The Zombie Apocalyptic Safe House (are you prepared?)

Have you seen this? How cool is it? This is apparently the Vagabond, a mobile shelter designed by Austen Fleming, winner of Bustler's annual Zombie Apocalypse Safe House competition. Based on the shell of an armadillo, it has reflective camouflage on the outside which is designed to allow it to blend in with the environment, and photovoltaic cells that can provide heat, boil water, and charge electronic devices. It's said to also have a wind-powered ventilator, a water filtration system, and an iPhone compatible tracking device. It can fold up, slinky style so that you can carry it like a backpack!


I'd have to wonder how thick of a shell it is. Surely a zombie could break through it? Either way, it's a very cool concept.

Who You Gonna Call? (not the Ghostbusters)

A little known fact about me: I love ghost hunting shows. There's something about the unknown and maybe finding proof that there is life beyond death that appeals. I'm someone who need answers. I want to know what makes something tick, to dissect the working. So when I watch these ghost hunting shows, I'm always a bit intrigued by the various pieces of "evidence". I'll admit, most of the time, watching those shows, I'm left feeling disappointed because I expect MORE to come from it. Silly of course, but I want a more clear defined...yes there is or no there isn't.

However, sometimes there ARE scientific explanations for what's going on. It's pretty easy to conclude first off that a place that is 'haunted' is going to have more witnesses, more people who say something's going on. It's the lemming effect. If something happens that you can't explain and you've heard stories that something's not quite right, well then you're going to start to believe it and you're going to follow suite and say that what you experienced was paranormal.

Ever wake up unable to move? You might want to say that a ghost is holding you down or whatever, but there are other explanations for this paralysis that doesn't have to be paranormal such as sleep paralysis or hynagogic trance. It's said that most people experience a hypnagogic trance once or twice in their lives, although it is far more common in people with epilepsy or suffer from certain sleep disorders.

Most of the time, however, those who claim to have a ghostly encounter were awake. So then we have to look to other explanations. Some paranormal investigators think that the presence of stronger than normal electronic magnetic fields (EM fields) may be an indication of something supernatural. These fields may come from electronic equipment or geological formations. You'll often see investigators carrying around an EM reader. The first step when finding stronger than normal readings would be to make sure that what you're reading isn't coming from something electronic. Researchers believe that these EM fields can interact with the brain, causing hallucinations, dizziness or other neurological symptoms. They theorize that this is one of the reasons people report more ghostly activity at night, because of the way solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetosphere. Electrical stimulation, for instance, to the angular gyrus of the brain can cause the sensation of someone behind you mimicking your movements. In other parts of the brain, it can cause people to hallucinate or have near death experiences.


All right but if it's just an effect on the brain, what about the cold spots? Those are physical symptoms. Cold spots are a common phenomenon in buildings believed to be haunted. Usually it's described as sudden drops in temperature or localized cold areas in an otherwise warm room, thought to be from the ghost drawing the energy out of the room. Often, however, these can be traced back to specific sources such as a drafty window or a chimney.

There may be one other thing playing tricks on you. Infrasound (an extremely low frequency between .1 -20Hz). At these levels, humans can't hear it, but we can FEEL it. It's believed that a good portion of the population is thought to be hypersensitive to these low frequencies-- causing nausea, extreme fear or awe, anxiety and chills. Researchers also believe it can affect vision by causing vibrations of the eye, making you 'see' things. Infrasound can be produced by storms, strong seasonal winds, weather patterns and some earthquakes.

In 1998, the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research published a paper called ‘The Ghost in the Machine’ by Vic Tandy. It described Tandy’s experiences with infrasound in his lab. While doing some experiments, his coworkers complained of various unknown 'spooky' feelings and chills in his lab. One woman even was said to have seen something. While working late at night, Tandy claimed to have had the feeling of being watched and catching the figure of something at the edge of his vision, but when he turned, there was nothing. When he brought in a fencing foil to repair, it started to vibrate. As he moved the blade around the room, it began to vibrate more strongly in the centre of the lab and at the edge of the room, stopped. He discovered that there was a 19Hz standing wave in his lab and that the walls had caused the sound waves to double back on itself, producing an area with enough energy to vibrate the blade. The source of this wave was a newly installed fan. When turned off, all phenomena associated with it stopped.

There are many natural reasons for paranormal activity if you know about it and where to look. What others can you think of?

If the Dead Could Speak



Photo by: AP

 This article isn't new, but I found it recently and the musecrack just sparkles in it. It's about an archaeological site in the walled port of Acre, where the alleys of an Ottoman-era town is being rediscovered after it was found uniquely intact underground.

"Etched in plaster on one wall was a coat of arms — graffiti left by a medieval traveler. Nearby was a main street of cobblestones and a row of shops that once sold clay figurines and ampules for holy water, popular souvenirs for pilgrims."

Used by residents in 1291, (the year a Muslim army from Egypt defeated Acre's Christian garrison) these items and more were preserved in this town, under an existing city built by the Ottoman Turks around 1750.

Under Christian rule, the city became an unruly trading hub to combative orders of soldier-monks, European factions that distrusted each other, and competing merchants, all sharing an enclosed area that was barely the size of two football fields. In 1216, a french bishop went to the town and wrote about the murders that took place constantly, the prostitutes and all the residents he believed to be outlaws who'd fled their own lands.

He described Acre “like a monster or a beast having nine heads, each fighting the other.”

In the 1990s, Israeli excavations got under way. They found the Hospitaller knights, with its pillared dining hall and storerooms, an orderly latrine and a dungeon with stone walls that still had holes for shackles. Also found was a passage constructed by the knights of the rival Templar order, leading from their own fortress to the port. Underwater digs in Acre's harbor revealed sunken fortifications and more than 20 lost ships, some armed with cannons and special weapons to shred enemy sails that dated to Napoleon Bonaparte's failed siege of the city in 1799. 

It’s like Pompeii of Roman times — it’s a complete city,” said Eliezer Stern, the Israeli archaeologist in charge of Acre.
Can you just imagine the stories that must have come out of a place like this? What was life like to be there? We have some idea from the french bishop, but what about when the city fell?

Next Stage in Human Evolution?

Remember the shapeshifter on Supernatural? Shapeshifters are individuals who their form so that they appear as something else--whether it's a living or dead person, or animal form. In the entertainment world, most are shown able to shift within their own skin, without losing their clothes, while in lore shapeshifting can speak of the individual having to shed their skin, nails, teeth...everything before transforming. If you watch Supernatural, they've had quite a few episodes featuring these paranormal beings, including a shapeshifter that took on the form of Dean. One way to distinguish who is one and who isn't (according to Supernatural) is a retinal flare that shows up when they are filmed.

Made up, right?

Meet Nong Yongsui. Okay granted, probably not a shapeshifter, but this young boy is unique. What's different about him isn't his blue eyes but the fact that:

“In the dark Nong’s eyes would emit a kind of blue-green light when shone upon by a flash light — his eyes were just like cat eyes.”

It's said that he has been born with night vision. It's said that his vision can be blurred during daylight when the sun is bright, but at night, he can do anything without needing a flashlight, even answer questions handed to him in the dark or catch crickets. Night vision happens in nocturnal animals by a thin layer of cells called the tapetum lucidum. This layer creates a retroreflector, meaning that when light hits the tapetum, it's reflected back.

No matter what you think, it's pretty cool if it's real. What do you think is going on with this boy? Do you believe something's changing our evolutionary path?

First step at Star Trek's Replicator

I would be the first to admit that having a replicator like that on Star Trek would be awesome. Can you just imagine? You wouldn't have to cook or bake (yes, there's freezer already made meals and delivery, but that still takes time). All you'd have to do is press on the button for what you want and voila, instant meal delivered straight to you. Granted, right now, it'd probably taste like cardboard but still.


One of the coolest things in development right now (there are some already out there and have been for the last decade), is 3D printing. So you'd take a 3D image on the computer and send it to this device and it'd 'print' it in 3D before your eyes like magic. The ones that are available right now apparently cost over $15,000, mostly used by companies (automotive, aerospace, footwear, jewelery), that need to develop a 3D version of their product out of plastics and other material.


It's even foreseen that in the future, 3D printing will reproduce replacement organs. Currently, tissues such as skin, muscles and short stretches of blood vessels can be made. Even bones have been printed. With more research, however, it should be possible to create bigger and more complex body parts. These printers work by depositing droplets of polymer which fuse together to form a structure. Voids in the structure and complex shapes are supported by printing a scaffold of water-soluble material and then once the product is complete, the scaffold is washed away. Researchers found that when small clusters of cells are placed next to each other, they fuse together and organize themselves. Various techniques are also being explored to condition the cells to mature into functioning body parts (for example, exercising muscles using small machines).


Though printing organs is new, growing them from scratch on scaffolds has already been done in 2006 in which new bladders were created for some patients and are still working. Some researchers think machines like this may one day be capable of printing tissues and organs directly into the body.

This, as far as I'm concerned, is the tip of the iceberg. If they can already accomplish some of these things, anything can be done in the future with one of these printers. As an author, I see the musecrack there, but also, the marketing potential. What would you do with one?

Hic Sunt Dracones (aka Here be Dragons)

We find dragons in various religions and cultures around the world, often revered as representatives of the primal forces of nature, religion and the universe. Usually, dragons are associated with wisdom and longevity, sometimes possessing some form of magic or other supernatural power. We all know movie and television's version of dragons--typically reptilian or serpentine in trait with large wings and sometimes horns. They may even breathe fire. With the discovery of how pterosaurs walked on ground, some dragons have been portrayed without front legs and using the wings instead as front legs.

The word dragon entered the english language in early 13th century. Derived from the Latin word draconem meaning "huge serpent, dragon," and from the Greek word δράκων, drakon meaning "serpent, giant seafish". The Greek and Latin term referred to any great serpents, not necessarily mythological. This usage was also used in English up to the 18th century.

While those may have been ancient depictions, populated by Hollywood and the imagination, there are a few real live "dragons" alive today. They don't breathe fire or are larger than a house, but they are very cool nevertheless and look like little dragons.

image credit: redbubble.com

The first is what's called a glaucus atlanticus or the blue sea slug often found in the temperate and tropical waters. It is a member of a new species called nudibranch which is a marine snail that lost is shell back in early evolutionary history. There are more than 3,000 species and are known for their elaborate patterns and vibrant colours. It floats on the surface of the water with the aid of a gas filled sac in its stomach. Because of the location of the sac, this little slug floats upside down. They feed on the venomous Portuguese Man o' War Physalia physalis; the by-the-wind-sailor Velella velella; the blue button Porpita porpita; and the violet snail, Janthina janthina. They survive by collecting the animal's toxins and storing them in littel sacs on the ends of their feather-like "fingers", producing a much more powerful and deadly sting.

The second is the gliding lizard, belonging to the genus Draco. This little guy looks more like the mythological creature. There are more than 45 species, ranging in size from 7-15 cm in length and are native to Southeast Asia.

The wings of the lizards are actually a rearranged rib cage in which one of the primary functions is to allow them to glide. By elongating their extended movable ribs, spanning the large flap of skin between their limbs, these arboreal reptiles can glide distances of over 60 meters. They also have a small set of flaps on their neck that serve as a horizontal stabilizer and a rudder-like tail to steer.

Not exactly creatures of legend, but still. What about the mythology of dragons do you like? What intrigues you?

Vampire Burials vs the Science of Decomposition

Vampires or zombies? What were our ancestors trying to keep from reviving? In my post about Zombie: Historical Accounts, I talked about how 8th century medieval skeletons were unearthed with large rocks wedged in their mouth (one where, to a point, the jaw was dislocated to fit the rock). Initially, archaeologists thought that it was a vampire-slaying ritual. During the Black Death, it was believed that vampires spread the plague. A rock in the mouth was thought to be a disease-blocking method to ensure the vampires didn't wake to continue spreading the plague. However, because the belief of vampires didn't emerge until the 1500s, the theory was disregarded and it was thought that maybe the stones was simply a barrier to stop the dead from coming back.

I'd wondered why people back then thought it was vampires. Well, in 2006, a 16th-century woman was unearthed in a mass grave near Venice among some graves of plague victims. The woman also had a stone in her mouth, a "vampire".

But why did the people during the Middles believe in vampires? Well, apparently the "first recorded use of the term vampire was to refer to a Russian prince that scientists now believe may have been suffering from rabies. At some point the Bohemians switched to driving a stake through the hearts of vampires, but in the early period burials with a stone in the mouth were the accepted 'cure' to prevent them coming back to life."

During early burials, vampires were "recognized" probably because of decomposition, a phenomenon not understood back then. When the body decays, the stomach releases a dark "purge of fluid". Bloodlike, this liquid can flow from the corpse's nose and mouth. Often the burial grounds were reopened during the plague to add new bodies, a way to recycle graves. Gravediggers would have seen the decomposing remains and may have been confused the purge of fluid for the blood of the vampire's "victim".

Not only was there this "purge" that they thought was evidence, but sometimes the shroud near the corpse's mouth was torn, giving the impression that the dead was chewing through the cloth. In reality, the fluid expelled from the body sometimes moistened the shroud, causing it to sag into the jaw.

Vampires were thought by some to be the causes of plagues, and the superstition took root that shroud-chewing was the "magical way" that vampires infected people, Borrini said.

Inserting objects, then, such as the stones, into the mouths of alleged vampires was thought to halt the spread of disease.

Unlocking the Human Genome for the Creation of Psychics

Did you know that we have, on average, 3,000,000,000 DNA bases in our genome? How about if you unwrapped the DNA in all your cells it would reach to the moon 6000 times? Or that 99.9% of our DNA is the same as that of every other human?

I love genetics. In fact, I almost continued my biology and anthropology schooling to take Ancient DNA Studies. While I didn't keep up with my studies in it, simply leaving with a Bachelors of Honors in Biology and Anthropology, my writing often takes a scientific turn. 

In 2000 a rough draft of of a map of the entire human genome was completed; and then in 2003 the final draft was complete. While there are things we still don't know about what genes do what, this map has made it possible to better understand the causes and functions of disease, as well as create better preventative medicines. 

In Hunting the Shadows, my writing is heavily influenced by genetic manipulation. Using a virus as a vector, the scientists in my book create mutations (with the help of radiation) to reawaken locked up psychic abilities.

From Wikipedia: A viral vector is a tool commonly used by molecular biologists to deliver genetic material into cells. This process can be performed inside a living organism (in vivo) or in cell culture (in vitro). Viruses have evolved specialized molecular mechanisms to efficiently transport their genomes inside the cells they infect. Delivery of genes by a virus is termed transduction and the infected cells are described as transduced.

I love that anything can be possible. Yes, there are restraints, but writing paranormal means that I can stretch those limits a bit more. In the case of my characters, well, these abilities are a part of their daily lives and I try to explain as much as possible how that affects them. Their strengths as well as their problems. It's not something they can learn over night how to control. It takes years of hard training...and sometimes, that's not enough.

What do you think about psychic abilities? If you could have any ability, what would you want?

How to pull of an art heist...or how scientists have created a time-masking cloak

In a popular comparison: an art heist takes place in a crowded museum--before your eyes and surveillance cameras. you don't see the thief, not even the actual taking of the painting. The opportunities would be staggering...and scary, but this is exactly what scientists at Cornell U are claiming to have done. Not the actual heist, but creating a time cloak that hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second.

While other invisibility cloaks created move light beams away from an object (like making an armored tank disappear or nanotubes creating a mirage), the Cornell team (backed by the Pentagon) found a way to alter how fast the light moves, changing the dimension in time, not space. By doing this, it makes it appear to the human eye or surveillance cameras (or even laser security beams) that an event isn't happening.

"You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place," said study co-author Alexander Gaeta, director of Cornell's School of Applied and Engineering Physics. "You just don't know that anything ever happened."

This 'hole in time' is created using fiber optics as light moves inside a fiber thinner than a human hair. The scientists shoot the beam of light out. With other beams, they create a time lens that splits the light into two different speed beams that create the effect of invisibility by being too fast or too slow.

In the diagram a laser beam passes through a "split-time lens" - a specially designed waveguide that bumps up the wavelength for a while then suddenly bumps it down. The signal then passes through a filter that slows down the higher-wavelength part of the signal, creating a gap in which the cloaked event takes place. A second filter works in the opposite way from the first, letting the lower wavelength catch up, and a final split-time lens brings the beam back to the original wavelength, leaving no trace of what happened during the gap. (Image and Caption via Cornell University)

"It is significant because it opens up a whole new realm to ideas involving invisibility," McCall said

Click to watch a time cloaking simulation:



If you had such technology, what would you do with it?

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

1. World's tiniest steam engine built
2. God particle: why Cern scientists have been using the Large Hadron Collider to find it
3. What's your sound perfume?
4. Brain-controlled computer tracks attention
5. Big Question for 2012: The Great Pyramid Secret Doors
6. 'Matrix-style' learning implants new skills in brains
7. Ultrathin, foldable sensors probe secrets of the brain
8. Crusader's Arabic Inscription No Longer Lost in Translation
9. Students Preserve Revolutionary War Shipwrecks
10. Light Me Up, Buttercup
11. Ancient Fish Takes a Walk
12. Student Innovators Hack Kinetic and Cancer to Win $100,000
13. They guppy: newest top predator?

What would you like to see in 2012?

2012 is approaching so I thought I'd open up the floor to you guys. I'm going to be re-arranging a few things next year, but want to keep this spot open for paranormal and science things. I thought though that I would give you guys a say. What would you like to see in this paranormal/science spot in the coming new year? Anything in particular you'd like to see explained?

I'm going to leave you guys with a cool vampire hunting kit that was used in the approx 1890s. The kit includes: crucifix, stake, mallet, hatchet, German stamped letter to the mother of deceased victim, signed new testament bible by hunter Andrew Kauffman along with picture of victim, pliers, Remington derringer pistol, rosary, syringe, garlic extract, sulphur, hair from destroyed vampire, pulled fangs of destroyed vampire & holy oil.

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

1. First mini-earth may have been spotted
2. New dinosaur species discovered in Natural History Museum after nearly a century
3. A 3D printer
4. Plasma could cure the common cold
5. Intelligence agency recruits spies with online code
6. Forget antibiotics, try nanoparticles instead
7. Morphing mirror could clear the skies for astronomers
8. Ultrathin, foldable sensors probe secrets of the brain
9. First superpredator had enormous eyes on stalks
10. Earliest animals looked like baseballs
11. Woolly mammoth to be cloned
12. Why aren't we smarter? Evolutionary limits on cognition
13. Acquired traits can be inherited via small RNAs

Star Trek's Holodeck May Indeed Be in our Future

If you've watched Star Trek, you're probably aware of the holodeck. It's like one big simulated reality room where you can interact with "programmed world". It'd be like living in your tv and interacting with your favourite characters. You become part of that story. That world.

I'm not sure about you, but I've been waiting for the day when a holodeck-like virtual reality system was created. Just think what you could do...you could travel the world without ever having to leave your livingroom! Ok, I'd still want to go, but it'd still be pretty cool. It could be a very cool way for authors to learn about a new subject they're writing about.

Well a a holodeck may not be too far off. A couple of companies in Britain have started to work on something similar using a bunch of projectors, Sony Move controllers, and some creative visual tricks. What they do is project the images on the walls in a way to adjust to the geometry of the objects in the room (such as the couch in the video or the box), creating the illusion that the surface itself has changed. The controllers are attached to the camera and the position is fed back to the projectors in real time, allowing the projectors to adjust for the distortion of the image. This lets the camera move around, adding to the three-dimensional effect.

Sony Europe, Studio Output and Marshmallow Laser Feast shot three web videos to highlight the immersiveness of movies rented or purchased from the PlayStation Store. In the videos, all were made with just one take and no postproduction work. The effects look apparently nearly as good (and cheaper) and could even be used to replace the CGI technology used in the film industry that created Avatar.

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

1. What did Australopithecines sound like?
2. 'Twine' lets everyday objects speak to us
3. Stonehenge reveals new clues of ancient worship
4. 'Language gene' may influence learning too
5. To self-diagnose, spit on iPhone
6. Squidbot could limbo into dangerous places
7. Electronic contact lens displays pixels on eyes
8. Alzheimer's damage reversed by deep brain stimulation
9. Neutrinos and multiverses: a new cosmology beckons
10. One of the universe's fiercest black holes is hiding inside this galaxy
11. The world's oldest known heliocentric model is completely backwards
12. Why does going somewhere take longer than coming back
13. Why sleeping on a problem is best

Are you a chimera?

Thousands of years ago, the Greek poet ­Homer wrote about a specific monster with the chest of a lion, the tail of a snake, the midsection of a goat and heads of all three animals. While this is only mythology, and an exaggerated version at that, there are many natural-borne chimeras around today that we may not even know about.

What is a chimera?

From wiki: a chimera is a single organism (usually an animal) that is composed of two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated from different zygotes. Chimeras are formed from four parent cells (two fertilized eggs or early embryos fused together). Each population of cells keeps its own character, resulting in an organism of mixed tissues. Usually, the condition is inherited, but may also be acquired through the infusion of allogeneic hematopoeitic cells (this happens through transplantation or transfusion). The likelihood of offspring being a chimera is increased if it is created via in vitro fertilization.

There is also a form of congenital chimerism (tetragmetic chimerism). In this way, chimerism occurs through the fertilization of two separate ova by two sperm. The two usually then fuse together at the blastocyst or zygote stage. What results is an organism with intermingled DNA. As the organism develops, it can come to possess organs that have different sets of DNA (i.e. it may have the liver composed of one DNA and a kidney of another. It may even have two different blood types). In CSI (the original), this was a particular key plot in "Bloodlines".

The difference in phenotypes may be subtle (e.g., having one eye a different colour from the other, etc.) or completely undetectable. Chimeras may also show, under a certain spectrum of UV light, distinctive marks on the back resembling that of arrow points pointing downwards from the shoulders down to the lower back in what is called Blaschko's lines.

Blaschko lines form from the fact that chimeras start out with two different cells, each with different DNA (and therefore different instructions). The skin of the person is therefore made up of two different sets of instructions on how to colour the skin. The Blaschko's lines result from the fact that some of a chimera's skin cells say to make darker skin and some say to make lighter.

When there is a big difference between the two DNA's instructions on how dark to make the skin, then you get obvious Blaschko's lines. If the differences are subtle, then you may not be able to see the pattern without the aid of an UV light.

While not as rare as once believed, chimeras may be identified by finding two different populations of red cells, or if the zygotes were of opposite sex, either ambiguous genitalia or hermaphroditism (alone or in combination).

In 2003, scientists had begun to blur the lines of chimerism-producing animal-human hybrids-when Chinese scientists at Shanghai Second Medical University successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. While the embryos were successful, after several days of being allowed to develop in a laboratory dish, they were destroyed so that the stem cells could be harvested. And in 2004, pigs were created with human blood.

Why?

Because scientists believe that the more human-like the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

What do you think about chimeras?

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities links

1. Bionic contact lens 'to project emails before eyes'
2. Faster-than-light neutrino results queried
3. 15 infant dinosaurs discovered in crowded nest
4. First teeth grew outside the body
5. Climate may have doomed Neandertals
6. Walking through doorways make you forget
7. Insect cyborgs may be the first responders: search and monitor hazardous place
8. Smart swarms of bacteria inspire robotics: Adaptable decision-making found in bacteria communities
9. Ancient skull found in China may be oldest evidence of violence between humans
10. Discovery of a new muscle repair gene
11. Key to aging? Key molecular switch for telomere extension by telomerase identified
12. Psychopaths' brains show differences in structure and function
13. Key gene function against cell death discovered

Why invisibility cloaks may be in our future

At one point, even just the idea of having the ability of invisibility was a fictional concept. But what if you really could? Would you use the ability for good or evil? This is something Cian, one of my characters, has to deal with. After an experiment goes wrong and he finds himself invisible to the world, at first, he finds it fun...until time passes and loneliness kicks in.

But what if you didn't have to be 'changed' to be invisible? What if you just had to put on a cloak to be hidden from the world? If you've watched Harry Potter, Harry receives one as a gift that he uses to sneak around Hogwarts.

While the first invisibility cloaks worked at microwave frequencies, physicists have found a way to create a cloak that works by hiding events in time. It's made possible because of a duality between space and time in electromagnetic theory (or rather-- the diffraction of a beam of light in space in mathematically equivalent to the temporal propagation of light through a dispersive medium). Like a lens focusing light in space using diffraction, it's also possible to use dispersion to make a lens that focuses in time.

Such a time-lens can be made using an electro-optic modulator, for example, and has a variety of familiar properties. "This time-lens can, for example, magnify or compress in time," say Fridman and co.

The trick, the physicists realized to creating a temporal cloak, was to place two time-lenses in series and then send a beam of light through them, compressing the light in time while the second decompresses it again. For a short period of time, they found that there's a hole in time where to the observer, because of the light coming out of the second time-lens, it appears undistorted as if nothing occurred. However, this method has some limitations, such as lasting only for 110 nanoseconds.

A second method was found more recently in which, researchers From the University of Texas created a cloak, using the technique of a mirage effect to hide objects from view, even creating an on and off switch to make it work.

A mirage effect is naturally occurring in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects. It can happen, for instance, when there's a big change in temperature over a small distance, bending the rays so that they are sent toward the eye rather than bouncing off the surface.

So if you see a pool of blue water in the middle of the desert it’s just the blue sky being redirected from the warm ground and sent directly into your eye. Your brain swaps this mad image out for something more sensible: a pool of water.

The scientists decided to find a material that would have an ability to conduct heat and quickly transfer it to surrounding areas to mimic the light-distorting temperature gradients of the desert. What they found was that sheets of carbon nanotubes that are one molecule thick, wrapped into cylindrical tubes, have a density of air but the strength of steel. Because they are also excellent conductors, the scientists believed that they would make the ideal material to create this mirage effect. Through electrical stimulation, the transparent sheet of nanotubes were quickly heated to high temperatures, transferring the heat to its surrounding areas. This caused the light rays to bend away from the object that was concealed behind the device, making it appear invisible.

"We really can hide objects. ... We can switch for a short moment and make it disappear," said Ali Aliev, a physicist at UTD.

While the technology is limited to the lab at the moment, researchers hope that in time the material could be used to hide large objects, such as military tanks. This still doesn't mean, however, that a human could wear such a device. At this time. But if something was created for a human to actually wear, what would you do with it?

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

1. Mimicking the brain -- in silicon: new computer chip models how neurons communicate
2. Fossilized skin reveals ancient predator's sharklike move
3. Toyota introduces robots that helps patients walk again
4. Hubble discovers tiny galaxies bursting with starbirth in early universe
5. A rare survivor from the birth of Earth
6. A realistic look at the promises and perils of nanomedicine
7. New "smart" material could help tap medical potential of tissue-penetrating light
8. Archeologists discover huge ancient Greek commercial area on island of Sicily
9. Why your hips don't lie
10. Reading the brain: Mind-boggling
11. Real-Life Inception: Army looks to 'counteract nightmares' with digital dreams
12. Antarctica's "Ghost" Mountains Explained
13. "Great Lakes" discovered on Jupiter Moon?

Beam me up Scotty!... or why everyone on Star Trek is a clone

While I'm still holding out for a car that drives itself (I don't just mean to park by itself but to also navigate the roads) to come on the market, I daydream constantly about having the ability of teleportation. Just imagine--you blink and you're at your destination a second later. Awesome right? No waiting in traffic. No having to pay for gas or insurance. But best of all, you'd be able to sleep and still be at work in time.

I was watching Jumper on Saturday night and if you haven't watched it before, the main character can teleport himself anywhere. Cool right? That is, when he's not being hunted. The idea of teleportation isn't a new one. While in Jumper it was an innate psychic ability that has existed for centuries, in Star Trek, the characters use a machine, a transporter that gets them to one place to another by dispersing the molecules in their bodies to another location.

But is it possible? Can a person successfully disappear and then reappear intact and alive?

Historically, the earliest mention of teleportation can be found in religious texts. Teleportation then found mention in a 1877 in a science fiction story by Edward Page Mitchell and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel on it called The Disintegration Machine. The word teleportation, however, wasn't coined until 1931 by author Charles Fort in his book, Lo! Since then, it has not only been used in Star Trek, but Stargate Atlantis and even Heroes and movies like the Fly and Jumper. While the ability varies depending on what you're watching (psychic ability vs some kind of technology that allows it), the same physics would apply.

While Newton's theory states that teleportation is impossible (objects don't move until they are pushed and cannot suddenly disappear and then reappear somewhere else), in 1925 Erwin Schrodinger and colleagues developed the quantum theory, overthrowing Newton's laws after 250 years. After analyzing the properties of atoms, they discovered that electrons acted like waves and could make quantum leaps in their seemingly chaotic motion within the atom.

In order for this to make sense, I need to explain what is called an EPR (Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen) experiment. In 1935 they proposed that if two electrons are vibrating in unison they remain in wavelike synchronization even if separated by distance because of an invisible Schrodinger wave connecting both of them. If something happens to one electron, some of the information is immediately transmitted to the other in what is called quantum entanglement that was thought to happen faster than the speed of light. Because Einstein didn't think anything could move faster than the speed of light, he thought he'd proven that quantum theory was wrong. But in 1980 Alan Aspect and colleagues performed an experiment that measured the spin of photons and agreed with the quantum theory.

Everything changed in 1993, when scientists had their first success, proving that it was physically possible to teleport objects, at least on an atomic level using the EPR experiment. A research team at IBM, led by Charles Bennett, confirmed that quantum teleportation (the transmission of characteristics--that is, the quantum state of a particular photon, or particle of light--from one place to another) was possible, but only if the original object was destroyed. While the original was destroyed, every distinguishing feature is re-created at the new location. Even now physicists have only been able to teleport particles of light and atoms over a distance.

In 2002, researchers in Australia successfully teleported a laser beam, but the most recent successful teleportation experiment happened in 2006 at the Niels Bohr Institute where Dr. Eugene Polzik and his team teleported information stored in a laser beam into a cloud of atoms.

While we have had some successes, we are far away from creating anything that could transport a human from one spot to another. From HowStuffWorks, "For a person to be transported, a machine would have to be built that could analyze all the atoms that make up the human body. The machine would then have to send this information to another location, where the person's body would be reconstructed with exact precision. Molecules couldn't be even a millimeter out of place, lest the person arrive with some severe neurological or physiological defect." If we go with what happened above where information was copied in the attached, electron, we would have to assume that the machine would act like a fax machine and duplicate the person on the receiving end, possibly destroying the original, thereby "killing" the person.

While teleportation isn't possible today, it would make an interesting sci-fi novel. If the original person was destroyed and a clone made, would that clone be EXACTLY like the original. Sure, it would have the same memories and emotions and whatnot, but what if things go wrong? Is the the person really dead since he/she has been cloned? What do you think?

Thursday 13: Round up of Science /Humanities

1. Water shifting to a new kind of liquid
2. What the brain sees when the eye looks away
3. Which way you lean (physically) affects your decision making
4. We all experience fantasy differently
5. Brain parasite directly alters brain chemistry
6. Re-programmable cells could be key to creating new life forms
7. Cyborgs may be sci-fi but brain-computer interfacing is real
8. New procedure to turn brown eyes blue
9. Skin sees sunlight to trigger tanning
10. Periodic table adds three new elements
11. 66 leg predator roamed ancient BC sea floor
12. First brain image of a dream created
13. Humans' entry into Europe pushed earlier