How do plants grow towards the light?

You've learnt about this in your science subject during secondary/high school.

It's interesting and I bet it still is. Why would the upshot of a tree grow towards the light and not elsewhere? Sciencefocus has a simple way of explaining it.

                          A weed in our unkempt flower vase

Plant cells contain a protein called phototropin that is mostly concentrated in the growing tip of the plant shoot. This protein unfolds into an activated state when it absorbs blue wavelengths of light.

This sets off a cascade of interactions between different proteins in the cells, which ultimately changes the alignment of cellular scaffolding proteins, called microtubules.

The upshot of this is that the cells on the darker side of the shoot elongate, while those on the light side remain squat and boxy. As the dark side of the plant grows longer, the shoot as a whole bends away from that side and towards the light.

Recent research at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University, and Wageningen University in the Netherlands, found that the rearrangement of the microtubules can happen surprisingly quickly. Within minutes of exposure to blue light, plant cells will start making new microtubules.


Source: Sciencefocus

Can eating burnt toast cause cancer?

Before we talk about burnt toast, let me share with you about what I was once told while enjoying my Sate Kajang (Kajang satay) - the satay that's famously originated from Kajang, Selangor. The delicacy is served with sliced or cubed cucumber for a purpose. The cucumber apparently 'neutralise' the compound formed in burnt meat that is believed to cause certain kind of cancer.

No scientific evidence was offered to support the idea, but they advise us to finish the cucumber cubes anyway.


Now, let's see what is ScienceFocus' take on burnt toast.


Are you a fan of toast? Maybe it's a good idea not to burn it.


It’s long been known that just over-heating, let alone burning, some foods can lead to the formation of compounds linked to cancer. These include heterocyclic amines and so-called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which can lead to fried or smoked foods posing a health risk.

In the case of burnt toast, most concern surrounds the risk from the formation of acrylamide, a compound that has been linked to cancer and nerve damage in animals. That said, the evidence of a direct link between cancer and acrylamide in food consumed by humans is far from compelling.

While some studies have pointed to a doubling in risk of ovarian and uterine cancer among women consuming this compound in food, other studies have found nothing.

Even so, in 2007, the European Union’s health advisors decided to take a precautionary approach, and recommended that people avoid eating burnt toast or golden-brown chips as they may contain unacceptably high levels of acrylamide.


TheGreenMechanics: So, while studies aren't conclusive, there's still belief that overly toasted bread can cause cancer. Have I been missing something? Because I have not been paying much attention to such 'risk' all this while.

What is the oxygen level in a plane?

The other question people ask the most when going into the cabin is how clean or stale the air is inside there. There is an earlier article about that here.

Today we are asking  about adequacy of oxygen in the cabin.

Inside the cabin of an Airbus. Photo by de engineur.

Oxygen level in a plane

Oxygen levels in flight are broadly the same s on the ground, about 210,000 parts per million by volume - hat is about 21%.

However, at cruise altitude the cabin pressure is lower than on the ground at around 82kPa, equivalent to about 1,800m (6,000 ft).

For comparison, air pressure at sea level is 101kPa. At this low pressure, oxygen levels in the blood are lower than at sea level. A healthy person suffers no effects, but those with respiratory illness sometimes need additional oxygen.


Source: TheDailyExpress' Sunlife, December 1, 2013 - pp. 14

World’s slowest moving drop caught on camera after 13 years!

It took them 13 years to finally capture on camera a single drop of the world's slowest-moving drop - a bitumen, or asphalt drop. That's very very slow, but it sure moves.

No wonder, you find the tarred road moving a little bit after few years, and it moves much faster than 13 years due to the vehicular weight it is holding on a daily basis.

Exactly how this experiment can benefit mankind, I don't know but for the sake of reading, here it goes:


Fall of a drop of tar pitch caught on camera for the first time. Image source: Discovery News


Slowest drop caught on camera

The second-longest running science experiment in history has just yielded its strange result: a sticky, black drop of pitch.

Set up in 1944 at Trinity College Dublin, the experiment is meant to reveal the strange properties of bitumen -- pitch, or asphalt -- which appears solid at room temperature but is in fact flowing very, very slowly.

At around 5 o'clock in the afternoon on July 11, 2013, physicist Shane Bergin and colleagues recorded what Nature described as one of the most eagerly anticipated and exhilarating drips in science.

“We were all so excited,” Bergin told Nature. “It’s been such a great talking point, with colleagues eager to investigate the mechanics of the break, and the viscosity of the pitch.”

The Trinity College team estimates the pitch to be about 2 million times more viscous than honey, or 20 billion times the viscosity of water.

The origin of the experiment is lost in history, although a similar experiment at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, set up in 1927, is tagged by Guinness World Records as the world’s longest running lab experiment.


More details, go to Nature News

Use your urine to charge mobile phone!

Put your phone on the ground and pee on it!

Maybe not literally, but soon you will be able to charge your phone with urine. Not only that, the researchers aim to eventually use the technology to power household electrical appliances, too.

You may not have to waste your urine anymore. Image credit: Discovery news

Alternative power source: Urine powers mobile phone

British scientists said they have harnessed the power of urine and are able to charge a mobile phone with enough electricity to send texts and surf the Internet.

Researchers from the University of Bristol and Bristol Robotics Laboratory in south west England said they had created a fuel cell that uses bacteria to break down urine to generate electricity, in a study published in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.

"The beauty of this fuel source is that we are not relying on the erratic nature of the wind or the sun; we are actually reusing waste to create energy. One product that we can be sure of an unending supply is our own urine."
-Ioannis Ieropoulos, engineer/researcher at University of Bristol

According to them, the cell is currently big - the size of a car battery - but hope to shrink it to become portable soon.


How it works

The team grew bacteria on carbon fiber anodes and placed them inside ceramic cylinders. The bacteria broke down chemicals in urine passed through the cylinders, building up a small amount of electrical charge which was stored on a capacitor (battery).

The microbial fuel power stack (MFC) that they have developed generates enough power to enable SMS messaging, web browsing and to make a brief phone call.


TheGreenMechanics:
As long as people continue to pee, raw material for this technology will be available. The task now is to refine the idea to make the invention capable of fully charging a phone battery.


Source: Discovery news

World's first Test-tube beef burger unveiled

A different (or should I say odd) way of making meat, I doubt I'd ever want to replace the beef in my burger with one.

Besides, meat may not even be an accurate name for it. If you think it has potential to become 'meat', it must have greater nutritional value than its predecessor. Nah, I'll stick to my real beef burger, for now.

Fancy a test-tube burger? Image credit: Discovery news

World's first test tube burger tasted in London

Early this week, Scientists unveiled the world's first lab-grown beef burger, serving it up to volunteers in London in what they hope is the start of a food revolution.

The 140-gram (about five-ounce) patty, which cost more than 250,000 euros (RM1.08 million) to produce, has been made using strands of meat grown from muscle cells taken from a living cow. Mixed with salt, egg powder and breadcrumbs to improve the taste, and colored with red beetroot juice and saffron, researchers claim it will taste similar to a normal burger.

A volunteer said he was expecting the texture to be more soft, adding it was close to meat but not as juicy.


How it is made

Cells are taken from organic cows and placed in a nutrient solution to create muscle tissue. The cells then grew into small strands of meat, 20,000 of which were required to make the burger. Although it is very expensive, the costs of cultured beef are likely to fall as more is produced and scientists claim it could be available in supermarkets within 10 to 20 years.

"Our burger is made from muscle cells taken from a cow. We haven't altered them in any way. For it to succeed it has to look, feel and hopefully taste like the real thing."
- Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands.


TheGreenMechanics: A very expensive burger, but time will tell if human will eventually shift to eating such edible as we run out of food.


Read the full article here.

Most popular Accidental Discoveries - 10 of them

It's been 75 years since a scientist accidentally discovered a new wonder material: Teflon. To celebrate, Focus looks at nine other fortunate discoveries, from text messaging to viagra to superglue.

Here are the top 10:

1) Teflon

Teflon was first created by a scientist named Roy Plunkett who was toying with CFC gases to create a new refrigerant. Plunkett stored cylinders of a gas known as tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) in dry ice so they wouldn’t explode in the lab, but when he came to use the gas, he discovered waxy, white flakes in its place.

This new substance was incredibly slippery and stable, resistant to heat, water, acid and pretty much everything else he could throw at it. It wasn’t until French engineer Marc Gregoire worked out how to bond it to aluminium that the first non-stick pan was produced and the brand Teflon soon followed.


2) Microwave oven

During World War II, Percy Spencer was a senior engineer for Raytheon, a defence contractor supplying radar equipment to the US military. In 1946, he was working at MIT's Radiation Laboratory to develop a more powerful magnetron – the vacuum tube at the heart of radar devices – when, standing in front of one of his test models, he noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted.

Intrigued, he tried holding a bag of unpopped popcorn up to the device – and so the microwave oven was born, with Raytheon’s industrial-sized 'Radarange' going on sale the following year. It’s now the saviour of many a tired 9-5 worker looking for a quick evening meal.


3) Viagra

At first, Sildenafil seemed to be a promising new drug for heart disease, including angina. But when it was trialled at a Swansea hospital, male test patients reported an odd side effect: unexpected erections. Marketed as Viagra in the late 1990s, the drug became a massive hit for Pfizer.

Image credit: SElefant


4) Synthetic dye

At the age of 18, William Perkin was working as a lab assistant in London. He’d been tasked with coming up with a new way of producing quinine, an expensive antimalarial drug. In 1864, after a failed attempt, he noticed a potent purple sludge at the bottom of one of his beakers.

Rather than throwing it away, Perkin tested it, soon realising he’d created an artificial dye that was more vibrant than anything from nature.


5) Pacemaker

We've all done it: reached into the toolbox and pulled out the wrong instrument. In Wilson Greatbatch’s case this simple mistake resulted in the invention of the first practical implantable pacemaker.

Greatbatch was actually trying to make a circuit that could record fast heartbeats, but when he inadvertently pulled out a 1-megaohm resistor instead of the 10,000-megaohm resistor he’d intended to use, the finished product pulsed for 1.8 milliseconds, stopped for one second and then repeated.

It was the unmistakable rhythm of a heartbeat at rest. The first successful pacemaker was implanted in a 77-year-old in 1960, who lived for 18 months after the device was inserted.


6) Radio astronomy

Both the origins of, and greatest discovery by, radio astronomy were accidental. Karl Jansky was an engineer investigating interference in telephone lines. The errant signals were found to come from celestial objects, and radio astronomy was born.

Three decades later, radio engineers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were also investigating a stubborn hiss. What they’d found was the last fading echo of the Big Bang, now known as Cosmic Microwave Background radiation.


7) Text messaging

In 1987, European bureaucrats set about drawing up a new technical standard for mobile phones. Fully digital cellular phones were being designed, and the officials wanted a system that would work across the whole of Europe, all in the spirit of European co-operation and harmony.

Written into the script was a tiny detail that enabled telecoms engineers testing the system to send short messages back and forth between themselves, to help manage the mobile network. But consumers soon discovered this ‘Short Message Service’ (SMS), and, to the immense surprise of the phone operators, loved it. We’ve been texting ever since.


8) X-rays

In 1895, physicist Wilhelm Röntgen was busy in his University of Würzberg lab investigating the properties of cathode rays. Suddenly he noticed a flicker on a barium platinocyanide screen. Surprise turned to shock when he saw a skeletal hand.

Some mysterious emanation was passing through the air – and through his flesh, allowing his bones to cast shadows on the dimly glimmering screen. X-rays – the 'X' stood for their unknown nature – were soon replicated in laboratories around the world. Within two decades, X-rays found extraordinary medical applications.


9) Saccharin

Surely one of the most important rules in chemistry is to always wash your hands. Luckily for the sweet-toothed among us, Constantin Fahlberge didn’t adhere to strict hygiene codes back in 1878.

After trying to create new derivatives of coal tar in his laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, he went home to eat his dinner, which he found to be unusually sweet.

In an interview with American Analyst, a leading scientific journal of the time, Fahlberge told a reporter that he immediately ran back to his lab and tasted the contents of every evaporating dish and beaker till he found the sweetener now known as saccharin.


10) Superglue

During World War II, Harry Coover, a chemist at Eastman Kodak, was head of a team that was trying to concoct a clear plastic that could be used to create transparent gun sights.

One unsuccessful attempt created a gloop that simply stuck to everything it touched – an experience that’ll be familiar to anyone who's ever spilt superglue on their hands. They had created what’s known as a cyanoacrylate.



Produced by John Agar, a Senior Lecturer in Science and Technology Studies at University College London. Original post here. Images, too, were sourced from the same page.

The toughest animal on the planet

Not really the kind of animal you see everyday as they are only about 1 mm to 1.5 mm long but still, they are animal.

The toughest, hardest creature is a tardigrade, also known as a water bear. They are found everywhere in the world, from the highest mountains to the deepest oceans, and there are more than 900 species of them.


Tardigrades or water bear. Freeze them, dry them, expose them to radiation and they're so resilient they'll still be alive! Image credit: Dailymail



Image credit: Dailymail


Tardigrades can dehydrate their bodies to just 1% of their normal water content. Without water, most chemical reactions happen too slowly to harm them and ice crystals can’t rupture their cells. They are extremophiles – animals that can exist in the most hostile of conditions.

They have been boiled at over 150ºC and frozen in liquid nitrogen without any noticeable harm. They can survive pressures of 6,000 atmospheres and in 2007, the Russian FOTON-M3 spacecraft took tardigrade passengers into orbit.

After 12 days exposed to the vacuum, cold and radiation of space, they hadn’t just survived; they had laid eggs that hatched! Pretty cool.


Now, for a comparison, the bears, despite their big and tough body build, is nothing compared to the toughness and survivability of the tardigrades.


The Bear that we know; only more than a thousand times bigger. Image credit: fanpop.com


References: Dailymail, Sciencefocus

Electric flowers have the power to bring in bees

It is common knowledge that flowers use bright colours and enticing fragrances to attract pollinators, but what’s not so widely known is that they also use electrical signals.

'Pollinating' - captured with Nikon D90 at | 200mm | f/4 | ISO-400 | 1/320 sec |

Nobody knew about this electrical attraction until biologists recently discovered that bumblebees can detect a charge and use it to determine which plant they visit. Charge detection may help bees decide which flowers hold plenty of nectar.

To investigate, biologists at the University of Bristol created artificial flowers, filling some with sucrose and others with quinine, which bees don’t feed on. Initially, the bees (buff-tailed bumblebees of the species Bombus terrestris) visited the flowers at random. But when a 30 volt field, typical of a 30cm-tall flower, was applied to the artificial plants containing sucrose, the bees detected the charge from a few centimetres away, and visited the charged flowers 81 per cent of the time.


Flowers use electrical signals

A bee lands on one of the electrically charged artificial
 flowers. Image:University of Bristol.

When a bee visits a flower some of its positive charge transfers to the plant, and further bees transfer more charge. This could show an incoming bee that there’s unlikely to be much nectar on offer.

“The last thing a flower wants is to attract a bee and then fail to provide nectar,” says Professor Daniel Robert, who led the research.

“It’s a lesson in honest advertising, since bees are good learners and would soon lose interest in such an unrewarding flower.”

It’s thought the electric charge supplements the other signals flowers use. Exactly how bees detect electrical fields is unknown, but the researchers speculate that the hairy bees bristle up under an electrostatic force.


Fact source: Daily Express Sunlife, 2/6/2013, pp.12

Why doesn't lightning travel in a straight line

In the past, I have few attempts at shooting the lightning as it happen and none of my shots are decent enough, but one thing I observed is that lightning does not travel in a straight line.

Captured with Nikon D90 at | 38mm | f/18 | ISO-200 | 30 sec |

First, how lightning is formed

The zig-zagging path of lightning has its origin in processes still not fully understood. It begins with strong rising currents of air creating a static electric charge through frictional effects somewhat like those on the surface of balloons rubbed on suitable fabric. Recall the Van der Graaff effect?

This charge generates an electric field that accelerates any free electrons in the surrounding air, smashing them into neighbouring molecules, thus releasing yet more electrons.


. . . and the zig-zag?

If sufficiently violent, these collisions will turn the air under the cloud (see pic above) from electrically insulating to conducting, which allows the passage of electrical current. This heats up the air to around 30,000^oC, triggering the characteristic flash light that follows the zig-zag path formed by the collisions.

The heat also causes a sudden expansion of the air, which we hear as a clap of thunder. The thunder 'loudness' corresponds with the amount of electrical current passing through the air.

In short: Molecules and electrons collisions are in random directions, so the lightning flash you see in the sky is not in a straight line, too.

Trivia Friday: Do plants die of old age?

Common knowledge tells us that every living thing will inevitably die, eventually.


                                  See more pics at my Flickr photostream.


ScienceFocus says that, given optimum conditions, some plants can live forever. It takes a change in external conditions to finish them off.

Annual plants, however, usually die soon after seeding.

Do you think gesture control will replace touchscreen?

Not too long ago, people relied on mouse, keyboard, and touchpad to communicate with their computers. Then portable devices emerged and touchscreens quickly became one of the more popular means of control and interface.

Touch-enabled smartphones and tablets have been very successful and as we progress further, people are now talking about gesture control.

The MYO works by using of muscle movement to control a wide range of devices

A magic armband that looks pretty simple

The MYO armband measures electrical activity in your muscles and translate that into signals before amplifying and relaying them to gadgets using Bluetooth wireless technology.

"A few years from now, it isn't hard to imagine people wearing Google Glass or a related headset, using a MYO armband to control the headset and other computers in the area, and having a Leap Motion to use a computer at their workstations"

- Technology blog Singularity Hub

I took part in an online poll by ScienceFocus and as of today, this is the result. During the first few days the ratio was 60:40 in favour of gesture control:

Sciencefocus poll result after 8 days

Reference: Pictures from MYO

How does a bulletproof vest work?

Mention bulletproof vest and this reminds many about the two slain VAT 69 commandos in Lahad Datu, Sabah recently.

In both fatal shooting by intruders, the victims were shot on their heads. Had it been on other parts of the body, they'd have better chance of survival. Because, surely they'd have been equipped with safety vests.

Testing the bulletproof vest. Wikipedia photo.

So, how do bulletproof vests work? Bullet proof vests are common pieces of protective equipment used by law enforcement and private security personnel.

They are designed to disperse the bullet's energy and deform the slug to minimise blunt force trauma. Hard body armour is made of strengthened steel plates. It is strong and effective but also heavy and cumbersome. But some ammunition can even penetrate steel, requiring stronger materials still.

The latest vests employ overlapping super-strength but lightweight composites of ceramic and titanium. Soft body armour is not as strong, but it is more lightweight and less conspicuous to wear. It is woven out of interlacing strands of Kevlar. Like hard body armour, layers of this tough, net-like material deform the incoming bullet, absorbing certain amount of its energy. The wearer would still feel the hit but at a much reduced impact.

TheGreenMechanics: Bulletproof or not, war and conflict should be avoided best as possible!

Further reading here, and ScienceFocus

What is the highest Voltage ever produced?

Immediately lightning bolt comes to mind.

But then lightning is not 'produced' by man. If you are in the electrical industry, transmission lines knowledge comes in handy. The world's highest substation voltage was proposed in India in 2011 with maximum 1,200kV or 1.2 million volts. That's more than 5,000 times the voltage of your typical home appliances ( refrigerators, lamps, fans, etc)

But that's not the highest voltage ever produced.


Typical voltage of Lightning bolts are between 10 to 120 million volts (10MV - 120MV)
(Long exposure picture taken in Putatan, Sabah)


Highest man-produced voltage

You are right, thinking about the Van de Graaff generator at your secondary school science laboratory.

According to Science Focus magazine, Van de Graaff generators produce the highest voltages. Charge is carried by an insulating belt from a lower electrode to another at the top, accumulating across a metallic dome. They can be strapped together to form tandems for even higher voltages. A tandem at Oak Ridge National Laboratory produced the highest ever at 25.5MV

A megavolt is 1 million volts, or 1,000kV.

Eye medication helps to regrow hair of balding men

This would definitely be a good piece of news to many balding persons out there. And it coud be on its way to the pharmacies sooner than we thought.

New research in the FASEB Journal shows how a commonly prescribed glaucoma drug may be effective in treating male pattern baldness and other forms of alopecia.

If you're balding and want your hair to grow back, then here is some good news. A new research report appearing online in The FASEB Journal (www.fasebj.org) shows how the FDA-approved glaucoma drug, bimatoprost, causes human hair to regrow. It's been commercially available as a way to lengthen eyelashes, but these data are the first to show that it can actually grow human hair from the scalp.

"We hope this study will lead to the development of a new therapy for balding which should improve the quality of life for many people with hair loss," said Valerie Randall, a researcher involved in the work from the University of Bradford, Bradford, UK.

"Further research should increase our understanding of how hair follicles work and thereby allow new therapeutic approaches for many hair growth disorders."

To make this discovery, Randall and colleagues conducted three sets of experiments. Two involved human cells and the other involved mice. The tests on human cells involved using hair follicles growing in organ culture as well as those take directly from the human scalp.

In both of these experiments, the scientists found that bimatoprost led to hair growth. The third set of experiments involved applying bimatoprost to the skin of bald spots on mice. As was the case with human cells, the drug caused hair to regrow.

"This discovery could be the long-awaited follow up to Viagra that middle-aged men have been waiting for," said Gerald Weissmann, MD, editor-in-chief of The FASEB Journal.

"Given that the drug is already approved for human use and its safety profile is generally understood, this looks like a promising discovery that has been right in front of our eyes the whole time. On to the front of our scalp!"


Further reading at The FASEB Journal

How do animals know where to migrate to?

What a traffic jam! Photo by National Geographic. Every year, Christmas Island's 50 million red crabs migrate to the sea to lay their eggs.


SOME BIRDS, FISH, TURTLES  and whales travel enormous distances when migrating to find food or to mate. The furthest may be the bar-tailed godwit, flying over 10,000km from New Zealand to Alaska. Starlings use a Sun compass, which means knowing the time so as to compensate for the Sun’s changing position.

By contrast, mallards can find north using the stars, an ability that is genetically programmed. Many other birds as well as salamanders, salmon and hamsters use the Earth’s magnetic field.

Loggerhead turtles can even sense the direction and strength of Earth’s magnetic field soon after hatching and later use this skill to navigate along their regular migration route.

Other animals use land features such as mountain ranges and rivers, and dolphins use the shape of the ocean floor. Wildebeest follow the scent of rain and salmon use smell to return to the very same stream where they were born.


Source: ScienceFocus, Photograph: NG/Allison Shaw

Biggest scientific breakthroughs in 2012

The end is near for 2012, so, let's look at the (presumably arguably) biggest scientific breakthroughs and other science-related achievements of 2012. Credit to io9 for all the fact-diggings with NASA and other sources.

All images can be traced back to io9.com. I have appended the active link to the full write-up at the end of this article should you be interested to read further.

Here are my 10 favourites from the list of seventeen:


1) NASA's Curiosity rover lands on Mars

NASA's one-ton, 6-wheel-drive, nuclear-powered science laboratory — known as Curiosity — touched down on the surface of Mars in early August 2012, following an eight-month voyage across millions of miles of space. It is far and away the biggest and most scientifically capable rover ever sent to another planet.

The landing sequence, alone, which required lowering the rover to the surface of the planet from a hovering, rocket-powered sky crane, was the most technically impressive ever attempted, and played out beautifully.


2) Artificial DNA brings us closer to synthesizing entirely new Forms of Life (or will we ever?)

Synthetic biologists demonstrated that artificial nucleic acids known as "XNAs" can replicate and evolve just like DNA and RNA, and are even more resistant to degradation than the real thing. The implications of evolvable, artificial genetic information are vast, to put it lightly, and stand to affect everything from genetic research to the search for alien life, to the creation of an entirely synthetic, alternative life form.


3) Computers learn to recognize the content of Images for the first time

Few will doubt that the world's first AI will be born in a Google server farm.

This dream came closer to reality this year when Google's secretive X Lab produced evidence that it had developed a neural network that could actually recognize what it was seeing in pictures. It did this by examining millions of images on YouTube for a few days, then offering the researchers some composite images of what it had learned to recognize. Two of those images were unmistakably human and cat faces.

This is the first time computers have taught themselves to recognize the content of images, and is a major leap forward in the quest to find ourselves some artificially intelligent friends.


4)  The most comprehensive Face Transplant in history

There have been face transplants before, but this was the first full-face transplant — and it worked marvellously well.

The recipient had lost most of his face in a gun accident, and now has a full face that he was able to move within days of his surgery. This will lead to many more people gaining a new lease on life with a face that functions almost as well as the one they were born with, and possibly, better.


5) Researchers create a Mammal entirely from stem cells

For the first time in history, researchers at Kyoto University created a mouse by using eggs derived from stem cells alone. The achievement once again shows the remarkable possibilities presented by regenerative technologies like stem cells, while raising pressing ethical questions about the potential for human births in which parents might not be required.

The key question here is, is this ethically acceptable?


6) Electronic implant that dissolves inside your Body

The boundary that divides man from machine continues to dissolve — often in more literal ways than you might imagine.

Scientists in September announced a new class of implantable electronics that can carry out a designated task for anywhere from a few hours to several weeks before disappearing completely, resorbing into the body after serving its purpose.

The potential applications of this technology — dubbed "Transient Electronics" by its creator, bio-engineer John Rogers — are many, and run the gamut from vanishing biological implants to environmentally friendly phones.


7) Study to examine what happens to Women Denied Abortions

For the first time in history, a group of researchers did a longitudinal study of what happens to women who seek out abortions, but are denied them under restrictive legal frameworks. The UC San Francisco research team followed nearly 1,000 women from diverse backgrounds across the U.S. over several years, after they were unable to have their abortions.

What they discovered was that these women were more likely to slip below the poverty line, be unemployed, remain in abusive relationships with the fathers of their children, and feel stressed out from having too many responsibilities. Only a tiny percentage of them put their babies up for adoption, and most already had children before seeking an abortion. What this ongoing study demonstrates is that abortion is an economic issue for women, with dire consequences for those denied them.

I think the sample is way too small for the study to be representative. But it is just a start to begin with.


8) Spaceflight Goes Private

The future of space exploration belongs not to government agencies, but private companies, and California-based SpaceX is leading the way. This year, while NASA's various Space Shuttles were busy hanging up their space boots, SpaceX became the first private company in history to complete a commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station, the first of 12 contracted resupply missions in a $1.6-billion delivery deal with NASA.


9) World's most High-tech condom

At last, a rubber-meets-the-road moment for materials science. Using a nano-fabrication technique called electrospinning, a team of researchers created a female condom that is woven out of fibres that block sperm and also release a medicine that prevents HIV infections.

The material can also be designed to harmlessly evaporate in a matter of hours or days, depending on what the woman wants. Sure, the Mars Rover could change the future. But this simple technology could change women's lives all over the world right now.


10) There is more water than we thought in the Solar System

This was the year of water in our solar system. We already had strong evidence of plentiful water on the Moon, and this year we found it for Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa and Mercury — plus we got more detailed images of Saturn moon Titan's river systems, which probably flow with liquid methane and ethane.

Water on other planets isn't exactly like water on Earth — usually it's packed with hydrocarbons, or is extremely brackish. But now at least we have evidence that water isn't as usual as we thought out there. Future space colonists may be able to mine for water on other words, using refineries to purify it into something potable.


Source: io9

Shaking fur science: How animals shed water by shaking

When an animal shakes water off its fur, it may look like a simple instinctive action. But the hand of evolution has optimised fur shakes across the hairy mammals so they don't waste energy.

Shake it off!  Photo credit: AllPosters.com

Using a hosepice and spray bottle, researchers at Georgia institute of Technology in the US soaked 33 animals obtained from zoo, a lab and a local park, and use a high-speed camera to film at up to 1,000 frames per second as they shook away the water.

Mouse movement: Mice remove 70% of the water in their coats in less than 1 second.

Shake speed

Animal shake speed (frequency) shown in Hertz, is fastest in mice, i.e. 29Hz. To define it, a 1 Hz shaking speed means an animal shakes once every second. This means, a mouse can shake 29 times in a single second. The following list compares the speed of different animals:

• Mouse      -     29Hz
• Cat           -     9.4Hz
• Pig            -     8.2Hz
• Kangaroo -     4.9Hz
• Lion         -     4.8Hz
• Labrador  -     4.3Hz
• Bear         -     4Hz

Removing water from fur restores its power of insulation. But to do this, an animal needs to overcome the surface tension between the water and the hair. So its shake must generate sufficient centrifugal force. In a shake, centrifugal force increases with distance from the centre of the animal, which means smaller animals have to compensate, shaking harder, to shift the same amount of water as large animals.


What's the benefit of knowing all this?

Isn't that seem a bit silly for scientists to study the way an animal shakes itself dry? Maybe, but it could help engineers come up with automated-cleaning techniques to use in devices we can’t easily clean ourselves, such as the insides of cameras or distant space rovers.

Also, a better understanding of the relationship between shaking and the removal of droplets could help engineers with the design of everything from washing machine to painting devices.


Source: Daily Express Discovery page, Nov 25., 2012

Can animals be right- or left-handed?

Simple answer is Yes.

If you prefer complicated answer, read on. Animals can be right-eyed, or left-footed - some animals do not have 'hands'. In the 1930s, parrots were given slices of carrot or apple, which they picked up with one foot before eating. 75% used their left foot, and in some species every bird was found to be left-footed.

I think this Malayan tiger is left-handed. Lok Kawi wildlife park, shot with Nikon @70mm

Fish tend to dodge consistently either left or right when evading a predator, using their preferred eye to deal with the threat. Humpback whales prefer the right side of their jaws when feeding.

Cats and dogs have preferences, too. In one study, psychologists in Belfast played for weeks with 42 pet cats. Although the cats would use either paw for easy tasks they reverted to their favoured side for more complex ones. In females this was usually the right paws, and in toms the left. In a tricky task of fishing a piece of tuna out of a small jar, all 21 females used their right paw.

Dogs behave similarly until they are spayed or neutered (sterilised/castrated), when the difference disappears, suggesting hormones play a role in left- or right-handedness.

Reference: DE, November 18,2012. Q&A pp-13.

BioDiesel: Terengganu mulls planting Jatropha

Not too long ago Jatropha became a bit of a talking point among biodiesel enthusiasts and researchers. At one point some suggested that this plant has enormous potential it could be the next big money spinner for Malaysia.

I remember reading one of the local dailies over breakfast that Jatropha's potential for biodiesel production could at least match that of or bigger than palm oil. That is a tall order for the un-tested commodity, but who knows.

Terengganu is considering such option to produce biodiesel - as reported by Bernama. I just hope that a full assessment would be carried out prior to granting of funds to entrepreneurs. You don't want another National Feedlot Centre blunder, do you?

Wonder Plant? Cover page of the Malaysian Business, April 2008.

Terengganu To Study Frim's Application To Cultivate Jatropha For Biodiesel

KEMAMAN, Nov 10 (Bernama) -- The Terengganu state government will consider the application by the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) to plant jatropha on a large-scale to produce biodiesel in the state.

Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Ahmad Said stressed however, that the state government would scrutinise any high-impact project before approving it for the benefit of the people and the state.

"Many aspects need to be studied, such as the cost, returns, implementation approach and whether the investment is worth it," he told reporters when asked to comment on FRIM's readiness to carry out the project in Terengganu.

It was reported in the media yesterday that FRIM would submit an application to the state government to request for land along the coast for the project. Besides maximising Terengganu's coastal areas which had been categorised as unfeasible for commercial agriculture because of the extreme heat, the project was seen to potentially generate income for the local residents.


Credit: Cover page image of the Malaysian Business, April 2008 can be found at Dunia Tiger's blog.