Science is Cool....

[Fish]

This is a repository for all cool scientific discussion and fascination. Scientific facts, theories, and overall cool scientific stuff that you'd like to share with others. Stuff that makes you smile and wonder at the amazing shit going on around us, that most people don't notice.

Post pictures, vidoes, stories, or links. Ask questions. Share science.

Why should I care?:

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by chefsos

The other reactors are aghast at this behavior.

That Japanese will perfect it in months...

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by chefsos

Don't you hate it when your fabulous post is the last one on a page, and the page turns, and it's gone forever? Well, here, bumped it across for you.

Thanks, missed this. Interesting work.

[AussieChiefsFan]

[Fish]

The chemistry of fireworks...

[Fish]

So let's all go bananas....



What do you have in common with a banana? Even though we might not look alike, all living things—bananas and people included—are made up of the same basic material.

Just like houses are made up of smaller units such as bricks, all living things are made up trillions of microscopic building blocks called cells. Within an organism, each cell contains a complete set of "blueprints". These directions determine the organism's characteristics.

Background

If we could zoom in on a single, tiny cell, we could see an even teenier "container" inside called a nucleus. It holds a stringy substance called DNA, which is like a set of blueprints, or instructions. DNA contains a code for how to build a life-form and put together the features that make that organism unique. Segments, or pieces, of DNA are called "genes". In living things, such as us, each gene determines something about our bodies—a trait. In our DNA there are genes that are responsible for hair color, eye color, earlobe shape and so on. We get our DNA from our parents. Some characteristics, like eye color, are pretty much entirely determined by DNA. Some are determined both by DNA and by your environment as you grow up, like how tall you will be as an adult. And some traits are not very directly tied to DNA at all, like the kind of books you like to read.

Just like us, banana plants have genes and DNA in their cells, and just like us, their DNA determines their traits. Using only our eyes, we couldn't see a single cell or the DNA inside of it. If we remove DNA from millions of cells, however, we will be able to view it without a microscope. That is what we will do today!

How to extract DNA from a banana: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...g-science-home

[Fish]

Antarctic Lake Vostok buried under two miles of ice found to teem with life

Analysis of ice cores obtained from the basin of Lake Vostok, the subglacial lake that Russian scientists drilled down to in 2012, have revealed DNA from an estimated 3,507 organisms.

While the majority were found to be bacteria, many of which were new to science, there were also other single celled organisms and multicellular organisms found, including from fungi.

The diversity of life from the lake has surprised scientists as many had thought the lake would be sterile due to the extreme conditions.

Lake Vostok was first covered by ice more than 15 million years ago and is now buried 12,000 feet beneath the surface, creating huge pressures. Few nutrients were expected to be found.

However, samples of ice that had formed as water from the lake froze onto the bottom of the glacial ice sheet above have revealed it is teeming with life.

This will raise hopes that life may be found in other extreme environments on other planets. One of Jupiter's moons, Europa, for example, is covered with an icy shell that may hide a liqud ocean below where life could exist.

Dr Scott Rogers, a biologist at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio, and led the DNA analysis of biological material found in the ice cores, said: "We found much more complexity than anyone thought.

"It really shows the tenacity of life, and how organisms can survive in places where a couple dozen years ago we thought nothing could survive.
"The bounds on what is habitable and what is not are changing."

Lake Vostok is around 160 miles long and 30 miles wide, covering an area of more than 6,000 square miles beneath the Antarctic ice sheet.

Among the bacteria found in the samples brought to the surface were those commonly found in the digestive systems of fish, crustaceans and annelid worms, raising the prospect there could be more complex life still living in the lake.

Isolated from the rest of the world for 15 million years, some of the DNA sequences were found to be unique to science and may belong to new species that have evolved in the depths.

Writing in the journal PLOS One, Dr Rogers and his colleagues said: "The sequences suggest that a complex environment might exist in Lake Vostok.
"Sequences indicating organisms from aquatic, marine, sediment and icy environments were present in the accretion ice.

"In addition, another major proportion of the sequences were from organisms that are symbionts of animals and/or plants.

"Over 35 million years ago, Lake Vostok was open to the atmosphere and was surrounded by a forested ecosystem. At that time, the lake, which might have been a marine bay, probably contained a complex network of organisms.
"As recently as 15 million years ago, portions of the lake were ice free at least part of the time. During these times, organisms were likely being deposited in the lake.

"While the current conditions are different than earlier in its history, the lake seems to have maintained a surprisingly diverse community of organisms.
"These organisms may have slowly adapted to the changing conditions in Lake Vostok during the past 15–35 million years as the lake converted from a terrestrial system to a subglacial system."

[TimeForWasp]

Originally Posted by Fish

So let's all go bananas....



What do you have in common with a banana? Even though we might not look alike, all living things—bananas and people included—are made up of the same basic material.

Just like houses are made up of smaller units such as bricks, all living things are made up trillions of microscopic building blocks called cells. Within an organism, each cell contains a complete set of "blueprints". These directions determine the organism's characteristics.

Background

If we could zoom in on a single, tiny cell, we could see an even teenier "container" inside called a nucleus. It holds a stringy substance called DNA, which is like a set of blueprints, or instructions. DNA contains a code for how to build a life-form and put together the features that make that organism unique. Segments, or pieces, of DNA are called "genes". In living things, such as us, each gene determines something about our bodies—a trait. In our DNA there are genes that are responsible for hair color, eye color, earlobe shape and so on. We get our DNA from our parents. Some characteristics, like eye color, are pretty much entirely determined by DNA. Some are determined both by DNA and by your environment as you grow up, like how tall you will be as an adult. And some traits are not very directly tied to DNA at all, like the kind of books you like to read.

Just like us, banana plants have genes and DNA in their cells, and just like us, their DNA determines their traits. Using only our eyes, we couldn't see a single cell or the DNA inside of it. If we remove DNA from millions of cells, however, we will be able to view it without a microscope. That is what we will do today!

How to extract DNA from a banana: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...g-science-home

I wonder if they figured this out when a banana was involved in a sex crime.

[Fish]

Tissue engineering: How to build a heart





More info in link at the top.

[Fish]

Take your kid's phone away on occasion.....

[Fish]

Your sneeze sound is just attention whoring...



Why deaf people sneeze silently

An online magazine for the deaf community, Limping Chicken, recently ran an item on how deaf and hearing people sneeze differently.

The article by partially deaf journalist Charlie Swinbourne got readers talking - and the cogs started turning at Ouch too.

Swinbourne observes that deaf people don't make the "achoo!" sound when they sneeze, while hearing people seem to do it all the time - in fact, he put it in his humorous list, The Top 10 Annoying Habits of Hearing People.

Nor is "achoo" universal - it's what English-speaking sneezers say. The French sneeze "atchoum". In Japan, it's "hakashun" and in the Philippines, they say "ha-ching".

Inserting words into sneezes - and our responses such as "bless you" - are cultural habits we pick up along the way. So it's not surprising that British deaf people, particularly users of sign language, don't think to add the English word "achoo" to this most natural of actions.

For deaf people, "a sneeze is what it should be... something that just happens", says Swinbourne in his article.

He even attempts to describe what an achoo-free deaf sneeze sounds like: "[There is] a heavy breath as the deep pre-sneeze breath is taken, then a sharper, faster sound of air being released."

Very little deaf-sneeze research exists, but a study has been done on deaf people and their laughter.

So do deaf laughs sound different to hearing ones? In a paper called Laughter Among Deaf Signers, the deaf guffaw or titter is described as "obvious and easily identified" but "more varied than the typical laughter of hearing people".

Speaking to Ouch, Prof Bencie Woll, director of the Deafness Cognition and Language Research Centre at University College London, calls actions like these "vegetative sounds". She says we can modify the noise, but we can't stop it.

"When we laugh, we are not trying to go 'ha ha'. That's just the sound that comes out as a result of the changes we make in our throat. The influence we have over our sneezing and laughter allows us to stifle them or put more power behind them, depending on what feels socially appropriate."

[Fish]

Happy Birthday to Nikola Tesla. One of the most brilliant mother****ers ever to grace the Earth. Sometimes crazy, but always brilliant...

[Fish]

Bump. **** Edison!!

Originally Posted by Fish

Why Nikola Tesla was the coolest Geek ever to live. AKA, what I bet you didn't know about Nikola Tesla, and what you thought you knew about Thomas ****ing Edison:

[underEJ]

Just went to a lecture at work on bubble science. Been looking at bubbles since childhood and never watched a single bubble long enough to see its whole life cycle as the soap weighs down and collects at the bottom. The top of the bubble gets thinner and thinner, changes color predictably, and then turns black before popping. Really cool physics on something I've just always taken for granted. I enjoyed the lecture. It also included lighting gas filled bubbles on fire so there was excitement too!

p.s. Tesla was awesome.

[Fish]

We've confirmed almost 1,000 extrasolar planets now. Which just a few decades ago would have been considered unlikely to the point of being unpossible. But we now know that the universe is flourishing with planets.

And yet on a truly cosmic scale, we've barely peeked through the keyhole looking into our own solar backyard....

[Fish]

Goofy gas planets....