Lunar-Resonant Streetlights Syncs with the Moon to Preserve Energy
Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor delivers enough light when it’s shining at its full potential. During a full moon night about 10% of the light of the sun is reflected to our planet, which means we don’t need a streetlight in those days.
But all the lights that are shining on full moon nights are doing nothing but wasting useful energy. They cannot be programmed according to the status of the moon. However, Lunar-Resonant Streetlights will soon be changing that trend. These lights somehow sync with the moon and dim down and turn off completely as the moon waxes. When it’s a new moon, it’ll be fully lit up, showing you the path to go back home. This technique results in an energy-saving of 90-95%.
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After trying out all expensive means to filter water, researchers have resorted back to nature and are using its unique abilities to provide clean water to the masses. “Biosculptures”, as scientists call them, are living sculptures that use the capacity of carefully chosen plants to clean and filter water.
These sculptures can be modified according to their use – at smaller scale they can be used to clean household or office graywater and at larger scale they can be used as parts of water remediation systems for wetlands, rivers, and storm water runoff.
Made of mosses, ferns and other plants that can grow on stone and concrete structures, they provide ecological and aesthetic solutions to water quality and water quantity problems.
Pictured above is “The Gift of water”, which is a wetland filtration system. The hands made of concrete are covered with moss and reach from the bank into the pond. As water flows through these hands, a misting fountain aerates it and moistens the mosses, which then filter the contaminants out of water.
Such systems are much better that other conventionally deployed systems because the waste from the water is converted into life sustaining material by the bacteria present in mosses and clean water is then utilized at other places. All this happens without the need of chlorine and other chemicals which can clean water but are not eco-friendly.
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The Eyes Have It: What Do We See When We Look At Ads?
Science Daily — How do consumers look at advertisements? Most marketing textbooks advance the theory that looking at ads is a predominantly "dumb process," driven by visual stimuli such as the size of the ad or the color of the text.
However, new research by researchers from the Netherlands and the University of Michigan uses eye-tracking software to reveal that it may be our goals -- the tasks we have in mind -- that drive what we pay attention to, even during a few seconds of ad exposure.
In the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, Rik Pieters (Tilburg University, The Netherlands) and Michel Wedel (University of Michigan) perform an eye tracking experiment on 220 consumers. The consumers are split into four groups, each with a different goal, and given free rein to view a series of advertisements.
The study is self-paced -- that is participants are allowed to look at the ads for as long or as short of a time as they would like. Overall, the participants looked at the 17 target ads in the study for an average of about 4 seconds only -- but with notable differences in focus.
Those asked to memorize the ad focused on both the body text and the pictorial representation of the product. Those asked to learn about the brand, on the other hand, paid enhanced attention to the body text but simultaneously ignored the pictorial.
This supports the Yarbus thesis that ad informativeness is goal-contingent. Differences in pupil diameter between ad objects but not between processing goals reflect the pupil's role in maintaining optimal vision.
"The fact that even during the few seconds of self-paced ad exposure, attention patterns already differ markedly between consumers with different goals underlines the importance of controlling and knowing consumers' processing goals in theory building and during advertising pre- and post-testing," the researchers write.
In other words, the eyes are a reflection of consumer goals.
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Functioning Neurons From Human Embryonic Stem Cells Produced
Science Daily — Scientists with the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at UCLA were able to produce from human embryonic stem cells a highly pure, large quantity of functioning neurons that will allow them to create models of and study diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, prefrontal dementia and schizophrenia.
Researchers previously had been able to produce neurons - the impulse-conducting cells in the brain and spinal cord - from human embryonic stem cells. However, the percentage of neurons in the cell culture was not high and the neurons were difficult to isolate from the other cells.
UCLA's Yi Sun, an associate professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Thomas Südhof at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center were able to produce 70 to 80 percent of neurons in cell culture. Sun and Südhof also were able to isolate the neurons and determine that they had a functional synaptic network, which the neurons use to communicate. Because they were functional, the neurons can be used to create a variety of human neurological disease models.
"Previously, the system to grow and isolate neurons was very messy and it was unknown whether those neurons were functioning," Sun said. "We're excited because we have been able to purify so many more neurons out of the cell culture and they were, surprisingly, healthy enough to form synapses. These cells will be excellent for doing gene expression studies and biochemical and protein analyses."
Sun's method prodded human embryonic stem cells to differentiate into neural stem cells, the cells that give rise to neurons. When the time was right, Sun's team added protein growth factors into the cell culture that stopped the neural stem cells from self-renewing and prodded them into differentiating into neurons.
To isolate the cells, Sun and her team added an enzyme that digests a sort of protein matrix that holds cells in culture together. The neurons could then be separated from the neural stem cells that had not yet differentiated, a sort of chemical round-up that isolated the neurons. The cells were then put into a cell strainer that allowed passage through of the isolated neurons.
The large number of pure neurons produced will allow Sun and her team to study their biological form and structure, the genes they express, the development of synapses and the electric and chemical communication activities within the synapse network.
"We will be able to study the cellular properties of neurons in a very defined way that will maybe tell us what goes wrong in diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's," Sun said. "We're currently creating many models of human neurological diseases that may provide the answers we're looking for. We don't know what causes prefrontal dementia, Huntington's disease or schizophrenia. The key is likely in the quality of neuronal communications. By studying the chemical and electrical transmissions, we may be able to determine what goes wrong that leads to these debilitating diseases and find a way to stop or treat it."
Sun will be among the first researchers to be able to study true neuron function.
A second important discovery in Sun's study showed that two embryonic stem cells lines derived in similar manners, and therefore expected to behave similarly when differentiating, did not. Using the same techniques to prod the two embryonic stem cells lines to differentiate, Sun found that one line had a bias to become neurons that are found in the forebrain. The other line differentiated into neurons found in rear portions of the brain and spinal cord. The finding was surprising, and significant, Sun said.
"The realization that not all human embryonic stem cell lines are born equal is critical," Sun said. "If you're studying a disease found in a certain part of the brain, you should use a human embryonic stem cell line that produces the neurons from that region of the brain to get the most accurate results from your study. Huntington's disease, for example, is a forebrain disease, so the neurons should be differentiated from a cell line that is biased to produce neurons from the forebrain."Sun said there are ways to prod an embryonic stem cell line biased to become neurons found in the rear brain to become neurons found in the forebrain. However, there are limits to how much prodding can be done.
Sun and her team confirmed that the two embryonic stem cell lines were different through gene expression analysis -- neurons that perform different functions in different parts of the brain express different genes. The cell line prone to becoming neurons found in the forebrain expressed genes typically found those neurons, while the other line expressed genes found in the rear brain and spinal cord.
Sun and her team now are studying why the two human embryonic stem cell lines have biases to become different types of neurons.
"If we knew that, we might be able to tweak or alter whatever is driving the bias so that limitation in the stem cell line could be bypassed," Sun said.
Study results were recently published in an early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Free Choice + Punishment = Cooperation
By Julie J. Rehmeyer
To get people to cooperate in a venture, make participation voluntary. That's the advice from researchers whose recent study offers a solution to one of the oldest problems in game theory: How can cooperation develop if individuals can do better for themselves by cheating?
In a community garden, for example, the lazy gardener who does nothing may reap as big a share of the produce as the hardest worker.
Such antisocial behavior is reduced if cheaters face consequences. An industrious gardener may deny the slacker his share of the harvest, for example. But that raises another issue. Gardeners who pitch in but don't punish freeloaders may get just as much produce as those who punish, without the risk and trouble of punishing someone.
Short-term self-interest seems to encourage an individual either to cheat or to cooperate but not to punish. In the long run, however, everyone is better off if most people both cooperate and punish. Then cheaters don't profit, the burden of punishing is light, and many people reap the benefits of cooperation. The challenge is at the beginning: How can collective ventures get started if people can't rely on one another to cooperate?
Karl Sigmund of the University of Vienna and his colleagues have now shown that if participation in a joint venture is voluntary rather than mandatory, the odds are higher that individuals will benefit by cooperating. They published their findings in the June 29 Science.
Sigmund and his team created a computer simulation in which computer "agents" act as individuals trying to maximize their profits. Each agent begins with a pot of money and then receives a small fixed income at each step of the game.
Agents may either participate in a risky cooperative venture or sit out. At each round, every agent that participates contributes a set amount to a common pool. The program then adds up the total, increases it by a certain percentage, and splits the money equally among the participants. The catch is that the simulation also allows agents to "cheat" by contributing nothing yet still receive a share of the pool. Another agent may punish the cheaters by forcing them to pay a fine to the computer. However, the agent imposing the fine incurs some expense in doing so.
At the beginning of the game, the researchers randomly assign each agent to be a cheater, a punisher, a cooperator who doesn't punish, or a non-participant. At each new round, the computer again assigns each agent a role. The general strategy is for each agent either to continue with its previous strategy or to imitate others who are faring better, but occasionally the computer will give an agent a randomly chosen new strategy.
Over time, the researchers discovered, cheating becomes more and more prevalent and ruins the investment for everyone. Nearly all the agents stop participating.
But from this state of near-total non-participation, a few agents will occasionally begin to cooperate simultaneously, with no freeloaders. These groups start making more money than everyone else, and their success leads the non-participants to imitate their strategy. The small groups grow, producing a large group of punishers or a large group of non-punishing cooperators.
Big groups of non-punishing cooperators are an easy target for cheaters. One agent randomly tries cheating and makes a load of cash, and then other agents imitate the strategy, soon making it unprofitable for anyone to cooperate. But if the group consists primarily of punishers, an agent who tries cheating loses money to numerous fines, which discourages others from cheating. Groups with plenty of punishers therefore tend to be very stable and long-lasting, because they produce plenty of cooperators.
If participation were mandatory, the state of near-total non-participation could never occur, so even if a small group of cooperators arose, it wouldn't have enough influence to make cooperation the norm. The only way cooperation could evolve in that case would be for nearly all the participants to simultaneously begin to cooperate. That, however, is very unlikely.
Sigmund says the study offers insight into the early evolution of cooperation. He is skeptical, though, that game theory can lead to new strategies with powerful applications. He chuckles at claims made during the 1950s that game theory could be used to win the Cold War. "What is most important," he says, "is that this gives you insight into some elements of human behavior."
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