Uh-oh. Lots of increased risk in kids (poor grades, risk-taking, sadness) who don't get enough sleep. And sleeping in on weekends doesn't help.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/sleep-for-teenagers/?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone
Adolescents who do not receive adequate rest have trouble keeping up in the classroom and are more vulnerable to other health problems. And catching up on sleep on the weekend won't help.
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Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Friday, October 17, 2014
Ebola virus survivability and aerosol spread
Scary!
Ebola virus can be transmitted with just a single aerosolized organism, and can last several hours in the dark even when dried out on a countertop.
Here are some excerpts:
INFECTIOUS DOSE: Viral hemorrhagic fevers have an infectious dose of 1 - 10 organisms by aerosol in non-human primates.
...however, airborne transmission has not been demonstrated between non-human primates
INCUBATION PERIOD: Two to 21 days
STABILITY AND VIABILITY
All information available on stability and viability comes from peer-reviewed literature sources depicting experimental findings and is intended to support local risk assessments in a laboratory setting.
DRUG SUSCEPTIBILITY: Unknown...Although clinical trials have been completed, no vaccine has been approved for treatment of ebolavirus. Similarly, no post-exposure measures have been reported as effective...There are no known antiviral treatments available for human infections.
SUSCEPTIBILITY TO DISINFECTANTS: Ebolavirus is susceptible to 3% acetic acid, 1% glutaraldehyde, alcohol-based products, and dilutions (1:10-1:100 for ≥10 minutes) of 5.25% household bleach (sodium hypochlorite), and calcium hypochlorite (bleach powder),
PHYSICAL INACTIVATION: Ebola are moderately thermolabile and can be inactivated by heating for 30 minutes to 60 minutes at 60°C, boiling for 5 minutes, or gamma irradiation (1.2 x106 rads to 1.27 x106 rads) combined with 1% glutaraldehyde. Ebolavirus has also been determined to be moderately sensitive to UVC radiation.
SURVIVAL OUTSIDE HOST: Filoviruses have been reported capable to survive for weeks in blood and can also survive on contaminated surfaces, particularly at low temperatures (4°C). One study could not recover any Ebolavirus from experimentally contaminated surfaces (plastic, metal or glass) at room temperature. In another study, Ebolavirus dried onto glass, polymeric silicone rubber, or painted aluminum alloy is able to survive in the dark for several hours under ambient conditions (between 20 and 250C and 30-40% relative humidity) (amount of virus reduced to 37% after 15.4 hours), but is less stable than some other viral hemorrhagic fevers (Lassa). When dried in tissue culture media onto glass and stored at 4 °C, Zaire ebolavirus survived for over 50 days. This information is based on experimental findings only and not based on observations in nature. This information is intended to be used to support local risk assessments in a laboratory setting.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Power shades and blinds
I thought these were a good idea: motorized blinds that are solar-powered so you don't have to rig up an electric cord to them.
Elephants Able To Detect Rainstorms 150 Miles Away from Popular Science
"in 2011 alone, poachers killed one out of every 12 African elephants. Yikes!":
Friday, October 10, 2014
Massive Claw
This massive claw is designed to assemble under-sea platforms for oil and gas production, I think. The story is told in time lapse because it's so huge.
http://youtu.be/7gU2ieExfqA
http://youtu.be/7gU2ieExfqA
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Rival cheap smart phone gets good review
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/technology/personaltech/oneplus-one-review-high-hopes-for-low-price-phone.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone
If OnePlus can navigate the perils of the cutthroat smartphone business, it may be giving us a peek of the glorious future of great, cheap phones.
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If OnePlus can navigate the perils of the cutthroat smartphone business, it may be giving us a peek of the glorious future of great, cheap phones.
Sent from my iPhone
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Instant home security system $250
Canary home security all in one system:
Plugs into an outlet, connects to Wi-Fi, monitors for earthquakes, loud noises, humidity, motion sensor, night vision. Cool!
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Watch These Ants Use Teamwork
Ants make a bridge - amazing teamwork.
Shape of an ant colony - cool! They poured molten aluminum into an anthill.
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Nature's GPS
Scientists have figured out which part if a butterfly's brain computes migration paths, assessing the sun's height and direction and compensating for time of day, even using polarized light on cloudy days.
Razor clam
"A razor clam can dig one-third of a mile through underwater soil on the amount of energy in a double-A battery: it squeezes its shells together. Surrounding sand falls into the newly created space. Further squeezing draws water into the mix, making a pocket of quicksand that the clam pulls itself through." - Popular Science August 2014, p. 33
Fearless Genius
"Many at Apple were intrigued to learn that contrary to Wall Street's hyper-short-term thinking and the typical American business plan, Nintendo had conceived a hundred-year business model for itself." p. 74
"Apple had worked on this [handwriting] recognition software for years, but they could not solve the tricky challenge... By chance, one night in 1987 in Moscow, in the final years of the Cold War, an Apple board member answered a frantic knock at his hotel door. A Russian engineer nervously handed him a disk [that] contained the handwriting-recognition software that Apple desperately needed." p. 79
-Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley. Doug Menuez. Atria Books 2014.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Third world water box - cool!
A bright red shipping container...Solar panels on the roof power [it] and two faucets dispense free purified drinking water to anyone who wants it...the container is meant to be a kind of "downtown in a box": a web-connected bodega-cum-community center that can be dropped into underdeveloped villages all over the world. Coke calls it an Ekocenter.
Inside the big red box sits a smaller one, about the size of a dorm fridge...Using a process called vapor compression distillation, a single [one] can purify more than 250,000 liters of water per year, enough to satisfy the needs of about 300 people... [Their design incorporates] a "counterflow heat exchanger" that would run cool incoming liquid past superheated distilled water that had been vaporized and compressed.
The question was how to get the purifiers mass-produced and into the hands of those who needed them...
The medical and pharmaceutical companies Kamen had worked with over the years weren't much better positioned to help. They had infrastructure in developed nations but not in the 100-odd countries where he hoped to see the technology deployed.
Frustrated, Kamen had another obvious-in-retrospect insight. 'If there's one thing you can buy anywhere in the world, it's a Coke.' ...Coke is something you drink, and they have coolers that are about the size of our machine, and they have bottling partnerships around the world.
Inside the big red box sits a smaller one, about the size of a dorm fridge...Using a process called vapor compression distillation, a single [one] can purify more than 250,000 liters of water per year, enough to satisfy the needs of about 300 people... [Their design incorporates] a "counterflow heat exchanger" that would run cool incoming liquid past superheated distilled water that had been vaporized and compressed.
The question was how to get the purifiers mass-produced and into the hands of those who needed them...
The medical and pharmaceutical companies Kamen had worked with over the years weren't much better positioned to help. They had infrastructure in developed nations but not in the 100-odd countries where he hoped to see the technology deployed.
Frustrated, Kamen had another obvious-in-retrospect insight. 'If there's one thing you can buy anywhere in the world, it's a Coke.' ...Coke is something you drink, and they have coolers that are about the size of our machine, and they have bottling partnerships around the world.
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/slingshot-inventor-dean-kamens-revolutionary-clean-water-machine#TCCC
What about maintenance?
For the first manufacturing run of 50 Slingshot machines, Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back.
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/08/features/engine-of-progress
"Almost every project we do starts out with most people thinking we are nuts." Yet he's made an enviable career out of proving such doubters wrong...in the next few weeks, Kamen's device -- named the Slingshot -- will begin shipping to Paraguay, South Africa and Mexico...The statistics of the global water problem are startling: 783 million people around the world don't have access to clean water... In the late 80s, he and the engineers at DEKA had been approached by Baxter Healthcare to develop a portable device that would let kidney patients treat themselves at home, cleaning their blood using a technique called peritoneal dialysis...But distillation also requires water to evaporate into steam before then condensing back into a liquid, and Kamen wanted to do it at a rate of ten litres an hour. "It turns out it would take 25kW of continuous input power," he says. "Your electric bill would be $50 a night." Instead, Kamen realised that, if he could recover the energy usually lost as radiated heat when the steam condensed back into water, he could use it to help warm more cold water as it entered the system, drastically reducing the amount of power the system required...He recognised that the machine could remove contaminants from water and purify it. In seeking an improvement to a medical practice necessary for a few thousand people worldwide, he realised he may have stumbled upon a way of saving millions of lives...Coca-Cola -- with its web of international bottling franchises bringing their products to every country on Earth (with the exception of North Korea and Iran), and a distribution network that enabled them to deliver bottles of Coke into the most remote communities -- might be the one organisation that could help him with Slingshot. "To me, Coca-Cola is not a soft-drinks company. Coca-Cola is the largest, most efficient logistics operation ever put on this planet," Kamen says. "...and the poorest people in the world get access to it."...Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back to DEKA. He expects they'll require no expert maintenance for as long as five years...DEKA project for Coke, the company intends to make this first generation of Slingshots a core element of its EKOCENTER plan, in which full-size shipping containers -- outfitted with a shop, a water machine, solar power, a phone-charging station, TV and an internet connection -- will provide what he calls a "downtown in a box" in even the most remote communities.
What about maintenance?
For the first manufacturing run of 50 Slingshot machines, Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back.
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/08/features/engine-of-progress
"Almost every project we do starts out with most people thinking we are nuts." Yet he's made an enviable career out of proving such doubters wrong...in the next few weeks, Kamen's device -- named the Slingshot -- will begin shipping to Paraguay, South Africa and Mexico...The statistics of the global water problem are startling: 783 million people around the world don't have access to clean water... In the late 80s, he and the engineers at DEKA had been approached by Baxter Healthcare to develop a portable device that would let kidney patients treat themselves at home, cleaning their blood using a technique called peritoneal dialysis...But distillation also requires water to evaporate into steam before then condensing back into a liquid, and Kamen wanted to do it at a rate of ten litres an hour. "It turns out it would take 25kW of continuous input power," he says. "Your electric bill would be $50 a night." Instead, Kamen realised that, if he could recover the energy usually lost as radiated heat when the steam condensed back into water, he could use it to help warm more cold water as it entered the system, drastically reducing the amount of power the system required...He recognised that the machine could remove contaminants from water and purify it. In seeking an improvement to a medical practice necessary for a few thousand people worldwide, he realised he may have stumbled upon a way of saving millions of lives...Coca-Cola -- with its web of international bottling franchises bringing their products to every country on Earth (with the exception of North Korea and Iran), and a distribution network that enabled them to deliver bottles of Coke into the most remote communities -- might be the one organisation that could help him with Slingshot. "To me, Coca-Cola is not a soft-drinks company. Coca-Cola is the largest, most efficient logistics operation ever put on this planet," Kamen says. "...and the poorest people in the world get access to it."...Kamen has created tooling to make the devices more robust than ever before. They have plastic parts that won't corrode, and each one is equipped with a phone chip to send remote monitoring data regularly back to DEKA. He expects they'll require no expert maintenance for as long as five years...DEKA project for Coke, the company intends to make this first generation of Slingshots a core element of its EKOCENTER plan, in which full-size shipping containers -- outfitted with a shop, a water machine, solar power, a phone-charging station, TV and an internet connection -- will provide what he calls a "downtown in a box" in even the most remote communities.
Men slower than women
Finally there's proof that men are slower than women. At least, their healing is slower than women.
Men heal slower than women.
"significant wound repair delay that correlated with increasing testosterone levels (P = 0.001) in the healthy elderly men"
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/524313_5
Ashcroft GS, Mills SJ. Androgen receptor-mediated inhibition of cutaneous wound healing. J Clin Invest. 2002;110(5):615-624.
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Men heal slower than women.
"significant wound repair delay that correlated with increasing testosterone levels (P = 0.001) in the healthy elderly men"
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/524313_5
Ashcroft GS, Mills SJ. Androgen receptor-mediated inhibition of cutaneous wound healing. J Clin Invest. 2002;110(5):615-624.
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