clhs sciblog » Uncategorized

A Bird’s- Eye View

faustta — Tue, 15 May 2012 04:17:32 +0000

Recently, scientists were able to count how many emperor penguins were in Antarctica with a simple satellite photo. If that isn’t great enough, scientists learned that there are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than they had previously thought. Scientists have done this before, but now they use a technique called “pansharpening”, which provides a high enough resolution for the scientists to tell the difference between the penguins, penguin droppings, and ice. Scientists now estimate that there are approximately 595,000 emperor penguins opposed to the old estimate of 270,000- 350,000 emperor penguins. Scientists, are not concerned that the penguins are in danger, but they are worried about the colonies in northern Antarctica because of the melting ice due to the rising temperatures.

I think this is great news because in the future we may be able to track all sorts of species with this technology. Scientists could use this technology to find and help endangered species and observe animal behavior. to read more click here.

Giant Whale eating Whale???

branbf — Sat, 05 May 2012 19:46:37 +0000

The skull and jaw has recently been discovered of a sperm whale 10 feet long in size, that lived 12-13 million years ago, of a coastal desert of Peru. The said cousin of the modern day sperm whale is said to be the closest rival in size though being very different. The modern day sperm whale has teeth on the bottom of its jaw while this new fossil shows that this prehistoric whale had razor sharp teeth about 14 inches long on both the top and bottom jaws of the skull. Paleontologist Olivier Lambert of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France is the man who led the expedition to the find of this fossil. The modern day Sperm Whale usually eats giant squid which is why it has a bottom row of teeth but this new prehistoric whale, called the Leviathan melvillei, is thought to have eaten other whales such as baleen whales seen in the picture.

It’s crazy what kind of animals lived back then. The fact that we are able to find and learn about these animals is unbelievable. I love learning about the ocean’s creatures from today’s ocean to millions of years ago. (even though the world isn’t even that old.) Kind of makes me wonder though, why are they not living on earth anymore? What was the cause of their extinction? What would life be like if the were still here with us? If you want to read more about this crazy find click right here!!!

Q4-2

Shocking News!!!

branbf — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:13:01 +0000

People have studied that the shock received by a Taser on the Chest can lead to cardiac arrest and even sudden death, although the frequent sudden death occurs is unknown. This study was based on the records of 8 people who had been shocked by a taser fired at adistance. All eight had gone into cardiac arrest. Seven of the people died and only one survived. The devices are used by more than 16,700 law enforcement agencies in 107 different countries. Steve Tuttle, a spokesman for Taser said that they pose a lesser risk of injury to civilians than firearms and safer for policemen than to physically tackle the suspect.

The way I see things is that people cant not stop using tasers, especially police officers. Yes it is bad that people are unfortunatly dying but you really have to think of what would happen if tasers weren’t used. The Officers would be risking their lives more and it would be harder to subdue the suspect, and it would keep innocent by standards safer. What do you think? Should officers stop using tasers or not? I say no. If you would like to read more click here!

Q4-1

Have a Great Summer!

Mr. Faust — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:18:26 +0000

Thanks for all the great posts this year. I’ve learned loads about current events in science…and I hope you have too! I won’t be grading any posts for the 2010-2011 school year after this post. Feel free to post if you feel the need, however!

Stronger Than Steel.

romeromn — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:53:56 +0000

Professor Yuntian Zhu, a matierals scientist at North Carolina State University, was included in a project of a stronger, yet lighter steel. They created nanostructures, which can be used on many different metals, to help create the Nano-Architectured Aluminum. Professor Zhu had explained how the aluminum alloys, that when combined to form hierarchical structure to many high levels of nanoscale levels make a powerful and flexible sort of steel. Professor Zhu is now working on making a strong magnesium, that will be lighter than aluminum.

The success of scientist making a new element is really interesting. They could re-invent the airplane and make it safer, lighter, and stronger, therefore saving more lives each and everyday. same with cars or anything else made with a hard, breakable element. Replace it with the Nano-Architectured Aluminum. Here is a link to the website.

Q1-1

Longest-Lasting Light Bulb

dangln — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:39:48 +0000

The longest-lasting light bulb is the Centennial light. It is located in Livermore, California. It is still giving off light in the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department. It is 109 years old and has been turned off a small amount of times. Part of the reason why light bulbs burn out is caused by the turning them on and off, not by just keeping them on. Each time someone turns on and off that light switch, the filament of the bulb is heated and cooled which causes parts of the filament to expand and contract, which causes small stress cracks to develop. So every time someone turns on and off a light switch, the crack gets bigger and bigger until the bulb eventually burns out.

Bulbcam

To learn more click here.

Q4-2

Inside Science of Iron Man 2

yangjk — Thu, 06 May 2010 18:24:11 +0000

I guess many people saw or watched Iron man 1 and this Friday Iron man 2 is comming out too. The power that able to move the Iron man is a particle accelerator. But Tony Stark came up with a new way of power reactor to make him alive. So, the film producer wanted to show what the acutal particle accelerator looks like.

The Hollywood called “The science and Entertainment Exchange”. A program of the National Academy of Sciences that connects experts in ntertainment with experts in science and engineering. Latcham the senior vice president of production at Marvel studio was able to find experts in particle accelerator in Cal Tech in Pasadena.

“They wanted to use the science to show what the particle accelertor would really look like and they wanted to do it in a way that was entertaining” said Wise (theoretical physicist)… etc.

Thoughts to speech?

matteuje — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:50:23 +0000

A milestone has recently been reached by a team of scientists. Their goal is to let people who are unable to speak because of accidents or diseases speak in real time. Through an implant that changes neural signals to modified FM radio signals and eventually to synthetic speech, a person can “say” something in fewer than 50 milliseconds. That is about as long as it takes a person to speak. While only able to do vowel sounds, the group is hoping they will be able to speak consonant sounds down the line. You can read more here.

It is amazing to see how far technology has gone. We are able to use our knowledge of radio, synthesizers, and many other technologies to allow people to do something otherwise impossible: have the ability to speak. They would be able to go from one word a minute to being able to carry out a conversation. Technology similar to this one could probably help many other medical problems. There seem to be few problems technology cannot solve.

Light From Black Holes

cichocet — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:58:28 +0000

As far as most people know, black holes are the darkest things out there. Their gravity is so intense that not even light can escape their grasp. Black holes aren’t studied with telescopes, but with computers, because you really can’t see them. Black holes might not be as dark as we thought though. Gases being sucked into the black holes canbe heated to tempuratures 1000 times hotter than the sun and become an intense sourse of x-rays. “As these black holes magnetic field pulls these gases into its center, it creates a light show.”

This information gives us a whole new understanding as too how complex black holes are. It could be essential to studying how they form and how they grow.

Too read more about this click here.

FASTER COMPUTERS?

williacd — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:39:14 +0000

team of French physicists say they have used a femtosecond laser (ultra-fast bursts of laser light) to alter electron spin and this would speed up retrieval and storage. The technique could increase the speed up to 100000 times.

imagine the possibility to be able to surf the net even faster computer work and computer operated mechanisms could operate all the faster. and you think we get stuff done now. Now i just wonder if computers can handel this type of speed.