DARPA yesterday issued a solicitation for proposals responsive to its Spectral Combs from UV to THz (SCOUT) program,
The post Using Light Frequencies to Sniff Out Deadly Materials from a Distance has been published on Technology Org.
In the late 1800s, we still didn't know a great deal about electricity. One scientist was still attempting to figure out how electric shocks kill things in 1895, and found that when he delivered a 240-milliamp shock to dogs, their hearts were very damaged (for comparison, a taser puts out about 3 milliamps). In 1903, Thomas Edison was trying to prove alternating current was dangerous by electrocuting animals. But before these instances of using electricity for death, one inventor thought people would be interested in using quick jolts to improve health, like the green juice of his day.
"When electricity was in its infancy, the power was believed to have a beneficial effect on health. Why not vend a small measure of electricity by coin operation?" wrote Paul Braithwaite in his book, Arcades and Slot Machines. Braithwaite was describing an existing patented design: a coin-operated vending machine that would deliver an electrical shock to the customer in exchange for money.
The patent for a "coin operated electrical apparatus" was originally filed by Norman W. Russ and granted in England in 1886. Russ followed up with patents for his invention in France, Belgium, Canada, and the United States, which granted it on May 15, 1888.
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August 2005: Willcox Playa, Arizona. The air was hot and full of wind, the ground hard and full of cracks, and an aircraft of sorts was flying directly at Josh Levinger's chest.
It was, put mildly, irregular in composition. Its fuselage was a blue, five-gallon water cooler bottle. Its two three-liter ballast tanks once contained soda, and its aluminum propeller guard came from a bicycle. The engine originally belonged to a weed-whacker and the fabric wing overhead was designed for kite surfing. The machine's name was Freedom Flies, and almost every part of it was borrowed or homemade.
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When it comes to making ethanol from things like sugarcane and corn, we've turned to the method that has been used for ethanol production for millennia: give yeast some sugar, and take away their oxygen. Just as they do when making beer or wine, the yeast take the sugar and partially metabolize it, releasing ethanol as a waste product.
While the basics are easy to do, it's turned out to be hard to get yeast to operate well in the sorts of environments that lead to efficient production of biofuels. At some level, the ethanol the yeast produce becomes toxic (as it is for us). And brewer's yeast tends to grow best at moderate temperatures (30 degrees Celsius), while biofuel production works best at temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius.
So far, the approach used for getting yeast to be a better biofuel producer has not exactly been carefully planned: we've just continued to grow them in the harsh environment of a biofuel reactor and wait for evolution to take its course. But two papers that appear in today's Science describe targeted changes that greatly enhance the ability of yeast to survive in a biofuel reactor.
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We congratulate the winners of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Eric Betzig, Ph.D.; Stefan Hell, Ph.D.; and
The post 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: What you need to know (infographic) has been published on Technology Org.
