Why Pendulum Clocks Mysteriously Sync Up - [LiveScience www.livescience.com]

Why Pendulum Clocks Mysteriously Sync Up

by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor   |   July 23, 2015 10:34am ET

Pendulum clocks swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other. Credit: Henrique Oliveira and Luís Melo View full size image

The 350-year-old mystery of why pendulum clocks hanging from the same wall synchronize over time may finally be solved, scientists say.
In 1665, Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock, was lying in bed with a minor illness and watching two of his clocks hanging on a wall, said Henrique Oliveira, a mathematician at the University of Lisbon and co-author of a new study detailing the findings. Huygens noticed something odd: No matter how the pendulums on these clocks began, within about a half-hour, they ended up swinging in exactly the opposite direction from each other.
The cause of this effect — what Huygens called an "odd kind of sympathy" — remained a mystery for centuries. But recently, scientists analyzing two pendulum clocks hanging from the same beam found that the clocks could influence each other through small forces exerted on the supporting beam. However, "nobody tested properly the idea of clocks hanging on the same wall," Oliveira told Live Science. [5 of the Most Precise Clocks Ever Made]

In conversations over coffee, Oliveira andstudy co-author Luís Melo, a physicist at the University of Lisbon, decided to analyze how two pendulums might interact through an immobile wall, instead of investigating how they might interactthrough a movable beam as had been done in previous research.
The researchers calculated that, as pendulums move back and forth, sound pulses could travel through the wall from clock to clock. These pulses can interfere with the swings of the pendulums, eventually causing them to synchronize.
The investigators tested their idea with experiments involving two pendulum clocks attached to an aluminum rail fixed to a wall. Their results showed that changes in the speed of the pendulum swings coincided with cycles of those sound pulses.
In addition, they plan to expand their model to explain the behavior of other kinds of oscillators, such as the electronic oscillators used to synchronize activity on microchips, Melo said.
Oliveiraand Melo detailed their findings online July 23 in the journal Scientific Reports.
Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Mathematics of Synchronization Phenomena

www.math.kyushu-u.ac.jp/eng/pages/laboratory04.html

In this way, Huygens is said to have discovered synchronization phenomena. We can perform a simple experiment on pendulum synchronization using ...

Portuguese scientists discover why pendulum clocks swing ...

www.theguardian.com › Science › Physics

5 days ago - A new study accounts for the synchronisation of pendulum clocks. ... pendulum clocks hanging from a wall would synchronise their swing over ...

Pendulum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum

A pendulum is a weight suspended from a pivot so that it can swing freely. When a pendulum is ..... It kept time with two synchronized pendulums. The master ..

Daily News & Analysis

Unusual 'pill on a string' could help detect Esophageal cancer Daily News & Analysis  - ‎10 hours ago‎ Researchers have developed a 'pill on a string' that could help doctors detect esophageal cancer - cancer of the gullet - at an early stage.

Unusual 'pill on a string' could help detect Esophageal cancer

Wednesday, 22 July 2015 - 11:36pm IST | Place: London | Agency: PTI

Researchers have developed a 'pill on a string' that could help doctors detect esophageal cancer - cancer of the gullet - at an early stage.

• Image Source: Youtube screen grab

Researchers have developed a 'pill on a string' that could help doctors detect esophageal cancer - cancer of the gullet - at an early stage.
Researchers said that ''cytosponge'' sits within a pill which, when swallowed, dissolves to show a sponge that scrapes off cells when withdrawn up the gullet.
It allows doctors to collect cells from all along the gullet, whereas standard biopsies take individual point samples.
Esophageal cancer is often preceded by Barrett's esophagus, a condition in which cells within the lining of the esophagus begin to change shape and can grow abnormally. Between one and five people in every 100 with Barrett''s esophagus go on to develop esophageal cancer in their life-time, which can be difficult to treat.
At present, Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer are diagnosed using biopsies, which look for signs of dysplasia, the proliferation of abnormal cancer cells.
Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have shown that variations in mutations across the esophagus mean that biopsies may miss cells with important mutations.
A sample was more likely to pick up key mutations if taken using the Cytosponge, developed by Rebecca Fitzgerald at the Medical Research Council Cancer Research Unit at the University of Cambridge. "The trouble with Barrett's esophagus is that it looks bland and might span over 10cm," said Fitzgerald. "We created a map of mutations in a patient with the condition and found that within this stretch, there is a great deal of variation amongst cells," she said.
"Some might carry an important mutation, but many will not. If you're taking a biopsy, this relies on your hitting the right spot. Using the Cytosponge appears to remove some of this game of chance," she said.
Fitzgerald and colleagues carried out whole genome sequencing to analyse paired Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer samples taken at one point in time from 23 patients, as well as 73 samples taken over a three-year period from one patient with Barrett's esophagus.
The researchers found patterns of mutations in the genome that provided a ''fingerprint'' of the causes of the cancer.
The team found fingerprints which they believe are due to the damage caused to the esophagus by stomach acid splashing onto its walls; the same fingerprints could be seen in both Barrett''s esophagus and esophageal cancer, suggesting that these changes occur very early on the process.
Even in areas of Barrett's esophagus without cancer, the researchers found a large number of mutations in their tissue - on average 12,000 per person (compared to an average of 18,000 mutations within the cancer). Many of these are likely to have been ''bystanders'', genetic mutations that occurred along the way but that were not actually implicated in cancer.
The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics.

Iraqi woman with rare disorder getting treated in Mumbai

Thursday, 23 July 2015 - 8:15am IST | Agency: dna | From the print edition

• dna Correspondent

According to doctors, achalasia cardia is a rare neurodegenerative motility disorder which affects one-nine humans per 1,00,000 population.

A 42-year-old Iraqi woman is undergoing treatment in the city for achalasia cardia, a condition in which the oesophagus fails to propel food down to the stomach and, as a result, food gets deposited at the cardio esophageal junction (where the esophagus meets the stomach). The patient was born with this condition.
According to doctors, achalasia cardia is a rare neurodegenerative motility disorder which affects one-nine humans per 1,00,000 population.
"When the patient came to us, her nutritional state was very poor, as she hadn't consumed food in over two months, with her serum albumin at 2.5. We found that food was getting deposited near the lungs, which resulted in severe chest infection, patchy pneumonitis and yellow infected sputum," said Dr Arun Behl, Onco Surgeon, Fortis Hospital, where she is being treated.
The patient's health was assessed using Esophageal manometry & Upper GI endoscopy and CT scan. She was then put on Total Parenteral Nutrition (TPN) to bring her nutritional levels back to normal. Of the four key blood vessels that carry blood to the stomach, three were severed in the previous operations. The single functional vessel had to be preserved to maintain viability of stomach tube, said Dr Behl.
"Corrective surgery was scheduled and alternative back-up plans were also put in place – replace esophaegus completely with the stomach itself/colonic interposition/jejunum free graft/radial artery forearm flap," said Dr Mohan Koppikar, laparoscopic surgeon.
.............

Still drinking coca cola? Watch this

  
• Still drinking coca cola? Watch this!
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Russian Scientists Revive Nikola Tesla's Designs With Help From Crowdfunding
June 29 2014 | From: InternationalBusinessTimes

Russian Scientists Revive Nikola Tesla's Designs With Help From Crowdfunding

What if electricity could travel the way data does, unburdened by clunky infrastructure as voltages flow wirelessly?
That was inventor Nikola Tesla’s vision more than a century ago. Now, Russian scientists are attempting to turn his concepts into reality with the help of an $800,000 crowdfunding campaign.





The basic idea is to pump electricity into homes and other buildings not by traditional power lines or electrical substations, but via 10-story-tall transmitting towers. Each tower can handle voltages in excess of 3 million volts, which it then sends to wireless receivers by creating currents in the ground. (U.S. electrical wall sockets, by comparison, take only 110 volts).

Leonid Plekhanov and Sergey Plekhanov, both graduates of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, have spent more than five years conducting research and experiments on the Planetary Energy Transmitter project, and they previously raised $40,000 through a Russian crowdfunding campaign, the TreeHugger blog noted earlier this month.

The scientists have tinkered with original designs by Tesla, the namesake of Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla Motors. The new plans use more lightweight materials to ease the construction of transmission towers. Tesla’s original Wardenclyffe tower prototype weighed more than 60 tons, while the new design will weigh just 2 tons, Smart Grid News said. The Russians have also integrated advanced electronics into the design.

If the tower and receivers function as intended, the system could “allow the transmission of large amounts of energy via ground to any kind of distances — instantly, safely and without losses,” say the scientists, who prefer that the towers transmit emissions-free solar energy in particular.

On their website, Global Energy Transmission, the Plekhanovs dismiss concerns that wireless energy transmission will turn the planet into a microwave oven or function like giant, super-powerful antennae. They say it’s all in line with the basic laws of physics and electrical engineering. A purportedly “simplified explanation” of the design offers more details.

The current crowdfunding effort runs through July 25 on the IndieGoGo site. So far the project has reached 1 percent of its goal.

For the full story and links visit: InternationalBusinessTimes

Bioprinter can print 3D samples of human tissue

Treating severe burns typically involves grafting a healthy patch of skin taken from elsewhere on the body. But large burns present a problem. That has researchers at Wake Forest experimenting with a treatment method that involves applying a small number of healthy skin cells onto the injury and letting them grow organically over the wound. 3-D-bioprinted skin potentially could be produced faster, provided Organovo can successfully replicate the cell structure of human epidermis.

L’Oreal already has a massive lab in Lyon, France, to produce its patented skin, called Episkin, from incubated skin cells donated by surgery patients. The cells grow in a collagen culture before being exposed to air and UV light to mimic the effects of aging. Organovo pioneered the process of bioprinting human tissues, most notably creating a 3-D-printed liver system. Both parties benefit from the partnership: L’Oreal gets Organovo’s speed and expertise, and Organovo gets funding and access to L’Oreal’s comprehensive knowledge of skin, acquired through many years and over $1 billion in research and development.

At the moment, L’Oreal uses its epidermis samples to predict as closely as possible how human skin will react to the ingredients in its products. If L’Oreal can more quickly iterate on the molecular composition of its skin samples, it can produce more accurate results, conceivably across different skin phenotypes. That means products like sunscreen and age-defying serums—which inevitably will yield varying results across varying skin types—can be tweaked for greater efficacy.

L’Oreal also has a history of selling Episkin to other cosmetic and pharmacology companies. The company won’t disclose the going rate, but in 2011 toldBloomberg it sold half-centimeter-wide samples for €55 each (about $78 each at the time). That said, Guive Balooch, who runs L’Oreal’s in-house tech incubator, says the bioprinting will be done primarily for research purposes.

Click to Open Overlay Gallery

Organovo’s Novogen MMX Bioprinter can print 3D samples of human tissue. COURTESY OF ORGANOVO

Balooch approached Organovo after seeing its human liver model. While the two companies still need to settle on an exact plan for the skin samples, the bioprinting process for epidermis will be roughly similar to that of the liver. It happens in three steps, says Michael Renard, a VP at Organovo. Once scientists have collected the human cells from the various companies that harvest and sell them, they use a proprietary in-house technology to turn the cells into a “bio-ink” that feeds into the bioprinters. The actual manufacturing isn’t all that different from what you might see with a standard 3D printer.

“In concept, it’s the same idea of programming the 3-D printer to print architecture on an X-Y-Z axis,” he says, referring to the CAD designs that typically inform 3-D printers. “We just happened to use living human cells. There’s delicacy involved.” During the last step, the structure of cells is nourished (Renard won’t say how) and kept in a temperature-controlled environment so they can fuse into a cohesive mass of tissue.

There are still a bevy of unknowns, such as when Organovo will start production and just how much faster it will be compared to L’Oreal’s current derma-farming methods. Still, Renard says Organovo produces at  “a commercial scale,” so it stands to reason the same will go for skin. That’s a vague start, but these things—you know, the rapid manufacturing of human flesh—don’t happen overnight.

from indiatimes

16 Famous Celebs Who Opted For Plastic Surgery And Regretted It Instantly Entertainment

'Bacteria Could Be Used to Control Robots'[next antibiotic to treat robot fever due to bacteria??]

'Bacteria Could Be Used to Control Robots'

Indo-Asian News Service, 17 July 2015

inShare1

Believe it or not bacteria can control the behaviour of an inanimate device like a robot!A scientist from Virginia Institute of Technology has used a mathematical model to demonstrate that robots may indeed be able to have a working brain.
"We were trying to find out from the mathematical model if we could build a living microbiome on a non-living host and control the host through the microbiome," said Waren Ruder, assistant professor of biological systems engineering.
For future experiments, Ruder is building robots that will have the ability to read bacterial gene expression levels in E. coli using miniature fluorescent microscopes.
The robots will respond to bacteria he will engineer in his lab.
Ruder's approach revealed unique decision-making behaviour by a bacteria-robot system.
The bacteria in the mathematical experiment exhibited their genetic circuitry by either turning green or red according to what they ate.
In the mathematical model, the robot was equipped with sensors and a miniature microscope to measure the colour of bacteria instructing it where and how fast to go depending upon the pigment and intensity of colour.
In one instance, as the bacteria were directing the robot towards food, the robot paused before quickly making its final approach a classic predatory behaviour of higher order animals that stalk prey.
On a broad scale, understanding the biochemical sensing between organisms could have far reaching implications in ecology, biology and robotics, said the paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.
In agriculture, bacteria-robot model systems could enable robust studies that explore the interactions between soil bacteria and livestock.
In health care, further understanding of bacteria's role in controlling gut physiology could lead to bacteria-based prescriptions to treat mental and physical illnesses.
Ruder also envisions droids that could execute tasks such as deploying bacteria to remediate oil spills.

Massless particle for gen-next electronics found

Press Trust of India  |  Washington 

July 17, 2015 Last Updated at 17:57 IST

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A massless particle that eluded scientists for 85 years has been discovered and it could pave the way for faster and more efficient electronics and new types of quantum computing.

An international team led by Princeton University scientists has discovered Weyl fermions theorised 85 years ago.

The researchers reported in the journal Science the first observation of Weyl fermions, which, if applied to next-generation electronics, could allow for a nearly free and efficient flow of electricity in electronics, and thus greater power, especially for computers.

Proposed by the mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl in 1929, Weyl fermions have been long sought by scientists because they have been regarded as possible building blocks of other subatomic particles.

Their basic nature means that Weyl fermions could provide a much more stable and efficient transport of particles than electrons, which are the principle particle behind modern electronics.

Unlike electrons, Weyl fermions are massless and possess a high degree of mobility; the particle's spin is both in the same direction as its motion - which is known as being right-handed - and in the opposite direction in which it moves, or left-handed.

"The physics of the Weyl fermion are so strange, there could be many things that arise from this particle that we're just not capable of imagining now," said corresponding author M Zahid Hasan, a Princeton professor of physics who led the research team.

The researchers' find differs from the other particle discoveries in that the Weyl fermion can be reproduced and potentially applied, Hasan said.

Typically, particles such as the famous Higgs boson are detected in the fleeting aftermath of particle collisions, he said.

The Weyl fermion, however, was discovered inside a synthetic metallic crystal called tantalum arsenide that the Princeton researchers designed in collaboration with researchers at the Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter in Beijing and at National Taiwan University.

The Weyl fermion possesses two characteristics that could make its discovery a boon for future electronics, including the development of the highly prized field of efficient quantum computing, Hasan said.

For a physicist, the Weyl fermions are most notable for behaving like a composite of monopole- and antimonopole-like particles when inside a crystal, Hasan said.

This means that Weyl particles that have opposite magnetic-like charges can nonetheless move independently of one another with a high degree of mobility.

The researchers also found that Weyl fermions can be used to create massless electrons that move very quickly with no backscattering, wherein electrons are lost when they collide with an obstruction. In electronics, backscattering hinders efficiency and generates heat.

New drug to beat brain and breast cancers

IANS | Jul 16, 2015, 04.49 PM IST

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Researchers have discovered two chemical compounds that effectively stop the growth of brain cancer cells and breast tumours, opening the way for potential new drugs to be developed.

"It is particularly encouraging for brain tumour patients, who do not currently have effective treatment options besides surgery," said James Turkson from University of Hawaii Cancer Centre in the US.

"The targeted treatments are less toxic and therefore will give cancer patients a better quality of life when both compounds are developed as drugs," Turkson said.

In the study published in the journal Cancer Research, the researchers examined compounds that inhibit Stat3, a protein implicated in a variety of cancers that include brain and breast cancers.

In mouse models of brain and breast cancer, the two compounds effectively inhibited tumour growth, the results said.

The two chemical compounds, a hydroxamic acid-based inhibitor (SH5-07), and a benzoic acid-based inhibitor (SH4-54) designed at the UH Cancer Center stopped the growth of brain and breast cancer cells by blocking a certain function of the Stat3 protein.

The two compounds stop the protein from promoting cancer cells to grow, thus stopping the tumours from growing.

"Our results offer preclinical proof of concept for SH5-07 and SH4-54 as candidates for further development as cancer therapeutics," the study said.

Hole in head makes you smarter 

Big News Network (IANS)Thursday 16th July, 2015

Intelligence in humans can be estimated by the size of the holes in the skull through which the arteries pass, says a study.

"It is possible to estimate brain metabolic rate from the size of the arteries that supply the brain with blood," said lead author Roger Seymour in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide.
Published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, researchers showed that the connection between intelligence and hole size stems from brain activity being related to brain metabolic rate.
Professor Seymour measured the 'carotid foramina' (which allow passage of the internal carotid arteries servicing the brain) in primates and marsupials and found large differences.
"During the course of primate evolution, body size increased from small, tree-dwelling animals, through larger monkeys and finally the largest apes and humans," Seymour said.
A human brain contains nearly 100 billion nerve cells with connections measured in the trillions.
Each cell and connection uses a minute amount of energy but, added together, the whole brain uses about 20 percent of a person's resting metabolic rate.
If an artery passes through a bone, then simply measuring the size of the hole can indicate the blood flow rate and in turn the metabolic rate of the organ inside.
"Our analysis showed that on one hand, brain size increased with body size similarly in the two groups. On the other hand, blood flow rate in relation to brain size was very different. The relative blood flow rate increased much faster in primates than in marsupials," Seymour said.
The blood flow rate and presumably brain metabolic rate increased with brain volume much faster than expected for mammals in general.
By the time of the great apes, blood flow was about 280 percent higher than expected.
"The difference between primates and other mammals lies not in the size of the brain, but in its relative metabolic rate. High metabolic rate correlates with the evolution of greater cognitive ability and complex social behaviour among primates," Seymour said.

planning to visit Venus and an asteroid

After Mars and Moon, ISRO planning to visit Venus and an asteroid

• Science

by Kanishk Singh - Jul 16, 2015

After reaching on Moon and Mars, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is not sitting back idle, in fact the Indian space agency is now planning to reach and explore Venus, also asteroid nearby.
Venus is the second planet in our solar system. Since, Venus is one of the hottest planet in our solar system it appears like an orange fire ball if watched through a telescope in the night sky. Some scientists call Venus as the twin of our Earth due to spectacular similarities. If we go by mythology, Venus is the planet of love, wealth and prosperity and it was named after the Greek goddess of love and beauty.
Venus is not habitable since its atmosphere mostly consists of carbon dioxide and temperature at the planet hover around 460 degree Celcius. Venus is located nearly 261 kilometres far from the Earth and takes 224 days to complete one revolution around the Sun.
Kiran Kumar, Chairman of ISRO said that they are looking forward to next planetary mission and it could be a repeat mission on Mars, a mission on Venus or an asteroid mission. He further added that after the success of Mangalyaan, ISRO planning to revisit the red planet with Mangalyaan-2 mission.
“Overall capability we have demonstrated that we can go up to Mars with a minimal launcher and the next thing will be to look at the science portion and it can be more science driven,” Mr Kumar said.
Mr Kiran also said that the Indian space agency is making a 10-year road map for future missions and planetary explorations including asteroids. A mission to revisit Moon is on the track, Chandrayaan-2.
Moreover, Russia, the United States and the European Space Agency have had missions to Venus till date. ISRO will become fourth agency to achieve the feat.

SOLAR AIRCONDITIONED CLOTHS

Short-Sleeved Solar Powered Air Conditioning Clothing
Cloth material: Decron
Duration of continuous work: 8-10 hours (5V)
Tip: Customization is OK


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Cloth material: Decron
Duration of continuous work:8- hours (5V)
Tip: Customization is OK

#2 – Solar Powered Cooling Helmet

… and you can of course complement the above top with this little bit of ingenuity to help cool your noggin. Not to mention it looks simply ravishing. Available from (who else?) Hammacher Schlemmer for less than $50 US.

Plan on trekking the Sahara or braving the South East Asian heat? Why rely on bottled water on throngs of natives to personally fan you with palm fronds in the comfort of your Range Rover when you could pack an air-conditioner … right in your shirt?
Previously unavailable in the U.S. until this year, this odd little bit of clothing is available for just $159 via Japan Trend Shop.

#18 – Breathe Air Helmet

Via Times Online:

The “Breathe Air” helmet was created to filter out particles that irritate hay fever and asthma sufferers. It covers the cyclist’s nose and mouth with a shield behind which the filtered air circulates.

Okay, so it’s not entirely useless. But do you really want to look like a Star Wars Stormtrooper defending the Death Star while you’re cycling around Phuket?
Currently unavailable. Expected to retail for £100.

AIRCONDITIONED CLOTHS