Prompts: Keeping the Brain Warm During the Deep Freeze

Share |

It just got real cold here in New York City. The temperature dropped like twenty degrees in a few days and it’s staying that way for the foreseeable future. Combined with the earlier sunset after daylight savings time, and it can be downright depressing outside. Heading into the months of cold and dark, sometimes it’s tough to keep the old brain in gear and churn out creative story ideas.

Personally, when I get home and it’s 6:30 and already pitch black outside and the wind’s howling, I just want to curl up with a good book and relax. For about a week straight. (Alright, with my kids that would never happen, but you get the idea).

But then I know I’ll just look back and kick myself in the rear end for all the time I wasted. So how do you keep your brain working despite the chill outside? I do it by practicing on items I find from combing through the mountain of press releases I collect at work in my job as a news editor. Here’s just a few of them, along with my own take on how to spin them into interesting stories:

 

Researchers Kick-Start Ancient DNA

Binghamton University researchers recently revived ancient bacteria trapped for thousands of years in water droplets embedded in salt crystals.

For decades, geologists have looked at these water droplets — called fluid inclusions — and wondered whether microbes could be extracted from them. Fluid inclusions have been found inside salt crystals ranging in age from thousands to hundreds of millions of years old. The researchers began to wonder about the DNA of the organisms they were finding in these inclusions.

“The things that aren’t alive in there, their DNA is still preserved,” said Professor J. Koji Lum. Lum’s graduate student Krithivas Sankaranarayanan reviewed existing literature on ancient DNA and helped to develop a protocol for use with the samples. The researchers sequence the DNA and culture the bacteria they find. (Read more…)

It sounds like a microbial Jurassic Park. These are bacteria that haven’t seen the light of day since before the time of man. The thing is, all organisms, even bacteria, are bred to survive, and microbes from the Mesozoic may have developed survival skills that modern science has never seen. Imagine Professor Lum, alone in the lab late at night. He’s studying these ancient bacteria that his colleagues have brought back to life. He peers at the Petri dish. Did one of the little blobs just move? He looks even closer, noticing a slight quivering motion in the mass of cells.

As he holds it up to his face, Professor Lum is utterly surprised when a thin liquid jets out of the dish into his eye. Then his surprise fades along with the rest of his emotions as the bacteria, really a tiny part of a larger sentient mass, travels to his cerebral cortex and implants its instructions. For countless eons the entity has slept. Now, once Professor Lum infects the rest of his team, enough of its consciousness can be completely resurrected, and the bacteria that enabled it to control the primitive beasts that lived ages ago will spread to rule a much more promising species, man.

 

Flexible Wings May be Feasible for Designing Efficient Microscale Flying Machines

Creating micro-scale air vehicles that mimic the flapping of winged insects or birds has become popular, but they typically require a complex combination of pitching and plunging motions to oscillate the flapping wings. To avoid some of the design challenges involved in mimicking insect wing strokes, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology propose using flexible wings that are driven by a simple sinusoidal flapping motion.

The simulations described in the research revealed that tilted elastic wings driven by a simple harmonic stroke generated lift comparable to that of small insects that employ a significantly more complex stroke. In addition, the simulations identified one flapping regime that enabled maximum lift and another that revealed maximum efficiency. The efficiency was maximized at a flapping frequency 30 percent higher than the frequency for maximized lift. (Read more…)

Basically, what this boils down to is that these researchers have figured out how to engineer tiny insect-like wings that actually work. They haven’t really built them yet, but that comes next, a working model. It could take years, but just think: two partners, developing a tiny, mechanical flying device. What’s the most obvious application for such a small-scale piece of technology? Of course: spying. Whether industrial or military, a tiny microprocessor borne on insect wings would literally be the perfect “fly” on the wall.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Back to our two partners; call them Tom and Harry. Let’s say they finally get a prototype, a tiny buzzer droid with remote control and video/audio feed that’s the size and weight of a housefly. Harry can’t resist, he has to try it out. He deploys it late one night as a joke and tails Tom, following him, noting his boring route home, his annoying habits. But then things get serious when Harry discovers Tom having an affair with Harry’s wife.

Work becomes strained as Tom uses the surveillance droid to discover that Harry is embezzling money from their fledgling company. Paranoia sets in as the two surreptitiously spy on each other, forgetting all about their research as they become consumed with invading each other’s privacy. It is a story about paranoia and how even the most brilliant technology can enable our worst impulses, as the two former friends and colleagues lose everything they ever valued.

 

Researchers Trap Antimatter Atoms

A team made up of researchers from the University of Calgary, institutions across Canada and around the world have discovered how to trap atomic antimatter. The results of their discovery are published in the journal Nature.

The goal of the research involves trapping and storing the simplest of all antimatter atoms, antihydrogen, with the purpose of studying it. Trapping antimatter is tricky. When matter and antimatter get too close, they destroy each other, in a kind of explosion, leaving behind the energy which made them. The challenge is cooling the atoms off enough, 272 degrees below zero, so that they are slow enough to be trapped in a magnetic storage device.

“We’ve been able to trap about 38 atoms, which is an incredibly small amount, nothing like what we would need to power Star Trek’s Enterprise or even to heat a cup of coffee,” says Rob Thompson, head of physics and astronomy at the University of Calgary and a coauthor of the Nature paper. (Read more…)

They can trap antimatter? Whoa, what’s next? Charge up the dilithium crystals! Seriously, though, this seems like a pretty big deal. Even if they can only capture a few atoms of the stuff, you know before long they’ll get enough to do more than heat up some decaf.

And when scientists are able to capture enough antimatter and are able to control the explosive energy when it comes into contact with normal matter, it could mean the end of the energy crisis. At least that’s what our intrepid researchers hope as they continue their work. Imagine in twenty, thirty years when these experiments become more routine.

Just imagine as everything seems to be going well, contracts are about to be signed that will take the technology global and render oil and coal obsolete. But a junior researcher starts noticing something. In addition to the energy produced from the matter-antimatter reactions, trace amounts of radiation are produced that have never been seen before. When the experiments involved a few atoms, there radiation levels were too small to study, but as the research grew, the scientist noticed odd occurrences. Animals behaved strangely, and team members would occasionally develop cognitive difficulties that became permanent.

He runs more tests and comes to a startling conclusion: the radiation produces lasting brain changes that could potentially harm 1 out of every 1,000 people. He alerts his superiors who, you guessed it, already know. It’s being hushed up, cars are already being fitted with antimatter engines. The technology is ready to roll. This is the price for the fuel of the future, he’s told.

Our young scientist disagrees. He goes on the run, determined to spread the word. He steals some antimatter to prove his point, but becomes branded a terrorist. Now how does he save society?

##

So there you have it, a couple of freebies to mull over as you nurse your hot cocoa by the fire and keep your brain cells active. Use ‘em or lose ‘em. Or write about something completely different. But write about something. And stay warm!

-Jason Kahn
Mad Scribblings From the Edge
The Dark InSpectre

Comments: No Comments »

Authors: . Form: . Length: . Editor who accepted this story: .

Author Bio

A medical editor by day, Jason Kahn lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY. His stories have appeared in Baen’s Universe, Damnation Books, Something Wicked, and numerous anthologies. His hobbies include rooting for his University of Michigan Wolverines and chasing after two mischievous gnomes who claim to be his children.

Abandoned Towers Content: Prompts: A Little Exercise For the Old Creativity Muscle  Prompts: A Time to Give Thanks, and a Few Good Ideas  Prompts: A Year’s Worth of Story Ideas  Prompts: Ancient Leviathans and Runaway Slime  Prompts: Because Inspiration Doesn’t Take a Holiday  Prompts: Death Masks and Killer Gizmo’s  Prompts: Free Story Ideas, No Waiting—Did I Mention They’re Free?  Prompts: Insert Story Idea in Slot A, Add Inspiration in Slot B  Prompts: Inspiration, Free of Charge  Prompts: Keeping the Brain Warm During the Deep Freeze  Prompts: Love and Madness, Great Fodder for a Good Story or Two!  Prompts: More Stories From the Idea-tron  Prompts: New Writing Ideas for the New Year  Prompts: News For the Summer Blues  Prompts: Of Avian Gods and Resurrected Saints  Prompts: Of Moons and Invisible Men  Prompts: Of Sorrowful Silence and Diamond Planets  Prompts: Real-World Stories to Kick Start Your Creativity  Prompts: Ripped From Today’s Headlines  Prompts: Something to Think About  Prompts: Space Bubbles and Ancient Hotties  Prompts: Space on the Brain and Noises from the Deep  Prompts: Spring Into Story Ideas  Prompts: The Living Earth and the Deep Freeze  Prompts: The Stories You’re Dying to Write  Prompts: Time Jumping Snails and Zombie Jocks  

Is this you? Is the information on this page correct? Let us know if it isn't!

Comments are closed.