Science Articles & Inventions Online

COMPUTER BIO LOGIC GATES FROM BACTERIA

DNA is often referred to as the building block of life. Now scientists from Imperial College London have demonstrated that DNA (and bacteria) can be used to create the fundamental building blocks of a computer – logic gates. Using DNA and harmless gut bacteria, the scientists have built what they claim are the most advanced biological logic gates ever created by scientists. The research could lead to the development of a new generation of microscopic biological computing devices that, amongst other things, could travel around the body cleaning arteries and destroying cancers.

While previous research had already proven biological logic gates could be made, the Imperial College scientists say the big advantage of their creations is that they behave like their electronic counterparts – replicating the way that electronic logic gates process information by either switching “on” or “off.” Importantly, the new biological logic gates are also modular, meaning they could be fitted together to make different types of logic gates and more complex biological processors.

To create a type of logic gate called an “AND gate,” the team used modified DNA to reprogram Escherichia Coli (E.Coli) bacteria to perform the same switching on and off process as its electronic equivalent when stimulated by chemicals. In a similar way to the way electronic components are made, the team demonstrated that the biological gates could be connected together to form more complex components.

The team also created a “NOT gate” and combined it with the AND gate to produce the more complex “NAND gate.” NAND gates are significant because any Boolean function (AND, OR, NOT, XOR, XNOR), which play a basic role in the design of computer chips, can be implemented by using a combination of NAND gates.

The researchers will now try and develop more complex circuitry that comprises multiple logic gates. To accomplish this they will need to find a way to link multiple biological logic gates together that is similar to the way in which electronic logic gates are linked together to enable complex processing to be carried out.

“We believe that the next stage of our research could lead to a totally new type of circuitry for processing information,” said Professor Martin Buck from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London. “In the future, we may see complex biological circuitry processing information using chemicals, much in the same way that our body uses them to process and store information.”

The team also suggests that these biological logic gates could one day form the building blocks of microscopic biological devices, such as sensors that swim inside arteries, detecting the build up of harmful plaque and rapidly delivering medications to the affected area. Other sensors could detect and destroy cancer cells inside the body, while others could be deployed in the environment to monitor pollution and detect and neutralize dangerous toxins.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

We all know about these commonly used inventions, but they had a dark side.

1…..Ecstasy

Anton Köllisch developed 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine as a by-product of research for a drug combating abnormal bleeding. It was largely ignored for around 70 years until it became popular in  dance clubs of the early 80s. It was only when the Rave party culture of the late 80s adopted Ecstasy as its drug of choice that MDMA became one of the top four illegal drugs in use killing an estimated 50 people a year in the UK alone. Its inventor died in World War I.

2…Concentration camps

Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts set up “safe refugee camps” to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for one  reason or another related to the Boer War. However, when Lord Kitchener succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa in 1900, the British Army introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. Kitchener initiated plans to- “flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organized like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly ‘bag’ of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children.” Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children. Over 26,000 women and children were to perish in these concentration camps.

3…ROCKETS

Despite a lifelong passion for astronomy and a dream that rockets could be used to explore space, Wernher von Braun’s talents were used to produce the Nazi V2 rocket which killed 7,250 military personnel and civilians and an estimated 20,000 slave laborers during construction. Later in the US he developed a series of ICBM rockets capable of transporting multiple nuclear warheads around the globe before redeeming his reputation with the Saturn V rocket that put men on the moon

4…NUCLEAR FUSION

Sir Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant was the first to discover that heavy hydrogen nuclei could be made to react with each other . This fusion reaction is the basis of a hydrogen bomb. Ten years later, American scientist Edward Teller would press to use Oliphant’s discovery in order to build the hydrogen bomb. However, Oliphant did not foresee this – “We had no idea whatever that this fusion reaction would one day be applied to make hydrogen bombs. Our curiosity was just curiosity about the structure of the nucleus of the atom”.

5…SARIN GAS

Dr. Gerhard Schrader was a German chemist specializing in the discovery of new insecticides, hoping to make progress in the fight against world hunger. However, Dr. Schrader is best known for his accidental discovery of nerve agents such as sarin and tabun, and for this he is sometimes called the “father of the nerve agents”.

6…LEADED PETROL

Thomas Midgley discovered the CFC Freon as a safe refrigerant to replace the highly toxic refrigerants such as ammonia in common use. This resulted in extensive damage to the Ozone Layer. His other famous idea was to add tetraethyl lead to gasoline to prevent “knocking” thus causing worldwide health issues and deaths from lead poisoning. He is considered to be the man that – “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history.”

7…TNT

Joseph Wilbrand was a German chemist who discovered trinitrotoluene in 1863 to be used as a yellow dye. It wasn’t until after 1902 that the devastating power of TNT as it is better known was fully realized and it was utilized as an explosive in time for extensive use by both sides in World War I, World War II. It is still in military & industrial use today.

8…GATLING GUN

Richard Jordan Gatling invented the Gatling gun after he noticed the majority of dead from the American Civil War died from infection & illness, rather than gunshots. In 1877, he wrote: “It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine – a gun – which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease would be greatly diminished.” The Gatling gun was used most successfully to expand European colonial empires by ruthlessly mowing down native tribesmen armed with basic primitive weapons.

9…AGENT ORANGE

Arthur Galston developed a chemical that was meant to speed the growth of soybeans and allow them to be grown in areas with a short season. Unfortunately in high concentrations it would defoliate them and it was made into a herbicide even though Galston had grave concerns about its effects on humans. It was supplied to the US government in orange striped barrels and 77 million litres of Agent Orange were sprayed on Vietnam causing 400000 deaths and disabilities with another 500000 birth defects. Service personnel to some extent were also affected

10…ZYKLON B

Fritz Haber was a Nobel Prize winning Jewish scientist who created cheap nitrogen fertilizer and also made chemical weapons for the German side in World War I. It was his creation of an insecticide mainly used as a fumigant in grain stores that was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million people. His Zyklon B became the nazis preferred method of execution in gas chambers during the Holocaust.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Failed Iron ore extraction by Thomas Edison

People know Thomas Alva Edison as a successful inventor but history books revealed that he has some failed inventions to his credit; in 1890’s he put in huge amounts of money into Iron ore mining as he was planning to supply iron to different buyers, but all his money went down the drain as he failed to extract iron from its ores.

Flying Aircraft Carrier – USS Macon/USS Akron

Flying aircraft carrier called USS Macon was a very useful military invention which was able to carry five F9C “Sparrowhawk” airplanes that could be launched as well as retrieved during flight but it was dumped later because it crashed due to design failure during a flight in 1935.

Cybernetic Walking Machine

A Robot like machine that walked, was designed by a man named Ralph Mosher to carry weapons in very difficult military environments, it was designed for General electric, but it was abandoned later, after its initial experimental launch in 1968 due to some unknown reason.

Ford Nucleon.Nuclear powered motor car by Ford

Ford Nucleon was a car designed by Ford Motor Company in late 1950’s and they had planned to use nuclear power as a fuel in that car having a small nuclear reactor in it ; it was an excellent idea by Ford Company but never implemented due to the dangerous issues of nuclear radiation and nuclear waste.

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Kinetoscope

Thomas Edison also tried his luck to invent a device which can combine sound and pictures to create motion pictures but he failed to do so, he dropped this idea by 1915.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

AS sparkling bling goes, it doesn’t get bigger.

DIAMONDS IN THE SKY

Australian astronomers have discovered a planet they think is made of diamond.

The galactic gem could be as large as 60,000 kilometres across – five times the diameter of Earth.

The “diamond planet” orbiting a pulsar, centre, of this image. The orbit is represented by the dashed line. The blue lines represent the radio signal from the pulsar. Illustration: Swinburne University 

It is orbiting a tiny, dead, spinning star, called a pulsar, about 4000 light years away in the Milky Way.

CSIRO astronomer Michael Keith said the diamond planet was likely to be very hot and glowing white.

“It would probably look very pretty,” he said.

An international team, led by Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, found the exotic object using telescopes including the radio telescope at Parkes. They were searching for pulsars – the lighthouses of the universe – which emit beams of radio waves as they spin rapidly.

They discovered a pulsar which is only about 20 kilometres across and rotating extremely fast – 175 times every second.

Slight variations in its pulse alerted the astronomers to the presence of the companion planet, which orbits the pulsar every two hours and 10 minutes. Dr Keith said the planet appeared to have been a massive star that lost more than 99 per cent of its mass.

Its density made it likely it comprise mostly of carbon atoms, crushed together in a crystalline structure “very similar to diamond.”

He joked that it would be priceless: “I recently got engaged so I know how much diamonds cost.”

Team member Willem van Straten said they hoped the planet was glowing white, because that would make it easier to see light from it using a telescope. The team was searching for millisecond pulsars because they were like accurate “clocks” whose regularity could be used to detect the presence of gravitational waves – theoretical ripples in space time thought to be generated by cosmic events such as two black holes colliding.

The “holy grail” would be to find a pulsar orbiting a black hole, to see if Einstein’s general theory of relativity still holds in an extremely strong gravity field, he said. “You could study space and time in the vicinity of the black hole with a lot of precision.”

Somewhat unromantically the pulsar, with its diamond companion, is named PSR J1719-1438

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

10 products that defined Steve Jobs from Apple

1:51pm | Steve Jobs had no formal schooling in engineering, yet he’s listed as the inventor or co-inventor on more than 200 US patents.

Joint co-founder of Apple retires as CEO of the mighty conglomerate which he drove to the top of the IT world.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

NEW AERO GEL SUBSTANCE IS KNOWN AS FROZEN SMOKE

Researchers have created a new aerogel that boasts amazing strength and an incredibly large surface area. Nicknamed ‘frozen smoke’ due to its translucent appearance, aerogels are manufactured materials derived from a gel in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas, resulting in a material renowned as the world’s lightest solid material. The new so-called “multiwalled carbon nanotube (MCNT) aerogel” could be used in sensors to detect pollutants and toxic substances, chemical reactors, and electronics components.

Although aerogels have been fabricated from silica, metal oxides, polymers, and carbon-based materials and are already used in thermal insulation in windows and buildings, tennis racquets, sponges to clean up oil spills, and other products, few scientists have succeeded in making aerogels from carbon nanotubes.

The researchers were able to succeed where so many before them had failed using a wet gel of well-dispersed pristine MWCNTs. After removing the liquid component from the MWCNT wet gel, they were able to create the lightest ever free-standing MWCNT aerogel monolith with a density of 4 mg/cm3.

MWCNT aerogels infused with a plastic material are flexible, like a spring that can be stretched thousands of times, and if the nanotubes in a one-ounce cube were unraveled and placed side-to-side and end-to-end, they would carpet three football fields. The MWCNT aerogels are also excellent conductors of electricity, which is what makes them ideal for sensing applications and offers great potential for their use in electronics components.

A report describing the process for making MWCNT aerogels and tests to determine their properties appears in ACS Nano.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha