Scientific Advancement

It was on this day in 1975 that Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act and started the "go metric" campaign with school activities, bumper stickers, public service announcements, and wall charts. But in 1982, Ronald Reagan disbanded the Metric Board and canceled its funding. The metric system was developed 200 years ago, during of the Age of Reason, and is based on numeric intervals of 10, while the U.S.'s measurement system is based on seeds and body parts. Today, the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar are the only nonmetric countries in the world.*

Way to go, Gipper. Get the government off the people's backs.

*The Writer's Almanac

Woman Fired for Teaching Science

Yes, Bloggers, the Christians have done it again! Turning the clock back 500 years they have determined that science has no place in 2007. Read for yourself here:
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/11/29/texas-so-so-doomed/

Tuesday's Word: water table

The water table or phreatic surface is the surface where the water pressure is equal to atmospheric pressure.

A sustainable amount of water within a unit of sediment or rock, below the water table, in the phreatic zone is called an aquifer. The ability of the aquifer to store groundwater is dependent on the primary and secondary porosity and permeability.

Contents
1 Form
1.1 Surface topography
1.2 Perched water tables
2 Fluctuations
2.1 Seasonal fluctuations
2.2 Long term fluctuations
3 See also

Form
The form of a water table may change and vary due to seasonal changes, topography and structural geology. In undeveloped regions, or areas with high amounts of precipitation, the water table roughly follows the contour of the overlying land surface, and rises and falls with increases or decreases in infiltration. Springs and oases occur when the water table reaches the surface. Springs commonly form on hillsides, where the earth's slanting surface may "intersect" with the water table. Other, unseen springs are found under rivers and lakes, and account for the base-flow water levels in water bodies.

Surface topography
Within an aquifer, the water table is rarely horizontal, but reflects the surface relief due to the effect of gravity.[citation needed] In hilly regions, the variation in gradient give rise to rivers, springs or oases when the water table intersects the surface. It should be noted that the water table does not always mimic the topography due to variations in the underlying geologic structure (i.e. - folded, faulted, fractured bedrock).

Perched water tables
A perched water table (or perched aquifer) is an aquifer that occurs above the regional water table, in the vadose zone. This occurs when there is an impermeable layer of rock or sediment (aquiclude) or relatively impermeable layer aquatard above the main aquifer but below the surface. If a perched aquifer's flow intersects the Earth's surface, at a valley wall for example, the water is discharged as a spring.

Fluctuations

Seasonal fluctuations in the water table. During the dry season, river beds may dry up. In some regions (Great Britain for example), winter precipitation is often higher than summer precipitation and so the groundwater storage is not recharged in summer. Consequently, the water table is lower in the summer period yearly. This disparity between the level of the winter and summer water table is known as the zone of intermittent saturation, wherein the water table will fluctuate in response to climatic conditions.

Long term fluctuations
Fossil water is groundwater that has remained in an aquifer for millennia, and occurs mainly in deserts. Fossil water is non-renewable by present day rainfall due to its depth below the surface, and any extraction ('mining') causes a permanent change in the water table in such regions.

Your blog author has been trying to find water filters. He is beginning to think it would be easier to drill a well.

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Tuesday's Word: desalination

Desalination refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water suitable for animal consumption or irrigation, and if almost all of the salt is removed, for human consumption. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. Desalination of ocean water is common in the Middle East (because of water scarcity) and the Caribbean, and is growing fast in the USA, North Africa, Singapore, Spain, Australia and China.[citation needed] It is used also on ships, submarines and islands. Desalination typically requires large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or wells (bores).
Desalination of brackish water is done in the United States in order to meet treaty obligations for river water entering Mexico. Several Middle Eastern countries have energy reserves so great that they use desalinated water for agriculture. Saudi Arabia's desalination plants account for about 24% of total world capacity. The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It uses multi-stage flash distillation, dual-purpose and it is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.
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Friday Science Blogging: Peltier effect

(Elec.) The production or absorption of heat at the junction of two metals on the passage of a current. Heat generated by the passage of the current in one direction will be absorbed if the current is reversed.

the free dictionary

Readers, I checked science sources. It's so complicated that you don't want to know!

The Peltier effect is the reverse of the Seebeck effect; a creation of a heat difference from an electric voltage.
It occurs when a current is passed through two dissimilar metals or semiconductors (n-type and p-type) that are connected to each other at two junctions (Peltier junctions). The current drives a transfer of heat from one junction to the other: one junction cools off while the other heats up; as a result, the effect is often used for thermoelectric cooling. This effect was observed in 1834 by Jean Peltier, 13 years after Seebeck's initial discovery.

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See!?!

Friday Science Blogging

A ruminant is any hooved animal that digests its food in two steps, first by eating the raw material and regurgitating a semi-digested form known as cud, then eating the cud, a process called ruminating. Ruminants include cattle, goats, sheep, llamas, giraffes, bison, buffalo, deer, wildebeest, and antelope. The suborder Ruminantia includes all those except the camels and llamas, which are Tylopoda. Ruminants also share another anatomical feature in that they all have an even number of toes.

Explanation

Ruminants have a fore-stomach with four chambers. These are the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. In the first two chambers, the rumen and the reticulum, the food is mixed with saliva and separates into layers of solid and liquid material. Solids clump together to form the cud (or bolus). The cud is then regurgitated, chewed slowly to completely mix it with saliva and to break down the particle size. Fibre, especially cellulose and hemi-cellulose, is primarily broken down into the three volatile fatty acids, acetic acid, propionic acid and butyric acid in these chambers by bacteria and protozoa.

Even though the rumen and reticulum have different names they represent the same functional space as digesta can move back and forth between them. Together these chambers are called the rumen-reticulum. The degraded fibre, which is now in the lower liquid part of the rumen-reticulum, then passes into the next chamber, the omasum, where water and many of the inorganic mineral elements are absorbed into the blood stream. After this the digesta is moved to the last chamber, the abomasum. The abomasum is the direct equivalent of the monogastric stomach (for example that of the human or pig), and food here is digested in much the same way. Digesta is finally moved into the small intestine, where the digestion and absorption of nutrients occurs. Bacteria created in the reticulo-rumen are also digested in the small intestine.
Almost all the glucose produced by the breaking down of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin is used by bacteria in the rumen, and as such ruminants usually absorb little glucose from the small intestine. Rather, ruminants' requirement for glucose (for brain function and lactation if appropriate) is made by the liver from propionate, one of the volatile fatty acids made in the rumen.

The idea for this Friday's contribution to the understanding of science is from Katie, a lovely young lady. We were talking about cows. She said cows aren't supposed to eat grain; they should eat grass. It seems that advice has been heard before, perhaps it was a discussion of organic farming or safe beef. Not sure. In any case, I hope to see her again as there are now more questions re safe food sources.

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