Science News

[GodsEmbryo]

Thought I would follow the lead of others and instead of creating a fuckload of new threads, bundle them into one thread...

Metal foam obliterates bullets – and that's just the beginning

April 6, 2016

Composite metal foams (CMFs) are tough enough to turn an armor-piercing bullet into dust on impact. Given that these foams are also lighter than metal plating, the material has obvious implications for creating new types of body and vehicle armor – and that's just the beginning of its potential uses.

Afsaneh Rabiei, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State, has spent years developing CMFs and investigating their unusual properties. The video seen here shows a composite armor made out of her composite metal foams. The bullet in the video is a 7.62 x 63 millimeter M2 armor piercing projectile, which was fired according to the standard testing procedures established by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). And the results were dramatic.

"We could stop the bullet at a total thickness of less than an inch, while the indentation on the back was less than 8 millimeters," Rabiei says. "To put that in context, the NIJ standard allows up to 44 millimeters indentation in the back of an armor." The results of that study were published in 2015. [...]

Source and rest of the article: http://phys.org/news/2016-04-metal-foam-obliterates-bullets.html

 

[freeones_regina]

I wonder what would happen if the bullets were made of the same material. :dunno:

 

[Rock111x]

This is awesome, the growth and change of Mt St Helens over 4 years, a re-emergent dome

https://gfycat.com/CandidLiveIchthyosaurs

 

[GodsEmbryo]

University of Washington team stores digital images in DNA — and retrieves them perfectly

April 7, 2016

All the movies, images, emails and other digital data from
more than 600 basic smartphones (10,000 gigabytes) can be stored
in the faint pink smear of DNA at the end of this test tube.
Tara Brown Photography / University of Washington​

Technology companies routinely build sprawling data centers to store all the baby pictures, financial transactions, funny cat videos and email messages its users hoard. But a new technique developed by University of Washington and Microsoft researchers could shrink the space needed to store digital data that today would fill a Walmart supercenter down to the size of a sugar cube.

The team of computer scientists and electrical engineers has detailed one of the first complete systems to encode, store and retrieve digital data using DNA molecules, which can store information millions of times more compactly than current archival technologies.

In one experiment outlined in a paper presented in April at the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, the team successfully encoded digital data from four image files into the nucleotide sequences of synthetic DNA snippets. More significantly, they were also able to reverse that process — retrieving the correct sequences from a larger pool of DNA and reconstructing the images without losing a single byte of information.

The team has also encoded and retrieved data that authenticates archival video files from the UW’s Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal project that contain interviews with judges, lawyers and other personnel from the Rwandan war crime tribunal.

“Life has produced this fantastic molecule called DNA that efficiently stores all kinds of information about your genes and how a living system works — it’s very, very compact and very durable,” said co-author Luis Ceze, UW associate professor of computer science and engineering. We’re essentially repurposing it to store digital data — pictures, videos, documents — in a manageable way for hundreds or thousands of years.”

Source and rest of article: http://www.washington.edu/news/2016...l-images-in-dna-and-retrieves-them-perfectly/

 

[GodsEmbryo]

I wonder what would happen if the bullets were made of the same material. :dunno:

The Arms Industry send me a mail to tell you you are hired. They like your way of thinking

This is awesome, the growth and change of Mt St Helens over 4 years, a re-emergent dome

https://gfycat.com/CandidLiveIchthyosaurs

Holy shit... Most impressive!

 

[Rey C.]

Cool thread. :hatsoff:

 

[Rock111x]

Cross section of DNA, high powered electron scanning microscope. Pretty

 

[GodsEmbryo]

The future is here: Interactive screens on your packages

8 April 2016

Instead of reading a label, consumers could be interacting with an electronic screen on packaging in the future, thanks to a revolutionary new development by scientists at the University of Sheffield (UK).

The scientists collaborated with technology company Novalia to create a new way of displaying information on packaging, a move that could revolutionise the packaging industry.

This technology could be used in greetings cards or products where a customer could receive a simple message. More complex developments could include a countdown timer on the side of a packet to indicate when a timed product was ready - such as hair-dye, pregnancy tests or home-baking using a ‘traffic lights’ system.

[...]

Professor David Lidzey from the University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy said: “Labels on packaging could become much more innovative, and allow customers to interact with and explore new products. The use of displays or light emitting panels on packaging will also allow companies to communicate brand awareness in a more sophisticated manner.”

Chris Jones from Novalia said: “The paper-based packaging industry is worth billions of dollars. This innovative system we have developed with the University of Sheffield could give manufacturers a way to gain market share by being able to distinguish its products from competitors.”

Source and complete article: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/packaging-interactive-screens-1.566630

 

[Jack Davenport]

Not sure I am all that excited about an interactive screen on my package.

The Mt. St. Helens info is cool. I vaguely remember it happening. If I am not mistaken, the ash actually made its way over to the East coast. Probably other parts of the world too.

 

[Jack Davenport]

Keep an eye out for "transparent aluminum"

 

[Rock111x]

Not sure I am all that excited about an interactive screen on my package.

The Mt. St. Helens info is cool. I vaguely remember it happening. If I am not mistaken, the ash actually made its way over to the East coast. Probably other parts of the world too.

The one you guys in the USA is Yellowstone

 

[Jack Davenport]

There are 2 Mount St.Helens ?

 

[Rock111x]

There are 2 Mount St.Helens ?

Yellowstone is a different volcano, it called a caldera. It is potentially one of the largest volcano on our planet today. Here is is an example of Yellowstone vs. Mt St Helens

 

[freeones_regina]

The interactive screens on packages sounds great to me, no more accidentally drinking milk that went sour.

 

[Mr. Daystar]

I wonder what would happen if the bullets were made of the same material. :dunno:

I would think that, the force of the actual explosion from the powder igniting would cause the bullet to shatter as opposed to being propelled down the barrel. It may work as a core, surrounded by another materiel. In the past, bullets and armour have always escalated together, so I'm sure someone is working on it....probably the ones making the armour.

 

[GodsEmbryo]

Consensus on Consensus

Newswise — A research team confirms that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans. The group includes Sarah Green, a chemistry professor at Michigan Technological University.

What’s important is that this is not just one study—it’s the consensus of multiple studies,” Green says. This consistency across studies contrasts with the language used by climate change doubters. This perspective stems from, as the authors write, “conflating the opinions of non-experts with experts and assuming that lack of affirmation equals dissent.”

Environmental Research Letters published the paper this week. In it, the team lays out what they call “consensus on consensus” and draws from seven independent consensus studies by the co-authors. This includes a study from 2013, in which the researchers surveyed more than 11,000 abstracts and found most scientists agree that humans are causing climate change. Through this new collaboration, multiple consensus researchers—and their data gathered from different approaches—lead to essentially the same conclusion.

The key factor comes down to expertise: The more expertise in climate science the scientists have, the more they agree on human-caused climate change.

[...] There are many surveys about climate change consensus. The problem with some surveys, Green points out, is that they are biased towards populations with predetermined points of view. Additionally, respondents to some surveys lack scientific expertise in climate science.

“The public has a very skewed view of how much disagreement there is in the scientific community,” she says. Only 12 percent of the US public are aware there is such strong scientific agreement in this area, and those who reject mainstream climate science continue to claim that there is a lack of scientific consensus. People who think scientists are still debating climate change do not see the problem as urgent and are unlikely to support solutions.

Source and complete article here: http://www.newswise.com/articles/consensus-on-consensus2

 

[sean miguel]

^yes, consensus has anything to do with the scientific method.

why are you even citing consensus when it's irrelevant to what is true or false?

make your claim based on the evidence regardless of how many people agree with you.

 

[sean miguel]

this repeated appeal to consensus to me sounds like a case of "thou dost protest too much." If the science and the evidence is sound why the need to bring up consensus? Unless ...

sunrise will be at 6:23 AM seattle time tomorrow based on the axis tilt of the earth in relation to the sun. Oh, and there's consensus.

 

[sean miguel]

"doth" :o I wasn't lisping.

 

[Jack Davenport]

"doth" :o I wasn't lisping.

I rethent that.