Snippets on Science and Tech today

What a wonderful page you have here. I have just finished reading all the comments and have enjoyed them all. Its better than buying the New Scientist which I buy once a month... I find the facts fascinating.. keep it up

Hopefully not in front of a class first time Appy! Do you know of an 'interesting' way to talk about back emf? Or is it just chalk and talk??? It's one thing to know this stuff, it's quite another to come up with a way to teach it!

hi Andre
Still struggling with my assignment so nothing interesting today....

well I wonder if I can come up with an ans for your query Suzy, for I am no good in teaching (personally I feel that way!)something to do with my temper perhaps..mmm back emf or counter emf varies with the load ,the more the load min the back emf..dunno how you will make it interesting!! will just chk the net for your sake..havent done any subject related search so far..

Recent research on the diminishing population of Eagles/Vultures in our state reveals a shocking fact.The reason for the extinction of these birds is renal failure caused by a chemical called cadmium.
The cattle population in the rural area when sick are given shots of pain killers which has this chemical in a higher dose. These cattle are discarded in the open wasteland. And the avian population that live on these dead carcass succumb to the contamination over a period of time. Well folks, the pain killer we take also have the same chemical and prolonged usage of such drugs is sure to cause trouble.

But then if you look at the equation of risk virsus cure, this factor is overlooked perhaps.
(up to some extent)For example, I take a banned drug(yes not ashamed in accepting it) for my migraine.I am very well aware of the side effect. but still the present good living is also important for me.

Hi, appy and Suzy and Andre (sorry, I forgot how to make your accent mark)! Wow! This is a VERY interesting "Forum" page! Thank you for starting and contributing to it! I guess I should visit more often!

I saw a headline: 200-pound dinosaur skull found. Well that's huge so I wanted to find out more. It has been named Gryposaurus monumentensis (I had to copy-paste that name), is a duck-billed dinosaur, and it was found in Utah. What I couldn't find out was if it was the whole dinosaur that was supposed to weight 200 pounds, or the skull. 90kg seems a lot for a skull! I guess I'll keep searching.....

I agree that a 200-pound seem amazing, but that "monumentensis" part of the name suggests it's extremely large! Two hundred pounds for the entire skeleton, on the other hand, seems rather small, relatively speaking.

Hi, Suzy. Here's more information:

The Gryposaurus monumentensis is a newly discovered dinosaur that roamed the Earth 75 million years ago, devouring everything in its path.

The 9m (29ft) long gryposaurus monumentensis had 300 teeth, with 500 more 'stored' in its head, ready to grow as replacements. The massive creature could chew its way through any plant.

The research, printed in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, was carried out by experts from Utah.

Palaeontologist Scott Sampson commented on its massive skull and skeleton. He added: 'This is a brand new and extremely important window into the world of dinosaurs.' Gryposaurs were first discovered in 1913 but this is a new variety. It is one of a number of new species of dinosaur found at the Grand Staircase site in Utah.

Its remains were first discovered five years ago by a furniture maker from Pennsylvania.

Here's a website with more information about Gryposaurus monumentensis:

http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/schwarzenegger-of-dinosaurs-discovered/20071003163 009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001
Be sure to eliminate spaces.

Here's the text of the article:

'Schwarzenegger' of Dinosaurs Discovered
By Ker Than,
Posted: 2007-10-04 08:09:10
Filed Under: Science News

(Oct. 3) - A toothy, big-boned dinosaur uncovered in Utah is helping scientists recreate what ancient North America looked like 75 million years ago.

Dubbed Gryposaurus monumentensis, the new species was a member of the so-called duckbilled dinosaurs, so named because their flat, bony snouts resembled duck beaks. Unlike ducks, however, duckbilled dinosaurs, also called hadrosaurs, had teeth, which they used to munch on tough, fibrous plants.

Utah Museum of Natural History Scientists in Utah uncovered the remains of Gryposaurus monumentensis, a new species that was a member of the so-called duckbilled dinosaurs.

Similar to a shark, a duckbilled dinosaur essentially had a conveyer belt of teeth in its mouth, a seemingly endless supply. G. monumentensis, for example, had more than 300 teeth available in its mouth to slice up plants. And stacked below in columns hidden within the jawbone were many more replacement teeth, so a duckbill might have sported more than 800 teeth at any moment.

"It was capable of eating most any plant it wanted to," said Terry Gates, a paleontologist at the Utah Museum of Natural History and the University of Utah who was involved in the discovery. "With its robust jaws, no plant stood a chance."

Jaws weren't the only robust thing about G. monumentensis. All of its bones were likewise massive. Scott Sampson, another Utah Museum paleontologist who was involved in the study, called the animal the "Arnold Schwarzenegger of duckbilled dinosaurs."

"It was like a dinosaur on steroids," Sampson added. "The bones were thick, not just in the skull, but in the limbs as well."

The researchers think G. monumentensis was a key player in the ecosystem of ancient North America. "Duckbilled dinosaurs are the most common fossil that we find in the rock that we do our prospecting," Gates said. "From that we know they were probably one of the most common dinosaurs within this ecology 75 million years ago."

The new species is detailed in the Oct. 3 issue of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Most of what is known about G. monumentensis comes from a massive well-preserved skull and jawbone unearthed by the researchers in the Kaiparowits Formation in Utah in 2003. The team later found enough bones in other areas of the site to assemble a nearly complete skeleton. From these bones, paleontologists estimate the creature's head would have been just under three feet (one meter) in length, with an adult G. monumentensis measuring up to 30 feet (9 meters) in length.

The heftiness of G. monumentensis poses several problems for paleontologists trying to envision what North America looked like 75 million years ago. How the massive duckbill could survive alongside other giants, and why it d

Here's the rest of the article:

The heftiness of G. monumentensis poses several problems for paleontologists trying to envision what North America looked like 75 million years ago. How the massive duckbill could survive alongside other giants, and why it didn't mingle even with its own relatives, are two head-scratchers.

At that time, southern Utah was very different from the arid desert and red-rock country there today. During much of the Late Cretaceous, a shallow sea split North America into eastern and western landmasses.

The western landmass, where G. monumentensis lived, was only about one-fifth the size of North America. Yet crammed on this relatively small island were several large plant-eating dinosaur species.

While G. monumentensis chomped greens in Utah, other species of duckbilled dinosaurs were grazing farther north in places such as Montana and Alberta, Canada.

Sampson estimates that as many as six duckbilled dinosaur species lived in so-called "West America" at any one time, up to 30 different duckbilled species over a span of several million years. And all of this was in addition to other large plant-eating dinosaurs, such as horned reptiles that were the ancestors of Triceratops.

Why the multiple duckbilled species didn't intermingle more is a mystery, since scientists know of no physical barriers like rivers or mountains that would have impeded the creatures' movements. "Think about white-tailed deer that are found all over North America today," Sampson said. "We wouldn't expect to see that many kinds of species and separated on such a fine resolution."

A related mystery is how such a relatively small landmass could support so many massive plant-eaters. One idea is that duckbills and other large plant-eaters had slower metabolisms, allowing them to subsist on much less food, yet still grow to their gargantuan sizes. Or there might have been an unusual overabundance of plants for dinosaurs to graze on. Yet another idea is that the climate of West America varied across latitudes, and that this "climate gradient" prevented dinosaurs from mixing.

If "the climates were somewhat different, then the plants would have been different," Sampson said. "If the plants were different, then the plant-eating animals are going to be different."

Thanks Julie! That was amazing! Even though this dinosaur was a plant eater, it sounds like it would be terrifying to encounter one....

The Nobel Prize for medicine was announced and was awarded for the process of gene targeting - removing a gene and replacing it with another (how's that for oversimplification?!) One of the winners was 82 - imagine being that productive at that age!

Scientists have discovered that elephants in Africa will run away if they hear the sound of buzzing bees. African honeybees are apparently extremely aggressive and their stings are very painful. The scientists are proposing placing hives near farmland to deter elephants from damaging crops, thereby allowing elephants and humans to get along together. Now if they could only solve the problem of the bees stinging the humans!!

Thank you Julie. It is so interesting to read about the past history of life..and I'm glad that I wasn't around in those days either!!

The latest issue of Current Science, the international science journal, reports the finding of the smallest known land vertebrate in India, a miniature frog, from Kurichiyarmala in Kerala’s Wayanad district on the Western Ghats of peninsular India. This new species of frog, measuring only between 10 and 14 millimetres in size in adult males, belongs to the Nyctibatrachidae family and they have named it Nyctibatrachus minimus

so balanced the page with that post.:)

Nobel prize ,well a tongue-in -cheek homage to the real Nobel laureates ,the awards for bizarre research and inventions has been announced, the Igs being chosen by the Annals of Improbable Reaearch magazine. Some scientists have objected this, stating that it tarnish the legitimate research.But others say a sense of fun humanizes the scienists.

The highly coveted peace prize was awarded to u.s.
airforce lab for developing a 'G ay bomb'..a chemical weapon that would make the enemy soldiers become sexually irresistable to each other... none showed up to receive the award, but then a disco ball was dropped over the stage to demonstrate the bomb, an official censor of the evening activities intervened and it was aborted.(hard to type this post with a straight face, CSL!!)
and this ceremony was conducted at Harvard University, MA.

We watched an interesting program on Public TV the other night. They talked about how man had started in Africa. From there he wandered into other parts of the earth. One of the first places he went to was Australia. One small part of the program was about Nomads that live in the Northern Soviet Union. They raise and live on reindeer. They live in tents. To sleep at night, they put a smaller tent inside a larger tent. In the smaller tent they leave candles burning while they sleep. Temperatures there get down to 100 degrees below 0. We assumed that was (F). The color of man's skin would change, eventually, according to the climate where he lived. It was a very interesting program.

The Nobel Prize for Physics has now been announced. Two physicists identified idependently the physical effect called giant magnetoresistance. It is this effect that allows computers to store huge amounts of information. Yay for giant magnetoresistance!! p.s. The is about a small change magnetism causing a greater change in electrical resistance.

hi Debby
I start to shiver at 12 deg C!! I can't imagine those kinds of temperatures, in either C or F!

Hi Suzy - When they sleep in the 2nd tent, they use no blankets, just their clothes. Unbelievable! It makes me cold just to think about it. There were only 9 people in this one particular group. I thought it seemed very small. I can't imagine a baby surviving in that climate!

The program was very interesting. They were following a certain "lineage" of people by testing "DNA."

I am amazed at how much info those "memory sticks" hold. My DIL is an artist who "blows glass." She takes pictures of her items and puts them on memory sticks. Technology has come so far. It is hard to keep up with everything.

And now the Nobel prize for Chemistry - awarded for studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces. One of the results of Gerhard Ertl's research has been an understanding of the thinning of the ozone layer. According to the Associated Press: "Ertl’s research laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhaust and even why even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21217633/

Science scores another Nobel with the Nobel Peace prize going to Al Gore and the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)for their work raising awareness of the problem of climate change. See http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=305293 for a list of Nobel Peace prize winners since 1980...

I was trying to decide how science could score the Nobel for literature which was awarded to British writer Doris Lessing for 'five decades of epic novels that have covered feminism and politics, as well her youth in Africa.' Perhaps we could claim that the fact the a woman won as scientific proof that women are really, really smart? What do you think? Can you think of another way science can claim this one?

Madame Curry? I think she had something to do with the x-ray?

Word for the day: phytoremediation
The technique of using plants to clean up polluted soil in order to make poisons less harmful.
Arsenic, trichloroethylene, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, vinyl chloride, are some of the nasties that are being (experimentally) removed from soil using plants (including trees.
In air pollution experiments using 6-inch (15-centimeter) modified poplars in sealed containers, the plants were better at taking up gaseous trichloroethylene and benzene...

That is intersting, Suzy. Thanks for the info!

Human digits came from fish..... a palaeontologist at London's Natural History Museum, said the small fin bones of the Queensland lungfish are much the same as fingers and toes in modern back-boned land animals. Unfortunately the palaeontologist also said "We have a case of fish fingers in the Queensland lungfish" Groan!!!

The Queensland lungfish is known as a living fossil because it has survived since first appearing on the fossil record more than 100 million years ago.

Craig Venter;
Marveric biologist, the man who mapped the genomes,a controversial DNA scientist, has claimed that his team has constructed a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to declare the creation of the first artificial life form on planet Earth. Researchers hope that the discovery will contribute to developments in bioengineering, to help deal with climate change or provide alternative energy sources.
you can learn more on this topic by chking the following link..
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=126844

A headline in Newsweek: Free the Asteroid! (It Didn't Kill the Dinosaurs) Apparently the timing is off. A group of palaentologists believe it was a series of volcanic eruptions in India that are to blame. The timing is right, and these eruptions apparently are estimated to have released ten times more climate-altering gases (mostly carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide) into the atmosphere than the asteroid impact. Some scientists are sticking with the asteroid theory, and the article ends with the sentence: but it never hurts to be reminded that even the most popular theories in science are only as good as the next experiment.

Why is it that some of the best inventions are the result of research for war?

British tanks can now have a sort of invisibility cloak (very Harry Potterish). Using cameras and projectors, tanks can be made invisible to observers on a battlefield. Witnesses to a demonstration said they wouldn't have believed it if they hadn't seen it for themselves. Researchers are now trying to work out a way to make tanks invisible without using the cameras and projectors.

I heard something the other day that I hadn't heard before. I heard the world was knocked about 3 degrees off of its axis when the earthquake hit that caused the Sunami. Has any one else heard any thing about this? I thought it was interesting. Of course, if it did happen, it would explain some of the weird weather we have been experiencing.

Hi Debby, I googled 'earth axis earthquake' and found this article - though it's mostly about time changes rather than movement of the axis..
http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PLATETEC/RotationQk2004.HTM
Still looking....