Centripetal Notion: category

This is stupid cool. I can’t wait to try this.

One of the few known oscillating chemical reactions, it can generally repeat itself about 10 times before ending as a dark blue liquid smelling of iodine.

His explanation traces the seemingly erratic nature of fundamental particles to the symmetries of E8, a simplified representation of an even more complex 248-dimensional object. “My brain exploded with the implications and the beauty of the thing,” he told New Scientist, recalling when he first made the connection between his theories and the shape of E8. “I thought: ‘Holy crap, that’s it!’” Thus far all the particle interactions predicted by his model correspond with observations in the real world. (…)

Whoa, sand coated with a hydrophobic substance stays dry when submersed in water. Originally developed to contain ocean oil spills near the shore.

“Could pond scum solve the world’s energy and global warming crises?

University of Hawai’i professor Pengchen “Patrick” Fu thinks it can, with a little push from biotechnology.

Fu has developed strains of cyanobacteria — one of the components of pond scum — that feed on atmospheric carbon dioxide, and produce ethanol as a waste product.”

Play-by-play pictures from a couple’s visit to L’Enclume, the restaurant home to world-famous chef Simon Rogan and his cutting edge molecular gastronomy (read: playing chemist/physisict with food).

Some excellent writing as per usual from Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG about, ultimately, human impact on the planet as seen from the future.

(video)

“It’s like examining the sound wave of a symphony. It’s fantastically complicated, but if you look at a larger scale, there are some patterns—a periodic beat there, and repeated phrases. And you realize there might be levels higher up in the complexity that might be simple, that organize the entire piece. There’s something big out there that’s regulating the chemistry of life, and that’s where we’re headed.”

Flower-like nanostructures made from zinc oxide at China’s Harbin Engineering University by Yujin Chen et al. can detect ethanol by responding to changes in electrical resistance.