Welcome! This is the 4th edition of "Winds of Discovery", a report by Glenn Halpern of HipperCritical that will take you on a wild ride across the spectrum of science and discovery.
Topics this week include: Biovaccines; Skinplex; Gene doping; Nanotech and alternative energy solutions; Allergen neutralization; Isaac Newton; DARPA's U-Haul in the Sky; Robot guards; Smart glass; Visual gadgets; Human hibernation; Space law; Space tourism; Wave power; Super tsunamis; Dead zones
If YOU have a link suggestion send it to discovery, here @windsofchange.net. Regular topics include:
- The government continues to fund biovaccines in preparation for any future terrorist attacks through Project BioShield. However, government money may not be enough to cover all the costs. Learn more about the companies that are putting forth such efforts and the products they are developing.
- Findings from a recent animal study indicate that we may actually be able to get by (a bit better) with a little help from our friends.
- Women who think they will live longer lives tend to produce boys when pregnant. It sounds a little crazy, I know, but that's what the data indicates.
- Skinplex is a product which enables the skin to transmit data. Soon we'll be able to trade business cards and other information with nothing more than a handshake.
- The world continues to witness scandal after scandal involving athletes who seek to get ahead of the competition through drug doping. Too many athletes are getting caught, and its most embarassing when Olympians are bagged on the international stage. So, some are looking for new, less detectable solutions.
- Some oil companies are looking to use nanotechnology to make oil extraction more efficient, and increase their recoverable reserves.
- Meanwhile, nanotechnology is also being touted as a key enabler of competitive alternative energy solutions.
- Nanodot.org points to a speech by India's President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who says "Our Future Lies in Nanotechnology." Given India's past record developing an IT industry in Bangalore et. al. via IIT, it will be interesting to see what investments are made in nanotech education.
- Food allergy sufferers may soon have reason to celebrate. Scientists at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology are using high frequency sound waves to neutralize the protein in sesame seeds which unleashes the harmful allergenic effects. The scientists believe that the same technology can be applied to peanuts, milk and other foods.
- Sir Isaac Newton is one of the most famous and most accomplished scientists in world history, and we will soon be able to learn much more about him on the web. I'll be checking it out for sure.
- DARPA is creating its own 'U-Haul in the Sky' which will be able to deliver an 1,800 person unit to any spot in the world within four days. Sure, sometimes DARPA stretches it's creative mind a bit too far, but then other times they come up with the most useful technologies in the world.
- Smoke em out! Who? No, not al Qaeda or the Taliban. In Tokyo, robot guards are being designed to locate and even apprehend ordinary intruders.
- Have you ever felt uncomfortable sitting next to a glass window on a bright and sunny day because the heat from the sun seems to keep pouring in? Well, smart glass will provide the benefits of sunlight without all that heat.
- The Society for Information Display held its annual international symposium where visitors got to play with all the up and coming visual gadgets that will soon (or already have) hit the marketplace. Very cool stuff.
- If humans will ever reach the most distant galaxies, then it will certainly require some degree of hibernation. A typical trip might span across several generations. Well, while it still may be decades away, scientists are already at work studying the possibilities of human hibernation.
- As we venture further away from this planet, space law is becoming a bright new field for the next generation of attorneys, and the rules are still being written.
- Meanwhile, Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log explores the future of space tourism.
- John Atkinson explores wave power and its potential to reduce California's dependency on coal, natural gas and all that stuff.
- Hybrid cars generate and store electrical energy, and the surplus power may some day be sold to power companies. Will ownership of hybrid vehicles turn into a moneymaking scheme for the environmentally aware drivers out there?
- The Beeb frets over the future possibility of a super tsunami and other "gee-gees" which could wipe out whole cities, and
- "Dead zones" have been detected off the Oregon coast and Scotland too. Global warming may be the culprit.
- On the bright side, the huge uniform stretches of Purple Loosestrife cluttering up North American ecosystems may soon be a thing of the past. This invasive European species has some natural enemies, and tests in my different locations reveal that importing some of them will cut Lythrum salicaria down to size - without negative effects on the rest of the ecosystem.
Please check back soon for another exciting edition of Winds of Discovery!
The Independent is fretting over mega-tsunamis too, and I have no clue how to tell whether the threat is real (even if highly unlikely) because I simply have little to zero faith in the accuracy of BBC and Independent reporting.
oops, I meant The Guardian, not The Independent. I hold them to equal (as in equally low) standards.
Here's more on mega-tsunamis and what we can do about it:
How can we stop it?
Put simply, we can't. We have no technology that can stop a volcano erupting, no support that can hold 500 billion tonnes of rock and no barrier that can stop a wave moving at 500 miles per hour. All we can do is evacuate.
But can we evacuate tens of millions of people with just a few hours notice? Unless evacuation plans were incredibly well thought out, no. Imagine New York's grid locked streets trying to cope with every person in the city on them. The alternative is evacuating when the volcano starts to erupt, possibly giving a few weeks warning. However, the island may not collapse on the next eruption, or even the next ten. Would we risk evacuating millions of people on the off chance? Could we risk not to?