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Scientists 3D Print Living Kidneys.

A team of researchers lead by Xu Mingen at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in eastern Zhejiang Province in China have been able to successfully use 3D printing technology to create living, functional kidneys.

The substrate is a blend of human kidney cells and hydrogels filled with water and nutritious material that allows the kidneys to survive for up to four months. 

Ever thought of taking a rip-roaring road trip to Neo-Tokyo on the back of a futuristic motorcycle?

Inspired by post-apocalyptic anime smash Akira, Japan native Masashi Teshima has done just that, and in the process turned his fan-fueled dreams into a platform for a worthwhile cause or two.

Aboard a life-size replica of the iconic motorcycle ridden by Akira protagonist Shotaro Kaneda, Teshima set out from his hometown of Fukuoka, Japan and rode all the way to Tokyo, raising money for Bokura Company, an organization whose focus is to provide support for childhood autism.

But the giving doesn’t stop there.

The motorcycle, which took Teshima over seven years and 10 million yen ($121,000 USD) to build, is currently on display at the Katsuhiro Otomo GENGA Exhibition, a celebration of original artwork by the acclaimed Akira creator.  Proceeds go toward support for relief and rebuilding efforts stemming from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which devastated large portions of Japan’s east coast.

Q: What is the “False Vacuum” and are we living in it?

Physicist: The False Vacuum is just another item on the long list of things to worry about, that are not worth worrying about, and that nobody can do anything about.  If you have any other worries, worry about those first.

In any physical system you’ll find that there’s an energy “ground state” that the system tries to approach.  For example, if you pour water into a bathtub there are a lot of ways that the water could arrange itself, but it will rapidly try to assume the ground state: being as low and still as possible.

In any physical system there’s a lowest energy state called the “ground state”.  If you allow the energy to drain out of a system, then it will approach its ground state.

Gravitational potential (the energy that something on a high shelf has more of, and that’s released when things fall) is the easiest example of an energetic system to picture.  Being on the ground is the lowest gravitational potential a thing can have (without digging); thus the name.

But in the tub example, the water in the tub doesn’t “know” about the drain or the area around the tub.  Given the chance the water would flow out of the tub and into a new, lower, ground state.  In fancy-math-speak, you’d say that the water in a tub is in a “local energy minimum”.  Within the tub, water definitely assumes the only ground state it can find.  However, if it jumped out of the tub, or somebody pulled the plug, then it would try to find a new, lower ground state and would find that it gained a bunch of new energy in the process (what with the flowing and splashing and whatnot).

There’s no good way to find out if you’re in a local “false” ground state or a true ground state.

The idea of energy levels, and ground states, and all that, applies to pretty much everything.  That includes electromagnetic fields and even particle fields.  A “particle field” is the quantum mechanical way of describing particles (all smeared out, instead of being all in one point), and each field has a pretty reasonable set of energy levels.  Every new particle elevates the energy level by one step, and the ground level is exactly what you’d expect: zero particles.

The vacuum is the most absolute ground state: no waves, no particles, nothing at all to elevate the energy above zero. So, the idea behind a false vacuum is that what we consider the ground state of the universe isn’t really the ground state, and it may be possible to drop into an even lower-energy state (drain the tub, so to speak).  What we think is the ground state, the vacuum, may not be the true ground state.  

The “danger” of living in a false vacuum is that, under the proper circumstances the false vacuum can drop into the true vacuum.  The cause is usually described as a sufficient burst of energy to get the appropriate fields “over the hump” (picture above).  If the difference in energy between the false vacuum and true vacuum is large enough, then the surrounding space can likewise be tipped into the lower state.  In theory, a “false vacuum collapse” would expand at light speed (or about light speed) from the originating event, and destroy the heck out of everything in the affected, and ever-expanding, region. 

Milky Way Now Has a Twin (or Two)

Research presented Aug. 23, 2012 at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Beijing has found the first group of galaxies that is just like ours, a rare sight in the local Universe.

The Milky Way is a fairly typical galaxy on its own, but when paired with its close neighbours — the Magellanic Clouds — it is very rare, and could have been one of a kind, until a survey of our local Universe found another two examples just like us.

Astronomer Dr Aaron Robotham, jointly from the University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and the University of St Andrews in Scotland, searched for groups of galaxies similar to ours in the most detailed map of the local Universe yet, the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey (GAMA).

"We’ve never found another galaxy system like the Milky Way before, which is not surprising considering how hard they are to spot! It’s only recently become possible to do the type of analysis that lets us find similar groups," says Dr Robotham.

"Everything had to come together at once: we needed telescopes good enough to detect not just galaxies but their faint companions, we needed to look at large sections of the sky, and most of all we needed to make sure no galaxies were missed in the survey"

Sophisticated simulations of how galaxies form don’t produce many examples similar to the Milky Way and its surrounds, predicting them to be quite a rare occurrence. Astronomers haven’t been able to tell just how rare until now, with the discovery of not just one but two exact matches amongst the hundreds of thousands of galaxies surveyed.

"We found about 3% of galaxies similar to the Milky Way have companion galaxies like the Magellanic Clouds, which is very rare indeed. In total we found 14 galaxy systems that are similar to ours, with two of those being an almost exact match," says Dr Robotham.

The Milky Way is locked in a complex cosmic dance with its close companions the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are clearly visible in the southern hemisphere night sky. Many galaxies have smaller galaxies in orbit around them, but few have two that are as large as the Magellanic Clouds.

Dr Robotham’s work also found that although companions like the Magellanic Clouds are rare, when they are found they’re usually near a galaxy very like the Milky Way, meaning we’re in just the right place at the right time to have such a great view in our night sky.

"The galaxy we live in is perfectly typical, but the nearby Magellenic Clouds are a rare, and possibly short-lived, occurrence. We should enjoy them whilst we can, they’ll only be around for a few billion more years," adds Dr Robotham. Dr Robotham and colleagues have been awarded further time on telescopes in New South Wales and Chile to study these Milky Way twin systems now that they’ve been found.

Capturing CO2 with Tomatoes

A California farmer is finding a unique way to capture emissions of carbon dioxide — piping the climate-altering gas from a power plant into his massive greenhouse, spurring more plant growth and tastier tomatoes.

This carbon capture and tomato storage project is the first of its kind in the United States although similar ones exist in Europe.

The new $13 million combined heat and power co-generation plant opens Aug. 22 at Houweling’s Tomatoes in Camarillo, Calif. The two GE-built engines will burn natural gas to keep the greenhouse warm, while generating some extra electricity that is sold back into the local grid. At the same time, the 8.8-megawatt plant feeds its waste carbon dioxide directly into Houweling’s giant 150-acre greenhouse.

"All the electricity (power) plants out there are putting CO2 into the atmosphere and heat which are two big consumptions," said owner Casey Houweling. "If we use our energy wiser we would have impacts from two sides, reducing cost and becoming more efficient."

Houweling says the co-generation plant is a big investment but he expects it will pay off in the long run. ”There will be a big benefit because we won’t be exposed to energy prices because we are selling the electricity,” Houweling said. “Long-term we believe this will stabilize our production costs.”

The power industry has looked at many types of carbon storage projects over the years as a way to reducing atmospheric emissions of the heat-trapping gas. Some firms have tried injecting it underground to abandoned mines or salt deposits, others have tried bubbling CO2 through ponds of microscopic algae. But Houweling says that the extra CO2 is a perfect fit for his greenhouse. He already has to purchase the gas anyway from an industrial supplier to makes his plants grow.

"In a greenhouse, if we don’t add C02," Houweling said, "the plants will pull down the level so much they will stop growing."

Houweling says the addition of the co-generation plant makes his greenhouse facility almost 100 percent energy-efficient. He recycles 90 percent of his waste, captures rainwater for irrigation, and has deployed five acres of solar panels. The greenhouse-grown tomatoes also use less land than traditional row farming. That is a further energy savings, according to Scott Nolen, product line leader for General Electric.

Spaun - the Most Realistic Artificial Human Brain Yet

A group of neuroscientists and software engineers at the University of Waterloo in Canada are claiming to have built the world’s most complex, large-scale model simulation of the human brain. The simulated brain, which runs on a supercomputer, has a digital eye which it uses for visual input, a robotic arm that it uses to draw its responses — and it can pass the basic elements of an IQ test.

The brain, called Spaun (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network), consists of 2.5 million simulated neurons, allowing it to perform eight different tasks. These tasks range from copy drawing to counting, to question answering and fluid reasoning. At this point, you should watch the video below to get a rough idea of how Spaun works — and then read on to find out why Spaun is so interesting.

Now, the nitty-gritty details. Spaun has a 28×28 (784-pixel) digital eye, and a robotic arm which can write on some paper. Every interaction with Spaun is through its 784-pixel eye. The scientists flash up a bunch of numbers and letters, which Spaun reads into memory, and then another letter or symbol acts as the command, telling Spaun what to do with its memory. The output of the task is then inscribed by the robotic arm.

Spaun’s brain consists of 2.5 million neurons that are broken down into a bunch of simulated cranial subsystems, including the prefrontal cortex, basal ganglia, and thalamus, which are wired together with simulated neurons that very accurately mimic the wiring of a real human brain. The basic idea is that these subsystems behave very similarly to a real brain: Visual input is processed by the thalamus, the data is stored in the neurons, and then the basal ganglia fires off a task to a part of the cortex that’s designed to handle that task.

All of this computation is performed in a physiologically accurate way, with simulated voltage spikes and neurotransmitters. Even the limitations of the human brain are simulated, as you can see in the video below, with Spaun struggling to store more than a few numbers in its short-term memory.

The end result is a brain that is mechanistically simple (2.5 million neurons isn’t really much to write home about), but which is surprisingly flexible. By implementing just a handful of very basic tasks, it’s interesting to see how complex behavior begins to emerge. There are some tantalizing hints as to how the brain evolved: starting with simple tasks, and then building upon and weaving them together to build complex functionality. 

Moving forward, the research team, led by Chris Eliasmith, wants to imbue Spaun with adaptive plasticity — the ability to rewire its neurons and learn new tasks simply by doing, rather than being pre-programmed. 

Source

First Practical Maser (Microwave Laser) Built

Using spare chemicals, a laser bought on eBay and angst from a late-night argument, physicists have got the world’s first room-temperature microwave laser working. The achievement comes nearly 60 years after the first clunky versions of such devices were built, and could revolutionize communication and space exploration. The work is published this week in Nature.

Before there were lasers, there were microwave lasers, or masers. First conceived in the Soviet Union and the United States during the 1950s, early maser machines were the size of a chest of drawers. They produced only a few nanowatts of power, severely limiting their usefulness.

Because of this impediment, most in the field gave up on masers and moved on to lasers, which use the same principles of physics, but work with optical light instead of microwaves. Lasers are now used in applications ranging from eye surgery to CD players. The poor maser lived on in obscurity. It found only a few niche uses, such as boosting radio signals from distant spacecraft — including NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Those masers work only when cooled to less than ten degrees above absolute zero, and even then they are not nearly as powerful as lasers.

Pink power But Mark Oxborrow, a physicist at the UK National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, wondered whether a crystal containing the organic molecule pentacene might offer a breakthrough. He came across a decade-old publication by Japaneseresearchers suggesting that when the electrons in pentacene are excited by a laser, they configure such that the molecule could work as a maser, possibly even at room temperature.

He borrowed some spare pentacene from a lab at Imperial, and cooked it with another organic molecule known as p-terphenyl. The result was a pink crystal a few centimeters long.

Next, the team needed a powerful laser. Oxborrow located an old medical laser on eBay and drove to a warehouse in north London to pick it up. But the researchers were filled with doubts — the whole thing seemed too easy. Oxborrow admits that he was skittish about the experiment. “For about three days, I could have done it, but I didn’t have the nerve to switch on that button,” he says.

The final impetus came from an argument with his wife. Whereas less well-behaved people might have wallowed in the pub, “I went to the lab as a bit of therapy”, says Oxborrow. “I said, ‘Oh well, what the hell, let’s just try it.” And it worked on the first go.

Excited state The laser light excited the pentacene molecules to an energy level known as a metastable state. Then a microwave passing through the crystal triggered the molecules to relax, releasing a cascade of microwaves of the same wavelength.

It was the same principle as an optical laser. “The signal that came out of it was huge,” says Oxborrow, about a hundred million times as powerful as an existing maser. Alone in his lab, “I swore a lot and walked around the corridor about five times talking to myself”.

Left: New maser

In late 2013, a person dressed as a clown had been spotted walking  the streets of Mansfield at night, holding balloons, and sometimes a stuffed teddy bear. 

One woman claimed he offered to paint her windowsills after knocking on her front door, despite having no equipment on him.

A person claiming to be the Northampton Clown has set up a Facebook account called “Spot Northampton’s Clown,” and it has already garnered over 122,000 likes. 

Should Students Use Wikipedia?

Imagine the following fake conversation with a student:

Student: The instructor in another course said something about antimatter. What is antimatter? Where could I read about that?

Me: Well, you could go to Wikipedia. I am sure the page on anti-matter has a nice summary.

Student: Wikipedia??? Really? I thought all faculty hated Wikipedia. We were told it’s not a good thing to use.

Interesting. What do faculty think about students using Wikipedia? I have this unjustified feeling that it is a fairly straightforward source for basic information. Let me take a look at a few pages:

Antimatter.

Cave Diving.

The Momentum Principle.

Rhett Allain.

Looking at this sample, how accurate are these pages? The antimatter page seems to have a good summary of the topic with no obvious errors.

Apparently, there isn’t a Wikipedia page on the Momentum Principle. I thought that was odd. Well, the page on Impulse (physics) seems to be essentially the same as the momentum principle. It isn’t exactly what I would write, but it isn’t wrong either. Of course, I could probably say the same complaint about many of the physics textbooks. Finally, the Rhett Allain page is brief — but again not wrong.

Is Wikipedia evil? I don’t think so. Wikipedia is a tool, just like a lot of other things. It can be abused or it can be used for the good of mankind. Really, it isn’t much different than the information you would find in a textbook. Perhaps in the early days of Wikipedia, there was some unreliable stuff in there. However, I think that Wikipedia has matured enough that you won’t find too many seriously wrong things in there. You still find incorrect things in textbooks, so … not much different.

Then can students use Wikipedia? I think the problem some faculty have is that they don’t want students to use Wikipedia because it makes the assignment too easy. My feeling on this is that perhaps there should be a different assignment. Really, it depends on the learning goals. If the goal is to process and synthesize information, I think Wikipedia should be included in that process. If the goal is to learn how to find things in a library, then clearly Wikipedia shouldn’t be used.

Wikipedia is like a calculator in math classes. What if there was a math assignment where students were to do long division? Would it be wrong for the students to use a calculator? I think it depends. Why are they doing long division? In the past, long division was taught in schools so that students could divide numbers. But if the goal is to divide stuff, a calculator would make more sense.

There is another reason to teach long division: to give insight into how division works and what place value means. If this is the goal, the calculator actually doesn’t help. It just skips the whole processes, so it would be a bad-thing.

What is an IP Address?

In one way or another, we’re all vaguely familiar with the term IP address. Hardly any of us, however, are actually familiar with how it works. In essence, an IP address is nothing more than a series of numbers that allows a digital device to communicate with the internet. Each individual IP address allows each of the billions of digital devices across the globe to be located and differentiated from one another. In this sense, an IP address is comparable to a standard mailing address.  “IP” stands for Internet Protocol, which is just a set of rules that govern and legitimize Internet activity and allow for the completion of various tasks on the Internet. While that sounds vague, an IP address is one part of a precise grid that facilitates online communication by locating and connecting devices and locations. 

The address itself consists of four sets of numbers separated by single dots, each of which may contain one to three digits. Each of the series of numbers can range from 0 to 255. For example, an IP address could look like 82.243.1.119. There are two types of IP addresses: 

Static: A static IP address will never change, they serve as a permanent address. They are based on location, so the numbers represent such information as the city, country, continent etc. that the computer is in - and the Internet Service Provider (ISP) that serves that computer. Generally preferable for online gaming and other communication and location-heavy acts. However, they are generally considered to be less secure because they can be tracked for data-mining purposes. 

Dynamic: These IP addresses are, unsurprisingly - ‘un-static,’ or changing. These are temporary, and one is assigned each and every time a computer accesses the internet. Essentially, these addresses are borrowed from a set of shared addresses. Only a limited number of static IP addresses can be assigned, so many ISPs share addresses among their customers in this way.

Dolphins Name Themselves via Whistle

This is really, really cool. According to Stephanie King and Vincent Janik of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Dolphins are even smarter than we used to think (and we used to think that were really, really smart). 

Bottlenose dolphins have been shown to respond and answer to high-pitched bursts of sound, but here’s the kicker - each individual dolphin only responds to one specific sound, it’s “signature whistle.” 

This whistle is a distinct tune that each dolphin develops for itself and then broadcasts to others, it seems to act as a sort of nametag - the dolphin effectively devises its own name and then tells other dolphins what they’ve come up with. 

When scientists played each dolphin’s “signature whistle” to them, the dolphin responded back with the same whistle - and they didn’t respond at all when they were played another dolphin’s signature. 

Scientists had previously known that dolphins exchange signatures when first meeting each other, but now we know that they also respond to these same whistles at later times. 

Source: ScienceNews