Awesome Tech-Inspired Halloween Costumes

October 31, 2008

In honor of Halloween and also because my coworker, DiscoDave, is doing some similar on his Discovery Space site, I offer some fantastic homemade costumes inspired by technology.

Cell Phones Recycle Themselves

October 28, 2008

Just yesterday I activated my new mobile phone (my old one got wet and went ka-put!). Now I have four old mobile phones lying around that should be recycled. I hesitate, though. Sometimes electronics meant for recycling get shipped to third world countries, where underpaid workers are used to disassemble the components and, in the process, come into contact with dangerous materials such as acids and cyanide as well as dioxins and lead.

(You may recall that Discovery Tech ran a "My Take" about this problem called Don't Recycle Your Computer.)

So I was intrigued/happy/curious to learn about a totally new approach to recycling electronics. Engineers Habib Hussein and David Harrison from Brunel University, U.K., have come up with a technique that allows electronic components to disassemble on their own.

The technique uses fasteners made of a smart, shape-memory plastics. When you heat the material at a certain temp, the material changes shape. So a fastener can be secure at one temp and then unfasten at another temperature. Once unfastened, the components fall apart without screws having to be undone or without clamps having to be pried opened manually.

Hussein and Harrison started a company, Active Fasteners, based on the concept and will be publishing test results in the International Journal of Product Development.

Image: Gallo Images - Neil Overy

How Do Researchers Find Out How People Filter Science Info?

October 23, 2008

Two days ago, I posted a blog about Dietram Schuefele's study that we may wasting our time trying to educate the public about scientific issues without first trying understand how people will filter the information. That's all well and good, but I wondered how researchers could, in Schuefele's words develop "a better understanding of how different groups will filter or reinterpret this information when it reaches them, given their personal value systems and beliefs"?

I posed the question to Schuefele and here's what he said:

• Science needs to stop looking at research as separate from its societal impacts. For emerging technologies like nano and stem cell research, the boundaries between science, politics, and ethics are
increasingly blurry, and many of the questions raised over human enhancement or virtually invisible surveillance devices have more to do with ethics than with understanding the science behind them. And the reluctance on the part of many scientists to address these questions stifles any dialogue with the
public.

• Our research shows that information is not everything. In fact, the same piece of information may mean very different things to different people, depending on their value systems or beliefs. The assumption that we can simply put the facts out there and expect the public to "get it" eventually is naïve.  rather, we need to understand what people's concerns and hopes are, which cultural and social factors shape these hopes and concerns, and how we can use this knowledge to communicate with the public in a way that (a) reaches as many different groups as possible, and (b) addresses their concerns and questions in a way that makes sense to them.

Photo: Betsie Van der Meer

Nanowire Sensor Teams Up with Immune System to Detect Disease

October 22, 2008

When it comes to figuring out what kind of disease or infection your body might have, well, your immune system is the best sensor. It has a variety of T-cells, each uniquely equipped with particular surface receptors that are designed to match up like puzzle pieces to prongs on the surface of bacteria or viruses. When a match happens, the T-cells begin to multiply, producing identical copies of itself that have the right surface receptor to attach to the bacteria or virus and eventually destroy it. In the process, the T-cells produce an acid and a tiny electric current.

Researchers at Yale have found a way to sense the T-cell's response using a nanowire and a computer chip. The electronic device could allow doctors to diagnose disease, such the flu, tuberculosis, E. coli, or HIV infection, and even identify that strain.

Tarek Fahmy, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, say that their system detects as few as 200 activated immune cells and can produce results in seconds. The researchers envision an iPod like device that analyzes cells from a patient and provides a digital readout of the disease present.

Caption for images: (top) A mixture of T cells, each with different surface receptors (purple, red, and green) are contained in a fluid and added to a reservoir above an array of nanosensors (gray). (bottom) When a T-cell links up a disease, it becomes activated (yellow glow) and produces an acid and a tiny electric current. The nanosensor picks up the electric current (orange glow) and the computer chip sends the signal to a read out on the device.

We May Be Wasting Our Time Educating Public

October 21, 2008

Scientists really like the idea that if you line up all of the facts, you'll draw a tidy conclusion. But more and more it seems that values influence scientific conclusions. That's what Dietram Schuefele and his colleagues report in a recent study published in the Public Understanding of Science. It makes sense. A person who is fairly conservative in his/her religious beliefs will draw different conclusions about stem cell research or using nanorobots to treat disease. And that's important information to take into consideration because if you're trying to promote science to masses....if you're trying to advocate funding for some avenue of research, well, you might be talking to a wall.

Says Schuefele: "we may be wasting valuable time and resources by focusing our efforts on putting more and more information in front of an unaware public, without first developing a better understanding of how different groups will filter or reinterpret this information when it reaches them, given their personal value systems and beliefs."

Image: Purestock

My Favorite Tech Blogs

October 15, 2008

Recently I was asked by blogs.com to provide a list of my top 10 tech blogs. I wrote the list and sent it off to the requester. Then I thought, Hey I should tell the readers! So here it is. I put the short list below. If you want to see the longer version you can go directly to Tracy's Top 10 Tech Blogs on the Discovery Tech site.

1. KurzweilAI.net

2. Powrtalk

3. New Scientist's Technology Blog

4. Sustainable

5. State Of the Art

6. Etherized

7. Webmonkey

8. Technology Review Blog

9. Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends

10. Gizmag

Photo: Mike Kemp

How Nanotech Can Address Global Problems

October 14, 2008

Here's an interesting Q&A from Nanotech Briefs. It asks four industry experts to discuss the world's environmental and energy challenges and how nanotechnology could help address them.

The experts:
Jens Greiser, strategic marketing manager at FEI Co.
Michael Naughton, professor of physics at Boston College
Bart Riley, founder and CTO of A123 Systems
B.J. Stanbery, CEO and founder of HelioVolt Corp.

The editors asked these experts eight questions, among them:

• In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges we face in the 21st century with regard to energy and the environment?
• How will nanotechnology help us deal with these global challenges?
• Fossil fuels account for nearly three-quarters of the world's energy consumption. How can nanotech change this dependency?
• How does the U.S. compare globally with regard to nanotech advancements/funding in these areas?

Some highlights:

• The biggest challenges: National infrastructure and balancing energy demands with sustainability.
• How will nanotech help? It allows you to access physical and chemical mechanisms that are otherwise inaccessible.
• How can nanotech change fossil fuel dependency? Better performance of energy generation and storage.
• How does the United States compare to Europe? Venture capital in the United States  is better and Europe has a lot to  learn from it.

This is just a smattering of some very interesting and insightful comments. It's not a long article, so I suggest you read it.

Image: Igor Kopelnitsky  

Glowing Proteins Win Noble Prize

October 08, 2008

Imagine you are at an outdoor gathering. It's pitch dark. There are thousands of people and you cannot make out heads from tails. One person, however, is walking through the crowd holding a sparkler. Everyone else seems practically invisible but the person and the sparkler stand out perfectly from the rest.

This is what it was like for scientists trying to observe proteins functioning in cells. It was like they were looking down on a crowd of activity occurring undercover of night. But then Osamu Shimomura of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA, and Boston University Medical School, MA came along. He isolated a green fluorescent protein from the bioluminescent jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which lives off the west coast of North America. The protein glows bright green under ultraviolet light.

Martin Chalfie of Columbia University in New York developed a way to attach the green fluorescing protein to otherwise invisible proteins in cells. With this advancement scientists could watch the movements, positions and interactions of tagged proteins. They could watch, for example, nerve cells growing or cancer cells spreading.

Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, CA expanded the color palette from green to other colors, which allows scientists to watch several different biological processes at the same time.

So, "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP" these three scientists were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Photo: KEYSTONE/Georgios Kefalas

Nanotechnology? What the Heck is That?

October 07, 2008

A new poll from the guys at the Project of Emerging Nanotechnology finds that almost half of U.S. adults have heard nothing about nanotechnology.

Half. Nothing.

Honestly, I'm not surprised. There's a lot of stuff going on right now that demands more of our attention. The upcoming election. The economic meltdown. Who has room in their brain to think about these things that are so esoteric to the nonscientist?

But it's not just the people. It's the federal government, too. For the last eight years, the Bush administration has not appropriately funded scientific research and in fact, for the last two years, funding has declined. This has forced universities to dip into their endowment funds. But you can imagine how, in the aftershocks of the Wall Street bail out, how deep those pools of money are. Not. 

It's not just that the money hasn't been there. But by giving science a cold shoulder, the Bush administration is also neglecting to educate its citizens about the potential benefits and risks posed by these technologies.

Let's hope the new administration, whatever and whoever it is, does a better job at putting science front and center in national policies and budgets.

Photo: Don Farrall

Cool Images from Science and Engineering

October 05, 2008

Everywhere around you, wonders abound. If only you had a scanning electron microscope or a high-def digital camera to see them. Well fret no more. The winners from this year's Science And Engineering Visualization Challenge have been announced and you can see them in a slide show.

There are 13 images, two of which I've included here, captions and all. They really leave you wanting more. And I wish the organization would find a way to add more categories or winners. They are so freakin' cool.

Loligo pealei squids have eight arms and two tentacles, all of which are coated with suction-cups, lined with fangs composed of chitin. These tiny suckers, whose diameters are around 400 µm, ultimately ensure that the half-meter-long squid will enjoy its next afternoon snack!

[Image courtesy of Jessica D. Schiffman and Caroline L. Schauer; Drexel University]

The Glass Forest depicts at the microscale level a community of diatoms, unicellular algae characterized by a peculiar glass-like cell wall, attached to the basal segment of a marine invertebrate (Eudendrium racemosum) and captured by Scanning Electron Microscope.

[Image courtesy of Mario De Stefano, The 2nd University of Naples]