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San Jose State University students have built a prototype chassis for an omnidirectional motorcycle — which will eventually allow them to not only move sideways and have the bike balance itself, but do total 360′s while driving!
The students hope to have their prototype complete and fully operational by the end of the year. You can follow their progress and concepts here.
[Via Geekologie]
Unfortunately, the very lab equipment that pharmaceutical researchers use to create new crystal-free drugs can cause the molecules to crystallize.
To get around this conundrum, science wizards at Argonne National Laboratory, a government-run facility southwest of Chicago, counteract gravity with two opposing speakers. Each speaker pumps out sound at 22,000 hertz–just beyond the upper range of human hearing–and form a standing sound wave that can trap blobs of dissolved experimental compounds.
The technique isn’t a way to mass-manufacture new drugs, at least yet. But the stuff floating in the video above can be moved in the X-ray beamline of Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source for detailed chemical analysis–and that might lift promising new drugs into the clinical trial pipeline faster.
from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.
Spectrometers are a pretty invaluable piece of lab equipment. They make it rather simple to identify substances by analyzing the light that they absorb. Problem is, for the hobby scientist, they typically cost thousands of dollars. Jeffrey Yoo Warren’s latest Kickstarter project aims to put these powerful tools in the hands of your average Joe, with an open-source DYI model, where the key ingredient is a shard of DVD-R. Using that piece of plastic in conjunction with black paper and a webcam, his $35 kit allows anyone to quickly and easily reveal the spectral fingerprint of any substance. There’s even a $5 model that works in conjunction with a free Android app, turning your smartphone into a legit lab tool. The goal, ultimately, is to build up a library of substances that can easily be matched with samples caught in the wild — in essence, to build a “Shazam for materials.” The original inspiration was an effort to identify contaminants left behind by the BP oil spill, but Warren also touts its ability to reveal hidden dyes in laundry detergents and to differentiate wines or olive oils. For those with grander ambitions, a $300 pledge will score you a pre-built and calibrated desktop spectrometer, complete with pyrex dishes and a full spectrum lamp. To help fund this backyard (or back pocket) science revolution, hit up the source link.
from Engadget
This is insane. I keep watching this video again and again, and my stupid grin doesn’t go away: a live demonstration of a real flying bike! Now we just need light sabers, golden robots with English accent, and hyperspace engines. More »
from Gizmodo
The challenge to reduce carbon emissions rages on (despite those who “don’t believe†in global warming). According to Manuel Jiménez Aguilar, an answer may lie in our urine.
In a study he published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, Aguilar explains that urea results in the production of ammonium bicarbonate and also ammonia, which can absorb atmospheric CO2. So why the olive waste? Well urine decays and it seems that the liquid waste that results from the olive paste-making process is a basic preservative that will keep urine fresh.
This mixture of urine and olive waste, according to the study, could reduce CO2 emissions by one percent. Sure, it’s not really doing anything for the carbon monoxide or host of other gases, but CO2 is a big problem in global warming and that would make quite a significant difference. He’s proposing that such a mixture would be placed in places such as chimneys so that gas is sort of filtered past it before heading out into our atmosphere. There would obviously also need to be a system to refresh the paste once it was saturated with carbon dioxide.
It would be a pretty cool environmental development: recycling of olive waste water and our own personal body waste, while also reducing CO2 emissions. Win-win, if you ask me.
What do you think? Viable option for reducing carbon emissions or waste (oooh see what I did there?) of time?
[Via Geekosystem | Photo Credit]
Modern diesel engines are more fuel efficient than gasoline engines. Cleaning up their exhaust is a bit more challenging, though, due to the large amount of oxygen involved in the combustion. In particular, removing the nitrogen oxides (NOx) formed as oxygen and nitrogen in the air reacting at high temperatures requires specialized systems and expensive catalysts like platinum. While everyone would like to get rid of the platinum, no materials have been found that match its catalytic performance in diesel engine exhaust.
Until now, apparently. Research published recently in Science describes a new catalyst, a complex mixture of metal oxides including manganese, mullite, and the rare earth metals samarium and gadolinium (Mn-mullite (Sm, Gd)Mn2O5, to be precise), that actually performs better than platinum. And it’s cheaper.
The work was performed by scientists at the nanotechnology startup Nanostellar, with collaborators at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, University of Kentucky, and the University of Texas at Dallas.
from Ars Technica
We’ve known DNA could be a viable solution for data storage for a while now, but Harvard researchers have just discovered how wildly efficient it could really be by fitting 5.5 petabits, or 700 terabytes, of data into just one gram of DNA. More »
from Gizmodo
