Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens him Marshall Brain and welcome to this
Speaker 1: week's Friday news round up, where we look at the
Speaker 1: week's science and technology news and review. Here are some
Speaker 1: of the articles that seemed the most interesting this week
Speaker 1: from the Interesting Reading series on the brain Stuff blog.
Speaker 1: If I had to pick something that surprised me this week,
Speaker 1: it would be an article I saw about laser spark plugs.
Speaker 1: Spark plugs have been around in almost exactly their current
Speaker 1: form for more than a century, and it really hadn't
Speaker 1: crossed my mind that this area needed improvement. But these
Speaker 1: laser spark plugs are amazing if they can get them
Speaker 1: working in real life engines at a reasonable price. They're
Speaker 1: not amazing because they're lasers, even though lasers are always cool.
Speaker 1: They're not amazing because their thousand watt plus pulse lasers,
Speaker 1: although that's definitely cool as well. They're amazing because there
Speaker 1: is a claim that they can improve fuel economy by
Speaker 1: and that claim comes from real engines using real prototype
Speaker 1: laser spark plugs. If you ever look at a spark
Speaker 1: plug fire, and if you want to do this, you
Speaker 1: could pull the plug on your lawnmower and watch it fires.
Speaker 1: Somebody else pulls the string. It's a very tiny little spark.
Speaker 1: It's it's practically nothing. It ignites a flame front that
Speaker 1: has to expand outward from that tiny source of ignition,
Speaker 1: and there just isn't that much time available for that
Speaker 1: expansion to occur. An engine running at six thousd rpm,
Speaker 1: for example, fires spark plugs fifty times per second. In
Speaker 1: contrast to that, when you use a laser as the
Speaker 1: spark plug, the flame front is huge by comparison, because
Speaker 1: the beam penetrates down into the cylinder. The only problem
Speaker 1: I have with this idea is that it falls in
Speaker 1: to that big stack of other ideas that claim they'll
Speaker 1: improve engine efficiency by I mean, how many times have
Speaker 1: we heard this claim. Let's hope that this one pans out,
Speaker 1: or that electric cars really take off and this idea
Speaker 1: becomes irrelevant. Speaking of electric cars, what would make electric
Speaker 1: cars explode in popularity? What we need is something that's
Speaker 1: better than the current crop of batteries that we're using.
Speaker 1: I mean, the batteries we have right now are relatively speaking,
Speaker 1: really big and really heavy and really expensive. Something small
Speaker 1: and cheap and lightweight that can store or produce lots
Speaker 1: of power is what is necessary for electric cars to
Speaker 1: really revolutionize anything. This week there were two announcements that
Speaker 1: hold promise for something happening in this arena. There was,
Speaker 1: for example, a recent announcement that fuel cell prices could
Speaker 1: drop by a factor of ten. The problem with current
Speaker 1: fuel cells is that they need a lot of platinum,
Speaker 1: which is pricey, to help catalyze the reaction that produces
Speaker 1: the power or scientists have come up with a new
Speaker 1: catalyst made of much cheaper materials like iron. If this
Speaker 1: works out, it may be possible to consider using fuel
Speaker 1: cells in cars in the relatively near future. You can
Speaker 1: google Interesting Reading number seven thirty six for details. But
Speaker 1: even better is a Darper project that's trying to develop
Speaker 1: tiny fusion reactors. The idea is to shrink atomic accelerators
Speaker 1: down to chip scale and then collide ions together to
Speaker 1: create fusion. DARPA is shooting for an energy ratio of twenty,
Speaker 1: meaning that the power out is twenty times greater than
Speaker 1: the power in. How hard could it be? But if
Speaker 1: they could get this idea working, it would certainly make
Speaker 1: electric cars more viable. Google Interesting Reading number seven forty
Speaker 1: to learn more about DARPA's attempts and speaking of electric
Speaker 1: cars and cars that get really good gas mileage, the
Speaker 1: Purdue team in the Shell Eco Marathon this year created
Speaker 1: a car that got an equivalent of two thousand and
Speaker 1: two hundred miles per gallon. The car weighs only two
Speaker 1: seventy pounds, it's super aerodynamic, and it got an extra
Speaker 1: boost from solar panels worked into the carbon fiber body.
Speaker 1: The most interesting part is the fact that they hope
Speaker 1: to make this vehicle street legal at some point. If
Speaker 1: you google Interesting Reading number seven thirty eight, you can
Speaker 1: get the details on this, and you can also see
Speaker 1: Interesting Reading number seven thirty seven for a discussion of
Speaker 1: Michigan's solar car strategies that's quite revealing. Also in Interesting
Speaker 1: Reading number seven forty there's a video that's worth watching.
Speaker 1: The problem that they're trying to solve is the truck
Speaker 1: full of explosives trying to drive through a checkpoint problem.
Speaker 1: It's not easy having a barrier that's strong enough to
Speaker 1: keep a multi ton high speed truck out, but that's
Speaker 1: also easy to raise and lower, and is also inexpensive
Speaker 1: and is also attractive. This company offers a number of
Speaker 1: solutions that fit the bill, and of course, how better
Speaker 1: to demonstrate them than to ram some real trucks into
Speaker 1: some real barriers and show it on a video on YouTube.
Speaker 1: The most interesting one is this thing that looks like
Speaker 1: a flimsy fabric net. When it rises out of its
Speaker 1: little protective pocket in the road, it is surprisingly effective. However,
Speaker 1: then there's this bar that looks like a flimsy piece
Speaker 1: of wood that the guard can raise and lower by hand. Again,
Speaker 1: you might think that you could drive right through it.
Speaker 1: This video demonstrates otherwise. If you google interesting Reading number
Speaker 1: seven forty you can see the video. Why is it
Speaker 1: that human beings are sometimes so bad at self control?
Speaker 1: For example, more than half of Americans are overweight, and
Speaker 1: that happens because we're not particularly good at controlling what
Speaker 1: we eat. Why is eating so hard to control? Scientific
Speaker 1: American has an article this week that tries to explain it.
Speaker 1: The theory proposed is something called a dual system model
Speaker 1: in our brains. According to the article, we have quote
Speaker 1: two emotional stems, our impulses and our powers of reflection
Speaker 1: end quote. These two systems are constantly fighting with each
Speaker 1: other and impulses often went out because they're impulsive, they
Speaker 1: don't require a lot of processing power or energy. The
Speaker 1: article goes through the research in this area and offers
Speaker 1: several techniques to try in order to gain better self control.
Speaker 1: Simply knowing that obesity is unhealthy is not enough to
Speaker 1: stop impulsive behaviors around obesity. One thing you can try
Speaker 1: is pre planning strategies or rules that you can rehearse
Speaker 1: and execute whenever temptation arises. For example, if I have
Speaker 1: a problem with peanut m and m's, I might say, look,
Speaker 1: if I ever see a peanut eminem, I'm going to
Speaker 1: physically turn around and walk in the other direction. If
Speaker 1: I practice this enough, I do it automatically. The article
Speaker 1: suggests that an alcoholic person can practice ordering a nonalcoholic
Speaker 1: beverage at a bar until the behavior becomes automatic, and
Speaker 1: so on. If you google Interesting Reading seven forty you
Speaker 1: can get the details on these techniques. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you're going to buy an hd TV or a
Speaker 1: bluebery player or something in the video sphere. There are
Speaker 1: all kinds of headline specs that most people can deal with,
Speaker 1: like screen size and resolution and the contrast ratio. But
Speaker 1: when you get into some of the esoteric stuff, it
Speaker 1: gets harder. For example, what kind of motion interpolation algorithms
Speaker 1: should you look for if you're buying an HD TV.
Speaker 1: The article points out that when a film gets converted
Speaker 1: from its native twenty four frames per second to a
Speaker 1: TV refresh rate, there are different ways to do it
Speaker 1: depending on the TV you buy. For example, if you're
Speaker 1: increasing from twenty four frames per second to a sixty
Speaker 1: hurts TV signal, one way to handle it is called
Speaker 1: three to pull down processing. The CPU repeats one frame
Speaker 1: three times and the next frame two times to create
Speaker 1: sixty frames per second. The article then points out that
Speaker 1: the imbalance the three and the two ratio creates an
Speaker 1: artifact called jutter. An easy solution is to jump up
Speaker 1: to a twenty hurts refresh rate. Now you can use
Speaker 1: five five pull down processing and get rid of the jetter.
Speaker 1: The best TVs can then do some image processing and
Speaker 1: do frame interpolation, essentially creating new frames between two film
Speaker 1: frames using computational techniques. Now, Lee and I would end
Speaker 1: up buying whatever TVs on sale, But if you have
Speaker 1: the time and the money to explore the high end stuff,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting article. Google Interesting Reading number seven
Speaker 1: thirty nine for details. Do you own an iPhone? Would
Speaker 1: you like to get more out of it? If so,
Speaker 1: there's an article entitled getting the most out of your
Speaker 1: iPhone twenty easy tips and tricks that you may be
Speaker 1: interested in this week. A lot of these are tiny
Speaker 1: little features hidden in the user interface. This simply may
Speaker 1: have escaped your notice. For example, there's a way to
Speaker 1: lock the screen orientation, and Lee has actually been looking
Speaker 1: for this because she likes to read in bed and
Speaker 1: when she puts the thing sidewise, it flips on her.
Speaker 1: There's an easy way to bring up the music controls
Speaker 1: even if the screen is locked, and so on. Google
Speaker 1: Interesting Reading number seven thirty eight to read this article.
Speaker 1: Is peanut butter carcinogenic? Yes? It turns out it can
Speaker 1: be because of a chemical called a plot toxin that's
Speaker 1: common in peanuts. If you're the sort of person who
Speaker 1: eats a lot of peanuts or peanut butter, you may
Speaker 1: want to google Interesting Reading number seven thirty seven to
Speaker 1: learn more about this threat to your existence. What are
Speaker 1: the chances that you or I will ever travel in space?
Speaker 1: I'd say they're pretty slim, but it's still fun to imagine. So,
Speaker 1: while we're imagining traveling in space, what are the six
Speaker 1: most common space dangers we will face in our dreams?
Speaker 1: An article entitled the six Weirdest Dangers of Space Travel
Speaker 1: tackles this question. The winners are, in order, moon, dust,
Speaker 1: space debris, static electricity, heat stroke, an inability to stop,
Speaker 1: and kidney stones. Kidney stones. Yes, kidney stones, because astronauts
Speaker 1: get kidney stones more often then regular people do. It's
Speaker 1: because weightlessness causes bone loss, and bone loss drops a
Speaker 1: lot of calcium into the bloodstream, and calcium causes kidney stones.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in these threats to your dream world,
Speaker 1: you can google Interesting Reading number seven thirty seven for details.
Speaker 1: And finally, you've probably heard of royal jelly. In a beehive,
Speaker 1: the worker bees need to sometimes raise up new queens,
Speaker 1: and they do this by picking an egg at random
Speaker 1: and feeding it royal jelly. For some reason, royal jelly
Speaker 1: causes some kind of transformation that turns what would have
Speaker 1: been an ordinary worker bee into a queen bee. Scientists
Speaker 1: obviously have been trying to figure out how a food
Speaker 1: could do this. What a scientist in Japan named Massaki
Speaker 1: Kamakura has discovered is a new protein that he is
Speaker 1: named royal actin. It works by activating a gene that's
Speaker 1: common in many animals. For example, when he fed royal
Speaker 1: actin too fruit flies, they increased in size and they
Speaker 1: laid more eggs. In bees, the genes effects are simply
Speaker 1: more pronounced. If you google Interesting Reading number seven thirty seven,
Speaker 1: you can learn more about royal jelly and how it
Speaker 1: turns worker bees into queen bees, and it raises the
Speaker 1: obvious questions should we be feeding this stuff to our kids?
Speaker 1: So that's it for this week. To learn more about
Speaker 1: these and dozens of other topics, you can google Interesting
Speaker 1: Reading number seven thirty six, seven thirty seven, seven thirty eight,
Speaker 1: seven thirty nine, and seven forty have a great weekend
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
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