Jerry's Odd Corner of the Internet

Organisers of the International Barcode of Life conference, in Adelaide this week, plan to use miniature DNA decoding devices to answer the question: “What species is that?”

Conference co-chair and director of the Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity at the University of Adelaide, Professor Andrew Lowe, says this is one of the most exciting developments in genomics.

“You point this thing at an alien species and it tells you all about it. That’s where we want to get to … maybe in five years, which is really neat.”

By 2015 scientists expect to have a reference library of five million standardised DNA sequences they can use to identify 500,000 species, which is more than a quarter of all known species on Earth.

They would take a sample and then compare it with the sequences in the database, looking for a match.

wilwheaton:

An Android app developer has published what he says is conclusive proof that millions of smartphones are secretly monitoring the key presses, geographic locations, and received messages of its users.

In a YouTube video posted on Monday, Trevor Eckhart showed how software from a Silicon Valley company known as Carrier IQ recorded in real time the keys he pressed into a stock EVO handset, which he had reset to factory settings just prior to the demonstration. Using a packet sniffer while his device was in airplane mode, he demonstrated how each numeric tap and every received text message is logged by the software.

Carrier IQ tried to threaten this guy with a bogus lawsuit when he revealed their nefarious activity, so he contacted EFF and told them to suck it. The company was forced to back off.

So there are two morals to this story:

1) Support EFF!

2) I’m really glad that I rooted my phone and installed a custom ROM (CM7).

Light can behave pretty weirdly. What with being indecisive as to whether it wants to be a particle or a wave, you can expect that it’ll surprise you sometimes. Not to mention that when you get down to really small scales, the laws of physics as we understand them on the macro scale don’t seem to apply. That being that case, a completely intuitive discovery byPrinceton engineers isn’t completely surprising in its weirdness. What did they find? Well, they discovered that on a scale of nanometers,blocking holes with gold caps doesn’t block light transmission like you’d expect. It can actually increase light transmission by up to 70%.

This isn’t some kind of weird-but-established optical effect that anyone knew about either. “The common wisdom in optics is that if you have a metal film with very small holes and you plug the holes with metal, the light transmission is blocked completely,” said Stephen Chou, professor of engineering and head of the experiment. “We were very surprised.”

In the experiment where this was discovered, the researchers were shooting lasers through a film riddled with 60 nanometers in diameter and placed 200 nanometers apart. When they placed gold caps over the holes, caps that were 40nm thick and 40% larger than the holes themselves, they expected complete blockage. They got a 70% increase in transmission.

It’s not completely clear why this happens, but Chou says that the metal caps are actually acting as a sort of antenna and radiating the light they were intended to block. Waves will travel along the surface where there aren’t holes and then actually be broadcast by the caps, increasing the overall transmission rated. Crazy, right?

This discovery could be a big help to all kinds of endeavors in the nano-world. For researchers who don’t want light, it’s helpful to know that this is not the way to block light, and for researchers who do, it’s good to know that this can help boost transmission rates. The hope is that this discovery can aid in the improvement of microscopes, telescopes, and all manner of extremely sensitive optic equipment. It just goes to show you how complex and weird the world really is. If we’ve only just discovered that the way we block light in the macroscopic world has the opposite effect in the microscopic world, who knows what else we’re missing. Not to mention it’s just crazy that this is apparently how the world works.

(via PhysOrg)

With the advent of sealed battery devices — like your iPhone or iPod — there’s been mounting concern not only for how long a battery will last on a single charge, but how many charges you can expect to get from a device. Deciding at what point to begin recharging a battery is now a thing to be fretted over, as batteries have a limited number of charge cycles in their functional lifetime. Now, new research could do away with such fears and pave the way for rechargeable batteries that last decades.

 

Colin Wessells, a graduate student at Stanford University and the lead author on the research, says that a battery that can be charged and recharged tens of thousands of times over 30 years could be a reality. His work centered on crystalline copper-based nanoparticles for use in electrodes, which do not degrade as readily during charging and discharging.

The trouble with the battery charge-discharge cycle seems to be ions, which can damage the crystaline structure of electrodes. Over time, these degrade and lower overall battery performance — hence, why there is a limited number of charge cycles a battery can withstand. Wessell’s design uses an open arrangement of the atoms in crystalline copper hexacyanoferrate, giving plenty of space for the ions to pass through without knocking against another atom. In fact, the researchers even shopped around for perfectly sized ions, settling on hydrated potassium over lithium or other substances.

In their laboratory experiments, the team found that their electrode could still achieve 80% full capacity after 40,000 charge cycles. For comparison, a typical lithium-ion battery lasts about 400 charge cycles. It’s important to note that the researchers did not actually construct a battery for their experiments, but the amazing performance of the electrodes used is still very compelling. The research also suggests that building these new batteries would be quite inexpensive.

For his work, Wessells has focused on high-capacity and high-energy batteries, which are a far cry from consumer electronics. However, they could have a wide range of applications for storing power from wind turbines or solar power plants. Moreover, high capacity batteries that last for years and years would certainly make these green forms of energy even more environmentally friendly by keeping batteries out of landfills.

Though successful in the lab, Wessells and his team have yet to actually construct his hypothetical battery. However, he believes that the technology already exists to construct one. Hopefully we’ll be seeing stronger, longer-lasting batteries sooner rather than later

(via eWeek Europe, image via Joshua Rothhaas)

When you think of The Wizard of Oz’s cast of villains, you most likely think of the flying monkeys and the Wicked Witch of the West, and maybe the pissy apple trees and the green dudes guarding the WWotW’s castle.

Also known as ‘Winkies.’ True story.

If you’ve seen or read ‘Wicked,’ you might have a more sympathetic view of the Wicked Witch of the West. But ‘Wicked’ doesn’t go far enough, since it ignores the fact that the movie features one of the most brilliantly conniving movie villains ever.

It’s her, right there.

Glinda, not the Wicked Witch of the West, is the cause for everything that goes wrong for Dorothy and her new friends in the land of Oz, and she starts instigating the film’s central conflict the second Dorothy shows up.

Read more: 5 Reasons The Greatest Movie Villain Ever is a ‘Good’ Witch | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_18881_5-reasons-greatest-movie-villain-ever-good-witch.html#ixzz1f1k4pfAd

Are you a coffee connoisseur and only settle for the fancy stuff, but are always on the go and never have the time to park at a seat at an outdoor cafe and casually enjoy a cup of espresso? Luckily for you, Instructables user urant attempted to solve that terrible, crippling problem of yours by making the pocket espresso machine. Unlike infomercial lingo, this pocket espresso machine actually its in an average-sized pants pocket.

Urant managed to build the machine out of parts that came from a local hardware store, including copper plumbing parts, lead-free solder, an alcohol stove, and a handful of other things. Urant was worried about the acidity of the beverage corroding the copper and having the copper ending up in the drink, but consulted with a doctor and not only found out that there’d be no issue with some copper corrosion, but also that tinning the brew head will eliminate any possible copper corrosion.

The result is a handy little espresso machine that one can store away in their pants pocket, and pull out for a quick brew on the go. Not as sophisticated as reading a book at a tiny table outside of a cafe and eating a little pastry along with your espresso, but hey, if you have to have your espresso, brewing it out of your pocket is better than not having your espresso, right?

For the full list of instructions, head on over to Instructables and get soldering.

(Instructables via Make)