Gizmorama

March 2, 2011
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Remove excess moisture & dampness from the air
which reduces mold, mildew & other musty odors!
http://pd.gophercentral.com/u/1104/c/186/a/474
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Good Morning,

An exciting new field of science is purposing that sound can
tell us a lot about our ecosystem... go figure. It's not
every day that a science editor gets the chance to introduce
a whole new field to his or her readers, so this is pretty
significant material! The details on "soundscape ecology"
can be found in the last article. Hopefully I will be up-
dating you on its progress really soon.

Until Next Time,
Erin

Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
Email your comments

P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the new
Gizmorama forum. Check it out here...
http://gizmorama.gophercentral.com
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Radical engine design said more efficient

SAN DIEGO - A California company says its radical design for
an internal combustion engine could increase efficiency and
cut greenhouse gas emissions. The San Diego firm Tour Engine
says it has a solution: Just split the engine in two,
NewScientist.com reported. Conventional engines convert just
30 percent of available energy into motion because of a
design compromise between two conflicting stages, or strokes,
of their cycle: compression and combustion. To efficiently
compress the air and fuel drawn into the engine, its cylin-
ders need to be cool, so a radiator has to constantly draw
energy in the form of heat away from the cylinders. But that
reduces the amount of heat energy available to push the pis-
tons and move the car. Tour Engine's design splits the engine
cylinder into two separate but connected halves -- one cold
and one hot -- connected by a valve. The cold half of the
cylinder houses the intake and compression stages of the
cycle, while the hot half carries out the combustion and
exhaust stages. Separating them allows the size of each to
be better suited to their very different tasks, Tour Engine
says. In a conventional engine, the cylinder is smaller than
is desirable for the combustion stage because smaller means
more efficient compression. This, however, means the burning
air-fuel mixture does not have enough space to expand fully,
so a substantial amount of energy is simply lost as heat
through the exhaust pipe. "In conventional engines you lose
about 40 percent of the available energy to the cooling
system, and about 30 percent to the exhaust," Tour Engine
says. The company says its split cylinder design could in-
crease efficiency by 50 percent.


'Missing' element gives planet birth clues

DAVIS, Calif. - A search for a missing metal in the Earth
could help scientists understand the early stages of planet
formation, U.S. researchers say. Scientists studying the
element chromium have knows for years that the element's
isotopes are relatively underrepresented in the Earth's man-
tle and crust, and the question has been whether they were
volatile and disappeared into space in the planet's early
period or got sucked in the Earth's deep core at some point.
University of California, Davis, geology professor Qing-Zhu
Yin and others compared measurements of chromium isotopes in
meteors with levels found in the Earth's crust. The meteor-
ites studied are from a class called chondrites, left over
from the formation of the solar system more than 4.5 billion
years ago, a UC Davis release said Thursday. From the com-
parisons the researchers were able to determine that some
forms of the element chromium separated and disappeared deep
into the planet's core, and some 65 percent of the "missing"
chromium is most likely in the Earth's core. The separation
must have happened early in the planet building process, the
researchers say, probably in the multiple smaller bodies that
assembled into the Earth or when the Earth was still molten
but smaller than today.


New optical microscope breaks record

MANCHESTER, England - British researchers say they have dev-
eloped a microscope that has broken the record for discerning
the smallest object the eye can see. Scientists at the Uni-
versity of Manchester said the best previous optical micro-
scopes can only see items around one micrometer -- 0.001
millimeters -- clearly. By combining an optical microscope
with a transparent microsphere, dubbed the "microsphere nano-
scope," the Manchester researchers say they can see 20 times
smaller -- down to 50 nanometers -- under normal lighting, a
university release reported Tuesday. This increase in reso-
lution means scientists could potentially examine the inside
of human cells, and examine live viruses for the first time
potentially to see what can combat them. Existing electron
microscopes can see items that tiny but can only see the
surface of a cell rather than examining its structure, and
there is no tool to see a live virus, scientists say. "Theo-
retically, there is no limit on how small an object we will
be able to see," Professor Lin Li of Manchester's School of
Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, said.


Sounds seen as ecology study tool

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A U.S. researcher says a new scien-
tific field will use sound to understand a landscape's
ecology and reconnect people with the importance of natural
sounds. Bryan Pijanowski, a Purdue University professor of
forestry and natural resources, says so-called soundscape
ecology will focus on what sounds can tell people about an
area, a university release reported Tuesday. Natural sound
could be used like a canary in a coal mine, he says, acting
as a critical first indicator of environmental changes.
Sound could be used to detect early changes in climate,
weather patterns, the presence of pollution or other alter-
ations to a landscape, he says. "The dawn and dusk choruses
of birds are very characteristic of a location," Pijanowski
says. "If the intensity or patterns of these choruses change,
there is likely something causing that change." "Ecologists
have ignored how sound that emanates from an area can help
determine what's happening to the ecosystem." Pijanowski
has already begun some soundscape ecology work in various
natural and human-dominated landscapes around Indiana, making
more than 35,000 recordings to characterize the rhythms of
the natural sound and how varying degrees of human develop-
ment affect those rhythms. "As we continue to become more
and more urban, we get used to the urban sounds which are
mostly just noise. We're so used to blocking out noise that
we block out the natural sounds as well," he says.

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