Pacemakers of Tomorrow Could Be Powered by the Sugar in Your Body

The implants of the future will be powered by the energy sources already inside your body. Last week we saw scientists take a step toward this vision by developing a transistor that used the fuel from our cells (a molecule called ATP). And now, a French team has announced the development of a fuel cell that can use the glucose (sugar) inside an animal to produce electricity. Their paper is available free at the journal PLoS One.

The team surgically implanted the device in the abdominal cavity of two rats. The maximum power of the device was 6.5 microwatts, which approaches the 10 microwatts required by pacemakers [Technology Review].

Philippe Cinquin and his team created the cell, in which graphite electrodes are coated with enzymes that oxidize glucose to produce energy. Then connectors carry the electricity from the cell to whatever it’s powering.

Unfortunately, the enzymes used in past glucose biofuel cells were not suitable for implants, because they either required highly acidic conditions to work or were inhibited by a variety of ions found in the body. The newly developed devices lack these constraints and are the first functional implantable glucose biofuel cells, with prototypes in rats stably generating power for at least three months [Scientific American].

The great benefit of these systems would be that they are long-lasting and self-sufficient: Who wants to sit around while a pacemaker recharges, or be cut open so its battery can be replaced? That kind of durability, however, remains a ways away for these biofuel cells. …

via Pacemakers of Tomorrow Could Be Powered by the Sugar in Your Body | 80beats | Discover Magazine.

Hypersonic aircraft shatters aviation records

The Air Force tests an unmanned X-51 WaveRider off the coast near Point Mugu. Launched from a B-52 bomber, it hits 3,500 mph and travels for 200 seconds before plunging into the ocean as planned.

An aircraft resembling a large bodyboard detached from a flying B-52 bomber and then shot across the Pacific on Wednesday at more than 3,500 mph, shattering aviation records and reigniting decades-long efforts to develop a vehicle that could travel faster than a speeding bullet.

The unmanned X-51 WaveRider, powered by an air-breathing hypersonic engine that has virtually no moving parts, was launched midair off the coast near Point Mugu. It sped westward for 200 seconds before plunging into the ocean as planned. Previous attempts at hypersonic flights lasted no more than 10 seconds.

“Everything went very well for a first flight,” said Charlie Brink, the X-51 program manager for the Air Force. “For things to go off the way they did, we’re confident this technology has a bright future.”

Since the 1960s, the Air Force has been flirting with hypersonic technology, which can propel vehicles at a velocity that cannot be achieved from traditional turbine-powered jet engines. …

via Hypersonic aircraft shatters aviation records – latimes.com.

Ninjas rescue student from muggers

A STUDENT has been saved from a vicious assault – not by the boys in blue but the men in black.

Ninjas scared off three thugs who had the misfortune to attack the 27-year-old medical student outside their warrior school.

The German exchange student had been targeted by the men while he was riding the late-night train home, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

They demanded he give them his wallet but when he refused and got off the train, they followed.

They pounced as he made his way through a dark alley in Sydney’s west.

They grabbed his phone and iPod and kicked him while he lay on the ground.

However, the men were spotted by a member of a nearby dojo.

Nathan Smith told his sensei and the rest of the students at Ninja Senshi Ryu and they rushed out to confront the thugs – all dressed in traditional black ninja garb.

On seeing the ninjas, the men fled, only to be later arrested by police.

“You should have seen their faces when they saw us in ninja gear coming towards them,” the school’s sensei, Kaylan Soto, told the Herald.

They also failed to notice a ninja, Nathan Smith, standing in the shadows outside the dojo. Mr Smith immediately alerted his sensei, or teacher.

Another ninja, Steve Ashley, said: “It was probably the worst place in Sydney where they could have taken him.”

via Ninjas rescue student from muggers | Herald Sun.

UFO, extraterrestrial disclosure linked to public readiness

After more than 210,000 page views of the April 26, 2010, article “Human-looking ETs secretly in U.S?” it seems clear that there is significant public interest in the topic of possible extraterrestrial visitation to Earth, UFOs and equally possible activities of the U.S. defense and intelligence communities regarding these subjects.

The article was about an account of a reported effort by U.S. authorities – Operation TANGO-SIERRA – to investigate a human-looking extraterrestrial who had made contact with a federal employee.

Are people who consider tales like this too gullible? Or, are they open-minded and increasingly aware of highly unusual possibilities?

The same information sources for Operation TANGO-SIERRA are reportedly also those who released information about the alleged Project SERPO. That account involved a mission that allegedly sent 12 specially-selected and highly-trained U.S. military personnel to another planet as guests of friendly extraterrestrial visitors as part of an exchange program.

When we see news about calls for more openness and disclosure about possible government activities in these areas, it also seems clear that human psychology and our preparedness to deal with such possibilities are major elements to consider.

In fact, it might be fair to say that disclosure about possible extraterrestrial visitation to Earth is directly tied to the emotional, spiritual, psychological and social readiness of the public to handle this kind of news. …

via American Chronicle | UFO, extraterrestrial disclosure linked to public readiness.

Scientists detect huge carbon ‘burp’ that helped end last ice age

Scientists have found the possible source of a huge carbon dioxide ‘burp’ that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age.

The results provide the first concrete evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) was more efficiently locked away in the deep ocean during the last ice age, turning the deep sea into a more ‘stagnant’ carbon repository – something scientists have long suspected but lacked data to support.

Working on a marine sediment core recovered from the Southern Ocean floor between Antarctica and South Africa, the international team led by Dr Luke Skinner of the University of Cambridge radiocarbon dated shells left behind by tiny marine creatures called foraminifera (forams for short).

By measuring how much carbon-14 (14C) was in the bottom-dwelling forams’ shells, and comparing this with the amount of 14C in the atmosphere at the time, they were able to work out how long the CO2 had been locked in the ocean.

By linking their marine core to the Antarctic ice-cores using the temperature signal recorded in both archives, the team were also able compare their results directly with the ice-core record of past atmospheric CO2 variability.

According to Dr Skinner: “Our results show that during the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago, carbon dioxide dissolved in the deep water circulating around Antarctica was locked away for much longer than today. If enough of the deep ocean behaved in the same way, this could help to explain how ocean mixing processes lock up more carbon dioxide during glacial periods.”

Throughout the past two million years (the Quaternary), the Earth has alternated between ice ages and warmer interglacials. These changes are mainly driven by alterations in the Earth’s orbit around the sun (the Milankovic theory).

But changes in Earth’s orbit could only have acted as the ‘pace-maker of the ice ages’ with help from large, positive feedbacks that turned this solar ‘nudge’ into a significant global energy imbalance.

Changes in atmospheric CO2 were one of the most important of these positive feedbacks, but what drove these changes in CO2 has remained uncertain. …

via Scientists detect huge carbon ‘burp’ that helped end last ice age.

Solar Scientists Agree That the Sun’s Recent Behavior Is Odd, but the Explanation Remains Elusive

In very rough terms, the sun’s activity ebbs and flows in an 11-year cycle, with flares, coronal mass ejections and other energetic phenomena peaking at what is called solar maximum and bottoming out at solar minimum. Sunspots, markers of magnetic activity on the sun’s surface, provide a visual proxy to mark the cycle’s evolution, appearing in droves at maximum and all but disappearing at minimum. But the behavior of our host star is not as predictable as all that—the most recent solar minimum was surprisingly deep and long, finally bottoming out around late 2008 or so.

Solar physicists here at the semiannual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week offered a number of mechanisms to shed light on what has been happening on the sun of late, but conceded that the final answer—or more likely answers—remains opaque. Beyond scientific understanding, motivations for better solar weather forecasts include hopes to use them to safeguard against electrical grid disruptions, damage to Earth-orbiting satellites and threats to the health of space travelers posed by solar radiation flare-ups.

One researcher has looked for clues to solar weather in the meridional flow, which moves from the solar equator toward the poles, and which seems to change speed during the shifting solar cycle. Another looked at the solar “jet stream,” a slow current that originates at solar mid-latitudes and pushes in a bifurcated stream toward both the equator and the poles. Another scientist examined the inner workings of the sun through the oscillation of sound waves propagating through the solar interior; yet another looked at magnetic maps to chart the shifting flux across the sun.

“I think we’re almost in violent agreement that this is an interesting minimum,” said David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. By several measures—geomagnetic activity, weakness of polar magnetic fields, flagging solar deflection of galactic cosmic rays—the minimum was the deepest on record, Hathaway said, although some of those records contain just a few cycles. Hathaway focused on shifting speeds of the meridional flow, finding that the flow was anomalously fast at the most recent minimum. But, speaking of heliophysics forecasting techniques in general, he cautioned against leaping to any conclusions based on small-number statistics. “We need to be careful about extending what we’ve seen in one or two cycles to all of them,” he said.

Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) instead examined the jet stream, a periodic east–west flow of material that corresponds with the onset and end of the solar cycle. With helioseismology data, which track acoustic oscillations on the sun, researchers can check in on the progress of the jet stream at depths of roughly 1,000 kilometers, potentially allowing for better forecasts of the timing of the solar cycle. But it is “still too early to tell” if the jet stream can robustly predict solar activity, Hill acknowledged, noting that the stream could be a cause or an effect of the cycle.

Hill’s NSO colleague Sushanta Tripathy also turned to helioseismology to investigate the recent solar minimum, finding that in acoustic oscillations deep within the sun there were in fact two separate minima—one in late 2007 that did not correspond to the sunspot minimum, and one around late 2008 that did. In prior data, from 1995 to 2007, the frequency shifts in the oscillations had matched up well with the sunspot counts. And at shallower depths within the sun, the seismic and sunspot activity were in phase for the most recent solar minimum as well. All in all, the cycle was definitely unusual, Tripathy said.

Julia Saba of SP Systems, Inc., and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., had yet another approach, turning to magnetic maps to track regional differences on the sun. Her approach accurately forecast the timing of the 2008 solar minimum 18 months in advance, she said, but acknowledged that the forecast had been revised from an earlier prediction. Based on current data, Saba said, the next solar cycle looks like it will be weak and prolonged. But that could all change—her predictions assume “that the sun doesn’t change on us again.”

After hearing his colleagues’ various approaches to investigating the sun’s behavior, Hill took stock of a field with many open questions. “My main impression of all this is I’m gratified to see that we all agree that this is an interesting minimum,” Hill said. “What’s not so gratifying is we have no clue why any of these effects are happening.” …

via Solar Scientists Agree That the Sun’s Recent Behavior Is Odd, but the Explanation Remains Elusive: Scientific American.

DNA replication… without life

THE precursor of life may have learned how to copy itself thanks to simple convection at the bottom of the ocean. Lab experiments reveal how DNA replication could have occurred in tiny pores around undersea vents.

One of the initial steps towards life was the first molecule capable of copying itself. In the open ocean of early Earth, strands of DNA and loose nucleotides would have been too diluted for replication to occur. So how did they do it?

Inside many undersea hydrothermal vents, magnesium-rich rocks react with sea water. Such reactions create a heat source that could drive miniature convection currents in nearby pores in the rock, claim Christof Mast and Dieter Braun of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. They propose that such convection could concentrate nucleotides, strands of DNA, and polymerase, providing a setting that would promote replication.

Sea water inside pores on or near a vent’s chimney may undergo thermal convection because the water at the wall of the pore closest to the vent’s heat source would be warmer than the water near the furthermost wall, say Mast and Braun. If the pore contained strands of DNA, nucleotides, and polymerase they would ride upward in the warm current. The DNA strands would also be “unzipped” in the heat, splitting into two strands that each serve as templates for eventual replication.

All these components would then tend to shift away from the rising warmer region. In air, particles typically shift into a colder current because they are more likely to be pushed away by warmer, more energetic molecules than those on the cooler, calmer side. The researchers reckon a similar process would occur in the fluid in the vents.

Over time, the DNA templates, polymerase and nucleotides would collect at the bottom of a pore. Once there, they could become concentrated enough for the polymerase to bind new nucleotides to the single-strand DNA templates, replicating the original DNA (see diagram).

To test this theory, Mast and Braun put these ingredients into tubes 1.5 millimetres long. They used a laser to heat one side of the water and create thermal convection. Sure enough, they found that the DNA doubled every 50 seconds (Physical Review Letters, vol 104, p 188102).

But how would any replicated DNA have then moved between pores to recombine with new templates, producing a variety of configurations? Fatty acids in the water may have provided a shuttle service, says Braun. Last year, a team at Harvard University found that fatty acids driven by convection will form membranes. Such membranes could trap the concentrated genetic material and transport it, he says (Journal of the American Chemical Society, DOI: 10.1021/ja9029818).

“The work shows that DNA can be both concentrated and replicated under a very simple set of conditions,” says Nick Lane at University College London.

via DNA replication… without life – life – 27 May 2010 – New Scientist.

Asian bear filmed doing ‘kung fu’ moves with stick

The footage, which was uploaded to YouTube a few days ago, shows the bear first playing with the 5ft stick with a paw.

The bear then appears to start twirling the stick rapidly around its head using ‘kung fu’ style moves.

At one point the bear – allegedly named Claude – even throws the stick mid-twirl into the air and catches it.

The three-minute clip of the bear was filmed by Canadian YouTube user alexbuzzkentaroguy at the Asa Zoo in Hiroshima, Japan. He says he then uploaded the clip to YouTube.

Animal behaviour expert Professor Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado said the footage appears genuine.

He said: “This is an amazing example of animal object control. This goes beyond normal animal usage of complex tools but then again you can train seals to balance balls on their noses and train elephants to paint with their trunks, so why not this.

“I would guess this is the result of extreme training and would find it hard to believe the animal taught itself this spontaneously.”

Professor Bekoff added that the bear’s ‘Kung Fu’ moves were not natural and the bear must have been in a situation of extreme boredom.

The Asa Zoo has not yet confirmed if the footage is genuine.

The unedited version of the clip plus a previous edited version have so far gained more than 800,000 hits.

via Asian bear filmed doing ‘kung fu’ moves with stick – Telegraph.

Adventurer crosses English Channel using helium balloons

He set off from a field in Kent early this morning hoping to become the first cluster balloonist to cross the stretch of water. The US adventurer, 36, was held at the mercy of the prevailing winds beneath his colourful collection of gigantic inflatables. He set off from Kent Gliding Club in Challock, near Ashford, shortly after 5am, taking about an hour to travel the 10 miles to the coast. Mr Trappe spent about an hour and three quarters sailing silently over the Channel before reaching Dunkirk. As he soared high over the French countryside he continued heading towards the Belgium border. But after cutting away balloons to aid his descent, Mr Trappe made a textbook landing in a French cabbage field shortly after 9am. He avoided a power line and bounced a short distance before coming to a halt.

“It was just an exceptional, quiet, peaceful experience,” he told Sky News. Asked why he wanted to take on the challenge, he said:  “Didn’t you have this dream – grabbing on to a bunch of toy balloons and floating off? I think it’s something that’s shared across cultures and across borders.

“Just this wonderful fantasy of grabbing on to toy balloons and floating into open space.”

He described sailing over the white cliffs of Dover in complete silence as “tremendously peaceful, tremendously beautiful”.

And there was even time for a “civil” chat with a man on the ground. The trained pilot added:  “There are risks and we work to methodically reduce the risk so we can have a safe and fun flight.

“Because really it’s only about dreams and enjoying an adventure and that’s only enjoyable when it is safe.

“Mr Trappe has already made a number of trips using his balloon cluster. Last month he claimed a new world record for the longest free-floating balloon flight, flying 109 miles across North Carolina. ..

via Adventurer crosses English Channel using helium balloons – Telegraph.

On Vacation

Hi. Few posts until Tuesday as I’m doing some sightseeing. Can you tell where these iPhone photos were taken? ( more to come )