Youtube summarizes pop culture, so I can do other stuff February 5, 2023
Posted by stuffilikenet in Awesome, Brilliant words, Geek Stuff, Japan, Mushrooms, Mutants, Toys, Video.add a comment
Efficient hydrolysis using Chromium and Cobalt on seawater February 4, 2023
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Right. A Chinese team has performed direct electrolysis of untreated seawater, achieving long-term stability exceeding 100 hours at 500 mA cm−2 and performance similar to a typical PEM electrolyzer operating in high-purity water. This is achieved by introducing a Lewis acid layer (for example, Cr2O3) on transition metal oxide catalysts to dynamically split water molecules and capture hydroxyl anions. Such in situ generated local alkalinity facilitates the kinetics of both electrode reactions and avoids chloride attack and precipitate formation on the electrodes. A flow-type natural seawater electrolyzer with Lewis acid-modified electrodes (Cr2O3–CoOx) exhibits the industrially required current density of 1.0 A cm−2 at 1.87 V and 60 °C. Managing this without filtering the seawater or alkalizing it first is the real key, here. The efficiency is near 100%, the first step towards green hydrogen production at scale. You are seeing the first glimpse of the sun-fueled future, where solar power is stored as hydrogen.
Hpomework: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-023-01195-x
Full-body medical scanner February 4, 2023
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A company was founded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek has created a 360-degree body scanner comes equipped with over 70 sensors that collect more than “50 million data points on skin, heart, vessels, respiration, microcirculation and more.” This data is then analyzed by a “self-learning AI-powered system” created by Neko Health.
This sort of thing seems vaguely familiar.
Pikachu Vs Godzilla(s) January 29, 2023
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It’s not Kung Fury, but then again it hasn’t tried to be.
1980s Hallucination January 29, 2023
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This gem is apparently a production of something like the Swedish Film Board (they have one, right?) and many, many nights of substances illegal the world over. I laughed all the way through, and I’m a seriously old fart with no sense of humor anymore.
Inside the Fantasy Genre Writer’s Head December 23, 2022
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…or, maybe not.
Base Editing Cures T-cell Leukemia December 17, 2022
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Recently base editing technology allowed researchers to add several novel modifications to T-cells from a healthy donor. The base edits altered several key markers that identify the immune cells as T-cells. This meant the edited cells were essentially invisible to other T-cells (and themselves, so they wouldn’t kill each other).
Other base edits to the T-cells removed markers that were unique to the donor, turning the cells into a “universal” treatment. Now this treatment can become an off-the-shelf drug given to many patients, in contrast to the slow and expensive personalized nature of current T-cell therapies.
These are enormous changes. The first patient to receive this treatment is completely cured instead of being dead, which was the next stage of her leukemia.
Homework: The Nature article describing the technique. There’s no paper with just this story.
Nanobots Cure Pneumonia in Mice December 13, 2022
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Well, that’s an exciting title, but a trifle misleading. Yes, the mice were fully cured of pneumonia but not by nanobots. It was algal cells whose surfaces are speckled with nanoparticles containing antibiotics. A bit of a cheat I admit, but I would never have thought of it. The algal cells migrate through the lungs delivering antibiotics (actually the cell membranes of neutrophiles, which I also would not have thought to do). Looks like this:
Pretty slick, right? The big green bit is the algal cell itself and the crumbly crust is the added cell membranes. The researchers (Wang and Zhang) treated the infected mice directly through their windpipes. Some were treated with this nanobots and got well in a week. The untreated mice died in three days.
I’ve had pneumonia twice; I know how they feel.
Homework: “Nanoparticle-modified microrobots for in vivo antibiotic delivery to treat acute bacterial pneumonia” by Fangyu Zhang, Jia Zhuang, Zhengxing Li, Hua Gong, Berta Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, Yaou Duan, Qiangzhe Zhang, Jiarong Zhou, Lu Yin, Emil Karshalev, Weiwei Gao, Victor Nizet, Ronnie H. Fang, Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang, 22 September 2022, Nature Materials.
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01360-9
Ant-man’s Camera December 1, 2021
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Oh sure, it needs a nice camera bag. But at least it works well enough for Science.
Chip fabrication in the garage August 24, 2021
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This fellow has succeeded in making a chip prototype in a home setup…not your ordinary garage, it’s true; he’s got equipment I bet you haven’t got. Still, none of it is truly impossible to get if you want to spend a little money.
No title, just watch and see August 20, 2021
Posted by stuffilikenet in 3D Printing, Applications, Awesome, Geek Stuff, Toys, Uncategorizable, Video.add a comment
I really enjoy deadpan delivery and self-deprecating humor and therefore watch Integza on Youtube…but this guy has help with deadpan from his hilariously barely-patient pregnant wife, whose archery skills are really, really good…compared to his especially. Naturally, his competitive nature will not tolerate that…
Local Color January 29, 2021
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Around the corner from me on King Road in San Jose. This is possibly the nicest bit of graffiti in my admittedly suburban neighborhood. In fact, I don’t recall seeing any in my daily 3-6 miles of walking around the neighborhood (old people need lots of exercise to stay fit) except this lovely bit. It is certainly a mutant with the Buddha among the cactus and the Mayan dragon and all.
Purple Perfection January 4, 2021
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Eye Repair December 30, 2020
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There is a lovely article on Hackaday about restoring vision to blind persons which eye can see will be enlightening[0]. It will open your eyes to brilliant possibilities.[1]
[0]Sorry about the puns; I seem to be in a vitreous humor today.
[1]Not really sorry.
COVID Vaccine Info Dump December 30, 2020
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Berthub.eu has an excellent deconstruction of the Pfizer vaccine (“a character-by-character look at the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine”).
You won’t be sorry.
Ju-u-u-ust About There December 30, 2020
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Exciting update:
Ion-propelled Aircraft December 8, 2020
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Yanked from the scripts of Star Trek with embarrassing plagiarism, researchers from MIT have created a proof of concept aircraft propelled by ionic thrust. They have only tested it in a (pretty large) gymnasium, but it’s impressive nonetheless.
Simple in concept[0], a wire with 20Kv ionizes air in front of an airfoil while the oppositely-charged airfoil draws the air over itself:
The amount of thrust generated by this system is pretty small admittedly, so there are several airfoils stacked atop one another to provide enough lift for sustainable flight.
An intriguing design, it is possibly a first step of a solution to the problem of noisy propeller-driven flight. If we imagine a future with drones filling our skies, I sure hope they are quiet[1]
[0] to be honest
[1] unlike my wife’s drone
Stabilizing Perovskites December 3, 2020
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Professor of Chemistry Biwu Ma and his team from Florida State University published a new study that shows if you add a layer of N,N‐bis(tert‐butyloxycarbonyl)‐quinacridone (TBOC‐QA) to a perovskite solar cell, it increases the stability and efficiency of the cell with an efficiency of 18.9% without the layer of pigment to 21.1%. It also seems to have enhanced the durability of the cell (perovskites do poorly in humidity and air).
Better still, this is a pretty simple process from a manufacturing point of view: spray and heat (“surface passivation by annealing”). “We believe that surface passivation of these cells using low-cost pigments is a very promising approach to improving their stability and efficiency,” Ma said.
Homework: Qingquan He et al. Highly Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells Enabled by Low‐Cost Industrial Organic Pigment Coating, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2020). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202012095
Free Time November 22, 2020
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I used to write these posts here about Stuff I Like during my lunchtime before a number of Bad Things happened to me. The Bad Things got steadily worse for awhile, and I got out of the habit of writing frequently. I haven’t posted much in the last few years because of timing issues, moving twice, taking eighteen months off work (partly related to the aforementioned Bad Things) to travel and generally letting writing fall onto a back burner. Don’t forget, this blog started out as just an example for my sister to follow to monetize her medical experience without having to have an actual job; I just got a little carried away.
Well, every once in a while I get enthusiastic enough to rise from my pit of despair to write up more Stuff I Like…like this little gem:
This gent has taken the longest possible route to boot his PC. The writeup is fairly detailed, with GitHub sources and self-mocking humor. I would say more, but I’m only just a little bit out of my pit of despair and I’m not charming nor am I witty lately.
COVID-19 Cracked by A.I. November 7, 2020
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The Summit computer at Oak Ridge has looked at scads and scads of data about Covid and pretty much figured out what Covid is and what to do about it therapeutically. There is an excellent writeup of it on Medium.com which I am not going to plagiarize, but tell you all to read right here.
Stuffilike.net 