Diamond no longer nature’s hardest material

Scientists at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and University of Nevada, Las Vegas had created materials which are harder than diamond.  Diamonds were thought as the hardest material in this world; however scientists converted certain materials with compressive pressure under indenter which were transformed into materials harder than diamond.  The two materials were wurtzite boron nitride (w-BN) and lonsdaleite (hexagonal diamond).  It was said that lonsdaleite was 50% harder than w-BN.  The compressive pressure caused the structural phase transformation and atomic bonds flipping to transform the materials.  The finding was published in Physical Review Letters. – kuku

Diamond will always be a girl’s best friend, but it may soon lose favour with industrial drillers.

The gemstone lost its title of the “world’s hardest material” to man-made nanomaterials some time ago. Now a rare natural substance looks likely to leave them all far behind – at 58% harder than diamond.

Zicheng Pan at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and colleagues simulated how atoms in two substances believed to have promise as very hard materials would respond to the stress of a finely tipped probe pushing down on them.

Extreme conditions

The first, wurtzite boron nitride has a similar structure to diamond, but is made up of different atoms.

The second, the mineral lonsdaleite, or hexagonal diamond is made from carbon atoms just like diamond, but they are arranged in a different shape.

Only small amounts of wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite exist naturally or have been made in the lab so until now no one had realised their superior strength. The simulation showed that wurtzide boron nitride would withstand 18% more stress than diamond, and lonsdaleite 58% more. If the results are confirmed with physical experiments, both materials would be far harder than any substance ever measured.

Doing those tests won’t be easy, though. Because both are rare in nature, a way is needed to make enough of either of them to test the prediction.

Rare mineral lonsdaleite is sometimes formed when meteorites containing graphite hit Earth, while wurtzite boron nitride is formed during volcanic eruptions that produce very high temperatures and pressures.

Flexible friend

If confirmed, however, wurtzite boron nitride may turn out most useful of the two, because it is stable in oxygen at higher temperatures than diamond. This makes it ideal to place on the tips of cutting and drilling tools operating at high temperatures, or as corrosion resistant films c on the surface of a space vehicle, for example.

Paradoxically, wurtzite boron nitride’s hardness appears to come from the flexibility of the bonds between the atoms that make it up. When the material is stressed some bonds re-orientate themselves by about 90º to relieve the tension.

Although diamond undergoes a similar process, something about the structure of wurtzite boron nitride makes it nearly 80% stronger after the process takes place, says study co-author Changfeng Chen at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, an ability diamond does not have. …

via Diamond no longer nature’s hardest material – tech – 16 February 2009 – New Scientist.

Scientist Predicts A ‘Miserable Future’ For Our Universe

How did the universe begin? How will it end? Do other universes exist? Everyone at some time or another ponders these questions. Generations of researchers have brought us to our current point of understanding, but our picture of the universe has changed more in the past decade or so than it did in the past century. The changes have had a significant effect upon our understanding of the future of the universe and life within it.

Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University, will describe how these revolutionary discoveries in cosmology have dramatically altered our views on the universe at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting on Feb. 16.

In his lecture “Our Miserable Future,” Krauss will discuss the impact of new discoveries, including the key facts that the universe is flat and the dominant form of energy in the universe resides in empty space. While significantly impacting our understanding of the future of our universe, these changes have also effected the questions asked in modern cosmology, forcing researchers to confront several profound questions.

“Are fundamental cosmological questions falsifiable? Are the laws of nature fixed, or environmental? Are there fundamental cosmological limits to knowledge, and to life?” asks Krauss, a professor in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences where he is a faculty member in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Physics Department. “The revolutionary developments of the past decade have forced us to confront truly fundamental questions at the basis of science.

“In the far future all evidence of the big bang will disappear and scientists will think we live in a static eternal universe,” explains Krauss.

Looking out at a night sky twinkling with distant light, it’s a disturbing challenge to imagine that one day – far in the future – we will be alone in a dark empty universe. The rest of the universe will disappear before our very eyes.

via Scientist Predicts A ‘Miserable Future’ For Our Universe.

Leukemia patients treated with arsenic, vitamin A

Doctors appear to have safely and successfully treated patients with cancer of the blood and bone marrow with a combination of arsenic and vitamin A, according to long-term study in China.

In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the doctors said they prescribed the regimen to 85 patients and monitored them for an average of 70 months.

Of these, 80 patients went into complete remission and the researchers did not find any associated long-term problems in their heart or lungs and there was no development of secondary cancers.

“Two years after their treatment, the patients had arsenic blood and urine levels well below safety limits, and only slightly higher than controls,” they wrote.

“The treatment was effective … and worked better than either drug given alone.”

The authors recommended that the treatment be given to patients with blood and bone marrow cancer, or acute promyelocytic Leukemia.

While vitamin A is regarded by some experts as a viable treatment, this is the first time that its use has been monitored for such an extended period of time.

Since the 18th century, arsenic compounds have been used as medicines to treat certain ailments. The US Food and Drug Administration approved it for the treatment of people with blood and bone marrow cancer in 2000.

via NewsDaily: Leukemia patients treated with arsenic, vitamin A.

What? I just fell out of my chair. A cancer cure article without the phrase, “still years away”?? Oh, I see the key phrase now:  “since the 18th century”. This article shows how long it takes to get a cancer treatment approved I guess.

Baboons And Pigeons Are Capable Of Higher-level Cognition, Behavioral Studies Show

It’s safe to say that humans are smarter than animals, but a University of Iowa researcher is investigating the extent of that disparity in intelligence.

And, it may not be as great a gap as you suspect, according to UI psychologist Ed Wasserman, who presents his findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting February 12 in Chicago.

One cognitive capacity that is vital to human intelligence is the ability to determine whether two or more items are the same or different – a skill the famous American psychologist William James called the very “backbone” of our thinking. If you have two pennies in your left hand and a nickel and a dime in your right hand, then you can correctly report that the two coins in your left hand are the “same” and that the two coins in your right hand are “different.” You can also make similar judgments with any collection of items.

Wasserman’s research shows that baboons and pigeons can do that, too. A recent study by Wasserman and UI graduate student Dan Brooks found that both pigeons and people can learn same-different discriminations with visual stimuli that never repeat from trial to trial, thus proving that simple memorization cannot explain this cognitive feat.

via Baboons And Pigeons Are Capable Of Higher-level Cognition, Behavioral Studies Show.

Empathy Partly Based On Genes, Mouse Study Shows

The ability to empathize with others is partially determined by genes, according to new research on mice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).

In the study, a highly social strain of mice learned to associate a sound played in a specific cage with something negative simply by hearing a mouse in that cage respond with squeaks of distress. A genetically different mouse strain with fewer social tendencies did not learn any connection between the cues and the other mouse’s distress, showing that the ability to identify and act on another’s emotions may have a genetic basis.

Like humans, mice can automatically sense and respond to others’ positive and negative emotions, such as excitement, fear or anger. Understanding empathy in mice may lead to important discoveries about the social interaction deficits seen in many human psychosocial disorders, including autism, schizophrenia, depression and addiction, the researchers say. For example, nonverbal social cues are frequently used to identify early signs of autism in very young children.

“The core of empathy is being able to have an emotional experience and share that experience with another,” says UW-Madison graduate student Jules Panksepp, who led the work along with undergraduate QiLiang Chen. “We are basically trying to deconstruct empathy into smaller functional units that make it more accessible to biological research.”

Animal models of complex social behaviors such as empathy should bring the field closer to understanding what causes social interaction deficits and how they may be treated.

via Empathy Partly Based On Genes, Mouse Study Shows.

Songbirds Fly Three Times Faster Than Expected

A York University researcher has tracked the migration of songbirds by outfitting them with tiny geolocator backpacks – a world first – revealing that scientists have underestimated their flight performance dramatically.

“Never before has anyone been able to track songbirds for their entire migratory trip,” said study author Bridget Stutchbury, a professor of biology in York’s Faculty of Science & Engineering. “We’re excited to achieve this scientific first.” Songbirds, the most common type of bird in our skies, are too small for conventional satellite tracking.

Stutchbury and her team mounted miniaturized geolocators on 14 wood thrushes and 20 purple martins, breeding in Pennsylvania during 2007, tracking the birds’ fall takeoff, migration to South America, and journey back to North America. In the summer of 2008, they retrieved the geolocators from five wood thrushes and two purple martins and reconstructed individual migration routes and wintering locations.

Data from the geolocators indicated that songbirds can fly in excess of 500 km (311 miles) per day. Previous studies estimated their flight performance at roughly 150 km (93 miles) per day.

The study found that songbirds’ overall migration rate was two to six times more rapid in spring than in fall. For example, one purple martin took 43 days to reach Brazil during fall migration, but in spring returned to its breeding colony in only 13 days. Rapid long-distance movement occurred in both species, said Stutchbury.

“We were flabbergasted by the birds’ spring return times. To have a bird leave Brazil on April 12 and be home by the end of the month was just astounding. We always assumed they left sometime in March,” she said.

via Songbirds Fly Three Times Faster Than Expected.

Heart pill to banish bad memories

Scientists believe a common heart medicine may be able to banish fearful memories from the mind.

The Dutch investigators believe beta-blocker drugs could help people suffering from the emotional after-effects of traumatic experiences.

They believe the drug alters how memories are recalled after carrying out the study of 60 people, Nature Neuroscience reports.

But British experts questioned the ethics of tampering with the mind.

Paul Farmer, chief executive of mental health charity Mind, said he was concerned about the “fundamentally pharmacological” approach to people with problems such as phobias and anxiety.

He said the procedure might also alter good memories and warned against an “accelerated Alzheimer’s” approach.

In the study, the researchers artificially created a fearful memory by associating pictures of spiders with a mild electric shock delivered to the wrists of the volunteers.

A day later the volunteers were split into two groups – one was given the beta blocker propranolol and the other a dummy drug before both were shown the same pictures again.

The researchers assessed how fearful of the pictures the volunteers were by playing sudden noises and measuring how strongly they blinked, something called the “startle response”.

Memories erased

The group that had taken beta blockers showed less fear than the group that had taken the placebo pill.

The following day, once the drug was out of their system, the volunteers were retested. Once again, those who had taken the beta blocker were less startled by the images.

Study leader Dr Merel Kindt explained that although the memories are still intact, the emotional intensity of the memory is dampened.

Dr Kindt stressed that using the procedure for complex conditions such as post traumatic stress disorder was still many years away. … bbc

Wal-Mart’s glow-in-the-dark mystery

It began in late 2007 as a routine audit. Retail giant Wal-Mart noticed that some exit signs at the company’s stores and warehouses had gone missing.

As the audit spread across Wal-Mart’s U.S. operations, the mystery thickened. Stores from Arkansas to Washington began reporting missing signs. They numbered in the hundreds at first, then the thousands. Last month Wal-Mart disclosed that about 15,800 of its exit signs – a stunning 20 per cent of its total inventory – are lost, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for at 4,500 facilities in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Poor housekeeping, certainly, but what’s the big deal?

In a word: radiation.

The signs contain tritium gas, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Tritium glows when it interacts with phosphor particles, a phenomenon that has led to the creation of glow-in-the-dark emergency exit signs.

It’s estimated there are more than 2 million tritium-based exit signs in use across North America.

It turns out that Ontario-based companies SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc. of Pembroke and Shield Source Inc. of Peterborough have sold the lion’s share of these signs, which use tritium produced as a by-product from the operation of Canadian-made Candu nuclear reactors.

The health effects of tritium exposure continue to be a hot topic of debate. It’s not strong enough to penetrate the skin, and in low quantities regulators and industry groups say tritium is safe. But when inhaled or ingested it can cause permanent changes to cells and has been linked to genetic abnormalities, developmental and reproductive problems and other health issues such as cancer.

“The problem is that because it’s hydrogen it can actually become part of your body,” says Shawn-Patrick Stensil of Greenpeace Canada. “The radiation doesn’t emit far, but when it actually becomes part of your cell it’s right next to your DNA. So for a pregnant woman, for example, it can be really dangerous.”

via TheStar.com | Business | Wal-Mart’s glow-in-the-dark mystery.

Fibromyalgia caused by infection?

I have a friend with fibromyalgia and someone told me you can get rid of it and recommended this book:

Are you exhausted but can’t sleep? In pain, but don’t know why? Frustrated because your doctor can’t help?

The best-selling resource for CFIDS & fibromyalgia. In easy-to-understand language, it explains these disorders, their symptoms, their sources, and how to eliminate them. It presents clear, concise, and specific guidelines for diagnosis and treatment. – endfatigue

Thurston’s owner tries to pin down location of 150 bowling balls

Some area residents called the Thurston’s Restaurant bowling alley in Frankfort on Friday night wanting to bowl, but there was one major problem.

All but one of the estimated 150 bowling balls were nowhere to be found.

Alicia Gatto, owner of the restaurant at 147 S. Litchfield St., said the bowling alley was last used Saturday, Feb. 7.

When some men from the restaurant went into the bowling area Friday night, they discovered the balls were gone and told Gatto about it.

“I thought they were joking — totally thought they were joking,” she said. “It’s the case of the missing bowling balls.”

Frankfort police were notified of the incident, she said.

There haven’t been many strikes or gutter balls at the bowling alley recently anyway because it has been closed — except for a few occasions such as birthday parties — while the lanes are being repaired, she said.

The bowling balls were accounted for Saturday, when many people bowled, she said.

With laughs and facial expressions of disbelief punctuating her comments, Gatto explained that she locks the doors, and has security cameras operating during the day and motion-sensor alarms at night.

She said she can’t imagine how anyone could have taken so many bowling balls out of the building without anyone noticing.

“There’s one left in the front, but the rest are all gone,” she said. “I’m lost.”

via Thurston’s owner tries to pin down location of 150 bowling balls – Utica, NY – The Observer-Dispatch.