Saturday, October 13, 2012

Science Saturday: October 13, 2012

A few interesting science-oriented articles we gathered up this week while randomly Googling

Time for yet another edition of Weber County Forum's ever-popular Science Saturday feature, we do believe.  In that connection, here are a few science-oriented articles we gathered up this week while randomly Googling, or otherwise prowling the net:

1) A little something gleaned from frequent WCF contributor Dan S., who says, "Want to understand water? Just do the math...":
This dovetails nicely with a topic which we've recently discussed at length on WCF, wethinks.

2) A new theory gives the first mathematical solution explaining the birth or initiation of ball lightning using standard equations for the motion of electrons and ions:
Thus the "poltergeist" theory finally gets relegated to the round file, we guess.

3) More progress in the ongoing effort to build logic gates out of biological material. "Engineer Tae Seok Moon’s dream is to design modular “genetic parts” that can be used to build logic controllers inside microbes that will program them to make fuel, clean up pollutants, or kill infectious bacteria or cancerous cells":
Remember... Shigella flexneri, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella are your FRIENDS, people.
Engineer Tae Seok Moon’s dream is to design modular “genetic parts” that can be used to build logic controllers inside microbes that will program them to make fuel, clean up pollutants, or kill infectious bacteria or cancerous cells.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-complex-logic-circuit-bacterial-genes.html#jCp

4) Last but not least, this amusing letter's well worth a read, concerning a physics student who admitted he did know the "conventional" answer to a test question, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to "teach him to think."
How's that for "thinking outside the box?"

No comments:

Post a Comment

© 2005 - 2014 Weber County Forum™ -- All Rights Reserved