Scientists Turn Tequila into Diamonds
Scientists Turn Tequila into Diamonds
The key to the surprising discovery is tequila’s ratio of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, which lies within the “diamond growth region.” The resulting diamond films could have inexpensive commercial applications as electrical insulators, say researchers Javier Morales, Luis Miguel Apátiga, and Víctor Manuel Castaño from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Morales is also with Nuevo León´s Autonomous University).
Originally, the scientists were experimenting with creating diamonds from organic solutions such as acetone, ethanol, and methanol. They found that diluting ethanol in water resulted in high quality diamond films. The scientists then noticed that the ideal compound of 40 percent ethanol and 60 percent water was similar to the proportion used in tequila.
“To dissipate any doubts, one morning on the way to the lab I bought a pocket-size bottle of cheap white tequila and we did some tests,” Apátiga said. “We were in doubt over whether the great amount of chemicals present in tequila, other than water and ethanol, would contaminate or obstruct the process, it turned out to be not so. The results were amazing, same as with the ethanol and water compound, we obtained almost spherical shaped diamonds of nanometric size. There is no doubt; tequila has the exact proportion of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms necessary to form diamonds.”
Periods of healthy old age vary
Periods of healthy old age ‘vary’
The health of older Europeans varies widely between countries, even in those with longer life expectancies, a report has claimed.
The researchers collected data on life-expectancy, then surveyed older people from each country to find out whether they felt that illness had limited their ability to carry out normal activities.
This was used to calculate how many “healthy life years” a man and woman from each EU country could expect after their 50th birthday. In some cases, this revealed problems not immediately apparent by just looking at life expectancy charts.
Airline passenger restrained with duct tape
Airline passenger restrained with duct tape
An airline crew used duct tape to keep a passenger in her seat because they say she became unruly, fighting flight attendants and grabbing other passengers, forcing the flight to land in North Carolina.
Maria Esther Castillo of Oswego, N.Y., is due in court Thursday, charged with resisting arrest and interfering with the operations of a flight crew aboard United Airlines Flight 645, from Puerto Rico to Chicago.
Castillo, 45, struck a flight attendant on the buttocks with the back of her hand during Saturday\’s flight, FBI Special Agent Peter Carricato said in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Charlotte. She also stood and fell onto the head of a blind passenger and later started pulling the person\’s hair, the complaint stated.
Lynx deodorant kills boy, 12
A 12-year-old boy collapsed and later died after using too much deodorant.
Daniel Hurley was proud of his appearance and was lavish with his use of deodorants and gels, said his father, who had desperately tried to revive him.
Derby Coroner’s Court heard that Daniel’s overuse of Lynx Vice in the confined space of the bathroom of his family’s home caused his heart to fail.
Pub row erupts after feces found in ice cream
Pub row erupts after feces found in ice cream
A bitter row has broken out between one of Sydney’s largest tourist pubs and a family of five who accused chefs of serving human excrement in their gelato after they complained about noise during a football match.
State government food minister Ian Macdonald confirmed on Wednesday that frozen fecal matter had been found in a serving of chocolate gelato offered to placate pub patron Steve Whyte and his wife Jessica, who became “violently ill” after eating it.
“The stench went through my nostrils, I retched and spat it into the napkin,” Jessica Whyte told the Daily Telegraph newspaper, recounting what local media are calling “gelati-gate.”
In this economy, even sex doesn’t sell
In this economy, even sex doesn’t sell
The women at Donna’s Ranch are crowded around the kitchen table on a warm summer night, dining on stir fry, tugging at thigh-high dresses, griping about depleted bank accounts. At this northeastern Nevada bordello, which marks a gravel road’s end, they woo grizzled truckers and weary travelers for a single reason: money.
Lately, the women don’t go home with much.
Signs of the economic free fall have cropped up in many of Nevada’s 25 or so legal brothels. The Mustang Ranch, for example, has a steady stream of customers, but the number of women vying for work has soared. Even a 74-year-old applied. This summer, the Shady Lady gave $50 gas cards to those who spent $300. The Moonlite Bunny Ranch offered extras to customers paying with their economic stimulus checks.
Here, 180 miles west of Salt Lake City, near the junction of Interstate 80 and Highway 93, Donna’s Ranch has seen its business plummet nearly 20%. More than three-quarters of its customers are long-haul truckers, and high fuel and food prices have drained them of “play money,” owner Geoff Arnold says. That cuts into pay for his 10-member staff and the “working girls.”
How to Permanently Delete Data from Your Hard Drive
How to Permanently Delete Data from Your Hard Drive
According to the New York Times, a basic privacy measure that is often overlooked is the proper destruction of data on hard drives. An ongoing study by British Telecom says that most people don’t realize that deleting a file doesn’t actually remove the data from a computer.
In fact, the BT research found that only 33 percent of second hand hard drives had been completely wiped clean. To ensure your drive doesn’t contain any personal data before you give it away or sell it, you need to reformat the hard drive or use digital shredding software if you want to completely eliminate all traces of data. In this post, we’ll show you how.
When it comes to data stored on your computer, deleting files doesn’t actually remove the data. File information is kept in a directory so that the operating system can find it. When you delete a file, all you are doing is removing it from the directory and flagging that part of the drive as being available for new data. Until that region is overwritten, the old data can be retrieved, in fact that’s how you can recover lost data. It’s also the way most file recovery programs work - they look for data on your hard drive that shouldn’t be there according to the directory and restore it.
DNA breakthrough on 1946 murder
DNA breakthrough on 1946 murder
Scientists working on the case of a schoolgirl raped and shot dead 62 years ago have made a possible breakthrough in the hunt for the killer.
Muriel Drinkwater, 12, was attacked as she walked home from a school in Penllergaer, Swansea in June 1946.
Forensic experts have now obtained a DNA profile related to the killer’s family from a semen stain on her coat.
Confessions of a Naked Sushi Model
Confessions of a Naked Sushi Model
Lying here diagonally across the top of a dining table in the back room of Ambassador Wines and Spirits, naked except for the scallop shells covering my nipples and the silk scarf sheltering my crotch, while guests gorge on sushi and sashimi pieces plucked from my torso, I require your cooperation.
There is more than raw fish at stake. I owe it to Hirosaki Koko, the caterer who invited me here tonight, to remain completely still. I owe it to the customers who have paid good money for a dining experience spiked with a dose of sexual fetishism. And I owe it to the spirit of the Japanese practice of Nyotaimori.
Utterly exposed before a group of strangers, I do my best to fight off the impending toe cramp and a fierce desire to wince. This is all very new to me. You see, it’s my first time as a naked body sushi model.
Sci-fi special: Is science fiction dying?
Sci-fi special: Is science fiction dying?
Years ago, on one of my first assignments for New Scientist, I was sent to London’s Dorchester Hotel to interview Carl Sagan, the American astronomer. Sagan was famous for his popular science books, the blockbuster TV series Cosmos, and his science fiction novel Contact, which was turned into a film starring Jodie Foster. Rather overawed by Sagan’s palatial suite and by meeting the man himself, I asked him which he preferred - science or science fiction? “Science,” he replied without hesitation. “Because science is stranger than science fiction.”
That was two decades ago. Since then, we have discovered that 73 per cent of the mass-energy of the universe is in the form of mysterious “dark energy”, invisible stuff whose repulsive gravity is speeding up cosmic expansion; we have discovered micro-organisms surviving in total darkness kilometres down in solid rock and even around the cores of nuclear reactors; and we have seen the rise of superstring theory, which views the ultimate building blocks of matter as impossibly small “strings” that vibrate in a 10-dimensional space. If science was stranger than science fiction at the time Sagan spoke to me, it is even more strange now.
This has led some to claim that science - and its handmaiden, technology - are changing so fast that it is impossible for science fiction to keep up. In the past, science fiction notably failed to predict the transistor, whose year-on-year miniaturisation has enabled computers to conquer the modern world. In the future, goes the argument, it is going to be even harder for science fiction writers to predict the technological developments which will transform our lives. Science fiction, claim the doomsayers, is dead - or, if not dead, in terminal decline.