Is It Possible To Clone Dinosaurs?

The movie Jurassic Park, based on Michael Crichton's bestselling novel of the same name, tells the story of a theme park filled with dinosaurs resurrected from DNAs extracted from bloodsucking insects trapped in tree sap. 

The 1993 movie, directed by renown director Steven Spielberg (who later produced two more sequels of Jurassic Park, and they sucked real bad compared to the first one), became the most financially successful film for Spielberg.

Image: en.wikipedia.org

I've always admired Crichton—I've got nearly all of his books; Micro, Next, Congo, etc—because of his unique way of blending science with fiction. In fact, the science of Jurassic Park seemed plausible: bloodsucking insects flew alongside dinosaurs and fed on their blood; they then rested on a branch before unfortunately trapped by tree sap bursting out from the tree. As a result, the DNA of the dinosaurs remained in the gut of the insects. That made sense.

If we could clone Dolly the sheep as well as producing a myriad of other creatures using the science of genetics and cloning techniques, why not dinosaurs?
So why haven't we had a Jurassic Park yet? It's been 20 years since the release of the first Jurassic Park, and the science of cloning has been steadily improving over the years.

Dolly's taxidermied remains. Image: en.wikipedia.org

Shortly after I shared the news on social media I was inundated by skeptics who asked about DNAs preserved in insects trapped in amber. They argued that since the insects are preserved by the amber, it is likely that the DNA remained intact, which means the blood that remained in the insects should still hold DNA.

That's exactly what Dr David Penney of the University of Manchester thought.
In his paper, he wrote that 

Intuitively, one might imagine that the complete and rapid engulfment in resin resulting in almost instantaneous demise, might promote the preservation of DNA in a resin entombed insect, and DNA preservation might be better within the protective environment of the resin than in an air-dried museum specimen.

Neat.
But the results of his experiment show otherwise.

The Disappearance of MH370 Has Brought Technology Down On Its Knees

For many people, the disappearance of MH370 is utterly incomprehensible, and you can hardly blame them for thinking that way. After all, we're living in an era of GPS and Google Maps, and basically everyone is being spied on by the NSA.
So how can a plane so huge vanish into thin air just like that?

Ever since the start of the industrial revolution, humans have been creating countless wonders: building bridges; cars; airplanes; trains; guns and firearms; and two centuries later we basically have had the entire world under our feet. We have looked beyond our planet, snapping photos of the Sun, Mercury, and celestial body as far as Jupiter and the 67 moons that surround it. We have transformed the Earth according to our needs, creating dams and canals, altering terrain and destroying nature at will while pushing other species towards extinction. We have also expanded our clout onto a neighboring planet via the Curiosity rover. Hence, with this constant influx of the glory of our technology it's easy to think that everything is within our control, and that everything can be achieved by our technology.

Research Is A Dangerous Business

When people talk about risk at work, they normally mean the risk of getting fired, losing a business deal, and probably encountering some minor accidents like electrocution while charging their electronics. 

Unlike these risks, the risks you encounter during research are far more unpredictable because you work with unpredictable subjects; the weather (climate scientists), wild animals (zoologists), chemicals (chemists), and sometimes, the product of your own research (physicists). Even in social sciences, the research is often far more dangerous than your average nine-to-five job.

Image: www.specialtyexecutives.com

One particular technique in psychology, called participant observation, involves taking part in the activities of those you want to study. For example, if you wish to study the drug cartel, you would need to actually get your hands dirty. Sociologist Mick Bloor, a professor at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences once ended up in a bar fight while studying male prostitution in Glasgow. Lorraine Dowler from the Pennsylvania State University was forced to flee when her interviewee became the target of a street-level assassination attempt. Social scientist Frank Burton woke up one morning to find a submachine gun pointed at him. The body of Ken Pryce was found washed up on a Caribbean beach after investigating criminology in Jamaica.

Nokia To Patent Haptic Feedback Tattoo--Irrelevant?

For all you tattoo + Nokia fans out there, the cellular giant is considering filling a patent for a, well, creepy technology which I personally think is kind of irrelevant (even after slashing 1000 jobs in Finland recently).

What is haptic technology?

Cara Menulis Tesis Yang Betul

Ramai di antara kita perlu menulis tesis pada akhir pengajian kita. Tesis merupakan laporan kajian yang kita lakukan terutamanya pada semester terakhir untuk memenuhi kehendak atau syarat kursus universiti.

Namun ramai di antara kita yang selalu menulis yang bukan-bukan dalam tesis, contohnya, mengarang Hikayat Merong Mahawangsa pada tesis fizik adalah sesuatu yang tidak wajar dilakukan, sebab profesor fizik memang tidak berminat pada hikayat tersebut. Mereka lebih berminat dengan Hikayat Sang Kancil dengan Buaya.

Problem Of Mining (On The Moon)

Our moon is our nearest celestial neighbour. And over the course of several million years it has been our best friend; albeit a faraway one--without Luna to shield us from asteroids and other celestial rocks, we would have been hit more frequently.

Image: nineplanets.org

That being said, the process of asteroids landing on the moon has made Luna a prosaic mix of a plethora of materials--silicon, iron, calcium, aluminium, potassium, and phosphorus. Ah, not forgetting the elusive Helium-3. Helium-3 is an isotope of the conventional Helium-4.

Who Really Invented The Computer?

No, it wasn't Steve Jobs.

Some people might say Alan Turing, the guy who, in the 1930s, laid the foundation for computational science.

Who's Smart And Who's Not?

Is the recently deceased Steve Jobs smart?

Most of us do not know Jobs personally, though we're constantly told of Jobs' accomplishment, his temperament, and his brilliance. He sold me my iPod, presented me with the ever sophisticated iTunes, tempted me with iPhones, and fascinated me with his death.

Where Does Your E-Waste Go?

When our old laptop, mouse, pendrives and handphones stop functioning, we dump them into the rubbish bin and the rest is history and most of us probably have no idea where they'd go next.

Well, like organic waste, these e-waste will be sent to landfills, i.e. local electronic graveyards, if your town or municipal happens to have one. Unfortunately, e-waste site is fairly rare due to its toxic nature, and hence most of them, if not all, will be exported to China.

Mobile Phones Do Not Cause Cancer

This is the third time I blog about mobile phone and its connection to cancer.
A new Danish study of over 350,000 people, published recently, has found no link between using mobile phones and an increased risk of cancers of the brain and central nervous system.--- bmj.com

Image: b4tea.com

This is by far the best evidence yet to repudiate the claim. Unlike previous studies which was criticized heavily for exhibiting "recall bias"--relied on people who had already been diagnosed with brain cancers to remember how frequent they used their mobile in the past, the researchers for this study followed a group of mobile phone subscribers over a mean period of 10 years, and recorded new cases of cancer in the group and then compared this to cancer rates in the general population.

What Should We Do If An Asteroid Heads For Us?

2012? Armageddon?

In the movie Armageddon, for instant, a team of oil drillers were sent up to land on the surface of the asteroid to blow it off. Hey wait! There could be valuable minerals up on that rock!

Saving 7 Million Tons of Juvenile Fish A Year

40% of the world's population relies on fish for food. But every year, 7 million tons of dead fish are tossed back into the ocean because they were too young (i.e., small) to be marketable, or simply because they weren't the species the fishermen were after.

David Watson, a student in the Innovation Design Engineering joint course between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College, London, has designed SafetyNet to counter this problem.

What Happen If Every Element On The Periodic Table Came Into Contact Simultaneously?

No, no. They don't form anything like the Hulk, and definitely won’t form a super-molecule containing one of everything.

Image: forbiddenplanet.co.uk

There are two methods of putting it to the test, neither of which are practical.

Automatic Teller Machine

You're short on cash, so you walk over to the automated teller machine (ATM), insert your card into the card reader, respond to the prompts on the screen, and within a minute you walk away with your money and a receipt. These machines can now be found at most supermarkets, convenience stores and travel centers. Have you ever wondered about the process that makes your bank funds available to you at an ATM on the other side of the country?

Alright, it's just a computer mounted on the wall, with a simple keypad, a screen monitor, a built in printer, and an opening for money dispensing. The question that baffles me is the way the ATM smartly select the correct amount in accordance to our request and collect the money from various compartments that eventually comes out from the dispensing opening.

Cell phone ban

Everytime I take a plane I hear the captain says: Please switch off your phone or I'll throw you out of this plane.



Everytime I go refueling I would see the no cell phone sign on the wall.

Why the hell la people... It's not even harmful to use mobile phone on the plane or at the petrol kiosks...(call me lanxi)

Rebuilt lungs

"In a lab at Yale University, a rat inhales. Every breath this rodent takes is a sign of important medical advances looming on the horizon, for only one of its lungs comes from the pair it was born with. The other was built in a laboratory."

taken from :http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/24/lungs-rebuilt-in-lab-and-transplanted-into-rats/

I came across this article the other day and found it to be really interesting. This technique takes an existing lung, strips away all the cells and blood vessels to leave behind a scaffold of connective tissues, and re-grows the missing cells in a vat.

Process
It’s the medical equivalent of stripping a house down to a frame of beams and struts and rebuilding the rest from scratch. The whole process only took a few days and when the reconstituted lung was transplanted into a rat, it worked.



This is important because the lungs are notoriously bad at regenerating and repairing themselves. If a person’s lungs are severely damaged, the only real solution is a lung transplant. But that’s easier said than done. The procedure is expensive, only 20% of patients at most are still alive ten years later, and the demand for donor lungs far exceeds their supply.



So this team of scientists would get a lung from a dead donor, or a primate, or even a swine, strip away all its outer skin, and re-grow it by using stem cell from the patient. THis could reduce the risk of rejection by the body.

Challenges
The problem with this technique is that there were signs of minor bleeding in the airway during the experiment and they predicted that the technique could be fully prepared in 20 to 25 years. This means good news for lung disease patients~!

Well this also gives more reason for smokers today to refuse to quit smoking, because help is at hand! =.=




Malcolm

Sonicator

I went to the lab today knowing absolutely nothing about the instruments etc, and I stumbled upon something very interesting, it's called the Ultrasonic Cleaning System, or commonly called Sonicator =)

It's the first time I see something like this so I came back searched some info about it~~



An ultrasonic cleaner is a cleaning device that uses ultrasound (usually from 150–400 kHz) and an appropriate cleaning solution to clean delicate items.

They are often employed for cleaning of jewellery, lenses and other optical parts.


In everyday use such devices may be found in use in most jewelry workshops, watchmakers establishments, or in electronic repair workshops (where it could be used for cleaning an electronic device that has been exposed to particles which hinder its operation).

Working Principle

In an ultrasonic cleaner, the object to be cleaned is placed in a chamber containing a suitable solution. In aqueous cleaners, the chemical added is a surfactant which breaks down the surface tension of the water base.

An ultrasound generating transducer built into the chamber, or lowered into the fluid, produces ultrasonic waves in the fluid by changing size in concert with an electrical signal oscillating at ultrasonic frequency. This creates compression waves in the liquid of the tank which ‘tear’ the liquid apart, leaving behind many millions of microscopic ‘voids’ or ‘partial vacuum bubbles’ (cavitation).

These bubbles collapse with enormous energy. However, they are so small that they do no more than clean and remove surface dirt and contaminants. The higher the frequency, the smaller the nodes between the cavitation points, which allows for cleaning of more intricate detail.


info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasonic_cleaning

Telecommunication

We use telephone almost everyday. It started from a humble beginning, from Mr. Alexander Graham Bell (some of us don't even know this dude invented the telephone) to our sophisticated Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Iphone today.


Alexander Graham Bell

Yet how many of us actually ask: How does a phone work?

We have to answer those in two parts: wire phone and wireless phone, which is the cell phone, and wire phone is also related to how out internet works, and again, how many of us ask the same question again? How does the internet work? We plug in our computer and got onto the network, what does it mean to someone who has never used the internet? Why do we need phone lines to connect the internet?? What is a modem? Why do we need modem??

Wired phones;


A telephone is wired to a network of lines, connecting all the neighboring phones. In larger area the network would be bigger, and it is all connected in a box on a pole



and for a bigger population it's in a metal booth or something, which often end up at someone's front yard.



The idea is simple, pick up the receiver and you'll hear a dial tone, dial your number and the network booth would instantly direct your call to the intended phone line, and when it is connected, your speech(sound wave) is converted into digital signal via a modulator. The signal will travel via the phone line to the other end, and be converted back to sound wave. For farther call, for example international call, the signal will be transmitted via satellites(there are hundreds of satellites in our orbit now) or via undersea fiber optic cables.



As for wireless phone, they need cell phone towers. Take maxis for example (go Maxis go!!!)



They have excellent coverage =P simply because they have set up more cell phone towers than their competitors. Each cell phone towers limit the amount of users, for example 3000 users per tower, and thus the larger the population of a certain area, more cell towers are needed. Your call can actually be passed from one cell phone tower to the next.



As you are walking or driving and you are leaving one area and entering another, your cell phone will automatically connect to the tower with the strongest signal. You won't even notice that this has happened and your call will continue as normal.. This is the transmission method, but the concept is still the same, converting sound wave to digital signal via a modulator, and then going to the tower, venture to the other phone, convert the signal back to sound wave via demodulator..



But beware that someone might end up talking in the same frequency as you are(they can hear what you say!!), intentionally or unintentionally.



Internet

The internet is using the same concept, but they dont speak, they transmit bits. Each computer transmit their "speech" in the form of bits that are converted to digital signals via a modulator, and travel through the telephone line to the other side and demodulated into bits again. Modulator and Demodulator is the device we call MODEM



Each modem has its transfer limit, for example a 56K modem transmit 56000 bits of data per second, or modulate-demodulating 56000 bits of data per second, and so the same concept works for broadband modem and narrowband modem. It all depends on the amount of transistors and diodes in the modem nowadays. As technology advances we get faster speed and broader band, and encourages people to download more porns and torrents =P


For this entry, I may not have the most correct answer to how those stuff work, because I'm just a general physics student and I read those in magazines and websites and do not actually attend classes like telecommunication engineers. So please bear with me should I make any mistake in my explanation. =)

info:
http://www.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone.htm
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-does-a-telephone-work.htm
http://www.theshulers.com/whitepapers/internet_whitepaper/index.html