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Buckball and Chain

Buckminsterfullerenes C60 "High" Temp Super Conductors Difficult to purify. Until U of M @ Amherst developed tool for grabbing buckyballs. Polymer resin - (hexagonal structure) - DIENE reacts only w/ buckyballs. Vince Rotello Can pull them out of solution

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Re-bar

U of C @ Berkeley. Produces concrete reinforcing steel bars nearly corrosion free. Made from scrap steel , melted, reshaped, air-cooled as steel cools carbon precipitates out of bar, forming microscopic fingers called carbides permeate & strengthen the steel.

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Colliding Neutron STars

Gamma ray = extremely high frequency radiation. So process which makes Gamma ray = High Energy process. Gamma ray bursts from collision of two neutron stars - Shrunken remnants of burned out stars. Release tremendous amounts of energy. Damage Ozone Layer Produced mass extinction 245mil years ago @ Permian Period? 95% all species vanished.

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Snake Poison

Broadband antivenin = chemical in snake bloodstream which makes them immune to their own poison. Hunter-killer snake = Australian tiger snake makes a broadband antivenin which makes them immune to many types of snakes since they eat them.

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Dinosaur Mine

Scott Woodward found Dinosaur DNA Utah Coal Mine 80 mil years ago. cytochrome b genes 174base pairs long need 1,000

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Rocket on a Round-Trip

-NaSA Delta Clipper. -DC-X = Delta Clipper Experimental. -Wholly reuable one-part space vehicle. -SSTO = Single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft. -Put itself into orbit and bring itself back wo/ shedding parts. -Rockwell International. -Drag of upper atmosphere = 100miles orbit @ 24,000miles -To orbit mass of earth 17,500mph or fall. -Prob : MASS FRACTION -> 10%rocket H/W 90%Fuel -SHAPE? Cone. Dissipate heat. Lo Thermal Shielding least carry-along weight. -FLIGHT PROFILE: take off/land vertically. -Renentry from 17,500mph to 250hpm. relight main engines -> land. -Need : Cheap to operate -To land Vertically scale thrust from 28% to 100% -Hollow honeycomb fuselage and wings. -Carbon-fiber aeroshell credit card thickness only +3,120 lb to gross weight. -O2 Tank in Fiberglass for insulation 16k lb of Liquid O2 at -297F -2 tanks w/ He (used to pressurize ships Fuel tanks to push O2 and H2 into combustion chamber. -Explosive H2 fuel stored in 8x16' tank) lined w/ balsa wood insuation . 3,500 lb H2 at -423 F -O2 Tanks made of alloy Li + Al. -Struts/Ribbing -> Carbon Fiber. -Engine : O2+H2->Controlled explosion.(but H2 heavy:replace w/ kerosene?) 90-10 mass fraction needed. 70:1 Thrust-weight ratio (to get into space) Kerosene-H2 Hybrid.

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Better bent than Broken

-Natures Structures *twist* yet don't collapse! ,Work w/ forces ALGAE -FLEXIBLE MATERIALS that bend vs solid parts that slide. -Crash of Surf - hull of a ship vs strand of kelp. buoyant structure w/ large surface area can take beating from H20 Current Algae - current should tear it, the additional length is swept back and forth. - Beyond the first segment the plant travels w/ the water. @ same speed & direction. -> no friction LEAF -CONICAL FLEXIBILITY Flags have high drag (higher than weather vane) But tree's leaves have low drag why? Why doesn't drag entire tree down in strong wind? When wind pulls on a leaf, catches on lobes leaf curls into a cone. w/ right flexibility in right place, cone rolls tighter in stronger wind adjacent leaves cluster forming large cones. stems need to hold leaf (bending load) yet twist in wind to form leaf cluster. Stem must be resistant to bending loads yet compliant to twisting loads. stems have groove in top of them! FEATHER Also must twist but not bend to give lifting force Twist because act like propeller. up-down vs around-n-around. propeller blade is twisted so can move air. if propeller spin direction reversed so is twist! thus bird feather reverse direction twice per flap. Not bend to give oa support. INSECT Insect wing like apropeller blade also Entire wing reverse pitch (inclination) and profile(curvature) every stroke (100xsec). Wing flexibly so wind modulated pitch,profile,twist. HUMAN ELASTICITY Inside Body -> Heart Valves Helps pump of flow of blood expand uniformly but not too much (else aneurysm) expand a balloon ununiform expansion. bicycle pump = heart elastic arterial vs coordinated dual cylinders S +

Wave of the Future

-1987 Ingrid Daubechies wavelets -Analyze,xmit,manipulate,store,reconstruct signals FOURIER ANALYSIS -Refinement of Fourier Analysis. -Jean-Baptiste Any signal can be decomposed into a Fourier Series -Synthesis -Analysis - Given a signal how do you find its sine components -> Fourier spectrum/analysis -Only problem : Fourier analysis bad w/ short duration signals. -Since each sine component infinite in time, can't pinpoint timing of the spike. -Fundamental principle of signal processing - The more accurately you know pitch of the note the less you know when it was struck. WINDOWED FOURIER ANALYSIS -Windowed Fourier Analysis - Divide signal into finite time slots (windows) then find Fourier representation for each slot. -Elements of this, are wave trains of short duraction. -Prob : Since each window has a fixed, finite length can't locate a sharp spike in the signal precisely. DAUBECHIES WAVELETS (DOHB-shee) - DW -Break signal down into wavelets. -Miraculous mathematical properties - 1. Length of each wavelet proportional to pitch (high pitch briefer wavelet) 2. No redundancy. (Fourier has lots of redundancies which cancel out) 3. DW - Fractal properties -Test - A two drawn out notes w/ similar pitch C & Csharp Two Cymbal classhes. Windowed Fourier analysis could find either pitch or 2 notes or timing of 2 spikes not both DWavelets could do both. -Daubechies wavelet = compactly supported orthonormal wavelet bases. --fin