Better Gas Mileage

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2008) — With the high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel impacting costs for automobiles, trucks, buses and the overall economy, a Temple University physics professor has developed a simple device which could dramatically improve fuel efficiency as much as 20 percent.

According to Rongjia Tao, Chair of Temple's Physics Department, the small device consists of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector. With the use of a power supply from the vehicle's battery, the device creates an electric field that thins fuel, or reduces its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion than a standard fuel injector, he says. (Full Story at sd)

There are tons of "gas saving" gadgets on the market. Just about all of them do nothing at best and harm your car at worst. That said, I actually understand the priniciple these guys are working from and could see it working. The only question I have is, what about cars that are already efficient? Would this mainly work on older cars or is this something that would help any vehicle? 

It's Real

Little Shop of Horrors fans may see a resemblance to the bloodthirsty plant from the 1986 movie in the above electron micrograph image.

Drexel University doctoral student Jessica Schiffman won an honorable mention in photography in the 2008 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for capturing what's actually an array of suckers found on the tentacles of a long-finned squid.

Each sucker--about 400 micrometers wide, or a little smaller than the width of a human hair--is surrounded with "fangs" of chitin, a hard organic material. (via make)

Pretty cool if you ask me.

Brain Games

See how quick (and accurate) you are at spotting a break in the pattern. Go here to check out a game that will test your reflexes and wit. . . Come on it's short and pretty easy. 

Brilliant Birds

Crows seem to be able to use causal reasoning to solve a problem, a feat previously undocumented in any other non-human animal, including chimps.

Alex Taylor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and his team presented six New Caledonian crows with a series of "trap-tube" tests.

A choice morsel of food was placed in a horizontal Perspex tube, which also featured two round holes in the underside, with Perspex traps below.

For most of the tests, one of the holes was sealed, so the food could be dragged across it with a stick and out of the tube to be eaten. The other hole was left open, trapping the food if the crows moved it the wrong way.

Three of the crows solved the task consistently, even after the team modified the appearance of the equipment. This suggested that these crows weren't using arbitrary features – such as the colour of the rim of a hole – to guide their behaviour. Instead they seemed to understand that if they dragged food across a hole, they would lose it. (Full Story at newscientist | via marginalrevolution)

I think that a crow would make a very cool pet. I know there would be issues with it, but I would much, much rather have a crow over a parrot (or a cat). 

Tea Treatment

ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2008) — Drinking chamomile tea daily with meals may 

help prevent the complications of diabetes, which include loss of vision, nerve damage, and kidney damage, researchers in Japan and the United Kingdom are reporting.

The findings could lead to the development of a new chamomile-based drug for type 2 diabetes, which is at epidemic levels in this country and spreading worldwide, they note. Their study appears in the Sept. 10 issue of the ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

In the new study, Atsushi Kato and colleagues point out that chamomile, also known as manzanilla, has been used for years as a medicinal cure-all to treat a variety of medical problems including stress, colds, and menstrual cramps. Scientists recently proposed that the herbal tea might also be beneficial for fighting diabetes, but the theory hasn't been scientifically tested until now. (Full Story at sd)

I'm glad they found something that can help people. What I don't get, however, is why the focus is always creating a drug that bandaids a problem rather than focusing on the root cause. 

The New Collider

Want to check out the new Large Hadron Collider? Here are some webcams you can check out:

http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Walmart Not Making You Fatter?

We estimate the impacts of Wal-Mart and warehouse club retailers on height-adjusted body weight and overweight and obesity status, finding robust evidence that non-grocery selling Wal-Marts reduce weight while grocery-selling Wal-Marts and warehouse clubs either reduce weight or have no effect. The effects appear strongest for women, minorities, urban residents, and the poor. We then examine the effects of these retailers on exercise, food and alcohol consumption, smoking, and eating out at restaurants in order to explain the results for weight. Most notably, the evidence suggests that all three types of stores increase consumption of fruits and vegetables while reducing consumption of foods high in fat. This is consistent with the thesis that Wal-Mart increases real incomes through its policy of "Every Day Low Prices," making healthy food more affordable, as opposed to the thesis that cheap food prices make us eat more.

Of course, not everyone likes Wal-Mart. (From marginalrevolution)

Interesting. Not that this settles the whole Walmart debate by a long stretch. 

Wolves Hunting Salmon

Move over, grizzly bears. "Fishing wolves" in coastal British Columbia are also looking to snatch some salmon, and will eat the fish almost exclusively when they are available, new research reveals.

Biologists analyzed years of data from gray wolves' feces to monitor what the animals were eating.

The team found that the coastal predators, like many other wolves, rely on deer most of the time in the spring and summer.

But during several months in the fall, the wolves ignored deer to focus on migrating salmon.(Full Story at nationalgeographic)

Hey, I can't blame them. I love deer meat, but mixing in some salmon sounds about right to me.

Eat a Black Raspberry

New research strongly suggests that a mix of preventative agents, such as those found in concentrated black raspberries, may more effectively inhibit cancer development than single agents aimed at shutting down a particular gene. (Full Story at sd)


The great thing about this study: even if they are wrong, it means you just got a little extra vitamin C. No harm no foul. So go find some berries.

Food for Fuel

In experiments, sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama yielded two to three times as much carbohydrate for fuel ethanol production as field corn grown in those states, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists report. The same was true of tropical cassava in Alabama. (Full Story at sd)

Not a good idea. I hope this doesn't end with high prices on sweet potatoes.

Kids Don't Care About Others

If you’ve ever spent time with toddlers, sooner or later you’ll hear the word “Mine!” It’s usually followed by an adult saying, “Now, now, you have to learn to share.” But a study in the August 28th issue of Nature suggests we may be wasting our breath. Because kids in the preschool set have no interest in making sure everyone gets their fair share.

Scientists from Switzerland wondered if, and when, young children begin to consider the welfare of others. So they gathered up over 200 Swiss schoolchildren and a small mountain of candy. And one-by-one they gave each child a choice that goes something like this: I can give one M&M to you and one to one of the other kids. Or I can give one to you—and none to anyone else.

Children who were three or four years old didn’t much care whether or not their friends also got an M&M, or a jellybean or any other sweet. But that attitude changed by the time the kids were seven or eight, when almost 80 percent of them opted to be fair. Okay, that doesn’t exactly make them candidates for a Nobel Peace Prize. But maybe magnanimousness begins with an M…&M. (From sciam)

I don't think they aren't telling the whole story. My 3 year old is often very concerned that her younger brother gets a treat if she is getting one. Of course there is a sibling connection there and it may be learned behavior, but I still am skeptical of this study. Maybe they just need to clarify if they found certain relationship qualities trump the child's natural inclination.

Attracting Money

IT'S an uncomfortable truth that beautiful people make more money: in the US, attractive workers earn 10 per cent more than their less winsome colleagues. Although it is plausible that the "beauty premium" arises because we favour pretty people, it might be that ambitious employees spend more time on grooming, or that attractive people are more confident employees.

Now a study of a TV game show supports the prejudice hypothesis. The effect is so strong that contestants often lost out on hundreds of euros because they made poor judgements about fellow players. (From newscientist)

One of the reasons I should pay more attention to my appearance. . .

Solar Highway

Roads and parking lots as solar collectors? Is that the newest revolutionary innovation since the term “alternative energy”? Capturing solar energy from pavements has been perfected for years now.

Researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute will unveil Tuesday, August 19, 2008 the findings of a research project on the concept of using the heat absorbed by pavements. Rajib Mallick, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who was the team leader will hail the achievement as “revolutionary”.

By using the heat from asphalt, the researchers have developed a solar collector that could turn roads and parking lots into invisible and cheap sources of electricity and hot water. (Full Story at ecoworldly)

I just have some doubts about this whole idea. Seems like it cld be expensive, failure prone, and with little returns (in terms of energy). Maybe I'm just a naysayer. Anyone else have thoughts on this.

Placebos in Kids

It's a strange finding nestled inside a weird phenomenon: children are 50 percent more likely than adults to respond favorably to placebos.

So concludes a Public Library of Science Medicine review by French pediatricians of anti-epilepsy drug studies. If replicated in other drugs, researchers may need to adjust their analyses of clinical drug studies involving kids.

What could account for the tendency of kids to feel better after taking a drug designed to do nothing? The reasons, write the researchers, "remain largely unknown and mostly speculative." (Full Story at wired)

What do you think folks? I wonder if imagination has something to do with it. The whole placebo thing, in general, facinates me.

The Magic Pill

ScienceDaily (Aug. 1, 2008) — Trying to reap the health benefits of exercise? Forget treadmills and spin classes, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies may have found a way around the sweat and pain. They identified two signaling pathways that are activated in response to exercise and converge to dramatically increase endurance.

The team of scientists, led by Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Ronald M. Evans, Ph.D., a professor in the Salk Institute's Gene Expression Laboratory report in the July 31 advance online edition of the journal Cell that simultaneously triggering both pathways with oral drugs turned laboratory mice into long-distance runners and conferred many of exercise's other benefits.

In addition to their allure for endurance athletes, drugs that mimic the effects of exercise have therapeutic potential in treating certain muscle diseases, such as wasting and frailty, hospital patients unable to exercise, veterans and others with disabilities as well as obesity and a slew of associated metabolic disorders where exercise is known to be beneficial.(Full Story at sd)

If it can help people with rare diseases I'm all for it, but I'm just too skeptical (bitter?) to believe that the drug companies will leave it there. If this drug ever does make it to market, it will be perscriped like crazy. The real problem is that people will start thinking they can eat anything (junk) and look better by taking this pill, and everything will be OK. It just doesn't work that way, and you can't convince me otherwise.

Bad Bio

Biofuels sound like such a good idea. A clean-burning fuel that reduces our need for foreign oil. What’s not to like? Well, for one thing, turning corn into biodiesel could be taking food off hungry people’s plates. “Okay,” biofuel advocates say, “suppose we just use the stems and leaves that are left over after crops are harvested? That should solve the problem.” Well, maybe not entirely. Because removing that so-called crop residue takes food away from soil microbes. They convert that material into the nutrients that crops need. So says USDA scientist Ann Kennedy of Washington State University.

Microbes break down crop residue to form organic matter—the stuff that gives soil its rich, dark color. Organic matter, in turn, provides nutrients, helps the soil retain water, and prevents erosion. So, if you harvest the crop residue to produce biofuels, you remove the materials that are fodder for the bugs that make organic matter. Soil quality would drop, and farmers would have to find some other way to fertilize their fields. So biofuels are not a magic bullet. Maybe you should just eat the corn and ride your bike. (From sciam)

I keep saying this kids: biofuel is not the answer.

Green Motor Oil

ScienceDaily (July 29, 2008) — Titanium, a protean element with applications from pigments to aerospace alloys, could get a new role as an environmentally friendly additive for automotive oil, thanks to work by materials scientists from Afton Chemical Corporation (Richmond, Va.) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The researchers established that a titanium compound added to engine oil creates a wear-resistant nanoscale layer bound to the surface of vulnerable engine parts, making it a credible substitute for older compounds that do not coexist well with antipollution equipment. (Full Story at sd)

On a similar note: Check your owners manual for the frequency of oil changes suggested. The old adage that every 3000 miles or 3 months doesn't usually hold true. In general, you can wait longer than that which is good for the wallet and the environment.

There May Be a Yeti Yet

Scientists in the UK who have examined hairs claimed to belong to a yeti in India say that an initial series of tests have proved inconclusive.

Ape expert Ian Redmond says the hairs bear a "startling resemblance" to similar hairs collected by Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary.

He told the BBC the Indian hairs are "potentially very exciting".

After extensive microscope examinations, the hairs will now be sent to separate labs for DNA analysis. (Full Story at bbc)


Like I've said before, I love the idea that there are many more myths that will eventually be proven true.

More Exercise Needed

ScienceDaily (July 29, 2008) — In addition to limiting calories, overweight and obese women may need to exercise 55 minutes a day for five days per week to sustain a weight loss of 10 percent over two years, according to a report in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

More than 65 percent of U.S. adults are overweight, a public health concern, according to background information in the article. "Among obese adults, long-term weight loss and prevention of weight regain have been less than desired," the authors write. "Therefore, there is a need for more effective interventions." Current recommendations prescribe 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days of the week, for a total of 150 minutes per week. However, a growing consensus suggests that more exercise may be needed to enhance long-term weight loss. (Full Story at sd)

I have to say that's a big difference. 30 mintues a few times a week wouldn't seem too daughnting to most people but an hour a day most days. . . I just wonder how they will try to sell the new recommendations.

Get Moving To Keep The Heart Young

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2008) — Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but endurance exercise seems to make it younger. According to a study conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, older people who did endurance exercise training for about a year ended up with metabolically much younger hearts. The researchers also showed that by one metabolic measure, women benefited more than men from the training.

"We know that the heart deteriorates as people get older, and that's largely because they don't stay as active as they used to," says first author Pablo F. Soto, M.D., instructor in medicine in the Cardiovascular Division. "Past research has suggested that exercise can reverse some effects of aging, and we wanted to see what effect it would have specifically on the heart." (Full Story at sd)

Can't say I'm surprised really.