Daily Science Dose

In the late 1950’s, two scientists working at UCLA came up with a process in which fresh water can be made from seawater. It’s a little thing called reverse osmosis. One of those UCLA guys, while working at Ben-Gurion in Israel, had an idea to use the same kind of process to create energy.

It’s quite simple. The way that osmosis works with fresh versus seawater, water will naturally move from a less-concentrated solution (fresh water) to a more-concentrated solution, i.e. the salty water, and once something moves, it creates kinetic energy, and energy is energy, people. You just have to figure out a way to optimize and harness it.

And that is what this Sidney Loeb fellow wanted to do. He patented it anyway in 1973, and named the process Pressure Retarded Osmosis (gee, I wonder if you could get away with naming it that today). But with osmosis, you need a membrane that is permeable to something like water and not to something else, say salt. The water moves from fresh to salty, creating a flow, if enough pressure is present. The amount of pressure is key, and if you doubt me, think of a shower with really low water pressure. Yeah, exactly.

With enough pressure, you can move turbines, and turbines run generators, and yep, you got power. A group in Norway is working on new and improved membranes that can actually produce the pressure (about 12 atmospheres) needed to create power, which was the sticky point since 1973. The Norwegians are looking at plans to build a prototype power plant in a fjord near Oslo, a great location in terms of ample supplies of both fresh and seawater.

The Dutch group working on similar plans for their own prototype and they have come up with the term Blue Energy. The Dutch plans also include a series of batteries, powered by the salt water. Blue Energy uses the movement of the ions present in salt water, the + Na and the - Cl. It makes me think of how a solar panel works, using ions to create an electron flow which creates electricity.

So far, it seems that a fifth of the power that the little pressure retarded osmosis systems produce are needed to pump the water, so obviously, things are going to have to become a lot more efficient before we start replacing all the coal plants with osmosis plants. So designing the shape of the membrane “tubes” will become important, to maximize surface area, but also be as compact as possible. And then there is maintenance and cleaning of said membranes…and a limited number of suitable locations…constructing in hard-to-reach places that will require new roads…

Besides that, it’s brilliant. Clean, non-obtrusive, safe for the environment and wildlife…The Europeans are obviously getting creative.

reverse osmosis, osmosis, UCLA, desalinization, fresh water, seawater, salt water, pressure retarded osmosis, PRO, membrane, electron flow, ions, electricity, power, kinetic energy, energy, green energy, Blue Energy, Oslo, Norway, Netherlands

As Martin Prince says at the conclusion of his class president pre-election speech, Keep watching the skies…

And tonight you will be rewarded. We will again get a lovely sight in the Western sky when a 10% crescent moon will be very close to a 20% crescent Venus, which is the second brightest object in the night sky. If you remember back in November, a crescent Moon aligned with not only Venus, but also Jupiter. It was pretty, indeed, but now, Venus is brighter.

But wait, Venus is going to be in its crescent form, right? Why would that be brighter than say a full Venus? And the answer to that, my friends, is that Venus is actually closer to the Earth when in its orbit at the point that it appears as a crescent to Earthlings.

Did you also know that you can see Venus during the daytime right now? It’s that bright. If you have a clear day (unlike me today in Portland, Oregon), get outside and try to find a shady spot from the sun’s direct rays into your eyes. Find the slight light of the thin sliver of the Moon, which will be directly east from the Sun. Scout a few “thumbs” away from the Moon, and you will find Venus. By the time the sun sets, Venus will be on the right side of the Moon from our perspective in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, when the show is at its best, the Moon will look like a coy, tight-lipped smile with a Venus beauty mark off to the right. 2 degrees right, to be exact.

Viewing will be best from sundown for about three hours before both the Moon and Venus set. And yes, a telescope is handy, but this show is for all to see. If you are lucky, you may also see a Russian Kosmos satellite move through the Moon-Venus alignment.

night sky, Moon, Venus, crescent, skywatching, Martin Prince, western hemisphere, Jupiter, align, Sun, Earth, astronomy

After reading this next study, I am kind of wondering as to why looking at toenail clippings would be the preferred method for measuring the level of arsenic in a human body. Is it because it is easy and non-intrusive, cheap, and a part of the body that is ripe for the study of bioaccumulation? Or is it some foot fetish’s odd way of getting his jollies? I’m hoping it’s the first reason.

Anyway, without further ado, today’s dose is about toenails and arsenic and England. England was the original hotbed for environmental degradation back in the earlier years of the Industrial Revolution — you know, lots of mining and no consideration of producing and disposing of rather nasty waste by-products. Well, some of that nasty stuff was arsenic, and in addition to that, there were arsenic mines that also lead to a issue of arsenic pollution in Great Britain.

Scientists from the University of Leicester, Notthingham Trent University, and the British Geological Survey have developed a relatively easy and painless (although perhaps a little gross) way to measure environmental arsenic in a person’s body — toenails. Toenails grow slowly, building matter and along the way picking up chemicals and in this case, elements that accumulate in our bodies. Add a little acid to those nails, let them dissolve and a little “inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry” and you’ve got yourself a good way of finding out how much arsenic that person has been exposed to over long periods of time.

Mark Button [of the University of Leicester] added: “This preliminary research indicates that people living close to a former arsenic mine have elevated levels of arsenic in their toenails. However, the potential health risks in this case, if any, are not yet clear and no arsenic related health issues have been reported. A large-scale and more detailed biomonitoring study is required to confirm these initial results.”

Dr Jenkin, lecturer in Applied Geology at the University of Leicester said: “This is the first time that the chemical form of the arsenic in the toenails has been measured - that can tell us something about how it got in there and possible risk factors. — SPX via TerraDaily

The only problem with the testing is that as of yet, the researchers are not quite sure how “concentrated” the amount of arsenic in a toenail is and how that affects the measurement of said arsenic. It could be that the human toenail concentrates arsenic and makes it look as though there are high levels, when in fact it’s very low levels over a longer period of time. That makes it harder to determine how it relates to harmful effects that can occur from exposure to arsenic, like cancer of the lungs or kidneys.

But it’s a start…

arsenic, toenails, bioaccumulation, chemicals, mining, waste, England, Industrial Revolution, Leicester, Nottingham Trent, University, British Geological Survey, cancer

Popular theory has it that chocolate did not make an appearance in North America until the Europeans had taken the cacoa bean from Central America to Europe and then back across the Atlantic to the new colonial settlements on the North American continent. But it seems that some 1,000 year old mugs from New Mexico can dispel that theory. Archeologists have found traces of theobromine, a signature chemical found in cacao and chocolate in a pair of mugs, which previously had confused researchers as to their purpose.

Of course, looking at the objects, they sure don’t scream out chocolate-drinking mugs. And not truly knowing what they are for, you could imagine they held any number of items including most probably food. But what kind of food or liquid was the question, as scientists can tell a lot about a forgotten people from their “tools”, which includes ceramics used to store and preserve food. However, these “mugs” were open-topped, so you’d assume they would be used not for storage or preservation, but for some other purpose, perhaps eating. But why something so fancy, thin and tall? Patricia Crown of the University of New Mexico saw some Mayan chocolate mugs and the light bulb lit up above her head. The Chaco Valley mugs had traces of chocolate’s chemical compound, theobromine.

Chocolate was a delicacy for Mesoamericans starting from 500 BC, and as that part of the world was not so far advanced in cultivation, the cacao bean and the process to make it into a tasty beverage were not something for everyday consumption — unless you were rich enough. Chocolate spread from the Mayans to the Aztecs, but may have come from the Olmecs to the Mayans in the first place, so it is perfectly plausible that having such a long history, the cacao bean would have made its way to North American before the Spanish showed up in the New World.

And now it seems that there is evidence for chocolate’s arrival to other parts of the Western Hemisphere via internal trade routes between Central America and North America. Of course, like today, when a trade route is long and treacherous, costs go up. And archeologists are thinking that chocolate was a, what else, luxury good, used by early North Americans in the Southwest.

What was chocolate doing so far north? In Pueblo Bonito, the cylindrical vases appear at only a few sites and there are not many of them. They also don’t show up in burial sites, which means that they probably belonged to the community, says Crown. Drinking chocolate was likely a part of elaborate ceremonies similar to those seen in Mayan culture, she says. –Science Magazine

chocolate, cacao, cacao bean, archeology, Chaco Valley, early North America, Central America, trade, luxury goods, New Mexico, Mesoamericans, colonial, Spanish, Aztecs, Olmecs, Mayan

This news is a couple of weeks old at this point, but it’s never too late to complain about it, nonetheless.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is obviously still griped with the Bush-era, pushover-for-Big-Business philosophy when it comes to regulating children’s toys and other products. I guess when it comes to testing for lead, some prices are too high.

Last (this) year when all those toys were (are) being recalled, Congress in their infinite wisdom decided to pass some legislation to protect consumers against manufacturers and their distributors when it comes to taking short cuts or using cheaper and more dangerous materials in the manufacture of children’s goods. Sounds good, yes? Well, it would be if our government would bother to enforce some rules every now and then.

The CPSC decided to give manufacturers and distributors another year before they have to start testing products before selling them to an unwitting public. That’s right, another year before said companies will have to test for lead in the paint used on your kids toys. You’d think that for starters the Consumer Product SAFETY Commission would want a company to test their products before someone gets sick or before the costs of a massive public recall. But no, it’ll be another year before anyone will be testing your child’s toys.

According to the LA Times article on the subject, the CPSC spokesperson said that to start testing today would not be feasible and the time frame was unrealistic.

Ensuring the safety of products given to our smallest and most vulnerable citizens should always be feasible. But again, it is just another example of a business’ bottom-line coming before your safety and health.

Larry Mestyanek, owner of Los Angeles company TAG Toys, thinks the stay will save him $50,000 in testing fees. He’s been fielding calls from customers every day asking whether his toys have been tested and whether he can explain the law, so he appreciates the reprieve.

But it’s too late to save money for Albert Lee, owner of boys clothing manufacturer Monster Republic in Los Angeles. He said he has been rushing to test his clothing since he heard about the law in mid-December. It cost him “a solid month of worry and stress,” plus a few thousand dollars, he said. — LA Times

Wow, $50,000 is worth more than a child's health...

Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC, recall, toy, children, health, lead, products, regulation, safety, testing, Congress

Last week, a US satellite collided with a Russian satellite. And this accident could be just the beginning.

Since the launch of Sputnik, Americans and the former Soviet Union raced each other to send more and more satellites into space. And most of that hardware is still up there. It’s called space debris, and in the fifty years that man has been exploring the vacuum that envelopes the planet, there have been more than 6,000 satellites launched into orbit, half of which are not longer functioning. And now, as more and more nations are joining the Americans, Russians, and the Europeans in placing more potential debris into the low-orbits, the problem of space debris may get a whole lot worse.

There is an estimated 14,000 objects that are larger than 4 inches or 10 centimeters. The US and Russia actively track about 17,000 objects that are floating around in space for fear that these objects may collide or even penetrate something like the International Space Station, the Hubble Telescope and its cousins, or the ever-smaller US Space Shuttle fleet.

Worse yet, some of that junk up there is radioactive.

Currently, 44 radiation sources from Russia are parked in the burial orbit. They are: two satellites with unseparated nuclear power units (Cosmos-1818 and Cosmos-1867), fuel assemblies and 12 closed-down reactors with a liquid metal coolant, 15 nuclear-fuel assemblies, and 15 fuel-free units with a coolant in the secondary cooling loop. They are to spend no less than 300 to 400 passive years in the orbit. That is enough for uranium-235 fission products to decay to safe levels.

The United States is another contributor to the high levels of radiation in near-Earth space. In April 1964, its Transit-SB navigation satellite with a radio isotope generator aboard failed to enter orbit and broke into pieces. While burning up in the atmosphere, it scattered about a kilogram of plutonium-238 over the western part of the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar. The result has been a 15-fold increase in background radiation around the world. A few years later, the Nimbus-B weather satellite with a uranium-235 reactor crashed into the Indian Ocean. Today, there are seven American radiation sources circling the Earth in orbits ranging from 800 kilometers to 1,100 kilometers, and two more in near-geostationary ones. –Ria Novosti

After the US-Russian collision, Russia is being warned by scientists that wreckage could land in Siberia. The Kosmos line of military satellites have been known to carry nuclear reactors on board. So far, the Russians are not confirming if the satellite involved in the collision is indeed radioactive, but they seem to be taking the warnings seriously, especially as Lake Baikal is in the area that wreckage may affect.

satellite, US, Russia, collision, space debris, Sputnik, Siberia, military, radioactive, wreakage, Lake Baikal

Maybe. NASA thinks that it may have a star on its hands that could possibly be flaring due to quakes on the surface of the star. The quakes occur, not because of vulcanism like here on Earth, but because this particular star has super-powered magnetic fields that are so intense they rip apart the surface of the star when they move.

Neat.

Let’s start at the very beginning. BANG. Ha, ha, get it?

There is this star, see, and it’s 30,000 light years away from Earth. The star is named SGR J1550-5418, which isn’t very romantic, and it’s located in the constellation, Norma, which is even less romantic. This SGR J1550-5418 is a neutron star.

A neutron star is what’s left over after a supernova event. After a star collapses onto itself, the stuff left over are neutrons, the same sub-atomic particles that comprise an atom’s neucleus. You can think of a neutron star as a really big atomic neucleus that is super dense. This neutron star is about one and half times the mass of our Sun, but all that is compacted into a sphere with a diameter of only about 12 miles.

Well, this SGR J1550-5418 is a special kind of neutron star. It’s a “soft-gamma-ray repeater.” There have only been six of these soft-gamma repeaters found so far. What happens is that the star occasionally flares out, that’s right, gamma rays. Luckily for NASA scientists, just this last summer a new telescope, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space telescope, was launched to study these very same gamma rays.

Theory has it that soft-gamma-ray repeaters that are known as “magnetars” flare due to “quakes” in the surface crust of the star. The magnetar have such powerful magnetic fields that they effectively rip open the surface and allow gamma-rays to erupt forth into space. Hopefully, with the Fermi on the case, scientists will be able to test the theory about starquakes. The Fermi will be able to see through the bursts and find the structures within.

neutron star, astronomy, NASA, space, telescope, Fermi, gamma-ray, magnetar, soft-gamma-ray repeater, sun, earth, starquakes, magnetic fields

Or create…paint your room blue.

There really is science all around us. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the color of the room you are in or the background of that website you were just on before hitting this one is a rich study in perception and how we can be cognitively-steered by those primary colors of red and blue.

Maybe Matisse was in a blue studio when he painted this Red Room...

Studies in the past have looked at how color affects human cognition, and for the most part, many studies contradicted each other. And when studies contradict each other, it is difficult to reach a consensus among scientists and more studies are needed. In the case of blue versus red, some studies found that red fostered cognition (or perception) while others showed the opposite. What’s a researcher to do?

Break down cognition into more specific tasks, and then see how red affects them. And that is just what Rui (Juliet) Zhu, a consumer psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada did. She and a helpful grad student (the unsung heroes of science) tested undergrads (the unsung human lab rats of science) on different tasks using different colors as backgrounds on computer screens. Those tasks that involved careful concentration were more accurately completed when the background color was red.

However, more creative tasks, such as coming up with different uses of everyday items, saw better results when the background color was blue.

Wait, how do you judge “creativity”? Well, in the case of Zhu’s study, she put together a panel of students to decide what answers were more creative than other answers.

Zhu thinks the results reflect the different associations conjured by red and blue: Thanks to its connection to stop signs, red ink, and blood, red alerts us to danger and mistakes, signaling the need to be vigilant. Blue, on the other hand, may put people in a more creative mindset because of its more tranquil associations with sea and sky.

The practical implications of the study could be far-ranging, says Kathleen Vohs, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. For example, the researchers showed that volunteers who viewed two versions of a fake camera ad–one that featured detailed images of the camera’s features and accessories, and one that featured more creative photos (see picture)–rated the first ad more favorably when it appeared on a red background and the second one more favorably when it appeared on a blue background. — Science Magazine

So, wait, all of this research money is just to make advertising more effective? Yes, but no. The findings could be better utilized for color schemes in buildings. You know, interior decor really needs a good strong foundation in science…

Oh, I kid. Kind of. But my next question is…will pink make me only half-concentrate?

Another researcher, who I want to call Zhu’s Professor Wernstrum (for all you Futurama fans), says that though the research is interesting, he wonders if it is the color of the backgrounds on the computers used, or the brightness and saturation of said color that produces the results.

red, blue, color, perception, cognition, human, study, research, creativity, effects of color, interior decor, advertising, Futurama