Scientists have discovered the gene that is concerned with enamel production, and this could mean at a minimum, the ability to repair existing enamel, and at best, grow new teeth. Don’t hold your breath though; this technology may still be years away from consumer mouths.
While we’re not really a science blog, this news seemed big enough to post. The Phoenix Mars mission has confirmed that water exists on Mars by what they call ‘touch and taste’ tests, electronically of course. Next up, Phoenix will extend its mission through the end of September to search for life on Mars. They’ve already found nutrients (such as sodium, potassium and more) that exist in our bodies, but no organic materials yet.
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Phoenix Mars Lander confirms existence of water on MarsRead More »
10 Atoms! Think about it. Nano sized.
Scientists at the University of Manchester have made this amazing breakthrough using graphene, a material that is essentially a single layer of carbon atoms. Although transistor size has been decreasing on a regular basis ever since their invention, in recent times, that speed has slowed down due to the breakdown in electrical properties at the nanoscale level.
We may not see graphene-based chips for another 15 or 20 years, but it is one possibility to replace silicon as it reaches its limits.
We recently published a story about the US town that switched over to run exclusively on wind power. Now we’re pleased to see this story of a Korean village that runs 100% on solar power. All of the homes and the school have solar panels on the rooftops. The island that the village is on also has a wind farm that will soon account for 20% of electricity needs. Looking forward to seeing more of these success stories!
via Meta Efficient.
2030 to me seems too far away, but I’ll take it. The report itself was over 200 pages, which indicates to me that they spent a ‘government’ god-awful amount of money to produce it. Ok, fine, but let’s see if they now spend the important money to make this a reality.
According to the report, it would $6/person/year to implement this. The Wired article wasn’t clear on whether this was every year or just for 1 year, but who cares? At that amount, I will gladly take a line-item tax on my 1040. Persons making less than $40k or so can get that waived.
Other stats – wind power could account for 300Gigawatts of power, reduce carbon emissions from coal and natural gas plants by 25%, drop water consumption by 4 trillion gallons per year. Yes, yes, this will all take some doing including infrastructure overhauls, but do we have a choice? BTW, a town in MO has already shown the way.
More research into this contentious area has shown that our brains simply aren’t built for multitasking, yet alone performing other tasks while driving. Research done by neuroscientist Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and his colleagues shows that using part of your brain for language processing reduces activity in the spatial regions used for driving. Since driving is the less-ingrained task, then that’s going to take even more of a hit.
But the reduction in ability isn’t limited to when you talk on the phone or with someone else in the car, but other things like attending to the radio, eating or dealing with kids or pets. Ok, so the research is there; now we as a society just need to accept it, and put the correct guidelines in place.
In case you were up late at night wondering what a profile of the continental US’s carbon output was like, wonder no more. The Vulcan Project measures CO2 levels at finer time and distance scales than have been documented in the past. Here is one such map that has come out of this project.
They also have a ton more data and analysis in various formats on their site and even a video that they stuck up on YouTube.
via Wired.com
