dekay.org » science

Expensive wine just tastes betterâ€¦

dekay — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 12:07:07 +0000

Give one person the same wine in two bottles, one labelled with 5â‚¬, the other with 50â‚¬, will he notice? Seems like not: the more „expensive“ one will taste better.

Placebo effect? Scientists have looked at people’s brains during this test and found interesting differences: the placebo effect seems to actually work!

(original post at „The Frontal Cortex„)

And one quote to take home and think about:

„We have these general beliefs about the world –for example, that cheaper products are of lower quality – and they translate into specific expectations about specific products,“ said Shiv. „Then, once these expectations are activated, they start to really impact our behavior.“

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The Father of Molecular Gastronomy Whips Up a New Formula

dekay — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:15:32 +0000

Wired has a new article about my chemical hero HervÃ© This, „The Father of Molecular Gastronomy Whips Up a New Formula„.

Molecular gastronomy is more than just the chemistry of cooking, think new flavors, new cocktails, stuff done with liquid nitrogen, encapsulation with agarose or alginate.

Many cool things you, too, can try at home. Will you?

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Plotting applications for MacOSX

dekay — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:15:16 +0000

There are a couple of nice plotting apps out there for MacOSX. Ⅰ have been using Plot myself for much of my thesis and related work, but this review has shown a great alternative: DataPlot, which could be mistaken for DataPlot (a free multi-platform software for plotting and data analysis created by NIST. And actually this app seems to be doing very many cool things, including Design of Experiments and relatedâ€¦ In any way: this is just a UNIX-app and runs on top of X11, so be prepared for an extraterrestrial experience). Now, the OSX DataPlot is very cool and integrated with most OSX technology, almost guaranteeing nice graphs and mac look and feel. Check it out!

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Motor powered by bacteria

dekay — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 21:14:18 +0000

It seems like we are finally reaching the fun stage in nanotechnology. Some Japanese scientists have invented a nano motor that is driven by bacteria! The little creatures are sliding along and are pushing the motor, just like the old hamster wheel.

It is funny, as the bacterium in question is called mycobacterium mobile, which can move at a fast 5 micrometers per second; if you think about its size: it moves about 3–4 times its own size per second. A human would thus be moving at 6 meters per second, or 21.6 km per hour, not bad for a critter

[via treehugger and physorg]

Citation: Hiratsuka, Yuichi, Miyata, Makoto, Tada, Tetsuya and Uyeda, Taro Q. P. „A microrotary motor powered by bacteria.“ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. vol. 103. no. 37. 13618–13623

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The hexagonal periodic table of the elementsâ€¦

dekay — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 18:24:42 +0000

The periodic spiral is a perfect example of infoporn and science visualization. Who would have know that after Mendeleev’s glorious act of inventing the periodic system of the elements, or rather its design and structure — its visualization, someone, some hundred years later would try again. This time, though, it looks functional and pretty: the periodic spiral uses a hexagonal grid in which all elemnts are placed in a spiral starting from the center of that hexagon; the trick that still keeps the chemical grouping together is the generous use of white space: the groups are all aligned radially, blocks are still blocks. So, in a way, there is not much new in this kind of visualization, it is just no longer square but hexagonal. Still, the noble metals are set apart from the less noble ones, but as far as Ⅰ can tell there is no obvious advantage to do soâ€¦

On the mentioned site you can also check out a shockwave application that lets you explore some characteristics and data of the elements; there is also a downloadable (and not free) version for Macs and Windows.

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of flowers and equationsâ€¦

dekay — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 13:26:09 +0000

Peter Miller has created a great gallery of images which, as you might say it, are art in its automated sense. His creation — images of organic materials, flowers and other similikes — are not painted nor created by hand, but by math.

All kinds of vital organic patterns, textures and shapes arise from descriptions that seem purely mechanistic and devoid of life.

Long gone are the days where Life itself seemed to be just a couple of lines of code in mathematica. THIS is enjoyable and visible, and much easier to understand for the layman.

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First alien life forms discovered in „blood rain“?

dekay — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 11:50:47 +0000

Popular Science has posted a story about Godfrey Louis’s research concerned with the mysterious “blood-colored showers”. His findings suggest that the coloring compound within those showers are actually alien life forms capable of replication. Although “life”, nothing like anything we would know of. No DNA and stable above very high temperatures. Published in Astrophysics and Space Science (doi://10.1007/s10509–005–9025–4, abstract)

from the abstract:

The striking red colouration of the rainwater was found to be due to the suspension of microscopic red particles having the appearance of biological cells. These particles have no similarity with usual desert dust. An estimated minimum quantity of 50,000 kg of red particles has fallen from the sky through red rain. An analysis of this strange phenomenon further shows that the conventional atmospheric transport processes like dust storms etc. cannot explain this phenomenon. The electron microscopic study of the red particles shows fine cell structure indicating their biological cell like nature. EDAX analysis shows that the major elements present in these cell like particles are carbon and oxygen. Strangely, a test for DNA using Ethidium Bromide dye fluorescence technique indicates absence of DNA in these cells. In the context of a suspected link between a meteor airburst event and the red rain, the possibility for the extraterrestrial origin of these particles from cometary fragments is discussed.**

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OpenSource that science software!

dekay — Sat, 27 May 2006 19:11:21 +0000

nodalpoint.org reports about a new scientific journal opening soon: Source Code for Biology and Medicine, which will cover

Source Code for Biology and Medicine aims to publish source code for distribution and use in the public domain in order to advance biological and medical research. Through this dissemination, it may be possible to shorten the time required for solving certain computational problems for which there is limited source code availability or resources.

Hopefully this initiative will make some things more transparent, create better tools for other’s to use and create fame for all those fancy wizards making great useful software for scientists!

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Molecular mixology

dekay — Sun, 14 May 2006 10:29:36 +0000

Molecular mixology, the newly coined term for the return of mixing cocktails with much more sophisticated methods than just “mixing”, including e.g. addition of baking powder as a source of “fizz”, is the little brother of molecular gastronomy. This term was first used in 1969 by Nicolas Kurti, but is more recently known through the lips of french scientist HervÃ© This (more details on the previous link to Wikipedia). This has written an essay about this, detailing some of the scientific/chemical methods usedâ€¦ very enjoyable and interesting to read. A list of books about this topic (and much more) is also available.

(just a quick primer to catch your and my attention. Ⅰ will come back to this in the future!)

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iNMR: the end to all longings for a Mac NMR software

dekay — Sat, 06 May 2006 14:39:42 +0000

iNMR

Year: 2006

Version: 0.6.3

Author: Giuseppe Balacco

Platform: Mac OS

Category: Utility

Publisher: Mestrelab Research

Price: EUR 100

Ⅰ am in the process of doing a detailed review; this time written with a outputthis.org templateâ€¦ stay tuned for the review which will appear here shortly.

Tags: software, mac, nmr, chemistry, science, inmr