Snippets on Science and Tech today

It has been suggested that reintroducing dingos to the wild could protect native species. The following is from the Australian newspaper...

According to Professor Dickman, dingoes would help to control feral foxes and cats that he claimed were behind the decrease in numbers and extinction of small animals such as the NSW bilby and species of native mice.

He said 40 per cent of marsupials and 75 per cent of native mice are now extinct in semi-arid regions of western NSW, central Queensland and parts of Western Australia.

I always thought I wanted to be cremated, but have now discovered that I could be composted instead! A Swedish biologist has come up with a way to do it. I would be frozen, put in a nitrogen bath, vibrated to powder, put in a biodegradable bag, six months later I would be compost....

Pregnant mothers who get the flu during their second trimester have a greater chance of having babies with autism or schizophrenia. Now that scientists know this they can work on reversing the effects....

hey Suzy,no i dont think you are weird..reading sci news and enjoying it isnt anything abnormal..but this compost stuff is disturbing!!!!
havent given much thought abt it..in our custom we burn and disperse the ashes in some river or ocean..it is also 100%bio degradable!!!

Hi appy, apparently when we are cremated noxious gases and poisons go into the atmosphere. I hadn't thought about that when i chose cremation. There are officials blocking the 'compost' choice because of the concerns about harmful chemicals remaining in the compost. Really shouldn't be any different to animals decomposing in the wild??? Benefits aside, I can't quite get my head around being vibrated to powder!

The latest theory about bipedalism - we walk upright because it is 'energetically less costly'. Humans walking on two feet use one quarter the energy of chimpanzees knuckle-walking on four limbs. Source = ABC news

Poisonous fumes, dust and smog are staining the white-marbled Queen Victoria Memorial, one of India's best-known landmarks from the days of the British empire, a leading environmental agency warned on Monday.

i would love to visit this memorial! 3000 exhibits in 25 galleries! It would take days to see everything....

...how about this from 'You are What you eat'...
'Yvonne, who was overweight, depressed, exhausted and constipated, survived mainly on chips and microwaved meals. She never, ever ate real food. To bring Yvonne to her senses, I teasingly suggested that if she were to drop dead tomorrow, her body would literally take years to decompose because she was so full of all these preservatives.' - is Gillian McKeith being serious or not?

The way she has written it suggests that Gillian was joking, but it sounded intriguing so I googled 'preservatives and decomposition' and discovered a conversation on snopes. There was talk of antimicobials versus antioxidants, weather and temperature and so on. This one was my favourite though:
Also, as an interesting point in this, most preservatives lock in moisture, keeping it from evaporating, and keeping a product seemingly fresher. Where as decomposition is caused primarily by bacteria which would feed off this excess moisture and decay you faster if the science of preservative poisoning actually worked.

I like the way he/she thought outside the box... Often wish I could do that....

I have always hoped that there was life on other planets and finding water on HD 189733b (we should rename it something more interesting) suggests that there might be. The geek in me finds it incredible that they can detect water on a planet 64 light years away and tell us what the planet is made of and how hot it is!!! The next time I have a minute I am going to visit www.galaxyzoo.org to look at the pictures there.

Saturn's 60th moon has just been discovered. It is about 2km in diameter. Before Cassini only 18 moons had been identified...

China has produced the world's first cloned rabbit using a biological process that takes cells from a fetus, state media said on Tuesday.
The Chinese rabbit was the world's first to be cloned using 'fibroblast' cells from a fetal rabbit, the China Daily said.with this Chinese cloning research has reached a global advanced level.

Suzy - it IS interesting what scientists can tell us, but how useful (at least at this time) is information about something that was true 64 light years ago? Yes, I know light years isn't a unit of time, but it does tell me that the info is pretty old.
This was the first time I got to this 'page' - you and appy are on a higher level than I usually think!!!

Hi Jamie - I like your 'light years ago' comment! It's a great way to express it and I might borrow it.... I sometimes wonder about the usefulness of the information too. There's a few arguments out there, but the only one that makes any sense to me is that it's interesting! If my friends knew how much of a geek I really am they would be shocked!

ah ha!some activity in here..welcome Jamie.i agree with Suzy regarding the usefulness of the info posted here.just a lil effort to provide a glimpse of whats happening around us,in the field of science from various source is the purpose of this page.but i wonder how far its reached the ppl for we get no feed back as such regarding the same..still i continue to post here whenevr i come across something really eye catching..Suzy fills in the gap with her interesting bits and pieces and helped me keep this page alive..more input is welcome...

the picture in the tough puzzle,a starling prompted me to make this post..
starlings can detect insecticidal compounds in vegetation, which they utilize to keep their nests bug-free..isnt it amazing??

and more on the behavior of birds and critters if their young ones have been disturbed by the humans..
theres a myth..Birds and critters abandon their young ones at the slightest human touch.And the myth derives from the belief that birds can detect human scent.Infact birds have relatively small and simple olfactory nerves, which limit their sense of smell.But for a couple of birds like the hawk,vulture that can smell the gas from the decayed prey,and the starlings that identifies the insecticide vegetation,no bird's sense of smell is cued to human scent.The same logic applies to most animals. 'In general, wild animals bond with their young and do not quickly abandon them,' Wild rabbits are the exception to this rule.Of course, wild animals should be left undisturbed as much as possible.
But if a baby bird is found on the ground without its fledgling feathers and the nest is easily within reach, it can be returned without harm. The parents will welcome it back with open wings.

I just thought I'd let you know that I come here often to read your science comments. Whilst a great many of them sail straight over my head, that doesn't stop me from trying to expand my mind. Sorry I don't have anything to contribute, this is more my hubby's kind of thing, but I thought I'd let you know this page is read.

Today's headlines mention a synchrotron which has been built in Melbourne. So what? I once heard that a synchrotron was used to find out what killed Pharlap - but I don't know if that's true. The link below takes you to a list of some of the amazing things that have been done with a synchrotron....

http://www.synchrotron.vic.gov.au/content.asp?document_id=269

In outback Australia a 4 kilometre deep hole is being drilled in order to harness geothermal energy - the heat in the earth itself. Water is pumped down into the hot rocks and the hot water that returns is used to generate electricity.

Ants are being studied to get ideas for crowd control - particularly panicked crowds. So far it has been shown that putting a barrier, like a pillar, in front of exit doors, actually speeds up evacuation efforts by reducing the tendency of people to push into each other. This information could be useful in case of fire or terrorist attack.

According to an article in Science Daily, reading ability can protect lead smelter workers from the cognitive damage that can result from exposure to lead. Workers with a high reading ability (12th grade or higher) had less 'damage' than those with a reading ability of 11th grade or lower. The article says there are multiple theories explaining this, which with my limited understanding of the brain seem to come down to its flexibility. Unfortunately the workers were not protected from effects on their 'motor speed' or motor skills.

PEAK..whats this??
Pulsed Electron Avalanche Knife..
Use..it is used to perform cataract surgery in complicated cases.
How?...by cutting tissue with short bursts of electric pulses.
Advantage?..unlike conventional techniques, use of PEAK caused very little damage to healthy tissues surrounding the target area.The cutting made with this is very precise,resulting in...minimal collateral damage at the edges of the cut.

Sorry i haven't been around to comment lately - I'm supposed to be working on assignments. To meet the requirements of one of them I have spent hours looking at dozens of websites about electricity, magnetism, motors, generators, transformers, power grids..... There are some fantastic resources out there....

Sugar and spice and everything nice hold no interest for a cat. They lack the gene that permits mammals to taste sweetness.You can rest assured,they will never snatch your unattended desert!

Poor cats!What a life to be deprived of sweet things!

Obesity obsess all..Eating fatty foods, not exercising and somehow remaining lean and healthy--it's the dream of all. It may become possible perhaps, if the present research thats proved a success in mice is extended to the humans. The scientists have developed mice that resist obesity and diabetes despite eating a diet high in fat, by dubbibg a uncoupling protien-1 in the system, which when produced in muscle tissue mimics the effects of exercise.That is attaining the benefit of exercise without actually sweating it out! The accumulation of fat is avoided by this protein-1 which converts the fat in to heat energy.

by dubbing..(sorry got a bit carried away by the news!)

Bring it on!!!

Hi Appy
I just read an interesting perspective on scientific advances and their dangers.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22284831-27703,00.html
It discusses the need for public debate of research and the power to stop that research. I agree/disagree. Didn't someone get into BIG trouble once for proposing that the earth moved around the sun and not the other way around? But on the other hand, there's some dangerous science out there, as the article mentions (artifically engineering old viruses...)

The cost of filtering and recycling water could be reduced in a few years' time due to a new material developed by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the Public Utilities Board (PUB), in Singapore. The material that is being engineered by researchers from NTU and the PUB uses nanotechnology, which controls matter on a scale smaller than 1 micrometre, and is made up of nano-sized crystals,that capture a large amount of unwanted matter in the water.Unlike the conventional filter,this new technology will make the filter double up as a reactor which will be able to destroy unwanted material.
The final goal, which will take a few years, is to make a cleaning filter or membrane out of the nano-material.To date, the filter can remove at least 20 percent more organic carbon which is one of the parameters to assess cleaner water.

Wasn't the lunar eclipse amazing! My family and I went out to check it out every few minutes until the moon was completely covered and a dark, mottled, red. Usually when these things happen it is raining or just overcast and I miss them. This year the eclipse happened at the perfect time of day (7-8pm) and with a clear sky.

Did you know that the geographic north pole (defined by the rotation of the earth about its axis) and the magnetic north pole are not the same? The magnetic poles change over time. In 2002, when the book I'm reading was published, the magnetic north pole was approximately 1600 km south of the geographic north pole...

In 2029 an asteroid will pass closer to earth than many communications satellites. The good news is that researchers believe there is virtually no chance of it hitting earth, and the distance is expected to be about 36,000km.

Did some interesting reading today in a local journal..its all abt kidney and its functions..todays topic was abt the Nephrons..
The nephron is the functional unit of the kidney, responsible for the actual purification and filtration of the blood.There are nearly 1.3 million Nephrons in each kidney..and to simplify things..if I remove the tubelike structures to form a thread, I can reach from my place to NY!
Amazing....now I bet,next time when you visit the loo you cant help thinking abt these nephrons!!

A recent experiment using a mock-up airplane found that our body oils cause the problems on planes. They react with ozone (very high levels in the atmosphere at flying heights) to create chemicals that cause headaches, nasal irritation, dry eyes and lips, and a few other common air travel complaints. An ozone destroying catalyst in the ventilation systems, already common on wide-body planes, but not narrow-body planes, can solve the problem. Science Daily and msnbc news are both reporting this today.

Researchers in Germany have converted stem cells from adult human bone marrow into another sort of stem cell -- ones that will turn into functioning brain cells. The findings could lead to people with conditions such as Alzheimer Disease becoming their own donors to repair brain tissue.
This devastating neurological disorder may be treated with new screening methods that has been developed as a result of painstaking research in the lab for decades.

Wish I had something interesting to contribute today - I'm currently trying to complete an assignment and, although it is science based, it's not terribly innovative information. e.g. Did you know that motors use the effect of forces on current carrying conductors in magnetic fields??? Don't yawn - it's rude !

Ha! no yawn here Suzy..motors have kept me awake..huge chapters and very less time to cover them..well now the force you are talking abt is perpendicular to the said current carrying conductors and the magnetic field..would you like me to state the law?...lol,lol..

and my first assignment as a graduate trainee was, to dismantle and reassemble an Induction motor!!