Assorted photos

I haven't been taking as many photos this year as in previous years, so here are a few from this spring and early summer. I still have another batch awaiting some free moments to process and put online.

( Photos under the cut )

Space Basil and Optical Ears

Physics Org

Water for biofuels or for food: it's one or the other - Biofuels, hailed by many as the green solution to offset a coming oil shortage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are not a cure-all solution, experts at a water conference in Stockholm warned this week.

Basil Orbits Earth - The Materials on the International Space Station Experiment-3, or MISSE 3, was attached to the outside of the space station in August 2006. The suitcase-sized container is filled with hundreds of materials, including basil seeds, to study how each is affected by the space environment.

'Second Life' Sex Machine Spawns Lawsuit - Kevin Alderman didn't bring sex to "Second Life." He just made it better. The 46-year-old entrepreneur recognized four years ago that people would pay to equip their online selves - which start out with the smooth anatomy of a Barbie or Ken doll - with realistic genitalia and even more to add some sexy moves. One of his creations, the SexGen Platinum, has gotten so popular that he's now had to hire lawyers to track down the flesh-and-blood person behind the online identity, or avatar, that he says illegally copied and sold it.

Electricity from body heat - Making calls from a cell phone with no battery, using just the warmth of your hand? Perhaps that’s no more than a pipe dream right now. But new circuits are already making it possible to harness body heat for generating electricity.

news@nature

Long-term memory gets wiped - Yadin Dudai and Reut Shema of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, trained rodents to associate a particular smell with illness. Injecting the rat brains up to a month later with a polypeptide called ZIP caused the rats to completely forget the unpleasant memory, they report in Science. The study suggests that even though long-term memories can last for years or even for a lifetime, they are constantly maintained by an ever-active process. That goes against previous ideas that long-term memories are simply held in safe, static storage says co-author Todd Sacktor, a neuroscientist at State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

Mice can smell greenhouse gas - Mice can smell carbon dioxide at levels just higher than that in normal air, thanks to specialized neurons in their nose. Carbon dioxide can't be smelled by humans, but other animals have shown an ability to detect relatively high levels of the gas. Insects, too, can detect CO2, but they do it via membrane receptors rather than through any kind of nose.

Technology Review Feed - Biotech Top Stories

The Enthusiast - David Sinclair is very good at persuading people. The catch, says a longtime colleague and scientific rival, is that he is sometimes overly optimistic about his results. Sinclair's basic claim is simple, if seemingly improb­able: he has found an elixir of youth. In his Australian drawl, the 38-year-old Harvard University professor of pathology explains how he discovered that resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine, extends life span in mice by up to 24 percent and in other animals, including flies and worms, by as much as 59 percent. Sinclair hopes that resveratrol will bump up the life span of people, too.

Making Deaf Ears Hear with Light - An optical cochlear implant would bypass these inner ear hair cells, which are nonfunctional in many cases of profound deafness. Optical radiation would stimulate the neurons that are normally triggered by the motion of these microscopic fibers in response to sound vibrations.

Jump-Starting the Damaged Brain - Surgically implanted electrodes in the brain of a man with severe head injuries are connected to a pair of surgically implanted pacemakers. An illustration of the device is shown above. The programmable pacemakers deliver electricity to the brain via the electrodes, sparking activity in the brain. Researchers say that boosting activity in the thalamus, shown in close-up in the bottom image, improved both motor and cognitive function in this patient.

New Scientist Tech - Technology

'Ionic wind engines' keep computers cool - Experiments conducted by Garimella's group suggest that ionic wind engines combined with a conventional fan could increase cooling by up to 250%, although an array of wind engines would be needed to provide enough cooling for a normal processor. An ionic wind engine generates wind using an electric current passing through the air between two electrodes placed close together. As electrons flow between these electrodes they collide with air molecules, creating positively charged ions that are then attracted back to the negatively charged electrode. This creates a small, concentrated breeze.