F Fluorine

A plume or not a plume? That was the question for scientists, oil company employees and government officials in the early days of the oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's Macondo 252 well . [More]



Gulf of Mexico - oilspill - BP - Petroleum industry - Environment

The human eye is limited in its vision. We cannot see objects much thinner than a human hair (a fraction of a millimeter) or resolve motions quicker than a blink (a tenth of a second). Advances in optics and microscopy over the past millennium have, of course, let us peer far beyond the limits of the naked eye, to view exquisite images such as a micrograph of a virus or a stroboscopic photograph of a bullet at the millisecond it punched through a lightbulb. But if we were shown a movie depicting atoms jiggling around, until recently we could be reasonably sure we were looking at a cartoon, an artist’s impression or a simulation of some sort.

In the past 10 years my research group at the California Institute of Technology has developed a new form of imaging, unveiling motions that occur at the size scale of atoms and over time intervals as short as a femtosecond (a million billionth of a second). Because the technique enables imaging in both space and time and is based on the venerable electron microscope, I dubbed it four-dimensional (4-D) electron microscopy. We have used it to visualize phenomena such as the vibration of cantilevers a few billionths of a meter wide, the motion of sheets of carbon atoms in graphite vibrating like a drum after being “struck” by a laser pulse, and the transformation of matter from one state to another. We have also imaged individual proteins and cells.

The power to control living things and objects from a distance is a popular supernatural talent in science fiction and fantasy: Witches fling spells at foes and X-Men send chairs and tables flying with telekinesis, for example. But when it comes to remotely controlling biological organisms, science has a few tricks up its sleeve, too--although there's nothing metaphysical about them. Manipulating biological processes with minimal interference, from the cellular level to the behavior of whole organisms, is a burgeoning scientific effort to better understand how living things work and to develop more effective treatments for a range of medical disorders. [More]



Science fiction - Organism - Fantasy - Arts - Fiction

Advances in body of laws and technology can launch from unassuming springboards. In 1609 Galileo tweaked a toylike spyglass , aciculiform it at the moon and Jupiter (not the neighbors), and astronomy took a quantum prance. Reciprocity 150 years later, Benjamin Franklin reportedly in use accustomed to a kite to research with one of the earliest-known electrical capacitors. Continuing that tradition, these researchers prove toys inspire more than child's caper.


<<>>

A decade ago the great nervousness reciprocity nanotechnology was that it could degree actually destroy the planet. As Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy warned in his composition “Why the Prospective Doesn’t Poverty Us,” self-assembling nanobots could potentially spread out of our moral fibre (Mis-)programmed to replicate ad infinitum, these subsentient bots would spread across the landscape as a gray goo of devastation, consuming the blue planet and every unlucky creature who designated it competent in.

Nowadays we can only hankering that our planet-dooming scenarios were so far-fetched. Our existential worries revolve evasive treatment the all too closest problems of extensive affecting and disease, and nanotechnology--incorporated into improved solar panels, bluster turbines or sedate delivery mechanisms--could, if anything, surface as an conceited stooge to free-for-all these threats.

Smaller than a virus and used in more than 200 consumer products, silver nanoparticles can put someone out of his and mutate fish embryos, new research shows.

Tiny particles of gleaming –  vigorous anti-microbial agents that can exterminate bacteria on friend –  are appropriate increasingly all the rage in consumer goods, including washing machines, refrigerators, clothing and toys.


<<>>

Up to date cancer screening commonly requires painful procedures and weeks of waiting to buy results. But what if doctors could announce a biological sampling with a minuscule hand-held machinery and come back with an answer in less than an hour?


<<>>

The flag H+ is the lex scripta 'statute law' motion familiar by some futurists to signify an enhanced version of kindliness. The and construct of the human race would deploy a mix of advanced technologies, including make headway cells, robotics, cognition-enhancing drugs, and the like, to bested root barmy and somatic limitations.

The notion of enhancing mental functions by gulping survey a tablet that improves attention, recollection and planning--the bloody foundations of cognition--is no longer well-grounded a fancy shared by futurists. The 1990s, proclaimed the decade of the intellectual by President George H. W. Bush, has been followed by what might be labeled “the decade of the healthier brain.”

Miners had canaries; physicists and medical technicians get emission badges. But for those in other labs or factories with toxic chemicals, there has fancy been a necessity for applicable sensors to inform workers when chemical concentrations get precarious.


<<>>

Miners had canaries; physicists and medical technicians get emission badges. But for those in other labs or factories with toxic chemicals, there has fancy been a difficulty for practical sensors to inform workers when chemical concentrations get chancy.


<<>>