Category Archives: Science Communication

A New Way to Keep Things Clean and Dry

Posted on February 27, 2012 by | 6 comments

Ever wish you can keep your car clean without having to wash them everytime? NeverWetTM spray may be the answer you are looking for. NeverWetTM  created by Ross Technology Corp is a silicon-based spray which can form superhydrophobic surface to many materials it sprayed on.

We know that hydrophobic means water (hydro) Fearing (phobic). A hydrophobic substance will avoid as much contact with water as it can, one good example is cooking oil.

Superhydrophobic is a term to describe a substance’s characteristic with water. It has the same characteristic as hydrophobic, but the characteristic is shown much stronger. When a droplet of water sits on a surface, it forms a contact angle based on what type of surface it sits on. If the surface is hydrophobic, it will have a contact angle of 90 degrees to 180 degrees. If the surface is superhydrophobic, it will have a contact angle of at least 150 degrees.

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NeverWetTM spray can form a superhydrophoic coating to prevent items from getting wet. Some application of the spray are, preventing electronics from water damaging, water-proofing clothes, preventing bacterial growth, and maintaining clear view for car windows. There are many applications for NeverWetTM spray such as anti-icing, anti-corrosion, anti-bacterial, and self-cleaning. However, all of these applications have one central idea: to keep water away.

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NeverWetTM spray will be available on the market as a retail product around mid 2012.

References:

NeverWet Web mainpage: http://www.neverwet.com/index.php

Superhydrophobic: http://www.neverwet.com/product-characteristics.php

Superhydrophobic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhydrophobic

NeverWet article from Geek.com: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/superhydrophobic-spray-means-no-more-clothes-to-wash-20111112/

Video used:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8Kdb04G5io

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSHLqowYqjU

Image used:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/DropConnectionAngel.jpg

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The Neuropsychology Behind Rubbing that Stubbed Elbow

Posted on February 3, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Everyone has experienced it at least once, where a slip or misjudgement quickly led to a painful stubbing of your elbow or toe. Usually when this happens though, there’s a near reflexive behavior we exhibit: we begin to rub the injured area instinctively-thinking this will help the pain! Could there be an actual biological purpose behind this? Well according to a 20th century theory from Neuroscientists Ronald Melzack and David Wall, pain and touch may actually compete for perception from your elbow to the brain. This  concept is known as the Gate Control Theory of Pain, and is still a dominant theory of the interactions of touch and pain today.

So how could rubbing your whacked elbow dull out the pain? The theory is based on the pathways of two receptors: mechanoreceptors, which transmit touch as changes in pressure, vibration and movement on the skin; and nociceptors, which transmit pain from damage or potential damage to the skin. Both receptors send nerve signals through different pathways to a region of the spinal cord known as the Substantia Gelatinosa (SG), which is full of transmission cells that send pain and touch signals to the brain.

Though both pain and touch nerve fibres leave the skin and arrive at the SG, the speeds at which they get there are drastically-different. Touch sensations reach the spinal cord through A-beta fibres, which are very fast due to their wide, myelinated axons. The sharp pain of nociception travels through slightly-slower myelinated A-delta fibres, and that dull, throbbing pain we feel occurs from a separate, slower C fibre.

The three theoretical states of the Pain Control gate. Via HowStuffWorks.com (References)

What Melzack and Wall’s Gate Control Theory proposes is that if touch and pain meet together in the SG, then touch will have an inhibitory effect on the transmission of the sensation of pain (left). So relating this back to that painfully-stubbed elbow, at first you’d may remember feeling a sharp A-delta pain followed by a dull C-fibre one (S). However, if you rub at the injured area afterwards, then the fast A-beta touch fibres (L) may cause an overwhelming inhibitory effect on the pain transmission through the SG, exchanging the perception as touch instead! So perhaps rubbing that elbow really does make a difference in the end. Worth noting though is there is a reason this theory has received scrutiny; it is a rather simple theory to explain an entire range of somatosensation we experience, and recent physiological work has shown that the transmission of pain and touch is more complicated than what the Pain Control Gate theory suggests. Regardless, it may be the only somatosensory theory that can explain the many observed interactions between pain and touch, including why rubbing the skin of that stubbed elbow seems to mask the pain so well.

References

Wolfe, J. M., Kluender, K. R., Levi, D. M., Bartoshuk, L. M., et al. (2009). Sensation and Perception. (2nd ed.). Sinauer Associates, Inc.

http://www.drgordongadsby.talktalk.net/page13.htm

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/human-biology/pain4.htm

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DNA Computing

Posted on January 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

There are limits to desktop and supercomputers as eventually there will come a point when electronic miniaturization can go no further as components become smaller and more transistors are embedded onto silicon chips. DNA computing is just one of many new computing techniques already in development. Because DNA is so ubiquitous, it is convenient as well; the four constituent bases  of DNA act as “bits” of information comparable to 0 and 1 in binary.

First demonstrated in principle in 1994, DNA techniques were used to solve a Hamiltonian directed-path graph, an important type of problem in mathematics and computer science.  Those who haven’t heard of this problem need only to think back to elementary school, where teachers might have presented a puzzle challenge to draw a continuous set of lines through several points on paper without retracing any lines.  The logic behind this is that any solution attempts are carried out simultaneously, breaking down larger problems into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time.

In the initial demonstrations, each point on the was represented as a 20-unit oligonucleotide (a short segment of the DNA molecule), and allowed moves between any two points were represented as 10 unit complements. Whenever a grand total of oligonucleotides was linked to DNA polymerase (an enzyme that copies DNA), then all possible paths were produced.

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