Because I continually run across interesting inventions and discoveries that I cannot give my full attention to I thought I would create a weekly summary of items that have caught my eye. I’ll publish these headlines every Friday and hope, you, my readers find them as interesting as I do. Let me know if you
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Our oceans today are experiencing the highest mean temperatures ever recorded, up 0.59 degrees Celsius (1.1 Fahrenheit) since we started keeping records. True we have only been doing this since the 19th century, but during that period the warming appears to be consistent with higher increases in polar ocean regions. It is also apparent that
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In a recent study of the North Atlantic Ocean oceanographers took water samples to depths of 33 meters (+100 feet). The results surprised the scientists. Plastic garbage was evident not only in surface sampling but at all depths. We humans are creating an environmental nightmare in our oceans and need to address it now. There
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Ever heard of a hydrino? It is a form of shrunken hydrogen. Hydrogen is the first element in the periodic table. So you ask, how can you make hydrogen atoms even smaller? Well apparently you can by exposing them to ions, that is atoms that have lost an electron. These ions are called catalytic because
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In April 2012 a team of industry leaders formed a new company, Planetary Resources to launch robotic space missions to mine the natural resources to be found in space. The company’s announcement coincided with the latest revelations from the NASA Dawn mission to study two of the largest asteroids in the Solar System, Vesta and
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To Pluto and the Kuiper Belt with New Horizons I grew up like most of you with the certainty that our Solar System had nine planets revolving around the Sun. But Pluto, the ninth wasn’t discovered until 1930, nineteen years before I was born. And now that I am 63 we are back to before
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What has compelled us to return to Saturn after the voyages of the robotic spacecraft, Pioneer and Voyager, in the latter part of the 20th century? Yes, Saturn with its rings was mysteriously beautiful. Like Jupiter it was a miniature Solar System with many moons of which Titan, the largest, appeared as an orange-shrouded mystery
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Have you heard of oscillating gel? Researchers at University of Pittsburgh and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have demonstrated that this material responds to mechanical and chemical stimuli something only previously displayed by living membranes such as human skin. For robots the gel could serve as an artificial skin. Known as Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gel,
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I’m A, Rh+. Most of us are O, Rh+. Figured it out yet? I’m talking about our blood. As a regular blood donor I have learned about blood types and who I can give blood to and who I can’t. But for most of us who are not donors this remains a mystery. Well it
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Blow into the Single Breath Disease Diagnostics Breathalyzer and if you get a green light you are good to go but if the light turns red it means you need to see your doctor. That is how this new invention works. Developed by a team within the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stony
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