Posts Tagged ‘August 2010’
Science Confirms the Obvious: Ten Studies That Make You Say “Duh”
It might seem silly to investigate whether people are happier on the weekend, but behind such truisms are revelations about our brains, our behavior and our environment. Here we round up the year's most outwardly obvious scientific studies
Thus, with great pleasure, we round up ten of the past year's best hard science studies that answer some of the world's least pressing questions.
to see this year's most obvious science
A Slick Fix: Oil-Eating Robots Could Mop Up Ocean Disasters
Aeros (Airborne Robotic Oil Spill Recovery System) is a fleet of airplane-deployed robots that cordon off the oil and use centrifuge-like oil/water separators to collect oil for refining. Each ’bot can purify up to 3,000 gallons of water a minute. Several could clean an 11-million-gallon, Exxon Valdez–size spill in a few days.
Global Response Group, Aeros’s developer, is building its first prototype robot to test on an experimental oil spill next year. The company is also in talks with the Chinese government to establish the first Aeros airbase, which will deploy ’bots to protect that country’s fishing waters from offshore drilling. It will cost $800 million, a small fee compared with the billions of dollars in damage that a spill can cause.
Spills present challenges for any cleanup. “Booms don’t work well with big waves,” says oil expert Greg McCormack of the University of Texas. But the industry is eager for new strategies, he says, and will embrace Aeros if the prototype works. Aeros’s inventor, Myron Sullivan, says it will. “It needs fine-tuning,” he says, “but the technology is proven. There will be another disaster. All we can do is prepare for it.”
How It Works
1. ’Bots Away! Planes drop minivan-size water-cleaning robots and inflatable booms near the spill site.
2. Trap the Spill Once inflated, the U-shaped booms surround the oil. Robots use GPS to get behind a boom’s flap, which directs water into the ’bot’s cleaning system.
3. Clean The robot sucks oily water into a cone that spins the liquids, sending denser water to the outside and creating a stream of oil in the center. Low pressure at one end draws oil away while the heavier—and 99 percent clean—water flows out the other side.
4. Collect the Black Gold A bladder collects the oil, which crews pick up later to recycle. One robot can clean up to 3,000 gallons of water per minute, scrubbing the affected area in just a few days.
If Evolution Had Taken a Different Turn, Could Dragons Have Existed?
First up on the dragon checklist: flying. Dragon wings are usually depicted in one of two ways—a third pair of limbs connected to the backbone, or webbed forearms. Jack Conrad, a paleontologist and reptile expert at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, thinks the latter is more plausible. “It seems that six appendages are very unlikely in vertebrates,” he says. “The only thing close to having six limbs are these frogs in the western part of the U.S. that get this bad parasite and end up generating extra limbs. Even then, the new limbs are identical to the hind limbs, and the frogs don’t do well. It seems that anytime nature tries to generate a vertebrate hexapod, it dies. That seems to be the main limitation.”
In Conrad’s opinion, the leathery wings of a pterosaur are the best possible flight mechanism for a giant lizard. “Quetzalcoatlus had a 30-foot wingspan,” he says. “That would do the trick.” Big, strong wings are necessary to compensate for the weight of a dragon’s skin, which, of course, would need to withstand bow-and-arrow attacks. “Let’s throw a little alligator in there for armor,” Conrad says. An alligator’s skin, he explains, is made partly of bony plates. When European settlers first encountered the reptiles, the skin proved to be tough enough to turn away a musket ball, plenty strong for a dragon.
OK, so we’ve got a very large alligator with the wings of a pterosaur that can repel musket fire. Now it just needs to breathe flames. This is where no parallel exists—there are no known animals that can spit fire or even a flammable liquid. But there are some beetles that can shoot caustic chemicals from their abdomen that can burn people’s skin, so it’s not totally out of the question that some animal at some point in time could make a flammable liquid. Cobras can spit venom with great accuracy at objects six feet away; the dragon could borrow that ability to propel the flammable liquid. As for lighting it? “Well, maybe, if you had some specialized organ like an electric eel’s tail dangling in the mouth, that could spark that liquid and allow the creature to breathe fire,” Conrad says. “Of course, this is all very theoretical.”
The Goods: August 2010′s Hottest Gadgets
A 13-blade pocketknife, a plastic anchor and more great ideas in gear
Rise of the Helpful Machines
Meet 10 of the most advanced human-assist 'bots from around the world
Click to launch the photo gallery
Largest-Ever Solar-Powered Boat Prepares for a World Tour
The designers purposely eschewed fuel-powered engines to emphasize the need to conserve global resources. The company’s scientific coordinator and COO, Pascal Goulpié, hopes that its size and visibility—the boat will make a world tour next year—will inspire others to pursue alternative-energy ventures throughout the next decade.
Fighting Drugs With Drugs: An Obscure Hallucinogen Gains Legitimacy as a Solution for Addictions
Ibogaine, a brown powder derived from the African Tabernathe iboga plant, has intrigued researchers since 1962, when Howard Lotsof, a student at New York University and an opiate addict, found that a single dose erased his drug cravings without causing any withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately, the hallucinogen can increase the risk of cardiac arrest, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency lists it as a Schedule 1 substance, a classification for drugs like ecstasy and LSD with “no known medical value” and “high potential for abuse,” making it difficult to get federal funding to run clinical trials.
Animal tests, however, have shown the drug’s medicinal promise. “Rats addicted to morphine will quit for weeks after receiving ibogaine,” says Stanley Glick, the director of the Center for Neuropharmacology and Neuroscience at Albany Medical College. And addicts have reported positive effects in Mexico and Europe, where ibogaine therapy is legal. “Going cold turkey is horrible. There’s vomiting and diarrhea and pain and a constant drug craving,” says Randy Hencken, a drug user who was treated in Mexico. “After ibogaine, I didn’t feel any symptoms or cravings. I’ve been clean for nine years. Heroin and cocaine no longer have any power over me.”
Despite these successes, ibogaine lacks scientific credibility. “As great as ibogaine seems, no one knows exactly how effective it is as a treatment,” says Valerie Mojieko, the director of clinical research for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Research (MAPS), a privately funded Massachusetts-based nonprofit. So starting this month, MAPS will enlist Clare Wilkins, the director of Pangea Biomedics, to run the first long-term study to gauge the drug’s lasting effects at her clinic in Mexico (where patients already pay $5,000 for the treatment). She will treat 20 to 30 heroin addicts and, for the next year, MAPS will subject them to psychological and drug tests to quantify ibogaine’s effectiveness.
The study will also help establish how to prescribe the drug safely. “Most psychedelics are relatively harmless,” says neurologist Deborah Mash of the University of Miami, “but ibogaine has a much narrower margin for error.” Mash runs an ibogaine clinic in St. Kitts and has treated more than 400 addicts without incident in the past decade. But in the early 1990s, overdoses of the drug at a clinic in the Netherlands led to several deaths, which ultimately scared off the National Institute of Drug Addiction (NIDA) from starting its own research program in the U.S.
From the limited research, though, scientists have two theories about how ibogaine works. Some say it’s purely biological—that ibogaine degrades into a compound that binds with opiate receptors in the brain to quiet cravings. Others believe that it is also psychological, with the “whole-life review” part of the hallucination providing perspective on the negative aspects of drug use, and so the subject strives to quit.
Regardless of the mechanism, proving ibogaine works is essential to winning approval and funding for clinical trials in the U.S. The sooner the better: Nearly seven million Americans abuse illicit drugs, costing the nation an estimated $181 billion a year in health care, crime and lost productivity.
The MAPS study should begin to answer questions about ibogaine’s efficacy and safety, but most experts think prescriptions are 10 to 15 years away. Until then, desperate patients will continue to seek out treatment in unregulated places such as Mexico, and that’s ideal for neither the patients nor the researchers. Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, hopes this study will force regulators’ hands. “If we can show great results, it could increase support for ibogaine clinics and maybe get NIDA interested again—because that’s who really should be doing this research.”