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Future Think (June 6,
2008) Articles linked to in this post: o Why Men Have Breasts o IBM aims to cool chips with water o New Way To Think About Earth's First Cells o Plan for quake 'warning system' o Discovery Channel Bets on Planet Green - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - June 6, 2008 Why Men Have Breasts http://www.livescience.com/history/080606-hn-manzeer.html - - - Excerpts: ... They have them because men start out as women. As much as men hate to hear this, the human fetal blueprint is initially female. We all begin as a ball of cells that quickly differentiates into various body parts. At five weeks of gestation, the fetus sports a neural tube that eventually becomes the spine, but other than that, we all look like a wad of chewing gum. Then at six weeks' gestation, the outlines of eyes, arms, legs and a face (and let's not mention the tail that also shows up for a while) appear. It's not until about week six that the fetus also begins to takes on the biological accoutrements of gender. If the fetus has a Y chromosome, testoster- one will turn the buds for sexual organs into testes. Once in operation, those testes will pump out even more testosterone and, voila, a penis appears. Female fetuses aren't swayed by testosterone and so they stick with the fallback blueprint that calls for ovaries and a vagina. But the developmental secret here is that breasts and nipples are already in place be- fore testosterone shows its hand and starts shaping cells into male organs. In other words, men have breasts and nipples because they already had them before they became male. But then why didn't evolution opt to remove those seemingly useless female parts? Because evolution doesn't simply wipe out unnecessary physical bits and pieces. Those parts have to be a burden, or be in the way of survival and reproduction for evolution to take notice. Since there's no real caloric cost to men having boobs, evolution has no impetus to erase them. In fact, men's breasts are a good lesson in the higgledy-piggledy way that evolution works. Natural selection chooses for and against body parts, but there is no master plan that aims for the perfect creature. Men have boobs, women get facial hair, and we all stand in front of the mirror asking, "Why?" Each person is, in fact, a Rube Goldberg sort of organism pieced together by biology and made up of good parts, bad parts and parts that are inconsequential. ... - - - end excerpts - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - June 6, 2008 IBM aims to cool chips with water A network of tiny pipes of water could be used to cool next-generation PC chips, researchers at IBM have said. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7439406.stm - - - Excerpts: Graphic: http://tinyurl.com/4vo3zk Scientists at the firm have shown off a prototype device layered with thousands of "hair-width" cooling arteries. They believe it could be a solution to the increasing amount of heat pumped out by chips as they become smaller and more densely packed with components. The technology was demonstrated in IBM's 3D chips, where circuits are stacked one on top of the other. Laying chips vertically, instead of side by side, reduces the distance data has to travel, enhancing performance and saving critical space. ... Cool running Heat is seen as one of the major hurdles of producing ever smaller and quicker chips. It is the by-product of the movement of electrons through the tiny wires connecting the millions of components on a modern processor. As more and more components are packed on to chips - Intel recently launched a pro- cessor with two billion transistors, for example - the problems become worse. As a result, researchers around the world are engaged in a search for the most efficient way to take the heat off the chip industry. For example, in 2007, US researchers built tiny wind engines that created a "breeze" made up of charged particles, or ions, to cool computer chips. But the problems are exacerbated in the multi-storey chips which IBM, as well as others, believe offer "one of the most pro- mising approaches" for building future processors. Each 4cm sq sandwich is just 1mm thick but pumps out close to 1kilowatt - 10 times that generated by a hotplate. Conventional cooling techniques such as fans and heat sinks do not work as well with the 3D technology, particularly as heat has to be drawn away from between the individual chips. To get around this, researchers piped water through sealed tubes just 50 microns (mil- lionths of a metre) in diameter, between individual layers. Water is much more effi- cient than air at absorbing heat and so even with tiny amounts of liquid flowing through the system the researchers saw a significant effect. The idea of pumping liquids around com- puters is not entirely new. Early mainframe computers had water pumped around them. ... IBM has said its water-cooling technology could be in products within five years. - - - end excerpts - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - June 6, 2008 New Way To Think About Earth's First Cells http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080604140959.htm - - - Excerpts: A team of researchers at Harvard University have modeled in the laboratory a primitive cell, or protocell, that is capable of building, copying and containing DNA. Since there are no physical records of what the first primitive cells on Earth looked like, or how they grew and divided, the research team's protocell project offers a useful way to learn about how Earth's earliest cells may have interacted with their environment approximately 3.5 billion years ago. The protocell's fatty acid membrane allows chemical compounds, including the build- ing blocks of DNA, to enter into the cell without the assistance of the protein chan- nels and pumps required by today's highly developed cell membranes. Also unlike modern cells, the protocell does not use enzymes for copying its DNA. ... Some scientists have proposed that ancient hydrothermal vents may have been sites where prebiotic molecules--molecules made before the origin of life, such as fatty acids and amino acids--were formed. When fatty acids are in an aqueous environ- ment, they spontaneously arrange so that their hydrophilic, or water-loving, "heads" interact with the surrounding water mole- cules and their hydrophobic, or water-fear- ing, "tails" are shielded from the water, resulting in the formation of tiny spheres of fatty acids called micelles. Depending upon chemical concentrations and the pH of their environment, micelles can convert into layered membrane sheets or enclosed vesicles. Researchers com- monly use vesicles to model the cellular membranes of protocells. When the team started its work, the re- searchers were not sure that the building blocks required for copying the protocell's genetic material would be able to enter the cell. "By showing that this can happen, and indeed happen quite efficiently, we have come a little closer to our goal of making a functional protocell that, in the right en- vironment, is able to grow and divide on its own." ... - - - end excerpts - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - June 5, 2008 Plan for quake 'warning system' Nasa scientists have said they could be on the verge of a breakthrough in their efforts to forecast earthquakes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7435324.stm - - - Excerpts: Researchers say they have found a close link between electrical disturbances on the edge of our atmosphere and impending quakes on the ground below. Just such a signal was spotted in the days leading up to the recent devastating event in China. They have teamed up with experts in the UK to investigate a possible space-based early warning system. Many in the scientific community remain deeply sceptical about whether such signals are indeed indicators of an approaching earthquake. ... Despite years of searching for earthquake precursors, there is currently no method to reliably predict the time of a future earth- quake. Yet, most scientists agree that some form of early warning system could save tens of thousands of lives. The ionosphere is distinguished from other layers of Earth's atmosphere because it is electrically charged through exposure to solar radiation. On a significant number of occasions, satel- lites have picked up disturbances in this part of the atmosphere 100-600km above areas that have later been hit by earthquakes. One of the most important of these is a fluc- tuation in the density of electrons and other electrically-charged particles in the iono- sphere. ... Early warning One study looked at over 100 earthquakes with magnitudes of 5.0 or larger in Taiwan over several decades. The researchers found that almost all of the earthquakes down to a depth of about 35km were preceded by distinct electrical disturbances in the iono- sphere. ... Though full details have yet to be released, the BBC understands that scientists also observed a "huge" signal in the ionosphere before the Magnitude 7.8 earthquake in China on 12 May. ... - - - end excerpts - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - June 4, 2008 Discovery Channel Bets on Planet Green Seekingalpha.com: http://tinyurl.com/48f48t - - - Excerpts: Discovery ... is going where no company has gone before, betting that green programming will mean big green for its bottom line. Today, Discovery launches Planet Green, replacing its home network with the first 24/7 network dedicated to environmentally- friendly programming. The new buzz word is "eco-tainment" and the company that gave us the highly-rated "Planet Earth" series is betting it'll be in high demand. ... Discovery has snagged some big names who are passionate about the environment to pro- duce and star in shows ... Planet Green is also cashing in on the fact that big companies want to be associated with an eco-friendly message. General Motors (GM) is a lead advertiser and partner for "branded entertainment." ... can branded entertainment work when the channel is combining an auto giant and a green mes- sage? - - - end excerpts - - -
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