HOW HAS TELEVISION CHANGED OUR LIVES?


Television was undoubtedly the most important communications invention of the 20th century. Its ability to bring visual information directly into millions of homes made people aware of world events in a way that they never were before. It quickly overtook cinema as the main form of entertainment, and modern satellite, cable and digital television now provides people with an incredible choice of programmes, 24 hours a day.



Many people today still going to consider television to be mined numbing, brainwashing drivel. And if you look at some of the reality programming that is on, you might agree. But there are also a lot of wholesome, good quality entertainment and informational programs that can be used to educate, inform and excite individuals and families. With a large assortment of basic cable options available, there is no shortage of good programming to be found at nearly any time of the day or night.



Good quality television also helps to bring Families and communities together. From learning about historical events on the History Channel to new breakthroughs in science on the science channel and being introduced to new types of traditions and family lifestyles on shows on other channels that showcase other types of families and lifestyles across the globe, the ability to learn is more widespread through television than ever before.



Informative news channels also reach millions of viewers, alerting them to events and incidences around the world that might not have otherwise been known. Sporting events have also gained a lot of popularity thanks to the broadcast international events such as the world cup or European bike racing events.



And with the introduction of free Internet TV and live TV channels streamed over your mobile devices, the ability to tune in to any program you desire is more prevalent and easy than ever before.



Whether a program is experienced by a group of people together or by a single individual by his or herself, a good program can stir the emotions. It can make one laugh, it can inspire, it can help you learn about a cause or subject you may be more interested. It can introduce you to new things and make you feel better about yourself, and it can improve your knowledge and expand your mind.



After a long, stressful day, sometimes the best way to wind down is simply through watching some television. Watching a good movie or some shows that you enjoy is often an excellent way to end the day and reboot your mind for the next one.



For every good, informative, or quality entertainment program available on television, there is bound to be one or two that are less than stellar. But everyone has their own tastes and opinions as to what types of shows they wish to watch, which is why watching TV online is the most convenient way for everyone these days to enjoy the television they like most. It also enables you to watch what shows you want, when you want, so that you don’t have to miss anything if you aren’t near a television.



There is a vast amount of cable television options to choose from today, but selecting a lot of different cable TV packages can get expensive. However, an alternative to that is online streaming, which affords people the ability to stream, view and watch their favorite movies and programming on their computers, mobile devices or smart TVs with ease. From watching live TV channels to the wide variety of free Internet TV that is available, there really is no shortage of good programming that can be steamed through the Internet these days, with more and more options being added constantly.



In fact, regular cable companies are a bit worried about the popularity if Internet TV and some have taken advantage of the potential and offered their own streaming packages so as to retain customers. One of the advantages of free Internet TV is that you don’t always have to sit through a lot of commercials, which has been a big deterrent for many, and one of the main reasons people are making the switch.





Picture Credit : Google



 




 



Which is oldest and first commercially available artificial sweetener?



Did you know that our hunter-gatherer ancestors used to devour foods that were rich in sweets and calories, as they were few and far between? In fact, there is a gorging gene theory that attempts to explain our current eating habits, which continues to be high on sweets and calories, by tracing it back to those very ancestors. Gorging or not, sweets constitute an important portion of our diet and it is for this reason that both sugar and artificial sweeteners continue to play a crucial part in how we live.



Artificial sweeteners, however, are a rather recent phenomenon. Saccharin, which is the oldest to be discovered, came about only late in the 19th Century and having become the first such commercially available substance, it dominated the scene until second half of the 20th Century.



Remsen meets Fahlberg



The discovery of saccharin takes us back to the 1870s when Ira Remsen, an American chemist, returned to the U.S. and accepted a professorship at the John Hopkins University. As the university was founded only in 1976, it was, in fact, Remsen who set up the Department of Chemistry at the university.



Russian chemist Constantin Fahlberg entered the picture in 1877 when a firm that imported sugar enlisted him to analyse the purity of an import. That same firm put Fahlberg in touch with Remsen, getting him permission to use the latter’s laboratory for tests. Fahlberg and Remsen got along rather well and by 1878, Fahlberg took part in Remsen’s research at the institute.



Out-sugared sugar



On one of those days, Fahlberg was so sucked up in his lab work that he almost forgot his supper till quite late. When he broke a piece of bread and bit into a remarkably sweet crust, he merely assumed it must have been some cake. When he washed his mouth and dried his moustache with a napkin, he found that the napkin was even sweeter than the bread!



Puzzled, he next took his goblet of water. As luck would have it, he placed his mouth where his fingers had held it only moments previously, and the water tasted like a sugary syrup. Realising then that he was the cause of the universal sweetness, he licked his thumb, confirming his suspicion.



Knowing then that he had stumbled upon a coal-tar substance that “out-sugared sugar”, Fahlberg ran back to the laboratory and tasted everything that was on his worktable. He found the source and it took him weeks and months of work to determine its chemical composition, characteristics and reactions.



Even though Fahlberg previously synthesised saccharin by another method, he had no reason to taste it back then. By 1879, Fahlberg and Remsen published a joint article describing both methods of synthesising saccharin.



Sweeter than sugar



Saccharin, an organic compound which goes by the chemical formula C7H5NO3S, is nearly 300 times as sweet as sugar. Though it seemed initially that neither discoverer was interested in its commercial potential, Fahlberg applied for German and American patents after leaving Remsen’s lab and without informing Remsen.



Fahlberg received his U.S. patent for saccharin on September 15, 1885 and soon set up shop, selling it as pills and powder. Entering the fray as an artificial sweetener, saccharin soon became a viable alternative to sugar. The sugar shortage and its price rice during the World War paved the way for saccharin to be a sugar-substitute and it soon became more than just that.



Saccharin’s tale, however, is also inextricably woven with the rise of consumer consciousness, food control and regulation, especially in the U.S. With scientific evidence from both sides – for and against saccharin – no clear-cut demarcation has been possible with regard to its usage. The lingering threat hovering over a possible saccharin ban therefore spawned research into alternatives. Meaning that when saccharin was finally pushed off its perch, it was to give way to a new generation of artificial sweeteners.



 



Picture Credit : Google


When was the element roentgenium discovered?



For most of the time when I was at school, a chemistry teacher would walk into our class and say “Uuu”. While the uninitiated ones were often trembling to find out if the “you” meant themselves, for the rest of us it was clear that our teacher was speaking about element 111.



It has now been 25 years since element number 111 in the periodic table, roentgenium, was discovered, during which a few more synthetic elements have been added to the table. For it was on December 8, 1994 that atoms of roentgenium were discovered and detected for the first time.



Bombard bismuth with nickel



As early as 1986, nuclear physicists at the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia, bombard the element bismuth with nickel in the hopes of creating element 111. Alas, it wasn’t to be as they weren’t able to detect any atoms of a new element.



It had to wait another eight years before the discovery was eventually made. The methodology was similar, but the protagonists weren’t. As it was a group of scientists led by German physicists Peter Armbruster and Gottfred Munzenberg at the Gesellschaft fur Schwerionenforschung (GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany who enjoyed the success. In fact, Armbruster and Munzenberg were involved in the discovery of every element from 107 to 112.



The experiment involved bombarding a target of bismuth with nickel ions in the hope that the nuclei of the two would fuse together to form a bigger atom, once the nickel penetrated the bismuth nucleus. The trick was to carefully control the energy of the collision in order to ensure that fusion did take place.



Getting it right



This was needed because if the nickel ions weren’t fast enough, they would move off bismuth on contact, unable to overcome the repulsion between two positive nuclei. If, however, the nickel had too much energy, then the compound nucleus would just fall apart owing to the excess energy. Considering that most of an atom is empty space, successful collisions weren’t easy.



The scientists observed three successful collisions on December 8, 1994, forming atoms of atomic number 111 and mass 272. The new atoms were identified based on what happened to them when they decayed.



Considering that the atoms formed were very short-lived-what with a half-life of 1.5 milliseconds – it was some effort on the part of the scientists to realise that they underwent successive alpha decay to form atoms of element 109, 107, 105 and 103.



Uuu is for unununium



Even though the discovery was announced in a paper published in 1995 and further experiments conducted in 2000 by the discoveries yielded a few more atoms whose decay chains could be traced up to element 101, element 111 was given only a temporary name. This was because the permanent name had to wait until independent confirmation of its existence was provided.



The temporary name, as dictated by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), was derived from the atomic number. Element number 111 was therefore called unununium and was given the symbol Uuu (the “Uuu” in the first paragraph now makes sense, doesn’t it?).



A team of scientists at the RIKEN Linear Accelerator facility in Japan were able to make a few atoms of element 111 in 2003, providing the independent confirmation. Those in Darmstadt were given the opportunity to pick a name for the element and they went with roentgenium, honouring Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who discovered X-rays in 1895.



Since 2004, when IUPAC officially accepted the name, element number 111 has been roentgenium, with a symbol Rg. In that same year, during the discovery of element 115, scientists identified as isotope of roentgenium in its decay chain, offering scope for studying it further.



With very few atoms of roentgenium ever produced and with its longest-lived isotope known currently having a half-life of a little over 20 seconds, a lot remains unknown yet regarding element 111.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Moss serves a a cheap pollution monitor



Moses found on rocks and trees in cities around the world can be used to measure the impact of atmospheric change and could prove a low-cost way to monitor urban pollution, according to Japanese scientists.



Moss responds to pollution or drought-stress by changing shape, density or by disappearing, allowing scientists to calculate atmospheric alterations.



Mosses are a common plant in all cities so this method can be used in many countries; they have a big potential to be bio-indicators.



The scientists studied the effect of nitrogen pollution, air quality and drought-stress on moss found over a 3 sq km area in Hachioji City in north-west Tokyo. The study showed severe drought-stress tended to occur in areas with high levels of nitrogen pollution, which raised concerns over the impact on health and biodiversity.



The World Health Organization says 88% of city dwellers are exposed to annual pollution levels that exceed its air quality guidelines.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Keeping smartphones nearby makes us dumber



University of Texas researchers asked study participants to take a series of tests to measure their available cognitive capacity – that is, the brain’s ability to hold and process data at any given time. Participants randomly placed their smartphones (in silent mode) either on the desk, in their pocket or personal bag, or in another room.



The participants who left their phones in another room significantly outperformed those who had placed the phones on the desk, and these in turn slightly outperformed participants who had their phone in a pocket or bag. The results suggest that the mere presence of the devices is enough to drain somebody’s mental resources and impair cognitive capacity, even though participants felt that they were completely immersed in the task.



“Your conscious mind isn’t thinking about your smartphone, but that process of requiring yourself to not think about something uses up some of your limited cognitive resources. It’s a brain drain,” says assistant professor Adrian Ward.



Whether the phone was turned on or off didn’t seem to matter, nor if it is on the desk lying face up or face down – all that was needed to reduce a participant’s ability to focus was to have a smartphone within reach.



The researchers say it doesn’t come down to us delegating some cognitive processes over to the devices and losing on brain ‘exercise’; rather, it’s a matter of self-control. We’ve become so attached to smartphones that the brain actually has to give up part of its processing power to keep the urge of picking them up at bay.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Japan’s space camera drone on the ISS is a floating ball of cuteness



Astronauts abroad the International Space Station (ISS) have a new robotic companion. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Int-Ball is a spherical camera that resides in the Japanese module ‘Kibo’ on the ISS. Manufactured entirely by 3D printing, and using existing drone technology, it can move around autonomously or be controlled from Earth by JAXA Tsukuba Space Centre. The images it takes re transferred in near real-time allowing JAXA to quickly evaluate problems an offer solutions to ISS residents. It has cut the amount of the work done by Japanese astronauts on the ISS by about 10 per cent – photographing work and equipment for evaluation that otherwise would have to be done manually. In the future it will be able to check supplies and help with onboard problems.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Scientists genetically engineer world’s first blue chrysanthemum



Now, after 13 years Japanese scientists have created a genuinely blue chrysanthemum. This could be applied to other species and could mean that florists will no longer have to dye flowers.



True blue requires complex chemistry. Anthocyanins – pigment molecules in the petals, stem and fruit – consist of rings that cause a flower to turn red, purple or blue depending on what sugars or groups of atoms are attached.



Naonobu Noda, a plant biologist at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization in Tsukuba, Japan, first put a gene from a bluish flower called The Canterbury bell into a chrysanthemum. The gene’s protein modified the chrysanthemum’s anthocyanin to make the bloom purple. A second gene from the blue-flowering butterfly pea was then added. This gene’s protein added a sugar molecule to the anthrocyanin which turned the flowers blue. The two-step method was unexpected as the scientists believed multiple genes were required in a more complicated process. Chemical analyses showed that the blue colour came about in just two steps because the chrysanthemums already had a colourless component that interacted with the modified anthocyanin to create the blue colour.



True blue flowers are rare in nature, occurring only in select species like morning glories and delphiniums. According to the Royal Horticultural Society’s colour scale, most “blues” are really violet or purple.



 



Picture Credit : Google


‘Smart’ t-shirt monitors breathing in real time



Scientists have created a smart t-shirt that monitors the wearer’s respiratory rate in real time, without the help of any wires or sensors. The innovation paves the way for manufacturing clothing that could be used to diagnose respiratory illnesses or monitor people suffering from asthma, sleep apnea or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.



Created at Universities Laval in Canada, the t-shirt has an antenna sewn in at chest level that is made of a hollow optical fibre coated with a thin layer of silver on its inner surface. The fibre’s exterior surface is covered in a protective polymer. As the wearer breathes in, the smart fibre senses the increase in both thorax circumference and the volume of air in the lungs. The data is then sent to the user’s smartphone or a nearby computer.



To assess the durability of the invention, the researchers washed the t-shirt, and found that after 20 washes, the antenna withstood water and detergent and was still in good working condition.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Indian scientists discover ‘Saraswati’ – a supercluster of galaxies



The Saraswati supercluster of 43 galaxies is 4 billion light years away from Earth and roughly more than 10 billion years old. It spans 600 million light years and many contain the mass equivalent of over 20 million billion suns.



Superclusters are a chain of galaxies and galaxy clusters bound by gravity, often stretching to several hundred times the size of clusters of galaxies, consisting of tens of thousands of galaxies. The Milky Way, the galaxy we are in, is part of the Laniakea Supercluster.



The Shapley Concentration or the Sloan Great Wall superclusters are comparatively large, but the Saraswati supercluster is far more distant.



The supercluster was discovered by Shishir Sankhayan, of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, Pratik Dabhade, IUCAA research fellow, Joe Jacob of Newman College, Kerala, and Prakash Sarkar of the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Who is known for liquefaction of oxygen?



French chemist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) is a celebrated scientist and nobleman who was central to the chemical revolution in the 18th Century. A meticulous experimenter who changed the way chemistry was done and perceived, he had a large influence on how both chemistry and biology developed. While it is impossible to cover everything that Lavoisier achieved in a short article, we will be looking at how one of his predictions came true nearly 100 years later.



A prophetic idea



Lavoisier had a prophetic idea that “[t]he air, or at least some of its constituents, would cease to remain an invisible gas and would turn into the liquid stage. A transformation of this kind would thus produce new liquids of which we as yet have no idea.” Given that until 1877, the dominant thought was that the permanent gases – oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon monoxide – were not capable of existing in liquid form, such a statement was indeed beyond his time.



And yet, it did come true. For within days of each other, French physicist Louis Paul Cailletet and Swiss physicist Raoul Pictet arrived independently at methods for the liquefaction of oxygen in December 1877. A whole new field of research and science then opened up.



Born in 1832 into an industrial family, Cailletet was privileged to attend Lycee Henri IV in Paris, and the Ecole des Mines as an unregistered student. He returned to work on his father’s ironworks after his studies, and even though his exact nature of work remains unknown, it is evident that he applied the knowledge he had acquired while studying.



Observations in ironworks



Starting 1856, Cailletet published his studies based on observations in the ironworks and techniques to improve the quality of products. Most of these were presented by French chemist Henri Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville, a person with whom Cailletet shared a friendship that when beyond the typical Parisian scientific environment.



So when Deville became director of the chemistry laboratory at the Ecole Normale Superieure in 1868, it was no surprise that Cailletet also switched to a new series of experiments a year later – experiments that were no longer directly related to observations from ironworks. In 1869, Cailletet started experiments on high-pressure chemistry and most of his publications thereon dealt with compressibility of gases.



In 1877, Cailletet successfully attempted liquefaction of gases with an experimental arrangement based on a compression apparatus. Cailletet paced oxygen and carbon monoxide into his liquefaction apparatus on separate occasions, cooled and compressed them to a specific temperature and pressure and let the gases expand. He observed a thick mist at the end of the expansion and was able to identify that these were the condensed form of both gases.



 Deville is in the detail



Cailletet shot a letter to Deville on December 2, 1877, announcing the liquefaction of oxygen and carbon monoxide. Deville had the presence of mind to seal the letter in an envelope and deposit it with the Academie des Sciences. As a result, even when the Academie received a telegram from Pictet on December 22 stating that he had liquefied oxygen, there was no confusion over who got there first.



Pictet denied any priority claim and there was no dispute between the two parties. Pictet and Cailletet arrived at their results using different techniques and both of them were awarded the Davy Medal by the Royal Society of London in 1878.



Pictet proved to be an exception as a number of others jumped in and disputes ensued, Parallel priority claims were a constant theme between 1877 and 1908, during which time all the so-called permanent gases were liquefied. Cailletet’s liquefaction of oxygen had thus heralded cryogenics – a new field of research that concerned itself with the produced and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures.



 



Picture Credit : Google


What was the first jukebox?



How do you carry your music? You probably have it stored in your mobile phone or use music apps to stream them and listen. If you still don’t have your own smartphone, then you might be using a music player or the radio to listen the songs whenever you want. What if none of these options was possible? What if you had to gather around a device that played music, paying for every time you used the service?



A jukebox is a semi-automated music-playing device popular in the middle of the 20th century. Usually a coin-operated machine, it played a user’s selection from available self-contained media. If the idea doesn’t seem relatable to you, wait till you hear about a nickel-in-the-slot phonograph.



First jukebox



The nickel-in-the-slot phonograph is seen by many as the first jukebox, even though it was never known by that name (the word “jukebox” seems to have originated only after the 1930s). it was first installed on November 23, 1889 in the Palais Royale Saloon, Sutter Street, San Francisco, meaning it appeared nearly four decades before the word “jukebox” started doing the rounds.



Before we look at the nickel-in-the-slot machine, we will have to understand the phonograph. The brainchild of American inventor and businessman Thomas Edison, it was first demonstrated by him in 1877. Even though Edison firmly believed that his phonograph – a device for mechanical recording and reproduction of sound – would be put to use in offices, it was the music industry that benefited most from it.



Phonograph at its core



Among those who made the most of the phonograph were two men, Louis T Glass and William S Arnold. Glass worked with the Pacific Phonograph Company during that time and Arnold was his business associate. Glass was struck with the idea that if he could get people to part with money to listen to music, he might make it big in a new business. He soon got to work along with Arnold, and he proved to be absolutely right about his ideas.



Glass and Arnold came up with the nickel-in-the-slot phonograph, an inventions that placed on Edison Class M electric phonograph inside a wooden cabinet. With loudspeakers yet to be invented, the phonograph was attached to four tubes that looked like stethoscopes that were used to listen to the only song stored in the device.



Glass particularly prided himself in the way in which he had devised these four tubes. Each of these tubes was provided with a slot in which a nickel (coin) could be dropped. While dropping a nickel in any of these slots started the machine and played the song, it was only audible in the tube in which the nickel was dropped. If others tried to listen in with the other tubes, they got no sound, unless they dropped a coin to activate that tube as well.



Once installed at the Palais Royale Saloon, it became evident that it was an instant success. With minimal amounts being spent for regular maintenance, it was clear that Glass and Arnold had struck it rich. To add to that, the machines turned out to be so attractive that places that wanted to be buzzing with people took it on lease on regular rentals, while receiving just a 10th of the actual proceedings.



Makes a lot of money



Six months from the time the first nickel-in-the-slot phonograph got going, on May 14, 1890, it had raked in $1,035.25 1(a lot of money at that time). Other machines that had been placed around the city, including some that were placed in close proximity to each other, also did equally well. This prompted Glass to say “that all the money we have made in the phonograph business we have made out of the-nickel-in-the-slot machine,” when he was invited to speak at the first annual convention of local phonograph companies of the U.S. held in Chicago on May 28 and 29, 1890.



Till the advent of radio, phonograph and the various inventions based on it remained the mass medium for popular music and recordings. It was then followed by jukeboxes that dominated the scene until transistors were invented. They might have gone by a different name, but the predecessor to these jukeboxes started out by accepting just a nickel in the slot.



 



Picture Credit : Google


Which is the second artificial nuclear reactor?




 



We have a thing for firsts. Be it the first human being to climb the Mt. Everest, the first to set foot on the moon, or any such feat, they leave an indelible mark in our collective consciousness. The ones who come second, even though achieving an equally significant accomplishment, often fade from our memory. One such second is the X-10 Graphite Reactor, the second artificial nuclear reactor after the Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1).



Before we take a look at X-10, we have to understand the circumstances in which it came about. The authorisation of the Manhattan Project by the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II meant that scientists began their research and development to produce the first nuclear weapons. In December 1942, CP-1 became the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor as the experiment led by American-Italian physicist Enrico Fermi achieved the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. 



Need for plutonium



While CP-1 was a success as a scientific experiment and showed that nuclear chain reactions could be controlled, it was built on a small scale, which meant that recovering significant amounts of plutonium wasn’t feasible. As plutonium, a transuranium element that had been recently discovered, was seen as a potential ingredient for atomic weapons, producing it for research was a priority. 



The X-10 Graphite Reactor was thus born as an experimental air-cooled production pile that would help in designing the full-scale helium-cooled reactors that were also being planned. Whereas the X-10 Pile or Clinton Pile was to be built at the Oak Ridge site, the latter was planned to be constructed at Hanford. DuPont company was roped in to work with the University of Chicago to design and build both these reactors. 



Less than a year



Even though the design wasn’t completely ready, DuPont went ahead with the construction of the reactor in early 1943. The X-10 was to be a massive graphite block (24-ft cube), protected by concrete and having 1,248 horizontal channels that were to be filled with uranium slugs surrounded by cooling air. The face of the pile was to be used to push new slugs into the channels, while irradiated ones fell into an underwater bucket at the rear. 



These buckets of irradiated slugs were left to undergo radioactive decay before being moved to a separation facility , where remote-controlled equipment were used to extract the plutonium. Racing against time, the construction of the reactor was completed in less than a year. 



On November 4, 1943, the X-10 went critical for the first time. This meant that the number of neutrons being produced were equal to the number of neutrons being absorbed, which in turn produced the same number of neutrons. A reactor thus operates in a steady-state when it becomes critical. By the end of November, X-10 started producing small but significant samples of plutonium, which were experimentally valuable. 



Important learning



Even though it was decided that water should be used as a coolant for the Hanford reactors while X-10 was still under construction, X-10 provided important results and learning. The X-10 suppled the Los Alamos National Laboratory with the first significant amounts of plutonium, fission studies in which influenced the bomb design. The engineers, technicians, safety officers and reactor operators who worked on X-10 gained great experience, which they were able to apply once they moved to Hanford. 



Once the war was over, the reactor was put to use for peacetime efforts, producing radioisotopes, utilised in industry, medicine and research. It remained in operation until 1963, when X-10 was shut down permanently. By 1965, the X-10 Graphite Reactor was designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. government and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Recognised by the American Chemical Society as a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 2008, the control room and reactor face are still accessible to the public through tours provided by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 



 



Picture Credit : Google