricity, a basic filtration system and gravity.

Although the atmospheric humidity averages around 83%, Lima gets about half an inch of precipitation a year, making it one of the driest cities on earth. With this technology, potable water can be made available to all.

Fun Time! The MATRIX in 60 Seconds! (animated)

Giant NASA Spider Robots Could 3D Print Moon Base

From Ars Techica comes the news that the first Moon base might not be man made. Space architects Tomas Rousek, Katarina Eriksson and Ondrej Doule and scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are cooking up a plan to build giant spider robots to do the construction.

They propose using microwaves, no more powerful than your kitchen's, to melt lunar dust and fuse it into solid blocks and then the giant spider robots (I never get tired of writing those words) would assemble the habitat.

Sound like science fiction? Here's a video of a half-size prototype of the giant spider robot.

How Long Is Humanity’s Future?

Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom spends an inordinate amount of time writing about human extinction. He believes that there are good reasons for mankind to contemplate its end. After all, 95% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet are extinct.

But what really keeps Bostrom up at night is not the thought of annihilation by asteroid or global warming. It's the thought that our undoing will be the very technologies that we've created.

The things that worry him most? Biological tech and artificial intelligence (AI). Each could herald the demise of humanity. Nuclear war is down the list somewhat.

On the other hand there's Daniel Dewey. He spends his time imagining a future where AIs cure diseases and help us get to the stars. All this is happening at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute.

How long is humanity's future? Here's link to the article by Ross Andersen, who went to Oxford to interview Bostrom and his colleagues to ask that question.

Travel Photo of the Week

Pearl Waterfall, China

The New "X" Particle

Exciting word from CERN that there is a new X particle out there. Discovered by physicists in Japan in 2003, it took a backseat while everyone else was all caught up in finding the Higgs Boson.

This week, at a conference in Italy, CERN presented the first full measurement of the quantum numbers of the X. The result? The X is not a meson and is something much more exotic.

LHCb physicist Dr Matt Needham has said, "this measurement is a great step forward in understanding this mysterious X. The real nature is still unclear."

But they are expecting that it's nature will soon become clear. Whatever that result, CERN is confident that this particle is an "altogether new state of matter."

We Didn’t Domesticate Dogs. They Domesticated Us.

In this wonderful piece published on National Geographic's website, Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods opine that mankind was probably approached by friendly wolves and  that instead of thinking of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, perhaps we might better think of it as survival of the friendliest.

"Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated."

The two researchers believe that it was this relationship that caused the animals to not only change their appearance (splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails), but also their psychology. They evolved the ability to read human gestures.

 "As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it. But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives-chimpanzees and bonobos-can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can. Dogs are remarkably similar to human infants in the way they pay attention to us. This ability accounts for the extraordinary communication we have with our dogs."

And they believe that with these new abilities, people who used dogs to hunt would have a distinct advantage over those who did not and argue that the dogs realized that allying with humans improved their odds at the hunt, also. They also suggest that dogs may have been the catalyst for our civilization.

Maybe in another thousand years, they'll be able to talk. I hope so.

Here are two more links on this. One from the Wall Street Journal and another from Smithsonian.

Seeing Through Fire

One of the difficulties firefighters face is being able to see if someone is trapped behind flames. By shining infrared laser light into a scene, information carried by rays reflected by objects or people can be  reconstructed to see if this is the case. This technique was used  to produce the video below.

Developed by Pietro Ferraro and colleagues from the National Institute of Optics in Pozzuoli, Italy, they plan to make a device that houses both the laser and the holographic camera, so the system can be placed inside buildings or tunnels. There appear to be biomedical uses, also.

Here's a link to the original New Scientist article.

Fun Time! LEGO Ghostbusters Headquarters!

From LEGO toy artist Alex Jones, comes this wonderful creation: the Ghostbusters headquarters done in LEGOS!

It is fully furnished on the inside. Mr. Jones used both films and the cartoon series as guides to what all the rooms contained. Here's link to his site which has many more photos and a short video on this special piece of fan goodness.

Is Cocoa The Brain Drug Of The Future?

That's the title of an article in Scientific American highlighting research done at the University of L'Aquila in Italy that shows that raw cocoa may be packed with brain-boosting compounds. The research suggests that cognitive function in the elderly is improved by ingesting high levels of natural compounds found in cocoa called flavanols.

But don't gorge on chocolate yet; most of the cognition enhancing compounds are removed during the process of making the the candy. Even dark chocolate has most of the flavanols removed.

One curious correlation of greater national chocolate consumption is highlighted in the article:

"The more chocolate a population consumes, the more Nobel Laureates it has: Columbia University's Franz Messerli discovered a positive correlation between annual chocolate consumption per capita and a country's number of Nobel Prize winners per 10 million people. The study is not meant to seriously imply that brilliance is the result of chocolate consumption—although Messerli believes chocolate probably has some benefits, his analysis was inspired purely by whimsical curiosity and exemplifies the hazards of reading too much into a correlation."

There's some food for thought.