A piece of tape can only be used a few times before the adhesion wears off and it
The post Gecko Grippers Moving On Up has been published on Technology Org.
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Friday, 21 August 2015
Graphene oxide's secret properties revealed at atomic level
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Scientists have found that graphene oxide's inherent defects give rise to a surprising mechanical property caused by an unusual mechanochemical reaction.
via Science Daily
Scientists have found that graphene oxide's inherent defects give rise to a surprising mechanical property caused by an unusual mechanochemical reaction.
via Science Daily
Deep Sky Colors Poster
Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space
tagged with: galaxy, galaxies, nebulas, space, astronomy, poster, stars, sky, night
Full-size poster of several beautiful and unique award-winning images of the night sky, photographed by Rogelio Bernal Andreo.
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tagged with: galaxy, galaxies, nebulas, space, astronomy, poster, stars, sky, night
Full-size poster of several beautiful and unique award-winning images of the night sky, photographed by Rogelio Bernal Andreo.
»visit the DeepSkyColors store for more designs and products like this
Click to customize with size, paper type etc.
via Zazzle Astronomy market place
Graphene drives potential for the next-generation of fuel-efficient cars
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Graphene could lead to greener more fuel efficient cars in the future by converting heat into electricity, scientists say. Graphene's range of superlative properties and small size causes the transfer of heat through the material to slow leading to the desired lower operating temperatures.
via Science Daily
Graphene could lead to greener more fuel efficient cars in the future by converting heat into electricity, scientists say. Graphene's range of superlative properties and small size causes the transfer of heat through the material to slow leading to the desired lower operating temperatures.
via Science Daily
Will radical life extension be the abortion politics of 2050?
Science Focus
original post »
When it comes to ending life, the politics are pretty black and white — arguments about abortion and euthanasia are generally divided along ideological lines. What conservatives see as God's work, the secular left views as a matter of personal choice. But these familiar positions may soon be upended as scientists unlock the secrets of aging and push the limits of the human lifespan.
Estimates vary greatly on exactly what this research means in terms of actual years lived. Some researchers believe that technological advances will let people routinely live past 120 — others, like Aubrey de Grey, a leading gerontologist, believe that the first person to live to 1,000 has likely already been born.
If the latter sounds like the ramblings of an overly optimistic professor, then consider the less sensational fact that every six years the average lifespan in America increases by one year; in other words, even without revolutionary anti-aging breakthroughs, people will soon be living longer than many thought possible just decades ago. In fact, the U.S. government estimates that by 2050, around 400,000 Americans will be over the age of 100.
While promising on the surface, these developments will almost certainly raise important and uncomfortable questions in regards to social class, medical ethics, and basic morality.
We have already started to see tentative battle lines being drawn on the issue. A 2013 Pew poll found that 56 percent of Republicans thought life-extension technology was "bad for society," compared to only 35 percent who said it was good. The same poll found Democrats more evenly spit: 49 percent to 46 percent.
On the surface it would seem counterintuitive that conservatives, who generally are against abortion and euthanasia, would not be supportive of artificially prolonging life. But in other ways, it makes perfect sense.
After all, the party's large evangelical base has a simple, sacred objection in Genesis 6:3: "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." Or consider Pope Benedict's 2010 homily in which he warned against the dangers of artificially extending human life: "Humanity would become extraordinarily old, [and] there would be no more room for youth. Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life would be no paradise."
Unsurprisingly, an extreme extension of human life by technological means is likely to be viewed as antithetical to Christian, and perhaps general Abrahamic, dogma. But it is perfectly in agreement with conservative lust for individual liberty, and it is at this intersection of faith and politics that the American right will be forced to prioritize its principles. God is important, and freedom only slightly less so.
For the other side of the political spectrum the quandary is slightly different, though equally severe. Science for the left, it seems, could prove to be a double-edged sword.
Love of logic may well turn to loathing as only the rich, at least initially, are able to afford the therapies necessary to significantly extend life. Even better (or worse, depending), is that this prolonged life will allow them to accrue ever greater wealth, further exacerbating the class warfare so often cited by today's populist politicians. The Vulcan salute of "live long and prosper" may soon be more fact than fiction.
But eventually these therapies will almost certainly become more affordable, as drugs and treatments are wont to do, and the Malthusian nightmare so often prophesied yet never realized may eventually materialize: At some point the Earth will have one too many people. It is not impossible to imagine a day when the largesse of the very rich (and very old) restricts the birth rate of those from more modest means.
And all of this on top of a countervailing trend that seems to look upon old age itself as immoral and selfish. This idea, which largely explains the growing acceptance of euthanasia in some European countries, was recently espoused by ObamaCare architect Ezekiel Emanuel in a piece penned for The Atlantic entitled "Why I Hope to Die at 75."
Writes Emanuel:
But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world... [The Atlantic]
When examined closely, it's not so far removed from Benedict's sentiment.
And that's just it: What seem like strange bedfellows today could very well be tomorrow's allies. These therapies, if realized, will reside in politically uncharted territory, upending our hard and fast rules about who believes what.
One thing is certain, however: No matter how long humans live in the future, debates about the value of life itself will never die.
#science
» see original post http://theweek.com/articles/555605/radical-life-extension-abortion-politics-2050
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Silicon Valley could save the world from climate change. But we don't want them to.
Science Focus
original post »
Silicon Valley could save the planet. All they need to do is combine their entrepreneurial brilliance with an enormous infusion of cash, and, more importantly, have our society grant them the cultural permission to lead us to a green future.
But we don't want that. And, frankly, that's why we peons annoy the titans of tech so much.
Why won't we hand our environmental challenges to our top technologists to solve? After all, these are among the world's most successful people at identifying unsolved problems and tackling them. And they're loaded with enough money, resources, and cache to get things done.
The reason is simple: We're afraid.
Instead we demand solutions from policymakers — not because we think they're the biggest geniuses, but because we think only the government has the legitimate authority to do big binding things that affect us all, which is what stopping climate change requires.
What's more, many of us think that only government can do the right thing in a divided world. Regardless of our partisanship or our policy preferences, we're increasingly doubtful that big goals can be met except by coercive force. In fact, we suspect that, at bottom, everything is a matter of coercive force.
Consider, for a moment, Jeb Bush. After teasing environmentalists with dreams of a "moderate" Republican — as opposed to yet another "denier" — Bush recently laughed off restrictive policymaking as a solution to our climate challenges, enthusing instead over, well, Silicon Valley.
Innovation and technology, said Bush, are "the source of a lot more solutions than any government-imposed idea and sometimes I sense that we pull back from the embrace of these things." Instead, Americans should "tear down the barriers," allowing new inventions to "accelerate in our lives to find solutions" to our humanity-wide problems.
Speaking for a host of green activists at their wits' end, Salon political writer Simon Maloy called Bush's vision "an impossibly vague nothingburger […] that gives the impression that Jeb cares about climate change as he advocates for the status quo." And indeed, that's one way the story Bush tells could wind up.
Here's another real possibility: Bush's vision could actually make enormous progress toward soliving our environmental struggles.
Why not trust our technologists to actually tackle the difficulties our scientists warn us about? Why do we put our faith in government not even to compel us to do great things, but to stop us from doing little things that add up, such as emit carbon?
We are setting our sights too low, envisioning a government that just skims some value off the top of our emissions in the form of taxes and fees. This is not nearly enough. And our government is incapable of doing the big things that actually need to be done.
At Vox, David Roberts warns that reversing the trend line of net emissions requires us "to imagine all of human society turning on a dime, beginning in 2030, deploying massive amounts of nuclear, bioenergy, wind, and solar, and doing so every year for decades." That public effort "may not violate the laws of physics," says Roberts, "but it is unlikely, given what we know about human beings, path dependence, and political dysfunction."
It's almost as if the best approach is to set aside our lawmakers' climate policy agendas and focus on rendering our old energy technologies ridiculously obsolete. That would take a ton of work, yes. It would probably take government subsides on a massive scale. But if we really wanted to, we could create an energy-industrial complex every bit as powerful, wealthy, and supreme as the military-industrial complex that grew out of World War II. Just look at what one person, Elon Musk, has been able to achieve with even modest government subsidies.
Humanity has a simple problem: We are not good enough at making and using energy. We're slow, inefficient, fearful, and unserious about how plentiful energy can be.
Why don't we turn Washington into the biggest venture capitalist in the world, and hand Silicon Valley a blank check marked "climate"? Because it makes them masters of the universe. Yes, it's all about our fear again. Even worse than lining their pockets with "public money" we envision going to poor people instead, letting our tech titans lead would make them a civilization apart: plainly higher and better than us, in a way that cuts to the heart of our egalitarian envy and pride.
Unless we get over that resentful queasiness about the new ruling techno-class we're winding up with anyway, we'll just keep choking on climate.
#science
» see original post http://theweek.com/articles/556627/silicon-valley-could-save-world-from-climate-change-but-dont-want
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How to get faster fiber-optic pipes through computation
Science Focus
original post »The information age demands fat pipes. But making fat pipes is not always as easy as it sounds. Consider our current generation of fiber optic communications. Compared to microwave systems, where every symbol communicates something like one or two bytes of data, most current optical systems are limited to one to four bits per symbol.
This hasn’t mattered so much because many lasers, each with a different wavelength—called a channel—can be used on the same fiber, and the rate at which we send those bits is astonishingly high. Single channel capacities are way in excess of 40Gb/s range—40Gb/s was in testing the last time I taught a telecommunications course, and in 2012, various companies were testing 160Gb/s per channel. These incredible capacities, however, are achieved under very stringent conditions: the optical power must remain low, and the optical properties of the fiber must be carefully controlled (something called dispersion management).
The increase from 40Gb/s to 160Gb/s also represented the switch from encoding one bit per symbol to four bits per symbol. However, these encoding systems require that there is considerably more optical power per channel, and this causes problems with the stringent conditions mentioned above. This has made increases beyond four bits per symbol difficult. Funnily enough, everyone has kind-of-sorta known how to solve the problem, but no one was willing to simply bite the bullet and do it. At least until now.
Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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» see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/_KQ9bhK8R-s/
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Trifid Nebula, Messier 16 Square Sticker
Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space
tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, star forming nebulae, trfdnbl, star nurseries, galaxies, nebulae, star factory, trifid nebula, european southern observatory, clusters of stars, factories for stars, eso, vista
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic picture from our universe featuring the massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula.
It was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 13 x 17 arcminutes.
It's an awe-inspiring, breathtaking image that reveals some of the wonder that is our universe.
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image code: trfdnbl
ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
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tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, star forming nebulae, trfdnbl, star nurseries, galaxies, nebulae, star factory, trifid nebula, european southern observatory, clusters of stars, factories for stars, eso, vista
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic picture from our universe featuring the massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula.
It was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 13 x 17 arcminutes.
It's an awe-inspiring, breathtaking image that reveals some of the wonder that is our universe.
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more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series
image code: trfdnbl
ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
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via Zazzle Astronomy market place
Origin of Saturn’s F Ring and Its Shepherd Satellites Revealed
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Scientists have revealed that Saturn's F ring and its shepherd satellites are natural outcome of the final stage of formation of Saturn's satellite system.
via Science Daily
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Scientists have revealed that Saturn's F ring and its shepherd satellites are natural outcome of the final stage of formation of Saturn's satellite system.
via Science Daily
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Sprites from Space
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An old Moon and the stars of Orion rose above the eastern horizon on August 10. The Moon's waning crescent was still bright enough to be overexposed in this snapshot taken from another large satellite of planet Earth, the International Space Station. A greenish airglow traces the atmosphere above the limb of the planet's night. Below, city lights and lightning flashes from thunderstorms appear over southern Mexico. The snapshot also captures the startling apparition of a rare form of upper atmospheric lightning, a large red sprite caught above a lightning flash at the far right. While the space station's orbital motion causes the city lights to blur and trail during the exposure, the extremely brief flash of the red sprite is sharp. Now known to be associated with thunderstorms, much remains a mystery about sprites including how they occur, their effect on the atmospheric global electric circuit, and if they are somehow related to other upper atmospheric lightning phenomena such as blue jets or terrestrial gamma flashes.
Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old
An old Moon and the stars of Orion rose above the eastern horizon on August 10. The Moon's waning crescent was still bright enough to be overexposed in this snapshot taken from another large satellite of planet Earth, the International Space Station. A greenish airglow traces the atmosphere above the limb of the planet's night. Below, city lights and lightning flashes from thunderstorms appear over southern Mexico. The snapshot also captures the startling apparition of a rare form of upper atmospheric lightning, a large red sprite caught above a lightning flash at the far right. While the space station's orbital motion causes the city lights to blur and trail during the exposure, the extremely brief flash of the red sprite is sharp. Now known to be associated with thunderstorms, much remains a mystery about sprites including how they occur, their effect on the atmospheric global electric circuit, and if they are somehow related to other upper atmospheric lightning phenomena such as blue jets or terrestrial gamma flashes.Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old
North American and Pelican Nebulae Wall Graphic
Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space
tagged with: nanpn, pelican nebula, north american nebula, emission nebulae, billowing interstellar gas clouds, awesome astronomy images, stellar winds, star forming activity, star nursery, star nurseries
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous picture from outer space featuring the North American and Pelican emission nebulae in the constellation of Cygnus, The Swan. The red, green and yellow areas all highlight the cloud of interstellar ionised hydrogen.
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image code: nanpn
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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tagged with: nanpn, pelican nebula, north american nebula, emission nebulae, billowing interstellar gas clouds, awesome astronomy images, stellar winds, star forming activity, star nursery, star nurseries
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous picture from outer space featuring the North American and Pelican emission nebulae in the constellation of Cygnus, The Swan. The red, green and yellow areas all highlight the cloud of interstellar ionised hydrogen.
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image code: nanpn
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Light Echo from Star V838 iPad Mini Case
Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!
tagged with: le0018, nasa, etoiles, les etoiles, astronomy, nebula, space, hubble, science, scientific, outer space, deep space, sky, hst, hubble telescope, nebulae, reflection, nova, v838, monocerotis, light echo, hubble space telescope, red, orange, black, beautiful, pretty, inspiring, celestial
"[This is] the most recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of an unusual phenomenon in space called a light echo. Light from a star that erupted nearly five years ago continues propagating outward through a cloud of dust surrounding the star. The light reflects or "echoes" off the dust and then travels to Earth."
(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2006-50)
Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (STScI)
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The Zazzle Promise: We promise 100% satisfaction. If you don't absolutely love it, we'll take it back!
tagged with: le0018, nasa, etoiles, les etoiles, astronomy, nebula, space, hubble, science, scientific, outer space, deep space, sky, hst, hubble telescope, nebulae, reflection, nova, v838, monocerotis, light echo, hubble space telescope, red, orange, black, beautiful, pretty, inspiring, celestial
"[This is] the most recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of an unusual phenomenon in space called a light echo. Light from a star that erupted nearly five years ago continues propagating outward through a cloud of dust surrounding the star. The light reflects or "echoes" off the dust and then travels to Earth."
(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2006-50)
Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (STScI)
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Better estimates of worldwide mercury pollution
original post »
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Once mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of power plants, the pollutant has a complicated
The post Better estimates of worldwide mercury pollution has been published on Technology Org.
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Full Moon Poster Print
Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space
tagged with: full, moon, space, astronomy
High resolution Full Moon Photo from Robsastrophotography
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tagged with: full, moon, space, astronomy
High resolution Full Moon Photo from Robsastrophotography
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Click to customize with size, paper type etc.
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Tadpole Nebula, Auriga Constellation Square Sticker
Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space
tagged with: envelope sealers, star forming activity, awesome astronomy images, tnitac, tadpole nebula, auriga constellation, interstellar gas clouds, new born stars, hot young stars, star nursery, dust clouds
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome outer space picture featuring the Tadpole Nebula, a star forming hub located about 12000 light years away in the Auriga constellation.
This nebula is brimming with new-born stars, many as young as only a million years of age. It's called the Tadpole nebula because the masses of hot, young stars are blasting out ultraviolet radiation that has etched the gas into two tadpole-shaped pillars, called Sim 129 and130, the yellow forms that seem to be swimming away from the three red stars close to the centre of the picture.
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image code: tnitac
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
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tagged with: envelope sealers, star forming activity, awesome astronomy images, tnitac, tadpole nebula, auriga constellation, interstellar gas clouds, new born stars, hot young stars, star nursery, dust clouds
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome outer space picture featuring the Tadpole Nebula, a star forming hub located about 12000 light years away in the Auriga constellation.
This nebula is brimming with new-born stars, many as young as only a million years of age. It's called the Tadpole nebula because the masses of hot, young stars are blasting out ultraviolet radiation that has etched the gas into two tadpole-shaped pillars, called Sim 129 and130, the yellow forms that seem to be swimming away from the three red stars close to the centre of the picture.
more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series
image code: tnitac
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
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Orion Nebula and Trapezium Stars Wall Decal
Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space
tagged with: awesome astronomy images, hot young stars, star nursery, emission nebulae, ornebcsfr, orion nebula, trapezium stars, new born stars, dust clouds
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous picture from the deep universe featuring the bubbling, seething mass of gas and dust that is the Orion Nebula, 1500 light years away and the closest star-forming region to us. The nebula is a star nursery in which there are birthing, new-born, young and adult stars. Look carefully in the brightest central region and you'll see the Trapezium, four of the most massive stars in Orion.
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image code: ornebcsfr
Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team
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via Zazzle Astronomy market place
tagged with: awesome astronomy images, hot young stars, star nursery, emission nebulae, ornebcsfr, orion nebula, trapezium stars, new born stars, dust clouds
Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous picture from the deep universe featuring the bubbling, seething mass of gas and dust that is the Orion Nebula, 1500 light years away and the closest star-forming region to us. The nebula is a star nursery in which there are birthing, new-born, young and adult stars. Look carefully in the brightest central region and you'll see the Trapezium, four of the most massive stars in Orion.
more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series
image code: ornebcsfr
Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team
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Click to customize.
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