Hasta La Gadget!

After working in a hospital for over a decade, I’ve been around many people that had major health problems related to smoking. Combine the health issues with the fact that smoking is just absolutely disgusting to me, I think everyone should stop smoking. Especially my UPS driver, who routinely delivers me packages that smell like a used ashtray.

My dad used to smoke so I can appreciate how hard it is for people to quit, though. Scientists have been working on a vaccine that is designed to flood the body with an antibody to attack nicotine as it enters the body, rendering it useless as a source of pleasure.

The researchers are conducting a study in mice and have found that the so-called smoking vaccine is up to 85% effective at blocking nicotine in a mouse brain. The researchers say years of additional research is needed before the vaccine can be tested on people.

“As far as we can see, the best way to treat chronic nicotine addiction from smoking is to have these Pac-Man-like antibodies on patrol, clearing the blood as needed before nicotine can have any biological effect.” The challenge according to the researchers has been to develop a vaccine that is able to produce enough antibodies to stop nicotine from entering the brain and delivering the effects smokers crave.

[via BBC]

Scientists from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University aren’t keen on being wasteful — that’s why they’ve developed a toilet that uses 90% less water than other commodes and is capable of generating energy. Aptly named the No-Mix Vacuum Toilet, the porcelain pedestal’s pot divides waste between two partitions — one side for liquids, the other for solids — and uses vacuum tech reminiscent of airline lavatories. Flushing solid and fluid wastes with 1 and 0.2 liters of H2O, respectively, the can will be able to route refuse to external processing facilities. Fertilizer ingredients such as nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous would then be harvested from liquids. Similarly, methane can be coaxed from solids for conversion to electricity or as a replacement for other natural gasses. Two of the university’s restrooms are slated to have the toilets installed in the near future, and the team expects the thrones to roll out worldwide within three years.

[Thanks, Yuka]

Scientists develop flush-efficient toilet system that can turn waste into energy, sort before it recycles originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 Jun 2012 21:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It would be hard to miss the fact that a lot of doomsday believers thought 2012 was going to be the end of the world because of ancient Mayan texts. A newly discovered Mayan text puts a bit of clarity and might ease the concerns of people who believe in that sort of thing. The new text shows that 2012 was the “end date” for the Maya calendar.

That is different from the end of the world according to the researchers. The new text indicates that 2012 would have been celebrated by the ancient Mayan people, but has no doomsday prophecies regarding the date. The Mayan calendar is divided into something called bak’tuns each having 144,000 days beginning from the Maya creation date. The winter solstice of 2012 would be the last day of the 13th bak’tun.

Scientists and researchers say this would’ve been seen as a full cycle of creation. The new text was discovered among the Maya ruins of La Corona in Guatemala. Archaeologists discovered one block on a stairway featuring carved hieroglyphs to celebrate the visit of an ancient and powerful Mayan ruler. The archaeologists believe that this ancient king, known as Jaguar Paw, used a larger cycle of time to promote continuity of his people that happened to end in 2012.

[via MSNBC]

Newly discovered Mayan text says 2012 is the end of the calendar not the world is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Two former astronauts who went into space during different eras are working together to push a new private space telescope that will help detect asteroids in time to give humanity a chance to react. The two astronauts are Apollo moon pilot Rusty Schweickart and space shuttle astronaut Ed Lu. The two astronauts are at the helm of the project with the goal of building, launching, and flying an infrared space telescope with a single mission devoted to tracking near-Earth asteroids.

The project will be called Sentinel, and the goal is to launch the space telescope in 2017-2018. The team also includes Scott Hubbard, the former director of NASA’s Aims Research Center. The trio are part of a non-profit foundation called B612. The non-profit plans to raise the money for the project, estimated to require a few hundred million dollars, from corporate, private, and philanthropic donations.

The plan is to put Sentinel in orbit around the sun inward of Earth. That orbit would give Sentinel a field of view looking out past Earth enabling it to track approaching asteroids over months. The goal is to find 90% of all near-Earth asteroids that are roughly 460-feet in diameter and half of all the asteroids that are 130-feet across. NASA will be providing engineering, technical, and research support for the project. A contract is in the works with Ball Aerospace to build a wide-angle, infrared Sentinel Observatory. The team also plans to hire SpaceX to launch the satellite.

[via Discovery]

Former astronauts push private asteroid hunting Sentinel telescope project is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Scientists at Rice University in Houston, Texas have developed a spray paint that can store and deliver electrical power. This spray-on battery breaks down the elements of a traditional battery and incorporates them into a liquid that can be spray painted in layers onto almost any surface. This means that most objects can be turned into an electrical storing device, such as the ceramic mug shown below.

The electrical paint layers were airbrushed onto the curved ceramic surface of the mug to see how well they bond. Tests were also done on other surface materials such as glass and stainless steel. The paint layers each represent a different component of a traditional battery, which includes two current collector, a cathode layer, along with an anode and a polymer separator layer in the middle.

However, one limitation of the technology is the requirement of a dry and oxygen-free environment when making a new device. The researchers are currently looking into changing this so that the production process can be more efficient and commercially viable. They also believe that the technology could be integrated with solar technology to allow any surface to capture and store electricity.

[via Reuters]

Scientists develop spray-on battery, turns any object into electrical storage is written by Rue Liu & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.