Current Affairs Science Projects And Inventions

In October 1930, a young surgical resident sat vigil as a patient with a blood clot in her pulmonary artery labored to breathe. The surgery she needed had never been successfully performed in the United States. Developed in Germany, the "Trendelenburg operation" had a 6 percent survival rate. After seventeen hours, it was clear the patient was not going to survive without surgery, so, with nothing to lose, the procedure was successfully carried out, but the patient died. For the next twenty-three years, Dr. John Heysham Gibbon (1903-1973) and his wife Mary worked to produce a machine that could supply oxygenated blood while the heart was stopped. In 1935 he used a prototype heart-lung bypass machine to keep a cat alive for twenty-six minutes. Venous blood was fed into the machine where it was spun over a cylinder to provide oxygen/and then pumped back into an artery. Many improvements were made, and in 1951 the first coronary artery bypass on a human being was performed, although the patient died. Fifteen months later, on May 6, 1953, an eighteen-year-old girl's heart function was replaced for twenty-six minutes with Gibbon's machine while a large hole in her heart was repaired. She is known to have survived for at least another thirty years. Although this version was only used a few times, improved Gibbon machines and other models have enabled surgeons to perform many operations using cardiopulmonary bypass to correct heart defects, replace heart valves, and repair aortic aneurysms. Gibbon, the pioneering heart surgeon, died of a heart attack in 1973. 

"[It] computes the given numbers automatically; adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides." Wilhelm Schickard Early inventions to speed up calculations focused on manual solutions such as Napier's bones, which consisted of multiplication tables inscribed onto bones for calculating sums. Seeing John Napier's work, the German polymath Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635) created a mechanical calculator that automated the process of calculation and incorporated Napier's bones. In 1623, he designed and built the "calculating clock." At around the size of a typewriter, it could handle numbers of up to six digits in length. The calculator used a direct gear drive and rotating wheels to add and subtract. When a wheel made a complete turn, the wheel adjacent rotated one-tenth of a turn. Dials on the lower part of the machine were turned one way to perform addition, and the opposite way to perform subtraction. These dials were joined by teeth-bearing internal wheels that carried one digit every time the wheel passed from nine to zero. The upper part of the machine used Napier's bones to multiply and divide. The machine was fitted with a bell that rang when a calculation produced a result of more than six digits (and was thus too long to display). Schickard began building a replica of his calculating clock for astronomer Johannes Kepler but it was never completed because a fire engulfed his workshop. He gave Kepler detailed instructions on how to build the calculator, but then Schickard and his family died of the plague in the 1630s and the prototype was lost. It was not until the 1950s that a sketch of the calculating clock was discovered among Kepler's papers in Russia, proving that Schickard was the originator of the mechanical calculator. 

Public Key Cryptography (PKC) is a technological tool that enables participants to confirm their identity with each other electronically. Traditional signatures have been around for thousands of years, originally being used to mark artwork such as pottery with the identity of the creator. However, as the concept of currency and contracts spread across the globe, so did the use of signatures. Although signatures were adequate for society's needs, and still are as a whole, they clearly did not satisfy the demands of electronic security. When governments began to learn of the potentials of PKC, they endeavored to keep the technology to themselves. In the early 1970s, while working for the British government, James Ellis (1924- 1997), Clifford Cocks (b. 1950), and Malcolm Williamson (b. 1950) contributed to its development. It was only in 1997, under a new government "openness" policy, that it was revealed to the world that Britain had developed PKC twenty-four years previously. Numerous text books had been written on the subject in the intervening years, and, frustratingly for Ellis, Cocks, and Williamson, the texts had credited Martin Hellman, Ralph Merkle, and Whitfield Diffie of Stanford University with the discovery of PKC. To accurately describe PKC would be a long and complicated process. However, the fundamental point to PKC is that it allows two computers or people to communicate in impenetrable privacy (there is no known way to maliciously decipher the code). Exactly who should be credited with the mathematical trick for this encryption process seems irrelevant now, given that it is used so widely across the Internet. Many people will have used it online via a transaction that was secured through PKC. 

Norwegian Svend Foyn (1809-1894) is regarded as the father of modern whaling and is credited with the invention of the modern harpoon. Foyn's genius was to combine the use of fast steam-powered boats with deck-mounted cannons that could use both harpoons with strong lines attached to them and bomb lances to kill the target whale as quickly as possible. Foyn's purpose-built steam whale "catcher" Spes et Fides {Hope and Faith) first sailed in 1864 to northern Norway. By 1868 Foyn had perfected the technique and "modern" whaling methods began to reap financial rewards. This success soon transformed Norway into the dominant force in whaling, an industry previously dominated by British, American, French, and German ships. During the nineteenth century, whale oil was much in demand for lighting and soap; whale meat, which has been eaten by some cultures since early times, became popular in the twentieth century. Foyn's innovations were successful because they brought a whole new family of whales within the reach of the whalers—the Balaenopterinae, or rorquals. The rorquals, which include minke, sei, fin, and blue whales, were difficult to hunt because they are generally fast, large, and powerful, spend little time at the surface, and sink when harpooned. Another Foyn innovation was to inflate the carcass of the whale with air so that it floated and was easier to collect. The success and efficiency of modern whaling was also in many ways its downfall. Populations of large mammals can be very fragile and whale populations soon crashed, eventually leading to a worldwide moratorium on whaling in 1982. Although Japan, Norway, and many other countries continue whaling on a small scale, there is strong international pressure to stop the practice altogether. 

"Fogarty's... procedure was the first successful example of 'less invasive'... vascular surgery." Inventor of the Week archive Thomas Fogarty [b. 1934) was working as a scrub technician at the Good Samaritan Hospital, Cincinnati, Ohio, when he noticed the difficulty surgeons had in removing blood clots that formed in arteries and veins. The operation, which often took nine to twelve hours to perform, necessitated opening up the entire length of the vessel and often resulted in the patient dying or having their limb amputated. Fogarty devised a scheme that could be used to overcome the need for invasive surgery. It involved using a urethral catheter, which is flexible and strong enough to be pushed through a blood vessel and penetrate the blood clot. Working in his attic, Fogarty had the further inspiration to use the fly-tying skills he had learned as a fisherman to attach the "fingertip" of a latex glove to the catheter, which could then be inflated with saline once it was past the clot. The idea is that the balloon expands to the size of the artery and is then pulled back out, bringing the clot with it. In 1961, Fogarty's balloon embolectomy catheter—named for the clot-removal procedure—was used for the first time on a human patient. A small incision was made, and the catheter was threaded up through the patient's blocked artery. When inflated and pulled back out, it did indeed bring the clot out with it. Today Fogarty's balloon catheter (patented in 1969) is still the most widely used technigue for blood clot removal. The technology has also been extended for use in angioplasty, where balloons are inflated to widen narrowings in the heart arteries that cause Symptoms of angina.   

During the second half of the nineteenth century, more than a hundred patents for milking machines were applied for in the United States alone. The proliferation of people trying to develop this device, as with any that sees development across countries, makes it difficult to attribute the modern product to one person or organization. The problem with all kinds of automatic milking processes is that there is potential for damage to the cow's teats. A viable milking machine needs to strike a balance between producing a good yield of milk and safeguarding the cow, either from injury or infection caused by the equipment. Many inventors made contributions to the field. Foremost is the DeLaval Company of Gustaf de Laval, famous for inventing a device for separating milk and cream through centrifugal force, which researched almost every type of automatic milker in existence, including ones that simulated the action of the human hand. Other key inventors included L. O. Colvin, who created one of the first viable vacuum milkers, and William Mehring, whose foot-powered vacuum milking machine also received notable popularity. The closest ancestor of the modern milking machine is probably the "Thistle" machine of 1895, made by the Scottish Thistle company; its steam- driven pump resulted in a distinctive broken flow, called the pulsator. The regulation of the vacuum being applied to the cow's teat is essential to stop blood pooling in the teat, which can lead to injury; this key feature of modern machines is what links them back to the "Thistle." 

Most inventions are remarkable because they appear to be ahead of their time, revelatory events that transform the world into which they appear. The horse collar seems to be somewhat the opposite, for it is difficult to see why it was not invented earlier. The problem to be solved is obvious: A horse wearing a simple harness can pull a load weighing about 135 pounds (60 kg), but any heavier load forces the harness on to the horse's windpipe, and restricts its ability to breathe. Therefore, while horses had been domesticated, mounted, saddled, and harnessed by around 100—and so could be ridden for pleasure, work, or warfare—their role as a beast of burden was necessarily limited, and was to remain so for another 400 years. It was not until circa 500 that a Chinese camel driver had the bright idea of devising a padded collar, which was quickly used also on horses. It took the form of a rigid construction that sat low on the horse's chest and rose round its neck to rest on its withers or shoulders. The top of the collar supported a pair of curved metal or wood hames, to which the harness was attached. The collar reduced pressure on the windpipe and allowed the horse to use its full strength, thus allowing it to push forward with its hindquarters into the collar rather than pull the weight with its shoulders. This new design of collar reached Europe circa 920, and soon revolutionized agriculture. Horses replaced oxen as the main beasts of burden, pulling plows, harrows, harvesting machines, and other agricultural implements, as well as farm carts and wagons. 

Linnaean taxonomy is the system of classification of living organisms that is used throughout the biological sciences. Its inventor, Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), spent most of his career in Uppsala, Sweden. Starting with the plant kingdom, Linnaeus created a hierarchy in which plants are grouped, according to similarities in their appearance, into twenty-five phyla, and then each phylum into classes, and these in turn into orders, families, genera, and species. The first description of this system was published by Linnaeus in 1753, in a two-volume work, Species Plantarum. He later applied the same principles toanimals and minerals. The most important feature of Linnaean taxonomy is a system known as binomial (or two-name). nomenclature. The first name identifies the genus-to which the organism belongs; the second name, its unique species: for example, the common daisy is Bellis perennis. If necessary, the family, order, and phylum to which a genus belongs can be looked up in a floral taxonomy reference book. Linnaeus collected, studied, and classified plants and animals, publishing his findings in successive editions of Systems Naturae. The first edition, published in 1735, was just eleven pages long; the tenth edition, published in 1758, detailed 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 plant species. Linnaean taxonomy, although developed a hundred years before Darwin's theory of evolution, proved to be robust and effective even as scientists have explored the evolutionary relationships between organisms. More recently, comparisons of the genetic codes of individual species have led to some reclassification of plants and animals, but the essential concepts of Linnaean taxonomy remain entirely valid today. 

"And you shall have an implement  [and] you shall dig with it and turn and cover your refuse." Deuteronomy 23:1 on camp sanitation Without the toilet system, disease would be widespread and water undrinkable. It is an invention that is taken for granted in the modern world, but where would we be without it? Even though they began only as holes in the ground, toilets in various forms have been used since Babylonian times. A defining step in the long and complex history of the toilet was the S-trap system developed by Alexander Cummings, a watchmaker by trade. (Thomas Crapper is often given credit for the invention of the modern toilet; although he was involved in toilet production, it was Cummings who held the patent.) Cummings's design incorporated an S-shaped bend in the drainage pipe that created a water seal between flushes. This meant that foul odors were trapped below the water and could not escape into the air. Life improved immeasurably with the combined benefits of the flushing toilet and the closed sewer system. By blocking the odors of the sewer, Cummings made it possible to bring the toilet inside the house, and so he made the toilet desirable. Soon everyone who could afford one was happily flushing away. The S-trap design is still used in toilets as an effective way to deal with odor. However, toilet design has since addressed other aspects of use—in Japan, standard toilets are fitted with seat warmers, jets of cleansing water, and fully automated flushers. 

"Drinking and driving: there are stupider things, but it's a very short list." Author unknown In 1954 Robert Borkenstein (1912-2002), of the Indiana State Police, invented the breathalzyer, a portable device that provided scientific evidence of alcohol intoxication. After the consumption of alcohol, blood flows through the lungs and some of the alcohol evaporates and moves across the membranes into the air sacs. The breathalyzer shows a direct relationship between the concentration of alcohol found in the air sacs and that in blood. Subjects blow up a balloon (ensuring a deep air lurag sample is taken), the contents of which are released over a chemical solution, resulting in a color change detected by a monochromatic light beam. The extent of the color change relates to the percentage of alcohol in the breath. The breathalyzer replaced the drunk-o-meter, an earlier device developed by Rolla Harger and patented in 1936. It relied on the sampled breath being analyzed in specialist laboratories. Prior to this, police had to rely on observation of a suspect's physical condition, evidence that did not stand up well in court. The breathalyzer met the demands of legal evidence, although there were criticisms that the results varied between individuals consuming identical amounts of alcohol due to gender, weight, and metabolic rates. In 1964, Borkenstein published a milestone study in which he argued that the 0.08 percent blood- alcohol content should be the standard, above which any driver should be considered impaired. By the mid-1980s, chemical-based devices had given way to infrared technology where a narrow band of infrared light, of a frequency that is absorbed by alcohol, is passed through a breath sample. How much of the light makes it through to the other side of the sample without being absorbed gives the precise concentration of alcohol.