Sure, the ghost special effects somehow have gotten worse in the last 20 years, but it's pretty much impossible to not be charmed by the Ghostbusters returning to the New York Public Library. [Improv Everywhere] More »
My newest column for Discover is about that strangest of the senses, smell. An odor can be an overwhelming experience, and yet it’s often impossible to put that experience into words. In fact, we’re terrible at naming smells, despite being exquisitely sensitive to the differences between them. I take a look at some recent research that may bring us closer to resolving this paradox, with the invention of the first yardstick for the nose–a simple measurement of odor molecules that reveals a lot about how pleasant or vile we find them. Not only might it help us understand our own noses, but it may even let us build electronic noses to sniff for things we don’t want to stick our own noses in. Check it out.
Is there any specific criteria to choose the different configurations of layout in Tank farm area, i.e. how do we choose whether to go for tanks in single line or two rows, or zig zag path?
In the Jacketed pipes, whihc fitting to be used and when?
If you've been waiting for the iPod-compatible Nike+ heart rate monitor to really start exercising in earnest, well, you've been waiting a really long time. But now you can dust off those running shoes and start planning your jog on Google Maps—June 1 is the first day of the rest of your life. More »
With smallpox largely eradicated around the world, health organizations phased out the smallpox vaccine between the 1950s and 1970s (the last natural case of the disease was seen in 1977, in Somalia). During that span, Raymond Weinstein says, the AIDS crisis broke out in force. And in a study in BMC Immunology, he argues those two events could be connected.
Supposing that smallpox vaccination could have some effect on a person’s susceptibility to HIV, researchers led by Weinstein tested the idea on cells in a lab. They took immune cells from 10 people recently vaccinated against smallpox and 10 people never vaccinated. HIV, they found, was five times less successful at replicating with the cells of vaccinated people.
Why?
The researchers believe vaccination may offer some protection against HIV by producing long-term alterations in the immune system, possibly including the expression of a receptor called CCR5 on the surface of white blood cells, which is exploited by the smallpox virus and HIV [BBC News].
Any finding that expands knowledge of how HIV replicates could be an important one. And while this small study can’t prove Weinstein’s assertion is correct, the argument is, at the very least, plausible. Says Weinstein:
“There have been several proposed explanations for the rapid spread of HIV in Africa, including wars, the reuse of unsterilised needles and the contamination of early batches of polio vaccine. However, all of these have been either disproved or do not sufficiently explain the behaviour of the HIV pandemic” [Press Association].
Related Content:
DISCOVER: Whatever Happened to… Smallpox?
DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Lab Accidents
DISCOVER: Killer Pox in the Congo
80beats: Researchers Track the HIV Virus to a Hideout in the Bone Marrow
80beats: S. African HIV Plan: Universal Testing & Treatment Could End the Epidemic
Image: CDC
Giacomo Balla, futurismo e neofuturismo
By Giovanni Lista and Elena Gigli
Mudima, 2009
ISBN 88-86072-47-3
Italian, p. 70
p. 70
The publishing house Mudima in Milan has published Balla, futurismo e neofuturismo by Giovanni Lista and Elena Gigli. The books investigates two much discussed aspects of Balla’s work: the “compenetrazioni iridescenti” and the political ideals with the joining of Fascism.
To answer that question, don't go comparing their personality traits (the Newfie: famously loyal and sweet, Tiger Woods: um, no comment). Instead, look to the knees. Newfoundland dogs are prone to cruciate ligament disease, the same knee disorder that has troubled Woods and many other professional athletes--the disease makes dogs and humans more prone to ligament ruptures. Now, researchers at Liverpool University are asking Newfie owners to send in DNA samples from their pets so they can search for genetic factors that predispose dogs to the condition. According to lead researcher Arabella Baird, the study could have two benefits. If researchers determine which genes put dogs at risk of the condition, they can help breeders create healthier lines of dogs by preventing matings between dogs with the key genes. But the study may also help medical researchers find the comparable genes in humans, The Guardian reports:
Baird added: "The disease in humans tends to occur when stress is put on the ligament, but there have been some preliminary findings that suggest there is a genetic component that could predispose humans to the condition.... Our project will be looking at many genes and the results of our study in dogs will be comparative to ...
See here and here. The Union of Concerned Scientists has organized a statement from 800 researchers in Virginia defending Michael Mann and denouncing Ken Cuccinelli's tactics and investigation. Key quote: "In the interests of the people of Virginia, we urge you to halt this burdensome and entirely unwarranted investigation." Now if only the University of Virgina would lend its heft to the cause...
Hello,
For a hydrostatic test of pressure vessels in stainless steel, it is necessary that the rate of chloride is below a certain rate. Is there an inhibitor, added to tap water, allowing the reduction of chloride?
Best Regards
what kind of heat exchanger could I use if I want to preheated compreesed air leaving the compreeser (in gas turbine cycle) by liquid molten salt coming from central reciver solar tower . The molten salt entring the heat exchanger 566C and the air enter with 330C. the air outlet temperature should b
Can you use alcohol to warm a chlorine pool?
I know you can go to Radio Shack and on-line for power converters that will allow you to use USA type of power requiring devices ( 110 VAC 60 Cycle ) in Europe ( 220 VAC 50 Cycle )
But the last time I checked all they were was drop down transformers. They still did not address the 50 vs 60 cycl
Kudzu: It’s worse than you thought. The invasive plant now covers more than 7 million acres in the United States, mostly in the Southeast but not limited to there. Besides overrunning trees as it spreads like wildfire, the vine also brings another danger: In a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jonathan Hickman sounds the alarm that kudzu could cause a spike in ozone, polluting the air.
Ozone, of course, is a good thing when it’s high in our atmosphere, blocking some of the sun’s harmful radiation. But down on the surface of the planet, ozone isn’t such a good thing. It can cause respiratory problems in people and harm plants’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide; it also is a major constituent of smog.
Kudzu’s contribution to ozone levels works like this: Like other members of the pea family, or legumes, Kudzu grabs nitrogen from the air and puts it into the soil. There microbes convert nitrogen into nitrous oxide, one of the pollutants that also comes from automobile exhaust. That gas escapes from the soil and into the air, and undergoes reactions that lead to the creation of ozone [Discovery News].
When this reaction happens on a small scale it’s not a big problem. However, there’s getting to be so much kudzu in the U.S. that Hickman decided to measure what its ozone contribution might be. So his team studied the soil of Madison County, Georgia, picking some areas where kuzdu had invaded and some where it had not. In the kudzu-ed areas, he says, nitrous oxide emissions were double that of the kudzu-free areas.
To drive home the point, Hickman and his colleagues ran a simulation in which kudzu spread over the entirety of its region except for soils in the city or those used in agriculture. Crunching those numbers, the team estimated a dramatic increase—35 percent—in the number of days that would register an atmospheric ozone level in excess of the safe limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
That’s a pretty extreme scenario; kudzu alone isn’t going to drive up ozone pollution by a third. Even with kudzu stretching out ever further, its present contribution to ozone is most likely a minor one, Hickman says, but the ozone potential is one more reason to loathe the vine.
He acknowledged that any soil used to grow nitrogen-fixing plants or were fertilised for agricultural reasons would result in an increase in gases involved in the formation of ozone. “But in those cases, we are doing these things for necessary reasons — namely food production,” he observed. “In the case of Kudzu, it is an undesirable plant that is spreading over a large area in the south-east US” [BBC News].
It’s also an undesirable plant that people brought to America on purpose, making it not just a poster child for invasive species, but also for importing a foreign organism to try to fix some other problem in an ecosystem.
Kudzu (Pueraria montana) is a rapidly growing vine native to Asia that was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia as an ornamental plant and later promoted to farmers in the Southeast as a means of controlling soil erosion by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service during the 1930s [LiveScience].
Related Content:
DISCOVER: The Truth About Invasive Species
DISCOVER: Humans vs. Animals: Our Fiercest Battles With Invasive Species (photo gallery)
80beats: Should Humans Relocate Animals Threatened by Global Warming?
80beats: Globalized Pollution: Asian Smog Floats to American Skies
80beats: Today’s Biggest Threat to the Ozone Layer: Laughing Gas
Image: flickr / SoftCore Studios
what is the advantage of triple offset butterfly valve over high performance butterfly valve?
Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has taken… let’s see… <counting on fingers>… carry the two… about a gazillion pictures of the sky. Not all of them are gorgeous, and not all of them are news-breaking, but an awful lot are really cool but don’t get any press.
That’ll change now. The folks at the European Space Agency side of Hubble Central have created a new feature: the Hubble Picture of the Week. This is pretty much what it sounds like: a new, way cool picture posted once a week. They’ve posted the first three already, like this one:
Click to embiggen. That’s the planetary nebula IC4634, a star that was once much like the Sun, but is now at the end of its life, throwing off great gusts of gas in its final paroxysms before fading away as a white dwarf.
The galaxy image above is another one, NGC 2082, a pretty, face-on spiral about 60 million light years away. I worked on Hubble data for a long time, and I saw a lot of images that should be seen by more people, but there simply wasn’t a way to do it back then. With this new HST PotW, I bet a lot of those will get wider acknowledgment now.
Tip o’ the lens cap to astronomer, my friend, and sometime dance partner Lars Christian Lindberg.
Hello Fellow Members,
Does any one has an experience in using coal catalyst for the coal fired boilers? What are the products available in the market (India or Asia)?
How the efficacy of the catalyst is measured?
Appreciate all your feedback on this subject.
Regards
Sharad
I was going to write something up about Mount St. Helens, which erupted 30 years ago today. But then The Big Picture went and did an incredible retrospective of it, so I’ll just send you there. Here’s a taste:
If you’ve ever wondered what my nightmares are like, you’re looking at one.
I’ll add that a few years ago, when I still lived in California, I flew up to Seattle for a meeting. I literally gasped out loud when I saw the volcano out my window. I stared at it for as long as it was visible. The whole story was laid out clearly for anyone to read it: the side of the caldera was collapsed, and I could see the long run out from the lahar, the mudslide that followed the eruption. Even nearly three decades later the devastation was incredible. Over 3 cubic kilometers (0.67 cubic miles) of rock and ash blew out of the volcano that day.
You can read about the details of the event on the USGS site and on their 30th anniversary page. It’s a hair-raising story. [Edited to add: This NASA series of pictures is also way cool.]
And by the way? The volcano is still active. Have a nice day.
Image credit: USGS.
I am asking this question for a fellow co-worker. He is working on testing a pallet load of product and has performed several calculations to determine the amount of force this load will see when it come to a sudden stop at 6 mph. He has found several web sites that give the formula, and one that
http://www.youtube.com/user/ForkliftBriefing
just for information
although it does occur to me that the racking may have been over stressed by excess loads
