digital thoughts

If you have water (H2O), you can take just the oxygen (O2) from it. If you have Oxygen, can you take water from it? That would have been the fantastic innovation which could serve the entire humanity.

Many people claim that World War III will be triggered mainly because of water scarcity. Few brilliant scientists invented a method that would save this world from another war!

Aqua Sciences Inc, Florida, USA, invented the method to pull drinking water from the air, even in the driest parts of the world! Similar systems work effectively only in places with high humidity. The technology uses a blend of salts to collect water, then employs a combination of heat, chemistry and mechanics to extract the water from the salts. Click here to read more details about the technology behind this.

Many Indian state governments try to solve water problems by desalinating sea water. Desalination plants cost $1billion. Aqua science mechanism costs far less than that. Our state governments should seriously think about this new technology from Aqua Sciences.

Forty Finalists were chosen from thousands of middle school competitors in Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge (DCYSC). It’s amazing to see the level of thinking and creativity among these young children.

The DCYSC is designed to award students in the 5th through 8th grades for their knowledge of science and their ability to communicate effectively about science. First prize of $20,000 scholarship is awarded to Erik Gustafson who is just 11! He demonstrated the connection between acid rain and river stream.

Second prize winner is Katherine Strube, 14. She won $10,000 scholarship. She hypothesized that if power and/or water temperature is increased, the time it takes to produce hydrogen through electrolysis of water will decrease.

Third prize went to Ambrose Soehn, 14. His project is based on whether a natural polymer or a hybrid of natural and synthetic polymers could be made durable yet biodegradable.

Some of the projects done by other finalists are equally great. For example, take the project “The fertilizer effect on Vegetables” done by Samantha and Danielle. They did research on E-coli outbreak traceable to Spinach in 2006. They proved that cow manure or other fertilizers were the cause.

Muhammad, 13, did a project on how MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) affects our brain. If you like Indian/Chinese food that has high level MSG, you may want to take a look at his experiment.

Evan Cofer is just 13. He built three robots for his project and did research on optimal platform design for robots!

When her friends said “you are such a blonde”, Catherine Haber didn’t just scoff at that. She did research on how hair colour influences the perspective of other people. That landed her a spot in the group of finalists. Now, no one can tell her “You are such a blonde”! She is a brilliant blonde.

The research of Joshua Hammer, 14, will be of interest to many holistic healers in India and China. Many of these healers are quacks anyway. However, some of them are genuine. They practice magnetic therapy to heal the patients. Joshua proved the connection between magnetic field and cells. If you want to know more about this, click here.

If someone has celiac disease and can’t find tasty food while on gluten-free diet, he or she may accept the fact and live with that. Not Bethany Johnson. She studied nutrient data and created blended formulas that are gluten-free but taste well.

Indian American kid Rohit Kamat,13, did research on DHEA and won the spot in top 40. Five other Indian American Kids, Gokul Krishnan, Prithwis Mukhopadhyay, Shubha Raghvendra, Keshav Ramaswami and Prem Thottumkara also landed in top 40.

I personally like the project done by Keshav. He did research on how to stop the growth of cancer cells.

Many of us know places where the bacteria grow easily. How about the Doctor’s tie?! Benjamin Song, son of a doctor, found his father’s tie in the kitchen and was intrigued to do research on whether doctors’ ties carry more bacteria compared to the ties of professionals working in non-healthcare fields. Benjamin has to thank his father’s tie for landing in top 40!

Related Link: Profiles of top 40 in DCYSC

Do you know that an average person produces up to 300 watts of electricity during a 45 minute exercise session which is enough to power a washing machine for an hour?

A couple of smart PhD students created a prototype for a system that can harness electricity from exercise bikes, rowing machines, treadmills and cross-trainers and use it to power the gyms themselves. Gym equipment would be attached to generators or a central power source that could convert kinetic energy from movement into mechanical energy. I am sure gyms will be interested in any device that will save them even more money.

But it looks like such project already exists. Dr. Raj Pandian invented a Pandian seesaw which converts energy from children’s play. One to two minutes of playtime on seesaw can power a 20-watt light bulb for two to three minutes. South Africa has devised another way to harness the energy generated by kids playing on a merry-go-round.

In the 19th century itself, British jails forced prisoners to walk for hours on treadmills to create enough energy to grind grain to make bread for their rations. Apparently the prisoners detested going on the treadmill, but now people pay a lot of money to do the same thing and happily create electricity in the process. Interesting perspective!

I got these great pictures from my buddy. NASA’s STS-118 was a Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station flown by Space Shuttle Endeavour. STS-118 successfully lifted off on August 8, 2007 at Kennedy Space Center, Florida and landed at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center on August 21, 2007.

Look at the view and quality of these pictures, just breathtaking! These pictures are adjusted in size to fit this page. Click here to view these pictures in actual size.

Related Link: Space Shuttle Endeavour

A “GPS shield” that works in real time could save lives by quickly warning of potential tsunamis.

The German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) is being developed by a team led by Jörn Lauterjung of the National Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. Unlike the earlier methods which detect seismic waves transmitted through the Earth’s crust to distant receivers, the new ground-based system takes real-time measurements of vertical ground motion – the type of fault movement more likely to produce tsunamis (Ref: American Geophysical Union)

The conception aims at achieving indicators of a tsunami and its dimension by the analysis of different measurements at a very early stage. While a tsunami wave in the wideness of the sea spreads out with a speed up to 700 km/h, there will be time elapse of about 20 minutes between the wave’s generation and the first contact with the Indonesian mainland.

In this timeframe the sensors, which will be installed at different locations inside the considered propagation areas, are able to rapidly detect deviations from normality and send the alert signals.

To protect the Indian Ocean region the proposed shield would include an array of 18 GPS stations.

If this system works as expected, this is god-send for all regions affected by Indonesian earth quakes. Big Cheers to GITEWS team!

Powerful earthquakes struck Indonesia for a third day Friday, terrorizing thousands of people who slept outside in fear of tsunami and falling debris. Seismologists warned that the worst may be yet to come. They are afraid that powerful aftershocks like the ones happened today will lead to a “big one”.

Read more about this in Yahoo.

This is a bad news for all Asian countries and Australia. Definitely a bad news for Tamilnadu and Andhra coastal areas. So, watch out if you live in those areas.

A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity.

The “brain-machine interface” developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain’s blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

A cap connects by optical fibers to a mapping device, which links, in turn, to a toy train set via a control computer and motor during one recent demonstration at Hitachi’s Advanced Research Laboratory in Hatoyama, just outside Tokyo.

“Take a deep breath and relax,” said Kei Utsugi, a researcher, while demonstrating the device. At his prompting, a reporter did simple calculations in her head, and the train sprang forward – apparently indicating activity in the brain’s frontal cortex, which handles problem solving.

Activating that region of the brain – by doing sums or singing a song – is what makes the train run, according to Utsugi. When one stops the calculations, the train stops, too.

See the video of the demonstration by clicking here.

Some companies are developing a laser called “Ultrashort Pulse (USP) Lasers”. Barry Schuler, the former CEO of AOL, started a company called “Raydiance” to use USP laser technology.

Barry claims that USP laser can cut metal, kill cancer tumors, heal burns and may even replace big fat saw ““ without generating any heat.

Scientists are excited about this “no-heat” thing. This is important because heat will kill healthy tissues also when you focus laser on tissues that need to be removed.

Scientists have long known that USP lasers could do cool things, literally, by cutting without generating heat. But the lasers’ complexity and large size made the technology impractical. Now that it’s a little bigger than a breadbox, researchers want to use them to kill cancer tumors, cut metals, perform cornea transplants and to even remove tattoos.

The laser pulse is on for such a short time (one-millionth of a nanosecond), there’s no chance for heat conduction into the healthy tissue nearby. The result is a clean cut that heals quickly.

Have you ever struggled to do parallel parking? I do, every time. I came across a good article about parallel parking from fearlessdriver.com. It has some practical tips about doing parallel parking without bumping into other cars.

If someone can write the tutorial about how to drive in Bangalore’s messy traffic, that would be nice!

National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a corporation in the US whose members serve as advisers to the government on science, engineering and medicine. Getting into NAS is a big deal for all scientists.

Recently, two Indian Americans are inducted into the prestigious NAS in Washington. In recognition of their distinguished achievements in original research, physicist Katepalli Sreenivasan and agricultural economist Prabhu Pingali were among the 18 foreign associates included in the academy last week.

Sreenivasan, a world-renowned experimental physicist whose major fields of interest are fluid dynamics and turbulence, is currently a professor of physics and mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland where he also directs the Institute for Physical Science and Technology.

Pingali got his Ph.D. in Economics from North Carolina State University and is the director of the agricultural and development economics division of the food and agriculture organisation of the United Nations, an ethnic Indian newspaper, IndoLink reported.

Pingali has devoted his entire career to agriculture. His research and advisory work focused on technological change, environmental externalities and agricultural development policy. He has authored (or co-authored) nine books and 90 journal articles and book chapters.