Blog Archives - Ascension Now

Conscience : Franchise owner sells corporate gifts to give employees bonuses

24/2/2015

Dominic Kelly : Opposing Views : 24 Feb 2015

The owner of a Burger King franchise in Arizona was thrilled to have won the company's national "Franchisee of the Year" award, but instead of keeping the Corvette and Rolex watch he was awarded, he and the other franchise owners decided to sell them, add in some more of their own money and give all of their employees across the state bonuses.

Tom Barnett, owner of Barnett Management, won the coveted prize thanks to high ratings, great customer service reviews and stellar corporate inspections, but when it came time to enjoy the flashy prizes he received, Barnett and the other franchise owners decided they wanted to sell them.

The award needed to go to the people who got us here. It was the right thing to do," franchise co-owner Shelley Krispin said. "We're all better when we have people who work for us long term."

After selling the car and expensive watch, Barnett pooled some of his own money in with the other franchise owners and were able to give out a total of $120,000 to more than 100 employees across their 24 Burger King locations in Arizona.

"I just couldn't believe it. I was in shock," 15-year-old Charity Callahan said. "It was almost an entire month's worth of pay for me. They made us all feel appreciated."

"For him to give us that was really emotional," store manager Sandy Olson said.

The bonuses reportedly ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per person.
Source

Change your perception .... rewrite the chemistry of your body

24/2/2015

Turning science on its head: Harvard researchers offer new views of Myelin - the body's insulating material

24/2/2015

B. D. Colen : Harvard Gazette

© Daniel Berger and Giulio Tomassy
Pictured is an image of three neurons.

The higher you look in the cerebral cortex, the less myelin you'll find, according to Professor Paola Arlotta. Not only that, but “neurons in this part of the brain display a brand-new way of positioning myelin along their axons that has not been previously seen," Arlotta added.

Harvard neuroscientists have made a discovery that turns 160 years of neuroanatomy on its head.

Myelin, the electrical insulating material in the body long known to be essential for the fast transmission of impulses along the axons of nerve cells, is not as ubiquitous as thought, according to new work led by Professor Paola Arlotta of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and the University's Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, in collaboration with Professor Jeff Lichtman of Harvard's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

"Myelin is a relatively recent invention during evolution," says Arlotta. "It's thought that myelin allowed the brain to communicate really fast to the far reaches of the body, and that it has endowed the brain with the capacity to compute higher-level functions."
In fact, loss of myelin is a feature in a number of devastating diseases, including multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia.

But the new research shows that despite myelin's essential roles in the brain, "some of the most evolved, most complex neurons of the nervous system have less myelin than older, more ancestral ones," said Arlotta, co-director of the HSCI neuroscience program. What this means, she said, is that the higher one looks in the cerebral cortex - closer to the top of the brain, which is its most evolved part - the less myelin one finds. Not only that, but "neurons in this part of the brain display a brand-new way of positioning myelin along their axons that has not been previously seen. They have 'intermittent myelin' with long axon tracts that lack myelin interspersed among myelin-rich segments."

"Contrary to the common assumptions that neurons use a universal profile of myelin distribution on their axons, the work indicates that different neurons choose to myelinate their axons differently." Arlotta said. "In classic neurobiology textbooks, myelin is represented on axons as a sequence of myelinated segments separated by very short nodes that lack myelin. This distribution of myelin was tacitly assumed to be always the same, on every neuron, from the beginning to the end of the axon. This new work finds this not to be the case."

The results of the research by Arlotta and postdoctoral fellow Giulio Srubek Tomassy, the first author on the report, are published in the latest edition of the journal Science. The paper is accompanied by a "perspective" by R. Douglas Fields of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health, who said that Arlotta and Tomassy's findings raise important questions about the purpose of myelin, and "are likely to spark new concepts about how information is transmitted and integrated in the brain."

Arlotta and Tomassy collaborated closely on the new work with postdoctoral fellow Daniel Berger of the Lichtman lab, which generated one of the two massive electron microscopy databases that made the work possible. "The fact that it is the most evolved neurons, the ones that have expanded dramatically in humans, suggest that what we're seeing might be the 'future'. As neuronal diversity increases and the brain needs to process more and more complex information, neurons change the way they use myelin to achieve more." said Arlotta.

Tomassy said it is possible that these profiles of myelination "may be giving neurons an opportunity to branch out and 'talk' to neighboring neurons". For example, because axons cannot make synaptic contacts when they are myelinated, one possibility is that these long myelin gaps may be needed to increase neuronal communication and synchronize responses across different neurons. He and Arlotta postulate that the intermittent myelin may be intended to fine-tune the electrical impulses traveling along the axons, in order to allow the emergence of highly complex neuronal behaviors.
Source

Human communication slants towards the positive across multiple languages

23/2/2015

Jeremy Dean : PsyBlog : 16 Feb 2015

Billions of words analysed in 10 world languages and this mood keeps shining through.

Across multiple languages and in many modes — movie subtitles, music lyrics, Russian literature — human communication skews towards the positive, a new study finds.

Scientists have gathered billions of words from Korean Twitter feeds, Arabic movie subtitles, The New York Times and much more to try and answer an age-old question about whether human beings tend to talk more about the brighter side of life.
Professor Peter Dodds, a mathematician and the study's lead author, said: "We looked at ten languages, and in every source we looked at, people use more positive words than negative ones." The researchers think that their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests language itself has a sense of positivity built in at its core (Dodds et al., 2015).

To reach these conclusions, researchers gathered billions of words from 24 different sources, including websites, TV and books, including 100 billion words from Twitter alone. Native speakers of the 10 different languages — which included English, Spanish and Chinese — then coded all the frequently used words (100,000) on a scale of negative to positive.

While some sources were more positive than others, with Chinese books being the least positive and Spanish-language websites being the most positive, all the samples averaged above the neutral point. This was even the case for English language song lyrics, which were ranked 22 out of 24 categories for happiness, with only Chinese novels and Korean subtitles being less happy.

To read the rest of this article, go to : http://www.sott.net/article/292722-Human-communication-slants-towards-the-positive-across-multiple-languages-and-many-modes

Coming next - DNA data storage

23/2/2015

Jacob Aron : New Scientist : 15 Feb 2015

If you must preserve messages for people in the far future to read, Blu-ray discs and USB sticks are no good. For real long-term storage, you want a DNA time capsule.

Just 1 gram of DNA is theoretically capable of holding 455 exabytes - enough for all the data held by Google, Facebook and every other major tech company, with room to spare. It's also incredibly durable: DNA has been extracted and sequenced from 700,000-year-old horse bones. But conditions have to be right for it to last.

"We know that if you just store it lying around, you lose information," says Robert Grass of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. So he and colleagues are working on ways to increase DNA's longevity, with the aim of storing data for thousands or millions of years. They began by looking at the way information is encoded on a DNA strand. The simplest method treats the DNA bases A and C as a "0" and G and T as a "1". Of course, any damage to the DNA leaves holes in the data, so the team used an error-correcting technique called a Reed-Solomon code. This includes redundant blocks that can be used to reconstruct garbled bits of data.

They also tried to mimic the way fossils keep a DNA sequence intact. Excluding all water from the environment was key, so they encapsulated the DNA in microscopic spheres of glass. To test how long this storage system might last, they encoded two venerable documents, totalling 83 kilobytes: the Swiss federal charter from 1291, and the Archimedes Palimpsest, a 10th-century version of ancient Greek texts. DNA versions of these texts were kept at 60, 65 and 70 °C for a week to simulate ageing. They remained readable without any errors (Angewandte Chemie, doi.org/f23gmf).

The results suggest that data in DNA form could last 2000 years if kept at a temperature of around 10 °C. The Global Seed Vault in the Arctic could preserve it for over 2 million years at a chilly -18 °C, offering truly long-term storage.

Grass would like to store all the world's current knowledge for future generations, but it's far too expensive to generate DNA at present. It cost around £1000 to encode the 83 kilobytes, so doing the same with Wikipedia would run to billions. Instead, Grass suggests that we focus on what future historians might want to read. "If you look at how we look at the Middle Ages, it's very influenced by what information has been stored," he says. "It's very important that we get a relatively neutral documentation of our current time and store that."

Sriram Kosuri of the University of California, Los Angeles, thinks the projected preservation times are reasonable. In 2012 he stored a copy of a colleague's book in DNA and is now working with the band OK Go to create a DNA version of their latest album. But he's less sure about what to put in a time capsule. "I haven't given it much thought," he says. "We pretty much chose an arbitrary piece of digital information whose only constraint is that we weren't going to get in trouble for making a lot of copies of it."
Source

Limpet teeth discovered to be strong enough to construct ships

20/2/2015

RT : 18 Feb 2015

© wikipedia.org :
The true limpet species Patella vulgata on a rock surface in Wales

The newest contender for the strongest material is found in the sea. Science has discovered recently that teeth belonging to tiny marine creatures called limpets are so incredibly tough they could be used to construct boats.

The chompers are 100 times thinner than the diameter of a human hair. Scientists have determined that if we built huge structures from material fashioned from limpet teeth, they would be as strong and unbreakable as the smallest piece of the material - a massive advantage for engineering.

Limpets are snail-type creatures crawling along the sea bed, carrying their portable, cone-shaped homes with them. Scientists decided to use a process known as atomic force microscopy on a set of limpet teeth to test how the material behaves at a microscopic level, and how strongly it bonds together. The University of Portsmouth study came out with surprising results. Professor Asa Barber says: "Until now we thought that spider silk was the strongest biological material because of its super-strength and potential applications in everything from bullet-proof vests to computer electronics, but now we have discovered that limpet teeth exhibit a strength that is potentially higher."

Barber discovered that this is due to goethite, a mineral found inside the teeth and formed by the animal as it grows. Limpets develop strong teeth to latch onto rocks and scrape off algae, their primary food source. As if by design, "the fibers are just the right size to make up a resilient composite structure."

What the team also discovered is that limpet teeth stay the same strength no matter the size. This is really important, as "generally a big structure has lots of flaws and can break more easily... Limpet teeth break this rule as their strength is the same no matter what the size."

And since "engineers are always interested in making these structures stronger to improve their performance or lighter so they use less material," replicating these structures at the atomic level could catapult the science to new highs. Barber listed "F1 cars, hulls of boats and aircraft structures" as just some of the potential production applications.

Science couldn't have done anything with the discovery earlier, because techniques for splitting the ultra-thin mineral have only recently been invented. "We had to cut out a smaller volume of material out of the curved tooth structure," which is less than 1mm, Barker explains.

According to Barker, the challenge with bio-inspired science is finding natural structures that could prove useful and innovative, as there are so many to choose from. "Nature is a wonderful source of inspiration for structures that have excellent mechanical properties. All the things we observe around us, such as trees, the shells of sea creatures and the limpet teeth studied in this work, have evolved to be effective at what they do."
Source

Marinaleda, Spain - democratic and socialist: everyone works, no police, salary is 1200 Euros.

16/2/2015

LIve Travel Enjoy : 06 Feb 2015

With virtually no police, crime or unemployment, meet the Spanish town described as a democratic, socialist utopia.

Unemployment is non-existent in Marinaleda, an Andalusian village in southern Spain that is prosperous thanks to its farming cooperative. On the face of it, the Spanish town of Marinaleda is indistinguishable from any other in its region. Nestled in the picturesque Campiña valley, the surrounding countryside is made up of rolling green hills, miles of olive plantations and golden fields of wheat stretching as far as the eye can see. The town is pretty, tranquil and typical of those found in Andalusia, Spain's poorest and most southerly province.

It's also a democratic, anti-capitalist village whose mayor actively encourages shoplifting.
[Note: I do not condone shoplifting. MS]

Since the financial crisis began in 2008, Marinaleda has shot to fame — and so has its maverick mayor Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, who earned the nickname "The Spanish Robin Hood," after organizing and carrying out a series of supermarket raids in a direct action protest last August. Basic groceries such as oil, rice and beans were loaded into carts, wheeled from the store and taken to a local food bank to help the poor, as helpless cashiers looked on, some crying.

In an interview after the event, Gordillo, the democratically elected mayor since 1979, said it was not theft, but a non-violent act of disobedience. "There are many families who can't afford to eat," he argued. "In the 21st century this is an absolute disgrace. Food is a right, not something with which you speculate."

Marinaleda, Andalusia, Spain
In this province alone there are 690,000 empty properties due to bank foreclosures. But not in Marinaleda, because Gordillo has a solution: anyone who wants to build their own house can do so for free. Materials and qualified workmen are provided by the town hall, and the generous allowance of 192 square meters means the homes are spacious.

Families then pay just 15 euros ($19) per month for the rest of their lives, with the agreement that the house cannot be sold for private gain.

In Andalusia, unemployment now stands at 37 percent (a staggering 55 percent for young people). But Marinaleda, population 2700, has virtually full employment through the town's farming co-operative, where laborers earn equal wages of 1200 euros ($1600) per month. Here, in a region where 1 in 3 people are unemployed, this achievement cannot be understated.

"We need to rethink our values, the consumer society, the value we place on money, selfishness and individualism," Gordillo remarks. "Marinaleda is a small example, and we want this experience to extend throughout the world." Source

Surprising 'inner core' of Earth's inner core

16/2/2015

Liz Ahlberg : University of Illinois : 09 Feb 2015

© Lachina Publishing Services
The earth’s inner core has an inner core of its own, with crystals aligned in a different direction.

Thanks to a novel application of earthquake-reading technology, a research team at the University of Illinois and colleagues at Nanjing University in China have found that the Earth's inner core has an inner core of its own, which has surprising properties that could reveal information about our planet. Led by Xiaodong Song, a professor of geology at the U. of I., and visiting postdoctoral researcher Tao Wang, the team published its work in the journal Nature Geoscience on Feb. 9. "Even though the inner core is small - smaller than the moon - it has some really interesting features," said Song. "It may tell us about how our planet formed, its history, and other dynamic processes of the Earth. It shapes our understanding of what's going on deep inside the Earth." Researchers use seismic waves from earthquakes to scan below the planet's surface, much like doctors use ultrasound to see inside patients. The team used a technology that gathers data not from the initial shock of an earthquake, but from the waves that resonate in the earthquake's aftermath. The earthquake is like a hammer striking a bell; much like a listener hears the clear tone that resonates after the bell strike, seismic sensors collect a coherent signal in the earthquake's coda. "It turns out the coherent signal enhanced by the technology is clearer than the ring itself," said Song. "The basic idea of the method has been around for a while, and people have used it for other kinds of studies near the surface. But we are looking all the way through the center of the earth."

Looking through the core revealed a surprise at the center of the planet - though not of the type envisioned by novelist Jules Verne. The inner core, once thought to be a solid ball of iron, has some complex structural properties. The team found a distinct inner-inner core, about half the diameter of the whole inner core. The iron crystals in the outer layer of the inner core are aligned directionally, north-south. However, in the inner-inner core, the iron crystals point roughly east-west.

Not only are the iron crystals in the inner-inner core aligned differently, they behave differently from their counterparts in the outer-inner core. This means that the inner-inner core could be made of a different type of crystal, or a different phase.
"The fact that we have two regions that are distinctly different may tell us something about how the inner core has been evolving," Song said. "For example, over the history of the earth, the inner core might have had a very dramatic change in its deformation regime. It might hold the key to how the planet has evolved. We are right in the center - literally, the center of the Earth."

The U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Science Foundation of China supported this work.
Source

Tesla unveils batteries that can power entire homes out soon

13/2/2015

Sputnik : 13 Feb 2015

© Reuters / Rebecca Cook: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the lithium-ion battery technology the company has already developed can be used in the home, although Musk wouldn't say exactly what it would cost or when the company would be able to officially roll it out, but he hinted it would be soon.

The design, Musk added, is already finished and production of the battery could begin as soon as six months from now. Musk told reporters he was very pleased with preliminary tests of the battery, which reportedly could last up to a week before needing to be recharged. "We are going to unveil the Tesla home battery, the consumer battery that would be for use in people's houses or businesses fairly soon," Musk said during a conference call Wednesday that focused on company earnings and which was first reported by Bloomberg News.

Musk says he is planning to make a product that would work like a car battery, but in the home, and told reporters that he expects "enormous demand" for battery systems in home and businesses that would serve as backup systems when the power goes out, or as a way to save on energy costs.
Source

DEEP SPACE CLIMATE OBSERVATORY:

12/2/2015

For years, space weather forecasters have worried about the aging ACE spacecraft, which provides early warnings of CMEs and other solar storms bearing down on Earth. Launched in 1997, ACE could fail at any moment, leaving us blind to incoming storms. On Feb. 11th, NOAA, NASA and the US Air Force launched a replacement--the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR).

DSCOVR blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday 11 February at 6:03 p.m. EST atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Shortly after liftoff, an American Airlines flight en route from JFK to San Juan flew past the area. Passenger Tim Leavitt pointed his iPhone out the window and captured some remarkable shots of the rocket's exhaust:

"What an amazing vantage point--and a lucky shot," says Leavitt.

The spacecraft is now on its way to the L1 point where it will monitor the solar wind one million miles upstream from Earth. NOAA says DSCOVR is in good health. Its solar arrays have deployed and it is communicating with the ground. Approximately 150 days after launch, DSCOVR will replace ACE as our primary warning system for solar magnetic storms.

In addition to monitoring the solar wind, DSCOVR will also look back at Earth. The spacecraft's EPIC camera has ten filters for photographing our planet at wavelengths ranging from UV to visible light. True-color images of the full sun-facing side of Earth will be publicly available approximately 24 hours after they are taken. The first images will be posted approximately six months after launch. EPIC's observations will be used to measure ozone and aerosols, cloud height, vegetation properties and the ultraviolet reflectivity of Earth. Another instrument onboard, called NISTAR, measures solar energy reflected from the sunlit face of Earth. This will help climate scientists track changes in Earth's radiation budget caused by human activities and natural phenomena.
www.spaceweather.com

Researchers discover cold plasma has ability to kill norovirus

10/2/2015

Alex Berezow : BBC : 30 Jan 2015

Cold plasma consists of ionised gas molecules at room temperature_

Norovirus, the most common cause of gastroenteritis in the world, can be killed with "cold plasma," researchers in Germany have reported.

The virus, which elicits vomiting and diarrhoea, has gained international notoriety for causing outbreaks on cruise ships. However, such incidents represent merely a fraction of the tens of millions of cases that occur around the world each year.

The research appears in mBio journal.

Preventing norovirus outbreaks is complicated by the fact that the virus is highly resistant to several different chemical disinfectants. Bleach, a chlorine-based solution, is currently the most effective treatment, but researchers are seeking more convenient alternatives. One such alternative is cold plasma, also known as non-thermal plasma. This "fourth state of matter" consists of ionised gas molecules at room temperature. These ions can destroy many kinds of microbes, but their effect on viruses was less clear.

Handheld gadget

A team of scientists led by Dr Birte Ahlfeld and Prof Günter Klein at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover examined the effect of cold plasma on a strain of norovirus isolated from a human faecal sample taken during an outbreak at a military base in Germany. Cold plasma treatment led to a roughly 20- to 50-fold reduction in the number of virus particles.

The viruses were destroyed because cold plasma consists of highly noxious ions, called reactive nitrogen and oxygen species, which exhibit potent antimicrobial activity. Moreover, the cold plasma generator, which produces the ions by applying an electric field to ambient air, could be designed as a handheld device. Alternatively, commonly contaminated surfaces, such as salad bars, could have cold plasma generators built into them.

Norovirus is infamous for causing gastroenteritis outbreaks on cruise ships. "A spread of norovirus can be inhibited at crucial points, which as we know from our previous studies are all surfaces with frequent contact to human skin or hands." Dr Klein said. "Handheld devices can be used to disinfect different surfaces or a plasma box for hands or cutlery or plates is possible."

Growing problem

Other researchers shared Dr Klein's enthusiasm. Brendan Niemira and Dr David Kingsley, food safety experts at the US Department of Agriculture who were not involved with the research, said: "Cold plasma is a waterless technology, so there wouldn't be any solutions to apply or to rinse off. That reduces water usage throughout the process, and might be more advantageous for continuous cleaning applications, such as for conveyor belts, materials handling surfaces, etc." A further advantage, they noted, is that storage of large volumes of sanitiser on site would no longer be necessary. Mr Niemira and Dr Kingsley believe that treating surfaces with a combination of bleach and cold plasma may eventually become the gold standard of norovirus decontamination.

Over the decades, norovirus research has been greatly hindered by the inability to grow the virus in the laboratory. However, in late 2014, scientists at the University of Florida reported a breakthrough after they successfully cultured the virus in a complex in vitro system that utilised B-cells.

Besides decontaminating surfaces, cold plasma may have other medical applications. For instance, its use in treating dental caries has recently completed phase II clinical trials in the United States.
Source

Spontaneous DNA mutation causes miracle cure

10/2/2015

Eric Hopton : RedOrbit : 09 Feb 2015

It's a medical miracle. A woman who had been suffering from an extremely rare disease for 50 years has experienced a spontaneous cure as a result of changes in her DNA. Doctors described the chances of such an event as "astronomically low" and the equivalent of winning the top lottery prize.

The lucky lady is now 58 and her identity is unknown. Before her sudden cure she had a condition known as "WHIM syndrome" which caused serious outbreaks of warts and infections. WHIM syndrome is a rare immunodeficiency disorder. WHIM is an acronym derived from the main features of the condition - Warts, Hypogammaglobulinemia, Infections, and Myelokathexis (retention of neutrophils in the bone marrow). It usually presents in early childhood. Recurrent bacterial infections and cellulitis are common symptoms. Sufferers frequently develop widespread warts that are treatment resistant. In extreme cases potentially cancerous genital warts can occur.

Doctors believe WHIM syndrome is an inherited condition caused by mutations in the CXCR4 gene. Early diagnosis is essential. Treatments include G-CSF (which stimulates the production of neutrophils); intravenous immunoglobulins; prophylactic antibiotics to prevent infection; and continued surveillance of the patient for skin lesions. The syndrome arises when patients have a defect in a tiny section of their DNA. As a result, any new immune system cells forming in the bone marrow remain there instead of circulating in the body. This opens a patient with WHIM syndrome up to serious risk of infection and sufferers are especially vulnerable to the human papillomavirus (HPV) which not only causes warts but leads to higher incidence of cancer.

According to the BBC, the 58 year old shocked a team of researchers at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases when she told them that her warts had spontaneously vanished 20 years ago. One of the Institute's researchers, Doctor Philip Murphy, decided to investigate further. His tests revealed that the cure could be traced back to an event called "chromosomal shattering". A mutation had occurred in a single bone marrow cell. The woman lost 164 genes from her DNA. But the real "miracle" was that among those lost genes was the rogue gene that had caused WHIM syndrome in the first place and that the mutation was in a stem cell that produces immune cells. From that single event the patient's ability to create and release immune cells from the bone marrow was eventually restored. There is no evidence from anywhere in the world of any other cases of such spontaneous DNA mutation causing a cure. Her warts and susceptibility to infection have disappeared.

Doctors now hope that this discovery will lead to a better understanding of the way WHIM syndrome works and that, as a result, new treatments could be found. For WHIM sufferers, who have always had to face the likelihood that theirs is an incurable, lifelong, and debilitating condition, this has to be great, if cautious, good news. Further research will now build on these findings and will also look at what part, if any, the other 163 mutated genes played in the process of recovery.
http://www.sott.net/article/292448-Spontaneous-DNA-mutation-causes-miracle-cure

ZODIACAL LIGHT:

10/2/2015

Around the world, people far from city lights are noticing a luminous triangle rising out of the western sky at sunset. It is the Zodiacal Light. Last night, Feb. 9th, Alan Dyer photographed the phenomenon from the City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico:

Dyer, author of "How to Shoot and Process Nightscapes," describes the photo: "The tower of light at left is the Zodiacal Light.
At right is the setting autumn Milky Way. At the base of the Zodiacal Light is bright Venus just setting, with fainter Mars above it."

Zodiacal light is sunlight reflected from billions of dust particles littering the solar system's orbital plane. These are the same dust particles that make meteors when they occasionally hit Earth's atmosphere. Zodiacal Light is very faint, so dark skies are required to see it. Now is a good time to look because the Moon is absent from the evening sky. A trip to the countryside on a moonless February evening often results in a Zodiacal Light sighting. Try it!
www.spaceweather.com

Researchers discover environmentally-friendly process for purification of water

10/2/2015

Christina Benjaminsen : Gemini : 27 Jan 2015

© Thor Nielsen/SINTEF
When biologist Netzer (left), who specialises in bioprocesses, met electrochemist Colmenares, whose field is
water purification, they came up with the idea of a practical, microbial, energy-generating water purification system.
Today their demonstration plant is up and running.

Researchers in Trondheim have succeeded in getting bacteria to power a fuel cell. The "fuel" used is wastewater, and the products of the process are pure water droplets and electricity.

This is an environmentally-friendly process for the purification of water derived from industrial processes and suchlike", says SINTEF researcher Luis Cesar Colmenares, who is running the project together with his colleague Roman Netzer. "It also generates small amounts of electricity - in practice enough to drive a small fan, a sensor or a light-emitting diode", he says.

In the future, the researchers hope to scale up this energy generation to enable the same energy to be used to power the water purification process, which commonly consists of many stages, often involving mechanical and energy-demanding decontamination steps at its outset.

Nature's own generator

The biological fuel cell is powered by entirely natural processes - with the help of living micro-organisms.

"In simple terms, this type of fuel cell works because the bacteria consume the waste materials found in the water", explains Colmenares. "As they eat, the bacteria produce electrons and protons. The voltage that arises between these particles generates energy that we can exploit. Since the waste in the wastewater (organic material) is consumed and thus removed, the water itself becomes purified", he says.

The electrons produced at the anode migrate via an external circuit and generate electricity. The protons produced at the same time migrate through the membrane. When the electrons are reunited at the cathode, they react with the oxygen to produce water and hydrogen peroxide. The hydrogen peroxide (also used to bleach hair) is used as a component in the water purification process. The fuel cell requires no electricity supply.

You can read the article in its entirety at :
http://www.sott.net/article/292074-Researchers-discover-environmentally-friendly-process-for-the-purification-of-water

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH JUPITER:

6/2/2015

This week, Jupiter is at its biggest, brightest, and closest to Earth for all of 2015. Astronomers call this "the opposition of Jupiter". The giant planet rises in the east at sunset and soars overhead at midnight, outshining everything except the Moon and Venus. Giorgia Hofer sends this picture from Laggio di Cadore, Veneto, Italy:

"I caught Jupiter and its satellites setting behind the Marmarole on the morning of February 4th at 6:50 am," says Hofer. "It was very bright."

Oppositions of Jupiter happen every 13 months, but this one is special. In a rare coincidence, Jupiter's opposition on Feb. 6th coincides almost perfectly with its equinox on Feb. 5th when the Sun crosses Jupiter's equatorial plane. It is an edge-on apparition of the giant planet that sets the stage for a remarkable series of events. For the next couple of months, backyard sky watchers can see the moons of Jupiter executing a complex series of mutual eclipses and transits.

For instance, on Feb. 5th, volcanic Io will cast its shadow on Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon.. Two days later, on Feb. 7th, icy Europa will cast its shadow on Io. Events like these will continue, off and on, until July 2015. Look up at midnight for the brightest light from the outer solar system you'll see all year.
www.spaceweather.com