Welcome To The Lab Of An Apollo Computer Anatomist

The Lab Of An Apollo Computer Anatomist

Blanche in her workshop.
Photograph by Ray Lego

Fran Blanche’s workshop is more than a place to unwind. It’s home. “I put a bed in my office,” she says. Her fashion business is downstairs; upstairs is a music studio and a laboratory with 30 years’ worth of tools. A private collector recently asked Blanche to study part of his Apollo-era Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC), which NASA designed to fly a Saturn V rocket. “All modern boards would come to emulate it,” Blanche says. “Trouble is, there’s no information about how it was constructed.”

Blanche's workshop in detail.
Photograph by Fran Blanche

1) Tektronix 564B oscilloscope. Blanche owns two, and they help her examine DC- and audio-frequency signals.

2) Articulated dental-exam lamp. Designed in the 1940s, the lamp has a tightly focused beam that gives Blanche a clear view of a project from any angle.

3) Homemade adjustable DC-power supply. Whatever current and voltage a project requires, Blanche’s custom-built device can usually provide it.

4) Heathkit 5-watt resistor substitution box. No schematic is perfect. This device helps test various resistances in a circuit before installing the real deal.

5) 25-watt Weller soldering iron. “I have used this iron since 1978, and it has never failed,” says Blanche.

One of LVDC's page-assembly boards.
Photograph by Fran Blanche
Saturn vs. LVDC: The launch-computer assembly could autopilot Apollo’s 363-foot-tall, 6.2-million-pound Saturn V rockets. Dozens of page-assembly boards like this one comprised each of the LVDC’s three computers. By carefully dissecting a board, Blanche uncovers its components and construction methods.

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Eight years ago, doctors took nasal tissue samples
and grafted them onto the spines of 20
quadriplegics. The idea was that stem cells within
the nasal tissue might turn into neurons that could

help repair the damaged spinal cord, and the
experiment actually worked a few of the patients,
who regained a little bit of sensation. But it didn't
go well for one woman in particular, who not only
didn't experience any abatement in her paralysis,
but recently started feeling pain at the site of the
implant. When doctors took a closer look, they
realized she was growing the beginnings of a nose
on her spine, New Scientist reports.
The surgeons removed a 3-centimeter-
long growth, which was found to be
mainly nasal tissue, as well as bits of
bone and tiny nerve branches that had
not connected with the spinal nerves.
The growth wasn't cancerous, but it
was secreting a "thick copious mucus-
like material", which is probably why it
was pressing painfully on her spine,
says Brian Dlouhy at the University of
Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City,
the neurosurgeon who removed the
growth.
This is hardly the first case of adverse side effects
from a stem cell transplant. The New Scientist
article points to several cases where people
developed tumors after participating in clinical
trials—including one 50-year-old man who, after
receiving an experimental treatment for
Parkinson's disease, developed a brain tumor
with hairs and cartilage embedded within it.
The nasal tissue experiment took place at a
mainstream hospital in Portugal, and there are
thousands of legitimate stem cell trials taking place
all over the world, but so far only a few stem cell
therapies have been approved by the FDA. Stem
cells have the potential to treat everything from
baldness and diabetes to cardiovascular disease
and Parkinson's. But stem cells, some of which can
differentiate into almost any cell in the body, also
have the potential to cause harm.
That hasn't stopped private companies from
peddling unproven stem cell therapies that
haven't been properly tested for safety, may not
be effective, and can have dangerous
consequences. One woman in Los Angel es, for
example, spent $20,000 on a wacky cosmetic
procedure that took stem cells from her belly and
injected them into her face. She later grew an
extra bone that prevented her from opening her
eye and scratched up her eyeball. Scientists
surgically removed the extra bone in 2012.
Attempts to shut down the scientifically invalid
(and possibly fraudulent) companies have met
with resistance from patients.

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Is IBM Making Plans For The End Of Silicon?

Is IBM Making Plans For The End Of Silicon?

As chips get smaller, chipmakers investigate new methods and materials.
IBM is putting $3 billion towards new chip research. Christina Welsh/Flickr
Since the computer age began, microchips have consistently been shrunk to smaller and smaller sizes. Moore’s Law, articulated in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, predicts, fairly accurately to date, that the number of transistors we can fit on a microchip will double every 18 to 24 months, constantly increasing computer speed and efficiency. Many computer scientists and engineers, however, believe we will soon reach a point where the traditional chip circuitry made of silicon will be too microscopic to work reliably.
So what’s going to happen? No one is sure yet, but chipmakers are already making moves to safeguard the future of hardware development. This week, IBM announced plans to allocate $3 billion over five years to chip research. While the company's overall R&D expenditures will remain the same, there is a new focus not only on miniaturizing circuitry to 7 nanometers, but also on replacing silicon chips with alternative technologies.

Georgia Tech computer scientist Tom Conte tells Popular Science that 7-nanometer transistors are “basically the size of large atoms. There are a lot of unknown quantum effects” that can’t be controlled, so chipmakers can’t guarantee reliable function.

Intel can currently make transistors at 22 nanometers wide, and plans to offer 14 nanometers next year. Moore’s Law has generally held true -- we've been increasing the number of transistors on chips for decades now. But according to Conte, "there's been no big benefit for a while now." From 1994 to 1998, maximum CPU clock speeds rose by 300 percent. Between 2007 to 2011, those speeds increased by a mere 33 percent.

Conte predicts “silicon’s days are numbered. We’ve hit a place where we need to step back and rethink how we design computers.” IBM seems to agree. Their recent announcement cited several different burgeoning technologies that could lead to breakthroughs in chip development, making them not only smaller, but also more efficient and more reliable.

One is quantum computing, where the goal is to increase a computer's operational capabilities. Tradidtional bits of information have values of only 0 or 1, but quantum bits can hold values of 0, 1, or both at the same time, enabling a system to process millions of calculations at the same time.

Another option is to pursue neurosynaptic computing, which uses circuitry that is “based on the structures we see in the brain,” says Conte. The idea is to make computers emulate certain processes that neurological systems excel at, like pattern detection.

Nanophotonics (also known as silicon photonics) process information using pulses of light rather than electrical signals. In their announcement, IBM expressed hopes that nanophotonics could provide “a super highway for large volumes of data to move at rapid speeds between computer chips in servers.”

The current structure of microchips might also remain the same, save for silicon. Carbon nanotubes – single atomic sheets of carbon rolled up into tubes – reportedly perform better 10 times faster than silicon, and could act a simple replacement for transistor material.

None of these technologies, however, have had enough testing. Furthermore, some experts remain ardently skeptical that silicon is even on its way out. “I wouldn’t bet a dollar on of this stuff,” says MIT computer scientist Srini Devadas. “The quantum stuff is just so far out,” he says, and he doesn’t believe carbon nanotubes or nanophotonics could feasibly compete with silicon in the near future. Transistor miniaturization will probably still slow down considerably once we reach 7 nanometers, but Devadas believes there's still a lot of room for innovation using existing materials. “Why not just develop a variant of silicon that works?” he asks.

Devadas also points out that the $3 billion IBM has pledged is “small peanuts” compared to the hundreds of billions chipmakers like IBM and Intel are already putting into research for silicon innovation. He believes that as silicon transistors continue to shrink, people are anxious to see other technologies usher in a “post-silicon” era, making IBM’s announcement seem more significant than it actually is.

Regardless of how promising other technologies turn out to be, it's pretty clear that silicon is here to stay for at least the next few years. “It’s the incumbent,” says Devadas. “Nothing else can compete.”new science discoveries

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Charge your phone with that white stuff fom the beach, Beach Sand Used To Make A Battery That Lasts Three Times Longer.

Beach Sand Used To Make A Battery That Lasts Three Times Longer

 Beach sand, on the left, and purified sand in the middle. The right image shows vials of the former two, and a third made up of nano-silicon used to make the battery. Scientific Reports
Sink your toes into this: Beach sand can be used to make lithium-ion batteries that last three times longer than current models, according to a study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

“This is the holy
grail: a low-cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium-ion battery anodes,” said Zachary Favors, a graduate student at UC Riverside, in a statement.

The idea came to Favors when he was sitting on the beach after surfing, and realized the material was made up of a high percentage of quartz, or silicon dioxide. Typically the negative side, or anode, of lithium-ion batteries are made with graphite. Silicon has been eyed as a replacement material, since it can store about 10 times more energy--only it's difficult to produce in large quantities and degrades quickly. But perhaps the silicon in sand could provide a cheap, abundant source of silicon.

After finding a reservoir of sand with an even higher fraction of quartz, in Texas, Favors processed it in the lab, as described by Gizmag:

[Favors] ground salt and magnesium into the purified quartz and heated the resulting powder. In this very simple process, the salt acted as a heat absorber while the magnesium removed oxygen from the quartz, resulting in pure silicon. More than that, the pure nano-silicon formed in a very porous, 3D silicon sponge-like consistency. Porosity is one of the keys to improving the performance of battery anodes as it provides a large surface area and allows lithium ions to travel through them more quickly.

The researchers have filed patents for the technology, and used it to produce a coin-sized lithium ion battery. The technology would allow phones to last for about three days on one charge, as opposed to the current average of about one day per charge, according to the business newspaper Mint. Let's hope this technology turns out to be as exciting as it sounds. new science discoveries

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Finally, Really, You're Invited to Help Name Distant Planets

Finally, Really, You're Invited to Help Name Distant Planets

It's a new policy for the International Astronomical Union.  Kepler 22b Kepler-22b, just 2.4 times the size of Earth, is the first planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Scientists do not yet know if the planet has a rocky, gaseous, or liquid composition. It's possible that the world would have clouds in its atmosphere, as depicted here. NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
The world known officially as PSR B1620-26 b orbits a binary star system about 12,000 light-years away.
With an estimated age of 12.7 billion years, PSR B1620-26 b is considered one of the oldest planets in the universe, more than twice as old as our solar system. Astronomers found it in the 1990s because of the tug it exerts on its two stars, a pulsar and a white dwarf.


As a name, PSR B1620-26 b doesn’t exactly have a ring to it, though. Some people instead call it Methuselah, after the oldest living person according to biblical accounts.

Next year, you’ll be able to vote on that name, and maybe have it officially sanctioned by the International Astronomical Union, in a new project under the Zooniverse. This is a big change for the largest astronomy society in the world, and an exciting one for citizen science.

To participate, you have to be involved in an astronomy club or non-profit organization, which can register with the IAU and then submit names for about 30 planets of the IAU’s choosing. Voting will happen next spring and summer, and the IAU will announce the new nicknames at a special ceremony at its 29th General Assembly next August, the biggest astronomy new science discoveries

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The Sound From Ships May Attract Unwanted Critters

The Sound From Ships May Attract Unwanted Critters

 
photo of a U.S. Navy ship
Barnacle Hull House
U.S. Navy via Flickr

A ship at anchor isn't necessarily quiet. Many crews leave their generators on while at anchor, to power refrigerators or

air conditioners. But maybe they should consider shutting down, if they can. The thrum of a ship's generator can attract sea squirt larvae from as far away as 500 meters, according to a new study.

The little larvae are a big problem for ships. Sea squirts, barnacles, algae and other sea creatures that attach themselves permanently to boat hulls create excess drag that the U.S. Navy estimates costs it $250 million a year. The organisms also travel the world this way, spreading to ecosystems where they don't belong. Many groups are working on coatings for ship hulls that discourage hangers-on, but Australian fisheries scientist Justin McDonald recently looked at the problem from a different angle, Australian broadcaster ABC News reports. McDonald studied whether the noises ships make encourage sticky sea creatures.

By recording the sounds of ships at bay, observing where sea squirts attach, and studying sea squirts in the lab, McDonald and his colleagues determined that sound does matter. Coral reefs are actually quite noisy, so the squirt larvae may think grumbling ships are homey reefs, McDonald told ABC. They head toward the sound and settle on the first hard surface they find, and then they're there for life.

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