Pocari Sweat
I don’t know a lot about sports, but I know science when I see it. And “Ion Supply Drink” is about as scientific as you can get. That alone would have been enough to ensure that I would drink this, the fact that it has the word “sweat” in the title just made me want it all that more.
The first thing you notice about this drink is how it’s not carbonated (yet again, fuck you guys). The second thing you notice is how much thicker it is that you would expect, probably due to the extreme levels of ions that make it into a real life Japanese powerthirst. The third and final thing you notice is how it tastes exactly nothing like anything you’ve ever consumed before.
Once again my favorite thing is the can, both for it’s stylish yet minimalist blue/white approach and the fact it’s covered in Japanese which makes no sense to me. Fortunately there is also a small portion in English which informs me that it actually is a sports drink as it is a “drink which supplies water and electrolytes lost through perspiration”. I guess that also explains why it’s called Pocari Sweat. Kind of.
It then goes on to explain what makes Pocari Sweat the greatest of Japanese Sports drinks: the fact it is “quickly absorbed into the body tissues due to it’s fine osmolality”. I told you bro, science all up in this. This drink has some dayumn fine osmolality gurrl. I’d like to put this down to a random translation thing, but the fact is the back of this can has better English on it than anything I have ever written. The other great thing is what it’s recommended for: sports, physical labor or after a hot bath. Apparently taking a bath is a sport in Japan. Or physical labor. I don’t know which of those is more interesting.
Finally I come to something not included in the drink itself, but something I found in my research (I couldn’t tell if it was Japanese or Korean). The ad. Or in fact, all ads for it. The only thing I can take away from this is the universal constant: young attractive females in white tank tops can sell anything. And when that fails: Bollywood dancing.
Shape-Memory Alloy
A shape-memory alloy is exactly what it sounds like: an alloy of two (or more) metals that somehow can “remember” the original shape it was folded into. One of the more famous examples of this is nickel-titanium, or nitinol, will spontaneously fold from a crumpled state back to the ordered, cold forged state when heated. A video of this process can be seen here. This works because of a small phase change in the metal itself, when shaped the atoms arrange themselves into organized crystal structures. Distorting the metal then causes these crystal structures to become disorganized and energetically unfavourable, application of heat then allows the original crystal structure to be formed again by overcoming the energy barrier. The special thing about SMA’s is that the crystal structures can be reversed while in most alloys the structures naturally decay due to diffusion of atoms within the metal.
Shape-memory alloys have many applications, ranging from uses in medicine and robotics right through to the more novel, as seen in this lamp designed by Japanese design group Nendo. In this case the heat from the bulb causes the lamp to “bloom” as the strips of alloy move back to their preformed shape.
Siderophores
Iron is one of those things that life needs, it’s at the heart of many proteins such as the hemoglobin in your blood. But getting that sweet, sweet ferrous metal is not always so easy. That’s why many creatures have evolved to use special chemical compounds known as siderophores (Greek for iron carrier). Siderophores are produced within the cell and then released into the extracellular environment where they bind to iron ions, helping to solubilize them and thus transfer them into the cell. Enterobactin (pictured above) is a particularly potent siderophore that works somewhat like the claw in one of those games where you try and retrieve a stuffed animal. In this case the oxygen atoms surround and bind to the iron atom to form metal-ligand bonds.
DARPA’s Cheetah Bot
AGES ago I posted a bit on DARPA’s plan to create a robot emulating the movement of a cheetah, whilst ambitious, previous projects such as Big Dog (created by Boston Dynamics) have been overwhelmingly creepy and effective. Now here’s the first video of the new cheetah bot, showing it run at speeds of up to 18 mph, which although not the organic cheetah’s record of 75 mph is still pretty damn good.
Materials That Fix Themselves
The quest for a self-repairing material has been an on going one, for years chemists have dreamed of being able to artificially recreate something that seems so trivial in biology. Now a team at the University of California, San Diego have achieved that using hydrogels. Hydrogels (or aquagels) are hydrophilic polymers which are highly absorbent and have a degree of flexibility very similar to natural tissues, allowing them to be prime components of tissue scaffolding. By manipulating the side chains of the constituent polymers, UCSD scientists have managed to achieve polymers that once broken can rejoin or “heal” by latching on to one of these “dangling” side chains.
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Brain Pulse Music
Awhile ago I reblogged a post from Scinerds about Hypna, which is a project to convert tree rings into music. Now, Japanese experimental musician, Masaki Batoh has come up with “Brain Pulse Music” which converts brain waves into music… apparently. The project isn’t complete and at the moment and sounds half bag pipes, half theremin and 100% Japanese avant garde horror. You’ve been warned.
A Planet Full of Water
But psyche! The water only exists either as steam or as ice, while this may come as a contradiction of sorts, the extremely high pressure on this planet causes the water to exist in a solid form. The planet named GJ1214b has a diameter nearly 3 times as great as Earth and weighs 7 times as much. The planet is also 40 LY from our sun. The measurements from the planet are calculated by the effect light has in the planet’s atmosphere.
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Why People Are Just Too Stupid for Democracy→
I hate politics. Now I have science on my side. It’s easily apparent that people are frequently delusional about their own intelligence, now a study shows that it’s not just their own character they’re mistaken about, but that of others too. This of course means that people are wholly incapable of selecting the best person to be a leader which in turn leads to mediocre policies and governments.
On the plus side, everyone seems to be able to agree who the worst people are.
Disturbing Science Books for Kids→
Microgravity Roller Coaster
Possibly one of the coolest applications of physics has to be in theme parks. Now engineers are going to try something a little more extreme than your run of the mill roller coaster. Specifically emulating zero gravity conditions while being strapped to a cart. But just to make things even more interesting they also wish to double the force of gravity in some parts of the ride. The roller coaster named “Vomit Comet” will be able to accelerate to speeds greater than 100 mph before shooting vertically upwards. At this stage the ride will slow slightly, giving its passengers the sensation of weightlessness for up to 8 seconds. The ride, designed by BRC Imagination Arts, could cost up to 60 million dollars due to the level of precision required, in fact due to the varying weight of passengers the physics of the ride will have to be recalculated every run.
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Spiders Are Bigger Than They Seem
Arachnophobia, or the irrational fear of spiders, is something that affects 50% of women and 10% of men. But it seems this isn’t the only thing blown out of proportion. A recent study has shown that people who are afraid of spiders actually rate spiders as much bigger than they really are, even trebling the length. The study was conducted by taking arachnophobes who have undergone therapy and getting them to interact with a range of spiders for a few minutes. After this session the human participants were made to fill out a questionnaire rating their level of distress and also asked to draw a line indicated how long they perceived the spider. The results showed a strong correlation between level of distress and exaggerated length of their 8 legged friend with on average the most fearful drawing lines 50% longer than those of the least fearful.
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Superconductors.
The basic concept of a superconductor is that it is capable of sustaining an electrical current without resistance. Resistance in a circuit is what causes a loss of energy, so superconductors are the closest thing we have to perpetual motion. However, they only work at near absolute zero, or more specifically, anything colder than 91 Kelvin.
When a superconductor is cooled to these temperatures, any interaction with a magnet causes a repulsion, this effect is called the Meissner Effect. The induced field in the superconductor opposes the applied field of the magnet, therefore repelling each other. So if the two repel, how is it possible to achieve any levitation? When the magnet is moved closer the flux trapping effect is engaged and the superconductor not only repels the magnet, but attracts it as well. The magnetic flux lines from the magnet are trapped inside the superconductor causing the magnet to be held at a fixed position. This is only possible if there are imperfections in the crystalline structure of the superconductor.
Of course, the opposite effect of levitation also occurs. When the magnet is picked up, the superconductor remains in magnetic suspension, and hovers below the magnet. Another phenomena is that the levitated magnet will freely move at a fixed distance over the superconductor without friction, so the applications would benefit transport, which means we can all have hover cars now.
SOUP by Mandy Barker
These pieces of environmental art portray scenes involving pieces of litter. In particular pieces of litter were found from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is located in the north Pacific. The Garbage patch is formed due to an oceanic gyre, which is a large rotating ocean current that acts to trap waste particles. The size of the garbage patch is unknown but is estimated to be between 700,000 (270,000) and 15,000,000 square kilometres (5,800,000 sq mi), up to 8% of the North Pacific’s total area. The total mass of this plastic is estimated at 100 million tonnes.
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