Uh-oh:
Welcome to the Skylighter web site for people who make fireworks and other pyrotechnics. Skylighter offers a wide variety of novelty fireworks, sparklers, fireworks books, fireworks videos, pyrotechnic chemicals (potassium nitrate, potassium perchlorate, aluminum, sulfur, etc.), fireworks making tools, fireworks tubes (for rockets, mortars, fountains, salutes, shells, etc.), fireworks shell parts, end plugs, end disks, end caps, and other paper and plastic supplies for making fireworks and pyrotechnics to organizations and individuals in all 50 states. The entire Skylighter catalog is available on-line, including air and surface shipping costs for all U.S. areas. Sorry, but we do not ship outside the United States.
And the guy who runs it has a blog with *extensive* information about how to construct fireworks. Here’s a bit:
Even when they don’t “work well,” and CATO (blow up) on the launch pad, these rockets are impressive! There is a lot of power packed into that engine tube, so it pays to put a long piece of Visco fuse on them, and have everyone plenty far away from the launch area just in case.
Whistle Rocket Explosion on Launch Pad(Photo Courtesy Jerry Durand)
This is the third in a series of whistle-related articles. The first installment dealt with making whistle fuel and simple fireworks whistles. That same fuel will be used in these strobe rockets. The second article described the construction of basic whistle rockets. Many of those same techniques will be used now to make strobe rockets. So, it’s a good idea for you to familiarize yourself with those basic methods before forging ahead with this project.
Oh, baby.
Man, I’m drooling.
About 15 years ago I had the good fortune to attend several nights worth of amateur fireworks displays as part of the Pyrotechnics Guild International competitions. And I got a serious case of fireworks lust. Which is always easy for me, anyway, what with being born on July 4th and all. A few years prior to that, I’d had the chance to help set up and set off some very impressive stuff – up to 6″ shells – as part of some SCA activities.
Believe me, I could seriously get into this stuff. I put it off back then because I had my hands full with other things. And I do still, of course, but the temptation now is even stronger. Hey, I already have several pounds of black powder here because of my flintlock . . .
Oh baby.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Depression, Gene Roddenberry, Health, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Star Trek, Survival
Back in the 1960s, salt was just salt. Known to be necessary for healthy life in most mammals, including humans, people didn’t give it a lot of thought beyond that. Oh, sure, sometimes people would worry about a salt deficiency – I remember taking salt tablets regularly the summer I worked as a hot tar roofer – but otherwise, it was no big deal. In fact, one of the early episodes of Star Trek had the M-113 Creature, as ‘salt vampire’ which killed by sucking the salt out of humans.
Then came the 1980s. And the start of the great salt scare.
Salt was tied to hypertension. Salt was found to be overused in all kinds of prepared foods (since it augments flavor and increases food density – what the industry calls “mouthfeel” by saturating food with more water). We were told that salt kills – and that you had damned well better cut back on the amount of salt you ate. Anyone with high blood pressure or heart disease was told to go on a low- or no-salt diet, using salt substitutes or just going without.
What wasn’t really discussed by the public health officials who got this bandwagon started was that only some people are salt-sensitive, i.e.: react to excess salt in their diet. I’m not going to dig back through all the research papers now, but I remember that it was estimated that for the US this was about 30% of the population. For those people, salt could indeed pose a problem. But most people didn’t have this kind of reaction – their system would just flush excess salt out through normal kidney function. Here’s a passage from the Wikipedia article on salt which addresses this:
Sodium is one of the primary electrolytes in the body. All four cationic electrolytes (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium) are available in unrefined salt, as are other vital minerals needed for optimal bodily function. Too much or too little salt in the diet can lead to muscle cramps, dizziness, or even an electrolyte disturbance, which can cause severe, even fatal, neurological problems.[29] Drinking too much water, with insufficient salt intake, puts a person at risk of water intoxication (hyponatremia). Salt is even sometimes used as a health aid, such as in treatment of dysautonomia.[30]
The risk for disease due to insufficient or excessive salt intake varies because of biochemical individuality. Some have asserted that while the risks of consuming too much salt are real, the risks have been exaggerated for most people, or that the studies done on the consumption of salt can be interpreted in many different ways.[31] [32]
Now, from a public health perspective, it makes sense to try and limit the average intake of salt. As noted, many prepared foods have a *lot* of salt in them. If you can stop 30%, or one third, or one quarter, of your population from developing high blood pressure without causing problems for the rest of the population, then why not? And I think that this is probably the reason and rationale behind the extensive public health campaigns to get people to cut back on salt intake, though I bet it would be difficult to get most public health officials to admit that this was the case.
But . . . what if a decrease in salt presented problems for that other portion of the population that is not salt-sensitive?
Salt is ‘natural mood-booster’
University of Iowa researchers writing in Psychology and Behavior say salt may act as a natural antidepressant.
Tests on rats found those with a salt deficiency shied away from activities they normally enjoyed – a sign of depression.
* * *
The tests carried out by US researchers found that when rats were deficient in salt, they shy away from activities they normally enjoy, like drinking a sugary substance or pressing a bar that stimulates a pleasant sensation in their brains.
Psychologist Kim Johnson, who led the research, said: “Things that normally would be pleasurable for rats didn’t elicit the same degree of relish, which leads us to believe that a salt deficit and the craving associated with it can induce one of the key symptoms associated with depression.”
Now what? Risk hypertension, or fight depression? What is the biggest public health concern?
As I’ve noted before, I *do* have problems with high blood pressure (though thanks to changes in lifestyle – specifically, getting regular sleep and exercise – combined with drug therapy, it is now coming down to close to the “normal” range). But I don’t seem to be salt-sensitive – drastically cutting my salt intake makes no difference in my blood pressure. My doctor doesn’t worry about my salt intake, saying that other factors are likely much more important in dealing with my hypertension.
But what about depression? Or just worrying about whether you’re going to die from too much salt?
I think Gene Roddenberry was right: sucking all the salt out of us is like sucking the life out of us. Or at least the joy of living.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Government, Heinlein, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Science Fiction, tech
Not quite a year ago I wrote about the Raytheon Sarcos powered exoskeleton, which was a major step towards the Powered Armor of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Well, now there’s some competition:
HULC
Dismounted Soldiers often carry heavy combat loads that increase the stress on the body leading to potential injuries. With a HULC exoskeleton, these loads are transferred to the ground through powered titanium legs without loss of mobility.
The HULC is a completely un-tethered, hydraulic-powered anthropomorphic exoskeleton that provides users with the ability to carry loads of up to 200 lbs for extended periods of time and over all terrains. Its flexible design allows for deep squats, crawls and upper-body lifting. There is no joystick or other control mechanism. The exoskeleton senses what users want to do and where they want to go. It augments their ability, strength and endurance. An onboard micro-computer ensures the exoskeleton moves in concert with the individual. Its modularity allows for major components to be swapped out in the field. Additionally, its unique power-saving design allows the user to operate on battery power for extended missions. The HULC’s load-carrying ability works even when power is not available.
There’s also a video of the thing in action.
Now, this is not Powered Armor. Not even close. In fact, it doesn’t even provide support or enhancement for the arms – just the legs. The “load carrying ability” is nothing more than a extendable arm from the back of the unit, which is worn like a backpack – you could do the same thing with any kind of backpack rig.
That said, this is a very interesting piece of equipment. It is slimmer and more universal than the Sarcos system. It packs into a bag the size of a decent sized backpack, and can be unfolded and put on in about 30 seconds. Without the batteries, it weighs about 50 pounds. (I wonder what the battery load is?) As noted, it is worn like a traditional backpack when in use, the main unit looks to be only 4 or 5 inches thick, allowing for another more normal backpack to be put on over it. It will allow the user to run for prolonged periods at 7 mph, with bursts up to 10 mph, and seems more flexible than the Sarcos system. In fact, it looks like it wouldn’t be much worse in terms of limitations than the metal-sided knee brace I used to wear while doing SCA combat, and a lot better than the armor most people wear for such activity. If it actually works as shown, this would extend the functional exertion period of your average soldier considerably, as well as increasing their capabilities in terms of weight carried and speed of movement.
Beyond the purely military applications, I can easily see this sort of system in use to assist those who are partially disabled, as well as in some employment positions.
I doubt that we’ll see these units on the battlefield anytime soon. But they remind me of the early aeroplanes – those rickety and somewhat jerry-rigged structures which barely flew. They were of only marginal use in WWI. But look how far they developed by the end of WWII.
Jim Downey
(Via MeFi. Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Astronomy, NASA, Predictions, Science, Space, Titan, Writing stuff
Well, the Advanced Survey Array from Communion of Dreams just got another step closer, and here’s a bit of insight into how I came up with much of the whole idea for the novel:
Telescope blasts into space to find other Earths
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA’s planet-hunting telescope, Kepler, rocketed into space Friday night on a historic voyage to track down other Earths in a faraway patch of the Milky Way galaxy.
It’s the first mission capable of answering the age-old question: Are other worlds like ours out there?
Kepler, named after the German 17th century astrophysicist, set off on its unprecedented mission at 10:49 p.m., thundering into a clear sky embellished by a waxing moon.
From NASA’s site on the mission:
The Delta II rocket carrying the Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft lifted off on time at 10:49 p.m. EST from Launch Complex 17-B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spectacular nighttime launch followed a smooth countdown free of technical issues or weather concerns.
Kepler’s mission: to peer closely at a patch of space for at least three-and-a-half years, looking for rocky planets similar our own. The spacecraft will target an area rich with stars like our sun, watching for a slight dimming in the starlight as planets slip through the space between.
“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars.”
It was this mission that I used as the basis for the Advanced Survey Array – specifically, the idea that such an array would need to be situated somewhere which would be shielded in order to allow the greatest possible sensitivity in the search for likely planets for colonization. Why? Well, here’s a bit from the Wikipedia entry for the Kepler mission:
Kepler is not in an Earth orbit but in an Earth-trailing solar orbit 950 miles above the Earth[11][12] so that Earth will not occlude the stars which are to be observed continuously and the photometer will not be influenced by stray light from Earth. This orbit also avoids gravitational perturbations and torques inherent in an Earth orbit, allowing for a more stable viewing platform. The photometer will point to a field in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra, which is well out of the ecliptic plane, so that sunlight never enters the photometer as the spacecraft orbits the Sun. Cygnus is also a good choice to observe because it will never be obscured by Kuiper belt objects or the asteroid belt.[9]
So, the ASA needed to be somewhere where it would be isolated & stable, as the Kepler observatory is somewhat isolated and stable – and that led to the idea of creating an electromagnetic “bubble” around Titan (where I wanted to situate the novel), caused by . . . what? It was at this point that I came up with the idea for the super-conducting ‘Tholan gel’, and from there . . . well, read the book. I don’t want to give away too many spoilers.
Anyway, glad that Kepler finally got off the ground – and I’m looking forward to the data which comes from it!
Jim Downey
From NPR, word that there may have been a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s Disease research:
Mad Cow And Alzheimer’s Have Surprising Link
Scientists have discovered a surprising link between Alzheimer’s disease and mad cow disease. It turns out both diseases involve something called a prion protein.
The finding, which appears in the journal Nature, could explain one of the great mysteries in Alzheimer’s disease: How components of the plaques that form in patient’s brains are able to damage brain cells. It also could point the way to new treatments for the disease.
“It’s very exciting,” says Lennart Mucke, director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and a professor of neurology and neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. “The study shines the light on a very unexpected component.”
OK, first off, I think the title of the NPR piece is somewhat misleading. Here’s what Nature has:
‘Harmless’ prion protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease
Non-infectious prion proteins found in the brain may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, researchers have found.
The surprising new results, reported this week in Nature1, show that normal prion proteins produced naturally in the brain interact with the amyloid-β peptides that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Blocking this interaction in preparations made from mouse brains halted some neurological defects caused by the accumulation of amyloid-β peptide. It was previously thought that only infectious prion proteins, rather than their normal, non-infectious counterparts, played a role in brain degeneration.
The results have yet to be confirmed in humans, but suggest that targeting the non-infectious prion protein (PrPc) could provide an alternative route to treating Alzheimer’s disease. “The need is huge,” says Paul Aisen, an Alzheimer’s researcher based at the neurosciences department of the University of California, San Diego. “And it’s great news for the field when a new idea is brought forth with strong evidence that can lead to new therapeutic strategies.”
Why did NPR choose to tie it to Mad Cow? Probably because that’s the only real handle most people, even NPR’s relatively well-informed listeners, have on any kind of prion disease. So they decided to use this link. Which may be unfortunate, if it contributes to speculation and fear that somehow Mad Cow disease leads to Alzheimer’s.
But the research is quite interesting, and a significant breakthrough. For a while, amyloid plaque has been understood to play a role in Alzheimer’s, but no one could quite figure out what exactly that role was. Tying it to prions gives a mechanism that explains how the plaque damages the brain and leads to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Furthermore, as noted in the stories cited, it offers a very promising strategy for countering the disease. And because of all the work which has been done on Mad Cow disease (and prion disease generally), these proteins are fairly well understood, meaning that it is likely that researchers will be able to come up with specific treatment regimens.
This is hopeful. Very hopeful.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to dKos.)
Filed under: Astronomy, Bad Astronomy, Failure, Government, ISS, movies, NASA, Phil Plait, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, Star Trek, Survival, tech, Travel, UFO
This item made the news yesterday:
Scientists eye debris after satellite collision
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites — one American, the other Russian — smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth.
NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the unprecedented crash and whether any other satellites or even the Hubble Space Telescope are threatened.
The collision, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said.
Wow: two satellites have collided in orbit, destroying both. This is the first time such a major collision has ever occurred.
The satellites were Cosmos 2251, a Russian communication relay satellite that’s been defunct for a decade, and an Iridium satellite, one of a fleet of communication satellites launched by Motorola in the late 90s and early 2000s.
* * *
There have been collisions in space before, but never from such large satellites — the Iridium bird was about 700 kg, and the Cosmos was about the same — and never resulting in a total wipeout like this. Again, if I have my numbers about right, the explosion resulting from the energy of impact would have been about the same as detonating a ton of TNT.
I had to chuckle at this comment in that thread at Bad Astronomy:
But wouldn’t the impact have made a new, ever more powerful hybrid satellite? It would have an over-arching need to communicate and would do so in Russian. The only way to make it stop broadcasting a constant barrage at us would be if it mistook someone for its designer at Motorola and then. . . Oh wait, this isn’t Star Trek.
No, not at all. When you have two large satellites, each moving at something on the order of about 5 miles a second hit one another at nearly right angles, then you don’t get any kind of hybrid. You get a mess. As in a debris cloud of upwards of a thousand bits and pieces of space junk, some of it substantial, most of it still moving at thousands of miles an hour, and all of it dangerous.
I’ve written previously about the threat of real ‘UFOs’ to our space exploration. From the quoted article in that post:
The reason is life-and-death. Since Mercury days, NASA engineers have realized that visual sightings of anomalies can sometimes provide clues to the functioning — or malfunctioning — of the spaceships that contain their precious astronauts. White dots outside the window could be spray from a propellant leak, or ice particles, flaking insulation, worked-loose fasteners (as in this latest case) or inadvertently released tools or components.
Whatever the objects might be, they pose a threat of coming back in contact with the spacecraft, potentially causing damage to delicate instruments, thermal tiles, windows or solar cells, or fouling rotating or hinged mechanisms. So Mission Control needs to find out about them right away in order to determine that they are not hazardous.
Right now the bulk of that debris cloud is about 250 miles higher than the ISS. But it will slowly drift closer (the effect of atmospheric drag – even at that altitude, it will slow anything in orbit, meaning that the item in question will drop to a lower orbit). At some point, this could be a real threat to the space station.
And beyond that, it is a further complication to *any* effort to get into something other than a low Earth orbit. Currently we have something like tens of thousands of bits of “space junk” that have to be tracked – and while all of it will eventually fall back into the atmosphere and burn up, it can present a real danger. If we’re not careful, we could encase ourselves in a shell of so much junk that it would basically eliminate the possibility of travel beyond our planet for decades.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Predictions, Reproduction, Science, Science Fiction, Synesthesia
I’ve written previously about synesthesia, and most recently said this:
The implication is that there is a great deal more flexibility – or ‘plasticity’ – in the structure of the brain than had been previously understood.
Well, yeah. Just consider how someone who has been blind since birth will have heightened awareness of other senses. Some have argued that this is simply a matter of such a person learning to make the greatest use of the senses they have. But others have suspected that they actually learn to use those structures in the brain normally associated with visual processing to boost the ability to process other sensory data. And that’s what the above research shows.
OK, two things. One, this is why I have speculated in Communion of Dreams that synesthesia is more than just the confusion of sensory input – it is using our existing senses to construct not a simple linear view of the world, but a matrix in three dimensions (with the five senses on each axis of such a ‘cube’ structure). In other words, synesthesia is more akin to a meta-cognitive function. That is why (as I mentioned a few days ago) the use of accelerator drugs in the novel allows users to take a step-up in cognition and creativity, though at the cost of burning up the brain’s available store of neurotransmitters.
And now there is more evidence that synesthesia is a more complex matter than researchers had previously understood:
Seeing color in sounds has genetic link
Now, Asher and colleagues in the United Kingdom have done what they say is the first genetic analysis of synesthesia. Their findings are published this week in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Researchers collected DNA from 196 people from 43 families in which there were multiple members with synesthesia. They looked exclusively at auditory-visual synesthesia, the kind where sound triggers color, which is easier to diagnose than other possible forms.
They expected to find a single gene responsible for synesthesia, but they found that the condition was linked to regions on chromosomes 2, 5, 6, and 12 — four distinct areas instead of one.
“It means that the genetics of synesthesia are much more complex than we thought,” Asher said.
No surprise there. The article goes on to discuss what may be happening physiologically – researchers are still trying to construct a model of how synesthesia actually happens in the brain, and still tend to see it as something which “goes wrong” developmentally. The supposition, according to the CNN article, is that there is a failure of a necessary “pruning” of cross-wiring in the young brain.
But what if it is instead a meta-cognitive function, something which is emerging as part of ongoing evolution of the human brain? In other words, an enhancement of our current ability to think and remember, by allowing our brains a bit more complexity in the neural connections?
Hmm.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Cosmic Variance, General Musings, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, movies, Science, String theory
(This is one of my newspaper columns from Columbia Daily Tribune, updated with links. Thought it might be of interest while I am away for a few days. – JD)
Harry Potter and the Superstring Revolution
One of my favorite String Theory blogs (yeah, I have rather eclectic interests) recently got into a discussion of the new Harry Potter movie. Even hard-core physicists like to discuss movies in addition to the latest research into 11-dimension supergravity and the advantages of D-branes over M-theory. Which is good, because when these people start throwing around the advanced math wizardry needed to really understand these concepts I’m just a Muggle. But if they talk movies or art, I can chime in with the best of them.
Anyway, the discussion of Goblet of Fire turned into a debate of whether or not the Potter books themselves should really be considered literature. And, frankly, it was rather funny to watch a bunch of really smart people try and wrestle with something so completely outside of their field of training. Sure, most of them had taken some lit classes while undergrads, but they were working with tools not really suited to the problem. It’d be like me, with a little bit of math from college 25 years ago, trying to engage one of them on the validity of the Superstring Revolution. I might have a general understanding of the issues involved, but I’m completely unequipped to contribute anything meaningful to the debate in the language of science.
What was really interesting about this, though, was that none of them saw it that way. They were all certain that their opinions of literature, as an intellectual exercise, were completely valid. They had fallen into the trap of thinking that their likes or dislikes in literature was all that was necessary to have an informed debate.
This is a common problem with all the arts. Non-artists usually think that their personal preferences are all that matters. If someone doesn’t like a Pollock drip painting, then it isn’t “art.” If they think that opera is boring, then that’s sufficient to consider it outmoded and useless. And conceptual art . . . well, it’s beyond the conceptual boundary horizon for most folks and so doesn’t even exist. Might as well be magic.
Furthermore, if you challenge these opinions people will get really indignant and defensive. They don’t want to hear that an understanding of the issues involved is necessary to appreciate some art. The old line “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like” will pop up in one form or another very quickly.
And on one level, that’s OK. I wouldn’t think of telling someone that they couldn’t form an opinion about what they like or dislike in art any more than I would consider telling them what they liked to eat for breakfast. But if you’ve never even heard of eggs, how can you have an opinion on the proper preparation of a nice quiche? It’d be like having strong feelings about word choice in the translation of Rilke’s Der Schwan when you don’t speak German. Sure, you can have an opinion, but it’s not something I’m going to take particularly seriously.
This isn’t to say that only an ‘expert’ can have a valid opinion about art. Hardly. By its very nature art is designed to elicit a response even in the uninformed. It’s perfectly OK to say “I like that painting.” Or, “I don’t care for opera.” But when someone starts to try and talk about the validity of a particular work of art (or music, literature, et cetera), they need to know what they’re talking about. Otherwise, people will treat you like the guy sitting in the sports bar who keeps yelling “pass the ball” at the TV during the baseball game. Or, perhaps more appropriately, like the guy at the Quidditch match who keeps calling for a relief pitcher.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Faith healing, Health, Psychic abilities, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech
(A time-delayed post while I am off to the urban jungles of the Northeast. Pray for me. – JD)
(Fortune Small Business) — It may sound like quack medicine, but electricity can help cuts and wounds heal faster. Studies published in the journal Nature in 2005 confirmed it: Our cells work like tiny chemical batteries. Wounds short-circuit them, and a jolt of voltage helps heal them.
Now a small medical company hopes to cash in, with the world’s first over-the-counter electric bandage.
Vomaris Innovations, based in Chandler, Ariz., recently went to market with the Prosit adhesive bandage, which uses microscopic batteries mounted on a flexible membrane to pass a tiny amount of current – 1.2 volts – over the affected skin. Though the process isn’t understood entirely, Vomaris founder Jeff Skiba, 55, won FDA approval for use of the Prosit in hospitals after an impressive array of clinical trials showed that it jump-started healing for all patients.
“The process isn’t understood entirely…” Well, I can tell them. It’s obvious.
[Spoiler alert.]
Clearly, what happens is that somehow the mild voltage charge across the skin manages to create a slight weakening of the supression field all around us caused by the alien artifacts surrounding our solar system, thereby allowing our natural psychic abilities to work properly and heal ourselves quickly. It’s all explained completely in the later chapters of Communion of Dreams. I swear, when will these people just simply read my book? It’s all explained in there.
Sheesh.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 