Heaving Dead Cats » neat

Liquid Glass Is Groovy!

Neece — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:03:13 +0000

Happy Darwin Day everyone! Today is Darwin’s birthday and in honor of him, I thought I’d post this article about Liquid Glass, which could possibly be the coolest nanotech material I’ve seen in some time. I think it’s so cool mainly because of its versatility and the fact that it’s already in use in Germany, the UK and Turkey.

Why am I talking about nanotech on Darwin’s birthday? If you think about it, without evolution, we wouldn’t be able to manipulate our world so deftly and with such finesse. About 195,000 years ago homo sapiens first appeared in the fossil record. We started leaving Africa about 70,000 years ago, and migrated as far as the Americas 14,500 years ago.

A mere 10,000 years ago, we were mostly hunter-gatherers in nomadic groups. The first proto-states were developed only 6,000 years ago. Think of that! Look how far we’ve come in such a short time!

Think of how we lived just 100 years ago in 1910.

By 1910 many suburban homes were wired up with power and new electronic gadgets.
Vacuum cleaners and washing machines had just become commercially available, though still expensive for middle class folks
The telephone was new, and millions of American homes were connected by manual switchboard
People relied on the paper for their news, but radio technology was in its infancy
The age of the airship was in full swing. Only 7 years previously, the Wright brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk
Henry Ford introduced the Model T 2 years before and sold about 10,000 of them this year
Advances in the use of gases meant the first electric refrigerators and air conditioning units.
Neon lighting was debuted in Paris
Inventions included: escalators, teabags, cellophane, instant coffee and disposable razor blades
Women still had another 3 years of corsets

Things they didn’t have in 1910:

stainless steel
zippers
the modern bra
the modern band-aid
the pop-up toaster
sliced bread

But let’s get back to Liquid Glass. You spray it on. It’s transparent, non-toxic and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat and bacterial infections. It’s flexible and breathable, which means it can be used on all kinds of products.

The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.

Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a family-owned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption.

The liquid glass spray produces a water-resistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable. The coating is environmentally harmless and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids. UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase will be coated with liquid glass.

Food processing companies in Germany have already carried out trials of the spray, and found sterile surfaces that usually needed to be cleaned with strong bleach to keep them sterile needed only a hot water rinse if they were coated with liquid glass. The levels of sterility were higher for the glass-coated surfaces, and the surfaces remained sterile for months.

Other organizations, such as a train company and a hotel chain in the UK, and a hamburger chain in Germany, are also testing liquid glass for a wide range of uses. A year-long trial of the spray in a Lancashire hospital also produced “very promising” results for a range of applications including coatings for equipment, medical implants, catheters, sutures and bandages. The war graves association in the UK is investigating using the spray to treat stone monuments and grave stones, since trials have shown the coating protects against weathering and graffiti. Trials in Turkey are testing the product on monuments such as the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara.

The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites. Other vineyard applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant. McClelland said you can “pour a bottle of wine over an expensive silk shirt and it will come right off”.

In the home, spray-on glass would eliminate the need for scrubbing and make most cleaning products obsolete. Since it is available in both water-based and alcohol-based solutions, it can be used in the oven, in bathrooms, tiles, sinks, and almost every other surface in the home, and one spray is said to last a year.

Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most important nanotechnology product to emerge to date. It will be available in DIY stores in Britain soon, with prices starting at around £5 ($8 US). Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete.

Thanks, PhysOrg

A bit more info on it:

The flexible and breathable glass coating is approximately 100 nanometres thick (500 times thinner than a human hair), and so it is completely undetectable. It is food safe, environmentally friendly (winner of the Green Apple Award) and it can be applied to almost any surface within seconds . When coated, all surfaces become easy to clean and anti-microbially protected (Winner of the NHS Smart Solutions Award ). Houses, cars, ovens, wedding dress or any other protected surface become stain resistant and can be easily cleaned with water ; no cleaning chemicals are required. Amazingly a 30 second DIY application to a sink unit will last for a year or years, depending on how often it is used. But it does not stop there – the coatings are now also recognised as being suitable for agricultural and in-vivo application. Vines coated with SiO2 don’t suffer from mildew, and coated seeds grow more rapidly without the need for anti-fungal chemicals. This will result in farmers in enjoying massively increased yields.

…The really clever part is that there are no added nano-particles , resins or additives- the coatings form and bond due to quantum forces. Our research informs us that in all probability, we offer the most versatile coating in the world. This technology is now available for domestic use in Germany. Full scale retail availability in the UK will commence in early 2010.

Nanopool

FREE Scanning Electron Micrographs of Just About Anything

Johnny — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:35:45 +0000

An interesting offer from ASPEX
November 10, 2009 2:54 PM – by PZ Myers

I had my doubts about this; I got an offer from ASPEX corporation to let people get free scanning electron micrographs of just about anything. They make a desktop SEM (Scanning Electron Micrograph), and all you have to do is fill out a form and mail it in with your sample of a dead bug or a microchip or bacon, and presto, within a few weeks they’ll have it scanned in and the image available on their website.

I asked them if they knew how many readers I have, and they said no problem, they can handle it.

Huh.

Well, you heard them. Scavenge your trash cans, dig into your local sources of vermin and oddments, and send them in. I’m thinking this could be really fun for any school teachers out there — you could have the whole class looking for interesting specimens to zoom in on. You can see their current galleries for ideas.

Follow the instructions here to get your dead bugs and rotten food scanned for free.

If you do send something in to get scanned be sure to note that you found them via PZ; and be sure to come back here and share your scan with the rest of us!

Duelity: A Different Take on Creation Versus Evolution

Johnny — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:17:27 +0000

Duelity provides a different take on creation versus evolution. With a slightly humorous, and definitely ironic reversal of roles. The creation story is told in a very scientific manner, while the big bang and evolution story is told in a poetic religious manner.

Besides this seeming like a fairly unique idea, the creators have made the two videos so that you can watch them separately, or at the same time.

Thus: Duelity
Check it out!

Swearing Brings Pain Relief

Neece — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 04:07:32 +0000

I may be an atheist with a heart of gold, but I have a tendency to swear a lot. I tone it down for family events and around kids, but otherwise I love to swear. It enhances what I’m saying and it feels good. Plus, why not? They are simply words. I think it’s silly that some words are taboo. Letters strung together and given a special dirty meaning, verbalized or written, are somehow wrong and bad? That’s so ridiculous to me, such a stupid effect of religion.

Well, now I have a new reason to swear profusely if I get hurt. A study was released last week in the journal NeuroReport about Swearing Actually Increasing Pain Tolerance. Over 60 volunteers put their hands in ice cold water and kept it there as long as they could. They were to say either a neutral word or a swear word of their choice. When saying the swear word, they endured an average of 40 more seconds of the ice water and reported less pain.

Still no one is exactly sure how swearing has such physical effects on the body, but it’s speculated that the brain circuitry linked to emotion is involved. But earlier studies have shown that regular language relies on the outer bit on the left hemisphere of the brain, while swearing relies on evolutionarily ancient structures buried deep inside the right half.

Also noteworthy was that the heart rate of the volunteers rose when they swore, which the researchers say suggests that the amygdala was activated. The amygdala is a group of neurons in the brain that can trigger a fight or flight response in which our heart rate climbs and we become less sensitive to pain.

A psychologist who has studied profanities for the past 35 years says about swearing, “It allows us to vent or express anger, joy, surprise, happiness. It’s like the horn on your car, you can do a lot of things with that, it’s built into you.”

Just be careful to not go to the extreme and hotline into your brain’s emotional system in a situation like road rage, where you escalate to physical violence. (of course)

There’s one catch though. The more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become. And without emotion, all that’s left is the swear word itself, which is unlikely to soothe your pain.

Heaving Dead Cats Now Available On Kindle!

Neece — Wed, 20 May 2009 02:06:40 +0000

This is just the coolest thing. I got Heaving Dead Cats published to Kindle! Now if you have a Kindle, you can read HDC on it. If you feel so inclined, you can go there and write a review or add some keywords. I would be so grateful if you did, but no pressure.

Ok, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Tweenbots Show How Wonderful Humans Can Be

Neece — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:45 +0000

Unlike most atheists I know, I don’t really consider myself a humanist, but maybe that’s because I really don’t know the full definition. Let’s look it up.

Humanism affirms the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts. Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation; as such, views on morals can change when new knowledge and information is discovered. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.

While I agree in principle with that definition, I have become rather cynical and jaded. My experience of people is less noble and dignified. Most people seem self-serving, narcissistic and self-centered. I’ve found that many people refrain from immoral acts only out of fear of punishment or guilt. Also, I’ve found that people in general don’t seek truth or look outside themselves much at all. They simply go about their lives to get by as comfortably as possible, mitigated by guilt and fear.

Of course there are lots of exceptions of extraordinary people. But in general my view of the human race is more like children in adult bodies, basically just going through life like a ball in a pinball machine, bouncing off of things and careening around randomly. I think it takes supreme effort to break free of this thoughtless kind of life, where you run on belief systems formed in early childhood. It takes critical and creative thinking to break free of the mold we are indoctrinated into as children.

But, sometimes I am surprised and delighted by humanity. It doesn’t happen often, so when it does, I feel the desire to share my warm fuzzies with everyone. This is one of those moments. I was stumbling around the interwebs when I came upon Tweenbots. In this 3 and a half minute video, Tweenbot is traversing Washington Square Park. He does it in 42 minutes with 29 people helping him.

From the site:

In New York City, we are very occupied with getting from one place to another. I wondered: could a human-like object traverse sidewalks and streets along with us, and in so doing, create a narrative about our relationship to space and our willingness to interact with what we find in it? More importantly, how could our actions be seen within a larger context of human connection that emerges from the complexity of the city itself? To answer these questions, I built robots.
Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.
Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot, I initially conceived the Tweenbots as disposable creatures which were more likely to struggle and die in the city than to reach their destination. Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.
… Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the “right” direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”
…this ad-hoc crowdsourcing was driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object. The journey the Tweenbots take each time they are released in the city becomes a story of people’s willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone.

I feel like my little Grinch heart melted a bit, watching that video. Random strangers helping a smiling, vulnerable robot traverse a huge city just makes me feel good about people in a refreshing and unexpected way. I have always thought of New York City as the epitome of the cold and heartless city, full of self-absorbed people who couldn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves. So this is just so touching to me. I’m dumbfounded that no one stole the little Tweenbots, or damaged them.

Then again a good critical thinker accepts conflicting information appropriately and changes their view of the world as needed, right? I was so moved that I am emailing the creator to tell her how her experiment affected me. I think it’s nice to share stuff like that with people. I like telling people I appreciate what they do. So often people only say something when they want to complain, instead of say something nice.

So have a great day, friends, knowing there’s hope for us yet.

Help Identify This Microscope!

Neece — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:47:28 +0000

I got my microscope! And I need your help. This thing is awesome (I think), but I have no idea what it is. It has no name on it. I have no idea even what the magnification is. I’ve dusted it carefully and now I’m waiting for UPS to deliver the slides and slide covers. I am still trying to figure out how to get a temporary light source to work, then I have to figure out a permanent lighting solution.

Oh… at the end of the technical bits, I need to rant a bit, in case you’re interested.

OK! The slides arrived. I’ve looked up Optical Microscopes and I know more than I did already. Don’t think you’re off the hook though. I still need you.

The eyepiece is removable and is 16x.
There are 4 objective lenses:
- Red: 4/0.1 160/0.17
- Yellow: 10/0.25 160/0.17
- Blue: 40//0.65 160/0.17
- Creme: Oil 100/1.25 160/0.17

So I’m guessing that the first number is the magnification. 4x, 10x, 40x and the oil immersion is 100x. I assume I need special immersion oil for that. What is the next number though? The /0.1, /0.25 etc. And what is the 160/0.17 part?

The light source is supposed to be powered and has a condenser. The cover is broken and there is nothing to hold a light bulb of any type that I can make sense of. It’s made in China, which is immensely helpful in a not helpful way.

So, any ideas on a temporary or permanent lighting solution? I was thinking LEDs would be best because they don’t get so hot. But they can be expensive. I came up with that when I was looking at new microscopes for sale, because all the new ones seem to have LEDs. But a regular bulb of some sort would be good too. I’m not sure of the bulb to get though. So suggestions are most welcome.

Ooh, I love Wikipedia. I found some links to some neat sites. These links really aren’t for you unless you’re a microscope geek wannabe like me. They’re more for me so I can find them easily.

If you have any resources, please feel free to comment with them because I want to learn as much as I can.

Well, I was about to wrap up, when Butch got up. He noticed some things that I hadn’t yet. Namely the number on the back which seemed unhelpful. It’s the model number: xsz-106. Damn, Google is amazing, because the second link down gave me a helpful page. It seems that it’s the xsz-106bn, Biological Microscope. The bulb was a halogen. Also there’s a dimmer switch on the side. Cool, if I can get it to work!

And now for my RANT: I have been very excited about getting this microscope. I understand that not everyone is interested in microbiology. But isn’t the pursuit of science and learning understandable in and of itself? So far, about 75% of the people I’ve told have replied with the same comment. “Why would you want a microscope?”

Why? Why not! The tiny world around us is amazing, complex and wonderful. It still holds secrets we have yet to unlock. It affects us in ways we take for granted, and is beautiful and fantastic. The total apathy and lack of interest is so disheartening. When someone I know expresses an interest in learning, even if the topic is not my favorite, I am delighted and encouraging. Know what I mean? Ok, so microbiology doesn’t interest you. That’s fine. But wanting to learn should always be encouraged. Don’t you think? Are we that apathetic these days, that people think it’s silly to want to educate themselves?

Ok, I’m done ranting. I have the tiny world around me to discover. Once I figure out how to illuminate it! Have a great day, my friends!

Heaving Dead Cats » neat

Liquid Glass Is Groovy!

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