In the past month, both Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi (a former Microsoft executive, space tourist and billionaire) donated sizeable chunks of money to the production of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). So, just what exactly is the LSST?

The LSST is an innovative telescope being constructed on a mountain in Northern Chile that will provide digital imagining of astronomical objects far, far away. Under development since 2000 (and intended for completion by 2014), the LSST is being funded and constructed by a public-private partnership that now incorporates over twenty organizations – including Google Inc., various research facilities and universities such as Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. The ground-based 8.4-meter telescope is designed be the world’s most powerful survey telescope, with a built-in 3200 Megapixel digital camera – the largest camera ever constructed.


Containing three large mirrors (which will be paid for with 30 million dollars provided by Mr. Gates and Mr. Simonyi) and three refractive lenses, the camera will have a 10 square degree field of view with very high image quality. The LSST will take a series of 15-second exposures of the night’s sky every three nights and, over the course of ten years, about 2,000 exposures will be acquired from every part of the sky – essentially creating a "movie" of the evolving universe. It will provide detailed pictures of everything from supernovae (exploding stars) to potential killer asteroids to the most distant objects in the solar system.

Pictures taken with the LSST also will allow researchers to produce three-dimensional maps of the mass distribution in the universe, which may help give scientists more insight into the strange phenomenon that has come to be known as "dark energy". Looking up into the night sky, the only things that can be seen are those that emit a glow – like stars, galaxies and planets. Dark energy is a force that cannot be seen but whose presence can be inferred by its gravitational effect. The belief among many scientists is that the dark matter in the sky is actually made up of burnt-out stars, and energy coming from that matter is responsible for the expansion of the universe. Through the LSST’s images, scientists hope to get a measurement of the amount of dark energy in the sky and perhaps learn more about the nature of this unknown force.

Upon completion, the LSST facility will be open to the public and the resulting data and images collected from the telescope will be made available to the community at large. A sophisticated data management system will provide easy access for everyone from school kids and space buffs to professionals and research scientists.

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Just when you thought you had a few more years to relax before you needed to begin racking your brain for ideas -- comes the first grade science project. Most of you are familiar with the dreaded school science projects. For first grade students? A first grade science project? Yes, you read that correctly and believe it or not it is in fact legal, but most importantly of all -- an excellent way of educating children in good habits at an early age.

The dreaded science project was not dreamt up by ogre-like teachers, nor were they created to ruin your life, the reasons are actually quite opposite, and you as a parent will thoroughly appreciate the assigning of a first grade science project because it will benefit you in the long run by teaching your child(ren) about responsibility, the importance of planning, and the necessity of organizing things. Some of the most important lessons are learned by doing an first grade science project. Instead of dreading first grade science projects, you can anticipate them as a means of teaching your child or children about taking responsibility, and learning to share their creativity and knowledge in an educational way.

Not only are the children learning at an early age from completing a first grade science project, but also learning early in life about dedication, finishing a job, and doing it to the best of their ability. A first grade science project is based on the idea of educating the children about topics and occurrences in their every day lives, by giving them the chance to be creative while examining the chosen topic, and learning new ideas by completing their first grade science project. They must first choose a topic to do their first grade science project on, and then begin gathering information about their first grade science project, and by organizing all the information as it is gathered is the way they infuse the knowledge in their brains, concerning the chosen topic.

After having collected enough information for their first grade science project, they are required to write a paper about their choice of topic for their first grade science project, and to come up with some form of visual educational support to either explain their topic, or to show the finished product of their first grade science project. When the time rolls around for the visual part of the project, most parents begin to panic, but at this age level, panic is not necessary. First grade science projects are not as difficult nor as detailed as those in the higher education levels, but must maintain an efficiency and educational quality about them.

A first grade science project is a way for your child(ren) to develop their creative skills, their educational skills, and their knowledge. Help them as best you are able, but refrain from completely taking over their first grade science project. Keep in mind, this is THEIR first grade science project and it is a necessary step for them to take in their growth toward mature young adults. Although it is only an first grade science project, they are in essence, preparing for life and it's challenges when they get older.

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Nearly a decade ago, Royal Philips Electronics fathered Philips Healthcare Services and appears determined that their subsidiary will soon become King of the medical equipment industry. Apparently, this move was in response to GE Medical Systems' announcement that it planned on becoming king itself of the ultrasound industry before the year 2000. Not to be outdone, Philips from the first year started an acquisition frenzy in order to expand its subsidiary's product portfolio well beyond its initial product line, which started in 1918 with medical x-ray tubes.

Concluding Philips Healthcare Services first year, Philips Electronics added digital ultrasound systems to PHS's portfolio by getting ATL Ultrasound of Washington. Only 2 years later, in late 2000, Philips grew into nuclear medicine by absorbing ADAC Laboratories of California.


In 2001 was a watershed year as Philips shifted into high gear by obtaining two more businesses and their product lines - Agilent and Marconi Medical. By procuring Agilent Technologies Healthcare Solutions Group of Massachusetts, Philips catapulted past GE Medical as the leader of the ultrasound sector. Philips took in Agilent's expertise in the areas of diagnostic cardiology, automated defibrillators, patient monitoring, and point of care diagnostic systems.

Marconi Medical Systems of Ohio, formerly Picker International, was already a big part in its own right among major global CT suppliers. With Marconi, Philips obtained cutting-edge multi-slice CT technology along with cardiology, oncology and PET/CT imaging applications. These 2 acquisitions in one year landed Philips in the top 3 for the entire medical equipment industry together with giants Siemens and GE Medical - there are those who say as number 2.

In 2005, the expansion kept going as Philips purchased Stentor, Inc. of California, provider best-in-class picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). This let Philips to help its clients successfully manage the many amounts of imaging data created by its medical scanners. Then, the following year, the expansion continued as Philips adopted Witt Biomedical Corporation, the largest independent supplier of Cath Lab monitoring and reporting systems.

In its pursuit to become King of the Medical Equipment industry, Philips Healthcare Services has acquired 6 businesses since its inception in 1998. Every single one of the 6 has extended Philips' offerings to include a total of ten medical imaging modalities, from CT to MRI to x-ray, together with defibrillation and cardiac monitoring equipment in addition to image and information management solutions.

So, has Philips arrived at the royal industry castle yet? Some believe so. As a matter of fact, prior to the last 2 acquisitions, Palo Alto's "growth consulting" business Frost & Sullivan seemed to think so. In 2004 Frost & Sullivan told everyone they were awarding Philips five, count them, 5 awards for "technology and services innovation and industry leadership". Philips was recognized for giving distinguished contributions to the cardiac resuscitation and medical imaging industries and for providing leadership in these market segments.

Was Frost & Sullivan simply searching for a spot at the royal court or were these genuine kudos? Probably the later. F&S conducted interviews with a myriad of market players along with their customers and suppliers, and reportedly did a great deal of research into the medical equipment technology field.

One of the many awards involved the regent-like titles of "Medical Imaging Company of the Year", "New Care Setting of the Year", and "Medical Imaging Technology of the Year". The other 2 were for Technology Leadership and Services Innovation Leadership.

The response of Jouko Karvinen, president of Philips Medical Systems, to the what he recieved sounded like the exact same of an industry coronation speech. He stated, "We proudly accept the Frost Sullivan Awards as an independent validation of Philips business and technology leadership. These five awards are further indicators that Philips continues to set the industry standard for developing innovative products that help treat patients and save lives."

Royal Philips. Long live our King!

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com/Article/The-Supreme-Ruler-of-Medical-Equipment--Royal-Philips/338314

Here's a site loaded with facts, figures, images, and science stories and experiments, all courtesy of the National Science Foundation. Check out the Science Learning Network in more articles

Are historical sciences somehow inferior to experimental ones? This attitude, sometimes referred to as "physics envy" (when adopted by non-physicists), is one of the most pernicious myths surrounding science and its practice. Everybody knows that physics is the queen of the sciences and that scientists in other disciplines are simply trying to catch up to the high standards set by Newton and his intellectual descendants. Right?

According to many practicing scientists (myself included), this is just a big load of dingo kidneys, and work done in the philosophy of science by Carol Cleland (e.g., Cleland 2002) has elegantly shown why. Cleland begins by acknowledging that there actually is a continuum between largely ahistorical disciplines--such as fundamental physics--and largely or exclusively historical ones--like paleontology or astronomy. This continuum passes through disciplines such as ecology and evolutionary biology, where one finds a mix of experimental and "detective" work, due to the fact that the objects of study (population of living organisms) do lend themselves to experimental manipulation but the results of such manipulations depend to a large degree on the past (often unknown) history of the objects themselves.

For Cleland, the fundamental distinction here is between sciences that attempt to predict the future and those that focus on "postdiction" of the past (for obviously, one cannot predict the past). A predictive science has to deal with what Cleland calls "the underdetermination of the future by the localized present," while a postdictive science is characterized by "the overdetermination of the past by the localized present." These are crucial concepts, which themselves rely on the asymmetrical arrow of time. Let us consider two illustrative examples from Cleland's paper.

Suppose we predict that a short circuit will cause a fire in a house. This may be a reasonable prediction, but it depends on a variety of other circumstances (co-occurring causes) in order to be true: not only does there have to be a short circuit, but the house has to have nonfunctional sprinklers, for example, or there has to be sufficient flammable material around, and so on. The prediction of the event, in other words, is underdetermined by the individual causes: one cause is not sufficient to guarantee the outcome. If this were a scientific hypothesis, we would have to be very specific about which other conditions ought to hold for the hypothesis to be verified (or rejected); just because the fire didn't occur, we are not authorized to reject the hypothesis that a short circuit causes a fire because the house also happened to have an efficient sprinkler system, without which the predicted outcome would, in fact, have happened. This is why, in physics and other experimental sciences, one has to specify the conditions of an experiment very carefully: without such precaution, too many other things might explain why the prediction was not accurate. The price for our ability to predict the future is that we can do so accurately only under very restrictive conditions; the more we relax such restrictions, the less we can falsify our hypotheses (because factors other than the focal one may have changed) and the less accurate the predictions become.

On the other hand, consider the other example discussed by Cleland: a baseball hitting a window. If you come home and see just a few pieces of glass scattered on the floor or the bill from a company that replaces windows or see a baseball on the floor that couldn't have gotten into the house in any other way because you had locked all entrances when you left, you would be able to infer the past event with a high degree of reliability. This is because the present situation overdetermines the past event; like Sherlock Holmes, you need surprisingly few clues to infer an amazing amount of detail, a situation that allows detectives, archaeologists, and astronomers to make a living.

The asymmetry of the two situations, then, lies in the fact that predictive sciences are attempting to go from causes to effects, while postdictive ones go from (some of) the effects to the likely causes. The irony of Cleland's analysis is that, because of the asymmetry in the determination of causes and effects, postdiction is actually much more powerful than prediction, in some sense turning on its head the classic view of historical sciences as "inferior." This is of course not a call to crown paleontology as the queen of the sciences, but rather a very healthy warning--based on a clever philosophical analysis--about the actual nature of scientific evidence.

Many sciences, as I mentioned at the beginning, in fact feature a complex mix of experimental and historical research, and as such, they may vary greatly in their effectiveness at prediction and postdiction of the phenomena of interest. What is still common to all science as a human activity aimed at understanding the natural world is that all scientific disciplines rely on some type of empirically based hypothesis testing. One may have to specify strict conditions for prediction, or abandon prediction entirely in favor of postdiction, but there have to be ways to test either the predictions or the postdictions by using empirically (i.e., either experimentally or observationally) obtained data. If one cannot do this, then one is not engaging in science--pace the proponents of so-called Intelligent Design theory and other such inanities.

Anthony Rizzi earned two degrees in physics, one from MIT and the other from Princeton University. Among his accomplishments is included the resolution of an 80-year-old problem in Einstein's theory; the first scientist to be appointed to Caltech's Laser Interferometer Gravity Wave Observatory (LIGO, LA), and founding The Institute for Advanced Physics where he also serves as the full-time director. In The Science Before Science: A Guide To Thinking In The 21st Century (which is also available in a hardcover edition (1418465038, $28.95), Rizzi maintains that there "good science" is that which expands the human mind; "bad science" is that which confuses the human mind. He also points out that "good religion" confirms our nature while "bad religion" confounds our nature. What is needed is a combination of good science and good religion if we are to achieve a true and expanding understanding of the universe we live in. Along the way, Rizzi addresses such unusual issues as the possibility of time travel; how a fuller science naturally leads to proofs for the existence of God; artificial intelligence, other forms of intelligence in the universe, and more. As much a treatise on the philosophy of science as it is a compilation of the nature of sound inquiry whether it be in the fields of physics or metaphysics, The Science Before Science is engaging, informed, and informative reading for all students of science, philosophy, and religion.

Just by you looking at kids science websites tells me something about you. You are interested in science, even if it is just to find one of those kids science websites to help with your science fair project. Or, maybe you are just crazy about science, like me.

Although there are tons of fantastic kids science websites, very few tell you what it really is like being a scientist. What is it like to work in a real laboratory? Yes I know that your teachers do a stunning job of demonstrating experiments and maybe you even have a chance to do some yourself, but have you ever asked a person who has a job in the laboratory what it is like doing what he does? Nope? Well pretend you are talking to him now. Let me tell you my experience as a scientist working in a lab.

I trained as a microbiologist, but also did some genetics, soil science and biochemistry. All of these fields are fascinating! Have you ever looked at yogurt under a microscope and realized that the "live culture" they talk about on the container is actually a culture of bacteria? When you have trained and worked as a scientist, you see the world slightly differently to the next guy.

So what are some of the scary things I have seen in a lab... hmmm... where to start?

Well the one time I was helping out in a laboratory practical class at the local university, when suddenly the room got a lot brighter and someone screamed hysterically. No, there wasn't anyone on fire, but there was a bench-top on fire with a microscope in the midst of flames. It was put out with the ever handy fire blanket, with the only damage being to the electrical cord of the microscope. The student concerned learned a valuable lesson that day - safety and careful working is essential in any laboratory.

I have worked with and seen many interesting samples. From the cow's ear that was submitted (don't worry the cow had died before the ear was taken as a sample) to bees (also dead) that were put in liquid nitrogen and then crunched and crushed up like peanut brittle to start the process of virus isolation.

Some of my own experiments while working in the laboratory that I did after I had finished the work I was assigned was to measure the pH of Coke. My goodness, did I get a shock - try it out sometime. The other thing I did was to pop a piece of Roquefort cheese under the microscope. Although I still drink coke, I have given up the cheese! But it was incredible to see. What you see under a microscope is another world.

The one time I was looking at chicken fecal samples (yup, I used to look at chicken poo) and counting worm eggs when all of a sudden into my field of view comes this creature that looks like it could have been from one of Hollywood's latest sci-fi movies. It turned out to be a feather mite. But I had nightmares for the rest of that week!

At times the pressure of working in a laboratory where you have to have results, because people are paying for them, can be quite hectic. On the other hand, if you are a true scientist, solving problems is all part of the fun.

Speaking of fun, one last story from my past. In one particular lab I worked in, because of the many instruments that generated heat, we suddenly had an influx of cockroaches. Although this problem was dealt with and sorted out within a day by the laboratory manager, a colleague and myself decided to save one roach. We popped him into a test tube with some cotton wool in the end so that he could not escape but still had air. He became our lab pet, "Fred the roach", for about a week. Although this is not good laboratory practice, who else can say they had a pet roach that lived in a test tube?

Once upon a time I used to teach high school science and so keeping up with current events in science was vital. The thing that upset me most when teaching those lessons were the students that refused to see the relevance of science, old and current, in their lives. I often stopped teaching the lesson to try and persuade them how relevant science, especially current events in science, actually was in everyday life. Think about it, let's just start with the human body... understand how it works and you will have a better understanding of how to look after numero uno.

Here are two of examples from my every day existence where science knowledge helped me out:

I enjoy fishing. A friend and myself were fishing on a farm dam using a two man inflatable boat and things were going well. We had a couple of nice size bass in the bag when my friend hooked into and landed a two kilogram Tilapia. He thing about the Tilapia species of fish that have very sharp spikes on their dorsal fins.

Now any reasonably intelligent person (especially one who is up to date with current events in science, as I was) would quickly figure out that a two kilogram fish with sharp spikes sticking out of it's back which is flapping around in the bottom of an inflatable boat is a recipe for disaster. We were too busy fishing to think logically...

So when the air in the floor panel of the boat started hissing out (because it was trying to establish an equilibrium - a whole new science topic), we snapped back to reality. With the boat folding in around us and the water coming very close to lapping over the rim the scientist in me yelled to my friend,

"Spread yourself wide..."

Yup, pushing the sides of the boat wide and increasing the surface area kept us afloat long enough for me to paddle to the shore.

So you are not into fishing from inflatable two man boats and therefore I have not convinced you yet of the relevance of keeping up with current events in science? OK, how about this one...

Picture yourself on a summer day doing an outdoor activity (apart from swimming), but oh my word, you are sweating buckets. This does not impress the blond daughter of your new neighbors! How are you going to ensure you look as fresh and "un-tired" as possible while still showing your physical abilities to this "o-so-nice" young lady?

Long, long ago, when I was still at school, I took part in what was fondly termed "cadets". This is where you are shown the ropes as to how to march in the army. It built discipline and taught you to listen to instructions and also made you very hot.

The heat I experienced during those sessions was not due to over exercise, I mean sometimes we just stood still for long periods of time, it was because of the dark brown uniform that we wore. I remember the master in charge jumping up and down in front of us for being so lethargic and sloppy in our marching when at his age he was still so full of energy. What I wanted to inform him about was that he always made sure he wore a white cotton shirt during those hours in the sun.

You see, I kept up with current events in science and therefore knew science - and he did not! White reflects the white light that carries with it energy that is converted into heat, brown absorbs a whole lot of white light. A lot of white light being absorbed means lots of energy being converted into heat, which means that by diffusion, heat energy reaches the body that is wearing the brown shirt - my body!

Picture this scenario:

You are sitting at home on the weekend bored out of your skull. Everyone else in the house seems to have something to do, except you. The obvious thing to do is to switch on the TV or the computer and let an impersonal screen entertain you while your brain wastes away!

Let me give you a healthy alternative. Simple science projects. Wait - before you run - science projects ain't necessarily hard work and boring!

I am a scientist by trade - and in my opinion, science rocks! Think of NASA - yup, full of scientists. Another example? - When the name Einstein is mentioned, no matter who you are there is a glimmer of awe that shoots through your now almost immobile brain (that is if you watch too much TV).

The Westernized world needs to wake up to the fact that, although computers and TV are fantastic tools for brain stimulation if used correctly, abuse of them has the opposite effect. What I am talking about here is a healthy balance.

"That is great", you say, "I see your point - but where do I start?"

Good question - let's face it, as much as many of us would like to, we cannot all go and grace the halls of NASA with our extreme scientific knowledge, and certainly most of us would not be able to apply our minds as Mr. Einstein did - but we can all still do science. This is because science is all around us. In fact science IS us (think about it)!

So let me give you a starting point - switch off the TV - go outside and start observing. This is where all the great scientific discoveries started.
To help you even further, here is a list of "problems" you can try and figure out using stuff around the house:

* How would you make a simple burglar alarm using some electrical flexi-wire, a battery and it's holder, a buzzer, a clothes peg and 2 thumb-tacks?
* How would you get drinking water out of leaves of plants using a box, a cup, a piece of plastic sheeting, some duct-tape and a rock?
* How would you make a simple compass using 2 sewing needles, some cardboard and a magnet?

Have I wet your scientific curiosity? I hope so.

A chemical reaction is a process that always results in the conversion of reactants into product or products. The substance or substances initially involved in a chemical reaction are called reactants. A type of a chemical reaction is usually characterized by the type of chemical change, and it yields one or more products which are, in general, different from the reactants.

Generally speaking, chemical reactions encompass changes that strictly involve the motion of electrons in the forming and breaking of chemical bonds. Chemical equations are often used to describe the chemical transformations of elementary particles that occur during the reaction.

Chemical changes are a result of chemical reactions. All chemical reactions involve a change in substances and a change in energy. However, neither matter nor energy is created or destroyed in a chemical reaction. There are so many chemical reactions that it is helpful to classify them into different types including the widely used terms for describing common reactions.

Combination reaction or synthesis reaction: it is a reaction in which 2 or more chemical elements or compounds unite to form a more complex product.

Example: N2 + 3 H2 ' 2 NH3

Isomerisation reaction: is a reaction in which a chemical compound undergoes a structural rearrangement without any change in its net atomic composition.

Example: trans-2-butene and cis-2-butene are isomers.

Chemical decomposition reaction or analysis: is a reaction in which a compound is decomposed into smaller compounds or elements:

Example: 2 H2O ' 2 H2 + O2

Single displacement or substitution: this type of reaction is characterized by an element being displaced out of a compound by a more reactive element.

Example: 2 Na(s) + 2 HCl(aq) ' 2 NaCl(aq) + H2(g)

Metathesis or Double displacement reaction: represents a reaction in which two compounds exchange ions or bonds to form different compounds

Examples: NaCl(aq) + AgNO3(aq) ' NaNO3(aq) + AgCl(s)

Acid-base reactions: broadly these reactions are characterized as reactions between an acid and a base, can have different definitions depending on the acid-base concept employed. Some of the most common are:

Arrhenius definition: Acids dissociate in water releasing H3O+ ions; bases dissociate in water releasing OH- ions.

Brønsted-Lowry definition: Acids are proton (H+) donors; bases are proton acceptors.

Lewis definition: Acids are electron-pair acceptors; bases are electron-pair donors.
Example: HCl(aq) + NaOH(aq) ' NaCl(aq) + H2O(l)

Redox reactions: are reactions in which changes in oxidation numbers of atoms in involved species occur. Those reactions can often be interpreted as transfer of electrons between different molecular sites or species.

Example: 2 S2O32(aq) + I2(aq) ' S4O62(aq) + 2 I(aq)
In this case, I2 is reduced to I- and S2O32- (thiosulfate anion) is oxidized to S4O62-.

Combustion reaction: it is a kind of redox reaction in which any combustible substance combines with an oxidizing element, usually oxygen, to generate heat and form oxidized products.

Example: C3H8 + 5 O2 ' 3 CO2 + 4 H2O

Other types of chemical reactions include organic reactions which are found in organic chemistry.
Organic reactions compose a wide variety of reactions involving compounds which have carbon as the main element in their molecular structure. In opposition to inorganic reactions, organic chemistry reactions are classified in large part by the types of the functional groups that exist within each compound. In this case the reactions are described by showing the mechanisms through which the changes take place.

Organic reactions are chemical reactions involving organic compounds. The basic organic chemistry reaction types are listed bellow:

- Addition reactions
- Elimination reactions
- Substitution reactions
- Redox reactions
- Rearrangement reactions

- Pericyclic reactions

The general form of the SN2 mechanism for example is as follows:

Where nuc: = nucleophile
X = leaving group (usually halide or tosylate, mesylate)

Example of hydroxide ion that acts as the nucleophile and bromine is the leaving group

This results in the inversion of the configuration because of the backside attack of the nucleophile.

The solvent type, the electrophile and the leaving group, all play an important role in this type of reaction:

Solvents: protic solvents such as water and alcohols stabilize the nucleophile so much that it will not react with substrate. Therefore, the use of a good polar aprotic solvent such as ethers and ketones and halogenated hydrocarbons is required.

Nucleophiles: A good nucleophile is required since it is involved in the rate determining step. A weak nucleophile will not efficiently attack the substrate.

Leaving groups: A good leaving group is required, such as a halide or a tosylate, since it is involved in the rate determining step (better leaving group for halogens: I>Br>Cl>F)
In organic synthesis, organic reactions are used in the construction of new organic molecules. The production of many man-made chemicals such as drugs, plastics, food additives, fabrics depend on organic reactions.

Among these, the oldest organic reactions are combustion of organic fuels and saponification of fats to make soap. Modern and advance organic chemistry starts with synthesis of terpenes, carbohydrates, proteins, steroids and polymerization reactions in the eighteen century. In the history of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awards have been given for the invention of specific organic reactions such as the Grignard reaction in 1912, the Diels-Alder reaction in 1950, the Wittig reaction in 1979 and olefin metathesis in 2005.

For centuries sailors knew how to use magnets in the form of compasses to show them where they were going. Compasses are fascinating instruments. In fact, when thinking about it, the concept of a magnetic field on the surface of the earth, which is what allows compasses to function, is in itself a fascinating phenomenon.

Although fascinating, a compass is very simple in the way that it works. A magnet, suspended and light enough to be influenced by the magnetic field in which it finds itself, will automatically line up with the north-south line of that magnetic field. If the only magnetic field in the magnet's sphere happens to be that of the earth's, you have a simple compass.

So if compasses are simple enough in design, how about making your own? Well, it just so happens that outlined below is a method to make a workable compass, using mostly materials found around the home...

What you going to need...

* 2 fairly large sewing needles (please be careful with them, these little things have been known to be quite sharp!).
* A piece of cardboard (at least 10cm x 10cm).
* A cork.
* Scissors, pencil, ruler, marker or pen, wood glue and a compass - not like the one you are making but the thing you use to draw circles - or something round, about 10cm in diameter.
* Something solid to balance the compass on, like a piece of off-cut wood.
* A bar magnet.

How to make the compass...

* Using the necessary stationary, cut out a circle from the cardboard, about 10cm across.
* Now cut a circle out the center of the circle of cardboard about 1 to 1,5cm across. The easiest way to do this is to fold the circle in half, find the midpoint using a ruler, draw a half circle around the midpoint, and then cut it out before unfolding it again.
* Use the pen and ruler to divide it into 4 quarters. At each end of the lines write the 4 main points of a compass, N, E, S, W (in a clockwise direction). This is your compass face.
* Cut a strip of cardboard about 7cm long and 1cm wide, and fold it in half.
* Stick a cork onto a solid foundation with wood glue.
* Push the one needle into the cork so that it is sticking up. Wrap some cellotape around it - this is to insulate it so that the magnetized needle doesn't stick to it.
* Magnetize the other needle by rubbing the bar magnet down the needle about 40-50 times. Always start at the same end and lift the magnet away from the needle to take it back and rub it again, always in the same direction.
* Push the magnetized needle through the folded, straight piece of cardboard at the "loose" ends so that you can open up the loose ends with the needle holding them open.
* Place the "compass face" onto the joined end of the straight cardboard, with the needle along the N-S line.
* Balance the compass on the needle sticking into the cork at the folded end of the straight piece of cardboard.

Once the compass has been set up, as long as the compass face is placed in the right direction and the needle remains magnetized, the compass will always swing to show the correct direction.

Fun science projects are those that teach you something about science and at the same time allow you to make something useful and fun. This is one of those projects!

The job of a burglar alarm is basically to tell you when someone who shouldn't be in your house has come in - not so. And where will these nasties come in? Through a door or window - right? So if we can make something that will tell us when a door or window has been opened that should not have been opened, we would know when someone, who shouldn't be coming in, is in fact coming in - right?

So how are you going to pull this off without some specialized equipment.

Easy...

You are going to use simple circuit that when closed with a switch will set off an alarm. The switch is going to be a clothes peg!

First up - what you are going to need:

* Approximately a meter of flexi-wire
* A 9V battery (the correct scientific term is a cell)
* A 9V battery (cell) holder
* A wooden clothes peg
* 2 thumb tacks
* A sharp knife
* Electrical insulation tape
* An small electric buzzer

And here is how it is done -

* Strip about 1cm of the plastic insulation off the one end of both wires of the flexi-wire using the sharp knife.
* Attach both wires of the one end of the flexi-wire to the battery holder by joining the wires together and then wrapping insulation tape around the joins.
* To the other end attach the buzzer in much the same way as you did the battery holder. To check if all is good up till now, if you attach the battery the buzzer should sound.
* About half way down the wire cut one of the wires in half, leaving the other one in tact. Strip the ends so that about a centimeter of wire is exposed.
* Press the thumb tacks onto the inside of the opening end of the clothes peg. Before you push them all the way in, place the end of the wire you have just stripped under each of the thumb tacks and push them in hard so that the wire is held there.
* Attach the battery. If everything is attached correctly, with the clothes peg closed, the buzzer should buzz. If it does not, you need to check your connections on the battery, buzzer and peg.
* Once everything is working, open the clothes peg and jam it into the gap of a door and it's frame or in a slightly open window.
* Alternatively, put a piece of cardboard or paper between the thumb-tacks that has a string attached. The other end of this string can be attached to anything that is going to move, with the idea that if that object is moved the cardboard is pulled from between the thumb-tacks.
* Once the thumb-tacks touch - if all is in working order, the buzzer will alarm you to something out of the ordinary.

There have been many depictions of the human energy field and subtle bodies in the metaphysical and religious literature. The interesting observation in these depictions is the many signature features that can be associated with plasma. This suggests that the human energy field and the subtle body can be modeled as a bioplasma body. A brief excursion of the images in the literature and their similarity with structures often seen in plasma will be carried out below.

1. Magnetosphere

It is well-known in general metaphysics that the (relatively) dense bioplasma body sits inside an ovoid which is enclosed by a sheath. This ovoid is similar to the magnetosphere around the Earth as it protects the dense bioplasma body (inside the ovoid) from unwanted radiation, just as the Earth's magnetosphere protects the physical-dense Earth from harmful solar radiation. The ovoid usually contains a dense body (relative to the rest of the ovoid) along the longer axis of the ovoid with low density (weakly ionized) magnetic plasma filling the rest of the ovoid. The field lines of the primary dipolar magnetic field generated by the central vertical currents (see #10 below) within the bioplasma body is largely embedded within the ovoid.

2. Concentric Shells

Plasma crystals, generated in the laboratory, are in the form of collections of particles which are held in a crystal-like array by a plasma of weakly ionized gas. When the assembly of microscopic particles was contained between two electrodes and illuminated by a laser beam, it could be seen, even with the naked eye, that the particles naturally arranged themselves regularly into as many as 18 planes parallel to the electrodes. In a subsequent experiment, the particles in the plasma crystal arranged themselves into neat concentric shells, to a total ball diameter of several millimeters. These orderly Coulomb balls, consisting of aligned, concentric shells of dust particles, survived for long periods. This onion-like layered structure, comprising of concentric shells, is also often seen in depictions of the human energy field or subtle bodies in the metaphysical literature.

3. Double Helix (Birkeland) Currents

The helical shape of the magnetic field around the gas cloud in the constellation Orion is believed to be caused by matter in the interstellar cloud moving in a straight line along the length of the filament. When this happens, it causes the magnetic field around the cloud to spiral around in a corkscrew pattern. Researchers were able to detect this spiral shape using the Green Bank Telescope, a radio observatory in Virginia. When helical magnetic fields form in plasma, charged particles move along the field lines generating helical currents.

Kundalini is a Sanskrit term is derived from the term kundala, which means a "ring" or "coil". Kundalini currents have often been depicted in the metaphysical literature as a serpent coiled around the back part of the root chakra in three and a half turns (comparable to a solenoid or a compressed helical current) around the sacrum. The energy is supposed to originate from an apparent reservoir of subtle bio-energy at the base of the spine. The central vertical currents in the subtle body (described as Ida, Pingala and Sushumna in the yoga literature) are often depicted in the metaphysical (particularly the yoga) literature as a pair of mutually entangled helical currents with straight currents passing through them.

Mutually entangled (double spirals) currents are frequently seen in space and laboratory plasmas. Helical structures can also be found in dusty (or complex) plasma. This shows that there is a strong connection between plasma dynamics and the formation of the central kundalini and pranic currents in the (supersymmetric) bioplasma body as described by plasma metaphysics.

4. Hot Spots or Plasmoids

Plasmas can take up a variety of shapes and have "hot spots" which are visible. It has been observed that these hot spots in plasma emanate along axes. Secondly, these hotspots have different colors and temperatures than the rest of the mass. These observations agree with the bright blobs of light of different colors often found depicted in subtle body and human energy field literature along the spinal axis of the human body.

The hot spots are believed to be sources of intense X-ray emission as well as pulsed electron and ion beams. Hot spots require intense heating rates more commonly associated with focused laser beams. Pulsed beams have also been depicted in the metaphysical literature (see #6 below). Presumably these are generated by the hot spots, exit out of the vortexes (see #9 below), and undergo "lensing effects" while being ejected from the ovoid and being refracted by the clear material in the ovoid which could produce convergent and collimated beams.

5. Coronas, Spicules and Granulations

Coronal auras and discharges, granulation and spicules are all features associated with the Sun and our subtle energy bodies - the latter, as seen by clairvoyants. Coronal discharges and flares can occur suddenly on the Sun. The various particles that are discharged, together with these flares, are carried by the Sun's plasma wind to cause magnetic storms on Earth. Spicules are short-lived phenomena, corresponding to rising jets of gas that move upward and last only a few minutes on the Sun. Spicules can also be seen in the coronas of bioplasma bodies. In addition, striations (which can also be associated with plasma and are seen on gas giants like Jupiter) are also seen. Coronas and spicules can also be seen in Kirlian representations of the aura. (In laboratory tests, it has been found that Kirlian representations of the aura correlate with the colors and shapes that human "seers" see.)

6. Beams and Jets

Using sophisticated scientific equipment, scientists at Jiao Tong University in Shanghai have shown that "subtle energy" has the properties of an electromagnetic current when flowing through acupuncture meridians but takes on the properties of coherent particle streams, similar to laser light, when projected out from the body through the hands of master Qigong healers who cure diseases by beaming their energy into the patient's body.

There are important vortexes on the palms of the hands (of the subtle body within the ovoid). Jets or directed beams of light have been seen in photographs taken during events where subtle energetic practices take place (for example: Reiki, Qigong and Christian "Praise and Worship"). There are also Hindu, Taoist, Buddhist and Christian images showing jets of light issuing-out from the palms of saints or deities. One of the seers of the Fatima apparitions of "Mary" in 1919, "Lucia", revealed that during one of the apparitions, "Mary" opened her hands and "rays of light" issued from them.

7. Filamentary Currents

Plasma naturally forms filaments in response to electric fields within the subtle body (which according to plasma metaphysics is composed of a complex plasma of negatively-charged, positively-charged and neutral particles). Charged particles are guided within these filaments by magnetic fields and accelerated by electric fields - generating currents. It is a well accepted fact in metaphysics that there are filaments within our subtle body, which have been referred to as "meridians", "nadis" and "channels" - in the Chinese, Indian and Tibetan literature, respectively. In Taoist and Qigong literature, they are also referred to as "circuits" and "orbits". For example, Qigong practitioners may speak of microcosmic and macrocosmic orbits. The microcosmic orbit is really the main meridian through which particles are accelerated in the relevant practices to bring energy to the rest of the subtle body. According to plasma metaphysics, these meridians are "Birkeland currents", i.e. currents in which charged particles flow through and are guided by magnetic field lines.

8. Plasma Focus Device

The plasma focus device produces, by electromagnetic acceleration and compression, a short-lived magnetically-confined, hot spot or plasmoid that is so hot and dense that it becomes a multi-radiation source. These plasmoids emit intense beams of accelerated ions and electrons (see #4 above). The plasma focus device is similar to the plasma gun which is a magnetically driven shock tube that ejects plasma in the form of a plasmoid, without pinching it.

The similarities in the image when we look down at the barrel of a dense plasma focus device and the image of the throat chakra as depicted by Leadbeater are obvious. Plasma focus devices are therefore already embedded in bioplasma bodies, with the vortexes in the bioplasma body acting as delivery systems of intense collimated beams of energetic particles that are seen in many religious depictions of deities (see 6 above).

9. Plasma Vortex

Charged particles in an ionized environment have a tendency to follow magnetic field lines. If the path of the particle is at an angle, i.e. neither parallel nor perpendicular to the magnetic field lines, the particle will spiral around the magnetic field lines using a helical path. When the particles plunge they collide with other particles in the ovoid, generating a light phenomenon similar to the auroras in the atmosphere at Earth's magnetic poles. This process will generate a helical path that will have a cone shape when viewed from the side, with the apex of the cone meeting the surface of the bioplasma body. Dynamically, this can be described as a vortex. Since there are many particles streaming down into the bioplasma body, taking slightly different trajectories, smaller vortexes can also appear within a larger vortex.

Experimental metaphysicist Barbara Brennan has observed, as many other metaphysicists, vortexes within the human energy field or bioplasma body. Within each vortex, residing on the surface of the relatively dense body within the ovoid, there are also small rotating vortexes spinning at very high rates.

10. Fields

It has been observed and recorded in the metaphysical and religious literature that within the bioplasma body are both helical and straight currents (see #3 above) aligned with the longer axis of the bioplasma body. These are the "central currents". In addition, there also numerous filamentary currents interpenetrating the bioplasma body (see #7 above).

A complex network of currents enveloping the bioplasma body has been observed by Barbara Brennan who notes, "The main vertical power current induces other currents at right angles to it to form golden streamers that extend directly from the body. These in turn induce other currents that circle around the field, so that the entire auric field and all the levels below it are surrounded and held within a basket-like network." Moving charges generate magnetic fields which have been depicted often in the metaphysical literature. There are localized fields embedded within global fields.

Since ancient times, many people have theorized why things fell toward the Earth. The ancient Greeks, Newton and Einstein have all dramatically expanded our understanding. Even today, it is still a subject of debate as new experiments may shed light on a topic that is as old as the universe itself. Gravity is usually described as an attractive force. But, that force is actually a by-product of the power in a curved line.

Ancient geometers were aware of curved line effects but, the significance of this concept wasn't attached to gravity until the time of Einstein. The writings of Aristotle stated that all things fell to Earth because everything was made of earthly substances and they were attracted to their natural home. Galileo substantiated this claim by stating that the center point of a pendulum's swing always pointed toward the Earth, which provided its source of attraction.

Newton also subscribed to this view of attraction, but he expanded it in significant ways. He is credited with giving the affects of gravity a mathematical foundation and directly associating gravity with the mass of an object. For example, an apple has mass. So does the Earth. Since the planet is bigger than the apple, it has more mass and thus, more attraction or gravity. So, an apple falls toward the ground because the Earth's attractive force is the larger. He applied this idea on a cosmological scale to account for why the planets in our solar system orbited the sun and why moons orbited planets. Because of Newton's combined knowledge in ancient geometry, alchemy and the use of Calculus to determine acceleration along a curved line, it is amazing that he did not relate this concept to gravity. But, eventually, someone did.

Einstein's first paper was found to be a special case over a limited range of circumstances, hence its common name of Special Relativity. It did not take into account the affects of gravity. He then developed a more general theory which did. It took him a decade to complete and it revolutionized the model we use to understand what gravity is and how it works.

Einstein stated that mass was not necessarily attractive, it simply bent or curved the space around it and that curve provided the means to move one body toward another. In Special Relativity he showed that spacetime is actually a fabric. In General Relativity he showed how it is bent or deformed by mass.

An easy way to imagine this process is to picture a bowling ball, which represents a planet, at the center of a trampoline, which represents the fabric of spacetime. Since the ball has mass, or weight, it curves the surface of the trampoline a great deal near the center and only a little at the edge. If we set a golf ball near the edge, it has very little mass, so it doesn't bend the surface very much. If we give the golf ball a little push around the edge, it will circle in a spiral that draws ever closer to the bowling ball.

Here's the key point Einstein made. The golf ball is merely following a path determined by the curve of the trampoline. The bowling ball is not actively exerting an attractive force. As the golf ball nears the center, the curve is greater hence, the force is greater and it "falls" even faster toward the bowling ball. Einstein showed that the acceleration that one massive object "feels" when it approaches another is what constitutes gravity. In other words, acceleration and gravity are the same phenomenon. Gravity then, is an effect or by-product of the bending of space.

It is unfortunate that most dictionaries and text books still describe gravity as an attractive force, which is often misunderstood to be akin to other types of attractive forces such as magnetism. This concept is misleading in that it attributes the force to the massive body, not to the curve.

There are several reasons to update this notion of attraction. You are not kept on the face of the Earth because it is pulling you down. You stay in place because space is pushing down on you. The moon has less mass than the Earth therefore it curves the space around it less. So, you weigh less on the moon simply because space is pushing on you less there. Einstein's model also shows how everything in the universe is connected to, and affected by, everything else in the universe.

There is no way to over-emphasize the importance of understanding the nature of gravity to our future knowledge of how the universe came to be, what it is, and how everything in it works.

Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four known forces. This disparity is the monkey wrench that
keeps physicists from being able to generate a Grand Unified Theory. It is hoped that experiments at the new Large Hadron Collider will help identify why the forces aren't equal and whether gravity could be leaking out of our universe into others, as suggested by Lisa Randall, Professor of theoretical physics at Harvard University.

A new study presented in San Fransisco in the United States of America by Froilan Granero-Molto has revealed that adult stem cells can help improve healing of broken bones and could eventually serve as a new treatment for the ten to twenty percent of fractures that are unsuccessful in healing.

The lack of fracture fix often leads to several surgeries, long periods of immobilization, pain, bone deformities, and sometimes worse with death. The exact reason why a patient's fracture does not often heal remains unknown in most cases but it seems that adult stem cells could help a lot there.

Researchers actually believe that a key reason for bone union failure may be a deficiency in adult stem cells, which normally become reparative cells in response to damage done. Stem cells in human bone marrow can become a lot of things like bone, cartilage, muscle, and more.

These adult stem cells, which can be obtained from a patient's bone marrow in a minimally insidious process, have been reported to improve fracture healing in a few patients, Spagnoli said. However, animal studies are needed before clinical trials can begin on human beings.

Therefore, Spagnoli and her coworkers performed a study in mice with leg fractures. They simply took adult stem cells from the bone marrow of mice and engineered the cells to express a potent bone regenerator, insulin-like growth factor one. Then they transplanted the treated cells into mice with a fracture of the tibia bone in the leg. Using computed tomography scanning, they showed that the treated mice had better fracture healing than did the untreated one. They established that the stem cells had migrated to the fracture site in the mice and increased the bone and cartilage that bridged the bone gap to make it heal better.

This study provided critical data needed to implement a novel curative approach in patients with fracture healing problems.

If scientists can duplicate the results of this animal study in humans, it may lead to a way to help a lot of people around the world who suffer from fractures that do not heal properly.

The use of adult stem cells would have several advantages over embryonic stem cells. First of all they simply do not have the ethical controversy that surrounds embryonic stem cells taken by cord blood banks from umbilical cord blood, and they may avoid the immune rejection response, since the patient's own cells can be used to treat them directly.

Great things are happening in imaging science right now. Using a really spectacular method and doing some very painstaking and pioneering work, it became possible to watch cells at work in the living brain. The results of this effort are just beginning to flow in. Two fresh examples are top articles in the well-known scientific journals Science and Neuron, respectively.

The first one of these studies, done at MIT, shows that, contrary to prevailing belief, astrocytes influence complex neuronal computations such as the duration and selectivity of brain cell responses to stimuli from the outside world. Thereby, they are playing an important role in determining how the "outside world" is perceived.

The second one of these studies, done by Harvard University neuroscientists, points into the same direction, namely the astrocytes, so far considered "passive filling substance" in the brain; in fact have a major influence on brain activity regulation.

What really is spectacular about both of the studies is the insight they provide into very widely used medical brain imaging: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). What the studies convincingly are showing is, that the astrocytes make for the actual signal that is measured with fMRI, namely the bloof flow changes in the brain, for instance during active perception. So there is no meaningful fMRI imaging without functioning astrocytes.

Importantly, these remarkable results are laying the groundwork for further important study of how this exquisite neurovascular coupling mediated by astrocytes may go awry in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, as well as in the normally aging brain.

Zero is not just a word or a numeral but a symbol of the pride of the Indian nation and the fact that the eastern culture's research and development in the field of science and mathematics is the very foundation on which the medieval world's discoveries were made and yet more future ones still remain to be made through forgotten zeroes of the east.

In this ever changing dynamic world no one really cares about this sweet little zero, but imagine if this is taken out of our lives then all the scientific developments will come to a chaotic end and your four to eight figure salary will be a single digit trauma. NASA will have to cancel their trips to mars and the moon, Hubble will just fall to the earth. Furthermore, our modern mathematics will be shaken and will find new abrupt faces to explain its complex theorems. In short, the entire world will be a bear's garden in the absence of this single numeral called 'Zero' and written as '0' and sometimes pronounced as just O.

Zero was not the brainchild of Greek, Arabic or the Western world but the product of an Indian mathematician called Brahmagupta in 598 AD. Brahmagupta was born in Gujarat in the city of Bhinmal which is currently situated in the North West Rajasthan. Brahmagupta was the head of the department of mathematics and Astronomy at the university set up by another great Vedic Indian mathematician Aryabhatta at the city of Ujjain which was at that time a great center for learning Science literature Sanskrit and the art of prediction called astronomy.

Iron iron cyanide complexes, namely Prussian Blue and/or Turnbull's Blue are very insoluble compounds that form when soluble iron cyanide complexes contact dissolved iron in aqueous solution. These insoluble iron cyanide compounds become part of the biosolids during water treatment, or part of the sediment in stream deposits. The EPA has ruled that these compounds, though not toxic, be measured as "total cyanide" because it is possible that they can release toxic hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to sunlight. The problem with the EPA ruling is that the EPA does not define analytical methods capable of quantitatively recovering these very insoluble cyanide species.

The EPA's decision that prussian blue should be considered toxic cyanide was in part because some measureable cyanide was generated when prussian blue was analyzed by distillation/colorimetric methods. Acid distillation, however, when followed word - for - word according to most accepted methods does not quantitatively recover cyanide from iron iron cyanide complexes. The Method Update Rule published in the March 12, 2007 Federal Register requires adjusting the pH of an aqueous sample thought to contain insoluble cyanide complexes to 12 - 13 and warming at room temperature for a minimum of 4 hours prior to removal of an aliquot for distillation. The problem with this is, although we have been doing this for years, that pH adjustment to 12 often causes significant loss of the more soluble cyanide species, and these are the ones that are actually toxic.

Since iron iron cyanide complexes are insoluble, it is best to filter samples in the field at the time of collection reserving the filter for subsequent extraction, and the filtrate for analysis of soluble cyanide. I would recommend that the filtrate not be treated with NaOH and only for residual chlorine, sufide (if more than 50ppm) and aldehydes. Treatment with NaOH could result in significant available cyanide loss.

The filter paper should be extracted with strong base solution and the extract recombined with the original sample, or analyzed separately. More information is obtained when analyzed separately because more information on cyanide speciation results. If it can be demonstrated that there is no significant cyanide present in the solids from a particular sampling site, then future extraction and analysis of the filtered solids can be omited.

There are other advantages to extracting solid samples besides the obvious that insoluble cyanides are more soluble in base than in strong acid solution. The extraction in base significantly reduces interferences in the subsequent analysis because many of the interfering species with cyanide distillations are insoluble in base reagent: the filtration first separates CN from dissolved interferences, then separates them from insoluble ones. These interferences include metallic sulfides, native sulfur, and sulfur (IV) oxides. All of these sulfur compounds are extremely likely in sediment samples, and biosolids and all of them are significant interferences with distillation.

There is a sharp divide amongst people who believe that life was created by god and others who say that life evolved accidentally when the situation was just right. The main issue is that those who believe that god created life have no patience to listen to scientists and scientists do not want to listen to the idea that God created all this. What do proteins tell us about life and how it might have been created?

What are proteins?

Proteins are constructed from one or more unbranched chains of amino acids Proteins are polymers. Proteins are made when amino acids combine in a given order in chain form. No two proteins have the same sequence of amino acids Every protein has a different number and arrangement of amino acids A typical protein contains 200-300 amino acids Some are large, the largest being known as titin that contains 26,926 amino acids in a single chain. Some proteins are smaller.

Human body is supposed to have about one million proteins. When we discuss about life being created accidentally and evolving do we say that all these proteins were made accidentally? Can you calculate how many possibilities are there for a protein of 100 amino acids to form? It is a very huge number. Every amino acid has to join the earlier in the given sequence. A single acid missing or more will stop the formation. Now take your calculator and ask a scientist about what are the chances that amino acids will form a chain and make titin, he/she will stop calculation half way because the answer may be so near to zero that it may be called as zero.

Those who believe that God created the living beings need to pick up any protein and ask a non-believer about how it was formed.

Its price tag was 500 million dollars in 1990. It certainly was a lot of money to pay for a telescope that circled the Earth and could not focus. A faulty mirror on the Hubble was the reason the expensive space telescope could not see. The Hubble would quickly become an object of ridicule and the subject of numerous jokes on late night television.

In 1993, astronauts repaired that faulty mirror on the Hubble. Fifteen years later, it is very safe to say that nobody is laughing now. In fact, even though the cost of the telescope has eclipsed 5 billion dollars, it has become a very inexpensive investment in astronomy and our understanding of outer space through time.

For more than a decade, the Hubble telescope has captured many of the most spectacular images of outer space. In addition, it has enabled direct observation of the Universe as it was billions of years ago, discovered black holes at the center of galaxies, provided measurements that helped establish the size and age of the Universe, and offered evidence that the expansion of the Universe is actually accelerating.

However, even though the final planned servicing mission for the telescope is scheduled for October of this year, the Hubble's best pictures of the Universe may be yet to come. The Hubble is about to receive a powerful upgrade in capability during an eleven day shuttle mission that will feature five space walks. The space walks will be necessary for astronauts to install new scientific instruments to enhance the telescope. NASA intends for the Hubble Telescope to get a wider, more distant, and sharper view of objects.

During the mission, the Hubble will receive a new set of the gyroscopes that will stabilize the telescope, and batteries and thermal blankets to extend Hubble's operational life until at least the year 2013. In addition, a degrading Fine Guidance Sensor unit, one of three aboard Hubble, will be replaced with a refurbished unit to help maintain the telescope's ability to point and focus on astronomical objects throughout the Universe.

The Hubble Telescope is responsible for dating the age of the Universe at 12-14 billion years. However, it cannot see back that far in time. It cannot see the period after the big bang when the Universe began an expansion that continues to accelerate to this day. It is important for our increased understanding of the Universe that scientists now see that time in distant space. The years after the Big Bang are known for the formation of the first stars and the creation of the first galaxies. In effect, to see this happen is a scientific search for the edge of the Universe. It is a search that will be undertaken by Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The successor to Hubble, scheduled for launch in 2013, will be designed to see objects even farther in distance, and therefore time, than the Hubble now can. However, in order for the James Webb Space Telescope to see objects at the edge of the Universe after the Big Bang, it will need to be a much different telescope than the Hubble.

Therefore, in 2013, an unmanned spacecraft will release the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) into an orbit 930,000 miles away from Earth. This distance puts the telescope well beyond the reach of space shuttle servicing missions, and therefore the telescope is expected to have a much shorter life than the Hubble.

After entering its orbit, a light shield the size of a tennis court will unfold to hide the JWST from the light of the sun. Finally, powerful cooling systems will help to dramatically lower the spacecraft's temperature to a -447 degrees Fahrenheit in order to be cold enough to complete its mission.

The James Webb telescope will carry three different types of cameras, all tuned to detect infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. In contrast, the Hubble was equipped to capture mostly visible light and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum. This difference in light spectrum is due to the fact that the further astronomers look back in time, the redder the light from objects appears to be. Scientist call this phenomenon red shift, and it means that light from the most distant (and therefore oldest) object is deep in the infrared part of the light spectrum, a part of the light spectrum which the Hubble is currently unable to see.

The James Webb Telescope's primary goal will be to see what happened when the Universe created its first light when it was about one billion years old. It is hoped that the telescope will allow astronomers to observe the birth of galaxies, the physics of star and planet formation, and the entire early development of the Universe. The information might also provide answers about how other solar systems form and evolve.

Hubble was the trailblazer in the search of outer space through time. James Webb is designed to look further back to the point of first light. It is a scientific search to see the edge of the Universe, a view from the distant past that will increase our understanding of space, for the world of tomorrow.

Solar systems are composed of several individual components including arrays (multiple connected modules), inverters, controls, safety disconnects, and batteries. By assembling differing sizes of components together, systems can be built with varied power outputs to meet the demands of various loads.

Like most electrical equipment, as solar technology evolves and consumer demand rises, panels and equipment gets smaller, more efficient and cheaper. Homes are able to supply upwards of 75% of their energy from solar power (with sufficient space) which means that electricity costs will be drastically lower. This also means that power can be cold back to power companies for further gain, if more energy is created than is needed. The modular nature of solar electric systems means you can easily add cells, repair or replace system components.

Solar cells are thin film circuits which are manufactured to respond to light, and convert it to electric current. The scientific term for this is "photovoltaic" (or PV), rather obviously, this means "electricity to light". Solar cells and modules are often referred to as PV cells and PV modules. Although electricity is generated even when it is cloudy, the more light the cells get the more electricity that can be produced. The modules convert the electricity into direct current (DC) for storing in batteries, or alternating current (AC) for use in the home thought an inverter. The inverter simply converts the electricity so it can be used in the home. The type of current produced will depend on the module and how its being used. AC power can also be transferred to the grid (through a power or utility company).

PV modules are usually installed on specially tended to ground or pole mounting structures. They can also be mounted on rooftops. It is sometimes possible for the modules to be installed on a tracker - a mounting structure that moves to continually face the sun throughout the day.

Refrigeration, when reduced to its simplest meaning, is the removal of heat from an enclosed area and transferring it to a different space. Doing this would lower the temperature in the area where the heat was taken from. Cooling, a major part of refrigeration, is generally referred to as either a natural or artificial way of dissipating heat. The artificial process is what is referred to as cryogenics. Cold is merely the non-presence of heat so in order to make a material or space cold, the heat must be vacuumed from it.

Refrigeration processes has gone a long way since its conception in 1700's. The very first refrigeration method that was demonstrated was the creation of William Cullen at Scotland in the University of Glasgow. Cullen's creation showed the potential of refrigeration during his time but people did not perceive its importance then.

By the 1800's, Michael Faraday has designed a gas-ammonia-to be liquefied and used in making things cold. This is accomplished with the application of low temperatures and high pressure. Technically, ammonia refrigeration has been born then but it wasn't until 1842 that the first ever system for refrigeration has been produced. This feat came about because of John Gorrie, an American physician.

With the precise application of refrigeration engineering (all based on heat transfer), modern man has enjoyed the benefits of having a cold space or cold box where he could store his food and beverages. But this is looking only at the basic use of refrigeration. There is more to this engineering than simply providing a glass of cold water. In fact, refrigeration is now on a much larger scale (there are now industries that thrive on the design, installation and maintenance of industrial refrigeration systems).

The development of refrigerants such as chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons has paved the way for the commercialization of refrigeration. Since then, refrigeration has been applied to air conditioning units; systems used by food processing companies (dairy products, poultry, meat, and fish products that need constant refrigeration); even breweries. Beyond simple processes, refrigeration can also be used for the complex purification of compression of air; for low temperature maintenance in oil refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants. All these complex processes are made possible with what's referred to as industrial refrigeration.

Without refrigeration, people nowadays would not be able to enjoy the simple luxuries of life such as ice-cold soda; safe sushi; many dairy products; cold cuts; even air-conditioned rooms; and some recreational activities such as ice skating. And without these simple pleasures, what do you think would our world be like?

Refrigeration is no simple subject. This is contrary to the common belief by many that refrigeration is mainly about cooling or coldness. The practice of refrigeration engineering is actually all about heat transfer. The term refrigeration could therefore be defined as heat energy removal so that a certain matter or space is colder than its surroundings. Heat energy is a form of energy that cannot be made, wiped out, or seen. On the other hand, heat energy can be moved. This concept encapsulates what is known as refrigeration.

To be able to understand the theory of refrigeration, one must consider the fact that cold is merely the nonexistence of heat. Heat must therefore be displaced in such equipment as the household refrigerator. First, the heat is taken by the evaporator which is then carefully displaced to the external parts of the refrigerator through the condenser. The condenser would be the one to make cooler air out of the transferred heat.

There are many uses for refrigeration-industrial refrigeration is more recognized when such words as refrigeration plants, ice plants, food processing companies, freeze drying, breweries, wineries, tube ice, crushed ice, or ice cubes are mentioned. Here are the qualifying features for industrial refrigeration:

• The size should be 100 tons or even larger
• The use of ammonia R-717
• A centralized system
• -60 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit of load temperature with usually at least a single load below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ammonia refrigeration plays a huge part on the ever-growing refrigeration industry. All over the world, there is a growing interest on the use of ammonia as a refrigerant. Since chlorine and fluorine have had restrictions, ammonia has since become popular and has emerged as a widely-used refrigerant. Also, since chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are now pending when it comes to the area of refrigeration, ammonia would, in the next few years, still continue to rise as one of the leading refrigerants in the world.

The refrigeration grade for ammonia is at 99.98 percent pure and is quite free of impurities such as water. This is also readily available and cheap-and its most qualifying feature to become an efficient refrigerant is its high absorption of heat.

Ammonia is an effective ingredient in refrigerating food and beverages. It may be considered as highly hazardous because of its irritating odors and corrosiveness but this compound is hardly combustible; hence, it is now widely used on air conditioning units and food processing plants.

Looking at all these aspects of refrigeration, one can deduce that it is far from simple; and it has many benefits to modern society. Minus these benefits, man would definitely not be able to cope with the onslaught of modernization.

Solving mysteries has always fascinated human beings. We love mystery novels and crime dramas because we want to deduce who the culprit is. In real life, advances in science also deal with deducing a mystery. Instead of private investigators, processes like chromatography frequently solve real-world mysteries.

Chromatography is a process that helps scientists, law enforcement, and even schools and companies identify the composition of a particular sample. Basically, scientists need a way to separate organic from inorganic compounds. The word itself means "color writing" and the method was developed in the initial part of the twentieth century. But since the 1950's, chromatography has rapidly developed as an important tool for the tricky job of analyzing materials and samples of unknown mixtures.

Although quite a few different laboratory techniques fall under the general heading of chromatography, they all share the common process of separating mixtures. A solvent carries the mixture to be evaluated through some kind of stationary material. As the mixture passes through the material, the analyte-the substance that needs to be identified-is separated and can be identified.

There are several different classes of this process that have a wide range of uses. Liquid Chromatography can be used to test water for pollution levels, while Gas Chromatography is used to test materials as diverse as fibers or determine the presence of bombs at an airport. Thin-layer Chromatography provides a speedy way to determine if foods contain insecticides or pesticides. Although these examples are all very different, the process is the same. A mixture is broken down, and using other chemicals and processes, unknown elements in the mixture are identified.

Chromatography is a good tool that we have developed to answer vital questions involving health and public safety. Through the use of controlled chemical interactions and reactions, chromatography helps us get to the bottom of things.

In this topic I am going to babble about the Red Dwarf Star Gliese 876, which is host to 3 exo- planets. Since Gliese 876 is a red dwarf star, that means that it is a fairly cool for a star, burning at about 3500K, and it is guessed to have only 32% of the mass our sun has. Since it is one of the tinier stars out there Gliese 876 cannot be seen with the naked eye, you would need the aid of a telescope to view it. Hovering around in the constellation of Aquarius, Gliese 876 is about 15 light years (or about 4 and a half parsecs) away from our sun. We would've never thought that such a tiny star would harness habitable extrasolar-planets about fifteen years ago.

In 1998 two exo-planet teams, one which was led by the famous exoplanet hunter Geoffrey Marcy, had found that there is a extrasolar-planet orbiting around Gliese 876. The planet was named Gliese 876b, and it was discovered by measuring the radial velocity of the star, as the planets strong gravity would pull on its parent star causing it to wobble. Gliese 876 is guessed to have 2 times the mass of Jupiter and orbits its parent star closer then Mercury does to our Sun, taking it about 61 days to complete a full orbit.

The next extrasolar planet that was found orbiting around Gliese 876 was discovered just 3 years later in 2001. Gliese 876C was found to be orbiting Gliese even closer then Gliese 876B, taking it about 30 days to complete a full orbit around its parent star. This must cause a huge gravitational battle when the the giant planets align up next to each other. Gliese 876C has a little more than half the mass of Jupiter. In 2005 a third extrasolar planet was discovered orbiting the red dwarf Gliese, named Gliese 876 d. Gliese 876 d is just barely inside of what we call a stars habitable zone, we believe, and it has about 6-7 times the mass of Earth, we think this might be a terrestrial planet. It takes Gliese 876 d about two days to complete a full orbit its parent star. The sunrise on Gliese 876 must be lethal considering how close its orbit is to its star.

So the two gas giants orbit the red dwarf in the so called habitable zone, because these are gas giants it is very unlikely for them to harbor life. But what about the large moons of Gliese B and C ?(if there are any) There could be a moon orbiting Gliese b that could be pretty close to the size of Earth. If all the conditions were right, where it's just cool enough to have water, life could very well be possible. We might even find some more extrasolar planets orbiting Gliese 876 in the future. Time and better viewing instruments will only tell if there is a extrasolar planet maintaining life in the Gliese 876 solar system.

When most people hear the name Einstein, the next thought is usually his famous equation, E=mc2. Believe it or not, Einstein's Nobel Prize was not awarded for this revolutionary discovery, but for his lesser known paper on the Photo-Electric Effect also published in the same year. A good deal of the confusion about Relativity Theory is that most folks think it is one theory. It is actually three different ideas submitted in three different papers. The equation showing the relationship of energy to mass can be found in an addendum he submitted three months after publishing the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. He began work on the General Theory of Relativity in 1907 and finished it in 1915. With it, he added the effects of gravity to his original equations and revolutionized how we view the makeup of the universe. And then there's the confusion about that light speed squared business. What's that all about?

Einstein's first paper was titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." This eventually became known as the Theory of Special Relativity. It dealt primarily with how space and time were related, showing that they were actually two descriptions of the same phenomenon known as 4D spacetime. (A description of spacetime and how it differs from 3D space with an added element of time can be found in my article titled "Dimensions.") It also explained the time dilation between objects which were moving near the speed of light and those that were moving very slow compared to the speed of light.

The paper showed time to be relative to its frame of reference. For example, if you and a buddy are standing in the aisle of a moving jet and tossing a ball back and forth, the two of you seem to be still and the ball seems to be moving at a normal, slow rate of speed. But, to an observer on the ground the ball, you, your friend, and the jet are all moving at 200 mph. The plane provides you with a different frame of reference than the one the observer on the ground has. Both Galileo and Newton understood this concept and called it an "inertial frame." Einstein enlarged the inertial frame by stating that everything including you, the jet and the observer on the ground were all moving at speeds far below that of light. When one of the objects in the scenario gets ramped up to light speed, everything changes.

Because of this, no one observer had a privileged frame of reference. In other words, if an event happened and was observed in two different spatial locations, the event might appear to have happened simultaneously to one observer and as two separate events to another observer. The different perspectives were due to each observer's motion in relation to the event. Therefore, both observations would be correct to each observer respectively. It would be impossible for either observer to claim they saw the event the "right" way.

Just as Einstein's first paper showed that space and time were two descriptions of one phenomenon, similarly, the addendum to this paper showed that energy and mass were also two descriptions of one phenomenon. Energy and mass are not equal, as is often misquoted. They are intra-convertible. A very small amount of mass can be exchanged for a very large amount of energy, as demonstrated by experiments in atomic and nuclear physics. It's considered one of the most elegant formulas in all of physics because a few characters demonstrate the complex concepts found in the original equation which is big enough to fill a blackboard.

Einstein applied this equation to whether or not an object of mass, any mass, could be accelerated to the speed of light. That's also were the c2 part of the equation comes into play. The whole thing is about speed, not light. Let's roll a rock to see how that works. It's a rather large rock, so it takes a good deal of energy to get it rolling. The energy from that initial push is now stored in the rock as kinetic energy, which it dissipates as it rolls. Any additional pushes just store more kinetic energy than the can dissipate and now it has velocity. So, when we want to stop the rock from rolling, we have to absorb the extra energy it contains. The kinetic energy is proportional to the speed squared. So, if you give the rock twice the energy it can disperse, it will take four times as much energy to stop it from rolling (twice the energy squared is four times the energy). In Einstein's equation, c represents the speed of light, emphasis placed on the word "speed." His famous equation then, is the ratio of the energy required to move a mass proportional to the speed of light squared.

MRSA periodically hits the headlines in most cities throughout the world, but in any discussion concerning antibiotic-resistant bacteria, more generically know as MRSA, and of ways to fight them, mention must be made of bacteriohages, or 'phages' for short. Phages have successfully killed bacteria, strangely, without the intervention of any scientists, for billions of years and have evolved benignly alongside humans and animals for as long as we have been on this planet. There are biblical references in the Book of Kings to people being told to bathe in rivers to fight infections. Admittedly, this was just a tad before the electron microscope came along in the 1930s, but they were on to something (though the Ancients did not know that phages were extremely specific about which bacteria they ate).

Fredrick Twort (UK) & Felix d'Herelle (Canadian), also before the Electron Microscope age, realized that something was eating holes in bacterial cultures, something so small it could be filtered through porcelain and safely drunk by humans, but which killed bacteria very rapidly. Intravenous preparations were used to combat gas gangrene, both during WW1 and in the years before WW2. During WW2 German & Russian soldiers carried phages to prevent battlefield infections. Did Allied doctors ever wonder what they were for, or were they dismissed as being merely "foreign"?

Phages are the preferred method of treatment by people visiting their pharmacy in Georgia (Europe). It costs many millions to develop a new antibiotic, the prolonged use of which, as in cases of MRSA treatment, often causes liver and other organ damage, not to mention Clostridium difficile, a nasty infection of the digestive track made possible as beneficial gut bacteria are killed.

In stark contrast, it is quite cheap and quick to dip a bucket into a river/sewer and isolate the required phages, adding the new ones to your phage library. If the bacterium mutates, so do the phages. Phages inflict no collateral damage either. Clever, eh?

The public and new doctors are being brainwashed by the chemical companies to regard anything not high tech as quackery, especially foreign quackery. The U.K. drugs regulatory authority MHRA, which insists that any phage "medicine" must go through the same rigorous safety testing as for dangerous drugs, is wholly funded by drug company license fee payments; strange bedfellows, indeed. As long as this attitude prevails, phage therapy will eventually become the synthesized domain of the chemical companies, whose dropping of phages like a hot brick, once they had mastered antibiotic synthesis, could not possibly be confused with altruism.

High-tech solutions to killing bacteria are costing the U.K. Health Services billions of pounds per annum, while they ignore a safe, cheap but low-tech, simple and effective alternative. Here in the U.K., the much trumpeted 'Deep Clean' of our hospitals, costing many millions of pounds, has just finished, as if that were the end of it and all the bacteria were now dead and gone.

The wily Georgians, those foreigners who kept the phage flag flying all these years, know this not to be the case, because they regularly, and cheaply, spray their wards and operating theatres with phages to keep them clean. Sounds too simple and low tech to work. Oh yeah; so why are we the ones with an MRSA problem?

The complicity of governments in this tale must not be underestimated either; the UK chemical & bacterialogical warfare research department (now privatized), formerly known as Porton Down, has been sniffing around the Tbilisi phage labs, presumably with a view to bolstering their stocks of phages available for key personnel protection in the event of germ warfare. No sign as yet of a few crumbs off the table for poor Joe Public, despite the 1000's of U.K. MRSA deaths annually. I shouldn't think the United States government will be too far behind either in their quest for self preservation; indeed, they are probably well in the fore!

So, as you can see, the trillions of phages on this planet just won't go away and so deserve not to be left out of any discussion purporting to examine ways of killing bacteria. Why, after all, they invented the sport!