I have two stories about lungs and they are entirely different with the older one being a bioengineering story from the US and the more recent one being an artificial tissue story from the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa (both in Canada). Lab grown lungs The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Quirks and Quarks radio programme posted a December 29, 2018 news item (with embedded radio files) about bioengineered lunjgs, There are two major…

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A revolutionary fabric created at UMD reacts to environmental conditions to either trap heat or release it. (Photo by Faye Levine) Courtesy: University of Maryland This may look like just another gauzy fabric but it has some special properties according to a February 7, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily, Despite decades of innovation in fabrics with high-tech thermal properties that keep marathon runners cool or alpine hikers warm, there has never been a material that…

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Xuan paper is special being both rare and used for calligraphy and art works. Before getting to the ‘fire-resistant’ news, it might be helpful to get some details about Xuan paper as it is typically prepared and used (from a Dec. 29, 2018 news item on xinhuanet.com), Today’s Chinese artists now have the opportunity to preserve their works much longer than the masters who painted hundreds of years ago.Chinese researchers have developed a non-flammable version…

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Caption: Audio map of vocal bursts across 24 emotions. To visit the online map and hear the sounds, go to https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/vocs/map.html# and move the cursor across the map. Credit: Courtesy of Alan Cowen The real map, not the the image of the map you see above, offers a disconcerting (for me, anyway) experience. Especially since I’ve just finished reading Lisa Feldman Barrett’s 2017 book, How Emotions are Made, where she presents her theory of ‘constructed…

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I’m always a sucker for bioenergy harvesting stories but this is the first time I’ve seen research on the topic which combines weight control with wound healing. From a January 17, 2019 news item on Nanowerk, Although electrical stimulation has therapeutic potential for various disorders and conditions, ungainly power sources have hampered practical applications. Now bioengineers have developed implantable and wearable nanogenerators from special materials that create electrical pulses when compressed by body motions. The…

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For anyone who’s not familiar with the problem, digital art is disappearing or very difficult and/or expensive to access after the technology on which or with which it was created becomes obsolete. Fear not! Mathematicians are coming to the rescue in a joint programme between New York University (NYU) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. From a February 16, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily, Just as conservators have developed methods to protect traditional artworks, computer…

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There seems to be much interest in bacteria as collaborators as opposed to the old ‘enemy that must be destoyed’ concept. The latest collaborative effort was announced in a January 19,2019 news item on Nanowerk, More than one in 10 people in the world lack basic drinking water access, and by 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas, which is why access to clean water is one of the National…

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I remember reading somewhere that historically the field of astronomy has been the most inclusive of amateurs (or citizen scientists as we call them now). If you think about it, all the sciences were started by amateurs. The notion that one should go to school and learn about science came much later after the pioneers, some of whom were philosophers such as Lucretius, developed theories to be passed on and codified the concept of scientific…

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The University of St. Andrews kicked off the new year (2019) by announcing the discovery of what’s believed to the world’s oldest periodic table chart. From a January 17, 2019 news item on phys.org A periodic table chart discovered at the University of St Andrews is thought to be the oldest in the world.The chart of elements, dating from 1885, was discovered in the University’s School of Chemistry in 2014 by Dr. Alan Aitken during…

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It’s very peculiar being able to understand each word individually in clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) but not being able to puzzle out much meaning other than the widely known ‘it’s a gene editor’. Regardless, CRISPR is a powerful gene editing tool and that can lead to trouble. Even before CRISPR, we’ve had some genetic accidents. Perhaps the best known is the ‘killer bee’ or Africanized bee (from its Wikepedia entry), The Africanized…

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