Keith's note: Word has it that HQ organizations finally got their FY 2011 budget numbers around 3 p.m. EST today.
Is VASIMR Part Of NASA’s New Architecture?
NASA JSC Solicitation: Variable Specific Impulse Magento-Plasma Rocket - VASIMR
"NASA/JSC has a requirement for the acquisition of services to update a magnet fixture with an additional cryocooler for conduction cooling and to eliminate the liquid cyrogen cooling system in preparation for crycooler testing in vacuum and magnetic field combined environments. In addition, Studies will be conducted to evaluate a Lunar Tug concept utilizing Variable Specific Impulse Magneto-plasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine capabilities from Low Earth Orbit to Lunar Orbit and libration points. NASA/JSC intends to purchase these services from Ad Astra Rocket Company."
Video below
Climate News Highlights
Photo by Eduard Korniyenko--People Seen Through Window Of Public Bus In Stavropol, Russia
Could All the Freezing Weather Lately be Caused by Climate Change? [Yes]
January 29, 2010–Anthropogenic warming has thrown what was once a stable climate into disarray, and may be leading as much to ruinous droughts as to record-breaking freezes.
Climate change is an issue of literal and figurative polar extremes. As the planet inexorably warms, deniers mix in assertions of global cooling with their usual Al Gore insults and political assaults. . . No wonder, then, that people around the globe are dizzy with confusion. Careening between these extremes, they are easily manipulated by seeming opposites, environmental, political and otherwise. All of this, in the end, is complicated by the lack of consensus from gun-shy scientists, who are lately more busy fending off (or feeding off of, depending on the scientist) ludicrous sideshows like Climategate than they are confidently extrapolating the destabilizing scenarios to come, a move that might give all their number-crunching some real-world meaning.
News From The United States of Ostriches
The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies released the results of a new national survey on public responses to climate change. This report finds that public concern about global warming has dropped sharply since the fall of 2008.
Obama To Propose Tripling Of Nuclear Loan Guarantees
Barack Obama will propose a tripling of government funding for new nuclear reactors to more than $54bn. Barack Obama used his presidential authority to help advance his climate change agenda today, announcing that the US federal government and agencies would cut their giant carbon footprints by 28% by 2020.
The announcement was [shown] by administration officials as evidence of Obama’s commitment to his climate and energy agenda, which has run into opposition in Congress and from coal, oil and manufacturing groups.
The White House said the targets – which are set against 2008 emissions levels – would reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80m metric tons by 2020, and save the government between $8bn (£5bn) and $11bn in energy costs.
Obama will also propose a tripling of government loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors to more than $54bn, an administration official said, a move sure to win over some Republican lawmakers who want more nuclear power to be part of climate change legislation.
The loan guarantees, which follow Obama’s pledge in his State of the Union address to work to expand nuclear power production, will be announced as part of his budget proposal on Monday, the official said.
Poorly-Placed US Weather Stations Produce Cool Bias in Temperature Record – Not Warm as Claimed
A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres shows that Anthony Watts and SurfaceStations.org was indeed correct. There are indeed a good deal of poorly-placed weather monitoring stations in the United States. And these have caused a bias in the record of temperature changes: [...]
With $4.5M of Pocket Change, Bill Gates Funds Geoengineering Research | 80beats
If climate-watchers found no solutions in December’s failed Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, then they might be heartened by the fact that billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates thinks there needs to be a greater focus on researching technologies that can slow global warming.
ScienceInsider reports that the Microsoft founder had provided at least $4.5 million of his own money to be distributed over 3 years for the study of methods that could alter the stratosphere to reflect solar energy, techniques to filter carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, and brighten ocean clouds [ScienceInsider]. These and other geoengineering techniques have been hotly debated in the scientific world, with some critics arguing that tinkering with Earth’s natural systems could do more harm than good.
Methods that divert some incoming solar energy, like spraying reflective aerosols into the stratosphere or making clouds more reflective, have been deemed potentially effective but also risky; the abrupt halt of a large-scale project would result in sudden, extreme warming. On the other hand, techniques that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere are considered less risky, but they’re currently too expensive to implement widely.
Some of Gates’ money has been granted to Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto, California and physicist David Keith of the University of Calgary in Canada–two of Gates’ informal energy and climate advisers for many years. They have also advised Gates on dispensing the money, some of which has already been granted to Armand Neukermans, an inventor based in Silicon Valley who is working with colleagues to design spray systems for the marine clouds, and students and scientists working for Keith and Caldeira. Funding has also helped support scientific meetings in geoengineering in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Edinburgh, Scotland, and aeronautics research related to altering the stratosphere [ScienceInsider]. Caldeira clarified that Gates’ money had not funded any field experiments; he also noted that some of the funding goes to more general research on climate change.
Gates’ funding is in line with his recent essay on climate policy in which he called for radical innovations in electricity generation and transportation. “If the goal is to get the transportation and electrical sectors down to zero emissions you clearly need innovation that leads to entirely new approaches to generating power,” Gates wrote. “While it is all well and good to insulate houses and turn off lights, to really solve this problem we need to spend more time on accelerating innovation” [Wired.com].
This is not the first time that Gates has shown an interest in geoengineering research. He is an investor in a Seattle, Washington-area firm called Intellectual Ventures that is investigating techniques to geoengineer the stratosphere. Gates worked with them to apply for a patent in 2008 to sap hurricanes of their strength by mixing warm surface water and with cold, deep ocean water.
While Gates’ $4.5 million contribution to climate change research is significant, it does pale in comparison to his other philanthropic efforts. Endorsing vaccines as the world’s most cost-effective public health measure, Bill and Melinda Gates said Friday that their foundation would more than double its spending on them over the next decade, to at least $10 billion [The New York Times].
Related Content:
80beats: Bill Gates Patents a Device Aimed at Halting Hurricanes
80beats: If We Can’t Stop Emitting CO2, What’s Our Plan B?
80beats: Fighting Global Warming: Artificial Trees and Slime-Covered Buildings
80beats: Obama’s Science Adviser Kicks Up a Fuss Over Geoengineering
80beats: Carbon Capture and Storage Gets First Try-Outs Around the World
80beats: Ancient Agriculture Trick, Not Hi-Tech Engineering, Is Best Climate Defense
80beats: Iron-Dumping Experiment Is a Bust: It Feeds Crustaceans, Doesn’t Trap Carbon
DISCOVER: 5 Most Radical Ways to Squelch a Climate Crisis (photo gallery)
Image: iStockphoto
NASA FY2010 Budget Press Conference
NASA Announces Innovation Initiatives With Fiscal Year 2010 Budget
"NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will brief reporters about the agency's fiscal year 2011 budget at 3 p.m. EST on Monday, Feb. 1. The news conference will take place in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, located at 300 E St. S.W., in Washington. NASA Chief Financial Officer Beth Robinson will join Bolden. The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's Web site. Questions will be taken from media representatives at headquarters and participating field centers."
Potato Identity Crisis: Am I a Vegetable or Supercarb or Both? | Discoblog
The poor potato seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. Particularly in the United Kingdom, where there seems to be a great deal of confusion among consumers over whether the potato is a vegetable or just a starchy carbohydrate or both.
In order to vanquish this confusion and get people to pile on the potatoes, The Potato Council in the U.K. has put forth a petition to Downing Street to re-classify the spud as a “supercarb”–a new food group that, according to the council’s website, would help highlight “how much goodness potatoes contain.”
The Council hope this re-branding restores the potatoes tattered image that has suffered in the hands of those health-conscious folks who believe that a carb is a four-letter word.
The BBC reports:
Spurned by dieters on low-carbohydrate regimens such as Atkins, the vegetable also appeared to score poorly on the Glycaemic Index (GI) — which measures how quickly foods are broken down. The slower, the better — and the potato was quick. And then it seemed it was no longer a vegetable at all, passed over by the Department of Health when it compiled its list of “five-a-day.”
In the United Kingdom, the potato is classified a starchy carbohydrate. But while it is starchy, research published in the British Nutrition Journal argued that the vegetable had been subject to “unjustified generalization” and pointed out that the potato’s nutrition was entirely dependent on the way it was cooked, pointing out that an overcooked french fry was quite different from a boiled new potato.
So should we or not scarf down that order of fries?
Tom Sanders, professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College, London told the BBC that potatoes are an important source of Vitamin C and several other important nutrients, and noted that they’re healthiest when baked or boiled. He added that big, freshly cut fries only take up about 7% fat because of their relatively small surface area, and fries baked in the oven are even better with just 5 percent fat.
We’ll take that as a yes.
Related Content:
Discoblog: The Secret to Why French Fries Smell So Good: Ironing Boards?
DISCOVER: 8: Low Carbs Put Squeeze On Farmers
80beats: Fungus Behind the Irish Potato Famine Strikes the U.S.
Image: iStockphoto
More Sour Grapes From Scott Horowitz
Commercial Space: What Role Is It Ready For?, Scott Horowitz, Space News
"For instance, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has conducted five launches of its simple Falcon 1, four of which failed (three totally, one partially). The company has learned from its failures and is working on upgrades. The more complex Falcon 9, designed to carry cargo to the ISS, is two years behind schedule and has yet to be launched. Moreover, this is the same vehicle they say can carry crew to ISS within three years."
Keith's note: It is rather hilarious for Scott Horowitz to cite one company's developmental woes and yet ignore the immense problems, delays, and cost overruns that his Ares 1 team had. Go look at the Atlas' flight record when they flew John Glenn.
Newsflash, Scott: SpaceX was flying a real rocket from the onset - not a cobbled together one-off rocket (Ares 1-X), half of which was a dummy inert mass that experienced an anomalous post-staging flight profile, damaged its first stage, etc. And Scott, let us not forget, your rocket - one that would still not fly for the first time for another few years (according to your own schedule) - would be flying crew within a similar time frame as Falcon 9 - yet doing so with a spacecaft (Orion) that was constantly reduced in capacity and underpowered due to flaws inherent in your rocket's design.
Even if you were to double the amount of launch/testing problems Falcon 1/Falcon 9 will end up costing a small fraction of the $8-9 billion you wasted and will be working in space sooner - and more cheaply - than Ares 1 would ever have been capable of doing.
Face it Scott - you placed all your (our) money on the wrong rocket.
As for astronauts flying on rockets, I wonder what Ken Bowersox knows that you do not?
chamfers on parts being pressed into a blind bore
I have always been told that the reason for chamfering the outside leading edge of a cylindrical part being installed into a blind bore is to insure that the part seats against the shoulder at the bottom of the bore and doesnt hit any radius that may exist in the bottom corners of the bore. Can anyo
The case of the brown star that’s really red or possibly blue | Bad Astronomy
Brown dwarfs are poorly named: they’re not really brown. They’re objects that are too small to really be called stars; they lack the oomph needed to fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores, which is the the mark of a true star. Because of this, they are far cooler than actual stars. Since cool stars are red, you’d think brown dwarfs would actually be really red.
And they are. Unless they’re blue.
Yeah, let me explain this one. First, here are two images of a newly discovered brown dwarf, perhaps the coolest ever seen, and certainly one of the closest to the Earth:
[Click to redgiantize.]
The star SDSS1416+13A is the brighter one in the image, and is a regular ol’ brown dwarf. The other star is its lower mass and cooler companion, called SDSS1416+13B. How cool is it? Scientists estimate that it’s at about 200 Celsius (400° F). I ate chicken last night hotter than that! So as stars go, 1416+13B is pretty cool.
Observations taken some time apart show that the two stars are in fact binary, orbiting around each other. Since we don’t know exactly how far away these two are, we can’t say exactly just what their masses are, but the way they give off light is a dead giveaway they are both brown dwarfs. It’s possible to estimate their distance, and scientists think they are between 15 and 50 light years away. That makes them very close to us as stars go! The Milky Way is 100,000 light years across, so these guys are basically sitting in our front yard.
Now, let me take a sec to explain some jargon. Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light. Because of this, astronomers sometimes use the words "blue" and "red" as adjectives, meaning shorter and longer wavelengths, respectively. So blue is bluer than red, and red is redder than blue. Duh. But they can also say with a straight face that red is bluer than infrared, and infrared is redder than red! That’s because red has a shorter wavelength than IR, and is therefore "bluer", while the IR is longer wavelength than red, and is therefore "redder". Got it? It actually makes sense, and you eventually get used to it. I’ll be using this jargon below, so be ye fairly warned.
The pictures above are false color; both are in infrared light (the left is from the ground-based UKIRT telescope, while the one on the right is from the space-based Spitzer telescope). You might expect that since 1416+13B is cooler than its companion, it should be giving off more long-wavelength (redder) IR light. But in the case of the left image, the blue color still means 1416+13B is giving off more light at the shorter (bluer) end of the IR part of the spectrum. What gives?
Brown dwarfs are weird, that’s what gives. They have atmospheres almost like planets do, and that air is filled with methane, water vapor (steam!), and sometimes even vaporized iron for hotter ones — in cooler brown dwarfs, that iron precipitates out… in other words, it rains molten iron droplets!
In the case of 1416+13B, the atmosphere is cool enough that methane and steam absorb the light coming from below. Those two molecules are picky about what light they absorb, and they soak up quite a bit of IR at different wavelengths, allowing other wavelengths through. So what’s happening here is that some of the redder IR light gets sucked up, while bluer IR passes right through. What we see from outside is the star emitting bluer IR light, so images taken in IR make the star look blue.
This spectrum, taken with the Subaru telescope, might help:
Think of the vertical axis telling you how much light the gas in the star’s atmosphere lets through, and the horizontal is the color. Bluer IR is on the left, redder on the right. You can see that a handful of blue colors blast right through, but the star emits very little in the red. So when we look at it with our infrared telescopes, we see it looking blue.
Mind you, to our eyes, this guy would look very, very red. But that’s in visible light, off to the left (blue) of this graph.
So, given all this, why does the star look red in the Spitzer image? Aiiiiieeee!
OK, don’t panic. That’s because Spitzer looks at a different part of the IR spectrum. It sees light at 3.6 and 4.5 microns, well off to the right (red) of the spectrum shown above. In those wavelengths, 1416+13B looks redder.
So here we have a brown dwarf that looks red, or maybe blue. It all depends on how you look at it.
But that’s the whole point! By looking at stars at different wavelengths, we can find out a lot about them. In this case, we can estimate the distance to the star, its temperature, and even what’s in its atmosphere… all from hundreds of trillions of kilometers away!
Things like this never cease to amaze me. Science! I love this stuff.
Related posts:
Dim, faint, and small is no way to go through life, son
Astronomers weigh in on teeny stars
Welcome to our tiny family
Image credits: JAC/UKIRT, Spitzer Space Telescope, University of Hertfordshire, and Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), University of Hertfordshire.
cooling tower COC
Can anybody suggest what should be optimum COC for cooling tower.?
Presently we are maintaining 1500 ppm TDS of cooling tower and make up water TDS is about 200 ppm.We need to increase cooling water TDS upto 3000 ppm.Can we do this for saving water and chemicals used for treatment?
Decision for the LHC: 1 Inverse fb at 7 TeV or Bust! | Cosmic Variance
Last week in Aspen we learned that this week would be when a major decision was reached by CERN at the annual Chamonix meeting as to how to operate the LHC at high energy. Following the magnet quench incident in September 2008, a year-long shutdown ensued for repairs to the magnets, and retrofitting of the rest of the machine for better quench protection circuitry and helium pressure release valves. Not all sectors were warmed up to room temperature for the retrofit last year, but all magnets were trained to go as high as beam energies of 5 TeV (design energy is 7 TeV per beam).
In November and December the LHC commissioning resumed, and it became the world’s highest energy collider on December 8, eventually delivering about 50,000 collisions at 2.36 TeV to CMS and ATLAS before shutting down for Christmas.
But the question facing the LHC managers this week was whether attempting to operate the LHC at 5 TeV on 5 TeV in 2010 was worth the risk to the machine itself. Clearly another disaster of the scale of the one in 2008 would cripple the program for a long time. In the end the decision is to operate the LHC at 3.5 TeV on 3.5 TeV (7 TeV collision energy, 3.5 times that of the Tevatron) and accumulate a substantial amount of physics-quality data: 1 inverse femtobarn, or stop by the end f 2011, whichever comes first. This corresponds to something like ten trillion proton-proton collisions, of which only a small fraction will yield events interesting enough to record for later analysis by the experiments, and of these, only a tiny fraction yielding data relevant for physics.
After a one to one-and-a-half year shutdown in 2012 to retrofit the rest of the machine and make other preparations, the LHC will attempt to double the energy, to 14 TeV in the center of mass, in 2013 and accumulate substantial physics data. My best guess is that if the Higgs boson is to be discovered, it will be at high energy with this large sample of 14 TeV data. We might be able to rule it out at 95% confidence in certain mass ranges if it’s not there, but we ought not be able to do that if it is, right? Patience, patience!
Nevertheless, there is no question that in a few weeks, when operated at 7 TeV collision energy, the LHC will become an awesome discovery machine. There are many new physics scenarios in which we will be able to see new phenomena with just a fraction of the full 1 fb-1 sample. Will nature give up her secrets so readily though? She may not – we may spend this year and the next rediscovering the Standard Model, building up understanding of the detector, and sharpening our analysis tools in order to discover quite subtle effects. No matter what happens, this is the most exciting time in particle physics in decades.
should disqualifications be world wide?
Disqualified drivers face international ban
From today, UK drivers disqualified for serious motoring offences in Ireland will no longer escape punishment when they return home, under a new law. The ban also extends to Irish drivers disqualified while in the UK, who will find the ban enfor
@JHabermas | Cosmic Variance
I’m not the only person to find it endlessly amusing that Jürgen Habermas, octogenarian theorist of communicative rationality, has taken to Twitter. (The account seems to be legit, but it’s hard to be sure.) This is so over-determined that just last year Lauren Fisher gave a presentation entitled “If Habermas could Twitter.” Well, now we know.
He’s still trying to master the 140-character limit, though. Here’s his latest set of tweets:
Well, yeah. The internet is (in some sense) an egalitarian public sphere, but it raises the danger of fragmentation into self-reinforcing interest groups. Remains to be seen how it will all ultimately play out.
HUB for pressure vessels
I would please appreciate if somebody tell me where is the definition (if defined) of "hub" for a pressure vessel, mainly in a butt welded connection of a flat plate...and if it is ASME COde definition...much better!
Thanks in advance
Commercial Space: Hot Air Vs Real Hardware
Keith's note: A paradigm shift is in the making - a shift from government-operated to private sector operated human and cargo transportation systems. Of course, everyone wants to get a word in about this. How two groups express their support points to a shift in how this will happen. It is one thing to wave your arms around about what is broken and offer semantic solutions. It is quite another to quietly build vehicles to make this actually come to pass. Witness the attitude difference between two pro-space commercialization organizations - one old (and tired) one new and fresh.
First there is the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (formed by a group of companies actually building space vehicles) who sees the opportunity to take a shift in direction and make things work better. And then there is the Space Frontier Foundation (fast becoming a noisy "me too" fringe group) who gleefully celebrates the cancellation of a program that has consumed $8 billion by issuing a press release that points fingers and makes absolutely sure that we all know that they told you so ...
I'll take CSF's forward-looking approach any day.
"At a time when job creation is the top priority for our nation, a commercial crew program will create more jobs per dollar because it leverages millions in private investment and taps the potential of systems that serve both government and private customers. We have a tremendous opportunity here to jump-start private activity in low-Earth orbit that will further lower the cost of access to space and unleash the economic potential of space long promised."
Space Frontier Foundation Praises Death Sentence for Ares
"The Space Frontier Foundation has been fighting to kill Ares I for years. We predicted this disaster in 2006 , put out press releases, op-eds and worked with our many friends inside NASA, Congress, and both large and small NewSpace companies. ... Our Mind the Space Gap campaign emphasized that Ares was a boondoggle that guaranteed sending more taxpayer money to Russia to pay for Astronaut visits to a space station we mostly paid for," continued Werb. "Now the NewSpace industry must step up and fill the Gap, creating jobs and innovation here in America."
Shorty Award nominations end tonight | Bad Astronomy
The Shorty Award nomination process ends tonight at midnight Pacific time (08:00 UT Saturday). If you have an existing Twitter account, please help my friend and quack-fighter Rachael Dunlop beat out that alt-med gufru* Joe Mercola. You can vote for her here, and you can get some backstory in this earlier post.
This is just the nomination process, but it simply makes my heart sing to know that someone who represents actual science and a real defender of health gets the most votes. Thanks.
"Gufru" = "guru" + "goof". This time I checked and found no definition for this word, so I now claim it for my own personal use when referring to someone who claims to be a guru, but is in fact a goofball peddler of nonsense.
Screen Inverter
I bought a new screen inverter for the Dell Latitude D600, put it in, it worked fine, and then after about a minute, the screen went black, where the inverter is, went really hot. has the motherboard just fried the inverter?
Scientist Smackdown: French Strike Back Against British G-Spot Study | 80beats
As if soccer, wars of incredible length, and the relative worth of wine vs. beer didn’t account for enough disagreements between Britain and France, add another spat to the pile: whether or not the G-spot really exists.
A few weeks ago, a team of scientists from King’s College London joined the ongoing scientific fray by publishing a new study on the much-debated female erogenous zone. It was the biggest to date, involving 1,800 women – all of whom were pairs of identical or non-identical twins. If the G-spot did exist, it said, then genetically identical twins would have been expected to both report having one. However, no such pattern emerged [The Telegraph]. As a result of the study, coauthor Tim Spector said, the study “shows fairly conclusively that the idea of a G-spot is subjective.”
It didn’t take long, however, for this news to reach the French, who aren’t about to start taking sex advice from across the channel. A group of gynecologists there convened their own conference in Paris to denounce this assault on female pleasure. Surgeon Pierre Foldes told a “G-Day” conference across La Manche: “The King’s College study shows a lack of respect for what women say. The conclusions were completely erroneous because they were based solely on genetic observations” [The Register].
The angry French gynecologists said they’d found the real problem with their British counterparts: that they’re British. The King’s College study, they said, had fallen victim to an Anglo-Saxon tendency to reduce the mysteries of sexuality to absolutes. This attempt to set clear parameters on something variable and ambiguous, they said, was characteristic of British scientific attitudes to sex [The Guardian].
Gynecologist Odile Buisson went even further in blaming national sex attitudes for supposedly leading the British researchers astray: “I don’t want to stigmatise at all but I think the Protestant, liberal, Anglo-Saxon character means you are very pragmatic. There has to be a cause for everything, a gene for everything,” she said, adding: “I think it’s totalitarian” [The Guardian]. She also told The Telegraph that the G-spot is real for upwards of 60 percent of women, and that saying anything else is “medical machismo.”
No word yet of the British team responding to this challenge to their study (and national pride).
Related Content:
80beats: The Woman of Tomorrow: Shorter, Plumper, & More Fertile
80beats: Are Birth Control Pills Changing the Mating Game?
80beats: Scientist Smackdowns
DISCOVER: The Science of Great Sex at 80
Image: flickr/ takomabibelot
Galvanic Protection of Metals
What is the critical potential difference to initiate galvanic corrosion in sea water?
Video: How Male Frogs Kick up a Frog Froth to Protect Their Young | Discoblog
Human parents can get into a huge lather about keeping their kids safe. So why should some species of frog be any different? Male Tungara frogs (Engystomops pustulous) will huff and puff and literally kick up a huge clump of foam that serves as a nest to shelter his mate’s eggs. The floating foam nests sound flimsy, but they’re actually incredibly durable–surviving the sun, high temperatures, infections, and parasites for four whole days until the eggs housed inside mature into tadpoles.
While scientists already knew of these foam nests, they didn’t know quite how the frogs made them. Now research (pdf) published in the Royal Society’s journal Biology Letters provides some answers. New footage filmed of an amorous pair of Tungara frogs foaming up a nest in the West Indies shows a carefully calibrated approach to nest-building that’s part yoga, part physics.
In the first stage of foam-making, the male hops onto the female’s back and begins to collect a foam-precursor fluid. Then he begins kicking his legs in short bursts, mixing air bubbles into the fluid just like an eggbeater does. In the next stage, he carefully pushes in eggs from the female underneath him into the center of the foam before eventually slowing down and stopping.
Scientists are hopeful that understanding the nest building process would help us create a similar “bio-foam” in the laboratory.
Study coauthor Malcolm Kennedy, an evolutionary biologist from University of Glasgow, told the BBC:
“This material is resistant to bacterial and microbial damage — and if you could make a spray can that could produce this, it could potentially be used on burn victims, for example, because it would prevent them from infection, but it doesn’t damage cells.”
Check out the eggbeater action for yourself:
Related Content:
80beats: An Early Education: As Embryos, Frogs Sniff Out Predators
Discoblog: Frogs Pee Away Scientists’ Attempt to Study Them
Discoblog: It’s Raining Tadpoles? Fish, Frogs Shower Japanese Residents
Image: Malcolm Kennedy
