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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 1, 2015 at 5:42am

Smart windows that can block heat but allow sunlight!

Yes, you heard it right! By using this material in "smart windows", you could reduce home energy use by taking full advantage of both the heat and the visible light provided by the sun each day. Researchers have developed a material that can do just that.

The material is a type of dual-band electrochromic material. "Dual-band" refers to the two types of nanocrystals contained within the material itself. In this case, the first nanocrystal allows you to block visible light while the second targets heat-producing infrared light. "Electrochromic" means that you can flip between light- and heat-blocking modes using a jolt of electricity.

This material was first described by researchers, including University of Texas Chemical Engineering Prof. Delia Milliron, in an article in Nature in 2013. This month, Milliron and her team published a new article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, which explores how an advanced version of this material could be built into a film for use on windows.

According to this paper, a window coating containing a single component ­— doped titania nanocrystals - can selectively block visible light or infrared radiation. It can also switch from heat- to light-blocking mode using a weak jolt of electricity in a matter of minutes (previous versions of the material could take hours to switch). All told, this material can block up to 80% of visible light or 90% of near-infrared light.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7462/full/nature12398.html

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.5b04933?journalCode=jacsat

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 26, 2015 at 9:49am

A Crossover Study of Noodle Soup Consumption in Melamine Bowls and Total Melamine Excretion in Urine
People who used melamine-made bowls to consume high-temperature noodle soup can excrete high amounts of melamine into the urine.

Melamine exposure remains common even after the 2008 melamine-tainted baby formula incident in China, which resulted in 6 deaths and approximately 50 000 hospitalizations. A continuous low-dose melamine exposure has been linked to urolithiasis in both children and adults. Another source of melamine exposure is melamine tableware.4 In a pilot study, researchers in China asked 16 healthy volunteers (age range, 20-27 years) to consume 500 mL of hot noodle soup (initial temperature, 90°C) served in melamine bowls in the morning of October 2011. then they collected from each participant 1 spot urine sample immediately before and at 2-hour intervals for 12 hours after consuming the noodle soup. This experiment simulated the natural situation; thus, not all participants provided urine samples at every 2-hour interval. However, all urine samples from all participants were collected after consumption for 12 hours. Postconsumption mean urinary melamine concentrations, corrected for urinary creatinine, initially increased sharply, peaked at 4 to 6 hours, and then declined sharply for 2 hours and then less steeply for the remainder of the monitoring period. The researchers therefore investigated if consumption of hot noodle soup served in melamine bowls would increase total urinary melamine excretion.
Melamine tableware may release large amounts of melamine when used to serve high-temperature foods. The brand of melamine bowls used in this study was chosen from the 5 brands we tested previously.4 The amount of melamine released into food and beverages from melamine tableware varies by brand, so the results of this study of 1 brand may not be generalized to other brands. The use of nonbreakable melamine tableware is common in our daily life. Although the clinical significance of what levels of urinary melamine concentration has not yet been established, the consequences of long-term melamine exposure still should be of concern.
Chronic Exposure To Melamine Through Tableware A simple switch from melamine-containing tableware to stainless steel ones can help reduce environmental exposure to melamine.
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1558449
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.5b01965

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 26, 2015 at 8:20am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 26, 2015 at 6:13am

Wormhole Created in Lab Makes Invisible Magnetic Field
The materials to make a magnetic wormhole already exist and are much simpler to come by. In particular, superconductors, which can carry high levels of current, or charged particles, expel magnetic field lines from their interiors, essentially bending or distorting these lines. This essentially allows the magnetic field to do something different from its surrounding 3D environment, which is the first step in concealing the disturbance in a magnetic field.
The technology could have applications on Earth
For instance, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines use a giant magnet and require people to be in a tightly enclosed central tube for diagnostic imaging.

But if a device could funnel a magnetic field from one spot to the other, it would be possible to take pictures of the body with the strong magnet placed far away, freeing people from the claustrophobic environment of an MRI machine
To do that, the researchers would need to modify the shape of their magnetic wormhole device. A sphere is the simplest shape to model, but a cylindrical outer shell would be the most useful.

"If you want to apply this to medical techniques or medical equipment, for sure you will be interested in directing toward any given direction. "A spherical shape is not the most practical geometry."

The study was conducted at Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.

http://www.livescience.com/51925-magnetic-wormhole-created.html

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 26, 2015 at 6:00am

Universal flu vaccine is not far away...

Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) have found a way to induce antibodies to fight a wide range of influenza subtypes—work that could one day eliminate the need for repeated seasonal flu shots.

A yearly flu shot provides some protection from flu epidemics, subtypes not covered by the vaccine can emerge rapidly. This phenomenon was evident in the 2009 spread of the H1N1 (“swine flu”) subtype that killed an estimated 151,700 to 575,400 people worldwide.

In the last decade, several studies from TSRI, Janssen and other institutions have shown that some people are capable of making powerful antibodies that can fight many subtypes of influenza at once by targeting a site on the influenza virus that does not mutate rapidly. Unfortunately, these “broadly neutralizing antibodies,” or bnAbs, are rare.

Still, the tantalizing existence of broadly neutralizing antibodies led Janssen and TRSI to try creating an influenza vaccine specially designed to elicit them.

Researchers zeroed in on a possible target: a protein on the surface of influenza, called hemagglutinin (HA). HA is present on all subtypes of influenza, providing the key viral “machinery” that enables the virus to enter cells. Most importantly, the long “stem” region of HA, which connects the virus to cells, plays such a crucial role that mutations at the site are unlikely to be passed on. If the body can make an immune response against the HA stem, it’s difficult for the virus to escape.

To create antibodies against the HA stem, the research team looked to influenza’s own structure, specifically the universal recognition site of the broadly protective antibody CR9114 in the HA stem (described by Dreyfus et al., Science 2012). This vaccine candidate was designed, produced and tested by a team of scientists led by Jaap Goudsmit, head of the Janssen Prevention Center, the paper’s first author Antonietta Impagliazzo (responsible for the design) and co-senior author Katarina Radošević.

The effort represents the first time scientists have been able to cut off the variable head region of HA, designing features able to stabilize the conformation of the original protein, and at the same time faithfully mimicking the key broadly neutralizing site. The ultimate goal was to use this synthetic version of the HA stem in a vaccine to teach the body to make powerful antibodies against influenza virus, priming it to fight off a variety of flu strains.

The scientists then studied the response of rodent and nonhuman primate models given one of several candidate immunogens. They found that animals given one especially stable immunogen produced antibodies that could bind with HAs in many influenza subtypes, even neutralizing H5N1 viruses (“avian” or “bird” flu).

The reseaScientists at TSRI studied the structure of the immunogen at every point in the process. Using the imaging techniques of electron microscopy (led by TSRI Associate Professor Andrew Ward and postdoctoral fellow Ryan Hoffman) and x-ray crystallography (led by Wilson and TSRI Staff Scientist Xueyong Zhu), the team showed that the most promising candidate immunogen mimicked the HA stem and that antibodies could bind with the immunogen just as they would with a real virus.

With proof that an immunogen can elicit antibodies against the stem region, Wilson said the next step in this research is to see if the immunogen can do the same in humans.

The research was published online ahead of print on August 24 by the journal Science.

Source: Scripps Institute

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 25, 2015 at 8:27am

Scientists in countries affected by mosquito-borne diseases are less aware of the latest research on these diseases than those from countries where those diseases are not endemic, a study has found.

Diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are more prevalent in poorer countries, but these are also places where scientific communication is weaker and research institutions cannot afford access to journals and conferences, the study says. This leads to ignorance and widespread misconceptions about the state of research on the diseases mosquitoes transmit, which limits the ability of scientists from poorer countries to do ground-breaking work, the authors warn.

“Scientists from disease-endemic countries are not usually involved in the development of innovative biotech approaches against vector-borne diseases.”
The study was published in Parasites & Vectors on 10 August.
http://www.parasitesandvectors.com/content/8/1/414

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 25, 2015 at 6:45am

Dry air is heavier then wet air.

Yes, this fact sounds bit counterintuitive, and surprisingly the misconception of air getting "soaked with water" is widespread even between people who studied physics. Moreover, even some meteorology students often forget this.

It is not exactly new finding, but a centuries old one. At the same time, the explanation is quite easy - water molecules have lower molar weight than molecules of N2 O2 and few other gasses, and as a result the water vapour is less dense than dry atmospheric air. Therefore the wet air, which is essentially a mix of dry air with little bit of water vapour, is slightly less dense than the dry air of the same temperature.
Not like the difference is too big, but still significant enough to play vital role in formation of some storms, as well as those dangerous heatwaves.

At the same time, the misconception of air absorbing in water like a sponge is still widespread and probably would not change soon.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 25, 2015 at 6:43am

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are flashes of gamma rays associated with extremely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies. They are the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the universe. Bursts can last from ten milliseconds to several hours. The initial burst is usually followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitted at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, microwave and radio).

Most observed GRBs are believed to consist of a narrow beam of intense radiation released during a supernova or hypernova as a rapidly rotating, high-mass star collapses to form a neutron star, quark star, or black hole. A subclass of GRBs (the "short" bursts) appear to originate from a different process – this may be due to the merger of binary neutron stars. The cause of the precursor burst observed in some of these short events may be due to the development of a resonance between the crust and core of such stars as a result of the massive tidal forces experienced in the seconds leading up to their collision, causing the entire crust of the star to shatter.
All GRBs observed to date have occurred well outside the Milky Way galaxy and have been harmless to Earth. However, if a GRB were to occur within the Milky Way, and its emission were beamed straight towards Earth, the effects could be devastating for the planet.
Depending on its distance from Earth, a GRB and its ultraviolet radiation could damage even the most radiation resistant organism known, the bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans. These bacteria can endure 2,000 times more radiation than humans. Life surviving an initial onslaught, including those located on the side of the earth facing away from the burst, would have to contend with the potentially lethal after-effect of the depletion of the atmosphere's protective ozone layer by the burst.
A Gamma ray burst can cause a mass extinction event anytime on Earth and we wont be able to do anything about it. We won't even see it coming !!!
A gamma ray burst (GRB) releases more energy in few seconds than that our sun will produce in its entire lifetime. Though these events are rare, astrophysicists think there is a 90 % chance that GRBs have caused at least one mass extinction event on Earth in the past.
Longer-term, gamma ray energy may cause chemical reactions involving oxygen and nitrogen molecules which may create nitrogen oxide then nitrogen dioxide gas, causing photochemical smog. The GRB may produce enough of the gas to cover the sky and darken it. Gas would prevent sunlight from reaching Earth's surface, producing a "cosmic winter" effect – a similar situation to an impact winter, but not caused by an impact. GRB-produced gas could also even further deplete the ozone layer.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 25, 2015 at 6:20am

Human biology in general has some cool stuff that not many are aware of.

1. While the brain appears to be lacking any gross movement to the layman, the microglial cells in your brain have projections that sweep your brain and slurp up debris and what not. This is estimated to happen every few hours or so.

2. There is a gene called CLOCK (obviously) that plays a central role in regulating your circadian rhythm. Recent papers have even showed how this gene can regulate the functions of your immune cells.

3. You can now potentially sequence your genome for <1000 dollars. Or sequence the genome of a bacteria sitting at your home using a USB-powered device. 4. A new layer in the cornea called Dua layer was discovered as late as 2013. The discovery of this layer is now helping improve corneal surgeries and prevent rejections of corneal transplants. 5. Human retina has a million photoreceptors. Even if we only consider two possible states of existence (0/1), there are >1e300,000 possible bits of information. And this number is estimated to be beyong the Bremmermann's limit. Evolution has done a perfect job!

For more reading:

1. stanford.edu The brain’s silent majority: http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2009fall/article6.html
2. TH17 cell differentiation is regulated by the circad... [Science. 2013]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=24202171
3. $1,000 genome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$1,000_genome
4. USB stick can sequence DNA in seconds https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21495-usb-stick-can-sequence...
5. Medscape: Dua Layer https://login.medscape.com/login/sso/getlogin?urlCache=aHR0cDovL3d3...
6. Transcomputational problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcomputational_problem

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 25, 2015 at 5:44am

Some interesting things on trust:

What most people don't know is that trust can be something reasoned and actually has at least 12 properties. If all 12 of those properties can be verified positively you have close to 100% reason to trust. What we know is that the average person is content to trust with just 2 properties fulfilled and when drunk or in an emotional state, 1 property will suffice. There are tricks and fallacies which are perpetuated because they feel like they are fulfilling a trust property when they aren't. The two biggest fallacies perpetuated as trust reasons are transitive trusts (used in things like Amazon reviews) and Composability which has you trust based on majority (used in things like political speeches and "wisdom of crowds"). Now if you know this then you can protect yourself or you can manipulate others pretty well. So you can sell yourself on 1 trust property really well, like say Visibility, which shows your "transparency" and others think you are open about your motives or results then you can cheat like hell on the other 11 properties and scam your way through the populace.

There's details on this research in chapter 5 here: Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM) but there's new research coming out as this is 4 years old already. http://www.isecom.org/research/osstmm.html

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