13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough and other news..

13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough
================================================================

7th grader Aidan Dwyer used "phyllotaxis" or the way leaves are arranged on plant stems in nature, as inspiration to arrange an array of solar panels to
generates 20-50% more energy than a uniform, flat panel array.

Aidan wrote, "I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci
pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and
figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the
Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from
PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in
series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was
5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely
as possible. ... The Fibonacci tree design performed better than the
flat-panel model. The tree design made 20% more electricity and collected
2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. But the most interesting
results were in December, when the Sun was at its lowest point in the
sky. The tree design made 50% more electricity, and the collection time
of sunlight was up to 50% longer!"His work earned him a Young Naturalist
Award from the American Museum of Natural History and a provisional
patent on the design.

Phyllotaxis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllotaxis
Article: http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html

* Car Makers Explore EEG Headrests
===================================
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38366/?p1=A3

* Study Shows Dogs Can Sniff Out Lung Cancer
============================================

"Last year, researchers developed a cancer-detecting electronic nose inspired by dogs' ability to sniff out different types of ovarian cancer. Now a new study has found that sniffer dogs' abilities extend to reliably detecting lung cancer. The researchers say the results of the study confirm that there is a stable marker for lung cancer, which offers the possibility that a 'breath test' for the early detection of lung cancer could be developed."

http://www.gizmag.com/cancer-detecting-electronic-nose/17340/
http://www.gizmag.com/lung-cancer-sniffer-dogs/19569/
http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2011/08/05/09031936.00051711.abstract?sid=b4c367ac-6264-4d94-8b46-2b1505bb3fcf

More Solar Activity predicted:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL048489.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14580995

/A
--

Line follower robot with Analog and PWM (no uC!)

Check this out:
http://www.ermicro.com/blog/?p=1908
----------------------------------------

Art, Typesetting and F/LOSS

=========================================================
Libre Graphics Magazine -- check back for latest issues !
http://libregraphicsmag.com/
=========================================================

It's hard to be in a bad mood while you're playing the ukulele!

It's hard to be in a bad mood while you're playing the ukulele!
Clive Maxfield
8/2/2011 2:23 PM EDT
Yesterday I didn't even know how to spell Ukulele, but then ordered a
"Build Your Own Ukulele Kit" and now I can't wait for it to arrive. This
is a bit of an involved tale (what do you mean "That's not unusual for
you, Max"?) so please bear with me while I explain…

While driving back and forth between my home and office in the mornings
and evenings I listen to the National Public Radio (NPR). A couple of
months ago there was a program about a Hawaiian musician called Israel
"IZ" Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole (1959 – 1997). As part of this we heard him
playing the ukulele and singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the film
The Wizard of Oz.

I have to tell you, this really is one of the most beautiful things I've
heard (see the embedded video below). Somehow IZ's voice and his ukulele
meld together in perfect harmony (no pun intended). Whatever you're
doing, this makes you pause for a moment's reflection and brightens your
day.

As the weeks went by, this slipped further and further toward the back
of my mind. Then, yesterday evening, I happened to be glancing through a
catalog from Uncommon Goods. And what did I see on page 53? You guessed
it; it was a Make Your Own Ukulele Kit.

Actually, this is not quite as hard as you might expect because the main
body is pre-assembled. All you have to do is take the unfinished parts,
sand them down, assemble them, add an optional painted design, and
attach the strings (I've not actually read the instructions, you
understand, I'm just guessing that it's best to add the strings after
you've painted the main body). All that remains now it to learn how to
play the little scamp!

Actually I think this is an amazingly good deal, because it costs only
$40. In fact I was so enthused when I saw this that I immediately
ordered two kits – one for me and one for my son.

Now, before we proceed, take a moment to listen to IZ playing his
rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow – even if you've heard this
before it's well worth pausing to listen to it again.

...start searching around on the web. Almost immediately I ran across a
site called Ukulele Boogaloo, and from there I found the chords used in
Somewhere Over the Rainbow. As you will see if you Click Here, this
shows the chords (there are only five) and how they are associated with
the lyrics. You must admit that this is pretty amazing. I've said it
before and I'll say it again: "The Internet is AMAZING!" (Young folks
who were brought up with the Internet simply cannot imagine how much
time and effort all of this would have taken when I was a lad.)

But wait, there's more, because I returned to YouTube and found a guy
called Ukulele Mike who has hundreds of videos of instructional ukulele
lessons out there. Lesson 97 covers the chords used in Over the Rainbow.
As you'll see in the video below, Mike starts by showing the chords
themselves; he then plays the song with the lyrics and chord changes
superimposed as annotations on the screen.

--
http://www.fastmail.fm - mmm... Fastmail...

'Superman' microscope can see nanoscale details without lenses

'Superman' microscope can see nanoscale details without lenses
Published: Tuesday, Aug 9, 2011, 20:39 IST
Place: Washington, DC | Agency: PTI

Physicists at UC San Diego have developed a new kind of X-ray microscope
that can penetrate deep within materials like Superman's fabled X-ray
vision and see details at the scale of a single nanometre, or one
billionth of a metre.

What's unusual about this new, nanoscale, X-ray microscope is that the
images are not produced by a lens, but by means of a powerful computer
program.

The computer program, or algorithm, is able to convert the diffraction
patterns produced by the X-rays bouncing off the nanoscale structures
into resolvable images, the report said.

"The mathematics behind this is somewhat complicated," said Oleg Shpyrko, an assistant professor of physics at UC San Diego who headed the research team. "But what we did is to show that for the first time that we can image magnetic domains with nanometre precision. In other words, we can see magnetic structure at the nanoscale level without using any lenses."

One immediate application of this lens-less X-ray microscope is the
development of smaller, data storage devices for computers that can hold
more memory.

"This will aid research in hard disk drives where the magnetic bits of data on the surface of the disk are currently only 15 nanometers in size," said Eric Fullerton, a co-author of the paper and director of UC San Diego's Center for Magnetic Recording Research. "This new ability to directly image the bits will be invaluable as we push to store even more data in the future.

--
http://www.fastmail.fm - Access all of your messages and folders
wherever you are

Team player or individual best ?

Blog Comment :
"My experience has been that the best individual contributors make the
best team players. If you apply the same skills that it takes to be a
great individual contributor - focus, persistence, objectivity, ability
to learn, ability to look at a problem from different perspectives - to
your interactions with others, you can make yourself a better team
player over time, just like the best engineers are good because they are
constantly examining their own work and figuring out how to improve..."

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/pop-blog/4218479/Just-what-on-earth-is-this-?cid=NL_EETimesDaily

--
http://www.fastmail.fm - Or how I learned to stop worrying and
love email again

Must visit!

Very interesting site of Micah Elizabeth Scott / Micah Dowty

http://scanlime.org/
Main top level site: http://navi.cx/