“As an example, the Michigan Tech paper describes an item known as a “parametric automated filter wheel changer.” The item would cost about $2,500 from a commercial vendor but could be made with a 3-D printer for less than $100. It’s essentially a plastic wheel that holds colored filters in place as they rotate, testing the effects of the varying colors on the number of electrons that are emitted for each photon fired into a solar cell, Mr. Pearce said. “It was $2,500,” he said, “and all it does is move the filter around.”
Lab Equipment Made With 3-D Printers Could Cut Costs by 97% - Percolator - The Chronicle of Higher Education (via infoneer-pulse)
As this matures, we’re all going to benefit.
Learning hurts your brain
After publishing an especially challenging quantum mechanics article, it’s not uncommon to hear some of our readers complain that their head hurts. Presumably, they mean that the article gave them a (metaphoric) headache. But it’s actually possible that challenging your brain does a bit of physical damage to the nerve cells of the brain. Researchers are reporting that, following situations where the brain is active, you might find signs of DNA damage within the cells there. The damage is normally restored quickly, but they hypothesize that the inability to repair it quickly enough may underlie some neurological diseases.
» via ars technica
Learning does hurt your brain! Don’t do too much of it at once!
“There is more, and recent, antiscience fare from far-left progressives, documented in the 2012 book Science Left Behind (PublicAffairs) by science journalists Alex B. Berezow and Hank Campbell, who note that “if it is true that conservatives have declared a war on science, then progressives have declared Armageddon.” On energy issues, for example, the authors contend that progressive liberals tend to be antinuclear because of the waste-disposal problem, anti–fossil fuels because of global warming, antihydroelectric because dams disrupt river ecosystems, and anti–wind power because of avian fatalities. The underlying current is “everything natural is good” and “everything unnatural is bad.”
Different people want to suppress different things. That’s not enough to legitimize any attempts though.
The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like - Health - The Atlantic
I’m very glad to read this. goes off to make more coffee
Is Psychology About to Come Undone?
The title is misleading. However, this focus on reproducibility is a good thing, and should be welcomed in any area of science.
If you’re a psychologist, the news has to make you a little nervous—particularly if you’re a psychologist who published an article in 2008 in any of these three journals: Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, or the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
Because, if you did, someone is going to check your work. A group of researchers have already begun what they’ve dubbed the Reproducibility Project, which aims to replicate every study from those three journals for that one year. The project is part of Open Science Framework, a group interested in scientific values, and its stated mission is to “estimate the reproducibility of a sample of studies from the scientific literature.” This is a more polite way of saying “We want to see how much of what gets published turns out to be bunk.”
» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)
the Tricorder project - About
This is really, really neat. Sensors everywhere! I think this is a worthwhile product as mainstream portable devices (smartphones and tablets) aren’t sensor focused to this degree, so it makes sense to have a separate product. If they succeed, then we might be more likely to see a greater integration of their paradigm back into the mainstream devices.
(I just can’t get over the keyboard that I see in the mark 2 though.)
“More concerning, say the editors, is that this trend may be a symptom of a growing dysfunction in the biomedical sciences, one that needs to be addressed soon. At the heart of the problem is an economic incentive system fueling a hypercompetitive environment that is fostering poor scientific practices, including frank misconduct. The root of the problem is a lack of sufficient resources to sustain the current enterprise. Too many researchers are competing for too little funding, creating a survival-of-the-fittest, winner-take-all environment where researchers increasingly feel pressure to publish, especially in high-prestige journals.”
Not the best of news, but better for things like this to be brought up internally than be forced upon the discipline from without.
So, who considers themselves smarter than a fifth grader now?
10-Year-Old Accidentally Creates New Molecule in Science Class
Clara Lazen is the discoverer of tetranitratoxycarbon, a molecule constructed of, obviously, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. It’s got some interesting possible properties, ranging from use as an explosive to energy storage. Lazen is listed as the co-author of a recent paper on the molecule. But that’s not what’s so interesting and inspiring about this story. What’s so unusual here is that Clara Lazen is a ten-year-old fifth-grader in Kansas City, MO.
Kenneth Boehr, Clara’s science teacher, handed out the usual ball-and-stick models used to visualize simple molecules to his fifth-grade class. But Clara put the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms together in a particular complex way and asked Boehr if she’d made a real molecule. Boehr, to his surprise, wasn’t sure. So he photographed the model and sent it over to a chemist friend at Humboldt State University who identified it as a wholly new but also wholly viable chemical.
» via Popular Science
“Well, let’s see. We’re back to black-box rules of thumb. People will take the outputs of the oracle-computers without understanding what they really mean, and apply them successfully or not. But causal principles that are not known are called “occult.” (Remember, occult meant “hidden,” not supernatural.) And the attempt to manipulate physical matter by use of occult powers was called “magic.” It’s not just that the technological fruits of the advanced science are mirabilia (“marvels,” “miracles”) it’s that the scientist-priests do not understand the principles behind them, either. So perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was far more right than he knew when he said that a sufficiently advanced science would be indistinguishable from magic.”
A scifi author describes how science could die, but high technology remain.
“A suitable analogy (h/t James Hannam) would run this way: Suppose I put a pot of water on the stove to make some tea. A physicist then runs into my kitchen and begins measuring temperatures of the coil and the water, the vapor pressure, conductivity of the kettle, and all what have you. When he is done, he thoroughly understands what makes the water boil. He knows the water, the fire, the air, and even, regarding the kettle, the earth. The one thing he does not know from all his measurements is that I wanted to make a cup of tea.”
Quite interesting, especially on the position of medieval Christian philosophers on natural causes.
