© Still from YouTube video/daveachuk
Science & Technology
© Andrei Sommer et al
A near infrared laser beam makes it easier for a nanoscale probe to pass through water
A near infrared laser beam makes it easier for a nanoscale probe to pass through water
The curious healing effect has been known for decades - researchers have been investigating its use in eye injuries since 2002 - but why it works has been a mystery. It turns out the explanation could be simple and yet strange: the red light seems to alter the physical properties of water, which turbocharges the chemical reactions that provide a cell's energy.
The revelation has come from work led by Andrei Sommer of the University of Ulm in Germany.
The effect on cells of near-infrared light, which has a wavelength of 670 nanometres, was first reported 40 years ago. The light causes mitochondria, the cell's powerhouses, to produce more ATP, a compound that provides the cell's energy.
© Srivas Chennu
If human brains could be similarly connected, it might give us superhuman problem-solving abilities, and allow us to communicate abstract thoughts and experiences. "It is really exciting," says Iyad Rahwan at the Masdar Institute in Dubai, UAE, who was not involved in the work. "It will change the way humans cooperate."
The work, published today, is an advance on standard brain-machine interfaces - devices that have enabled people and animals to control machines and prosthetic limbs by thought alone. These tend to work by converting the brain's electrical activity into signals that a computer can interpret.
© Nasa/GSFC
Swift has been keeping a close eye on the possible supernova
Swift has been keeping a close eye on the possible supernova
An ordinary supernova usually marks the death of a massive star, but a so-called superluminous supernova shines at least 10 times brighter and has more mysterious origins. The newly found explosion, called ASASSN-15lh, is at least 2.5 times brighter than any superluminous supernova seen before.
The All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN), a suite of automated 14-centimetre telescopes that scour the sky for stellar explosions, discovered the bright object in the southern constellation of Indus.
© www.democraticunderground.com
Is it a wave or a cloud?
Is it a wave or a cloud?
According to two newly published studies - surfer's waves, also called Kelvin-Helmholtz waves, can also be found in near-Earth space, a region of space that affects how solar radiation reaches our civilization.
© io9.com
NASA photography of KH clouds.
NASA photography of KH clouds.
"We have known before that Kelvin-Helmholtz waves exist at the boundaries of Earth's magnetic environment - but they were considered relatively rare and thought to only appear under specialized conditions," study author Shiva Kavosi, a space scientist at the University of New Hampshire, said in a press release. "It turns out they can appear under any conditions and are much more prevalent than we thought. They're present 20 percent of the time."
Comment: We find these wave clouds on Jupiter and Saturn which means they are common phenomena throughout our solar system. Kelvin Helmholtz clouds are named for Lord Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz, who studied the physics of the instability that leads to this type of cloud formation. It's widely believed that these waves in the sky inspired the swirls in van Gogh's masterpiece Starry Night.
© New Scientist
The image of a galloping horse rider was projected onto the clouds from a distance of 50 meters by a special laser-based projection system mounted on an aircraft.
The system beaming the images into the clouds was invented by a research team, calling itself Project Nimbus. It is composed of a designer, Dave Lynch, and a chemist, Dr Mike Nix, from the University of Leeds, who ultimately want to be able to beam the movies onto the clouds from the ground.
Comment: What a nice tool to take the blame and/or deflect attention away from UFO apparitions and cometary activity.
The bonobos used sticks to dig out food hidden under the ground and lever large rocks out of the way, as shown in the sequence of images above.
The great apes, which are cousins of chimpanzees, have been seen creating and using tools much like our early human ancestors.
Researchers have reported witnessing bonobos modifying branches to create spears and using antlers and rocks as daggers, scrapers, shovels and hammers.
They claim their skills with these tools resembles the techniques attributed to the Oldowan stone tool culture that appeared in ancient humans living between 2.6 million and 1.7 million years ago.
© Image by Heather Callaghan
The same developers who are bringing wireless remotely controlled microchip implants are actually focusing on their first flagship product: Gates Foundation-funded birth-control microchip implants. Wireless technology allows the remotely controlled chip to turn a woman's ability to conceive off or on at will - temporary sterilization. Of course with remote technology funded by eugenics depopulation fanatics, the first questions should always be, "the ability to conceive by whose will?" This would be the complete antithesis of female empowerment or a "woman's right to choose" - would it not?
The encryption is alleged to be so safe, that cyberhackers cannot break entry - that means you too.
The chip can be implanted into the hip, arms or beneath the back. Mum was the word during the last few years of development until it was finally publicly confirmed that the beta testing for the birth control chip would be starting towards the end of this year. Indeed, human volunteers will be sought for real-life chip testing.
Comment: I'd like to know who in the heck has control over Bill Gates' microchip! Is there any end to the number of unnatural and anti-human "innovations" that Bill Gates is behind?? Geeze, Louise!
Take a look:
Monsanto and Gates Foundation Push Genetically Engineered Crops on Africa
Bono and Bill Gates-Backed Global Health Charity Exposed as a Fraud
Bill Gates says global vaccination program is "God's Work"
Bill Gates Calls for "Decade of Vaccines"
Big owner of Monsanto shares: Does Bill Gates want population control?
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Backing Untested Vaccines Causing New Wave of Polio-Like Paralysis Across India
Vaccine Crimes: India holds Bill Gates accountable
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: "Vaccines reduce population growth"
Psychopath Bill Gates' silent takeover of American education
US geoengineers funded by Bill Gates to spray sun-reflecting chemicals into atmosphere to artificially cool the planet
Bill Gates Funds Covert Vaccine Nanotechnology
Bill Gates-funded birth control microchip
Bill Gates and the Re-Colonization of Africa
Let them eat fake - 'Artificial egg' made from plants backed by Bill Gates set to revolutionize cooking goes on sale at Whole Foods
© www.ksby.com
Pipe dream.
Pipe dream.
This desal facility can produce nearly a million gallons of water a day, operating for the past 30 years. However, the drinkable water it is making, is only used at the power plant.
"It is our drinking water, it is the water we use in the kitchen, we operate it in the plant, it is all the water we use on site," says Tom Jones, who oversees the desal facility at the power plant. "The water started in the Pacific, went through our water treatment plant -- it is a water desalination facility. We removed the salt from it and other impurities, and we pump it up the hill here were we store five million gallons of it for plant use.
The harsh drought leaving a dry mark on the state, officials say this water can be used for much more than the plant's uses. "We could pump this to a treatment facility or build a separate treatment facility here and tie it into other existing water systems," says Jones.
Comment: A new kind of desperate! On the one hand, a big bunch of dollars dollars for a pipeline and hopefully non-contaminated water or, on the other hand, the continued and irreversible depletion of groundwater, without replenishment in sight, compounding the real threat of a megadrought. A kWh costs an average of 12¢ in America, so this is a tenth of a cent per gallon. But the Canyon Diablo nuclear plant produces this electricity at only 4¢/kWh, cheaper than most other energy sources in California, so the cost is even less. (RO water from the supermarket costs about 40¢/gallon.) Significant increase of wastewater treatment across California could provide over a hundred million gallons a day. It's at least a choice.
© agsandrew/Shutterstock.com
These new, brain-inspired computing devices also could help neuroscientists better understand the workings of the human brain, researchers say.
In a conventional microchip, the processor, which executes computations, and the memory, which stores data, are separate components. This constant relaying of data between the processor and the memory consumes time and energy, thus limiting the performance of standard computers.
In contrast, Massimiliano Di Ventra, a theoretical physicist at the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues are building "memcomputers," made up of "memprocessors," that both process and store data. This setup mimics the neurons that make up the human brain, with each neuron serving as both the processor and the memory. The building blocks of memcomputers were first theoretically predicted in the 1970s, but they were manufactured for the first time in 2008.
Now, Di Ventra and his colleagues have built a prototype memcomputer they say can efficiently solve one type of notoriously difficult computational problem. Moreover, they built their memcomputer from standard microelectronics.
"These machines can be built with available technology," Di Ventra told Live Science.
The scientists investigated a class of problems known as NP-complete. With this type of problem, a person may be able to quickly confirm whether any given solution may or may not work but can't quickly find the best solution to it.
Comment: For more on our cosmic environment, check out: