• Science

    Stem-Cell-Coated Contact Lenses Are Curing the Blind

    By Dan Smith Posted on 6.3.2009 25 Comments

    Researchers in Australia have come up with an outwardly simple but incredibly ingenious way of curing blindness caused by corneal damage: Take everyday contact lenses, already used by millions (including me), and infuse them with a patient's own stem cells. After wearing them for about 2 weeks, test subjects reported a seemingly miraculous restoration of sight. Is it that easy?

    6.11.2009 at 07:57pm - Comment by Boatman

    Well done. Using the contact lens to grow a sheet of stem cells and then transferiing it to a previously differentiated substrate to create replacement cells is brilliant. This looks like another step forward in using stem cells with previously differentiated substrates. Aces! Boatman

  • Gadgets

    Nokia Working On Infinite Cellphone Battery

    By Posted on 6.15.2009 18 Comments

    Who hasn't missed an important call or woke up at the wrong time because you forgot to charge your cellphone over night? Well, Nokia hopes to make that a thing of the past by developing a technology that would use ambient radio radiation to perpetually charge a phone's battery.

    6.11.2009 at 07:12pm - Comment by Boatman

    Tesla worked on something like this. He was trying to transmit energy using radio waves. Good idea scavenging power from the ambient radio waves. Boatman

  • Cars

    Diesel on a Diet

    By Posted on 10.6.2008 9 Comments

    To make its Duramax 4.5 diesel cleaner and leaner, GM turned traditional engine design inside out and dumped 70 parts. The biggest change was flipping around the exhaust system to direct hot gases through short pipes toward a central turbocharger and catalytic converter inside the “V” of the engine. This compact design harnesses more exhaust heat and requires fewer components than conventional V8s, which send exhaust through long manifold pipes that protrude from each side of the engine, taking up more space and losing heat before they reach the turbo.

    10.6.2008 at 07:08pm - Comment by Boatman

    I wonder, has anyone considered marrying a Sterling engine and a conventional combustion engine together in the same block; using the heat from the combustion engine to power the Sterling engine. Boatman

  • Science

    Take an Amazing Virtual Tour of a 27-kilometer Particle Accelerator

    By Posted on 9.10.2008 18 Comments

    The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a massive internationally-funded particle accelerator located in Switzerland, keeps hitting setbacks.  Originally scheduled to power up around 2005, the project's latest snag—supports for the collider's many powerful magnets are failing—has pushed the start date to May of 2008 [this could also affect the Higgs Boson PPX proposition]. Scientists also reported that cooling the massive magnets to the required 1.9 degrees Kelvin (that's cold) seems to be taking “a little longer than planned." Personally, I'm glad they’re spending a bit of extratime to get everything perfect, since one theoretical failure situation could lead to the creation of a black hole that devours the earth.

    9.10.2008 at 08:23pm - Comment by Boatman

    If a black hole is created it will depend on 'when' it is created how much damage it will do. We are on a spinning planet in an eliptical orbit, in a solar system moving in a spiral galaxy, moving through the universe. Some where between 140 and 330 mi/sec (800,000 and 1,700,000 ft/sec) ft.sec.) If a property of a black hole is to be stationary in the universe when it is created and If Hawkings evaporation time is correct at 1*10 -23 seconds, the hole will move .000000000000002 inches max before it expires; else it will cut a hole along the resultant stationary vector and exit, hopefully above the tangental plane and not on a collision course with the sun. My 2 cents, B.



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