No, this talk does not not involve CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindormic repeats). This is about ‘old fashioned’ genetic breeding techniques with some ‘fancy pants’ words being thrown around. Also, somebody or other wants to patent this work on bees. From a September 30, 2019 Café Scientifque announcement (received via email), Our next café will happen on TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29TH at 7:30PM in the back room at YAGGER”S DOWNTOWN (433 W Pender). Our speaker…

Continue reading

A June 7, 2019 news item on Azonano announces research into the process of oil pipeline corrosion at the nanoscale (Note: A link has been removed), Steel pipes tend to rust and sooner or later fail. To anticipate disasters, oil companies and others have developed computer models to foretell when replacement is necessary. However, if the models themselves are incorrect, they can be amended only through experience, an expensive problem if detection happens too late.Currently,…

Continue reading

Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin The device you see above was apparently inspired by a rose. Personally, Ill need to take the scientists’ word for this image brings to my mind, lava lamps like the one you see below. A blue lava lamp Credit: Risa1029 – Own work [downloaded from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lava_lamp#/media/File:Blue_Lava_lamp.JPG] In any event, the ‘black rose’ collects and purifies water according to a May 29, 2019 University of Texas…

Continue reading

This work comes from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; Saudi Arabia). From a June 27, 2019 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed), Some of the vast amount of wasted energy that machines and devices emit as heat could be recaptured using an inexpensive nanomaterial developed at KAUST. This thermoelectric nanomaterial could capture the heat lost by devices, ranging from mobile phones to vehicle engines, and turn it…

Continue reading

You need to see this, Amazing, eh? The researchers are scheduled to present this work sometime this week at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) being held in New Orleans, US, from October 20-23, 2019. Here’s more about ‘Portal-ble’ in an October 16, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily, A new software system developed by Brown University [US] researchers turns cell phones into augmented reality portals, enabling users to place virtual building…

Continue reading

Markus Buehler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been working with music and science for a number of years. My December 9, 2011 posting, Music, math, and spiderwebs, was the first one here featuring his work. My November 28, 2012 posting, Producing stronger silk musically, was a followup to Buehler’s previous work. A June 28, 2019 news item on Azonano provides a recent update, Composers string notes of different pitch and duration together…

Continue reading

I don’t know what’s happened but either there are way more science type events or I’ve changed some pattern of internet use and am stumbling across more of them. I vote for the former. In any event, this is the third ’roundup’ of science type things and/or events that I’ve published this October 2019. Ingenium All three of the museums that are included in the Ingenium portmanteau (formerly the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation)…

Continue reading

The ‘smart city’ initiatives continue to fascinate. During the summer, Toronto’s efforts were described in a June 24, 2019 article by Katharine Schwab for Fast Company (Note: Links have been removed), Today, Google sister company Sidewalk Labs released a draft of its master plan to transform 12 acres on the Toronto waterfront into a smart city. The document details the neighborhood’s buildings, street design, transportation, and digital infrastructure—as well as how the company plans to…

Continue reading

I don’t know the dates for the last ‘golden’ age of electronics but I can certainly understand why these Japanese researchers are excited about their work. In any event, I think the ‘golden age’ is more of a play on words. From a June 25, 2019 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed), One way that heat damages electronic equipment is it makes components expand at different rates, resulting in forces that…

Continue reading

Caption: The CRISPR Journal delivers groundbreaking multidisciplinary research, advances, and commentary on CRISPR, the extraordinary technology that gives scientists the power to cure disease and sculpt evolution. Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers The CRISPR Journal’s publisher, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., released two notices about their special issue on ethics. I found this October 10, 2019 media alert on EurekAlert a little more informative than the other one, Highlights from this Issue: 1. Human Germline…

Continue reading