The Wiffle ball has been fooling batters since its invention in 1953, but scientists only recently learned why. Mechanical engineer Jenn Stroud Rossmann at Lafayette College placed the ball in a wind tunnel, measured airflow around it, and concluded that the shifting balance of forces inside and outside the ball is what makes it so devilishly hard to hit.

Illustration by Trevor Johnston

NET FORCE
The strengths of the internal and external forces shift constantly while the ball is in flight. The net of the forces is what dictates the ball’s path.

HOLES
The holes are on just one side. They disrupt airflow, increasing turbulence over that half of the ball.

EXTERNAL FORCE
More turbulence means less drag on that side, resulting in an upward “lift” force.

VORTICES
Air rushing into the holes creates vortices that whirl inside. The ball’s orientation, spin, and velocity all affect how those vortices develop.

INTERIOR FORCE
Vortices create a force that can change the ball’s direction.On faster pitches, the interior force typically overpowers the external force.

Three Wiffle Ball Hacks

1. SCUFF

Scratching the smooth surface between the holes creates more turbulence on that side, strengthening the curve. Asymmetry is key, so scuff only the one side.

2. OPEN UP

Enlarging the holes or smoothing their edges can increase interior airflow and make it the governing force, causing the ball to break toward the solid side.

3. BLOCK

Covering or deforming select holes can encourage multiple vortices of different magnitudes to form, leading to more dramatic curves.

THROW AN UNHITTABLE KNUCKLEBALL

Toss the ball at an easy speed, without spin, so the holes will face the batter upon release. In this orientation, the internal and external forces are at a perilous equilibrium: If the ball turns slightly—and it will—dominant airflow will shift and create a dramatic and unpredictable break.

Continue reading about How It Works: an electric racecar, private moon-landers, and more

This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Since electronic cigarettes hit the market in 2007, yearly sales have reached $1 billion in the U.S. Although they’re popular, it’s still unclear how safe they are. Last year, a study from an international group of scientists showed that the toxins in e-cigarette vapor are 9 to 450 times lower than in tobacco smoke. The Food and Drug Administration is still determining its regulatory stance. It’s sponsoring more research while sorting out its position.

Don Foley

A. LED

When the e-cigarette is active, an indicator light glows like a tobacco ember.

B. Sensor

Some versions have a pressure sensor that detects the airflow of an inhalation. The sensor then turns on the battery, which triggers the heating element. Other e-cigarettes are turned on and off with a button.

C. Battery

A slim lithium-ion battery, usually rechargeable, provides the power. An average e-cigarette has about 300 puffs per charge. 

D. Heating Element

Electricity passes through a resistant material—usually metal or ceramic—which produces heat. Once the heating element reaches approximately 150°F, it vaporizes about 0.005 milliliters of the nicotine liquid into a mist. Each hit has roughly 90 percent of the nicotine found in a tobacco-cigarette puff.

E. Nicotine Liquid

A viscous fluid made from propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, or a mixture of both, contains about 1 percent nicotine and flavoring such as menthol, fruit, or classic tobacco.

F. Mouthpiece

A flexible tip, sometimes made of silicone, evokes the feel of a real cigarette.

Continue reading about How It Works: a Wiffle ball, a surgical snakebot, and more

This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of Popular Science.

I still remember flipping through paper magazines while waiting for webpages to load on my family's PC, in the 1990s. Maybe one day waiting for your phone to charge will seem as antiquated.

An Israeli startup recently demonstrated a prototype charger that fully charges a smartphone in 30 seconds. You can watch it above, oooh.

As you can probably guess, the charger isn't exactly ready for the market yet. It's about the size of a laptop charger, so its creators are working on making it smaller, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company, called StoreDot, plans to have a charger ready for production by late 2016.

StoreDot's technology depends on nano-size crystals, called quantum dots, that are made of biological materials. Researchers have studied quantum dots intensely because they have cool electrical and optical properties that could improve electronic displays and data storage. Usually, however, researchers make quantum dots out of non-biological minerals such as silicon or cadmium selenide. In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that by putting its biological crystals in the electrolyte of a power cell, StoreDot made the power cell hold five times as much charge.

[The Wall Street Journal, Gizmag]

Adderall pills

ABC News / YouTube

That's the result of a study published today (April 7) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the study, nearly 400 volunteers were given dextroamphetamine in a double-blind test and then gave detailed feedback about how the drug made them feel. Each participant's genomes were sequenced and compared to genes known to be linked to an increased risk for ADHD or schizophrenia. People with alleles, or genetic units, that led to a euphoric response to dextroamphetamine were less likely to have genes linked to the two conditions. 

"The people who like amphetamine would tend to be less likely to ever have those diseases," study author and University of Chicago geneticist Abraham Palmer told Popular Science. 

The results speak to the role of dopamine in ADHD and schizophrenia. Amphetamine helps release dopamine into synapses, gaps between neurons, where it acts on the neurons and can lead to feeling really great. It is generally thought that schizophrenia may involve a certain hyperactivity in dopamine signaling, and ADHD the opposite. (In some cases, this has been over-simplified as involving "too much dopamine" in the former disease, and "too little" dopamine in ADHD.) Regardless of that spurious oversimplification, the two disorders have been thought of as opposite ends of a spectrum. This study shows that things are a "bit more complicated," Palmer said. 

The link between "amphetamine-liking" and each disorder was surprising, said Dr. Wade Berrettini, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania's school of medicine, who wasn't involved in the study. "It tells us that alleles predisposed to euphoria are protective against schizophrenia, and we didn't know that before," he said. "You would also assume that alleles for any response to amphetamine might be predictive of risk increases for ADHD," rather than the opposite, as found here. "In this I'm a little surprised."

Those who report liking the effects of amphetamine may be more likely to abuse it, although the participants in this study were carefully screened to weed out substance abusers or people with psychiatric conditions. 

Behold the oarfish, the world's longest bony fish. The beasts typically live hundreds of feet below the ocean surface are thus are rarely seen. Since 2002, however, a few videos (like the one above) have surfaced and given scientists important clues about the animals.

Most oarfish seen by humans are dead or dying on a beach. But a new video captured in March in Mexico's Sea of Cortés shows two 15-foot-long oarfish--aka Regalecus glesne--gliding about in shallow water near the shore.

Oarfish are known for their lengthy dorsal fin, which they undulate to move about. They can also contort their whole body in a sinusoidal pattern for fast swimming. Their large size and swimming behavior has led historians to think oarfish might be the source of many "sea serpent" sightings in the past. 

After watching this video, and seeing how weird they appear up-close--and with their fin sticking up out of the water at the beginning of the shot--I could see how an oarfish sighting could spin into a legendary story. (They have also been termed "king of herrings," which is my new favorite name for them.) Oarfish can grow up to 56 feet (17 meters) in length, according to the Encyclopedia of Life, and usually eek out an existence 650 feet to 3,000 feet down.

The video was taken by people taking part in a trip organized by Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. If that doesn't whet your appetite for oarfish footage, below is a clip captured in the Gulf of Mexico in August 2011.

Plate tectonics—the theory that explains the sinking, spreading, and slip-sliding of big chunks of Earth’s surface—is a bedrock of geology. But it can’t explain what happens to plates once they sink, or account for the forces that drive many of the planet’s volcanic hotspots. Today, advances in seis­mology, geochemical analysis, and computer modeling have enabled researchers to collect a wealth of new geological data about our planet and form a complementary theory of what’s going on beneath its surface. 

Andrzej Wojcicki/Science Photo Library/Corbis

THE PROCESS

SLABS

When one tectonic plate is forced beneath another, forming a subduction zone—the cause of many earthquakes—its leading edge sinks deeper into the mantle. The slab descends slowly, mixing molten rock as it goes, and as it nears the core, it partially melts.

PLUMES

Most volcanoes begin in the relatively cool upper mantle and shoot up along the rims of tectonic plates. But geologists now think many of Earth’s hotspots (in Iceland, for example) are powered by mantle plumes. These plumes rise in columns from the very bottom of the mantle, some 1,800 miles down, and carry heat from near the core to the crust.

PILES

Plumes originate along the edges of two vast areas—commonly known as piles—that lie opposite one another on the equator, one under Africa and the other under the South Pacific. Both piles contain material that seems to have remained in the deep mantle for about four billion years (perhaps because of its high iron content). 

KNOW YOUR PLANET

CRUST

The relatively thin and cool crust forms Earth's surface.

Temperature: Ranges from surface temperature near the top to 1,600˚F at the bottom

Thickness: About 5 miles under the oceans and 25 miles under the continents

Composition: Silicates that take the form of granite and basalt rocks

MANTLE

Two thirds of the planet’s mass, the mantle is the source of molten rock that rises to the surface during volcanic eruptions and when plates spread apart.

Temperature: About 1,600˚F at the top and 4,000˚F at the bottom

Thickness: Approximately 1,800 miles

Composition: Largely silicate rocks containing more iron than those in the crust

CORE

The ultrahot, metallic core sits at the planet’s center.

Temperature: About 4,000˚F at the outer edge to 9,000˚F at its center

Thickness: The outer core is 1,400 miles thick. The inner core has a 700-mile radius.

Composition: Predominantly iron, with some nickel and other elements; the outer core is molten, and the inner core is solid.

Continue reading about How It Works: a wiffle ball, an electric racecar, and more

Surgery has always been synony­mous with incisions. But the new snake-inspired Flex System from Medrobotics could reduce bloodshed and hasten healing by traveling through a convenient (if unsettling) alternative: a natural orifice, such as the mouth.

During a Flex procedure, the surgeon stands or sits within arm’s reach of the patient and a video console, and alternates between steering the robot with a joystick and manually operating the instruments threaded through its tip. Since the bot curves and pivots to maneuver around tissue and organs, Medrobotics claims it’s more versatile than laparoscopy, which often requires multiple punctures to insert a camera and tools. 

The company is now submitting Flex for approval in the U.S. and Europe for head and neck procedures, such as the removal of throat tumors. But the snakebot’s ultimate destination is the abdomen, via a small incision—or a private orifice. It’s an approach that, while distressing to imagine, could revolutionize surgery.

Illustration by Ryan Kirby

Steer

A surgeon steers the Flex System into the body with a haptic controller, which translates the robot’s contact with tissue into varying degrees of resistance in the joystick.

Slither

The snakebot locks in each turn as it pushes forward, its mechanical linkages automatically flexing and straightening to follow anatomical curves of almost 180 degrees.

Sense

The robot’s endoscopic “head,” or distal end, features a high-definition video camera ringed by six LEDs (footage appears on a nearby monitor).

Slice

The robot has a port on either side of its camera tip, where tools for grasping and cutting tissue can be inserted. They are threaded into the Flex System once it’s in place.

Continue reading about How It Works: a wiffle ball, an electric racecar, and more

This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of Popular Science.

Good morning! Have you enjoyed a cup of caffeine yet? No? Then perhaps you would prefer not interacting with people, lest your office turn into the set of a Maxine cartoon or something.

But what if I told you: interact with someone, or coffee will be withheld from you. Great idea, right? Surely this would serve to facilitate human interaction and not result in two bumbling messes chit-chatting awkwardly about the weather while they wait for a paper cup of ambrosia. 

This is apparently a real idea created by Singapore's Economic Development Board (EDB). With this dystopian torture device, two people input their names, then stand there and wait for coffee dispersal. From EDB:

"Let's grab coffee" often means more than just coffee. It signifies the start to relationships, opportunities and business decisions. In Asia, Singapore often facilitates connections between companies and successful business ventures with a wealth of resources. Our machine, the Coffee Connector, is this symbolic idea brought to life.

Oh, my. Just chain two people to the same desk chair. Please, don't do this.

[PSFK]

Study Volunteers

Andrew Meas, Dustin Shillcox, Kent Stephenson and Rob Summers in the University of Louisville lab where they get specialized training to work with electrical stimulation to move parts of their bodies below their spinal cord injuries.

Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation

After you've injured your spinal cord, getting a "motor complete" diagnosis means you're unable to move your legs—or anything on your body, below the injury—under your own volition. Stay "motor complete" for two years and the evidence says you'll never move those areas on your own again. But the prognosis is now a bit different for four hardworking, young(ish) men.

In a new study, researchers treated four men with spinal cord injuries with a combination of mild electrical stimulation to the spine and intense physical therapy. The men regained the ability to move their legs, knees, ankles and toes after being paralyzed for two years or more.

The study follows a 2011 announcement that the same regimen worked for one man, Rob Summers. Over time, Summers was able to stand for a few minutes without help. He could also take steps on a treadmill, with help bearing some of his body weight and keeping him balanced. The new guys' success shows Summers was not an unusual or lucky case. Perhaps this treatment could help others in the future, although there's a lot of development that has to happen before something like this becomes widespread.

Leg Raise

Study volunteer Kent Stephenson raises his leg on his own.

Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation

"It means there must be a significant proportion of individuals that would be classified in this category, as completely paralyzed, that can gain some improved function," says Reggie Edgerton, a brain scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who worked on the study. Edgerton has researched electrical stimulation for paralysis for decades, beginning with studies in animals.

"To see it in three more patients is very, very encouraging," says James Fawcett, a brain-repair researcher at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., who was not involved in the study. Fawcett described for Popular Science some of the reservations fellow scientists had after seeing Summers' results in 2011: "This, we thought, could be a very special case because he was a very fit young man." Before he was hit by a car while standing in his own driveway, Summers played baseball for Oregon State University. He was only 23 when he began experiments with Edgerton and his colleagues.

Among the three additional men who have seen results from Summers' therapy, two had more sensory loss than Summers'. Two were a bit older than Summers when they began working with Edgerton's team at ages 27 and 32.

For the study, all four men received an implant, containing 16 electrodes, tucked outside of the thick membranes protecting their spinal cords. The implant is something that's already on the market for treating chronic pain, so others have had this surgery, if not for the same reason as Summers and his fellow study volunteers.

The implant has to be turned on for the patients to be able to control their movements. They can't move when the implant isn't on. But the patients have some ability to move in their first few sessions with the implant, before any training. Further training helps the patients better control their movements and reduce the voltage they need to move.

Edgerton and his colleagues think the electrical stimulation works by making nerves in the spinal cord more sensitive to receiving messages from the brain saying, "Hey, I want to move."

"What we know we're doing is kind of raising the excitability or raising the awareness of the spinal cord with the stimulation," says Claudia Angeli, one of Edgerton's colleagues and a researcher at the rehab institute at KentuckyOne Health in Louisville. Once the spinal cord gets the message, it's able to do a lot of its own calculations to create movements such as flexing and stepping, Angeli says.

Edgerton, Angeli and their teammates are not sure exactly which pathways they're exciting, however. "We're looking at different pathways right now," Angeli says. Once they figure this out, it will help them know which paralysis patients would benefit from spinal stimulation.

Other studies the team has planned for the future include developing a stimulation implant just for helping paralysis patients with movement. Team members hope to make their own implant that would be easier to control than the repurposed pain reliever they're using now. The team is also looking at whether adding certain drugs to the regimen would make nerve cells in spine even more receptive to messages from the brain.

Fawcett would like to see other labs reproduce the team's work. "An experimental treatment like this needs to be done in several places by several different teams before we've really worked out how easy and how practical this is going to be to apply this to patients in general," he says.

Edgerton, Angeli and their colleagues published their work today in the journal Brain.

Prairie voles

Emory University / YouTube

As Rachel Nuwer explains in a thoroughly entertaining post at Smithsonian, the scientists picked voles because they are quite faithful, as far as mammals are concerned--and they needed to sacrifice a few afterward to look at their brains. In the experiment, the scientists allowed the voles to drink as much alcohol as they wanted over a 24-hour period, during which time they paired male and female voles (who weren't already in a monogamous relationship) and recorded how much they cuddled and/or mated. Afterward, they introduced the couple to a new vole, either male or female. They also performed a control experiment under the same circumstances, except without alcohol. Here's what they found, in a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 

Analysis of the voles' brains suggested that alcohol reduced anxiety in the male voles, perhaps akin to the way it "lowers inhibitions" in humans, making them more likely to seek out a new partner and not commit. But in the females the booze appeared to increase anxiety, and led them to try to establish and keep a bond with a male. 

Of course, voles aren't the same as humans, although there are some limited parallels. For example, the authors write, "the inhibition of bond formation in males is reminiscent of the negative effects of alcohol on long-term attachments and marital happiness, which occur for both men and women.” 

[Smithsonian]

BAE Railgun

Naval Sea Systems Command

In 2016, the U.S. Navy is going to test a railgun—a weapon that can repeatedly launch a projectile at more than 5,000 MPH—from a boat. In 2018, they're going to do it again. And in the 2020s, the Navy is going to figure out just what to do with a gun that seemed like science fiction decades ago.

Speaking at the Navy League's Sea Air Space exposition in National Harbor, Maryland, Rear Admiral Bryant Fuller told the assembled crowd of journalists, servicemen, and defense contractors that railgun shots cost 1/100th the price of a “standard” missile. (In the age of austerity, even something as futuristic as a railgun is sold on the premise of cost savings.)

A railgun works by generating a strong electromagnetic current that flows from one rail, through a U-shaped back end of the projectile, and into another parallel rail. This generates three magnetic fields—a parallel one around each of the rails, and a perpendicular one around the projectile. Squeezed forward by the magnetic fields, the projectile accelerates rapidly along the rails and is then launched forward, breaking the circuit. The end result is a large metal slug that can go very far, very fast.

Here's a video explaining the physics:

Scientist figured out the physics behind rail guns a while ago, and have tested them on land, but the main constraint on making a practical one is generating enough electrical power.

That's understandable. A railgun system needs 25 megawatts of energy flowing through it, and according to Captain Michael Ziv, the Navy's program manager for rail guns and energy weapons. Most currently serving destroyers don't have more than nine megawatts of electricity that they can shift around. 

Future ships like the Zumwalt class of destroyers with "integrated power systems" that make it really easy to assign electrical power can get around this. The Navy is keeping open the option of outfitting current ships with railguns, as they can bring batteries storing the extra power needed on board. The Navy is going to test the railgun at sea in 2016 from the back of the USNS Millinocket, a transport and supply ship. 

How far the shot goes depends on the power supplied. Smaller railguns might release a projectile at 20 megajoules, which means that at flying level it can go up to 60 miles. A larger railgun, the kind that draws 25 megawatts of power, can release projectiles at 32 megajoules of energy, where they will travel up to a 110 miles at a level trajectory. With the 25 megawatts, a railgun can also fire up to 10 times a minute, creating an anti-ship or anti-coastal weapon that's fast firing, cheaper than a missile, and at least as deadly.

If the tests go well, it's not just the Navy that's interested. The U.S. Army is working with the Navy to develop the railguns, meaning the weapon could one day attack both from the sea and the land.

Here, by the way, is what one of these looks like firing from land:

Spin me round

The basic schematic of the Salmonella-detecting disk.

Analytical Chemistry

The device, described in a paper published in Analytical Chemistry, contains six channels branching off from a central groove, where food samples are placed. As the device spins, the fluid is forced outward, traveling through small channels. Any bacteria is first concentrated on beads, which are coated with antibodies that bind to Salmonella. Cells are then broken apart with a laser, and DNA is amplified using primer specific to the bacteria. Then, C&EN explains: 

The DNA enters a channel containing... reagents and a sensor strip. As the DNA migrates up the strip, it hits a detection area, where the reagents mixed with the DNA cause a visible band of color to form. The researchers found they could detect as few as 100 colony-forming units of Salmonella in milk and 10 in buffer. 

And voilà! You can tell whether or not you need to worry about Salmonella.  

In a semi-related note, the risk of getting Salmonella poisoning from raw eggs is probably much lower than you thought. 

Hand-Cranked Microfluidics Machine

Courtesy of George Korir

We've seen a lot of nostalgia for ye olde chemistry sets lately. Nobel Laureates have reminisced about playing with them. These days, sets containing radioactive uranium dust or toxic lead are not going to cut it anymore, but that doesn't mean kids can't get exposure to real science. The Society for Science & the Public—the nonprofit that runs the Intel ISEF science fair—recently held a competition to see who could make the coolest modern science set. The winners are just as hands-on as 1950s chemistry sets. Even better, they've got technology that didn't exist then.

The first-prize winner is a hand-cranked microfluidics kit, made by a biochemistry professor and his graduate student. Microfluidics technology is what goes into lab-on-a-chip devices that mix and move different chemicals via tiny channels on a computer-chip-size platforms. Scientists are working on making microfluidic devices that will act like human organs.

In the prototype kids' kit, players come up with a sequence of chemical reactions they want to make. They then punch holes corresponding to their sequence into paper cards. The cards are pre-loaded with chemicals. To get their reactions to go, players put the cards through the hand-cranked card reader, which releases chemicals one drop at a time at every punched hole. In a statement, the professor who created the system, Manu Prakash of Stanford University, said he envisions kids trading successful reaction cards like baseball cards.

The second-place winner is set of electrodes players stick on their bodies that sense the electricity the body produces when flexing muscles and sending messages in the brain. The electrodes hook up a lot of amplifiers, and then to electricity-powered things, such as a light bulb, a motor, or a speaker. With a hand squeeze or a thought, players can, say, turn on a propeller.

Let's hope there's a toy company out there watching these ideas—or that the creators themselves might work toward getting these out into the world.

Check out descriptions of the other winners from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which provided prize money for the winners, including $50,000 for the microfluidics kit and $25,000 for the body-electricity kit.

Making biofuel

Georgia Tech researchers examine the production of the hydrocarbon pinene in a series of laboratory test tubes. Shown are (l-r) Pamela Peralta-Yahya, an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Stephen Sarria, a graduate student in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Georgia Tech Photo: Rob Felt

In an effort to launch things skyward in a more sustainable way, researchers have coaxed bacteria to produce a highly combustible compound called pinene. Conifers naturally excrete the stuff in their resin, lending the plants part of their distinctive scent. Pinene also happens to rival the properties of JP-10--a liquid rocket fuel that's widely used for commercial and military launches.

So, pretty soon a rocket or missile flying overhead might spew exhaust that smells like pine trees.

JP-10 and other energy-dense rocket fuels are derived from oil and don't come cheap. (The cost of JP-10 is about $25 per gallon and rising as oil demand grows.) Meanwhile, no biofuels today can compete with traditional rocket fuels on the market. Although ethanol derived from corn, for example, can more or less replace gasoline, even the latter and more energetic fuel packs about 20 percent less punch per gallon than JP-10.

A breakthrough in rocket-compatible biofuel came in 2011. That's when the Navy discovered chemicals that link together, or dimerize, two molecules of pinene into a fuel with properties similar to JP-10. Because leveling pine forests to extract a little pinene isn't practical, however, researchers have since sought alternative production methods.

The new research effort--a joint venture by Georgia Tech and the Department of Energy--builds on the work of the Navy by offloading pinene synthesis to bacteria. The group genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to produce conifer-derived proteins that assemble pinene.

Stephen Sarria and Pamela Peralta-Yahya, two Georgia Tech researchers who collaborated on the new work published in ACS Synthetic Biology, broke down the process for Popular Science in four steps: 

First, the researchers picked two groups of enzymes--pinene synthases and geranyl diphosphate synthases--to produce molecules of pinene. Second, they inserted genes that code for the enzymes into the DNA of E. coli (chosen because it's one of the easiest bacteria to genetically engineer). Third, the team grew up the bacteria in large fermenters, “very similar to how you'd make beer,” Peralta-Yahya said. With the brewing of pinene complete, they used the Navy-discovered chemicals to dimerize pinene molecules into rocket-ready fuel.

This new bacteria-driven method to make pinene is six times better than any other biological process, but the yield is still quite low. “Right now we’re seeing about 1 percent of theoretical yield," Peralta-Yahya said. "To be commercially competitive, we need to reach about 26 percent of theoretical yield."

The biggest hurdle for the team right now is pinene synthase itself. Both the enzyme's product, pinene, and its partner enzymes, the geranyl diphosphate syntheses, inhibit pinene-creating activity. Peralta-Yahya says there are two ways to solve the problem: either engineer a new kind of pinene synthase, or lower the concentration of geranyl diphosphate synthase.

For now, the team is trying both methods in hopes of making a “drop-in” biofuel that's cheaper and more sustainable option for launching rockets or missiles without changing engines or existing infrastructure.

Collect Them All

Courtesy Bonhams

Today, Bonhams auctions more than 300 pieces of space memorabilia. We have our eyes on these items:

Apollo 11 Checklist

Buzz Aldrin used the list—complete with handwritten notes—in preparation for his flight home from the moon. Est. price: $35,000–45,000

Apollo 12 Module Strap 

Still covered in moon dust, this strap held equipment in place on Intrepid, the second manned lunar lander. $25,000–35,000

Scale Model Of Lunar Rover

An aerospace company built this 1:7 model of Lunokhod 2, a Russian rover that roamed the moon in 1973. $10,000–15,000

Spacesuit From The ’60s 

The pressure suit dates to Project Mercury, the first U.S. human spaceflight program. $8,000–12,000

This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of Popular Science.
 

Lab Mouse

Photo by Rama on Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR

Oh, to be a mouse. You'd have been cured of every conceivable cancer and now, you'd have something of a fountain of youth, too, at least for your thymus. A team of researchers has gotten immune-system organs called thymuses in mice to grow, The Economist reports. After the researchers' treatment, the mice's thymuses grew more than twice as large. The thymuses, which normally change in structure and become less efficient as animals age, also returned to a more youthful structure.

This is the first time anybody has been able to get a working organ in a mammal to rejuvenate itself, The Economist reports. It's a step forward for this particular method organ regeneration. Of course, many labs have grown artificial organs in different ways. We've covered everything from a trachea, made from the patient's own stem cells, to 3-D printed organs. Some of these, such as the trachea, have already been used in people.

In contrast, the thymus-growing method didn't require any cells. Instead, it relied on a chemical trigger to make the thymuses grow. However, because the trigger only worked in mice that had been genetically engineered to be receptive to the trigger, the study is only a demonstration that getting organs to grow is possible. It will still take many years to figure out how exactly to trigger the similar growth in humans.

A team of three regenerative medicine researchers at the University of Edinburgh published the mouse-thymus work this month in the scientific journal Development.

[The Economist]

The Formula E Racecar

Graham Murdoch

This year, the first fully electric racing series will debut in cities around the globe. Called Formula E, the new Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) championship is the zero-emissions complement to the Formula One (F1) international racing series.

Formula E will be open to any vehicle that meets FIA technical specifications, an effort to motivate manufacturers to push the bounds of electric-vehicle technology. But for the inaugural season, all 10 teams (each with two drivers) will race just one model: the Spark-Renault SRT_01E. With oversight from Renault, the French company Spark Racing Technology will build 42 of them, incorporating parts from F1 heavyweights Dallara (chassis), Williams (batteries), and McLaren (powertrain and electronics). When the first race starts, in Beijing in September, the SRT_01E will show bystanders just what electric vehicles can do.

A) Sound

F1 racecars typically produce 130 decibels at high speeds, but the SRT_01E generates only 80—slightly more than a conventional road car. The “modern, futuristic” sound will come entirely from the tires, transmission, and wind buffeting. The FIA may require cars to produce an artificial sound to warn pit crews as the vehicles approach.

B) Powertrain

Two McLaren motor generator units (MGUs)—the same ones used in the McLaren P1 hybrid supercar—link to a six-speed sequential transmission and power the rear wheels. Rather than requiring a rebuild after each race like an internal-combustion engine, the MGUs should last two years.

C) Push-To-Pass

During the race, the car’s motor will be restricted to a power-saving mode of 180 brake horsepower to conserve battery life, but drivers can strategically boost it to 270 bhp for a few seconds at a time. This push-to-pass system will enable drivers to overtake competitors as they exit a corner or accelerate down straightaways to defend against them.

D) Tires

Formula E will be the first single-seater series to require all-weather tires. The bespoke Michelins are treaded for use in both wet and dry conditions. Their 18-inch diameter provides better fuel efficiency than smaller tires, translating to extra power or additional battery life. 

E) Pit Stops

Each team has four vehicles, and each driver must make two pit stops to switch cars during the one-hour race. At speeds of 150 mph, the batteries last about 30 minutes (and can’t be swapped out). Qualcomm will adapt its Halo wireless charging to safety cars this year and to racecars in season two. 

Continue reading about How It Works: a wiffle ball, the inner Earth, and more

The ultimate efficiency goal for solar-cell researchers is 50 percent.

Greg Maxson

Solar cells typically convert no more than 20 percent of incoming energy into electricity, in part because they capture only certain wavelengths of light. Researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems have developed a solar cell that converts 44.7 percent—a new record. It consists of a lens that concentrates sunlight onto four stacked subcells, each designed to absorb a distinct portion of the spectrum. The team estimates it will take them another two to three years to scale up the 5.2-millimeter prototype for use in solar-power plants.

1. Sunlight passes through a multifaceted lens known as a Fresnel. The lens focuses direct sunlight, delivering the power equivalent of 297 suns to the solar cell below. 

2. The first subcell, made from gallium indium phosphide, captures photons from the shortest wavelengths of light. The subcells beneath it contain elements capable of capturing progressively longer wavelengths.

3. Each subcell consists of several semiconductor layers, which create an electric field. As photons enter, they excite electrons, freeing them from the subcell. 

4. Once the freed electrons reach the top of the stack, a metal contact funnels them toward an output terminal as a direct current.

Continue reading about How It Works: a wiffle ball, a dog, and more

 This article originally appeared in the April 2014 issue of Popular Science.

DNA

Richard Wheeler via Wikimedia Commons

These DNA machines (or origami robots, so-called since they can unfold and deliver drugs stored within) carry fluorescent markers, allowing researchers to tell where in the roach's body they are traveling and what they are doing. Incredibly, the "accuracy of delivery and control of the nanobots is equivalent to a computer system," New Scientist reported. A study describing the advance was published this week in Nature Nanotechnology.

The nanobots can interact with one another, and were shown to be able to perform simple logical operations, for example releasing a molecule stored within upon command. Or, as the researchers put it: "The interactions generate logical outputs, which are relayed to switch molecular payloads on or off." It's a little hard to believe or wrap your head around, but then again, scientists for years have been able to use DNA to store large amounts of information, and DNA bots are nothing new. The researchers get the bots to work by exploiting the bind properties of DNA:

"This is the first time that biological therapy has been able to match how a computer processor works," study co-author Ido Bachelet, from the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Bar Ilan University in Israel, told New Scientist. The scientists said it should be possible to improve the computing power of the nanobots to approach that of an "8-bit computer, equivalent to a Commodore 64 or Atari 800 from the 1980s." 

While the bots cannot currently be inserted into mammals, due to their more advanced immune systems that can recognize and target these foreign particles, they can probably be modified to do so. "There is no reason why preliminary trials on humans can't start within five years," Bachelet said.

[New Scientist]