Science is Cool....

[Fish]

This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.

Post pictures, vidoes, stories, or links. Ask questions. Share science.

Why should I care?:

[listopencil]

...a single session of hookah smoking "delivers 1.7 times the nicotine, 6.5 times the carbon monoxide and 46.4 times the tar of a single cigarette."


So you do that for an hour to get the buzz from a cigarette and a half.

[ModSocks]

Originally Posted by Fish

Science! Mostly...

Making Oobleck!



What to do with Oobleck?

Make a disposable fleshlight, of course...



http://chinalert.com/2010/09/13/make...wn-fleshlight/

...If i were single...

[Fish]

Behold, the possible future of customized fruit trees. Thanks Science!

Frankenfruit!!! Nom nom nom!

Single Tree Grows 40 Kinds Of Fruit



In an ongoing series on hybridizing fruit trees, Syracuse University sculptor Sam Van Aken’s Tree of 40 Fruit is true to its name. Most of the year, it looks pretty ordinary, but in the spring, the tree blossoms display various tones of pink, crimson, and white. Then, from July through October, it bears 40 different types of stone fruit, including almonds, apricots, cherries, nectarines, peaches, and plums.

The feat is accomplished by grafting together several different varieties, including native fruit, heirlooms, and antiques, some of which are centuries-old, Aken tells Epicurious.

His main source is an orchard at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, which he leased when he heard the orchard was to be torn down. After developing a timeline of when each of the 250 varieties blossom in relation to each other, he would graft a few onto the root structure of a single tree. When his “working tree” was about two years old, he would add more varieties onto the tree as separate branches -- a technique called “chip grafting,” Science Alert explains. A sliver that includes a bud is inserted into an incision in the working tree and then taped in place. After it heals over the winter, the branch becomes just another normal branch on the tree, to be pruned as usual.

So far, 16 of these Trees of 40 Fruit have been grown, each taking about five years. He picked stone fruits because they’ve got a lot of diversity and they’re inter-compatible. And a bit of garlic and peppermint repellents keep deer away.

“By grafting these different varieties onto the tree in a certain order I can essentially sculpt how the tree is to blossom,” he says. “I've been told by people that have [a tree] at their home that it provides the perfect amount and perfect variety of fruit.”

[Fish]

So how does this illusion actually work?

The entire principle is based on cycloids; half circle shapes that are created by a fixed point on the rim of a circle. Imagine that you attached a marker to a wheel and rolled it along next to a wall. Though the wheel is spinning around in a full circle, the marker would draw something like this:



Based off of this principle, the curved line can be represented linearly. This video took things one step further and staggered eight small circles around one large circle to create the optical illusion. The motion inspires your brain to see the wheel that doesn’t exist.

You see, the curve is dependent on the sine and cosine of the horizontal and vertical position of the marker and the rate of motion is not held constant. Take another look at the above gif: notice how it seems to speed up as it approaches the top of the arc? Though each white circle is moving linearly and independently, the timing distance and changing positions relative to one another makes it look like a wheel in motion.

As Phil Plait points out, this geometry is pretty much how a Spirograph functions, except the toy works on variations of cyloids known as epitrochoids and hypotrochoids. By positioning the pen in a different spot in a wheel other than the edge, it can make various roulette curves. (Your childhood may have been lacking if it didn’t include a Spirograph and a giant pen that had 10 different colored inks inside.)

Math is really damn cool sometimes.


Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/brain/cycl...S4t00cMIwMF.99

[Fish]

Your brain is deleting stuff, and you don't even realize it....

[Dave Lane]

Originally Posted by Fish

Behold, the possible future of customized fruit trees. Thanks Science!

Frankenfruit!!! Nom nom nom!

Single Tree Grows 40 Kinds Of Fruit



In an ongoing series on hybridizing fruit trees, Syracuse University sculptor Sam Van Aken’s Tree of 40 Fruit is true to its name. Most of the year, it looks pretty ordinary, but in the spring, the tree blossoms display various tones of pink, crimson, and white. Then, from July through October, it bears 40 different types of stone fruit, including almonds, apricots, cherries, nectarines, peaches, and plums.

The feat is accomplished by grafting together several different varieties, including native fruit, heirlooms, and antiques, some of which are centuries-old, Aken tells Epicurious.

His main source is an orchard at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, which he leased when he heard the orchard was to be torn down. After developing a timeline of when each of the 250 varieties blossom in relation to each other, he would graft a few onto the root structure of a single tree. When his “working tree” was about two years old, he would add more varieties onto the tree as separate branches -- a technique called “chip grafting,” Science Alert explains. A sliver that includes a bud is inserted into an incision in the working tree and then taped in place. After it heals over the winter, the branch becomes just another normal branch on the tree, to be pruned as usual.

So far, 16 of these Trees of 40 Fruit have been grown, each taking about five years. He picked stone fruits because they’ve got a lot of diversity and they’re inter-compatible. And a bit of garlic and peppermint repellents keep deer away.

“By grafting these different varieties onto the tree in a certain order I can essentially sculpt how the tree is to blossom,” he says. “I've been told by people that have [a tree] at their home that it provides the perfect amount and perfect variety of fruit.”

Damn it I just gave this its own thread because it was awesome!

[Fish]

Missouri. National leader in front door feces.

Front doors carry ‘thin patina’ of poop bacteria



This image might have you thinking twice before knocking.

A new map called “The Patina of Feces” shows that the outer door frames of American homes wear a thin veneer of microbes that are normally found in animals’ guts. Given that the microbes had to leave those guts to travel door to door, they probably came from someone’s, or something’s, poop.

“No reason to freak out,” says project coleader Noah Fierer of the University of Colorado Boulder. We already knew that fecal bacteria are floating around in the air, and we know that we’re breathing them in all the time. They probably aren’t causing any health effects, for the most part.

One does wonder, though, about those hot spots, shown appropriately in brown. Fierer and his colleagues are still trying to figure out why doors in some places, notably north Texas, Arkansas and Missouri, have so much fecal matter. “Our current hypothesis is that these patterns are driven by proximity to livestock and, in part, by climate parameters,” Fierer says. Dry, windy places may have more fecal-laden dust moving around.

About 1,000 houses were sampled for the map, and almost all of them had some level of fecal bacteria. But the team still has a lot of work to do to figure out where the bacteria came from and whether the hot spots are real. The Texas panhandle, for example, may or may not be particularly poopy based on the two houses sampled. (No comment.)

As for the source, “some is surely human, much of it though might come from pigs, cows, chickens, squirrels or who knows what else,” Rob Dunn of North Carolina State University, who led the project with Fierer, writes in a blog post announcing the results. Urban areas also tend to have a lot of airborne dog poop, Fierer reported in 2011.

Fierer and Dunn study the microbes on and around us in our daily lives. It’s all part of a project called Your Wild Life that’s examining the biodiversity of everything from armpits and belly buttons to the insects living in our homes.

Some may say they’re happier not knowing these things. I think, though, that this provides a useful perspective on the world. It’s good to know that Stanford microbiologist Stanley Falkow was right when he reportedly said, “The world is covered in a fine patina of feces.”

[Fish]

So... China wants to build the largest universe-destroying particle accelerator in the world. Why not?

China plans super collider

Proposals for two accelerators could see country become collider capital of the world.

For decades, Europe and the United States have led the way when it comes to high-energy particle colliders. But a proposal by China that is quietly gathering momentum has raised the possibility that the country could soon position itself at the forefront of particle physics.

Scientists at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing, working with international collaborators, are planning to build a ‘Higgs factory’ by 2028 — a 52-kilometre underground ring that would smash together electrons and positrons. Collisions of these fundamental particles would allow the Higgs boson to be studied with greater precision than at the much smaller Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

Physicists say that the proposed US$3-billion machine is within technological grasp and is considered conservative in scope and cost. But China hopes that it would also be a stepping stone to a next-generation collider — a super proton–proton collider — in the same tunnel.

European and US teams have both shown interest in building their own super collider (see Nature 503, 177; 2013), but the huge amount of research needed before such a machine could be built means that the earliest date either can aim for is 2035. China would like to build its electron–positron collider in the meantime, unaided by international funding if needs be, and follow it up as fast as technologically possible with the super proton collider. Because only one super collider is likely to be built, China’s momentum puts it firmly in the driving seat.

Speaking this month at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Valencia, Spain, IHEP director Yifang Wang said that, to secure government support, China wanted to work towards a more immediate goal than a super collider by 2035. “You can’t just talk about a project which is 20 years from now,” he said.

Electron–positron colliders and hadron colliders such as the LHC complement each other. Hadron colliders are sledgehammers, smashing together protons (a kind of hadron that comprises three fundamental particles called quarks) at high energies to see what emerges. Lower-energy electron–positron machines produce cleaner collisions that are easier to analyse, because they are already smashing together fundamental particles. By examining in detail the interactions of the Higgs boson with other particles, the proposed Chinese collider should, for example, be able to detect whether the Higgs is a simple particle or something more exotic. This would help physicists to work out whether the particle fits with predictions made by the standard model of particle physics, or whether, for example, multiple types of Higgs boson exist.



The machine would be a big leap for China. The country’s biggest current collider is just 240 metres in circumference. Ten years ago, Chinese particle physicists would have doubted their ability to host a 52-kilometre machine, says Ian Shipsey an experimental physicist at the University of Oxford, UK. But after several successes in collider and neutrino experiments, including showing in 2012 how neutrinos change from one form to another, China now has “the confidence, for the first time, to propose an ambitious new machine”, says Shipsey.

The Chinese government is yet to agree on any funding, but growing economic confidence in the country has led its scientists to believe that the political climate is ripe, says Nick Walker, an accelerator physicist at DESY, Germany’s high-energy physics laboratory in Hamburg. Although some technical issues remain, such as keeping down the power demands of an energy-hungry ring, none are major, he adds.

But China is still a long way from collider dominance. Its main weakness is that its high-energy-physics community is small, says Guido Tonelli, a particle physicist and former head of one of the two major experiments at CERN. If China is to eventually host a super collider, the project will have to be international, he adds. “Nobody would be able to do that alone.”

Wang says that China would welcome international funding contributions for both projects, and that if there is a lot of support the ring size could be expanded to 80 kilometres, increasing the scientific scope (see ‘Collision course’). But he adds that the country will not wait for collaborators before pressing ahead. The next two years will be spent sketching out a design and establishing what technical difficulties need to be ironed out. Detailed design, budget and location plans will follow, and construction could begin in as little as five years, adds Wang.

But because, realistically, only one super collider will ever be built, says Shipsey, “the world will have to work together to locate it in the best place” for it to happen as quickly as possible. He believes that, in the next five years, the Chinese plans will produce positive competition between China, the United States and Europe, maximizing the chances of a single contender emerging.

There is a final complication. Plans are well under way for an International Linear Collider (ILC), an electron–positron linear accelerator that could operate at much higher energies than China’s proposed 52-kilometre electron–positron ring. Physicists are strongly behind the project, but it is yet to secure funding or a host country, says Brian Foster, who leads the European ILC design team. He fears that the Chinese plans could dampen support for the project.

Japan has shown a strong interest in hosting the ILC, but has not “got a stranglehold” on the project, says Foster. He suggests that China could step in, and argues that because the ILC has a wider energy range than a ring collider, the linear accelerator could do more than study the Higgs: it could explore other poorly understood particles, such as the top quark, and any other phenomena that the LHC might discover.

[Fish]

Scientists Can Now Cut HIV Out of Human DNA

HIV is a sneaky virus. Its MO involves integrating its own genes into your DNA, so that even as antiretrovirals hold everything in check, HIV lurks quietly inside your cells. Now scientists have found a way to edit the virus straight out of the human genome—a potential cure for even latent infections.

Genome editing is powerful technique that has really come into its own lately, thanks to a remarkable DNA-cutting protein that easily and precisely cuts out a particular DNA sequence. In fact, genome editing been used to treat HIV before. Earlier this year, another group used genome editing to cut out the DNA sequence of a particular human protein the HIV virus latches onto.

The latest study, from Kamel Khalili at Temple University, uses a similar technique but to different ends. Rather than editing human genes, it goes straight for HIV. Khalili's team showed that the protein could excise copies of the HIV genome from immune cells such as microglia and T cells. It also seemed to prevent any new HIV infection.

The research is still very new, so of course there are challenges to getting something that worked in a petri dish to work in a human. On the whole, very few cells in the human body are latently infected by HIV; how to(sic) you make sure the genome editing gets to those cells? And how do you make sure the protein never goes excising where it shouldn't?

But if those challenges are solved, genome editing could be a big step toward an actual cure for HIV. Except for a couple cases involving bone marrow transplants, a cure has been notoriously elusive. HIV hides itself by basically editing your genome—it makes sense that a cure could involve editing your genome, too.

[Fish]

Ooops.... Accidental genocide. Our bad.... again..... guess you were correct to fear us...

Previously Uncontacted Tribe Have Contracted Influenza



Earlier this month, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) confirmed that an Amazonian tribe that had never before had contact with the outside world had made voluntary contact; a rare event that is usually brought on by threats of violence. Rather than be excited to learn more about the group’s ways and customs, anthropologists have been fearful that the tribe would be exposed to diseases for which they have no immunity. Their worst fears were confirmed when FUNAI announced that those who made contact have indeed contracted the flu, which has annihilated entire tribes in the past.

Based on their hair style and skin ornamentation, it is possible that the individuals who made contact belong to the Chitonahua tribe. Their language is similar to Panoan, which allowed them to communicate with the tribe they found. The isolated people contacted a tribe in Acre, a Brazilian state with a low population density at about 5 per square kilometer. They had been living in Peru along the Xinane River, but were forced to leave in what was likely a threat from illegal loggers or drug traffickers who utilize the river. They reported they had been fired upon.

The two tribal groups co-existed peacefully for about three weeks. During that time, the five men and two women who had made contact fell ill from the flu virus. Doctors were brought in to help provide care, though the indigenous people were initially hesitant to accept the treatment and vaccination. Unfortunately, these people returned to their village without warning. Medical officials are now highly concerned that they will transmit disease to the others which could kill a substantial number of their tribe.

“This news could hardly be more worrying – not only have these people confirmed they suffered violent attacks from outsiders in Peru, but they have apparently already caught flu,” stated Stephen Corry, director of an indigenous people activist group, Survival International. “The nightmare scenario is that they return to their former villages carrying flu with them. It’s a real test of Brazil’s ability to protect these vulnerable groups. Unless a proper and sustained medical program is immediately put in place, the result could be a humanitarian catastrophe.”

In addition to the flu, it is possible that other diseases were picked up during their time of contact. FUNAI is sending a team of health professionals to seek out the tribe and deliver medication, but that help won’t arrive until next month. Until then, officials will have to hope that the disease didn’t spread through the rest of the tribe. Additionally, the people are still threatened by those conducting criminal activity.

"Both Peru and Brazil gave assurances to stop the illegal logging and drug trafficking, which are pushing uncontacted Indians into new areas. They've failed. The traffickers even took over a government installation meant to monitor their behavior," Corry said. "The uncontacted Indians now face the same genocidal risk from disease and violence which has characterized the invasion and occupation of the Americas over the last five centuries. No one has the right to destroy these Indians."

[ThaVirus]

That's something that always made me wonder..

How is it that the Old World had all of these ancient and dangerous diseases yet the New World had none? How come the Native Americans didn't give the Europeans some never-before-seen disease?

[Beef Supreme]

[Fish]

That time when Carl Sagan helped the US military develop a plan to detonate a nuke on the moon. Remember that?



When the U.S. Almost Nuked the Moon

In the thralls of the Cold War, the United States and the USSR battled for supremacy in the space exploration arena. Shortly after the Soviets struck first in 1957 with the successful launch of Sputnik I, the United States passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, and NASA began operation.

At the same time, the two countries were embroiled in a fervent nuclear race. With the development of the first nuclear warheads in the early 1940s, the United States sparked the “Atomic Age” and subsequently spent somewhere north of $8.75 trillion to produce 70,000 nuclear missiles. By the early 1950s, an air of nuclear optimism pervaded the U.S. In the same regard that the nuclear bomb had rendered all other explosives obsolete, the nuclear power plant would one-up coal, oil, and other sources of energy. At the Nevada Test Site (the U.S Department of Energy’s primary nuclear bomb testing ground) thousands gathered in folding chairs to watch atomic detonations.

Following a Post-Hiroshima rhetoric, America’s citizens were ready for nuclear technology to be utilized in positive, productive ways. Then, the U.S. Government put a top-secret plan in place to nuke the Moon.

***

As far back as 1949, Chicago’s Armour Research Institute (known as the IIT Research Institute today) had studied the effects of nuclear explosions on the environment and atmosphere. In 1958, the program was approached by the United States Air Force and asked to determine the hypothetical consequences of a nuclear explosion on the Moon. Sensing that national morale was low after the Soviets launched Sputnik, the U.S. government coined a plan: they’d nuke the Moon, causing an explosion so big that it’d be visible from Earth. They hoped the explosion would not only boost the confidence and approval of Americans, but serve as a show of power to the Soviets.

Led by renowned physicist Leonard Reiffel, a ten-person research team was formed under a rather auspicious project title: "A Study of Lunar Research Flights" (or, "Project A-119"). Immediately, the team began studying “the potential visibility of the explosion, benefits to science, and implications for the lunar surface.” An essential element to ensuring that the explosion would be seen from Earth was determining the mathematical projection of the expansion of the resulting dust cloud in space; Carl Sagan, a young doctoral student at the time, was brought in to help find an answer.

Scientists initially wanted to use a hydrogen bomb, but it would prove to be too heavy for a missile to propel, and the team “settled” on a W25 warhead -- a small, lighter bomb. At 1.7 kiloton-yield (a nuke’s measure of energy output), the W25 would also produce a much smaller explosion than Hiroshima’s Little Boy bomb, which had a yield in the vicinity of 15 kilotons. Ultimately, the team put a plan in place: the bomb would be launched toward the dark side of the Moon, would detonate on impact, and would create a dust cloud that would be lit by the Sun, making it visible from Earth.

But a few concerns lingered. Researchers and government officials feared that the public wouldn’t react favorably -- would it truly be a morale boost? The stakes were also high: should the missile-launched bomb miss its target, it might return to Earth and detonate. Lastly, Reiffel, the lead scientist, had high hopes for future Moon colonization; a nuclear fallout could have grave implications on this, and could clutter the natural radioactivities of the moon with additional radioactivity from the Earth. Ultimately, in January 1959, the project was abandoned.

It was subsequently revealed that the Soviets were planning a Moon explosion of their own. Merely dubbed “E-4,” their plan was part of a series of initiatives to assert dominance in the lunar landscape and display force. Like the American plan, it was called off due to safety concerns.

***

Years later, in a CNN interview, an 85-year-old Reiffel revealed some shocking details of the mission that had never come to light. According to Reiffel, “The motivation for such a detonation [was] clearly threefold: scientific, military and political,” and wasn’t merely intended to boost American morale.

Rather, Project A119 had sought to provide information "concerning the capability of nuclear weapons for space warfare." At the time, says Reiffel, "there was discussion of the moon as military high ground," and the United States was interested in getting there first. Military plans included setting up nuclear launch sites on the Moon so that, in the event that the Soviets attacked the United States’ homefront, “we could launch warheads from the Moon.” Reiffel elaborates on the project’s main motivation:

"People were worried very much by Sputnik and the very great accomplishments of the Soviet Union in those days, and in comparison, the United States was feared to be looking puny. So this was a concept to sort of reassure people that the United States could maintain a mutually-assured deterrence, and therefore avoid any huge conflagration on the Earth."

In the mid-60s, the project’s files disappeared from the Pentagon, and the government made every effort to conceal the mission -- even after Carl Sagan accidentally revealed top secret information in a job interview years later.

"These are horrendous concepts," Reiffel admits, "and they are hopefully going to remain in the realm of science fiction for the rest of eternity."

[Fish]

Important Science.....

Why Do Dogs Like To Smell Butts So Much?




An average dog's nose is anywhere between 10,000 to 100,000 times more sensitive than ours, and smelling each others' butts is just another example of chemical communication in the animal kingdom. It's like "speaking with chemicals," and that's how dogs ask about another dog's diet, gender, and emotional state.

Researchers studying the anal secretions of dogs and wild coyotes discovered that, next to their poopers, canines have pouches called anal sacs, which house the glands that secrete chemicals they use to get to know each other. Amines and acids are the primary compounds involved, and genetics and the state of their immune system can influence the aroma as well.

Dogs also have a secondary olfactory system in their nose called the Jacboson's organ, which is designed specifically for chemical communication. Its nerves lead right to the brain -- so the smell of poop doesn't overpower their sensitive senses.

[L.A. Chieffan]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

That's something that always made me wonder..

How is it that the Old World had all of these ancient and dangerous diseases yet the New World had none? How come the Native Americans didn't give the Europeans some never-before-seen disease?

Probably because of the much higher population density Europeans lived in which diseases could thrive. As many Europeans if not more died from disease over the course of many centuries until the immunities kicked in.

Over in the Americas before exploration population was much more spread out and tribal meaning there was much less exposure of different viruses between pockets of population. My best guess