Alex L., Fast Food Beef, S.I.N, November

It has been supposed that fast-food chains use mass-produced corn-fed cows for years; now proof of this has arrived, as David Biello reported on entitled That Burger You're Eating Is Mostly Corn. The study, preformed by A. Hope Jahren and Rebecca A. Kraft of the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and the The University of Hawaii, Honolulu, respectively, evaluated the amount of carbon 13 in the food tested.
This isotope of carbon is slightly heavier, because it has an extra neutron and is present in higher quantities in commercial corn then in most other plants. The findings have shown that 93% of the animal tissue in these foods are corn derived; based on find using a method to evaluate the amount of carbon 13 in the food. This was found in a statistically accurate survey of fast food servers. Only a dozen had hugely lower numbers, all of these were west coast Burger Kings, the researchers presume the levels were different because the meat was imported. The amount of isotopes found in chickens which are fed entirely on corn, varies less in chain-restaurants country wide, then it does in a single “farm-yard” chicken. This corn content may not matter to some but to all who care about their health, the environment’s health, or the world’s health might care greatly. The cows used in the factories that produce this food are fed on almost nothing but corn. This uses a great quantity of corn, which in turn uses a vast quantity of resources to create, and pesticides to. Not only this, but because they eat only corn when they are designed to eat a verity of different foods, this causes the cows to have to be over treated with antibiotics, which leads to more incurable diseases and poisons us.
It has been proven that corn is the primary food source for beef and chicken that is used in the fast-food industry. This leads to an overuse of corn that is detrimental to the environment, the cow’s health, and our health.

Nuclear Waste Disposal Lab

This lab modeled nuclear waste disposal containment methods by sealing a pellet of sodium hydroxide, a caustic base, with (1) aluminum foil (2) plastic wrap and (3) modeling clay. Each of these "contained" pellets was softly dropped into a weak solution of phenolphthalein, an indicator. This “nuclear waste” was let sit under observation for three days.

After this three-day period, it was noted that the aluminum foil had degraded. To the effect that it had released a great quantity of “radiation”. This expressed itself with a change in the color of the indicator solution, from clear to dark purple. The clay did not change, save for a slight release of bubbles. The plastic was held closed with a piece of wire, which quickly rusted, turning the solution a light brown color. If an extrapolation is made, the wire would rust through, leading to a release of “radiation”.

This experiment was designed well. I found the experiment to be exemplary of the difficulty associated with containment. The use of an indicator solution to show leakage was an ingenuous way to visually express the idea of radiation.

Orion K, SIN, Silicon Spintronics, November

Silicon Spintronics

Researchers have taken the first step towards a new technology that could possibly make computers produce less heat and use less electricity. This technology controls electron spin in silicon, which is the first advance in making silicon spin-based computer processors. This was reported by J.R. Minkel on sciam.com, in an article titled Spintronics Breaks the Silicon Barrier.

The researchers used aluminum electrons pushed through a ferromagnet to obtain electrons of the desired spin, which were then pushed into the silicon. Spin is a quantum property used to classify electrons; it is either up or down (also called clockwise or counterclockwise). Aluminum has equal parts spin-up and spin-down electrons. The ferromagnet will allow only electrons of one spin through; it impedes the flow of those electrons of the opposite spin.

The ferromagnet increased the percentage of one spin type in the silicon by one. However, this was done at 85 Kelvin. In theory this spintronics device should function at room temperature, this has not been tested though. To operate, a functional spintronics device would require a uni-spin substance.

These processors would be capable of using a small portion of the electricity used by contemporary, charge-based silicon processors; moreover, a spin-based processor would produce far less waste heat. This means that your laptop’s battery would last longer, because (1) the processor does not need as much energy and (2) the computer would need less cooling, which takes a large percent of battery life. Moreover, the computer could be smaller because a smaller fan could be used.