Category Archives: Science/Engineering

Five cool things to do with your DNA

Posted on October 24, 2007 | Comments Off on Five cool things to do with your DNA

Well, six, actually. Hints: Take a look at it, save it, jewelry, art, inspecting, and number six, send it into the future. Cool, indeed.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Gravity waves

Posted on October 12, 2007 | Comments Off on Gravity waves

A Texas scientist I know has a sloop on Lake Travis named "Gravity Wave," which is handily explained here, but the link and this post is about another, much larger kind of gravity wave called an "undular bore." Stupid name, but an impressive event, as a train of thunderstorms recently spawned four gravity waves rolling through the atmosphere over Des Moines, Iowa.

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Posted in Sailing, Science/Engineering, Weather/Climate

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The 2007 Physics Nobel for…

Posted on October 10, 2007 | Comments Off on The 2007 Physics Nobel for…

Wait for it. The Mp3 player! Well, not exactly, but the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is boasting that without the awarded physics process, called magnetoresistance (magnet plus neato), you could kiss magnetic hard drives, including the MP3 and the Ipod, adios amigo. I like my IRiver Mp3 player, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than an Ipod, just fine. But, really. I can well understand Snoopy the Goon’s pique.

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Giant spider web diminished

Posted on September 28, 2007 | Comments Off on Giant spider web diminished

Thanks to winds and rain, the giant web that stretched two hundred yards at Lake Tawakoni in northeast Texas back in August is only six percent of its previous size, but scientists are still interested in studying the apparent social effort of thousands of spiders–principally long-jawed orb weavers–which are normally canabalistic rather than cooperative. We can only hope they’re not evolving in some unpleasant new way. But, just in case, I plan to start being nicer to the ones I see around the rancho.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Heart scan

Posted on September 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Heart scan

I got a CT heart scan this morning at Austin’s Heart Hospital, a simple, non-invasive test whose results should be back sometime next week. My g.p. had recommended it when my cholesterol jumped back up recently and I’m still a smoker. Nevertheless, there’s no known history of heart disease in my family, so I’ll be curious to see how it comes out. In doing some searching on the value of CT scans, I found this interesting interview with one of the champions of the test.

UPDATE: It turned out to be a 1, i.e. low risk. Meaning minimal plaque in the arteries around the heart. But the g.p. said I still might have it in my neck or elsewhere, and he is advising me to start taking Zocor, a cholesterol-reducing drug, because of my age and the smoking. I’m thinking about it.

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Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering, Scribbles

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Prostate cancer

Posted on September 18, 2007 | Comments Off on Prostate cancer

The Veterans Administration recently notified me that I have a medical exam in December for the Agent Orange Registry, at their clinic up the road in Temple. Anyone who served in Vietnam during the American war is eligible for the exam. I applied for VA health care a few months ago, though I have private insurance, because I wanted to cover all the bases, plus get the AO exam, just in case. In case of what? Well, prostate cancer for one. It is one of the most common cancers in men, generally, but is considered service-connected in Vietnam veterans because we have a higher-incidence of it than the general male population. The connection is attributed to exposure to the dioxin in the defoliant Agent Orange. A few days after my VA notice, a classmate from OC 504-68 announced on the email list that he’d been diagnosed with it. Then the surprise "I have it, too" emails started coming in. So I’m getting a private physical, a.s.a.p., just in case. Nothing like hearing about the plight of men your age, in your own peer group, to focus on your own health.

UPDATE: I passed. The private doc said my physical inspection and PSA blood test showed prostate cancer was "not an issue," for this year, anyhow.

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Posted in Infantry OCS, Science/Engineering, Viet Nam

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Eliminating the battery

Posted on September 4, 2007 | Comments Off on Eliminating the battery

Mystery start-up EEStor of Austin is getting a lot of publicity–and got $2.5 million in seed money from venture capitalists last month–despite refusing interviews. Their revolutionary promise is to develop "technologies for (the) replacement of electrochemical batteries," via "ultracapacitors." Some experts at the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics are skeptical. But ZENN Motor Co. of Toronto, licensed the invention in 2005 and expects to start receiving units for its electric cars later this year.

MORE: From CNN. EEStor was talking a year ago, perhaps wildly, about replacing the internal combustion engine! Not just goodbye gas guzzlers, but goodbye gas. Wouldn’t that be sweet. But the commenters at Slashdot see lots of potential problems.

Via Instapundit 

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