The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Chemistry crafts: crystals!

This isn’t actually a discovery. It’s something you can do at home. All you need is bismuth, a pot and a stove and you can grow your own crystalline rainbow skyscrapers:

The Amazing Rust blog:

The distinctive, ‘hoppered’, shape of a Bismuth crystal results from a higher growth rate around its outer edges than on its inside face. The higher rate of growth on the edges forms a crystal which appears to be partially hollowed out in a rectangular-spiral stair step design.

The crystal’s eye-catching array of colors results from the formation of a thin oxide layer on its surface…. Due to variations in the thickness of the oxide layer, the crystal is not one solid color but rather is a rainbow of colors corresponding to the wavelengths (and colors) of light which interfere constructively at each location.

In not so many words:

There’s a “how to make your own” lesson at the link.

[via]

Entered on 27 February 2009 at 6:49 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Barreleye, I can see inside your head.

If they could do this with cats, a million TV watchers would pay $1,000 each. MSNBC reports on a fish with a see-through head:

The barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) is adapted for life in a pitch-black environment of the deep sea , where sunlight does not reach. They use their ultra-sensitive tubular eyes to search for the faint silhouettes of prey overhead.

…

Barreleyes are thought to eat small fishes and jellyfish. The green pigments in their eyes may filter out sunlight coming directly from the sea surface, helping the barreleye spot the bioluminescent glow of jellies or other animals directly overhead. When it spots prey (such as a drifting jelly), a barreleye rotates its eyes forward and swims upward, in feeding mode.

They filmed it with a robot sub. Then brought one up for a closer look. To see what lies behind their eyes.

Entered on 26 February 2009 at 6:02 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Waterproof sand brings promise of new life.

PhysOrg, ready for a day on the beach, reports that nanotech engineers have created waterproof sand. They expect to use it to make the world’s deserts bloom. The stuff is just like ordinary sand, but if you put a layer of it down in a field, it’ll hold water like a pond:

As DIME engineer Fahd Mohammad Saeed Hareb explains, their idea is to lay a 10-cm layer of waterproof sand beneath desert topsoil. The hydrophobic sand could serve as a water table to stop water from bleeding downward below the plants’ roots. Normally, water quickly trickles down through the sand, requiring that farmers water their plants five or six times per day.

With the new layer of hydrophobic sand, farmers would only need to water their plants once per day, decreasing water use by up to 75 percent. Another benefit of the hydrophobic sand is that it prevents underground salt from passing through the plant roots, which can kill the plants.

They didn’t say so, but I bet you could make some awesome castles out of this stuff.

Entered on 25 February 2009 at 6:34 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: Mama Never Taught Me

SONG: “Mama Never Taught Me” _{(To download: double right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Can experiences be passed on to offspring? “, New Scientist, 9 Feb 2009, as used in the post “Teach ‘em young. If not earlier.”

ABSTRACT:
Well, songs about mama are kind of a staple of a certain set of musical genres. What would be more natural than writing a song about mama teaching you things before you were born?

This song, specifically, I did as a genre experiment. I wanted to write a song that was not my mama’s music, but my papa’s. This is a kwela song, or at least the best approximation I could make of one. Kwela was a kind of South African skiffle that came out of the townships in the late ’50s. It was improvised dance music, usually done with a one-string bass and a pennywhistle, with a beat as distinctive and catchy as ska or rock’n'roll. My father was a fan, and after listening to some Little Lemmy and Spokes Mashiyane, I think it’s high time there was a kwela revival. I mean, once you hear how it should be done, how can you resist it?

Everyone should be making this music. Everyone should be listening.

Entered on 23 February 2009 at 6:25 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Relax. We’ll clean those memories right out.

WebMD, usually a reassuring site filled with comforting medical knowledge, shares the recent finding that a common blood pressure drug is not actually erasing our memories, but just kind of getting inside our heads anyway:

In their study, 60 undergraduate students aged 18 to 28 viewed fear-related images on a computer and learned to link pictures of spiders with a mild shock to the hand, which created a fearful memory.

After a 24-hour break, the researchers randomly gave each participant either 40 milligrams of propranolol or a placebo (dummy pill). An hour and a half later, they asked the students to view the spider pictures again and to remember what they had learned the day before.

The students who received the beta-blocker propranolol showed no return of fear when viewing the spider pictures, a finding that suggests the entire fear memory was removed.

I’m taking a related drug. Lots of people do. Beta-blockers work by blocking the effects of adrenaline, so it makes sense that they’d have some kind of influence on fear and anxiety. But still… affecting the way our brains create memories?

Entered on 23 February 2009 at 3:27 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Exploration Imagery: S88-29653, the Project Pathfinder Autonomous Lander

^{Click to embiggen vastly}

This was what space was going to be in 1988. All acrylic paints and spindly legs.

You can read more about the Autonomous Lander of Project Pathfinder at NASA’s Human Spaceflight gallery.

Entered on 22 February 2009 at 6:11 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Teach ‘em young. If not earlier.

New Scientist educates us about a new study suggesting that pregnant moms’ mental workouts can affect their unborn kids’ brains:

Larry Feig at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and his colleagues bred “knockout” mice that lacked a gene called Ras-GRF-2, causing them to have a memory defect….

Before they reached adolescence, the team kept these knockout mice in a cage filled with toys for two weeks. Such “enriched environments” are known to enhance learning and memory. In the knockout mice, the enriched cage was enough to compensate for their memory defect: when tested on the fear task, they associated the shock with the cage, like normal mice.

To see if this compensation could be passed on to young, the researchers waited for these enriched knockout mice to reach sexual maturity, bred them and tested their offspring on the fear task. Despite being reared by an “unenriched” knockout foster mother – to rule out the effects of spending time with a mouse they could learn directly from – the offspring associated the electric shock with the cage, just like their enriched mothers and those without the genetic defect.

The effects didn’t carry on to either the knockout mice offspring whose mothers hadn’t been in the “enriched” (memory-training) cage – dad’s learning isn’t enough – nor to a third generation of offspring whose mothers had inherited the lessons without going through the mental training. It was definitely something being passed by biological mothers to their children in fetu.

Entered on 20 February 2009 at 6:13 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Green up your office, green out your lungs.

Pogue’s Posts‘ recent look at the latest TED talks underlines one particular presentation that seems pretty interesting. It’s by a fellow named Kamal Meattle who’s experimenting with the way potted plants increase health and productivity:

We have tried and tested these plants for 15 years at Paharpur Business Centre and Software Technology Incubator Park (PBC™ – STIP) in New Delhi, India. It is a 20 year old, 50,000 ft² building, with over 1,200 plants for 300 building occupants.

…[C]ompared to other buildings in Delhi, the incidence of eye irritation reduced by 52%, lower respiratory symptoms by 34%, headaches by 24%, upper respiratory symptoms by 20%, lung impairment by 10-12% and Asthma by 9%. As a result of fewer sick days — employee productivity also increased.

…

Our experience points to an amazing increase in human productivity resulting from using these plants to be >20%, and energy costs to reduce by an extraordinary >15%.

I remember reading about the NASA research that inspired this experiment (they were enthusiastic about philodendrons), and am happy to see the ideas being carried further – including into to the workplace. Meattle’s project singled out areca palms (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens), mother-in-law’s tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata) and money plants (Epipremnum aureum, formerly Pothos) as the best indoor air cleaners and oxygen providers. Consider getting one or two for your desk, then?

[via 43Folders Clips]

EDIT TO ADD: More recent research on potted plants removing formaldehyde from the air. Go green!

Entered on 19 February 2009 at 6:20 in the Science file | 4 Observations |  Print

You’re made of cotton candy.

Or at least you can be, if MSNBC and the Soft Matter journal are to be believed. They’re publishing research that shows how cotton candy can be used to rebuild our bodies:

First, you pour a thick liquid chemical over a wad of cotton candy. Let the liquid solidify into a chunk, and put that in warm water to dissolve the candy. That leaves tiny channels where the strands of candy used to be. So you have a chunk of material with a network of fine channels within.

Next, line these channels with cells to create artificial blood vessels. And seed the solid chunk with immature cells of whatever tissue you’re trying to make. The block is biodegradable, and as it disappears, it will gradually be replaced by growing tissue. In the end, you get a piece of tissue permeated with tiny blood vessels.

So far, the researchers have made these blocks of material and run rat blood through the channels within.

Entered on 18 February 2009 at 6:29 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: Army Ants (penitential Tom Waits cover)

SONG: “Army Ants”, originally by Tom Waits _{(To download: double right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant. Originally by Tom Waits.

SOURCE: This is another penitential cover version – penance for a late original song. It’s about insects. And people. There’s no specific scientific source, although you can see the video to the original song here.

ABSTRACT:
“Army Ants” was recorded following the precedent of the late song – a spoken word number with some… vocal experimentation. In this case, I was using a gag I learned from Captain Beefheart (which also appears on the second track of this a capella album): cutting up a vocal and reassembling it later. Beefheart (and, as far as I can tell, Appendix Out) used one singer and audiotape. I used my family members and the computer.

The family that records together, forms a super-intelligent colony organized to protect the queen and defend against attacking colonies together.

I wanted it to sound like that, anyway.

Entered on 17 February 2009 at 6:53 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print