At 69 Colebrooke Row, his bar in London, Tony Conigliaro serves understated, finely balanced cocktails that taste so effortless you can hardly tell they've been through rotary evaporators, centrifuges, and the like on their way to your palate. His brand-new book, Drinks, gives an elegant insight into how some of his greatest effects are achieved.

As with many another modern cookbook that has a lengthy list of equipment in the back, not every reader is going to have the gear or inclination to follow all of Conigliaro's deep-in-the-lab recipes entailing vacuum distillation of essences. But, as with many another such, this is at least as much a document of an aesthetic as it is a practical manual. Personally, I have a centrifuge and a Buchner funnel and even so I think this book will serve more as a beautifully designed tome of glossy inspiration than a step-by-step guide.

Here's a sample recipe from the book, in which Mr. Conigliaro flavors egg whites with hay before shaking them into a cocktail.

***

Somerset Sour

Creating a cocktail that can be enjoyed during a specific season is a real driving force behind many of my recipes. If the Spitfire is a more summery version of a New York Sour, then the Somerset Sour does the same for autumn. For me, autumn time is epitomised by the flavours and aromas associated with Halloween: the smell of hay, toffee and bobbing apples. I wanted to encapsulate these in a drink and in doing so orchestrate a shared nostalgia of autumn for every drinker.

Cider brandy is distilled at autumn time and although it was an ingredient that I had never worked with before, I chose it as the base of this cocktail because it really captures the taste of apples at this time of year. The layering of ingredients was as important to this Sour as in the Spitfire; adding cognac dries out the cider brandy whilst introducing an element of toffee-like richness; the cider float ensures a crisp and refreshing finish. I discovered that the food-grade essence cis-3-Hexenal had the perfect 'just-cut grass' note that, when added to fresh apple, makes it taste and smell just like hay.

During the process of putting together this drink, I was always aware that an apple slice would be a complementary garnish. However, when experimenting with how to stop the apple from browning, it occurred to me that the scoops of apples I was testing would look just like bobbing apples if they were floating in the foam on the Sour. I began by using a melon baller to scoop a variety of apples until I discovered one with the best absorbing qualities -- the Pink Lady. If the cis-3-Hexenal is added with pectin and sorbic acid then the apple is prevented from browning. The resulting apples are incredibly juicy but also crisp from the pectin and acid, with a faint aroma of hay. The mini bobbing apples float in the foam of the Sour to create a garnish that both parallels the flavours of the drink but also enhances them with a multidimensional and multi-sensory flavour experience. This really expands upon the idea of what a garnish can be.

Ingredients

• 40ml cider brandy
• 10ml cognac
• 25ml fresh lemon juice
• 25ml hay-infused egg white
• 15ml sugar syrup
• Dash of cider
• Bobbing apple, to garnish

Aroma was a motivating factor behind this drink. Audrey Saunders and I have often lamented the unfortunate wet-dog-nose smell that arises from egg white reacting with alcohol. Together we have engaged in many conversations about how to eliminate it for good. I had a eureka moment when making truffle omelettes at home. I realised that the truffle flavoured the eggs through scent. Quite simply, since eggs are porous they can absorb smells, and with this as the case, I could use any number of smells to flavour them. All that was needed was to create a controlled environment in which to flavour the eggs through aroma.

I conducted tests by soaking different food-grade hydrosols into cotton wool and sealing them in Tupperware with the eggs, keeping the box in the fridge. The aroma in the box then fills all the empty space, including seeping through the egg shell, which is semi-permeable, meaning it will absorb small molecules around it, and literally adding flavour to the egg itself. With this knowledge I added to the egg white the same hay essence as I had injected into the bobbing apple.

1. Combine all the ingredients except the cider and bobbing apple in a cocktail tin.

2. Dry-shake then shake over cubed ice. Strain and serve in a large, chilled coupette, floating the cider on top.

3. Garnish with hay-infused bobbing apple.

"Everything, when miniaturized to the sub-100-nanometer scale, has new properties, regardless of what it is," says Chad Mirkin, professor of chemistry (and materials science, engineering, medicine, biomedical engineering and chemical and biological engineering) at Northwestern University. This is what makes nanoparticles the materials of the future. They have strange chemical and physical properties compared to their larger-particle kin. The thing that matters about nanoparticles is their scale.

Click to launch the photo gallery

Nanoscale materials are used in everything from sunscreen to chemical catalysts to antibacterial agents--from the mundane to the lifesaving. "I spilled wine at a Christmas party once, and I was terrified. Red wine on a white carpet. And it wipes right up," Mirkin recalled. "The reason is the nano-particulate used to coat the carpet keeps that material from absorbing into the carpet and staining the carpet."

On a more sophisticated side, researchers are developing nanoscale assays used to screen for cancer, infection and even genes. Gold nanoparticles that have been doped with DNA can be used to detect bacteria in a person's bloodstream, determining whether a patient has infection and what kind. Or they can be used to detect changes in a person's immune system that reflect the presence of cancer. Nano-flares can measure the genetic content of cells, and light up--or flare--when they detect a specific cell of a doctor's choosing, maybe cancer, stem cells or even the reaction to a small molecule used in a new drug.

So why do nanoscale things act this way? The scale allows for unique interactions among atoms and their constituent parts, and there are a few ways that this happens. For non-biological nanoparticles, it helps to think of a bowling ball, and where all its atoms are located. The vast majority are inside the ball, with a finite number at the surface, interacting with the air or the wooden lanes. Atoms inside the ball interact with atoms just like themselves, but atoms at the surface interact with ones very different than themselves, Mirkin explained. Now shrink that ball to molecular scales.

"The smaller you go, the ratio of surface to bulk atoms goes up," he said. "At a larger scale, the atoms at the surface are relatively inconsequential. But at nanoscales, you could have a particle that is almost all surface. Those atoms begin to contribute very significantly to the overall properties of the material."

These interactions play out in electronics, too, making material like graphene and quantum dots useful for tiny computers and communication devices. Nanoscale materials offer a smaller area for electrons to move around. And maybe most importantly for current research, on the nanoscale, you're on the scale of biology.

Given all these uses and future promises, Mirkin said, most people generally embrace nanotechnology in everyday life, even though most don't know what that actually means. Even controversial uses like sunscreen are pretty widely used, and often without knowledge of it.

"Much of it is going to be embedded in conventional products that we buy and don't even think about," Mirkin said. "There's nothing inherently good or bad in terms of making things small. The issue ultimately is, what do they do, and what are they used for? Given the application, have we considered the proper safety analyses and implications? And so far, I think we've done a pretty good job."

Click here to enter the gallery

Israel launched an offensive this morning on "terror sites and operatives in the Gaza strip, chief among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets."

Except that's not what the release said: it said, "terror sites and operatives in the #Gaza strip, chief among them #Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets." Because this announcement was made on Twitter.

The Israeli Defense Forces has a spokesperson, and that spokesperson has a Twitter feed, and that Twitter feed is where information from the Israelis is being disseminated.It's a mix of news ("The IDF has seriously damaged Hamas' long-range missile capabilities (40 km/25 mi range) & underground weapons storage facilities.") and argument in favor of the strike ("Israelis living near the #Gaza Strip have been living under fire for the past 12 years."). It's run extremely blandly and competently, like whoever's behind the feed was hired after proving their worth as the social media manager of Oprah Magazine. It hits all the right notes: hashtags, links to videos and articles, original photos. Hell, there's even a custom hashtag (#PillarOfDefense) created specifically for this event.

It'd be a very well-run Twitter campaign, except it's not announcing a new cellphone--it's announcing a barrage of missile strikes against a neighboring territory. Those pictures are of bombing sites. The videos are of Israeli generals explaining the bombings, or even videos of the bombings themselves. That hashtag? It's only #PillarOfDefense in English. In Hebrew, as Gawker found out, it's #PillarOfCloud--"a Biblical reference to the form God adopted in order to protect the Children of Israel and strike terror into the heart of Egyptians." And instead of Microsoft playfully interacting with Apple, or Domino's and Pizza Hut trading zingers about pizza, we have @AlQassamBrigade, the Twitter account of the Al Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian political party/terrorist organization Hamas, tweeting back:

@idfspokesperson Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves)

— Alqassam Brigades (@AlqassamBrigade) November 14, 2012

Remember when Twitter was silly? When it was about what you ate for lunch, or when it was a launching pad for comedians, or an irritating tool for self-promotion? It's not that anymore. Now it's the place where one of the strongest militaries in the world tells us what they're bombing today. It's where the IDF and Hamas interact.

You're no longer being asked to retweet if you love Wendy's Spicy Chicken Sandwich.

More than 12,000 rockets hit Israel in the past 12 years. RT if you think #Israel has the right to defend itself. twitter.com/IDFSpokesperso…

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

It's lonely way out there in interplanetary space, lonelier still if you don't have a star to call home. But this solitary life is all CFBDSIR2149 has ever known. Astronomers searching for the faint signatures of brown dwarf stars discovered this Jupiter-class giant hurtling through the cosmos with not star to orbit and nowhere in particular to be.

Discovered some 130 light-years from Earth, the planet is too dim to be viewed in the optical spectrum. But by analyzing its infrared emissions they were able to determine a few things about its chemical composition and its mass, which falls somewhere between four to seven times that of Jupiter. These kinds of starless planets aren't unheard of, but they are relatively difficult to detect when they are out there on their own. Astronomers usually detect planets outside our solar system by either observing its transit of its star or measuring the wobble of the parent star caused by the orbiting planet's gravitational pull.

Planets like lonely CFBDSIR2149 have no such star to draw observations from, and hence they are very difficult to spot--generally they either form far from their parent stars or are kicked out of their solar systems at a very young age. Which is a shame. A second analysis by the astronomers showed that CFBDSIR2149 has fallen in with a pack of young stars with which it is now traveling across the cosmos. No doubt that bunch is up to no good.

[Discovery News]

When nature's materials can't do the job scientists want done, it's time to head into the lab and get creative. That means entering the impressive, strange genre of metamaterials--stuff with a designer molecular structure that gives it unique properties. The latest entry in that field: a metamaterial lens from MIT that can bend and focus radio waves, which could be used to bring us higher-resolution images--of outer space or of molecules on Earth.

The metamaterial is fashioned into a concave lens made with help from 3-D printing. Usually a concave lens works by radiating waves out, like a speaker sending sound out into a room, but with the new material those rays get focused from the ends of the lens into a single point. Researcher Isaac Ehrenberg compares it to the Death Star focusing lasers to take out a planet, which is 1) awesome, 2) accurate, and 3) an excuse to use this clip.

The lens is actually made up of 4,000 "unit cells," tiny shapes that all bend radio waves slightly. Put enough of those together and you get the focused wave. When the MIT team tested out the process they found that the waves didn't get slowed down much by the material, either. That focus and efficiency, combined with the lens's light weight (less than a pound), means it could be ideal for use in imaging processes. The metamaterial might send radio waves to zero in on molecules, or go on top of satellites to guide the waves into the cosmos.

[MIT]

Ever since we inaugurated the Best of What's New (BOWN) awards 25 years ago, the bar we as editors set for our honorees has remained extremely high. Looking back over the 2,500 BOWN-winning products and breakthroughs shows us a history of innovation over the last 25 years. Within that history are digital cameras, smartphones, drones, private space planes, HIV drugs, genome sequencers, personal robots, space stations, electric cars, wireless internet connections, HDTVs, electronic books, MP3 players, and Mars landings.

Selecting the 25 most-important innovations from this auspicious group is no small task, so we called in reinforcements. We assembled a panel of nine BOWN editors (past and present) to sift through our roster of winners and select those innovations that have had the greatest, most-lasting impact.

With years of collective BOWN experience in the room--an unprecedented reunion--we whittled the list from 2,500 to 25. If the bar to get into BOWN any given year is high, than the bar to be dubbed among the best since 1988 is stupendous. In the end, we all agreed on one thing: We can't imagine a world without these 25 inventions. Nor would we wish to.

Panelists

Lauren Aaronson
Lauren Aaronson was an editor at Popular Science four years and co-ran Best of What's New in 2009 and 2010. She's now an exhibit researcher at the Liberty Science Center (http://www.lsc.org), where she's working on an upcoming exhibit about the Rubik's Cube.

Eric Adams
Eric Adams is a senior editor at Men's Health. He develops departments and manages the magazine's technology coverage and edits its annual 25-page Tech Guide in December. He is the editor of TechLust, the brand's online technology site, which also hosts his blog, Man & Machine. Prior to this, Adams was the aviation, automotive, and military editor at Popular Science, a senior editor at Air & Space/Smithsonian, and an associate editor at Architecture.

Scott Alexander
Scott was a senior editor at Popular Science from 2002 to 2004. During that time he edited What's New and Best of What's New. Prior to PopSci he worked at iVillage, Ziff Davis and CNET. After PopSci he freelanced and held staff positions at Playboy and American Photo.

Joe Brown
Joe is the editor-in-chief of technology supersite Gizmodo. Before joining Gizmodo he was an editor at WIRED Magazine. Before that: Popular Science, where he worked on BOWN for three years. Huzzah!

Mike Haney
Mike capped a seven-year career at Popular Science as executive editor, and helped create PopSci's digital publishing platform, Mag+, along with Bonnier's R&D team. After serving as Deputy Director of R&D, he later co-founded the Mag+ company. Today he helps decide where the platform should go next, and helps its more than 600 clients figure out what they should do with it, serving as the editorial voice among the techies. He maintains a soft spot in his heart for Popular Science, where he lingers on the masthead as contributing innovation editor.

Corinne Iozzio
Corinne is a senior associate editor at Popular Science in charge of the What's New section and Best of What's New. Before joining PopSci as an associate editor in 2009, she worked as an editor on the consumer-electronics reviews team at PCMag.com. Corinne also oversees other PopSci awards programs, including the CES Products of the Future and the Best of Toy Fair.

Suzanne Kantra
Suzanne is the Founder and editor-in-chief of Techlicious, a consumer technology media company. Prior to launching Techlicious in June 2009, Suzanne was the technology editor for Popular Science and Martha Stewart Living and served as the host of "Living with Technology" on Martha Stewart Living Radio. Suzanne is also a regular contributor to Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living Radio, NBCNews.com/Today.com and USAToday.com.

Bill Phillips
Bill is the Editor of MensHealth.com and the executive editor of Men's Health magazine. He was also the Editor-in-Chief of Men's Health Living, a popular but ill-fated (thanks, Great Recession) men's shelter magazine published in 2007 and 2008. Before joining Men's Health in 2003, Phillips was the executive editor of Popular Science, where he oversaw and edited Best of What's New between 1999 and 2002.

Dawn Stover
Dawn is a freelance science and environmental writer based in the Pacific Northwest. She is a contributing editor at Popular Science, where she was on staff from 1986 to 2006-first as an associate editor and later as a senior editor, articles editor, and science editor. She has also worked at Harper's and Science Digest magazines, and is currently a contributing editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Her work has appeared in a variety of other publications including The New York Times, Scientific American, New Scientist, Conservation, Outside, and Backpacker.

Digital textbooks seem like they should be a boon to students. They all fit on a single, thin device. They're (hopefully) cheaper. But dead-tree books beat them out on at least one thing: they won't tattle on you for not doing the assigned reading.

CourseSmart, a big e-textbook publisher, just unveiled a tool called CourseSmart Analytics that can track students' reading habits. Villanova University, Rasmussen College, and Texas A&M University at San Antonio will pilot the tool, which can determine how many pages students read, how much time it took them to read those pages, how many notes they took, and--here's the kicker--how "engaged" they were by the reading, based on those figures. The idea is for professors to look at those numbers and adjust help and attention accordingly.

This will probably be a little controversial. But there is a way to opt out, if you're a student who prefers to study alone.

[The Chronicle Of Higher Education]

Here at PopSci, we usually focus on the newest innovations in science and technology. But many past innovations in polymer science--the study of plastics and other similar materials--are still relevant and deserve recognition. They've saved lives, kept babies dry and made huge shark observation tanks possible. Some have tradenames that have gone on to represent an entire class of product, such as Kevlar. Others lurk in obscurity. Here are some of the most important materials and a glimpse into how scientists designed them to work their magic.

PMMA

Applications: Lucite, dentures, aquarium windows
Developed in: 1877

Polymethylmethacrylate is a very versatile polymer. If you ever see a clear plastic block, it's probably PMMA. It was first commercialized in the 1930s in Germany, and is now found anywhere one needs clear, strong material. This includes bulletproof "glass" at your favorite corner liquor store and the huge shark tanks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But my favorite use of PMMA is in so-called "frozen lightning" or Lichtenberg figure sculpture. Basically, put a chunk of PMMA into an electron accelerator, fire a bunch of electrons into the plastic until it's got about two million volts of charge, then touch the side of the plastic with a bit of wire and watch as bolts of lightning carve tracks inside the clear plastic.

Superabsorbers

Applications: Diapers
Developed in: 1960s

Back in the day, diapers were made from cloth. Frequently, those cloth diapers were filled with wads of natural absorbent fibers. Then polymer scientists discovered in the 1960s that they could make hydrogels like polyacrylic acid that absorb many times their own weight of water. It took about two decades, but polymer superabsorbers debuted in diapers in the mid-‘80s. Superabsorbers are sometimes (but not always) polyelectrolytes, meaning that the side groups on the polymer chains are positively or negatively charged. That helps the chains associate with polar liquids like water.

Kevlar and Nomex

Applications: Bbulletproof vests and fireproof clothing, respectively
Developed in: early 1960s (Nomex); 1965 (Kevlar)

Kevlar and Nomex are two polymers that belong to a class of compounds called aramids--aromatic polyamides. Aramids have particularly strong chemical bonds, and materials scientist exploit that strength when creating impact and fire-resistant fibers from the polymers. For example, Kevlar fibers are especially strong because all of the polymer chains align, one right next to the other, during fiber spinning. Nomex has a slight kink in the polymer chain, which means that fibers made from it cannot line up perfectly, and thus will be slightly weaker. Both are relatively fire-resistant, but Kevlar's strength can stop bullets. In addition to bulletproof vests, Kevlar shows up in snare drum heads. Nomex is used in fire-fighters' protective gear.

Polystyrene

Application: Shrinky Dinks
Developed in: 1839

Shrinky Dinks are awesome. Color some strips of plastic, pop ‘em in the oven and watch them fold up onto themselves. It turns out that these rainy day items are made from the same polymer as Styrofoam cups: polystyrene. Polystyrene, which was first commercialized in Germany in 1931 (styrofoam wasn't developed until 1954 in the United States), is a very versatile polymer and millions of tons of it are produced annually. A Shrinky Dink starts out as a sheet of polystyrene that has been pressed and flattened while close to the melting point. This forces the polymer chains to stretch out and line up. The sheet cools and the polymer chains are frozen into place (think of it as stretching out a Slinky and holding it). When you throw a Shrinky Dink in the oven, the polymer sheet warms up, and the polymer chains start to move around. When hot enough, all of the polymer chains coil back up, making the sheet of polymer shrink, just like a Slinky will pull itself together when you let go. Scientists at Northwestern University recently took advantage of that property to create nanopatterned surfaces. To get structures really, really close together, they used the stretched polystyrene and printed dots on the surface. Then they heated up the sheet, which shrunk, creating a very high-density array of dots.

"The plot is hysterical in both senses of the word, at the same time. Things are always happening, and there is always a blast door that must be shut on penalty of galactic holocaust, and there is a guy with evil intentions for humanity named THE DIDACT who looks like a dad in a bad Predator costume, but THE DIDACT may actually have understandably evil intentions for humanity, and your top-heavy computer program sidekick is going crazy, which for her means sometimes getting a bit sassy and turning red, which makes me wonder if I am going crazy, because I sometimes get a bit sassy and turn red, and even though you are eight feet tall and have repeatedly saved the world you have not received a promotion and no one trusts your instincts, and also your first name is John. John Master Chief."

So goes this excellent review of Halo 4 by friend of PopSci (and, um, roommate of me) Joe Bernstein over at Kill Screen. Read it, it's the tops.

The climate is soon coming to destroy you, but in the meantime you can enjoy this beautiful piece of the modern body of climate science that unequivocally spells your eventual doom. This high-res atmospheric model was created by NASA's Discover supercomputer and using the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GOES-5) and shows the global distribution of aerosols.

Says NASA: This portrait of global aerosols was produced by a GEOS-5 simulation at a 10-kilometer resolution. Dust (red) is lifted from the surface, sea salt (blue) swirls inside cyclones, smoke (green) rises from fires, and sulfate particles (white) stream from volcanoes and fossil fuel emissions.

It's also very pretty. Click through below for a wallpaper-worthy version.

[American Geophysical Union]

This week NASA announced its planet-hunter, the Kepler Space Telescope, just completed its primary mission. It's far from retired--Kepler got a nice long extension back in April, so it will keep staring at distant stars for up to four more years--but it's still a milestone for NASA and the planet-hunting community. To celebrate its next step, we're taking a look at some of Kepler's greatest hits so far.

Click to launch the photo gallery

Since its launch in early 2009, the space telescope has found a treasure trove of new worlds orbiting distant stars, suggesting that planets are plentiful in our galaxy and maybe the universe. It has found so many planets, they're practically garden variety--really a shocking thing when you sit and think about it. But it should not be this way. Exoplanets are awesome!

The space telescope is orbiting the sun, trailing behind Earth. It was designed to look for other Earths, and it hasn't found one yet--but it has come very close, as you can see in our slideshow.

"The initial discoveries of the Kepler mission indicate at least a third of the stars have planets and the number of planets in our galaxy must number in the billions," said William Borucki, Kepler's principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "The planets of greatest interest are other Earths, and these could already be in the data awaiting analysis. Kepler's most exciting results are yet to come."

Click here to see some of the best we've seen so far.

It's that time of the year again! What time? Oh, it's the time to drop thousands of dollars on the best photography gear on the planet. It's a fun time, a festive time, a time for reflection and spending time with family and also going into debt to buy $3,500 cameras and thousand-dollar lenses and backpacks and flash setups and so much more. But what to buy? Pop Photo rounded up the best photography gear of 2012 for your perusal in this year's Pop Awards. Check out the winners here.

"Are hops and marijuana related?"

I've fielded that question many times, usually after someone has sampled an especially resinous IPA -- although at least one PopSci editor asked me the same question when looking at a photo of the leaves of a hop plant.

The answer to that question is yes and no.

The fact that both Humulus lupulus (hops) and Cannabis sativa (marijuana) have similar organoleptic properties (taste and smell) could indicate a common ancestry--but it isn't proof. Lots of plants make similar aroma molecules, known as terpenes and terpenoid compounds, including lemons (which make limonene), lavender (linalool) and conifers (pinene) -- but none of them are closely related to cannabis or hops.

Terpenes are a class of organic compounds synthesized by cells. They all start with a particular base molecule, called isoprene. I won't go into terpene biosynthesis here, but it's important to remember that all terpenes are built up using one or more copies of isoprene. A few of the primary aroma terpenes in hops are myrcene, beta-pinene and alpha-humulene--these and similar aromatic compounds are also what give cannabis plants their characteristic smell.

Further, the major bitter compound in hops, the so-called alpha acids, aka humulone, is a terpenoid (derived from terpenes). The primary active ingredient in that dank you're smoking, the tetrahydrocannabinoids, are also terpenoids.

So, if terpenes are not exclusive to Humulus and Cannabis, how do we know they are related? The one nameless editor who noticed structural similarities in the two plants was more on the money.

Humulus and Cannabis are, in fact, two genera in the family Cannabinaceae, a taxonomic family that has endured a bit of a shakeup in recent history. In ye olden days of taxonomy, biologists would look for structural similarities between plants in order to group them. Botanically speaking, the leaves of plants in the Cannabinaceae family are generally palmately lobed and always have stipules. Additionally, they always have cystoliths (calcium carbonate crystals that sit in special organelles within the cell). Aside from "palmately lobed," none of this means a whole lot to me, either, so I guess we will have to take the plant taxonomists' word on it.

Before the 1990s, all of these physical similarities put hops and cannabis into a single family, under a larger order called Urticales. And so it stayed, until molecular biologists started running the DNA through sequencers looking for similarities between genes, when they found out that the order Urticales wasn't as special as they thought--it wasn't even its own order. The situation became so frustrating to the flowering-plant taxonomists that in 1998 they organized the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (like the Justice League, but with fewer secret identities) to sort the mess out. The APG published their take on the flowering-plant taxonomic system in 1998, and followed up with updates in 2003 and 2009.

(As an aside, microbiologists went through a similar problem. I am sure that most readers will remember the terms "gram positive" and "gram negative" from biology class, terms used to describe certain kinds of bacteria based on whether they could be dyed with crystal violet. That phenomenon, coupled with the shape of the bacterial cell (rod-shaped, round, or corkscrew), was the original basis for all bacterial taxonomy. In no surprise whatsoever, it turns out that shape is generally a piss-poor method to determine evolutionary relationships among bacteria. These days, microbiologists look at the sequence of the 16S ribosomal subunit to separate bacteria into different taxa.)

In 2002, a group of plant and molecular biologists in the US and UK looked at the structural characteristics, cellular organelles, latex-producing-properties (or lack thereof) and DNA sequences of a select number of genes for all of the plants originally in Urticales and related taxa. The upshot: by comparing sequences of rbcL, trnL-F, ndhF and matK DNA regions, they confirmed that Humulus and Cannabis were very closely related and belonged in a single family, Cannabinaceae. They also found that the Cannabinaceae family shares a common ancestor with other families, and thus all of those families needed to be lumped together. Confusingly, because Cannabinaceae is the older name, this bigger group is also called Cannabinaceae, under the order Rosales.

The upshot of all of this: 1) Don't become an angiosperm taxonomist unless you love frustration, because 2) taxonomy can be a giant pain in the butt. 3) Best thing to do is bust out a bottle of homebrew.

And yes, before you ask, homebrewers have made marijuana beer. Details online are thin, because the homebrew forums actively discourage discussion of it and the pothead forums are teeth-clenchingly imprecise. All I've found is 1) dry your bud first, then 2) don't add it to the boil without first soaking it in water to get the worst of the water-soluble tars out. I have no idea why people don't try to dry-pot their beer -- despite the worries I've read from these pot-brewers, the chances of contamination from the plant is very low, especially if you pasteurize it first. As for style, I've seen reports of a very dark ale recipe. Anything with a good malt backbone should be enough to dispel whatever gnarly flavors might develop. Finally, THC is alcohol soluble, so you probably want your beer to be in the 8% ABV range for maximum extraction. (Or just go the cheap and cheery route and extract it in vodka, then throw that in during bottling/kegging.)

And no, BeerSci has not tried any.

Soon, dolphins and sea lions won't be hunting mines any more. The U.S. Navy is phasing out the Marine Mammal Program. Though trained sea mammals have been serving the Navy for 50 years, they're retiring to make way for cheaper, easier-to-manage robots.

Dolphins use sonar-like echolocation--essentially, seeing with their ears--which makes them beasts at finding mines in water. After training the animals, they also have to be taken care of for the rest of their lives, which is costly. So let's feel free to let technology take over here. Development of the Knifefish, a torpedo-like unmanned underwater vehicle, is underway and should be completed by 2017.

[BBC News]

Memo to Salt Lake City Police Department: Lifeblogging was never cool. Neither, come to think of it, are the glasses you see above. But the chief of police of Salt Lake City is hoping to make the above accessory mandatory for his on-duty officers, as well as for every other officer in the state. Much like dashboard cameras currently log what's happening in front of a police officers car during a shift, this tiny glasses-mounted camera will record everything an officer sees--and does--while on patrol.

Which is actually a pretty cool idea, mandatory Oakley shooting glasses even when you're not shooting. The technology Salt Lake City is considering is made by Taser (yes, that Taser, they make other things as well). I caught a briefing on the technology some months back from TaserCEO Rick Smith. And I was kind of impressed.

While there's an argument to be made that all these cameras everywhere are turning us into a police state--especially when the police are the ones getting more cameras. And it's true: these kinds of cameras will increase the likelihood of you being filmed (by the state!) when perhaps you are not aware of it. However, with so many smartphones and laptops and tablets around these days, there are cameras everywhere anyhow. The nice thing about Taser's AXON Flex (that's the proper name of the product) is that when properly used it really serves the people as much as the officer.

With AXON, every interaction is going to be recorded, not just the ones that happen in front of the police cruiser. But the officer wearing the camera doesn't have control over the data it collects. At the end of each shift officers are required to turn in their cameras, which are plugged into a special terminal that offloads the data to a remote server. Individual officers don't have access to said server--to recall that video paperwork has to be filed and essentially a formal inquiry has to be made through the legal system.

All that is to say yeah, you're on camera. But so is the officer. And that might just encourage both parties to be nicer to each other.

[via KSL]

Researchers have been trying to create ultra-hydrophobic materials--materials that repel water--because condensation of vapor can interfere with the energy efficiency of industrial processes. That includes nuclear power generation, water harvesting, transportation, desalination and air conditioning. But with the right material, those resource-heavy processes could become less costly.

Enter MIT. Researchers there developed Lubricant Impregnated Surfaces (LIS), a material that is so hydrophobic, droplets of water slide right off of it. "We can show that water can slide off like ketchup," lead researcher Kripa Varanasi says. If you've ever eaten a hot dog, you know that this must be one slippery material.

Even calling it a material is, well, slippery. LIS is more accurately defined as an interaction between two materials: a lubricant, such as oil, and a hydrophobic surface. The surface is covered with microscopic bumps, each about the size of a red blood cell. The lubricant then fills the space between the bumps, and together, they repel condensing water 10,000 times faster than a surface that features only hydrophobic patterning.

So is LIS the most hydrophobic material--or whatever you want to call it--in the world? Well... that's complicated, too. There are multiple ways to measure hydrophobicity, and different kinds of experiments to show it. Take this this extremely hydrophobic nanotube material. Water bounces off of it. Watch:

Those nanotubes must be way more hydrophobic than LIS, right? After all, they instantly repel water, whereas with LIS, water just clumps up and slides off.

Not so fast. The carbon nanotubes are tested in static conditions, whereas LIS has been tested while water is moving--more specifically, while it is condensing. Therein lies the complexity of defining hydrophobicity. We're looking at two different things here. If we're measuring contact angles as a droplet bounces off a surface, you would say that the nanotubes were the most hydrophobic. But if we're measuring the roll-off angle conducted during a condensation experiment, LIS would win. (To measure roll-off angle, you tilt the surface and measure the angle at which the droplet starts to move.)

The MIT researchers hope that their design, which appeared in the August 2012 issue of ACS Nano, will be applicable to multiple substrates and lubricants. "What makes this attractive is that you can texture condensing tubes made out of steel or titanium. You can apply this to metals or ceramics or plastics," Varanasi says. "If you make sure the surface and lubricant are compatible, you can accomplish this."

Artificial muscles will offer future robots greater flexibility and lighter weight than a machine joint, expanding and contracting again and again. Although there are plenty of awesome robotic examples and prototype bionic uses, artificial muscles have been limited by many factors, like their response times or their power requirements. Now comes a new nanofiber muscle combining carbon nanotubes with candle wax, which might outperform any previous artificial muscle.

These nanotube fibers can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 times more mechanical power during contraction than natural muscles of the same size, according to scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas and collaborators from Australia, China, South Korea, Canada and Brazil.

They work by combining a waxy substance with a yarn made of carbon nanotubes. The wax expands in response to heat (or a voltage), and the yarn volume increases while its length contracts. This happens because it's twisting, as a news release from UT Dallas explains. As the wax melts or solidifies, it twists and untwists, generating motion. The yarn can be looped, sewn, braided or whatever else you do with yarn, so it could be easy to use it in new types of textiles. You could design blankets that get thinner when it's warm, maybe, or tapestries that tell you which chemicals are in the air.

Yarn muscle could be commercialized for small motors, the researchers say. Unfortunately, they won't be replacing our fragile human parts anytime soon.

"While we are excited about near-term applications, these artificial muscles are presently unsuitable for directly replacing muscles in the human body," said the research team leader, UT Dallas chemistry professor Ray Baughman.

The paper will be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

Part of the reason we're enamored with our famous buildings is for the sense of history they impart. When you look at the White House you're not just looking at a building; you're looking at our shared presidential past. That's great. But if you coldly stare at those structures like they were just well-molded hunks of concrete and steel, you might fairly wonder: can't we do better?

So we asked a few forward-thinking professionals in the business of buildings. The question went something like this: If we were going to remake a famous building or bridge using the materials we have today or will have in the future, what would we do differently? That's just vague enough to make things interesting. Here's what we got back.

THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE, 1937

JEROME LYNCH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

We're good at building bridges, for the most part. But civil engineer Jerome Lynch makes them even safer by using sensors that can automatically detect structural problems before they turn into catastrophes. For his work, he made it onto the 2009 list of our Brilliant 10 young geniuses. Here, he reimagines the Golden Gate Bridge with today's cutting-edge technology:

A common inspection procedure is for a team to come by every couple of years and take a look. But Lynch's sensors make that seem passé--while actually making the bridges safer. The sensors are put together from square-foot, microns-thick polymer sheets that are placed on key parts of a bridge, and they digitally send information on structural conditions, like so:

JOHN HANCOCK CENTER, 1969

ROGER DUFFY OF SOM

Architecture firm SOM (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP) had some fun with the question. As one of the biggest firms in the world, they've bult up an impressive resume. Some highlights: the largest manmade structure in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai; Chicago's Sears Tower; and another great Chicago building, the John Hancock Center. SOM's Roger Duffy chose to remodel the John Hancock Center, and the results are as much science as art. Here's a snippet from Duffy about some of the materials:

To ensure all this technological wizardry stays in top condition, Duffy writes that he'd also use "sensors or intelligent aggregates" in the concrete to monitor its health. "This intelligent concrete," he writes, "becomes responsive to its environmental surroundings providing better quality control and faster construction." If that was applied to the John Hancock Center specifically, that could make it more resistant to tension. Strategically placed concrete could also be put wherever the heaviest load areas in the building call for it. Even better: as he notes, it would make construction faster, as it "would eliminate the need for conventional reinforcing bars, which greatly reduces the construction time."

THE J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING

SHAWN GEHLE OF GENSLER

We caught architecture firm Gensler at a lucky time. They'd just wrapped up the remodeling of a prominent building--the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C.--for a competition. The premise was to design an office building for the year 2050. And what better building to apply their "hackable building" concept, as Gensler architect Shawn Gehle writes about the project, than to the headquarters of the FBI? The J. Edgar Hoover Building is in "the Brutalist style," and has an "overall fortress-like character." But we have the technology--and materials--to make it something bright, beautiful, and sustainable, Gehle writes. Some of those materials are simple (glass) and some are more complicated (a "new high-performance curtain wall"). Here's the list of Gehle's proposed changes.

Structural and material hacks like that would open up the headquarters (literally and metaphorically, it seems like). Such is the transformative power of materials.