Your Friday Reflective Vortex Using Liquid Gallium Metal Inside a Blender

Graphene Climbs the Walls

Was it a good week for graphene news? It’s always a good week for graphene news! From Graphene-Info:

A social housing development in Wales is reportedly being heated by graphene-enhanced wallpaper by NexGen Heating, as part of a trial exploring affordable alternatives to radiators and heat pumps to keep residents warm.

The “graphene heating system” supposedly looks and feels like traditional wallpaper—except perhaps for the fact that it can be plugged into an electrical socket, which regular wallpaper doesn’t usually require. Oh, and it comes packaged with solar panels and a smart battery—meaning it cuts carbon emissions while at the same time lowering fuel costs. Graphene for the win!

On the other hand, the same Graphene-Info newsletter also included an item about “a graphene oxide-based method of pre-enriching uranium in seawater by membrane filtration.” Uh oh. Sounds like the kind of world-domination plot a Bond villain would try to cook up. Could “Graphenefinger” be the next James Bond movie?

“Mona Lisa, Men Have Caked You…”

Whilst no one has been sure for centuries the source of Lisa del Giocondo’s enigmatic smile, one recent visitor to the Louvre may have interpreted it as a sign of low blood sugar. Says AP:

A man seemingly disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair threw a piece of cake at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum and shouted at people to think of planet Earth.

Hmm…Sounds like Whistler’s Mother (aka Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1). Could she have made the journey from the Musée d'Orsay to attack a fellow painting? Is this a whole weird new area we’re getting into? Well, maybe not:

Security guards were filmed escorting the wig-wearing man away as he called out to the surprised visitors in the gallery: “Think of the Earth! There are people who are destroying the Earth! Think about it. Artists tell you: think of the Earth. That’s why I did this.” 

Which only raises more questions than it answers.

Guards were then filmed cleaning the cake from the glass. A Louvre statement confirmed the attack on the artwork involving a “patisserie.”

This is not the first time that La Gioconda has come under physical attack:

The painting was stolen in 1911 by a museum employee, an event which increased the painting’s international fame. It was also damaged in an acid attack perpetrated by a vandal in the 1950s, and has since been kept behind glass. In 2009, a Russian woman who was angry at not being able to get French citizenship threw a ceramic cup at it, smashing the cup but not harming the glass or the painting.

And still…she keeps on smiling.

Games People Play

If you’re looking for a hyper-realistic video game, why not try Bad Writer, a first-person shooter writer game in which you try selling short stories to magazines.

You play Emily, a struggling writer, trying to make it in the big bad world of short story publishing. You walk around your house, getting ideas, and writing stories. Try not to get too distracted, or you will get sad that you hadn't written during the day. Get too sad, and it's game over. She gives up and gets a new job doing something far less fun and stressful.

The creator of the game, Paul Jessup, knows of what he speaks: he is a writer by trade, having sent more than 18 years publishing short stories and novels. Boing Boing adds: “Lavie Tidhar, author of Maror, Hood, By Force Alone, Osama, Central Station, calls Bad Writer ‘the most depressingly realistic writer’s life simulation I ever experienced.’”

Chain of Command

Morningstar has the lowdown on the latest with the “supply chain” disruptions. Where do we currently stand?

“No one really knows,” says Morningstar senior equity analyst Michael Field, who covers shipping and logistics.

Doh! OK, is there any guidance?

Field points to a few bright spots. Labor availability has improved in key areas, such as ports, to help move goods across the world. Companies have been signing long-term contracts with shippers to secure transportation, which was normally a buy-it-as-you-need-it market prior to the pandemic, Field says. 

Some of the industries most significantly hit by global supply chain shortages include semiconductors, automobiles, industrials, retail, and restaurants. 

Click through for more granular detail.

For all the woes hitting other industries, when it comes to shipping and logistic companies like Maersk (MAERSK B), supply chain issues have been a boon, and led to higher shipping rates.

Awesome. Here is a map of some of the latest trouble spots:

What’s the [Re]Use?

The Atlantic asks a reasonable question: should we bother recycling plastic? The authors point out:

Plastic recycling does not work and will never work. The United States in 2021 had a dismal recycling rate of about 5 percent for post-consumer plastic waste, down from a high of 9.5 percent in 2014, when the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled—even though much of it wasn’t.

It’s not that we don’t want to recycle it. Look at paper: it has a recycling rate of 68%. The problem with plastic, however, is not the concept, the process, or even the desire, but the nature of the beast.

The first problem is that there are thousands of different plastics, each with its own composition and characteristics. They all include different chemical additives and colorants that cannot be recycled together, making it impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastics into separate types for processing. 

… Just one fast-food meal can involve many different types of single-use plastic, including PET#1, HDPE#2, LDPE#4, PP#5, and PS#6 cups, lids, clamshells, trays, bags, and cutlery, which cannot be recycled together. This is one of several reasons why plastic fast-food service items cannot be legitimately claimed as recyclable in the U.S.

Couple that with the fact that plastic recycling itself produces waste—and often toxic waste at that—and that it isn’t even remotely economical and the problem becomes almost insoluble. Should we despair? The article points to some obvious but unpopular solutions:

Proven solutions to the U.S.’s plastic-waste and pollution problems exist and can be quickly replicated across the country. These solutions include enacting bans on single-use plastic bags and unrecyclable single-use plastic food-service products, ensuring widespread access to water-refilling stations, installing dishwashing equipment in schools to allow students to eat food on real dishes rather than single-use plastics, and switching Meals on Wheels and other meal-delivery programs from disposables to reusable dishware.

Ultimately it is up to us:

Consumers can put pressure on companies to stop filling store shelves with single-use plastics by not buying them and instead choosing reusables and products in better packaging. And we should all keep recycling our paper, boxes, cans, and glass, because that actually works.

The article doesn’t mention it but we hasten to add here programs like Vycom’s Recycling Program for display graphics and Lintec’s new film made from plastic water bottles. So obviously one goal is to find ways to safely and effectively reuse the plastic we’ve got, but the ultimate goal would be to produce less of the stuff to begin with.

Dyson’s Rosie Future

If you grew up watching The Jetsons, you immediately associate the name Rosie with the android maid. (If you are an AC/DC fan, the name means something else. If you’re a fan of both, it’s just really confusing.) Anyway, the idea of a robotic housekeeper is creeping closer to reality, and Dyson is one of the companies leading the way. Says The Verge:

Dyson has shown off a series of prototype robots it’s developing, and announced plans to hire hundreds of engineers over the next five years in order to build robots capable of household chores. The images are designed to show off the fine motor skills of the machines, with arms capable of lifting plates out of a drying rack, vacuuming a sofa, or lifting up a children’s toy.

The company, best known for its range of vacuum cleaners, says that it aims to develop “an autonomous device capable of household chores and other tasks,” with The Guardian noting that such a device could be released by 2030. It comes over half a decade after the company released its first robotic device, the Dyson 360 Eye robot vacuum cleaner, in 2014. Dyson has long emphasized its interest in AI and robotics to underpin its future products.

And they’re hiring like mad, currently recruiting 250 robotics engineers and plans to hire 700 more in the next five years. Dyson says they’ve already hired 2,000 new employees this year. They are also building a massive robotics lab in the UK. “The center will be based at Hullavington Airfield near the company’s existing design center in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, where it’s refitting an aircraft hanger where 250 roboticists will work.”

No word on how they’re coming with the other Rosie.

I, Roommate

While Dyson is working on robots to help around the house, New York State has launched a robot-based program to help conquer the problem of social isolation, especially among the elderly. Developed by the New York State Office for the Aging (NYSOFA), the program will distribute robot companions to the homes of more than 800 older adults. Unlike what Dyson is working on, these ’bots, called ElliQ and built by Israel’s Intuition Robotics, are says The Verge, “more proactive versions of digital assistants like Siri or Alexa—engaging users in small talk, helping contact love ones, and keeping track of health goals like exercise and medication.”

ElliQ consists of two parts attached to a single base. The first part is a lamp-like “face” with microphone and speakers, that lights up and swivels to face people it’s talking to. The second is a touchscreen tablet, used to display pictures, additional information, and conduct video calls. The unit has been deliberately design to appear more robotic than humanoid, in order to better focus attention on its conversational abilities.

Intuition Robotics’ claim is that ElliQ can project empathy and form bonds with users. The robot is supposed to remember key details about a user’s life, and shape its character to their own. It will crack more jokes if the user tends to laugh a lot, for example.

No word on whether it has what would be the most useful function: an emergency calling feature in the event of an accident, or if the robot’s roommate were suddenly unresponsive (which, admittedly, isn’t always an emergency situation…).  

Robot companions for the elderly is not uncontroversial, but it really depends on the person. We know several of our forebears who would throw the thing against the wall within five minutes.

Death Hamster

Coming soon to SyFy: Vicious Mutant Attack Hamster…ripped, as they say, from the headlines, the headline in question being the scientific journal Neuroscience. In Act I, a group of researchers attempt to bioengineer a super-friendly, not even remotely aggressive hamster. They avail themselves of CRISPR gene editing technology to

more fully examine the role of Avpr1a in the expression of social behaviors. We confirmed the absence of Avpr1as in these hamsters by demonstrating 1) a complete lack of Avpr1a-specific receptor binding throughout the brain, 2) a behavioral insensitivity to centrally administered AVP, and 3) an absence of the well-known blood-pressure response produced by activating Avpr1as. 

Avpr1as refers to Arginine–vasopressin (AVP) acting on V1a receptors, which “represents a key signaling mechanism in a brain circuit that increases the expression of social communication and aggression.” Basically, it’s a hormone that’s supposed to regulate things like teamwork, bonding, and general friendliness. The idea was that, by chopping out this hormone, the hamsters would stop all such regulation and just be cute and cuddly all the time.

What, as they say, could possibly go wrong. You know you’re in for trouble when the study’s abstract includes the word “unexpectedly.”

Unexpectedly, however, Avpr1a KO hamsters displayed more social communication behavior and aggression toward same-sex conspecifics than did their wild-type (WT) littermates.

And thus, by Act II, the supposedly docile hamsters were in fact vicious attack hamsters. It’s not a far stretch (for SyFy) to expect the hamsters to further self-mutate and start to turn on and kill the researchers themselves, then finally escape the lab and terrorize the country.

Hmm…sounds kind of like The Killer Shrews.

Font of Emotion

We all know that typefaces can affect our emotions. But how and why? To understand the relationship between typography and our emotions (well, your emotions, puny human), Monotype recently partnered with applied neuroscience company Neurons to develop a study entitled, “Why fonts make us feel; A scientific study exploring the emotional impact of type.” Says Print magazine:

The study consisted of online research conducted in November 2021 of over 400 participants in the UK, ranging from ages 18 to 50 with an even gender split. Neurons used data collection and consumer neuroscience to measure people’s subconscious and conscious reactions to type with three distinct typefaces: FS Jack (a humanist sans), Gilroy (a geometric sans), and Cotford (a languid serif). 

Languid serif? Anyway:

The researchers used these typefaces in three separate written scenarios: single words, a sentence using those words, and a sentence using those words with a brand included. Study participants were then asked to rate their emotional responses to these stimuli, including how sincere, memorable, trustworthy, or confident they felt.

Happily, there is no use of the word “unexpectedly” and no mention of vicious mutant attack fonts (that would be Comic Sans), but the study did confirm their hypothesis that type can have a significant effect on emotions.

You can take a deeper dive into this research on the Monotype website or watch a webinar about it.

Now Ear This

Scientists have, for the first time, 3D-printed a body part using an individual’s own cells. It is a field called tissue engineering (no, that is not a department at Kimberly-Clark), and a Queens, N.Y.-based biotech company called 3DBio Therapeutics used a 3D printer to create a replacement ear for a 20-year-old woman who had been born with a tiny, misshapen one. Says the NY Times:

The new ear was printed in a shape that precisely matched the woman’s left ear, according to 3DBio Therapeutics, a regenerative medicine company based in Queens. The new ear, transplanted in March, will continue to regenerate cartilage tissue, giving it the look and feel of a natural ear, the company said.

… The results of the woman’s reconstructive surgery were announced by 3DBio in a news release. Citing proprietary concerns, the company has not publicly disclosed the technical details of the process, making it more difficult for outside experts to evaluate. The company said that federal regulators had reviewed the trial design and set strict manufacturing standards, and that the data would be published in a medical journal when the study was complete.

This is the latest in an ongoing series of tests seeking to use 3D printing in tissue and organ replacement and repair.

United Therapeutics Corp….is also experimenting with 3-D printing to produce lungs for transplants, a spokesman said. And scientists from the Israel Institute of Technology reported in September that they had printed a network of blood vessels, which would be necessary to supply blood to implanted tissues.

… With more research, company executives said, the technology could be used to make many other replacement body parts, including spinal discs, noses, knee menisci, rotator cuffs and reconstructive tissue for lumpectomies. Further down the road, they said, 3-D printing could even produce far more complex vital organs, like livers, kidneys and pancreases.

Water, Water Everywhere

You know how it is. You agree to be the bagman for a drug lord, but something goes horribly wrong and you have no choice but to walk hundreds of miles across the desert with very little water. (Oh, wait, that was an episode of Better Call Saul.)

Anyway, Jimmy McGill would have been completely set if he had a new gel developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin that can extract liters of water per day out of even very dry air. The trick is the material of which the gel is made (sorry, Cary, it’s not graphene). From New Atlas:

The gel is made up of two main ingredients that are cheap and common – cellulose, which comes from the cell walls of plants, and konjac gum, a widely used food additive. Those two components work together to make a gel film that can absorb water from the air and then release it on demand, without requiring much energy.

First, the porous structure of the gum attracts water to condense out of the air around it. The cellulose, meanwhile, is designed to respond to a gentle heat by turning hydrophobic, releasing the captured water.

How much water could the gel extract?

In tests, the gel film was able to wring an astonishing amount of water out of the air. At a relative humidity of 30 percent, it could produce 13 L (3.4 gal) of water per day per kilogram of gel, and even when the humidity dropped to just 15 percent – which is low, even for desert air – it could still produce more than 6 L (1.6 gal) a day per kilogram.

While this would be useful for adventurers (or bagmen), the real need would be in places where water scarcity has become an issue—which are only going to increase as climate change continues.

The research on this gel was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Buzzfish

This one’s going to sting. We’re not sure we understand this, but here it goes: in California, bees are now legally considered to be fish. And we’re not talking about Bumble Bee tuna. Here is a portion of the ruling, via Boing Boing(emphasis added):

The California Endangered Species Act (Act) (Fish & G. Code,1 § 2050 et seq.) directs the Fish and Game Commission (Commission) to "establish a list of endangered species and a list of threatened species." (§ 2070.) The issue presented here is whether the bumble bee, a terrestrial invertebrate, falls within the definition of fish, as that term is used in the definitions of endangered species in section 2062, threatened species in section 2067, and candidate species (i.e., species being considered for listing as endangered or threatened species) in section 2068 of the Act. More specifically, we must determine whether the Commission exceeded its statutorily delegated authority when it designated four bumble bee species as candidate species under consideration for listing as endangered species.

Here’s the crux of the biscuit, from the Law & Crime blog: “a three-judge panel of a state appellate court found that certain invertebrate animal species, including bees, are legally contained under the same umbrella definition as “fish” under the terms of the Golden State’s homegrown Endangered Species Act.”

Essentially, several types of bees were under danger from large agricultural interests, and the California Fish and Game Commission sought to protect them by including them in the aegis of the CSEA. Big Ag sued, claiming that the CESA does not allow insects to be designated as endangered, threatened, or candidate species, as they are not specifically mentioned in the statute’s categories of wildlife.

The Commission countered, saying that the definition of fish can and should encapsulate bees and other similarly situated invertebrates because, in part, it already does in practice. At least one species of shrimp, snail and crayfish are listed under the CESA. The listing of the Trinity bristle snail is particularly instructive, the Commission argued.

All right, take it to the hole:

That’s because the snail, the commissioners note, does not even live in the water and was categorized as “threatened” in 1980. The way the snail got on the list was by being classified as a “fish.” Since the bristle snail is a terrestrial species, the Commission argues, “fish” cannot be limited to animals that inhabit a marine environment.

It does involve some wordplay.

“We generally give words their usual and ordinary meaning,” the analysis begins. “Where, however, the Legislature has provided a technical definition of a word, we construe the term of art in accordance with the technical meaning. In performing this function, we are tasked with liberally construing the Act to effectuate its remedial purpose.”

To snail it home:

Under a liberal construction of the CESA, the court concluded that the word “fish” is a legal term of art that previously included a “terrestrial mollusk” under section 2607.

“Accordingly, a terrestrial invertebrate, like each of the four bumble bee species, may be listed as an endangered or threatened species under the Act,” the unanimous 35-page opinion holds.

Although it doesn’t seem to have come up in any of this, the famed evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould once famously remarked that, after a lifetime studying fish, he concluded that there was “no such thing as a fish.” For example, although there are many sea creatures, most of them are not closely related to each other—one example being that a salmon is more closely related to a camel than it is to a hagfish.

Stephen Fry explains it a lot better than us:

Perhaps the real question is whether Catholics can eat bees on Friday during Lent.

This Week in Printing, Publishing, and Media History

May 31

1669: Samuel Pepys records the last event in his famous diary, due to failing eyesight.

1790: The United States enacts the Copyright Act of 1790, the country’s first copyright statute.

1819: American poet, essayist, and journalist Walt Whitman born.

1894: American comedian, radio host, game show panelist, and author Fred Allen  (né John Florence Sullivan) born.

2005: Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt was “Deep Throat.”

June 1

1495: John Cor, a Scottish monk and servant at the court of James IV, records the first known batch of Scotch whisky.

1857: Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal is published.

1872: American publisher, founder of the New York Herald James Gordon Bennett, Sr. dies (b. 1795).

1890: The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine—the first “computer”—to count census results. They may still be using it.

1936: English illustrator and animator Gerald Scarfe born.

1980: Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting. And thus begins the decline of newspaper circulation.

June 2

1840: English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy born.

1896: Guglielmo Marconi applies for a patent for his wireless telegraph.

June 3

1140: The French scholar Peter Abelard is found guilty of heresy.

1889: The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles (23 km) between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Ore.

1924: Czech-Austrian lawyer and author Franz Kafka dies (b. 1883).

1929: American game show host and producer Chuck Barris born.

1961: American lawyer, academic, author, and founder of the Creative Commons Lawrence Lessig born.

1965: The launch of Gemini 4, the first multi-day space mission by a NASA crew. Ed White, a crew member, performs the first American spacewalk.

June 4

1783: The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).

1876: An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City. (Insert your own Amtrak joke here.)

1907: American actress Rosalind Russell born. Russell starred with Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, one of the best—and funniest—newspaper movies ever made.

1917: The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded. Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall win the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe); Jean Jules Jusserand wins the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days;  and Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.

June 5

1851: Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.

1910: American short story writer O. Henry dies (b. 1862).

1919: American-Swiss author and illustrator Richard Scarry born.

1947: American singer-songwriter and violinist Laurie Anderson born.

1956: Elvis Presley introduces his new single, “Hound Dog,” on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.

2012: American science fiction writer and screenwriter Ray Bradbury dies (b. 1920).