Beam Me Up Science Fiction in the news,on tv,at the movies or in print. Whatever is of interest to you and to me is fair game. I also discuss cutting edge science that just might influence new sci-fi Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 0 5471

Articles from Beam Me Up

And a microbe shall lead them.... 2007-10-30 22:52:00 Past futurologist Timothy Leary is vindicated. As he predicted in 1977, genetic reproduction in a gravity free environment does indeed unlock or activate great swathes of the Terran genome, hitherto unexpressed.At least that's what the results of a study recently released by the National Academy of Sciences suggest.In "Space Flight alters Bacterial Gene Expression" the forty (yes 40) authors observed that:"Salmonella bacteria grown aboard the Space Shuttle on its STS 115 mission showed changes in the expression of 160 genes, with the RNA-binding protein Hfq in command....Global microarray and proteomic analyses revealed that 167 transcripts and 73 proteins changed expression with the conserved RNA-binding protein Hfq identified as a likely global regulator involved in the response to this environment."The researchers concluded that it was the absence of gravity that precipitated the novel gene expression.Similarly in Exo-Psychology Leary wrote that "[t]he significance of ...

Totalitarian tech update 2007-10-26 23:48:00 Cyber-utopian Cory Doctorow ponders: Is there a totalitarian urge embedded in our new technologies? Listen to his Leonardo Lecture at Simon Fraser University in Canada. This"Many of us dreamed that computers, and later the Internet, would lead to an unstoppable burst of freedom. " writes Alex Smith on Ecoshock "Now we see people pushing RFID tracking chips for all our kids, cameras on every street corner, and secret rooms in AT&T to record all our Net activities."/ ...

Waterspaceship Down? 2007-10-22 22:12:00 Researcher Sharon Doty, of the University of Washington, Seattle, has found a way to transplant rabbit genes into poplars, turning the trees into high speed toxics removers with potential applications for keeping one's spaceship tidy. Another researcher may be turning watercress into swords.Dotyt's research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , found that six-inch tall genetically modified poplar cuttings with a rabbit gene inserted into them removed up to 91% of the chemical trichloroethylene from the water used in their feed. The chemical was then broken down by the plants into a harmless salt, water and carbon dioxide--more than 100 times faster than by unaltered plants.Poplars naturally use an enzyme called cytochrome P450 to break down contaminants. But the rabbit gene gives the plants a real kick.The neo-poplars also broke down other common environmental pollutants including chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, and vinyl chloride."In view of their lar ...

Waterspaceship Down? 2007-10-22 12:36:00 Researcher Sharon Doty, of the University of Washington, Seattle, has found a way to transplant rabbit genes into poplars, turning the trees into high speed toxics removers with potential applications for keeping one's spaceship tidy. Another researcher may be turning watercress into swords.Dotyt's research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , found that six-inch tall genetically modified poplar cuttings with a rabbit gene inserted into them removed up to 91% of the chemical trichloroethylene from the water used in their feed. The chemical was then broken down by the plants into a harmless salt, water and carbon dioxide--more than 100 times faster than by unaltered plants.Poplars naturally use an enzyme called cytochrome P450 to break down contaminants. But the rabbit gene gives the plants a real kick.The neo-poplars also broke down other common environmental pollutants including chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, and vinyl chloride."In view of their lar ...

Thread-forming virus may become nano-silkworms. 2007-10-18 22:47:00 There may shortly come commercially available fabrics composed utterly of genetically engineered viruses tricked into organizing themselves into vast columns. With enormous applications for microelectronics, too. (Thanks Shaun Saunders for the heads up on this ).The viruses are gene-tweaked into binding with selecting inorganic, metallic and organic materials, and into queueing up into great aligned crystalline threads-- strong enough to weave into fabric and to use in nanoelectronics.In her paper "Ordering of Quantum Dots Using Genetically Engineered Viruses" Dr. Angela Belcher, professor of materials science and biological engineering at MIT, describes how she learned to spin viruses into fibers. She predicts thread batteries and other weavable electronic devices of all kinds coming on line in the future. "It's not really analogous to anything that's done now," she says in Tehnology Review . "It's about giving totally new kinds of functionalities to fi ...

Martian trinity could bring red planet alive. 2007-10-18 21:43:00 Three large Martian volcanoes -- the Tharsis Montes -- Arsis Mons, south of the Martian equator, Pavonis Mons on the equator, and Ascraeus Mons to the north -- may only be dormant, not extinct. And outgassing from them could stir the chilly vichyssoise of Mar's primordial soup into action! NASA Photo:A team of researchers led by Dr. Jacob Bleacher -- jointly of Arizona State University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md--have discovered that, unlike planet Earth's moving crust, where volcanoes erupt as the crust move over stationary plumes of magma, then flicker out as the crust moves on past that "hot spot", Mar's crust is stationary; the magma must come to the Mountain. The researchers posit horizontal flows of lave are moving beneath Mar's stationary crust."We finally have pictures with enough detail from the latest missions to Mars, including NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surve ...

Forecast: Sex and Marriage with Robots by 2050 2007-10-14 13:50:00 Shaun Saunders sent in this article by Charles Q. Choi, in Live Science: Humans could marry robots within the century. And consummate those vows. The idea of romance between humanity and our artistic and/or mechanical creations dates back to ancient times, with the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion falling in love with the ivory statue he made named Galatea, to which the goddess Venus eventually granted life. This notion persists in modern times. Not only has science fiction explored this idea, but 40 years ago, scientists noticed that students at times became unusually attracted to ELIZA, a computer program designed to ask questions and mimic a psychotherapist. "My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relatio ...

Are we missing a dimension of time? 2007-10-12 23:54:00 From the TelegraphA scientist has put forward the bizarre suggestion that there are two dimensions of time, not the one that we are all familiar with, and even proposed a way to test his heretical idea next year.Time is no longer a simple line from the past to the future, in a four dimensional world consisting of three dimensions of space and one of time. Instead, the physicist envisages the passage of history as curves embedded in a six dimensions, with four of space and two of time. If it is confirmed, it could point the way to a "theory of everything" that unites all the physical laws of the universe into one, notably general relativity that governs gravity and the large scale structure of the universe, and quantum theory that rules the subatomic world. click on the article title for the complete storythanks to Shaun A. Saunders for the post ...

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs. 2007-10-11 15:51:00 I have been hearing a lot about this from a great deal of people. Here is the Washington Post article online that Shaun Saunders found. We know the tech is there...saying that it is not, well is just hiding your head....what bothers me is that it's being deployed.... Has the pendelum swung that far back people? Is this the 21st century version of the sixties? Lots of unpopular wars, losts of protests, lots of government agencies spying, lots more interesting in causing fear and trouble..... Remember what Buffalo Springfield said.... "there's something happening here.... what it is ain't exactly clear..."Here is the article Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month. "I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects." Out in the crowd, B ...

Sun light caused mysterious blemishes on Iapetus 2007-10-10 12:19:00 From the NewScientist online magazineBlame the Sun for the mysterious dark blemishes on Saturn's moon Iapetus. New photos from the Cassini spacecraft reveal the splotches are mainly found on the sunward-facing slopes of craters and mountains, suggesting a runaway heating process is tainting portions of the moon. Cassini's imaging team members found that there are sharp-edged dark spots all over the surface, even on the moon's bright trailing hemisphere. Careful analysis revealed that these isolated spots are preferentially located on the sunward facing slopes of craters. That suggests that as the slopes get slightly warmer, ice there starts to evaporate. That exposes more dark stuff in the ice, which is then ready to retain even more solar heat.thanks to Shaun Saunders for the update ...

Jules Verne Dry Cargo Prepared In Turin 2007-10-09 14:14:00 180 kg of cargo which is to be carried into space on board Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle, is currently undergoing final preparation in Italy, from there it will be shipped to the launch site in French Guiana. The cargo items which will be on board the inaugural flight of the European-built Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) when it docks with the International Space Station (ISS) early next year include spare parts for the European Columbus laboratory and the ATV itself. One of the cargo items is an air-exchange duct which is needed for immediate instalment inside the ATV following first ingress into the European cargo spacecraft. ...

In NASA’s Sterile Areas, Plenty of Robust Bacteria 2007-10-09 11:29:00 From the New York Times By WARREN E. LEARY:Researchers have found a surprising diversity of hardy bacteria in a seemingly unlikely place — the so-called sterile clean rooms where NASA assembles its spacecraft and prepares them for launching. Samples of air and surfaces in the clean rooms at three National Aeronautics and Space Administration centers revealed surprising numbers and types of robust bacteria that appear to resist normal sterilization procedures, according to a newly published study. The findings are significant, the researchers report, because they can help reduce the chances of stowaway microbes contaminating planets and other bodies visited by the spacecraft and confounding efforts to discover new life elsewhere. Identifying and cataloging what microbes might survive sterilization is important in interpreting results of sampling missions to other planets, scientists said. If similar microbes turn up in alien samples, researchers could disregard the results as con ...

Quantum Computing Possibilites Enhanced With New Material 2007-10-08 17:46:00 Scientists at Florida State University's National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the university's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry have introduced a new material that could be to computers of the future what silicon is to the computers of today. The material could provide a technological breakthrough that leads to the development of new quantum computing technologies. Quantum computers would harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks on a scale far beyond those of current computers. Semiconductor technology is close to reaching its performance limit. Over the years, processors have shrunk to their current size, with the components of a computer chip more than 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair. At those very small scales, quantum effects -- behaviors in matter that occur at the atomic and subatomic levels -- can start playing a role. By exploiting those behaviors, scientists hope to take computing to the next le ...

Cassini Is On The Trail Of A Runaway Mystery 2007-10-08 17:37:00 From Sciencedaily.comNASA scientists are on the trail of Iapetus' mysterious dark side, which seems to be home to a bizarre "runaway" process that is transporting vaporized water ice from the dark areas to the white areas of the Saturnian moon. This "thermal segregation" model may explain many details of the moon's strange and dramatically two-toned appearance, which have been revealed exquisitely in images collected during a recent close flyby of Iapetus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Infrared observations from the flyby confirm that the dark material is warm enough (approximately minus 230 degrees Fahrenheit or 127 Kelvin) for very slow release of water vapor from water ice, and this process is probably a major factor in determining the distinct brightness boundaries. ...

Ultimate amateur lightsaber duel 2007-10-08 16:48:00 Wow, this is one of the most pro looking amateur light saber duels I have ever seen. It is an amazing tour of technical know how and movie special effect that even Lucas or Speilberg would and should envy. It is really that good! ...