- New Scientist Environment: Giant microwave turns plastic back to oil
A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level – turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas. All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and – hey presto! – a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers).
A US company is taking plastics recycling to another level - zapping them with a variety of frequencies to break down the hydrocarbon chains
autofluff cars gas oil plastic recycling
in Public bookmarks - Oil-eating microbes produce green energy
It is estimated that oil sands -- or bituminous sands -- represent two thirds of the world's oil reserves. Still, it's expensive and difficult to extract oil from these sands. Even with today's crude oil prices, the industry is still looking for cheaper ways to produce energy from the so-called 'tar' sands. Now, according to the University of Calgary, an international team of researchers has found a way for using microbes to extract methane from oil sands. With its enormous reserves, Canada could become one of the major oil producer in the 21st century. Field tests of this new technology should start in 2009.
in Public bookmarks - Out of Africa human origins: Genetic Map
The Bradshaw Foundation, in association with Stephen Oppenheimer, presents a virtual global journey of modern man over the last 160,000 years. The map will show for the first time the interaction of migration and climate over this period. We are the descendants of a few small groups of tropical Africans who united in the face of adversity, not only to the point of survival but to the development of a sophisticated social interaction and culture expressed through many forms. Based on a synthesis of the mtDNA and Y chromosome evidence with archaeology, climatology and fossil study, Stephen Oppenheimer has tracked the routes and timing of migration, placing it in context with ancient rock art around the world.
Journey of Mankind - The Peopling of the World. Who were our ancestors? From where did we originate? If we came out of Africa, what factors governed our routes? And when? Now finally this interactive genetic map reveals modern humans journey of opportunity and survival, confirmed by genetic science and documented by ancient rock art.
africa ancestors dna genetic genetics humans journey mankind map migrations modern oppenheimer peopling stephen the world
in Public bookmarks - Political lessons from animal behaviour Decisions, decisions | The Economist
<<stigmergy>><<management>>DICTATORS and authoritarians will disagree, but democracies work better. It has long been held that decisions made collectively by large groups of people are more likely to turn out to be accurate than decisions made by individuals. The idea goes back to the “jury theorem” of Nicolas de Condorcet, an 18th-century French philosopher who was one of the first to apply mathematics to the social sciences. Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants, bees, birds and dolphins. And those animals may have a thing or two to teach people about collective decision-making.
in Public bookmarks - Possibility of Life on Europa
Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, appears to be one of the few places that we might find extraterrestrial life in our solar system (the others being Mars and Titan, a moon of Saturn). What makes Europa such an attractive place to look for life is the possibility that it has liquid water and volcanic activity. Liquid water is essential for life on earth and is the most probable solvent for life elsewhere. Volcanic activity provides some of the heat necessary to keep the water on Europa from freezing and could provide important dissolved chemicals needed by living organisms. The surface of Europa is covered with ice. NASA's Galileo space probe has recently sent back a number of high quality images of Europa's surface. These images hint at a layer of liquid
Possiblity of Life on Europa
alien europa extraterrestrial life
in Public bookmarks - The Essential Difference front page | Science | Guardian Unlimited
Baron-Cohen's theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. He calls it the empathising-systemising (E-S) theory. Empathising is the drive to identify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. The empathiser intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat people with care and sensitivity. Systemising is the drive to analyse and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behaviour of a system; and the drive to construct systems.
in Public bookmarks - What do these enigmatic women want? neuroanthropology blog
In this week’s The Times Magazine of The NY Times, Daniel Bergner has a piece on women’s sexuality and research that’s already in preprint causing a bit of controversy as well as a convulsion of 1950s era humor in the online response. The title, ‘What do women want?’, that nugget of Freudian wonder, no doubt will raise the readership, as will the pictures of models simulating states of arousal (Greg Mitchell is in a bit of snit about them in, Coming Attraction: Preview of ‘NYT Magazine’ With Semi-Shocking Sex Images on Sunday. ‘Semi-Shocking’? I can imagine how that goes… ‘Are you SHOCKED by these photos?’ ‘Well, I’m at least SEMI-shocked, yes!’). In particular,
in Public bookmarks - Wordorigins.org
Wordorigins.org is devoted to the origins of words and phrases, or as a linguist would put it, to etymology. Etymology is the study of word origins. (It is not the study of insects; that is entomology.) Where words come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons. Often, popular tales of a word's origin arise. Sometimes these are true; more often they are not. While it can be disappointing when a neat little tale turns out to be untrue, almost invariably the true origin is just as interesting.
A site devoted to the origins of words and slang phrases
aave american argot bilingual black borrowing buzz buzzword citations coin coined colloquia english phrase way with word words
in Public bookmarks - Ars Technica
DNA Computing - Page 1 - (4/2000)
Ars Technica. Power users and the tools they love, without computing religion. Oh yeah, did we mention we are unassailable computing enthusiasts.
2000 ars beos computing damage hardware labs linux news openforum prosumer reviews technica win2k win95 win98 windows winnt
in Public bookmarks - Beyond the !Kung A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile and s
When the anthropologist Irven DeVore suggested in 1962 to then-graduate student Richard Lee that they study hunter-gatherers, neither expected to transform the modern understanding of human nature. A baboon expert, DeVore mostly wanted to expand his research to human groups. Lee was searching for a dissertation project. Being interested in human evolution, they decided not to study peoples in the Americas or Australia, as was the norm in hunter-gatherer studies. Instead, they looked for a site that was, in Lee’s words, ‘close to the actual faunal and floral environment occupied by early man’. So, they headed to Africa – specifically, to the Kalahari.
in Public bookmarks - Carl Zimmer: Did DNA Come From Viruses? Science, May 11, 2006
Scientists who deal in the history of life have never been quite sure what to do with viruses. One measure of their uncertainty is the Tree of Life Web Project, a collective effort to record everything known about the relationships of living and extinct species. The first page of its Web site--entitled "Life on Earth"--shows the broadest view: From a single root come three branches representing the domains of life (www.tolweb.org
in Public bookmarks
Note: more: The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer "as fine a science essayist as we have - DN - Kultur - I var mans mun
Är man språkforskare känner man till bonobon (dvärgschimpansen) Kanzi. Han är en celebritet i den komparativa språkforskningens värld, och primatforskarens Sue Savage-Rumbaughs skötebarn. Vad jag vet finns ingen bonobo eller schimpans som nått i närheten av Kanzis prestationsförmåga i handhavandet av "lexigram" (symboliska tecken) och att förstå talat språk. Vid ett tillfälle när han var i en vattenbassäng blev han tillfrågad: "Kan du hämta några grapefrukter och kasta dem i bassängen?"
Är man språkforskare känner man till bonobon (dvärgschimpansen) Kanzi. Han är en celebritet i den komparativa språkforskningens värld, och primatforskarens Sue Savage-Rumbaughs skötebarn. Vad jag vet finns ingen bonobo eller schimpans som nått i n&aum
kultur nöje
in Public bookmarks - Essay Contest: Why Would You Want Your Doctor to Have Studied Evolution?
Imagine if when someone said, "I finished reading a book!" they had in actuality only read three- fourths of it. Would you ask this person for help concerning the book? Unlikely, since there is a possibility that the information you want is in the one-fourth of the book that they didn't read. This same concept can be applied to evolution and the current medical school curriculum.
in Public bookmarks - Maim That Tune: Detune your head
"Are you plagued by Stuck Tune Syndrome? Do you have a song stuck in your head you just can't get out? Take heart friend, for your suffering is over. The Maimograph Machine, through complex analysis and calculation, will find an even catchier tune to counter-act the one you already have."
in Public bookmarks - Oklo: Natural Nuclear Reactors - Fact Sheet
It came as a great surprise to most [...] that nature had beaten humans to the punch by creating the world’s first nuclear reactors. Indeed, he argued, nature had a two-billion-year head start. Fifteen natural fission reactors have been found in three different ore deposits at the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa. These are collectively known as the Oklo Fossil Reactors.
in Public bookmarks - This Deep Sea Fisherman Posts His Discoveries on Twitter and OH MY GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE
The English-language site Moscow Times posted a handful of the photos, but I’ve found even more on Fedortsov’s Twitter. The fisherman is reportedly based in Murmansk, which is a real place in Russia, and not another planet where Hell has opened up and set demons free to roam the land and the seas.
in Public bookmarks - TIME WITHOUT END: PHYSICS AND BIOLOGY IN AN OPEN UNIVERSE (*)
Freeman J. Dyson Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton New Jersey 08540 Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 51, No. 3, July 1979 (c) 1979 American Physical Society Quantitative estimates are derived for three classes of phenomena that may occur in an open cosmological model of Friedmann type. (1) Normal physical processes taking place with very long time-scales. (2) Biological processes that will result if life adapts itself to low ambient temperatures according to a postulated scaling law. (3) Communication by radio between life forms existing in different parts of the universe. The general conlusion of the analysis is that an open universe need not evolve into a state of permanent quiescence. Life and communication can continue for ever, utilizing a finit
in Public bookmarks - Trailhead |E. O. Wilson | The New Yorker
The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them. She lay there, in fact, as though nothing had happened. She had become a perfect statue of herself.
in Public bookmarks
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