|
![]() |
#166 | |
Veteran
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: DE
Casino cash: $9765019
|
Quote:
When I eat a burrito, I shit that burrito out 2 hrs later....I don't care what science says. |
|
Posts: 3,814
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#167 | |
Ain't no relax!
Join Date: Sep 2005
Casino cash: $1008919
|
Quote:
Next time, add a bottle of green food coloring to your burrito. Verify when the Hulk turd makes an exit.... Post results.
__________________
![]() |
|
Posts: 48,135
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#168 |
Ain't no relax!
Join Date: Sep 2005
Casino cash: $1008919
|
Whooooah.....
Artificial jellyfish engineered out of rat heart muscles ![]() Scientists have made an artificial jellyfish out of rat heart muscles and rubbery silicon. When given an electric shock, it swims just like the real thing. Future versions should be able to swim and feed by themselves. “That then allows us to extend their lifetime,” John Dabiri, a professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, told me. The breakthrough is a big step toward the development of an artificial human heart with living cells. It also opens a window to a future where humans could loosen the constraints of evolution. “The design of the heart that we have today is by no means the best physically possible design,” Dabiri said. “It is the one that evolution stumbled onto over the course of millions of years of random searching.” It’s possible, perhaps probable, that there’s a better design out there for humans to discover. An artificial heart, for example, could be engineered to steer clear of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S. Building a better pump To get there, though, scientists must first understand how biology assembles its building blocks into a pump, Dabiri noted. “We know pretty well how to build engineered pumps, things that are built out of steel and aluminum and so on,” he said. “We don’t have as good a handle right now in biology on how nature builds things out of muscle tissues.” To start, they looked to the jellyfish, an example of a simple biological pump, and tried to build it in the lab from scratch. Jellyfish essentially have two parts: muscle cells that squeeze down on the body, pushing out water and jetting the animal the opposite way, and elastic stretchy tissue (the jelly) that gently recovers to its relaxed shape after each pump. “In our engineered system, we needed to have these two components,” Dabiri explained. The team could have used jellyfish tissue and jellyfish muscle, but “it so happens that the building blocks we are more familiar with in tissue engineering come from the heart cells of rats,” he said. The technique was pioneered by Kevin Kit Parker, a bioengineer at Harvard and co-author of a paper describing the artificial jellyfish published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology. It allows researchers to take rat heart cells and pattern them in different shapes and sizes that act as actuators – “things that can move, they can pump, they can flap,” Dabiri said. For the jelly part, the team used a thin layer of silicone rubber. Putting together the pieces The next step was to put the two pieces together in the best possible way to get a functioning jellyfish. Instead of simply copying nature, the team tried out all kinds of muscle patterns, looking for the best. “As engineers in this process of building artificial jellyfish, we simply don’t have the same constraints that evolution does,” Dabiri said. “These organisms, as they evolve, have to worry about fending off predators, catching their prey, reproducing. All we have to do is show up in a lab and try to be creative.” “So, it is a very different set of constraints that we have in terms of developing this, and so it is not surprising that we might find solutions that are different from what might have come through evolution.” In the end, the team settled on a muscle arrangement that is similar to that of the jellyfish, but “not a carbon copy,” Dabiri said. ![]() When the team put the engineered jellyfish into a pool of ionized water and sent an electric signal through the water, the fish swam like a real jellyfish. “We haven’t yet developed an internal pacemaking system within these artificial jellyfish, so the way that we control the functioning is, we shock them,” Dabiri explained. Future of jellyfish and hearts An internal pacemaker mechanism and chemical receptors that act as a nose to sniff out food are additions planned for future versions of the jellyfish, called Medusoid, to give it greater autonomy. This might raise science-fiction fears of giant artificial jellyfish roaming the waters – note that there’s another group working on robotic jellyfish that will never run out of energy. But in reality, the main application for the technology would be in biomedicine. Even in its current form, Medusoid could be used to test the effect drugs have on the pumping mechanism of a heart, for example. In the future, the research may lead to an artificial heart. One, perhaps, that is better than a healthy human heart. And if we can engineer better hearts, will we stop there? Does this open the door to a completely rebuilt – and improved – human?
__________________
![]() |
Posts: 48,135
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#169 |
Ain't no relax!
Join Date: Sep 2005
Casino cash: $1008919
|
One week from today.... Curiosity and the 7 Minutes of Terror!!! Sounds like an awesome band name. But nope, it's the latest Mars Science Laboratory that is approaching the atmosphere of Mars right now.
This will mark our civilization's most ambitious, most daring, and most complicated space mission ever. It just blows my mind that we are able to attempt this feat well over 100 million miles from Earth. Watch, and be amazed... Explanation: Next week at this time, there may be an amazing new robotic explorer on Mars. Or there may be a new pile of junk. It all likely depends on many things going correctly in the minutes after the Mars Science Laboratory mission arrives at Mars and attempts to deploy the Curiosity rover from orbit. Arguably the most sophisticated landing yet attempted on the red planet, consecutive precision events will involve a heat shield, a parachute, several rocket maneuvers, and the automatic operation of an unusual device called a Sky Crane. These "Seven Minutes of Terror" -- depicted in the above dramatic video -- will begin on Monday, August 6 at about 5:24 am Universal time, which occurs on Sunday night, August 5 for western North Americans. If successful, the car-sized Curiosity rover will rest on the surface of Mars, soon to begin exploring Gale Crater to better determine the habitability of this seemingly barren world to life -- past, present, and future. Although multiple media outlets may cover this event, one way to watch these landing events unfold is on the NASA channel live on the web. Watch the NASA channel here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
__________________
![]() |
Posts: 48,135
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#170 |
MVP
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: West of the Equator
Casino cash: $609901
|
Interesting, but not a suprise.
When astronauts first touched down on the moon in 1969 as part of NASA's Apollo 11 mission — and for every Apollo mission that followed — they left behind evidence that they'd been there, some intentional and some necessary. The most iconic of these were six American flags, all of which were thought to have been destroyed by the harsh conditions on the lunar service or at least knocked over by now. As it turns out, all but one are still standing. Photographs taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) satellite show that five of the flags are right where we left them. The first one, by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, was blown down by the lift-off thrust from their lunar lander as it left the moon's surface to reunite with the orbiting command module. The LRO images also show objects such as the lunar rovers used by some Apollo missions, and even the tire tracks they left behind. One of the most intriguing aspects of these photos is the fact that the remaining U.S. flags have all turned white. This happened due to bleaching by sunlight, which hits the flags for as long as 14 days at a time without any sort of atmosphere to filter its rays. Manufactured from nylon without any thought as to retaining their looks over the decades of lunar exposure — they weren't even expected to be standing for long — the flags cost only $5.50 in the 1960s. We're guessing that the flags eventually carried to Mars by Earth's astronauts will probably be made to last longer — and cost a pretty penny more. |
Posts: 13,691
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#171 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2001
Casino cash: $10004900
|
Quote:
![]() |
|
Posts: 26,959
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#172 |
Ain't no relax!
Join Date: Sep 2005
Casino cash: $1008919
|
Uh huh huh.. Trouser snake...
The “trouser snake” Note: not a trouser, and not a snake. Or a penis for that matter. This bizarre amphibian was recently discovered in Brazil. Last year the Madeira River was drained to make way for a new dam. At the bottom, they found six of these strange creatures wriggling about in the mud. Around 30 inches long, they look bizarrely like huge grey penises - or perhaps that's just my dirty mind? After study zoologists have confirmed that these are a new species of caecilian (a type of legless amphibian). Named Atretochoana eiselti, biologists are currently not aware of any living populations. ![]()
__________________
![]() |
Posts: 48,135
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#173 |
Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: 41°59.4′N 87°39.6'W
Casino cash: $5218908
|
I cannot wait until the rover landing. NASA's future rides on this. Sure hope it works out.
|
Posts: 2,524
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#174 |
Superhero
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Secret Location
Casino cash: $10115080
|
Grossly overstated. However, I'm staying up late to see how it turns out.
__________________
![]() ![]() |
Posts: 2,243
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#175 |
Paladin
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Gator Country
Casino cash: $10008487
|
Is it possible to find or manufacture an Earth like substance that essentially ignores our gravity? We need to get off the surface of this planet and build our civilization higher up. Closer to the sun's rays yes, but we can worry about that later.
|
Posts: 13,215
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#176 |
Space Cadet and Aczabel
Join Date: Aug 2000
Location: Kanab, UT, USA
Casino cash: $9333275
![]() |
WTF? Tell me you are drunk posting.
__________________
Thanks, Trump for the civics lesson. We are learning so much about RICO, espionage, sedition, impeachment, the 25th Amendment, order of succession, nepotism, separation of powers, 1st Amendment, obstruction of justice, the emoluments clause, conflicts of interest, collusion, sanctions, oligarchs, money laundering and so much more. |
Posts: 40,584
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#177 | |
Ain't no relax!
Join Date: Sep 2005
Casino cash: $1008919
|
Quote:
There are 4 basic fundamental forces at work in our universe, that we're aware of. Strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, and gravitational force. Everything we know says these forces are at work everywhere in the universe. These are essentially "laws" of the universe. Everything must obey.....
__________________
![]() |
|
Posts: 48,135
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#178 |
NFL's #1 Ermines Fan
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: My house
Casino cash: $2018491
![]() |
Building in trees would also accomplish this. I think a civilization built in trees would be really cool. Plus, it would be good for the environment.
__________________
Active fan of the greatest team in NFL history. |
Posts: 142,337
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#179 | |
Paladin
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Gator Country
Casino cash: $10008487
|
![]() Quote:
Sarcasm? |
|
Posts: 13,215
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
#180 | |
Hey Loochy, I'm hooome!
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: PooPooKaKaPeePeeShire
Casino cash: $840397
|
Quote:
__________________
Hey Loochy, I'm hoooome! ![]() |
|
Posts: 41,121
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() |
![]() ![]() |
|
|