Beauty of SriLanka

Gymnastics School in China

Very Speedy Fish

Fast food: The speediest fish on the planet that swim through the ocean at 75mph on the hunt for sardines  In a fishy recreation of House of the Flying Daggers, these pictures capture the break-neck 75mph speeds of one of the fastest hunts on the planet. The images, captured by Reinhard Dirscherl, 47, from Germany, freeze in time the amazing techniques used by the planet's most rapid fish. Atlantic Sailfish, caught on camera by Reinhard in Isla Mujeres, Mexico, can be seen in large groups darting in and out of schools of favourite prey sardines. The photographer came inches from the sword-nosed hunter as sardines took cover behind him in one raid A sailfish hunts sardines at break-neck speed off Isla Mujeres off the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico  By grouping together, the sardines look for safety in numbers hoping to thwart the animals trying to pick them off One picture even shows how he came face-to-face with one of the sword-nosed hunters as sardines took cover behind him during one raid.  Every year the sardines migrate along the Yucatan coast attracting predators like sailfish. As they are attacked from all sides the sardines form defensive bait balls.  By grouping together, they look for safety in numbers hoping to thwart the animals trying to pick them off. And taking even more desperate measures, the sardines even used Reinhard for protection. Every year the sardines migrate along the Yucatan coast attracting predators like sailfish As the sardines are attacked from all sides they form defensive bait balls in a bid to save themselves He said: 'When the sailfish hunt the sardines, the sardines panic.  'The sardines will use any means they can to hide, and the only barrier they could create between them and the sailfish was me. 'Sometimes they surrounded me completely and the Sailfishes circled around. 'Fortunately they wouldn't attack while I was there as they were wary of me. If they did then the sword on their nose could do a lot of damage.  'It was a fantastic experience for me.'

01st Accident in Southern Highway

Graphene Foam Sensors Cheaply Detect Trace Particles in Air Ten Times Better Than Current Tech

By Clay Dillow

Using Graphene Foam to Detect Gases RPI

Nanotechnology as a discipline is bleeding-edge cool, but so often we hear more about its amazing potential than its practical application. So it’s always refreshing to catch wind of a story like this: Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have developed and demonstrated a small, relatively inexpensive, and reusable sensor made of graphene foam that far outperforms commercial gas sensors on the market today and could lead to better explosives detectors and environmental sensors in the very near future.

The new sensor dispenses with a lot of the limitations that have been holding back sensors in this space. In the last several years, many strides have been made in the science of manipulating nanostructures to be excellent detectors of very fine trace elements of chemicals on the air. But these sensors, while great in theory, are impractical in actual service.

Current sensor designs are complex, often relying on an individual nanostructure that must be carefully manipulated and even more carefully analyzed. They are often not reusable and must be deployed at specific temperatures or pressures, making a handheld sensor device unreliable, very expensive, and impossible to use repeatedly.

Enter graphene foam. The new postage-stamp-sized sensor developed at RPI involves growing graphene--one-atom-thick layers of carbon--on a structure of nickel foam. Removing that nickel foam leaves behind a structure of foam-like graphene with unique electrical properties that can be tuned to the task of sensing.

When exposed to air, particles adsorb to the foam’s surface. And each of these particles affects the graphene foam in a different way, slightly modifying its electrical resistance. Run a current through it, and a measurement of the change in resistance tells a you what’s sticking to the foam. Moreover, by running a roughy 100-milliampere current through the foam the RPI team found they could cause the particles to desorb--that is, they unattached themselves from the sensor, cleansing it so it can be used again and again.

Tweaked to detect ammonia (a key ingredient in homemade explosive ammonium nitrate--think: fertilizer bombs), the graphene foam sensor managed to detect the offending particle at just 1,000 parts-per-million in just five-to-10 minutes--making it ten times more effective than the best detectors on the market today. A second demo involving nitrogen dioxide (another trace element given off by explosives as they degrade) showed nearly identical results--effective at 100 parts-per-million, or ten times better than current commercial sensors.

Given that graphene foam is fairly easy to handle and manipulate given its larger size and room-temperature-ready performance, that’s pretty remarkable. It also drastically lowers the barrier to a practical handheld devices for atmospheric sensing. See more straight from the source in the vid below.