Stannous Flouride's Book of Truthiness

David Mitchell posits a possible form of post-life existence that atheists would find highly disappointing:

I’m still chuckling.

CINCINNATI (The Borowitz Report)—Republican front-runner Donald Trump was crying foul on Monday after Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders allegedly dispatched an army of vegan thugs to attack a rally of peace-loving Nazis in Cincinnati.

According to Trump, he had begun to address a group of “orderly and civil Nazis” at a downtown arena when his audience was suddenly set upon by an unruly mob of angry vegans, many menacingly clad in Birkenstocks and sustainable garments.

“Make no mistake about who is starting the violence at these rallies,” Trump said. “It’s the vegans.”

Carol Foyler, a Nazi from suburban Cincinnati, said that she feared for her life when one of the vegans “ripped a Trump sign” from her hands and “tried to recycle it.”

Source: Sanders Sends Vegan Thugs to Attack Peace-Loving Nazis – The New Yorker

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, lack of access to safe, clean water is the biggest risk to society over the coming decade. Yet some of these risks could be mitigated by the development of this filter, which is so strong and stable that it can be used for extended periods in the harshest corrosive environments, and with less maintenance than other filters on the market.

The research team was led by Associate Professor Mainak Majumder from Monash University. Associate Professor Majumder said the key to making their filter was developing a viscous form of graphene oxide that could be spread very thinly with a blade.

“This technique creates a uniform arrangement in the graphene, and that evenness gives our filter special properties,” Associate Prof Majumder said.

This technique allows the filters to be produced much faster and in larger sizes, which is critical for developing commercial applications. The graphene-based filter could be used to filter chemicals, viruses, or bacteria from a range of liquids. It could be used to purify water, dairy products or wine, or in the production of pharmaceuticals.

This is the first time that a graphene filter has been able to be produced on an industrial scale – a problem that has plagued the scientific community for years.

(a) Viscoelastic property of GO (~40 mg ml−1). Scale bar, 1 cm. (b) Zero-shear viscosity of the dispersions increases with increasing GO concentration. Dashed line is a polynomial fit. (c) Rheology data for three different concentration showing shear-thinning behavior. Solid curves are the fit of the experimental data with a power law model. (d) Schematic of shear-alignment processing of a nematic GO to a film; L is the width of blade, h0 is the height of the channel, H is the height of the fluid in front of the blade and U is the processing speed. (e) Polarized light images of fully nematic GO at 40 mg ml−1 (scale bar, 1 μm). (f) The red circle in the photograph identfies dewetting spots in the SAMs, which is eliminated when processed from liquid crystalline GO (scale bars, 1 cm). (g) An SEM image demonstrates continuity and conformity of SAM over a porous Nylon substrate (scale bar, 1 μm). (h) Photograph of the gravure printing machine and (inset) images of 13 × 14 cm2 GO membranes with different thicknesses. (i,j) AFM height map and corresponding height profiles of our membrane (scale bar, 1 μm).

“It’s been a race to see who could develop this technology first, because until now graphene-based filters could only be used on a small scale in the lab,” Mr Akbari said.

Graphene is a lattice of carbon atoms so thin it’s considered to be two-dimensional. It has been hailed as a “wonder-material” because of its incredible performance characteristics and range of potential applications.

The team’s new filter can filter out anything bigger than one nanometre, which is about 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The research has gathered interest from a number of companies in the United States and the Asia Pacific, the largest and fastest-growing markets for nano-filtration technologies.

Source: Fabrication of shear-aligned membrane from nematic GO. : Large-area graphene-based nanofiltration membranes by shear alignment of discotic nematic liquid crystals of graphene oxide : Nature Communications : Nature Publishing Group

Pulled this bundle of unused redwood lath (as used in lath and plaster walls) out of the debris from the renovations next door.

Images of and from our world

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei set up a white grand piano in the muddy, rain-drenched refugee Idomeni camp on the Greek-Macedonian border Saturday, allowing 24 year-old Nour Alkhzam, a refugee from the city Deirez Zor, Syria, to play it.

Source: Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei brings white grand piano to muddy refugee field

Explanation: If seen in the right light, Saturn glows like a neon sign. (Although Saturn has comparatively little of the element neon, a composite image false-colored in three bands of infrared light highlights features of the giant ringed planet like a glowing sign)

At the most blue band of the infrared light featured, false-colored blue in the above image, Saturn itself appears dark but Saturn’s thin rings brightly reflect light from our Sun.

Conversely, Saturn’s B ring is so thick that little reflected light makes it through, creating a dark band between Saturn’s A and C rings.

At the most red band of the infrared, false-colored red above, Saturn emits a surprisingly detailed thermal glow, indicating planet-wide bands, huge hurricane-like storms, and a strange hexagon-shaped cloud system around the North Pole.

In the middle infrared band, false-colored green, the sunlit side of Saturn’s atmosphere reflects brightly. The above image was obtained in 2007 by the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting about 1.6 million kilometers out from Saturn.

Image Credit:  VIMS Team, U. Arizona, ESA, NASA