SCiO is made to analyze ... everything

 

The SCiO Pocket Molecular Sensor

Wondering how nutritious that food is, if that plant needs water, or just what that misplaced pill is? Well, the makers of SCiO claim that their device is able to tell you all of those things, plus a lot more. To use it, you just scan the item in question for one or two seconds, then check the readout on a Bluetooth 4.0-linked smartphone.

SCiO is actually a miniature spectroscope. Like the bigger, more expensive laboratory-grade models it's based on, it works by shining near-infrared light on materials, exciting their molecules in the process. By analyzing the light that's reflected off those vibrating molecules, it's reportedly possible to identify them by their unique optical signature, and thus determine the chemical composition of the material.

In the case of SCiO, an accompanying iOS or Android app sends its readings to the cloud, where algorithms process the data in real time. The results should appear on the phone's screen within a matter of seconds.

According to Consumer Physics, the Tel Aviv-based company that's developing the device, it will initially come with apps that allow it to analyze food, plants and medication. As described in a press release:

"The food app delivers macro nutrient values (calories, fats, carbohydrates, and proteins), produce quality, ripeness, and spoilage analysis for various foods, including cheeses, fruits, vegetables, sauces, salad dressings, cooking oils, and more. SCiO can also identify and authenticate medication in real-time by cross-checking a pill's molecular makeup with a database of medications. Finally, SCiO can analyze moisture levels in plants and tell users when to water them."

The company also plans on providing an Application Development Kit, so that third parties can create their own apps for use with SCiO. These apps could greatly expand the variety of materials that can be analyzed, as the designers claim that it should work on just about any material, "including cosmetics, clothes, flora, soil, jewels and precious stones, leather, rubber, oils, plastics, and even human tissue or bodily fluids."

SCiO is powered by an integrated battery, that should provide approximately one week of use per charge. It's compatible with iPhone 4S and up, iPad 3rd generation and later, and with devices using Android 4.3 and later. Consumer Physics is currently raising funds for its commercial production, through Kickstarter. A pledge of US$179 will get you one when and if they're ready to ship, this December.

The very similar TellSpec is also presently in development, although it's being marketed more as a food-specific device.

 

Sources: Consumer Physics, Kickstarter

Scientists spin up graphene in a kitchen blender

 

Bottles filled with water, detergent and graphene flakes – the graphene absorbs a small amount of light, leading to the darkened appearance of the mixture (Photo: CRANN)

It is one atom thick and touted to be stronger than steel. Graphene has captured the scientific and public imagination as the wonder material of the 21st century. Now, researchers at Trinity College Dublin have found a way to extract the substance from graphite – using a kitchen blender and some liquid soap.

Since Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim of Manchester University managed to extract graphene (which is a two-dimensional slice of graphite) using a piece of transparent tape, the buzz around this super-strong, super-conductive material has tended toward the superlative. Novoselov and Geim received the Nobel Prize for their discoveries in 2010, but still the quest continues for a method of scaling up graphene extraction to an industrial, or even a vaguely practical level.

Now, researchers at Trinity College Dublin have found a new and relatively quick way to obtain graphene from a sample of graphite, and their revolutionary equipment consists of a modest kitchen blender and liquid detergent. According to Dr. Keith Paton, who worked on the project, this was a "sighting" experiment, which was carried out "to test the feasibility of using shear mixing to exfoliate graphene."

Method

In their experiment, the Trinity College Dublin team describe how they took a high-power (400-watt) kitchen blender and added half a liter of water, 10-25 milliliters of detergent and 20-50 grams of graphite powder (found in pencil leads). They turned the machine on for 10-30 minutes. The process resulted in a large number of micrometer-sized flakes of graphene, suspended in the water.

Kitchen-sink solutions

The cheapest shear-mixing appliance is a regular kitchen blender, Dr. Paton explains, which was why the team chose to employ it in the first trials. Though adding liquid to the blender with the graphite allowed the graphene to shear off, at the end of the process the material would just settle at the bottom of the blender and re-aggregate.

The researchers realized they needed a surfactant to keep the flakes separated and dispersed in the liquid. Again, they decided to begin with the most available source, regular liquid dish-washing detergent, and they found that this worked nearly as well as an industrial product.

A standard kitchen blender, and transmission electron microscope images of graphene flakes (Photo: CRANN)

Scaling up

While the kitchen blender and dish soap experiment proved the concept, the researchers are keen to emphasize that this method is not easily scalable for industrial or commercial use. As their relatively low-tech trial was successful, they then moved to more sophisticated equipment. The rotor-stator mixer is a laboratory-quality device that has rotating blades and a stationary screen. There is a very small gap between the elements through which the liquid and graphite are squeezed, and this yields very high rates of shearing and exfoliation of graphene from the graphite.

Dr. Paton likens the process to "sliding your hands across a deck of cards," causing them to spread and separate. After being exfoliated in flakes, the graphene can be recovered in a number of ways, including using filtering processes or by allowing the liquid to evaporate. The experiment with the rotor-stator proved that the blender method could be scaled up to an industrial level of production, and this is what is getting people excited.

 

The stronger, lighter, super-conductor

The excitement is generated by the potential for the new material, graphene. The marvel is in its strength (said to be 200 times that of a comparable quantity of steel), the fact that it is extremely lightweight, and because it is highly conductive. According to Dr. Paton, this means that "commercial printing techniques, such as ink-jet or screen-printing, could be used to create very thin, flexible electronics, including batteries and super-capacitors.” There is also talk of a folding touchscreen device that uses graphene for the screen or for the connecting circuit.

Graphene could also be used for very thin, flexible, perhaps more efficient and transparent solar cells. And there is significant potential in strengthening plastics. Since a very minute amount of graphene can improve the strength of PET (plastic used widely in drink bottles) by around 40 percent, this could result in a huge reduction in the amount of plastic required.

All that having been said, two separate studies have recently raised concerns about the dangers that graphene could pose both to ourselves, and to the environment.

While it may seem to have burst onto the scene, experiments with graphene go back at least to 2004, when Novoselov and Geim conducted their tape experiment. This latest discovery was the outcome of a collaborative project between Thomas Swan (manufacturer of specialty chemicals) and CRANN (the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices) at Trinity College Dublin. The work was carried out at CRANN where the team was led by Professor Jonathan Coleman.

Source: Nature.com

New research shows blood tests could be effective in diagnosing depression

 

Research suggests a blood test to detect depression is possible (Photo: Shutterstock)

At present, reaching a diagnosis for depression typically involves interviews with the patient, resulting in a drawn out and costly process. Some recent research efforts have sought to address this, such as a diagnostic technique that measures electrical activity in the brain to more quickly detect mental illness. Now a team of Austrian researchers has demonstrated a link between levels of serotonin in the blood and the depression network in the brain, meaning that diagnosing depression could soon become a much more efficient undertaking.

Working at the Department of Biological Psychiatry at the Medical University of Vienna, a team led by Associate Professor Lukas Pezawas examined the relationship between the speed of serotonin uptake in blood platelets and the neural depression network in the brain.

The study focused on the serotonin transporter (SERT), a protein in the membrane that enables serotonin to be transported into the cell. In the brain, this regulates the depression network and is key in fending off depressive conditions.

Recent studies have demonstrated that not only is this serotonin transporter also present in the blood, it works in the same way that it does in the brain, ensuring that the concentration of serotonin in the blood plasma is kept at healthy levels. In observing this process alongside functional magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, the team concluded that there is in fact a close relationship between the rate of serotonin uptake in the blood and the function of the neural depression network.

"This is the first study that has been able to predict the activity of a major depression network in the brain using a blood test," says Pezawas. "While blood tests for mental illnesses have until recently been regarded as impossible, this study clearly shows that a blood test is possible in principle for diagnosing depression and could become reality in the not too distant future."

The team's research was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Source: Medical University of Vienna

Wonder-material graphene could be dangerous to humans and the environment

 

Jacob D Lanphere, a Ph.D. student at UC Riverside, holds a sample of graphene oxide

I've been waiting for some time now to write a headline along the lines of "scientists discover thing that graphene is not amazing at" ... and here it is. Everybody’s favorite nanomaterial may have a plethora of near-magical properties, but as it turns out, it could also be bad for the environment – and bad for you, too.

It’s easy to get carried away when you start talking about graphene. Comprised of single atom thick layers of carbon, graphene is incredibly light, incredibly strong, extremely flexible and highly conductive both of heat and electricity. Its properties hold the promise of outright technological revolution in so many fields that it has been called a wonder material.

But it’s only been 10 years since graphene was first isolated in the laboratory, and as researchers and industries scramble to bring graphene out of the lab and into a vast range of commercial applications, far less money is being spent examining its potential negative effects.

Two recent studies give us a less than rosy angle. In the first, a team of biologists, engineers and material scientists at Brown University examined graphene’s potential toxicity in human cells. They found that the jagged edges of graphene nanoparticles, super sharp and super strong, easily pierced through cell membranes in human lung, skin and immune cells, suggesting the potential to do serious damage in humans and other animals.

"These materials can be inhaled unintentionally, or they may be intentionally injected or implanted as components of new biomedical technologies," said Robert Hurt, professor of engineering and one of the study’s authors. "So we want to understand how they interact with cells once inside the body."

Another study by a team from University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering examined how graphene oxide nanoparticles might interact with the environment if they found their way into surface or ground water sources.

The team found that in groundwater sources, where there’s little organic material and the water has a higher degree of hardness, graphene oxide nanoparticles tended to become less stable and would eventually settle out or be removed in sub-surface environments.

But in surface water such as lakes or rivers, where there’s more organic material and less hardness, the particles stayed much more stable and showed a tendency to travel further, particularly under the surface.

So a spill of these kinds of nanoparticles would appear to have the potential to cause harm to organic matter, plants, fish, animals, and humans. The affected area could be quick to spread, and could take some time to become safe again.

"The situation today is similar to where we were with chemicals and pharmaceuticals 30 years ago," said the paper’s co-author Jacob D. Lanphere. "We just don’t know much about what happens when these engineered nanomaterials get into the ground or water. So we have to be proactive so we have the data available to promote sustainable applications of this technology in the future."

At this stage, the Material Safety Data Sheet governing the industrial use of graphene is incomplete. It’s listed as a potential irritant of skin and eyes, and potentially hazardous to breathe in or ingest. No information is available on whether it has carcinogenic effects or potential developmental toxicity.

But researchers from the first study point out that this is a material in its infancy, and as a man-made material, there are opportunities at this early stage to examine and understand the potential harmful properties of graphene and try to engineer them out. We’ve got a few years yet before graphene really starts being a big presence in our lives, so the challenge is set to work out how to make it as safe as possible for ourselves and our planet.

The Brown University research was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The UC Riverside paper was published in a special issue of the journal Environmental Engineering Science.

Sources: Brown University, UC Riverside

Secondary source:

Climate Change and the Medical Analogy

 

I’ve often used the insurance analogy to promote action in response to the threat of climate change: since the potential exists for a fire to damage or burn down your home, you’ve probably taken out fire insurance along with removing some of things that might cause the fire and, perhaps, have placed a fire extinguisher or two around. In climate change parlance, these are forms of mitigation and adaptation.

And that’s in response to the mere threat of a problem, not the reality of an oncoming fire. In the case of climate change, according to the IPCC and others, we’ve moved from threat to actual occurrence.

But perhaps there’s a better analogy. At a recent New School conference (and this makes two successive posts emerging out of conferences at The New School, where I teach), Paul C. Stern drew a medical analogy. Climate scientists, he said, could be seen as the equivalent of medical doctors diagnosing a patient, with the patient being the planet. Expanding the analogy, humanity is the guardian of the planet. Having sought multiple opinions, the vast consensus is that the patient is suffering from “a serious progressive disease” -- anthropocentric climate change -- and we, as guardians, need to address the problem.

As with medical diagnoses, one can treat causes or symptoms. With climate change, addressing the causes is termed mitigation, as opposed to addressing the symptoms, which is adaptation. Typically it’s better to work toward mitigation since, if is successful, adaptation is unnecessary. However we don’t know whether it’s too late to effectively prevent catastrophic climate change impacts, and that means we need to work on both mitigation and adaptation.

These metaphors are needed because, as more than one speaker at the conference noted, many people have a hard time getting their heads around the issues of climate change. As Columbia Earth Institute prof Elke Weber stated in the opening panel, “we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the required response.” There are a multitude of goals involved, some of which are conflicting and one result is that we don’t feel in control. In a line I especially liked, she said “there are no silver bullets, only silver buckshot.” Which is another way of saying we need to pursue both mitigation and adaptation.

In the concluding panel, NYU Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy Dale Jamieson expanded on the difficulty we have grasping the complexity and urgency of global warming. “[Climate change] is not just a really hard problem, but an unprecedented problem.” We try to “fit it into boxes,” but because it is unprecedented, that doesn’t often work.

These analogy “boxes” may not fit perfectly, but the fact that climate change is such a “wicked problem” makes analogies all the more important in enabling us to deal with the problem.

A version of this post originally appeared in EcoOptimism.com.

 

Canopy: A Curated Site That Finds the Best Stuff You Can Buy on Amazon

 

All this stuff’s on Amazon? Whaaaat? Photo Illustration: WIRED

Amazon is a great place to shop. It is not a great place to browse. The downside of having an inventory that spans everything from spatulas to stuffed animals to micro SD cards is that it inevitably becomes a destination for buying those sorts of humdrum products, not a place you go to discover cool new ones.

Buried deep in its massive catalog, though, Amazon does indeed have all sorts of nice stuff. Canopy was built to help you find it.

Created by a group of former Google designers without any official affiliation to Amazon, Canopy is a curated storefront trading exclusively in beautiful products that happen to be sold on Amazon.com. It’s the same type of fare you might expect to find on sites like Svpply or Uncrate: well-designed watches, bowls, knives, stools and blankets. But where those sorts of sites so often lead to 404 pages and out-of-stock listings, Canopy comes with a built-in guarantee: everything you see is not only available to buy with a few clicks but is also eligible for free 2-day shipping with your Prime account. Online shoppers with little self-control, beware.

Treating Products Like Works of Art

The idea to build a shopping layer on top of Amazon took shape around a simple realization: while Amazon’s back-end can’t be beat, its front-end is a total mess. “We all prefer to buy things on Amazon to just about anywhere else,” says Brian Armstrong, one of the designers who co-founded the site. “Amazon has a great infrastructure to deliver products. But they’re much less involved in the kind of questions of taste around products, and how to best provide context that’s going to make you feel special when you’re buying it. These are areas we think are super important.”

Canopy: a boutique store where everything’s eligible for Prime shipping. Image: Canopy

Taste is the first filter for the stuff you’ll find on Canopy. Every one of the 7,000-some products currently on the site was hand-picked by Canopy’s five-person staff. They are, by and large, things you would not expect to find on Amazon. Visiting the site for the first time can be surprising. The real life equivalent would be like walking into a boutique store, finding a nice throw pillow, and realizing upon check-out that the inventory room in the back is actually a fully stocked Walmart.

But Canopy’s not just concerned with curation. It’s also an effort to change how these products are being presented. On Amazon, Armstrong points out, every product is shuffled into the same homogenized product page. “I recently bought a sim card adapter on Amazon–some cheap, $2 plastic thing, and the detail page for that is exactly same as an iPad or a beautiful piece of furniture,” he says. Even the nicest, most thoughtfully made objects lose some luster under the fluorescent glare of Amazon’s sterile virtual shelves. “They’re not treated with the respect that they deserve,” Armstrong explains.

Canopy’s product page, by comparison, is much cleaner–and much more deferential to the product itself. It shows a photo, a few related items, comments that have been left by Canopy members, and a prominent link to Amazon. According to Armstrong, the idea is to treat each product like a piece of art.

To this end, Canopy puts special care into product photography. It’s one place where Amazon’s disinterested approach to its inventory is occasionally made plain. Armstrong remembers seeing a nice mortal and pestle set in a New York Times gift guide last holiday season, accompanied by a beautiful photograph the Times itself had commissioned. Out of curiosity, Armstrong checked to see if it was on Amazon. It was–with a 50 x 50 pixel image, blown-up to a point of near indecipherability. “It looked terrible,” he recalls.

To avoid this sort of mess, Canopy manually curates the image for every product it adds to the site. The team could even start doing product photography of its own for future sections of the site.

The idea is to treat each product like a work of art. Image: Canopy

Giving Amazon a New Face

Canopy recently opened up to the public, but it’s still figuring out what exactly the experience should entail. Currently, the default view is a popular page, where products are algorithmically surfaced based on the number of users who have recommended them. You can also browse by category or search if you’ve got something in mind. The next step is figuring out how to get people to come back to the site.

“We think of Canopy like a museum of amazing products where all of the products are available to buy right now,” Armstrong says. “It’s similar to the MOMA store in some way. And I think right now we’ve built the MOMA store. What we haven’t built are the exhibits.” Amazon doesn’t have any trouble bringing buyers back to the site; we head there by reflex when we need a book, or a spatula, or a SIM card adapter. One challenge Canopy faces is figuring out how to draw people back to their less-expansive offerings.

The big question, of course, is how Amazon feels about a bunch of upstarts building a museum store on top of its infrastructure. Apparently, totally fine. Armstrong met with a group of Amazon execs early in the development of the site and received their blessing. After all, while Canopy’s referral links will net its creators a small percentage of every transaction, the site ultimately serves to drive buyers to Amazon itself.

There’s a chance, however, that Canopy could ultimately help Amazon in ways that go beyond its discovery problems. Armstrong says he’s already been contacted by a number of companies who don’t normally associate with Amazon. Where their brands don’t necessarily align with Amazon’s, they might well be a good fit for Canopy. Armstrong had just had a conversation with an L.A.-based essential ware outfit earlier this month. “They had never actually considered shipping on Amazon before,” he says, “but they were willing to go through the process of getting their products on Amazon in order to be on Canopy.”

By offering an alternative to Amazon’s unglamorous virtual shelves, in other words, Canopy could actually help bring new products into the ecosystem. In that sense, a prettier face for the world’s biggest virtual store could be something everyone welcomes.

 

A Razor That Reaches Every Weird Spot on Your Face

 

 

Photo: Courtesy of Gillette

Gillette’s new FlexBall razor may be the first razor designed to eliminate craning your neck and making dumb faces while shaving.

Rather than add yet another blade to its shaving cartridges, the FlexBall features a new handle design. The key addition is a more nimble pivoting head, one that swings side to side with a 24-degree range of motion and works with the company’s existing ProGlide blade cartridges.

The FlexBall isn’t literally a ball joint, but it behaves like one. The dual-hinge system–a side-to-side pivot beneath the traditional tilting blade mechanism–allows the blade to stay in contact with skin more regularly, sort of like a car with an independent suspension system.

“We shave in straight lines, but our faces aren’t flat,” says Stew Taub, director of Shave Care research and development at Gillette. “That causes the blade to miss contact, and men try to alter their faces to improve contact with the blade.”

The FlexBall’s more pliable design also means you don’t have to lift and reposition the razor as often. According to Taub, the average number of individual lifts and strokes per shave is around 150. Some 750-stroke shaves have even been documented. The new pivothead makes it more like shaving in cursive. Gillette says you can trim your entire face with a single meandering sweep of the new razor. That’s a unlikely shaving strategy, but it’s possible with this razor.

Gillette says FlexBall has been in development for five years, time needed to nail down the right range of motion and resistance for the razor. Because no one shaves the same way–and no two faces are the same–it took several years to get it right. The company leaned heavily on computer simulations and high-speed cameras that helped capture data on peoples’ shaving habits in Gillette’s labs.

“For me, the problem area is under the chin,” says Taub. “Every guy’s face is different, and we all use different pressure on the razor. Our hair density is different. Whether you shave in the shower or at the sink, how well you hydrate hair–all these things make a huge difference in the shave. What the FlexBall does, you don’t have to go over tricky areas as much. Overall it will lead to a lower probability of cutting yourself or missing hairs.”

Video: Courtesy of Gillette. GIF: WIRED

In my experience, the new razor’s fluidity and flexibility does seem to come in handy when you’re transitioning from your jowls to under your jawbone or shaving along the cheekbone–prime areas to end up dotted with little squares of toilet paper. But old habits die hard, and it’s tough to get used to just shaving a large patch in one fell swoop; you’ll probably find yourself lifting the razor as often as ever to start. Is it the most revolutionary thing to ever happen in the world of shaving? No, but the experience did feel smoother than shaving with my normal razor. It is an improvement.

Still, there’s a bit of controversy surrounding the new system. New York Magazine’s Kevin Roose calls FlexBall an example of “everything that’s wrong with American innovation,” mostly because Gillette added predictable stuff like another pivot point instead of adding cooler stuff like lasers. And Quartz’s Gideon Lichfield compares the new razor to a duck’s penis.

The main points of contention are that the razor industry is always up to something, and that something has everything to do with selling more blades. In recent years, new companies such as Dollar Shave Club have established themselves as cheaper, hassle-free alternatives to the traditional routine of selling cheap handles and pricey cartridges. Coming from the old guard, a system like FlexBall seems like another forced-upgrade gimmick.

But beyond the smoother-feeling shave, there’s evidence that Gillette’s new tricks go beyond that.  It has responded to Dollar Shave Club’s model by launching its own lower-priced blade-subscription service. And the fact that the FlexBall razor uses existing blades is a welcome oddity in the world of razors, where new systems are often introduced simply to sell newer, pricier cartridges. According to Taub, the new handles will do a better job with the same blades.

“We knew from the beginning that we wanted it to be compatible with (ProGlide blades), because it took us nearly a decade to develop ProGlide,” says Taub. “We knew we already have the best cartridge technology. But we needed to help the cartridge work better. That’s a handle problem, not a cartridge problem.”

400 Years of Beautiful, Historical, and Powerful Globes

 

 

Globes

 

U.S. Puzzles Over What to Do about E-Cigarettes

 

 

Federal regulators propose new rules to answer long-burning questions about e-cig

Apr 24, 2014 |By Dina Fine Maron and Larry Greenemeier

Image of NJOY e-cigarette on display at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show, courtesy of Larry Greenemeier.

Electronic cigarettes may not generate any smoke, but their very presence in the marketplace gives off no shortage of political heat.
The slim devices that give smokers a nicotine fix devoid of cancer-causing tar have flourished in the U.S. market during the past several years even as the science on their long-term health risks has remained unsettled. Free of the restrictions that impede their tobacco-laden cousins from appearing in television ads or being puffed in public places, electronic cigarettes have become a multibillion-dollar industry that has become a lucrative new product line for Big Tobacco.
Regulators are still wrestling with whether electronic nicotine delivery systems should be treated as a health hazard, like tobacco, or as a tolerable alternative to the mix of poisonous vapors contained in every puff of cigarette smoke. The long-awaited expansion of federal regulations by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the electronic devices unveiled April 24 would not allow e-cigarettes free rein, yet neither do much to quell the industry’s growth.
The FDA wants to extend the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act to give the agency the authority to regulate e-cigarettes as well as cigars, pipe tobacco, nicotine gels, water pipe (or hookah) tobacco and dissolvables not already under the its authority (pdf). “This is an important moment for consumer protection and a significant proposal that if finalized as written would bring FDA oversight to many new tobacco products,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said Thursday in an agency-issued statement.
The new rules would reinforce actions that were already being taken by more than 30 states to block minors from buying e-cigarettes. The rules would likewise require health warnings on packaging and prohibit vending machine sales, unless they take place in a facility—such as a bar—that’s off-limits to underage smokers.
The inclusion of e-cigarettes under the 2009 law, however, does not ban TV or radio advertising or online sales of the devices. Nor does it restrict e-cigarette makers from selling kid-friendly flavors such as bubblegum or watermelon—a sticking point for public health advocates who say that such targeted offers are designed to attract youth users. With e-cigarettes covered by the law, the FDA could pursue such restrictions in the future, although they would require separate rule-making and public comment. “FDA is currently assessing available research regarding the impact of flavors on tobacco product use and is funding research on this issue,” according to an agency spokeswoman.
Hamburg touted “science-based” product regulation as a way to protect consumers and reduce the public health burden that tobacco creates. Her statement is regulatory speak for justifying the agency’s decision to give itself the regulatory flexibility to move forward with tougher regulations if studies underway reveal that inhaled e-cigarette vapors pose significant health hazards, but also to tread lightly if these concerns prove unfounded.
Although most public health experts agree that e-cigarettes are a healthier alternative to conventional cigarettes, emerging science is trying to gauge how much better they really are. An article in the May issue of Scientific American notes that researchers attempting to answer questions about the health and safety of the devices are struggling even to accurately measure their ingredients and by-products. That’s due, in part, to the lack of quality control over the devices, which leads to highly variable amounts of nicotine and other ingredients.
Although a typical e-cigarette contains nicotine, flavoring and a syrupy synthetic liquid called propylene glycol, it is the other unknowns—such as the by-products from heating e-cigarettes and the solution inside them—that are sparking the greatest concern. Nicotine acts as a stimulant that can be highly addictive and emerging research also links it to an impaired immune system. Propylene glycol, meanwhile, has FDA approval for use in certain foods and drinks as well as soaps. Yet it is unclear what the health impacts are of inhaling this chemical directly into the lungs. Various studies suggest the vapors from lighting e-cigarette ingredients together contain several cancer-causing substances. And data suggesting that the devices appeal to youths and lead to more instances of nicotine overdoses also raise questions about the long-term impact of “vaping.”
This is the FDA’s second attempt to regulate e-cigarettes. An earlier effort to oversee them as drug-delivery devices was scuttled after a leading e-cigarette company sued the agency saying that the sleek products that vaporize nicotine were not medical devices at all but rather were similar to tobacco products. A federal appeals court agreed, concluding that the devices offered similar recreational benefits to a cigarette.
The FDA’s decision Thursday did little to assuage concerns about their unknown ramifications. Although e-cig companies are not allowed to market their products as smoking-cessation devices (because such claims would mean they lead to being regulated like nicotine patches), many companies do tap dance around the issue, marketing themselves as the direct alternative to harmful cigarettes. The agency’s move puts it in a position of being ready to pounce if new evidence reveals unsuspected harm from e-cigarettes. “The FDA wants additional tools to protect the public health in today’s rapidly evolving tobacco marketplace,” Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in an agency-issued statement.
The U.S. action comes on the heels of a decision by the European Parliament in February to issue new e-cig regulations that would standardize nicotine levels in e-cigarettes and require child-resistant packaging. (Like FDA’s action, decisions about regulating e-cig flavors was left to its member states, although new health warnings were mandated for all e-cigarettes.)
“Our firm recommendation is people need to get combusted tobacco products [out] of their lives,” Tim McAfee, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Office of Smoking and Health, told Scientific American in a recent interview. “We don’t think e-cigs are going away, what we can do is think about what we can do to minimize the danger.”

 

Always Dropping Your iPhone? This Handy Leash Is for You

 

Photo by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

Owners of Apple smartphones suffer one great indignity: Our most indispensable possession is small, frail, and slippery.

Such qualities often result in a $200 trip to the Genius Bar to replace a spider-cracked screen, or a scramble to file the proper insurance claim forms when you leave your phone in the back seat of a cab. There are few remedies. Adding an ergonomically intrusive case protects against damage, but still doesn’t mean you won’t lose the phone.

This is why the $35 Kenu Highline is compelling. It’s a coil leash that attaches to your iPhone. One end plugs into the charging port on the phone (Lightning or 30-pin), where its held in place by a thin, clear polycarbonate snap-on case. On the other end is a Kevlar loop that fastens to your belt loop, your jacket’s zipper, or just about anything.

In practice, the design makes sense—as long as a majority of your iPhone use happens within two feet (30 inches if you stretch it all the way) of your pocket, or wherever you attach the leash. For most folks, that means little functionality is lost.

In exchange for the safety gained, you lose the immediate flexibility to do things like set the phone on a dashboard mount or plug it into a speaker and leave it there. You have to unclip it first, and releasing the Lightning attachment becomes easy with a little practice.

Most importantly, though, using Highline’s leash means being comfortable with being the type of person who needs to have your mittens clipped to your jacket sleeves. When testing safety devices, we must often determine whether a product’s function justifies the sacrifice in dignity that almost always follows. As someone who would rather be late for an appointment than awkwardly run after a bus or ever let another human see me on a kick-scooter, my vanity can accommodate the Highline. The thought of never again needing to deal with a shattered screen or the hassle of device replacement is worth the relinquished pride.

Of course, the other option is to be an adult and use the care required when handling a small glass rectangle, but I don’t know if that will ever happen for me.

The Highline is currently available for preorder for the iPhone 5 and 5s. It costs $35 and ships at the end of April. The 30-pin version for older iPhones ships immediately and costs $20.

Photo by Josh Valcarcel/WIRED

See This Aircraft? It’s Called A C-5 Galaxy And What’s Inside It Will Blow Your Mind.

 

April 28, 2014 Stories

Do you know what a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy is? If not, there is just one thing you need to know about this aircraft: it’s huge. It’s so big and bad, it’s almost hard to wrap your mind around it.

The C-5 Galaxy is a large military transport aircraft built by Lockheed. The United States Air Force uses the Galaxy to carry large and insanely heavy cargo that will absolutely blow your mind.

This is what the C-5 Galaxy looks like.

 

This is what the C-5 Galaxy looks like on the inside.

 

Tanks? No problem. This kind of largo cargo is easy for the Galaxy to transport.

 

This plane has the largest lift capacity of any US transport aircraft.

 

It has the 3rd largest lift capacity in the world.

 

It is able to carry 122 tons on 2 decks, lower deck for cargo and the upper deck has seating for 73 passengers.

 

A C-5 Galaxy can hold 10 light armored vehicles, which weigh about 12 tons each.

 

A Galaxy can carry an A-10 Warthog with the wings and tail detached.

 

The plane can also carry a Mark 5 Special Operations boat. The entire boat.

 

And if you want to get meta, it can also carry a C-130 transport aircraft.

Why Does the Balloon Move Forward in an Accelerating Car?

 

I love this experiment. It’s a classic really. Also, Destin (from Smarter Every Day) does a great job making it interesting to everyone.

 

Using Fake Forces

Let me point out one minor complaint. You have to be very careful with the words “move” and “fast”. Does the balloon lean forward when the car is going very fast? Not always. If the car is traveling at a constant speed of 100 mph, the balloon should just point straight up. If the car is going at a very fast speed of 100 mph and then slams on the brakes to reduce the speed to 80 mph (still very fast), the balloon would lean back. The key here isn’t speed at all. The key is the acceleration.

So, the car is accelerating forward and the balloon also leans forward. Why? Well, Destin gives a very nice explanation focusing on the air in the van. The air in the car has a higher density in the back of the vehicle than it does in the front. This means that the net force on the balloon due to collisions with the air will be in the forward direction.

Really, this is an interesting idea. Just think about gas in a stationary and non-accelerating car. The gravitational force pulls down on each molecule of nitrogen and oxygen. However, all the gas doesn’t just fall down to the floor because of collisions with other gas particles. In order to keep particles up at the top of the car, there needs to be more collisions at the bottom of the car in order to support both the lower and upper gas. This gives a greater gas density at the bottom.

Now consider an accelerating car. The back wall of the car will accelerate forward and push on the gas in the forward direction. This will cause more collisions in the forward direction with the rest of the gas. If you could look at individual gas molecules, it would look just like the car is tilted up a little bit in a slightly larger gravitational field.

This brings me to my favorite explanation of the balloon’s motion. Fake forces. What is a fake force? Well, you know about the momentum principle, right? It says that a net force changes the momentum of an object and forces are interactions between two objects (like the gravitational interaction between a ball and the Earth). However, this momentum principle only works if you are viewing the object from a non-accelerating reference frame (inertial reference frame). But what if you want to use the momentum principle in an accelerating mini-van? You can still do this, but you have to add a fake force. By fake, I mean that it isn’t a force between two interacting object. This fake force would have the form:

This fake force is what you feel when you are sitting in an accelerating car. Actually, that’s not true – you can’t feel this force because it’s fake. However, we humans can’t tell the difference between an acceleration and the gravitational force and this agrees with Einstein’s equivalence principle which says that a gravitational field is just like an acceleration.

Let’s start by looking at the forces on a chunk of air in this accelerating mini-van. Here is a view from the accelerating frame right when the car starts to accelerate (and the air has a normal distribution).

With this fake force in the horizontal direction, the piece of air will start to move towards the back of the vehicle. This air and other chunks of air will keep moving back until they interact with the back wall. Soon, there will be more air in the back of the car than in the front. This will change the distribution air and also the direction of the buoyancy force. The new buoyancy force will stop the chunks of air from accelerating with respect to the reference frame. Here is the new force diagram.

But what does this have to do with a balloon? The same buoyancy forces that push on the air push on the balloon (it’s the same air after all). That means the balloon would have forces like this:

Since the balloon has a low mass, it needs an extra force (the tension from the string) to keep it stationary (really, this is why balloons are so fun). But you can see, the balloon leans forward because of this buoyancy force.

Could You Use the Balloon Angle to Measure the Acceleration?

Yes. This would be a simple accelerometer – just like the one in your smart phone (except your smart phone doesn’t have a balloon inside it). You could also use a hanging weight to determine the acceleration, but this isn’t as nice. First, the hanging weight swings in the opposite direction as the acceleration and second, it won’t stop swinging. The balloon as a large drag force on it compared to its mass that prevents excessive swinging.

The balloon accelerometer isn’t very portable. Here is one you can build yourself. Take a clear jelly jar (or something like that) and attach a cork to a string. I then drilled a hole through the lid of the jar and mounted the string then sealed it with glue. After you fill the jar up with water, put the lid back on (all the way up with water with no air) and turn it upside down. Now, you should have a cork floating in water and held down by a string. Here is a picture.

You should build one of these. They are simple and very easy to use. It’s very fun to hold it in your hand while spinning in a circle. As the jar moves in a circle, it accelerates towards the center (towards you). The cork then leans in towards you also. Great personal demo for kids and adults.

But wait! How about an even more sophisticated version? Here is a plastic ball in a spherical flask (that probably has a technical name). The ball in this glass sphere can lean without hitting the wall. I had to add an anchor for the string so that the mounting point would be in the center of the sphere. Here is a picture.

But how can you use this to determine the acceleration? I’m not sure if it’s absolutely true (but it should be close) that the floating ball points in the direction of the vector sum of the negative of the gravitational field and the acceleration. I can draw that as:

If the acceleration vector is perpendicular to the gravitational field, then I can solve for the magnitude of the acceleration.

Or maybe you could put some marks on the glass sphere for an acceleration of 1/2 g at 26.6°, 1 g at 45°, 2 g’s at 63.4° and so on. Now you can go drive around and measure some accelerations.

Google prepara seu carro sem motorista para andar nas cidades

 

Gigante de buscas publicou vídeo em que veículos autônomos rodam por Mountain View, enfrentando riscos como ciclistas, pedestres, e zonas de construção.

Quando os carros sem motorista do Google foram vistos pela primeira vez em rodovias da Califórnia em 2010, estavam na parte fácil do processo. No último ano, a gigante de biscas tem focado seus esforços em levar os veículos para o tipo mais complicado de via: as ruas das cidades.

O Google afirma que seus carros autônomos já rodaram milhares de quilômetros em ruas de Mountain View, na Califórnia, desde agosto de 2012, aprendendo assim a dirigirem na cidade.

É difícil comparar os riscos potenciais que um veículo pode encontrar em rodovias e na cidade. Cruzamentos, pedestres, veículos parados em fila dupla, zonas com bras, e ciclistas, contribuem para esses perigos em potencial da cidade.

A gigante de buscas diz ainda ter um longo caminho para ensinar seus carros sobre os riscos das ruas das cidades. Mas em um novo post no seu blog, liberado junto com um vídeo no YouTube (veja abaixo), a empresa mostrou seus carros sem motorista conseguindo alguns feitos notáveis na navegação urbana.

Por exemplo, o Google mostrou seu carro autônomo identificando sinais manuais de ciclistas e antecipando os próximos movimentos dessas pessoas em bicicletas, como virar à esquerda.

Se o carro sem motorista estiver tentando virar à direita em uma intersecção, por exemplo, ele pode detectar pedestres e ciclistas e esperar antes de fazer a curva. O sistema do veículo pode até captar o farol dos ciclistas vindo de trás e esperar a bicicleta passar para continuar.

Além dos ciclistas, o Google mostrou seu carro autônomo passando por zonas de construção, mudando de faixa e seguindo os sinais e cones em laranja colocados na via. O veículo também consegui detectar outros veículos estacionados em fila dupla e então dar um espaço maior para evitar acidentes.

Por fim, o Google também mostrou o carro sem motorista lidando de forma segura com um cruzamento. No local, o veículo esperou até que outros carros na frente tivessem passado, antes de proceder.

O Google afirma que seus carros registraram cerca de 1,1 milhão de quilômetros autônomos desde o início do programa.

(Minha opinião: Isto não vai dar certo)

3 Frequently Asked Questions about Percentages

 

The Math Dude: Quick & Dirty Tips to Make Math Simpler

Apr 27, 2014 |By Jason Marshall

Scientific American presents Math Dude by Quick & Dirty Tips. Scientific American and Quick & Dirty Tips are both Macmillan companies.
This week's episode is a bit different. No, I'm not going to sing the whole audio podcast version showtune style. And no, as much as I'd love to, I'm not going to do the whole thing using my awesome British accent. Instead this week's show is the first in a new series of "Frequently Asked Question" episodes inspired by questions you've sent to mathdude@quickanddirtytips.com.
While I do read each and every email I receive, the truth is that there simply aren't enough hours in the day for me to respond to each question individually. But I've noticed a lot of commonality to many of your emails, which made me realize that we should dedicate one show each month entirely to your questions…and my answers. Up first today are your most frequently asked questions about percentages.

How Do You Calculate Percentage Increases?

Math fan Stephanie writes:
"How would I solve the following question: In the year 1986 the population of Elm Town increased from 900 to 981. What was the percent increase? How would I set that problem up to find the answer?"
This type of problem is all about finding what's called a percentage increase. A percentage increase is simply the amount—expressed as a percentage—that something has increased relative to its original value. If the price of something changes from $100 to $110, the price has increased by $110 - $100 = $10. So to find the percentage change, we just need to compare this $10 change with the original $100 price.
To do that we first need to find the ratio of the amount changed—that's $10—relative to the original value—that's $100. In this case that gives us a ratio of $10 / $100 = 0.1. If we then convert this fraction into a percentage (which we can do simply by multiplying the decimal value by 100), we find that the percentage change = 100 * fractional change = 100 * 0.1 = 10%.
Now let's look at the problem Stephanie brought up about the population of Elm Town increasing from 900 to 981. Since that's an increase in population of 81 people, the percentage change is 100 * (81 / 900) = 9%. There are many variations on this theme. For example, here's another question from math fan Teri that at first looks different, but is actually about the same underlying idea. Teri writes:
"If an employee earns $9 per hour and the supervisor wants to give the employee a raise of $3 per hour so in the end the employee will earn $12 per hour, what percentage of the current salary will the increase constitute?"
In this case, the employee's $9 salary increases by $3 up to $12. The ratio of the amount changed relative to the original value is $3 / $9 = 1/3 or 0.333…. If we convert this decimal into a percentage, we find that the percentage change is equal to 100 * 1/3 = 33 1/3%. A pretty hefty raise!

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