Eliminating plastics

Plastisphere, "Yum, Plastic" (Environmental Science and Technology),  Grist

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In a recent post, I offered information about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Here's some more information about plastics in the ocean and on land; and, for extra measure, something about biomimetic materials.

My search started with a Gizmag article, The hungry little bacterium that could hold the key to the world's plastic waste problem. Other, land-based eaters of plastic have been identified: fungus, mushrooms, worms, ... Apparently a lot of biota like plastic.

In a more measured tone, though, plastic-eating and water-based biota are changing the character of plastic present in the ocean in unpredictable ways. A study by Woods Hole proposes a whole new ecosystem. Larger plastic items are being converted to plastic confetti, causing the Garbage Patch to sink and become more bio-available: A 'little world' eating ocean garbage might be a mixed blessing.

Meanwhile humankind continues to probe the natural world for solutions. Here are some that have been identified: Six ways bio-inspired design is reshaping the future. My favorite is slide 3--Health: Battling Bacteria with Biomimicry--which mimics the design of shark skin. As the slide says:

Sharklet has created a bacteria-free surface that can be used in hospitals, restaurants, and other places where contamination has consequences. What's more, because this technique doesn't kill bacteria it will be far more difficult for them to evolve a resistance to it, sidestepping the core problem with most attempts at rendering bacteria harmless. After all, the root technology underwent a 400-million-year incubation period in the ocean, and bacteria haven't figured out how to thwart it yet.

BTW, I came across this page while searching: Degruyter's Bioinspired Materials.

Bioinspired Materials is an innovative journal devoted to publish constructive peer-reviewed, open access, cutting-edge articles from a wide range of research fields that use inspiration from Nature for the design of artificial materials for several scopes.

If you think just forgetting about plastic, which is based on oil anyway, and finding substitutes is a better idea, take a look at these 10 suggestions for eco-friendly plastics.

-- Marge

Cosmology: a change in perspective

Video credits: Science Channel, "Viewing the Universe for the First Time" 

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Assuming you're the center of anything except your own life can be a misleading proposition. Take for example the ancients', and particularly Ptolemy's, observation that the Earth was the center of the universe. Now we call it the geocentric model, then it was the basis of their cosmology and served to inform religion, science, and philosophy. Ptolemy's model was called the Almagest (AD 150) and the "system persisted, with minor adjustments, until the Earth was displaced from the centre of the universe in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Copernican system and by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion" (Brittanica).

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Sacrobosco, Tractatus de Sphaera (1550), Wikipedia

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By the 16th century the system was beginning to fall apart, as described in Universe (William J. Kaufmann III, W.H. Freeman & Company, New York, 1985):

...Tiny errors and inaccuracies that were unnoticeable in Ptolemy's day compounded and multiplied over the years, especially with regard to precession. Fifteenth century astronomers made some cosmetic adjustments to the Ptolemaic system. However, the system became less and less satisfying as more complicated and arbitrary details were added to keep it consistent with the observed motions of the planets.

Individual investigators, such as Aristarchus of Samos, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe, theorized that the bodies observed from Earth and Earth itself moved around the sun, but could not prove it. It wasn't until Galileo Galilei looked through the new telescope that it all came together. Here is a page of his notes on Jupiter.

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Galileo, notes on moons of Jupiter, StrongBrains

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Two references looking at the depth of the "cosmological models developed by Plato, Eudoxus, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus and others" are Celestial spheres at Wikipedia and Medieval cosmology at Luminarium Encyclopedia.


-- Marge

The power of collapsing bubbles

This cloud of collapsing bubbles are lit up by their own sonoluminescence (2005). Nature

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Cavitation is the term for a phenomenon caused by bubbles collapsing. The idea of bubbles collapsing sounds pretty innocuous, right? But enough of them in the wrong places can cause damage. They can do some valuable work, too. A boat or ship moves because of the bubbles around its whirling propeller. The ultrasonic cleaner in the dentist's office uses cavitation. And the noisy pipes in your house are caused by cavitation. (For example, take a look at this PDF: Why Cavitation Can Destroy Your Pump and Pipes). A small gas bubble, driven at ultrasonic frequencies, can produce sonoluminescence when it collapses. Wikipedia describes how this works.

NASA has an interesting paper titled Development of techniques to investigate sonoluminescence as a source of energy harvesting (2007).

There are some research topics published by Science Daily that may interest you, such as Destructive power of bubbles could lead to new industrial applications (2015). Quoting the article:

Bursting bubbles pull in material like black holes.

Snapping Shrimp Drown Out Sonar With Bubble-Popping Trick (2000):

Until recently, scientists had assumed that the snapping noise occurred when the two parts of the claw banged shut. Now, however, a team of physicists and a biologist have discovered that the noise, in fact, comes from the collapsing of small bubbles generated by the claw's closing motion.

And this showstopper: Temperature Inside Collapsing Bubble Four Times That Of Sun (2005):

“When bubbles in a liquid get compressed, the insides get hot – very hot,” said Ken Suslick, the Marvin T. Schmidt Professor of Chemistry at Illinois and a researcher at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. “Nobody has been able to measure the temperature inside a single collapsing bubble before. The temperature we measured – about 20,000 degrees Kelvin – is four times hotter than the surface of our sun.”

This has lead to the conjecture that nuclear fusion can be generated by cavitation: An Odd Hypothesis About Bubbles Could Finally Lead to Nuclear Fusion (2015).

Possibly cavitation is one of the processes in cold fusion. Don't know. What do you think?

-- Marge

Science: the brain, the immune system, and C4

Human body, lymphatic system, livescience

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Two separate scientific reports give concrete information on how the brain and immune system interact . One report finds that the brain is directly connected to the immune system; the other that the immune system may contribute to schizophrenia via a gene called C4.

In June 2015, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine revealed findings that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist (ScienceDaily). Scientific American also reported on this discovery, saying

As early as 1921 scientists recognized that the brain is different, immunologically speaking. Outside tissue grafted into most parts of the body often results in immunologic attack; tissue grafted into the central nervous system on the other hand sparks a far less hostile response. Thanks in part to the blood-brain barrier — tightly packed cells lining the brain's vessels that let nutrients slip by, but, for the most part, keep out unwanted invaders like bacteria and viruses — the brain was long considered "immunologically privileged,” meaning it can tolerate the introduction of outside pathogens and tissues. The central nervous system was seen as existing separately from the peripheral immune system, left to wield its own less aggressive immune defenses.

Scientific American describes the previously-understood separation between the lymphatic system and the brain:

The brain’s privilege was also considered to be due to its lack of lymphatic drainage. The lymphatic system is our body's third and perhaps least considered set of vessels, the others being arteries and veins.  Lymphatic vessels return intracellular fluid to the bloodstream while lymph nodes – stationed periodically along the vessel network – serve has storehouses for immune cells. In most parts of the body, antigens – molecules on pathogens or foreign tissue that alert our immune system to potential threats – are presented to white blood cells in our the lymph nodes causing an immune response. But it was assumed that this doesn’t occur in the brain given its lack of a lymphatic network, which is why the new findings represent a dogmatic shift in understanding how the brain interacts with the immune system.

Protecting us against disease, the immune system is an important function of the lymphatic system, which also includes bone marrow, the spleen, and the thymus.

Interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body, called psychoneuroimmunology, has been recognized by physicians since the mid-1800s. Common examples are stress causing a headache and the placebo effect.

This month the MIT Technology Review published Immune System Offers Major Clue to Schizophrenia. For so long schizophrenia, which "strikes in late adolescence or early adulthood, sending previously high-functioning individuals spinning into psychosis and often leaving them with devastating cognitive deficits (MIT)," has been a black box. We know it only by its devastating effects. This study finally sheds some light:

The C4 gene participates in what’s known as “the complement cascade,” a process by which the immune system marks tumors, viruses, or dying human cells for elimination and removal. What Stevens, along with Stanford biologist Ben Barres, found was that the complement cascade also plays a novel role in brain development early in life. Specifically, the system helps to “prune” unneeded or unused synaptic connections, sculpting the brain into a more efficient structure. Stevens demonstrated that complement molecules were serving as an “eat me” signal, summoning tiny cells in the brain known as microglia to converge on unused synapses and prune them away.

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Artistic view of how the world feels with schizophrenia, Wikipedia

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-- Marge

Making sure the water is safe...to drink

Filtering water, Outdoor Gear Lab

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With Flint Michigan's water crisis prominent in the news, let's take a look at what cities have done and do to provide safe drinking water. Also, what you and I can do to purify water when no reliable local authority is around. BTW, here's a timeline of the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Wikipedia offers a comprehensive overview of water purification.  It offers such gems as--

The practice of water treatment soon became mainstream and common, and the virtues of the system were made starkly apparent after the investigations of the physician John Snow during the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. Snow was sceptical of the then-dominant miasma theory that stated that diseases were caused by noxious "bad airs". Although the germ theory of disease had not yet been developed, Snow's observations led him to discount the prevailing theory. His 1855 essay On the Mode of Communication of Cholera conclusively demonstrated the role of the water supply in spreading the cholera epidemic in Soho, with the use of a dot distribution map and statistical proof to illustrate the connection between the quality of the water source and cholera cases. His data convinced the local council to disable the water pump, which promptly ended the outbreak.

A shorter definition of water purification and related facts are given by Science Daily.

When hiking, that sparkling, swift-running stream is hard to resist. I was always told that swift-running water is safe. But LowerGear in Water issues and treatment says no.

Not wanting to belittle Flint's water problems, For Third World, Water Is Still a Deadly Drink (Nicholas D. Kristof, 1997). Quoting the article:

''I try to boil the water,'' Mrs. Bhagwani said pleasantly. ''But the boys sometimes insist on drinking right away because they're thirsty.''

Then, she said, there is the cost. To boil water consistently would cost about $4 a month in kerosene, almost a third of Mrs. Bhagwani's earnings. She could afford that, but then there would be less money for food.

And even boiling water does not remove chemical toxins (Modern Survival Blog).


-- Marge

Science: 4 new elements found

Periodic Table with new elements, 2016, Science Alert

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News coming across the virtual wire is Four new elements confirmed. The numbers given them are 113, 115, 117, and 118; and they complete the 7th row of the periodic table. According to Gizmag these elements do not exist in nature, but were "confirmed to have been created for the first time."

My question is: are the real atoms with 113, 115, 117, and 118 protons lurking somewhere in nature, to be discovered sometime in the future, or are we making things up as we go along. Quoting the Gizmag article:

Element 113, for example, was created by using a linear accelerator to bombard a thin layer of bismuth with zinc ions travelling at about ten percent of the speed of light in hope that, in rare instances, the bismuth and zinc atoms would fuse to form a element. The resulting super-heavy atom of 113 would then decay and turn into other unstable radioactive isotopes, which would decay nearly as fast.

The result was that the scientists who created the new element had to spend years tracing back the event through a labyrinth of isotopic breakdowns to prove that they descended from the new element. Then, the JWP of the IUPAC had to review the literature to make sure no mistakes were made.

Fundamental as chemistry is to science, it has a kind of mystical aura to it. Russian chemistry professor Dmitri Mendeleev pieced together the periodic table in 1869 "to correct the properties of some already discovered elements and also to predict the properties of eight elements yet to be discovered." In Mendeleev's time 60 elements were known. Later in the Wikipedia article about Mendeleev, there's this:

As he attempted to classify the elements according to their chemical properties, he noticed patterns that led him to postulate his periodic table; he claimed to have envisioned the complete arrangement of the elements in a dream.

Another possible case of a chemist dreaming a solution (pun alert!) is August Kekule who suggested the structure of the benzene ring. His dream of a snake biting its tail has become famous; it was notably cited by Carl G. Jung in support of his ideas on alchemy. However, according to a piece in the New York Times, the story may not be true.

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Currrent atomic model, Newcastle School, SCIENCE-esl

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Other elements have been added in modern times. Here's a summary of the current periodic table's contents:

A total of 94 elements occur naturally; the remaining 20 elements, from americium to copernicium, and flerovium and livermorium, occur only when synthesised in laboratories. Of the 94 elements that occur naturally, 84 are primordial. The other 10 naturally occurring elements occur only in decay chains of primordial elements. No element heavier than einsteinium (element 99) has ever been observed in macroscopic quantities in its pure form, nor has astatine (element 85); francium (element 87) has been only photographed in the form of light emitted from microscopic quantities (300,000 atoms).

For more information on the new elements, check out Four elements have just earned a permanent spot in the periodic table at Science Alert.


-- Marge

Science: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Captain Moore, posing with a water sample taken from the Great Garbage Patch.
Courtesy of Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Yale Scientific

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In Mythbuster: The Truth about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch author Taryn Laubenstein describes the Patch thus:

From above the Pacific Ocean, all is calm. Blue water meets blue skies, each reflecting the other’s pure, infinite depths. But now a white scrap meanders by; not the reflection of a cloud, but a bobbing Styrofoam cup. Soon it is joined by two, now three, now ten, now fifty others, all jostling for space. They start to stack, forming hills, mountains. They support their plastic brethren: discarded bottles, packaging materials, webbed fishing nets. Worn-out tires pile atop one another forming rubber towers, while flimsy shopping bags flutter like flags in the breeze. It is an island of plastic the size of Texas, floating in the middle of the Pacific.

This is the image that comes to mind when people hear of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: a massive, floating heap of debris. However, while it is true that trash does find its way into the oceans, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a floating island in the traditional sense. Instead, the Garbage Patch is composed of tiny plastic bits that linger unseen beneath the surface, ranging in size from a few square inches to barely visible specks.

The myth of a floating island of debris originated with its discoverer, Captain Charles Moore, in 1997. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, it is one of five oceanic vortices where ocean currents trap pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris. These vortices are called gyres.

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Fangz, North Pacific Gyre World Map, Wikipedia

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In 2015 a trash-mapping expedition shed light on the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' by "measuring the size and mapping the location of tons of plastic waste floating between the west coast and Hawaii (The Guardian)." The sponsoring group, Ocean Cleanup, and its founder Boyan Slat have promised a report of findings by mid-2016.

Recently Slat's group tested its first trash-catching barriers in Dutch waters. Gizmag reports that by using a

natural system of circular ocean currents to push plastic waste into long floating arms and onwards into a central collection point, Slat's system would be highly energy efficient. He claims that it would cut the time required to clean up the oceans from millennia to mere years, and a positive feasibility study and US$2.1 million crowdfunding phase have since given him impetus to put his plan into action.

-- Marge

Science: diamonds, q-carbon, and other harder-than-diamond substances

Graphite vs. diamonds, Dept. of Geosciences, Penn State University

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It appears that diamonds have been the subject of research around the world for quite a while. And the results coming in say it's not the hardest substance there is and, possibly, not even that rare. As you know, diamond is a form of carbon, the major chemical constituent of most organic matter.

In the U.S. Johns Hopkins University reports Diamonds May Not Be So Rare As Once Thought. Reasons why they are still rare:

For one thing, the prevalence of diamonds near the Earth’s surface – where they can be mined – still depends on relatively rare volcanic magma eruptions that raise them from the depths where they form. For another, the diamonds being considered in these studies are not necessarily the stuff of engagement rings, unless the recipient is equipped with a microscope. Most are only a few microns across and are not visible to the unaided eye.

Reason why they are not rare:

The new research showed that water could produce diamonds as its pH falls naturally – that is, as it becomes more acidic – while moving from one type of rock to another, Sverjensky said.

The finding is one of many in about the last 25 years that expands scientists’ understanding of how pervasive diamonds may be, Sverjensky [Johns Hopkins geochemist] said.

“The more people look, the more they’re finding diamonds in different rock types now,” Sverjensky said. “I think everybody would agree there’s more and more environments of diamond formation being discovered.”

Meanwhile in other labs substances have been discovered and created that are harder than diamond: wurtzite boron nitride and a cubic form of boron nitride and the mineral lonsdaleite; nano-rods of carbon (ACNR); fullerite; and q-carbon.

Of these q-carbon is the most intriguing because it's easy to make, is magnetic at room temperature, and glows when a voltage is applied. Here are links to 4 articles about q-carbon: ExtremeTech, ScienceNews, Live Science, and a more scholarly article from AIP (American Institue of Physics).

To get an idea of the various forms carbon can take, have a look at Wikipedia's article, Allotropes of carbon.

-- Marge

Science: Tasting calcium

Sixth taste discovered: calcium (image source: Dreamstime), Live Science

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A while back my taster was off. No, not my personal wine taster or food taster, but my taste buds. One day I took a calcium tablet on a whim, and, voilà!, the taster was back on course.

Wikipedia has a good article on taste. It name the five basic tastes:  sweetness, sourness, saltiness, bitterness, and umami. Then adds a bit on other qualities that can be perceived:

The basic tastes contribute only partially to the sensation and flavor of food in the mouth—other factors include smell, detected by the olfactory epithelium of the nose; texture, detected through a variety of mechanoreceptors, muscle nerves, etc.; temperature, detected by thermoreceptors; and "coolness" (such as of menthol) and "hotness" (pungency), through chemesthesis.

But why calcium? It seems that in 2008 a sixth 'taste' was discovered: calcium. The research was conducted by Michael Tordoff, a behavioral geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. He says about the taste of calcium:

"Calcium tastes calcium-y," Tordoff said. "There isn't a better word for it. It is bitter, perhaps even a little sour. But it's much more because there are actual receptors for calcium, not just bitter or sour compounds."

Apparently a taste receptor for calcium

... makes sense for our survival, since the mineral is key to cell biology and good bones. Low calcium intakes have been implicated in several chronic diseases in people, including osteoporosis, obesity and hypertension.

"Many animals have a specific calcium appetite, which implies they can detect the mineral and consume sufficient quantities of it to meet their needs," Tordoff said.

ScienceDaily also reported on this topic in That Tastes ... Sweet? Sour? No, It's Definitely Calcium!

In 2012 Nature published a scholarly article that essentially followed-up on the discovery. It is titled "T1R3: A human calcium taste receptor." While the article is fairly technical, it make a thought-provoding statement in the discussion:

We are often asked whether calcium is a basic taste, akin to sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Our demonstration of a receptor in the oral cavity fulfills a universally accepted criterion for a basic taste but there is little consensus about what other criteria must be met. For example, is a specific taste quality or a central representation required? The “basic taste” concept is under fire. It cannot deal well with observations that the tastes of complex carbohydrates are bland to humans but avidly preferred by many other species, that dozens of receptors all produce a unitary sensation of bitterness, or that there is apparently no region encoding sour taste in primary taste cortex. Without a better definition we cannot determine whether calcium is a basic taste. Nevertheless, our results showing that calcium and lactisole interact with T1R3 establish T1R3 as a calcium taste receptor, and consequently provide the first evidence for calcium taste transduction in the human oral cavity.

-- Marge

Science: possible new route to fusion

Tri Alpha Energy plasma accelerator, Physics.org

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Time Magazine recently published an intriguing article about man's quest for clean energy in the form of fusion: Inside the Quest for Fusion, Clean Energy’s Holy Grail (subscription needed).

In Lev Grossman's very readable article, he reports that startup Tri Alpha Energy is using two linear plasma accelerators pointed at each other to achieve results that larger and far more expensive tokamaks have yet to produce. Furthermore, Tri Alpha Energy will use hydrogen nuclei and boron-11, not the conventional deuterium and tritium, to fuel the reaction. Boron requires a temperature of 3 billion degrees Celsius to fuse. So far Tri Alpha has produced a ball of superheated hydrogen plasma for five milliseconds, a record in the fusion effort. Before I move on, here's Lev's description of attempting fusion:

The heat and pressure necessary are extreme. Essentially you’re trying to replicate conditions in the heart of the sun, where its colossal mass–330,000 times that of Earth–creates crushing pressure, and where the temperature is 17 million degrees Celsius. In fact, because the amounts of fuel are so much smaller, the temperature at which fusion is feasible on Earth starts at around 100 million degrees Celsius.

That’s the first problem. The second problem is that your fuel is in the form of a plasma, and plasma, as mentioned above, is weird. It’s a fourth state of matter, neither liquid nor solid nor gas. When you torture plasma with temperatures and pressures like these, it becomes wildly unstable and writhes like a cat in a sack. So not only do you have to confine and control it, and heat it and squeeze it; you have to do all that without touching it, because at 100 million degrees, this is a cat that will instantly vaporize solid matter.

News (with a skeptical tone) of Tri Alpha's recent milestone was published by Physics.org in Tri Alpha Energy reportedly makes important breakthrough in developing fusion reactor. It's important to note that the physics community has a lot of tokamaks and funding to defend. Here's the link to Tri Alpha Energy's website.

For information on plasma acceleration, take a look at Oxford University's page on plasma accelerators. Note that a laser beam qualifies as a particle beam. Overturned scientific explanation may be good news for nuclear fusion (2011) talks about new information on the hydrogen-boron reaction.

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Electron injection ramp, Oxford University-Physics Dept.

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-- Marge

The beauty trap

Hedy Lamarr, Life Magazine (1942), reddit

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As you probably know, Google is featuring Hedy Lamarr with its current doodle. Beauty and brains can be a toxic mixture. Take a look at this video to see what I mean.

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Despite her oft-repeated quote--"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid"--when her beauty faded, she did too.

TCM (Turner Classic Movies) has video clips of films with Ms. Lamarr. The overview page features a biography, her filmography, and other points of interest.

-- Marge

Patricia and Wilma

Hurricane Patricia, EcoWatch

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Early last Friday there was dire news of a category 5 hurricane, named Patricia, that was expected to make landfall in Mexico later in the day. Patricia was reported as the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the western hemisphere. Luckily she struck land in a relatively uninhabited area and her winds had subsided to about 160 miles per hour, as reported by the Washington Post in How Patricia, the strongest hurricane on record, may have miraculously killed so few. Here's a video from GlobalLeak News showing what Patricia and her 160 mph winds looked like.

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Patricia vies with hurricane (aka tropical cyclone) Wilma in the statistics department. However, Wilma traveled further and caused a great deal more damage. This was Wilma's path.

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Hurricane Wilma, 2005 track, Wikipedia

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What got me to wondering was "what exactly does a change of 100 millibars air pressure mean?" While I wasn't able to find a direct answer (guess you have to be there), I did find info on how high-low pressure works at WeatherWorks.  Here are a couple of diagrams. Note that highs move clockwise and lows, counter-clockwise--at least north of the equator.

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High-low pressure diagrams, WeatherWorks

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With high winds it seems to me the most destructive part is the constant barrage of force prying things apart in small steps.  Here's an example of how Wilma worked, published by Tropmet.

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-- Marge

DIY: a (smart) phone worth keeping

Dave Hakkens, Phonebloks, Wikipedia

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In 2013 Dave Hakkens' Phonebloks campaign began with a single video. Dutch designer Hakkens had presented his idea for an open-source modular smartphone at his graduation from Design Academy Eindhoven. Here's the video.

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Soon after Google/Motorola stepped up to partner with Phonebloks in developing the concept. This effort became Project ARA with a pilot release date of early 2015. Google's ATAP group is handling the effort; the team is headed by Paul Eremenko, formerly with DARPA. There's an ATAP channel on YouTube. Here's a video about the development effort.

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The Verge reported in May 2015

...the project is expected to begin a pilot test in Puerto Rico later this year where the public will presumably be able to try it out.

As an aside, another ATAP project of interest is a Spotlight Story titled "Duet" in Times Square; a making-of video is below.

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-- Marge

Exploring Mudfooted

Zoologist Jolle Jolles publishes a blog titled Mudfooted where you can find some eye-catching photos. He states his purpose thus:

Mudfooted is about exploring the weird and wonderful natural world around us, about venturing outside and discovering new places as well as learning about wonderful nature and intriging science. It is a way of life! Mudfooted.com is the place to be inspired and get "muddy feet". 

Mudfooted came to my attention with an article on Unusual names for animal groups. Did you know that there is an implausibility of gnus? Or a parliament of burrowing owls? Or a flamboyance of flamingos?

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A flamboyance of flamingos, Mudfooted

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In the Animals section I found 10 Amazing Close-ups of Animal Faces. Here's one.

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Face of a Bateleur (Terathopius ecaudatus), a species of African eagle endemic south of the Sahara. Photo by Matthias Kretschmar. Mudfooted

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In the Nature section there's Amazing photos of waves that look like mountains.

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Mountains of water, photo by Ray Collins, Mudfooted

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The Science section gives New snail species discovered with semi-transparent shell.

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Lukina Jama–Trojama cave in Croatia, inset new species of snail (Zospeum tholussum), Mudfooted

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And Outdoors, the last section, yields The stunning floating Tianzi mountains.

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Tianzi mountains, Mudfooted

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You can see all in a visual archive.

-- Marge

Science: the cosmic web

Cosmic Web, Open Science

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First of all, astronomers report an observed phenomenon called the cosmic web. The article It's Filamentary says more, including

The distribution of galaxies and matter in the universe is non-random.  Galaxies are organized, even today, in a manner resembling an enormous network – the cosmic web.  This web has dense regions made up of galaxy clusters and groups, sparsely populated regions devoid of galaxies, as well as the filaments that link overdense regions.

“The filaments are like bridges connecting the denser regions in the cosmic web,” [Benham] Darvish explained.  “Imagine threads woven into the web.”

Here's a 3D image of the cosmic web, posted at Dave Reneke's World of Space and Astronomy.

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The Cosmic Web in 3D, davidreneke

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Physics Today reported last week that astronomers observe a nascent galaxy stuck to the cosmic web.

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Nascent galaxy in cosmic web, Physics Today

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The article mentions a cosmic web imager. To see the lab setup, browse to Caltech's CWI page. Unfortunately, the photos are small. Here's a paper (PDF format) with larger images and some more information: The Keck Cosmic Web Imager.

Spectrography, interchangeable with spectroscopy, is the method used to observe this type of web. According to Wikipedia--

Spectroscopy and spectrography are terms used to refer to the measurement of radiation intensity as a function of wavelength and are often used to describe experimental spectroscopic methods. Spectral measurement devices are referred to as spectrometers, spectrophotometers, spectrographs or spectral analyzers.

For a more granular definition, check out Spectrometer, Spectroscope, and Spectrograph in SPIE's Optipedia. SPIE is an international society advancing an interdisciplinary approach to the science and application of light.

-- Marge

Science: A fluffy feathered poodle from hell

A reconstruction of the new short-armed and winged feathered dinosaur Zhenyuanlong suni from the Early Cretaceous (ca. 125 million years ago) of China is seen in this illustration image provided by the University of Edinburgh on July 15, 2015, Reuters

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Reuters reports that a new dinosaur fossil has been unearthed in northeastern China. Officially named Zhenyuanlong suni, University of Edinburgh paleontologist Steve Brusatte calls the bird-like meat-eater a "fluffy feathered poodle from hell." Researchers describe the probably flightless dinosaur as a

fast-running meat-eater was about 6 feet (1.8 meters) long and covered with simple hair-like feathers over much of its body, with large, quill-like feathers on its wings and long tail. 

Steve Brusatte, one of the discoverers and namer of the dinosaur, is quoted by Reuters:

 "If you saw this wing on its own, you would probably think that Zhenyuanlong could fly. But it's a fairly big raptor, and its arms are so short in proportion to its body, that I have a hard time believing that it could fly or glide or do anything in the air," Brusatte said.
More likely, Brusatte said, Zhenyuanlong used its wings for display the way a peacock uses its tail feathers to attract mates and intimidate rivals. Another possibility is using the wings to brood eggs in the nest...

Among paleontologists there are questions about why wings evolved and when they were first used for flight. "The oldest-known bird, crow-sized Archaeopteryx, lived about 150 million years ago.(Reuters)."

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Archaeopteryx. Illustration by Carl Buell, National Geographic

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The first feather was discovered in 1861 by workers in a German limestone quarry. Paleontologist Hermann von Meyer thought at first it was a forgery. When more evidence of feathered, bird-like dinosaurs was identified by von Meyer, he named his finds Archaeopteryx, meaning 'ancient wing'. Darwin, who had published The Origin of Species two years earlier saw it as hard proof of evolution. At the time many thought of Archaeopteryx as the primary example of bird evolution; since then other pathways have been identified.

Now Archaeopteryx is sinking back into the crowd of primitive birds and feathered dinosaurs. As Ed Yong has ably explained, a fresh wave of fossils are coming to light. They reinforce the argument that paleontologists have agreed on for a couple decades now: birds evolved from a lineage of dinosaurs called theropods. But it’s less clear now how exactly Archaeopteryx fits into that evolution. It might still be closely related to the ancestors of living birds, or there might be non-flying theropods that were more closely related. Combine this with the recent discoveries of heavily feathered dinosaurs–feathered down to their feet, in fact–and the possibility emerges that dinosaurs evolved into flyers more than once. We look up in the sky today and see the results of only one of those transitions (Carl Zimmer, National Geographic).

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Reconstruction of Aurornis xui. Credit: Masato Hattori. National Geographic

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Discoveries after Archaeopteryx have mostly muddied the water in the search for the first bird and which family of dinosaurs it evolved from. Two articles that discuss the possibilities are The Changing Science of Just-About-Birds and Not-Quite-Birds and New Candidate for World's First Bird.

-- Marge

10 Percent and urban legend

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Being attracted by the premise that we only use 10% of our brains, the other night I watched "Lucy," even though my (mostly) always logical son insisted that the premise was untrue. Most interesting was how increasingly ineffective the plot became when you doubted its basis. (Sorry, Scarlett and Morgan. You both did fine jobs.)

Urban legend can sneak up on us. And the myth that says we use only 10 percent of our brains is especially pervasive, because it has been around so long and many people use it to their advantage. Another interesting take on the 10-percent-of-brain myth is Humans Already Use Way, Way More Than 10% of Their Brains at the Atlantic Monthly.

For more myths that are circulating, check out Snopes.com. It's a must-see in our twitter-fueled society.

The quantity 10 percent seems to be a handy number, though. There's the Ten Percent Law or Rule of 10's in ecology that says

...during the transfer of energy from organic food from one trophic level to the next, only about ten percent of the energy from organic matter is stored as flesh. The remaining is lost during transfer, broken down in respiration, or lost to incomplete digestion by higher trophic levels. (Wikipedia)

Statistics has the 10% condition which

states that sample sizes should be no more than 10% of the population. Whenever samples are involved in statistics, check the 10% condition to ensure you have sound results. Some statisticians argue that a 5% condition is better than a 10% condition if you want to use a standard normal model.

What I wonder is how 10 percent represents the population.  Guess that's why I'm not a statistician.

In elementary physics class we learned that efficiency seldom exceeds 20 percent.

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However, looking for example of inefficient devices, I'm finding some relatively efficient ones: Diode-pumped solid-state lasers that range from 1 to 60% efficient; autos that range between 15 and 35% efficient, and large AC motors that approach an amazing 93% efficiency (article is about centrifugal pumps).

Since we've wandered from the 10-percent topic, here's the ninety-nine rule:

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.

—Tom Cargill, Bell Labs (Wikipedia)

-- Marge