Ooh You're Blue-- The Hold Your Spine Game!

This from IO9.com:

Turns out some mysterious chemical additives may not be all bad. The sports drink and Popsicle color additive known as "brilliant blue" might have some serious benefits for people who suffer from spinal injuries, a new study reports.

In the days after a spinal cord injury, a lot is happening, and not all of it is good for the injured party. ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which usually acts as a power source for cells, floods into the injury site. But instead of helping cell recovery, ATP can unintentionally bind with important receptors on some immune cells. This can restrict oxygen flow to the cells and lead to some of the serious damage associated with spinal injuries

This colorizing chemical, also known as Blue No. 1, serves to prevent ATP from wreaking this havoc. When administered very soon after spinal injury in rats, the blue dye helped the rats recover faster and more fully. The results, which are being reported in the July 28th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the blue dye could be used in humans for the same types of injuries.

The treatment seems to be pretty much side-effect free. Well, except for one unintended consequence: the dye treatment temporarily turns skin and eyes blue. But being blue for a few weeks is a small price to pay for spinal injury recovery. Even if it means blue skin, I'll gladly sign up for my Brawndo treatment.

Brilliant Blue For The Spine [via Science News]

(Photo: Takahiro Takano)

Dean Kamen and Water Purification

Dean Kamen wants to mass produce and distribute water purification systems. The net effect is to give 1.1 billion people clean drinking water. In short, it could cure half of the world's sick people: many of whom are dying from easily curable water borne diseases.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Dean Kamen
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum

Dateline 2011: Intelligence is Viral

I think that the most shocking discovery of our generation will be that intelligence is viral-- a bloom turns the motor-control, blood-cooling grey mass in the skull into a calculator/camcorder/philosophical super-device. I think is why animals in captivity do things that their all-natural cousins do not. I think we're infecting them with intelligence.
Don't believe me? Here's a piece on how chimpanzees that get human love and attention score better than other chimps.

Make Solar Panels in your Pizza Oven

The reason why traditional power sources (line electric, gasoline engines, etc.) hold on is because of their cheap cost in comparison to "alternative" energy methods. Over the course of 5 years, consumption via solar-power will always be more expensive than line-power. What there were a way to bring that cost down for solar electric power? Look Down Under. An Australian scientist has developed a new method of manufacturing solar cells using nothing more than some nail polish remover, a pizza oven and a standard inkjet printer.

The iJET technique is so easy and cheap to carry out that it could revolutionize access to solar technology in the developing world.

In a recent radio interview (audio), Nicole Kuepper, a 23 year-old PhD student at the University of New South Wales, explained the process.

Firstly, she takes a standard silicon solar cell and sprays it with a substance similar to nail polish. Then, she inkjet prints something like nail polish remover onto the wafer in a set pattern in the same way that you’d print a normal photo. This enables the creation of high-resolution patterns on the cell at a very low cost. The cell is then metallized with an aluminum spray and baked at a very low temperature of around 550 fahrenheit in “something like a pizza oven.”

Kuepper went on to explain how solar cells are currently manufactured using expensive “high-tech, high-cleanliness equipment,” too costly for many countries in the developing world, adding, “we’re trying to do away with all of that so that so we can ensure that these solar cells can actually be manufactured in a developing country’s environment that you might find in say Ghana or Laos for example.”

(from Clean Technica)

Make Your Own Wind Turbine

In the 20th century people in several countries realized that the pollution of our world is getting serious. Using steam energy, atomic energy or just starting an auto engine pollutes our planet. Earth is in danger but we can give some time to our planet to regenerate! Using wind or sun power is just the first step to a cleaner, eco friendly living space to our children.

After several years scientists and inventors found the way to use clean, natural energy. Our Sun is the best power source we have, but the wind and water elements are important too! The most common answers to energy problems are the sun and the wind. These two elements can be found everywhere on Earth and building power plants based on these renewable energy sources is quite easy. Building a wind turbine is the easiest way to produce energy without any cost. If you want to build a turbine for your home, you will need these things: a generator, minimum 3 blades, a mounting (that keeps the wind's direction), a tower to get it into the way of the wind and some electronic things like batteries and control systems. At the start, you will need a DC motor to produce electricity. When you choose a model you must choose a low RPM model which can produce 12 volts with 2-300 RPM's. After you find your motor, you can start the building. You can made blades from an iron barrel or some half cut iron pipe. Just cut a blade from it and lock it symmetrical on the front of the motor. After this, use something thin and massive iron object to mount the structure in the best way of the wind.

Now build the tower to place the motor on the top of it. You can use a massive tree-stump or just weld a massive structure from some iron stick. After you locked the tower on the ground and placed the motor on the top, use the batteries to store the electricity and save the planet for our children!

This is a rough explanation, but you can find a very detailed, step-by-step guide at our website! Visit EcoTaz for this information and other interesting articles on the subject!

I know they're going to invent invisible keys to piss me off

Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.

Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don't. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don't create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army Research Office and the National Science Foundation's Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.

Eco-friendly chargers

Solar Power Chargers are an excellent and very simple means of charging up your batteries and have been widely and critically acclaimed thanks to their innovative and eco-friendly design and function. Traditionally, chemical based batteries had, at best, a highly limited life span and a life that ended in the same sad conclusion: the batteries when no longer useful had to be disposed off and new ones purchased.

The major problem with this was the high levels of waste involved, with such limited lifespan, and more and more people needing batteries, a solution had to be reached, and soon. As time went by, new improvements to the technology of batteries steadily improved, and so batteries lasted for longer. The major breakthrough for the batteries was that they soon became fully rechargeable after use, thus prolonging their useful lifespan exponentially.

While a major improvement from the original models of batteries, which n comparison were positively prehistoric in their design, rechargeable batteries were still wasteful. Whilst a major amount of wastage involved had been effectively reduced, a major bone of contention was that the batteries still had to use energy to be actually recharged, and the amount of energy expended in recharging the batteries was grossly disproportionate.

The latest breakthrough then for power chargers has been the greater use and implementation of solar powered components. These solar powered battery charges work in the same way as traditional models. With the crucial difference being that, thanks to the presence of photo sensitive cells within the unit, the power charger converts the energy from the sun into electrical energy to charge the batteries.

There are a number of different types of solar powered battery chargers, some chargers are effective than others due to their size, or because of the type of solar panels actually used. The amount of power actually generated by the various solar panels will be directly affected by the size of the individual panels. It should be noted that the solar battery charger is used to charge up the batteries rather than the actual devices themselves, and this at first glance seems a rather convoluted way of fixing the problem.

Logically, if a device was only powered by means of solar power, then in cases of indoor use, rainy weather etc, the device would be rendered all but useless. The amount of energy required to be converted into electrical energy to then power the electronic device is simply too high, and not a sustainable option.

The alternative to this would be to have the device directly outside in the sunlight, which is as foolish as it is impracticable. Not only would performance of the device be sporadic at best, entirely based on sun visibility, the heat generated by the sun would most likely cause severe damage to the delicate components of the electronic appliance in question. The sun is not the only issue, if it starts to rain, or the weather becomes windy, these conditions will further place the device at risk.

For purchase information on solar powered battery chargers and other cool gifts, visit us at Giftgadgetgateway.com

Article Directory: Article Dashboard