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Shuttle Launch Delayed
2007-02-28 15:43:00
The U.S. Space Shut tles are fragile beasts, with (so far) a catastrophic failure rate of about 1-in-60. For that reason, NASA takes even small amounts of damage to the shuttles very seriously. When a severe storm pounded Florida a couple of days ago, Atlantis was already sitting on the launch pad, and consequently the foam protecting its external fuel tank was damaged by severe hail. Since degraded foam doomed Columbia a few years ago, NASA has taken damage to the foam protectant very seriously. As a result, NASA has decided to roll the shuttle back into the Vehicle Assembly Building to repair the damage, which will result in a roughly six week delay in launching the shuttle (they cannot launch to the ISS while the crews are being changed out due to traffic congestion). So the new expected launch date for Atlantis will be in late April. By the way, I'm not an expert on launch pad processes, but it seems to me that rolling the shuttle out to the pad a month before launch is ju...
More About: Launch , Shuttle

A Better Way to Clean Water
2007-02-27 20:43:00
From the category of Pretty Cool News With a Lot of Applications, researchers at the University of Delaware have devised a new, inexpensive means of removing viruses from drinking water by using elemental iron. The technology would be tremendously useful in parts of the world where clean water is difficult to come by, as the elemental iron used to purify the water is available as a by-product of iron and steel production. It would also be useful in the U.S. and other industrialized countries as it would allow water utilities to stop using chlorine to purify water supplies. The researchers suggest that the process could also be applied to other tasks besides purifying drinking water, especially agricultural processes. The technique is said to be capable of removing up to 99.999% of viruses from water.
More About: Lean , Clean , Water , Better , Bett

Rent-A-Solar?
2007-02-26 17:09:00
Through a series of links today, I stumbled upon this site, where you will apparently be able to lease a solar energy system for your home. It doesn't do me much good at the moment (I live in an apartment), but if you own a home and you want to improve your energy efficiency while helping make the world a cleaner, healthier place, check out the Citizenrē REnU program at this website.
More About: Solar , Rent

New Avenue of Treatment for MS
2007-02-22 15:24:00
Have you ever had one of those teachers who really inspired you and made you think, as opposed to just memorizing stuff to regurgitate for your exam? For me, that teacher was Stan Harris, who taught government (political science) and sociology at my high school. The first semester of my senior year in high school, while I was taking his government class, Stan announced that he had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a debilitating disease that, according to Wikipedia, can cause a variety of symptoms, including changes in sensation, visual problems, muscle weakness, depression, difficulties with coordination and speech, severe fatigue, short term memory loss, problems with balance, over heating and pain. MS will cause impaired mobility and disability in more severe cases. Many years ago, scientists studying MS patients noticed that women with MS who became pregnant experienced not just reduced symptoms, but actual improvement of symptoms, during the course of their pregna...
More About: Men , Treatment , Treat , Avenue

MIT and Novartis Make Diabetes Genetic Info Freely Available
2007-02-21 15:41:00
The Broad Institute at MIT, Novartis, and Lund University have publicly released the results of a genome-wide map of genetic differences in humans and their relationship to type 2 diabetes and other metabolic disorders. The work is the result of a pioneering public-private collaboration known as the Diabetes Genetics Initiative (DGI), which was formed in 2004 and is aimed at deciphering the genetic causes of type 2 diabetes. The collaboration brings together diverse expertise in diabetes and metabolic disease, human genetics, genomics, statistical analysis, and drug development. The results of the study are freely available online at www.broad.mit.edu/diabetes. First, let me start by saying I'm pretty much a die-hard capitalist, and I believe that profit is an excellent motivator for companies in performing research and development. But I don't think that anybody should be allowed to profit off of human suffering, so that's why I'm really happy when I see something like this...
More About: Free , Info , Reel , Make

LysoSENS Progress Update
2007-02-15 19:31:00
I blogged recently about the Methuselah Foundation's LysoSENS project, one of their funded research efforts to help eliminate the deleterious effects of aging. What I didn't read closely enough was that the contest ended on December 31 (although I'm sure they are still accepting samples). On their blog, they have posted an update including details of the top five samples they received. If you're interested in details of the progress being made in the fight against aging, check it out.
More About: Update , Prog , Progress , Sens

Researchers Develop Method to Control Water Flow Through Carbon Nanotubes
2007-02-14 20:53:00
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method of controlling the flow of water through carbon nanotube membranes with an unprecedented level of precision. That may not sound that interesting, but it could lead to technologies designed to transform salt water into pure drinking water almost instantly, or to immediately separate a specific strand of DNA from the biological jumble. Nanotube membranes have fascinated researchers with their combination of high flow rates and high selectivity, allowing them to filter out very small impurities and other organic materials like DNA and proteins from materials with high water content. The problem is that nanotube arrays are hydrophobic, strongly repelling water. The researchers found a way to use low-voltage electricity to manipulate the flow of water through nanotubes. They discovered that when the nanotube’s membrane is given a small positive potential of only 1.7 volts, and the water is given a negative ...
More About: Research , Tube , Search , Carbon , Water

Intel Builds Fastest Chip Ever
2007-02-12 18:26:00
Intel yesterday announced that its researchers have created a single chip with 80 processing cores, capable of a trillion floating point operations per second (Teraflops). The chip isn't available yet, however, and likely won't be for another five or six years. A chart on Intel's website demonstrates how, through frequency scaling, the chip can be made to achieve as much as 1.81 Teraflops, though doing so increases the power needed from 62 Watts (less than many commercial processors available today) to 265 Watts. Just 10 years ago, a cluster of supercomputers capable of processing the same amount of calculations took up more than 2,000 square feet and consumed a half-megawatt of electricity. This type of processor will be a big step in the right direction for making computers do what we really want. Better pattern recognition for speech and video, better simulations of physical and biological processes, and better video games are just a few examples of how more powerful proc...
More About: Intel , Ever , Test , Fast , Build