Category Archives: Life Sciences
Implants designed dissolve inside the body
The user of electronic devices that you want to last long, especially smartphone batteries. However, if the electronic device is specifically designed to study (or cure) our body from within, it is best to disappear soon. That is precisely what has gotten a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA, who have just sealed up small electronic devices inside “cocoons” silk , which dissolve after serving its mission.
For Christopher Bettinger, biodegradable electronics specialist CMU, who was not involved in the study, is truly remarkable achievement by combining materials capable of creating operating devices. Doctors already use implants that dispense drugs or provide electrical stimulation from inside our bodies but now these are the first to dissolve.
The Simple Science behind Electronic Cigarettes
For people who want to try electronic cigarettes but are put off the technology that powers them most manufacturers offer starter kits which gives you all you need in one convenient package. It’s ideal for people who are skeptical about buying components and putting them together themselves and those who have been smoking for years and are not yet sure if they really want to give up.
How Do Electronic Cigarettes Work?
E-cigarettes are an innovation of modern science and research and have been 40 years in the making. And, even since they made their first appearance of the market, they have undergone a series of developments to enhance their performance even more.
There are three basic components to electronic cigarettes to come to terms with, in order to understand how they work. The battery is what provides power for the vaporization process to take place. The cartomizer is placed at the end of the battery and contains e-liquid or propylene glycerol solution.
Bees and their hives: engineering genius and optimization
The bees build their combs with cells in the shape of a hexagonal prism to place their larvae and store honey. This had already attracted the attention of Pappus of Alexandria who mentions him in an essay titled “the sagacity of the bees.” Charles Darwin studied in his now famous book “The Origin of Species” and describes it as a masterpiece of engineering in minimizing labor and material and a demonstration of the principle of natural selection.
Beyond its undeniable beauty what makes you so special? If it’s economy to maximize perimeter area is well known that the solution is a circle, and to save area to maximize volume a sphere. But in this construction the pieces fit together perfectly without wasting space or Overlap that cannot be achieved with circles and spheres. This is known in mathematics as a tiling and the periodic case is the same geometric shape which is repeated over and over again to generate it.
Front projection of this structure is the regular hexagonal tiling known to all. This in itself is remarkable, because it is only possible to achieve periodic tiling of the plane with squares, equilateral triangles and hexagons and those who accomplish more with less perimeter area to be the case of the regular hexagon, which concluded Pappus motivated by the bees.
Curious animals: the long-eared jerboa
If you’ve ever wondered what kind of animal can live in the desert under such hostile conditions, I will say that, among a variety of amazing creatures, is very curious animal whose name describes it completely: the long-eared jerboa. This rodent scary looking fragile and does withstand temperatures as high as +40 ° C and as low as -40 ° C in the desert areas of China and Mongolia.
Features long-eared jerboa
The long-eared jerboa is a tiny mammal. Its body is only 70 to 90 millimeters and the tail is between 150 and 162 millimeters. The color of their fur can vary from yellow to pale brown russet in the area present a whitish belly. The tail is usually very long, twice longer than its body and the same color as this, but finishes with a combination of white and black hairs. The hind legs of long-eared jerboa are greater than those of later adaptation that allows you to big jumps as a defensive strategy against predators. These two feet have five toes. The plants are covered with hair, an excellent protection against the friction of the sand.
Sciurumimus, the first feathery Megalosaurus
I have dubbed Sciurumimus its bushy tail, in honor of the squirrels of the genus Sciurus. Their fossil remains show that could be covered with feathers filamentous, like hairs. This young dinosaur is the first case megalosaur feathered as described and is not closely related to the birds.
The specimen lived in the Upper Jurassic, made between 154 and 135 million years, was discovered in a quarry Painten the German people and set out in the Muller Bürgermeister municipal museum in the region of Bavaria (Germany)
The fossil remains of this animal pen in contributing to “fill a gap in understanding the early evolution of a group of predatory dinosaurs more important,” says Oliver Rauhut SINC, a paleontologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, member of State Collection of Paleontology and Geology of Bavaria.
As published by Rauhut and his team of German researchers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the well preserved fossil skull indicates it had a large and short hind leg. The finest feathers would be distributed under the belly and dorsal vertebrae, and have feathers all over his body.