Tuesday April 03, 2012

No Brainer:
Brain Has Grid-Like Structure

A new way of mapping the brain's structure reveals that it has a grid-like structure.

Rather than the tree-and-branch structure previously suspected, it seems that the brain is made up of ribbons of neuronal fibres that cross paths at right angles.

From TechWeekEurope:

"Getting a high resolution wiring diagram of our brains is a landmark in human neuroanatomy," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "This new technology may reveal individual differences in brain connections that could aid diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders."

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Monday April 02, 2012

Galaxy Positioning System:
Using Pulsars for Space Navigation

Pulsars could be used by spacecraft as a kind of GPS system for navigation.

These dead stars rotate and emit radiation with such regularity that they rival the accuracy of atomic clocks.

From BBC News:

If a spacecraft carried the means to detect the pulses, it could compare their arrival times with those predicted at a reference location. This would enable the craft to determine its position to an accuracy of just five kilometres anywhere in the galaxy.

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Friday March 30, 2012

Eye on Radiation:
Camera Can 'See' Gamma Rays

Researchers in Japan have developed a camera that can 'see' radiation.

The camera may be used in the long and complex task of decontaminating the site of the Fukushima disaster.

From The Mainichi Daily News:

The new development makes it possible to easily grasp where radioactive substances spewed from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant have accumulated, and is likely to help decontamination work in the affected areas, officials say.

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Wednesday March 28, 2012

Unstable:
Fukushima Reactor Lacks Water & Has High Radiation Levels

Recent probes have revealed that one of the reactors at Fukushima has high levels of radiation and little water to cool it.

The environment in the reactor is such that it could take decades of specialist work to decontaminate it.

From The Washington Post:

The data collected from the probes showed the damage from the disaster was so severe, the plant operator will have to develop special equipment and technology to tolerate the harsh environment and decommission the plant, a process expected to last decades.

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Saturday March 24, 2012

Junk Funk:
ISS Astronauts Rattled by Space Junk

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station were evacuated to the station's escape pods when a piece of debris passed nearby.

The debris originated from a Russian Cosmos satellite, but luckily avoided the station in the end.

From CNN:

"The Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station received an 'all clear' to move out of their Soyuz vehicles after a small piece of a Russian Cosmos satellite debris passed by the complex without incident early Saturday," the statement said.

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Friday March 23, 2012

Pacific Grim:
Fukushima Radiation Polluting Pacific Ocean

A recent analysis seems to show that radiation from the Fukushima disaster has polluted a wide area of the Pacific ocean.

The irradiated water is fast approaching the Hawaiian islands.

From Straight.com:

Last April, Japanese officials claimed that they had halted the release of radioactive radiation from the crippled nuclear reactors at Fukushima.

On December 5, however, the Los Angeles Times revealed that "45 tons of highly radioactive water" had been released from the plant on the previous weekend.

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Saturday March 17, 2012

High Frontier:
Skydiver Prepares For Highest Jump Ever

Felix Baumgartner has taken a balloon up 22 kilometres and jumped successfully from it, in preparation for his coming attempt at the world record.

He will jump from 36 kilometres and possibly become the first human to fall at the speed of sound.

From BBC News:

His Red Bull Stratos team estimates he reached 364mph (586km/h) during the descent, and was in free fall for three minutes and 43 seconds before opening his parachute. From capsule to ground, the entire jump lasted eight minutes and eight seconds.

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Friday March 16, 2012

Mammoth:
Scientists Plan to Clone Wooly Mammoth

Scientists are hoping that they can recreate the wooly mammoth using cloning technology.

The discovery of frozen tissue in the Arctic tundra could result in viable genetic material that would be used to impregnate an elephant with a mammoth embryo.

From PhysOrg:

"The first and hardest mission is to restore mammoth cells," another Sooam researcher, Hwang In-Sung, told AFP. His colleagues would join Russian scientists in trying to find well-preserved tissue with an undamaged gene

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Thursday March 15, 2012

Can't Stop The Signal:
Message Sent Using Neutrinos

Researchers have sent a message through 240 metres of stone using neutrinos.

If the technology is commercialised, it could put an end to having no signal on your mobile phone.

From the University of Rochester:

"Of course, our current technology takes massive amounts of high-tech equipment to communicate a message using neutrinos, so this isn't practical now," said Kevin McFarland, a University of Rochester physics professor who was involved in the experiment. "But the first step toward someday using neutrinos for communication in a practical application is a demonstration using today's technology."

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Sunday March 11, 2012

The Final Frontier:
First Nuclear Aircraft Carrier Nears End of Life

The USS Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is setting off on its final voyage after 50 years of service.

The Enterprise was only meant to be in service for 25 years, but has ended up serving for twice as long.

From NPR:

The Enterprise is the longest aircraft carrier in the U.S. fleet. It is also the oldest, a distinction that brings pride as well as plenty of headaches for the ship's more than 4,000 crew members. The ship is effectively a small city that frequently needs repairs because of its age. It was originally designed to last 25 years, but a major overhaul in 1979 and other improvements have extended its life.

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Friday March 09, 2012

The Acid Test:
Is LSD a Viable Treatment for Alcoholism?

A thorough analysis of scientific papers from the 1960s has revealed LSD's potential as a treatment for alcoholism.

After receiving a single dose of LSD, patients reported a 'significant beneficial effect'.

From BBC News:

This effect was maintained six months after taking the hallucinogen, but it disappeared after a year. Those taking LSD also reported higher levels of abstinence.

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Tuesday March 06, 2012

Levitation:
Magnetic Levitation May Have Medical Uses

Magnetic levitation has been used to create high speed trains, but the technology may now have medical applications as well.

Researchers have found a way to use magnetic levitation to detect changes in proteins that could be used for diagnostic purposes.

From C&EN:

According to Whitesides, the main advantages of the levitation system are its low cost and portability. The magnets cost only about $5 each, and the device requires no electricity or batteries. Because the beads are visible to the naked eye, researchers can make measurements with a simple ruler with a millimeter scale.

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Monday March 05, 2012

Wire in the Blood:
Implant Breakthrough Could Lead to Robotic Limbs

A breakthrough by scientists at Sandia Laboratories could lead to robotic limbs that interface directly with the nervous system.

They have developed a biocompatible implant that could be used to route nerves to a prosthetic limb.

From Gizmag:

The current work at Sandia Laboratories is still in the proof of concept stage, but the stakes are very high. If they pan out and the gap between man and machine can be bridged, we could see the first true cyborg produced. Or, at the very least, the liberation of hundreds of thousands of people from physical limitations.

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Friday March 02, 2012

Flares Are Back:
Impending Solar Flare Threatens Earth

A physicist is predicting that the sun could soon release a huge solar flare that poses a catastrophic threat to electrical systems on Earth.

Critical infrastructure such as GPS satellites and electrical grids could potentially go offline for months or even years afterwards, leading to knock-on effects.

From Wired:

“A longer-term outage would likely include, for example, disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration,” the NRC report said.

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Tuesday February 28, 2012

That's Rich:
Upper Classes Are More Dishonest

Take two people: one is rich, the other poor. Who's the most honest?

A new study seems to show that the rich are more likely to be dishonest.

From Science:

The team's findings suggest that privilege promotes dishonesty. For example, upper-class subjects were more likely to cheat. After five apparently random rolls of a computerized die for a chance to win an online gift certificate, three times as many upper-class players reported totals higher than 12—even though, unbeknownst to them, the game was rigged so that 12 was the highest possible score.

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Thursday February 23, 2012

Jamming:
GPS Jammers Becoming More Widespread

A UK government study has uncovered over 100 incidents where GPS jamming devices have been used.

The jammers could be used for a variety of illegal purposes from fraud to armed robbery.

From ZDNet:

"Our modern society is almost completely reliant on GPS," Humphreys told the conference. "It could be deadly."

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Thursday February 09, 2012

Nuclear Boom:
US Builds Two New Nuclear Power Plants

The Fukushima disaster may have led to many countries banning new construction of nuclear reactors, but US regulators are not following in their footsteps.

Approval has been given for the construction of two new power plants in Georgia -- the first nuclear reactors built in the US for 30 years.

From USA Today:

Allison Fisher, an energy expert for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, called the NRC's action — less than a year after the Japan crisis — a step in the wrong direction.

"It is inexplicable that we've chosen this moment in history to expand the use of a failed and dangerous technology," she said.

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Sunday February 05, 2012

Out Of Africa By Sea?

Seems that early humans may have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever assumed.

Discoveries of prehistoric stone tools on Greek islands and genetic evidence from Australia form a valid cause for reconsidering the migration routes for prehuman travellers.

From The Wall Street Journal:

For a long time, scientists had assumed a gradual expansion of African people through Sinai into both Europe and Asia. Then, bizarrely, it became clear from both genetics and archaeology that Europe was peopled later (after 40,000 years ago) than Australia (before 50,000 years ago).

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Thursday February 02, 2012

A Weighty Matter:
Is Earth Getting Lighter or Heavier?

As time goes on, does the Earth lose mass or gain it?

A physicist has calculated that the planet sucks in tonnes of space dust every year due to gravity, but it's still losing mass.

From BBC News:

For instance, the Earth's core is like a giant nuclear reactor that is gradually losing energy over time, and that loss in energy translates into a loss of mass.

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Wednesday February 01, 2012

Breaking Down Brain Waves To Hear

US scientists have demonstrated that the brain decodes sounds into patterns of electrical currents and based on the correlation between sound and electric activity in brain's temporal lobe they were able to predict the words the person heard.

However any practical use in case of patients who cannot talk is a long way of because this research is based on what a person actually hears, rather than thinks of...

From The Guardian:

Experiments on 15 patients in the US showed that a computer could decipher their brain activity and play back words they heard, though at times the words were difficult to recognise.

"This is exciting in terms of the basic science of how the brain decodes what we hear," said Robert Knight, a senior member of the team and director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Sunday January 29, 2012

Hot Topic:
Is Global Warming Just Hot Air?

Global warming is one of the most controversial issues of our time.

Now 16 scientists have publishing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that casts doubt on the orthodox view of climate change.

From The Wall Street Journal:

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

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Friday January 27, 2012

Happy Anniversary:
Mars Rover's Eight Year Mission

The Mars rover Opportunity has just marked eight years on the red planet.

While its companion rover Spirit bit the dust long ago, Opportunity has managed to keep on trucking as it searches for signs of life.

From Time:

It was on January 25, 2004 that the rover Opportunity — swaddled in its cocoon of shock-absorbing air bags — bounced down on Mars for a mission designed to last a minimum of three months and a maximum of just a year or two. Eight years later, Opportunity is slower, creakier and much, much dirtier, and yet it's still at work, hunkering down on the crater rim as it prepares to ride out another bitter Martian winter. When the relative warmth and sunlight of spring return, the golf-cart-sized rover will resume its wanderings, adding to the mass of data it's already collected about Mars's wet, balmy, and perhaps biologically active past.

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Wednesday January 25, 2012

Mother Russia on the Move:
Russia Eyes Moon Base With Nasa

In spite of the failure of the recent Phobos-Grunt mission, Russia's space programme is still forging ahead with ambitious ideas.

One possible way forward might be a joint base on the Moon in cooperation with Nasa.

From The Register:

"We don’t want the man to just step on the Moon,” agency chief Vladimir Popovkin said in an interview with Vesti FM radio station. “Today, we know enough about it. We know that there is water in its polar areas," he added. "We are now discussing how to begin [the Moon’s] exploration with NASA and the European Space Agency."

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Sunday January 22, 2012

No Guts, No Glory:
Genetically Engineered Gut Bacteria Turn Seaweed Into Biofuel

Biofuels have been controversial as they have caused the prices of crops such as corn to rise.

But researchers may have found a way to turn abundant seaweed into ethanol using genetically engineered E.coli bacteria -- which could eventually be used to manufacture other substances such as plastics.

From Scientific American:

The microbe could turn out to be useful for making molecules other than ethanol, such as isobutanol or even the precursors of plastics, Yoshikuni says. "Consider the microbe as the chassis with engineered functional modules," or pathways to produce a specific molecule, Yoshikuni says. "If we integrate other pathways instead of the ethanol pathway, this microbe can be a platform for converting sugar into a variety of molecules."

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Saturday January 21, 2012

Hotshots:
Coronal Mass Ejection From Sun Heads For Earth

A coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun is heading for Earth but don't panic just yet.

Whilst the CME was originally predicted to head straight for us, it now looks like we're in for a near miss.

From The Washington Post:

“At first glance, it was, ‘Oh my God, it’s at the center of the [sun’s] disk, it ought to go right to the Earth,’ ” Kunches said. But upon further review and “head-scratching” Thursday, NOAA’s space weather team calculated that most of the plasma blob should pass harmlessly over the top of our planet.

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Friday January 20, 2012

The DNA Code:
Using Genetics to Defeat Counterfeiters

Methods to defeat counterfeiters such as holograms often don't take long to be circumvented.

So the US Department of Defense are turning to DNA as a way of embedded invisible 'barcodes' that are impractical to replicate.

From Wired:

“DNA is beyond what the bad guys can copy,” Hayward says. “You can counterfeit your way through visual inspection, through X-Rays. DNA is easily the strongest platform for authentication in the world.”

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Sunday January 15, 2012

Here's Ears:
Scientists Create Tiniest Microphone Ever

Scientists have developed the smallest microphone ever created, using gold nanoparticles and lasers.

The tiny microphone could record the sound of activity inside the smallest cells.

From ScienceNOW:

Feldmann's team recorded and analyzed the movements of this particle in response to acoustic vibrations caused by the laser-induced heating of other gold nanoparticles in the water nearby. As well as having unprecedented sensitivity, their nano-ear could also calculate the direction the sound had come from. They suggest three-dimensional arrays of nano-ears working together could be used to listen in on cells or microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses, all of which emit very faint acoustic vibrations as they move and respire. "There are definitely medical opportunities which we can tackle together with the right people," Feldmann says, "but we just have to see how it works first."

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Thursday January 12, 2012

Phobos:
Russian Official Fears Space Mission Sabotage

The recent failure of the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars damaged the pride of Russian space scientists.

Now a senior Russian official has inferred that Russia's space launch failures could be the result of interference of from other countries.

From The New York Times:

“We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now,” Mr. Popovkin said in the interview. “The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.”

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Monday January 09, 2012

A Brief History of Hawking:
Surviving Motor Neurone Disease

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in 1963 and told he had months to live.

In a remarkable testament to his tenacity and will to surive, the scientist has just marked his 70th birthday.

From BBC News:

The man himself says: "I have been lucky, that my condition has progressed more slowly than is often the case. But it shows that one need not lose hope.

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Saturday December 31, 2011

iPhone 1983:
Archives Reveal Apple's Early Telephony Experiments

A peek into Stanford University's archives has revealed that Apple experimented with prototype phones as early as 1983.

The company gave its archives to Stanford in 1997 but most of the material has remained private until now.

From Mashable:

The phone was designed for Apple by Hartmut Esslinger, an influential designer who helped make the Apple IIc computer (Apple’s first “portable” computer) and later founded Frogdesign. The 1983 iPhone certainly fits in with Esslinger’s other designs for Apple. It also foreshadows the touchscreens of both the iPhone and iPad.

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Friday December 30, 2011

Supershrink Me:
Junk Food Causes Brain Shrinkage

A diet rich in trans fats from junk food could result in brain shrinkage and eventual dementia, according to new research.

By avoiding these harmful fats and consuming more beneficial omega fatty acids, this shrinkage could be prevented.

From BBC News:

Study author Gene Bowman of Oregon Health and Science University said: "These results need to be confirmed, but obviously it is very exciting to think that people could potentially stop their brains from shrinking and keep them sharp by adjusting their diet."

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Tuesday December 27, 2011

The Big Dipper:
China's GPS Rival Goes Online

China's alternative to GPS, Beidou (meaning Big Dipper), has been activated for trial usage.

As well as civilian uses, Beidou has potential military applications.

From BBC News:

A 2004 study by Geoffrey Forden, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggested that Beidou could be used to target cruise missiles against Taiwan if a war broke out over the territory. Having its own system would protect China against the risk that the US could turn GPS off.

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Monday December 26, 2011

Bum Deal:
Japan Pioneers Biometrics of the Bottom

Biometrics for security such as iris recognition is becoming more commonplace.

The newest variation has been created by Japanese researchers -- a car seat that identifies you by the impression left by your bottom.

From PhysOrg:

They say that traditional biometric techniques such as iris scanners and fingerprint readers cause stress to people undergoing identity checks, while the simple act of getting seated carries less psychological baggage. Their other point is that other technologies such as fingerprint scanning can be compromised when sensor surfaces are unclean, or when there is poor lighting as in iris scanning, contaminating results.

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Saturday December 24, 2011

Adults Only:
Vending Machine That Detects Your Age

When food manufacturer Kraft wanted to distribute samples of a new pudding, they didn't want to attract negative publicity by giving them to children.

To that end, they have introduced a new type of vending machine that uses facial recognition to detect if you are an adult or not.

From Gizmag:

Kraft's goal of course is to ensure its samples are reaching their target demographic, but also hopes the odd machines will draw in consumers as well. According to Charlotte Maumus, PR rep for Kraft:

"Temptations is the first Jell-O dessert made just for adults, so it makes sense that this breakthrough technology dispenses free samples to adults only. Showcasing the future of how consumers could interact with products and sample more easily, if the machine detects a child, it will shut down, asking the child to step away from the machine. But if it detects an adult, then a tasty sample is dispensed."

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Thursday December 22, 2011

Boson and On:
LHC Discovers New Particle, But It's Not The Higgs Boson

Scientists analysing data from the Large Hadron Collider believe that they have discovered a new kind of particle, but it's not a Higgs boson.

The Chi-b(3P) is a boson like the Higgs that combines a beauty quark and its antiquark so that they bind together.

From The University of Birmingham:

Professor Roger Jones, Head of the Lancaster ATLAS group said: ‘While people are rightly interested in the Higgs boson, which we believe gives particles their mass and may have started to reveal itself, a lot of the mass of everyday objects comes from the strong interaction we are investigating using the Chi-b.’

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Wednesday December 21, 2011

Security Through Obscurity:
US Government Advisors Want Flu Research Censored

A panel of scientific advisors to the US government are asking researchers to censor their work into the flu virus.

They believe that there are implications for national security if the research is published in peer review journals.

From The New York Times:

“I wouldn’t call this censorship,” Dr. Alberts said. “This is trying to avoid inappropriate censorship. It’s the scientific community trying to step out front and be responsible.”

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Sunday December 18, 2011

Is Shrilk a nature inspired challenge to reign of plastic?

Recently developed at Harvard University this cheap and biodegradable material promises wide applications either in consumer market or medical professions.

Called "Shrilk" as it is made of of protein in silk and chitin (commonly extracted from shrimp shells) it has properties similar to an aluminium alloy but only half the weight and it degrades quickly. One of the many practical uses could be a replacement for ubiquitous plastic bags.

From Wyss Institute

"Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a new material that replicates the exceptional strength, toughness, and versatility of one of nature's more extraordinary substances -- insect cuticle.

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Friday December 16, 2011

The Ways Of The Cow

Do cows dig synchronised grazing?

It was one of the challenges of new research on cattle behaviour using hypothetical mathematical model.

From Guardian

"A British-American team of scientists has produced a study called A Mathematical Model for the Dynamics and Synchronisation of Cows."

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Thursday December 08, 2011

Earth 2.0:
Planet Capable of Supporting Life Discovered

Astronomers have discovered a planet similar to Earth 600 light years away.

Kepler-22b potentially has liquid water and consequently could support life.

From BBC News:

Kepler 22-b lies 15% closer to its sun than the Earth is to our Sun, and its year takes about 290 days. However, the planet's host star puts out about 25% less light, keeping the planet at its balmy temperature that would support the existence of liquid water.

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Monday November 28, 2011

Red Herring:
DNA Barcodes to Prevent Counterfeit Fish Sales

Many restaurants pass off cheap fish as more expensive varieties.

The problem has grown so large that restauranteurs are planning to use DNA fingerprinting to ensure diners get what they pay for.

From AP

Mislabeling is widespread in the seafood industry and usually involves cheaper types of fish being sold as more expensive varieties. A pair of New York high school students using DNA barcoding of food stocked in their own kitchens found in a 2009 study that caviar labeled as sturgeon was actually Mississippi paddlefish.

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Thursday November 24, 2011

Emo:
The Phone System That Recognises Your Emotions

There are few things more infuriating than an automated phone answering system.

Now a new technology can be used to detect your emotional state and tailor a response accordingly.

From Gizmag:

After having identified a person's mood and intentions, the system could then adapt the dialogue accordingly. If a user sounded doubtful of the system, for instance, it could offer them more help. If they sounded bored or angry, however, that offer might just irk them further.

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Friday November 18, 2011

See The Light:
Lightest Material Ever Created

Researchers have developed the world's lightest material, a lattice made from metal tubes 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.

The material could have many applications including thermal insulation and shock absorption.

From BBC News:

William Carter, manager of architected materials at HRL, compared the new material to larger low-density structures.

"Modern buildings, exemplified by the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge are incredibly light and weight-efficient by virtue of their architecture," he said.

"We are revolutionising lightweight materials by bringing this concept to the nano and micro scales."

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Wednesday November 16, 2011

Broad Spectrum:
Steve Jobs Hoped to Use Wi-Fi to Supplant Mobile Carriers

Venture capitalist John Stanton has revealed that Steve Jobs wanted to create his own wireless network to cut out mobile carriers completely.

Jobs planned to use unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum and eliminate the involvement of carriers such as AT&T.

From ITworld:

Stanton, currently chairman at venture capital firm Trilogy Partners, said he spent a fair amount of time with Jobs between 2005 and 2007. "He wanted to replace carriers," Stanton said of Jobs, the Apple founder and CEO who passed away recently after a battle with cancer. "He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum. That was part of his vision."

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Tuesday November 15, 2011

Protect & Serve?
NYPD Begins Eviction of Occupy Wall Street

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has started to evict protesters from Zucotti Park, the site of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

NYPD officers began their operation against the two month old protest at 1am local time.

From the New York Daily News:

"They took oaths to protect and serve," Jason Lee, 36 of Brooklyn, told a reporter who managed to remain in the protest. "They broke that oath tonight. They destroyed what we built. That's tyranny by any definition."

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Sunday November 13, 2011

Petri Dish:
Lab-Grown Meat is Coming

Scientists in the Netherlands are making great progress in their quest to grow meat from animal cells in a lab.

They are coming to the point where they will be able to produce the first lab-grown hamburger, at a cost of a quarter of a million euros.

From Reuters:

"The first one will be a proof of concept, just to show it's possible," Post told Reuters in a telephone interview from his Maastricht lab. "I believe I can do this in the coming year."

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Thursday November 10, 2011

Knot Bad:
Scientists Fashion Complex Molecular Knots

Scientists have created the most complex non-DNA molecular knot, a 160 atom loop with five crossing points known as a pentafoil knot.

These complex molecules could eventually lead to materials with desirable qualities such as elasticity and shock absorption.

From Science Debate:

David Leigh, Edinburgh University professor of organic chemistry, said: "It's very early to say for sure, but the type of mechanical cross-linking we have just carried out could lead to very light but strong materials, something akin to a molecular chain mail."

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Tuesday November 08, 2011

Help Wanted:
US Military Need Help Securing Networks

Darpa, the US military research agency responsible for the creation of the Internet, has admitted that it needs more help to secure networks.

Public networks like the Internet are far too porous and vulnerable to attack, so Darpa is soliciting ideas for solutions to the problem.

From Wired:

Because it’s the blue-sky research agency that helped create the internet, Darpa framed the problem as a deep, existential one, not a pedestrian question of insecure code. “It is the makings of novels and poetry from Dickens to Gibran that the best and the worst occupy the same time, that wisdom and foolishness appear in the same age, light and darkness in the same season,” mused Regina Dugan, Darpa’s director. She’s talking about the internet. “These are the timeless words of our existence. We know it is true of everything.”

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Monday November 07, 2011

Lifelike:
Biology Inspires Technology

One of the biggest trends in contemporary science is biomimicry, where new developments are based on techniques already seen in nature.

Now researchers have developed a reusable adhesive tape with remarkable properties based on the wall climbing abilities of gecko lizards.

From Gizmag:

The secret to the wall climbing ability of many insects and geckos lies in the thousands of tiny hairs called setae that cover their feet and legs. The sheer abundance of these hairs, coupled with flattened tips that can splay out to maximize contact on even rough surface areas, make it sufficient for the Van der Waals forces, which operate at a molecular level and are relatively weak compared to normal chemical bonds, to provide the requisite adhesive strength that allows them to scurry along walls and ceilings.

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Wednesday November 02, 2011

Nuked:
Belgium Readies End of Nuclear Power

Although Belgium still lacks a government, the main political parties have agreed to end the use of nuclear power by 2025 — subject to the adoption of alternative energy as a replacement.

The plans were originally drawn up and made law in 2003, but the Fukushima disaster has increased public hostility to nuclear power stations.

From Reuters:

"If it turns out we won't face shortages and prices would not skyrocket, we intend to stick to the nuclear exit law of 2003," a spokeswoman for Belgium's energy and climate ministry said.

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Sunday October 30, 2011

A Fishy Tale:
Fish Evolve to Survive Toxic Conditions

Researchers have discovered certain fish living in New York's Hudson river have mutated to survive in toxic conditions.

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are amongst the most toxic substances known to humanity, yet the fish in question have adapted.

From The Economist:

The species of interest to Dr Wirgin is the Atlantic tomcod of the Hudson river in upstate New York. Part of the Hudson was polluted with PCBs by two General Electric plants. Dr Hahn is looking at a different animal, the killifish (pictured), in New Bedford harbour, Massachusetts, which was polluted by other producers. Both Hudson tomcod and New Bedford killifish are able to tolerate levels of PCB far higher than those that would kill such fish in cleaner waters. The question is, why?

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Thursday October 27, 2011

High Orbital Heist:
Chinese Hackers May Have Compromised US Satellites

A US Congress report indicates that Chinese hackers may have assumed control of two American satellites.

The two satellites suspected to have been compromised were engaged in climate analysis rather than military applications.

From Businessweek:

The commission’s 2009 report said that “individuals participating in ongoing penetrations of U.S. networks have Chinese language skills and have well established ties with the Chinese underground hacker community,” although it acknowledges that “these relationships do not prove any government affiliation.”

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Tuesday October 25, 2011

Lucky Seven?
Earth's Population Hits Seven Billion Mark

Earth's population has officially hit the seven billion mark.

With the number of the world's citizens growing at 10,000 per day, the controversial topic of population control refuses to go away.

From The Guardian:

Thus our population rises at the same time as the number of people Earth can sustain shrinks, while spreading industrialisation and western consumption patterns only accelerate this process.The poor should get richer; but high birth rates, compounded by resource depletion and environmental degradation actively hinder development.

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Thursday October 20, 2011

Gut Logic:
Computing With Bacteria

Scientists have made a breakthrough in the field of biological computing.

Genetically-engineered bacteria were used to create working logic gates, the building blocks of all modern computers.

From PhysOrg:

The next stage of the research will see the team trying to develop more complex circuitry that comprises multiple logic gates. One of challenges faced by the team is finding a way to link multiple biological logic gates together, similar to the way in which electronic logic gates are linked together, to enable complex processing to be carried out.

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Tuesday October 04, 2011

Hub of the Matter:
UK Ploughs £50 Million Into Graphene Research Hub

The Uk government is putting £50 million into a research hub that will commercialise uses of Graphene.

Graphene has many potential applications including faster computer processors and better touchscreens.

From IT Pro:

"As the UK’s leading centre for graphene research, we look forward to the creation of the Graphene Hub which will help to stimulate the economy, create jobs and new business opportunities," said Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Manchester.

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Wednesday September 28, 2011

Defrosted:
Cold War Era Missile Launches Satellite

A Peacekeeper missile from the Cold War era has been repurposed as a launch vehicle for a military satellite.

The TacSat-4 satellite will be used to provide US armed forces with better communications links in the battlefield.

From Fox News:

In Afghanistan and other spots, mountainous terrain makes communications with hillside base stations challenging. In recent years, one special ops solider was killed trying to radio for support, his handheld unable to communicate with an nearby antenna.

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Sunday September 25, 2011

Armchair Astronomers:
Web Users Discover New Planets

Web users are helping astronomers discover new planets from the comfort of their home computers.

Nasa data from over 150,000 stars has been made available for citizen astronomers by Yale University, the University of Oxford, and the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

From Science Daily:

"These three candidates might have gone undetected without Planet Hunters and its citizen scientists," said Meg Schwamb, a Yale researcher and Planet Hunters co-founder. "Obviously Planet Hunters doesn't replace the analysis being done by the Kepler team. But it has proven itself to be a valuable tool in the search for other worlds."

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Thursday September 22, 2011

You Are What You Eat:
Genes From Food Found in Bloodstream

Scientists have discovered that genetic material from the food we consume can enter our bloodstream and affect the expression of genes.

Micro RNA molecules found in food can bind with messenger RNA in our cells and alter our metabolism.

From Discover:

It’s only logical that what we eat has an effect on the expression of our genes, in the general sense that nutrients from food are involved in cellular processes that control and are controlled by gene expression. But this is an unusually direct route, and surprising from an organism that’s so different from mammals.

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Wednesday September 21, 2011

Print to Pilfer:
3D Printers Used to Create Card Skimmers

3D printers are used for a variety of applications from rapid prototyping to creating artificial blood vessels for transplant.

But criminals are also using the technology to fashion flawless card skimmers used to steal money from ATM users.

From Krebs on Security:

“Just looking at the idea of 3D printing a potential skimming device, a criminal could invest in buying a desktop 3D printer,” De Schouwer wrote in an email to KrebsOnSecurity. “Not a kit printer in the line of a Makerbot or a RepMan but a desktop printer of a high end manufacturer of 3D printers like Objet, 3D Systems or Stratasys (HP). You could get one of those between $10,000 – $20,000 and they will print a high quality skimming device that, including some post finishing, will look like the real thing.”

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Sunday September 18, 2011

The Blood is the Life:
3D Printer Creates Blood Vessels

3D printing is already shaping up to be the next revolution in product design and manufacturing.

Now German researchers have used the technique to create artificial blood vessels that could be safely transplanted into patients.

"The individual techniques are already functioning and they are presently working in the test phase; the prototype for the combined system is being built," said Dr Gunter Tovar, who heads the BioRap project at Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB in Stuttgart.

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Tuesday September 13, 2011

Time is Money:
Transatlantic Cable Saves Milliseconds, Makes Millions

A new transatlantic internet cable will shave milliseconds off connection times but could save financial institutions millions.

As more trading is done automatically by computers using algorithms, a tiny improvement in speed could yield massive profits.

From The Daily Telegraph:

Of course, verifiable figures are elusive and estimates vary wildly, but it is claimed that a one millisecond advantage could be worth up to $100m (£63m) a year to the bottom line of a large hedge fund.

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Sunday September 11, 2011

Electric Jelly:
Electrolyte Gel Means Safer Batteries

Lithium batteries used in laptops and handhelds have experienced safety problems in the past that led to them exploding.

But a new technique replaces the liquid electrolyte used in the batteries with a gel that makes them much safer.

From BBC News:

"Safety is of paramount importance in lithium batteries. Conventional lithium batteries use electrolytes based on organic liquids; this is what you see burning in pictures of lithium batteries that catch fire. Replacing liquid electrolytes by a polymer or gel electrolyte should improve safety and lead to an all-solid-state cell," said Professor Peter Bruce from the University of St Andrews, who was not involved in the study.

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Friday September 09, 2011

Bright Idea:
Nuclear Fusion With Lasers

The UK has joined an initiative to create power from nuclear fusion using lasers.

The approach taken by the National Ignition Facility (Nif) is yielding more promising results than previous efforts using Tokamaks.

From BBC News:

Dr Moses said that a single shot from the Nif's laser - the largest in the world - released a million billion neutrons and produced for a tiny fraction of a second more power than the world was consuming.

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Thursday September 08, 2011

Larry vs Larry:
Judge Asks Oracle & Google to Attend Mediation

Oracle is currently suing Google over the use of Java in the Android operating system for mobiles.

Now the judge in the case is recommending that the respective heads of both companies attend mediation to resolve the case.

From ITworld:

Now it's up to the magistrate judge, Paul Singh Grewal, to decide which executives should appear. In his Thursday order, Alsup referred the mediation to Grewal and recommended that he order Ellison and Page, as well as the executives the companies already suggested, to attend. But he said the final determination is up to Grewal.

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Monday September 05, 2011

Small Wonder:
World's Smallest Electric Motor

Scientists have created an electric motor from a single molecule.

The motor is one nanometre long and could eventually be used in applications such as cooling microprocessors.

From New Scientist:

If accepted by Guinness, the motor will be a record smasher. The current world-record holder for the smallest electric motor is a giant by comparison, composed of two 200-nanometre-long carbon nanotubes. Current running through these nanotubes pushes drops of molten metal from the outside of one tube to the other.

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Saturday September 03, 2011

Orbital Junkyard:
Space Debris Reaches 'Tipping Point'

Orbital debris has reached a 'tipping point' that could prove disastrous, according to a new report.

The amount of space junk currently in orbit could lead to a self-sustaining chain reaction and drastically worsen the problem.

From Reuters:

Some computer models show the amount of orbital debris "has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures," the research council said in a statement released Thursday as part its 182-page report.

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Tuesday August 30, 2011

WikiLeaks Leaks:
Cache of Unredacted Cables Unearthed

German newspaper Der Freitag claims to have unearthed a cache of unredacted diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks.

How exactly the cache came to light is unclear, but it may indicate a leak within the ranks of WikiLeaks itself.

From PC Magazine:

WikiLeaks usually redacts documents before it releases them, meaning it removes the names of informants or vulnerable sources. Many of the of the documents uncovered by Der Freitag had been published by WikiLeaks in the past, but they're not official WikiLeaks files and they have not been edited for sensitive information in the usual way. Its pages contained "named or otherwise identifiable 'informers' and 'suspected intelligence agents' from Israel, Jordan, Iran, and Afghanistan," Der Freitag said.

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Monday August 29, 2011

Abandonment Issues:
Space Station Could Be Mothballed

The recent failure of a Russian supply rocket to the International Space Station could have disastrous consequences for the crew currently in orbit.

With the end of the Space Shuttle program and the grounding of the Soyuz-U rocket until investigations are completed, the ISS crew may have to vacate the station by the end of the year.

From Discovery:

Should no resolution be found, 11 years of continuous manned presence on the ISS will come to an end, experiments will be shelved and there will likely be lengthy delays to SpaceX's plans of carrying out an unmanned docking of their Dragon vehicle by the end of the year.

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Saturday August 20, 2011

Genes For Green:
Cannabis Genome Sequenced

A Dutch genomics company has released the first complete genetic sequence for Cannabis sativa.

This could lead to the development of pharmaceutical drugs based on the plant's therapeutic qualities.

From Nature:

Thus far the company is only posting the raw sequence reads – meaning that the over 131 billion bases of shotgun sequence have not yet undergone the important and arduous process of being assembled into contiguous chunks. For now, the sequence is fragmented into hundreds of thousands of snippets. But Medicinal Genomics founder Kevin McKernan says he estimates the size of the C. sativa genome to be about 400 million bases – roughly three times the genome of that other weed, the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.

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Friday August 19, 2011

Bright Spark:
13-Year-Old Scientist Makes Solar Power Breakthrough

A 13-year-old scientist has invented a new kind of solar array based on the mathematics behind the growth of trees.

Using the Fibonacci sequence, Aidan Dwyer designed a tree-like solar array that is more efficient than current designs.

From The American Museum of Natural History:

My conclusions suggest that the Fibonacci pattern in trees makes an evolutionary difference. This is probably why the Fibonacci pattern is found in deciduous trees living in higher latitudes. The Fibonacci pattern gives plants like the oak tree a competitive edge while collecting sunlight when the Sun moves through the sky.

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Wednesday August 17, 2011

It's A Small World:
Earth Is Not Expanding

Since Darwin's time, scientists have wondered whether the Earth is expanding.

A recent study has concluded that Earth's radius expands by 0.1 miliimetres a year -- an amount so minuscule that it's not statistically significant.

From ScienceDaily:

The team applied a new data calculation technique to estimate the rate of change in the solid Earth's average radius over time, taking into account the effects of other geophysical processes. The previously discussed geodetic techniques (satellite laser ranging, very-long baseline interferometry and GPS) were used to obtain data on Earth surface movements from a global network of carefully selected sites. These data were then combined with measurements of Earth's gravity from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft and models of ocean bottom pressure, which help scientists interpret gravity change data over the ocean.

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Friday August 12, 2011

Hot Air:
Amazon CEO Proposes Airbags For Mobiles

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has filed a patent for a system that protects mobile devices from damage.

When a device is dropped, airbags could be deployed inside the casing to prevent damage.

From GeekWire:

One idea is to embed one or more small airbags inside the phone, according to the filing. If the device is at risk of damage from a fall, the airbags would instantly inflate via an embedded cartridge of compressed air or carbon dioxide. The monitoring system could either detect which side of the phone will hit the ground, and deploy the airbag there, or pop airbags out of multiple sides of the device.

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Monday August 08, 2011

Flaring Up:
Solar Flares Threaten Electrical Grids

As we approach a solar maximum, concerns are growing of outages in electrical grids caused by solar flares.

In the worst case scenario, solar flares could lead to major blackouts across the globe.

From National Geographic:

"The concern is if the electric grid lost a number of transformers during a single storm, replacing them would be difficult and time-consuming," said Rich Lordan, senior technical executive for power delivery and utilization at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

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Sunday August 07, 2011

Antimatter of Fact:
Antiprotons Envelop The Earth

Scientists have discovered antimatter particles enveloping the Earth.

The antiprotons could potentially be used one day as a source of fuel for spacecraft.

From BBC News:

The team says that this is evidence that bands of antiprotons, analogous to the Van Allen belts, hold the antiprotons in place - at least until they encounter the normal matter of the atmosphere, when they "annihiliate" in a flash of light.

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Wednesday August 03, 2011

Bubble Jam Delite:
Scientists Closer To Finding Parallel Universes

Scientists on the lookout for 'bubble' universes that may exist in parallel with ours have come one step closer to their goal.

They have determined that collisions between parallel universes leave a trace that could possibly be detected.

From Science Daily:

"It's a very hard statistical and computational problem to search for all possible radii of the collision imprints at any possible place in the sky," says Dr Hiranya Peiris, co-author of the research from the UCL Department of Physics and Astronomy. "But that's what pricked my curiosity."

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Tuesday August 02, 2011

Cop Flop:
Antisec Hacks Police Academy

Antisec, a hacking group affiliated with Anonymous, have released over 7,000 records taken from a police training academy's website.

The intrusion is supposedly in retaliation for the recent arrest of 14 individuals relating to last December's attack on PayPal's servers.

From The Register:

Many of the passwords employed by the officers were ordinary dictionary words, or were identical to their names or badge numbers, showing that law enforcement agents often make the same careless mistakes others do in setting up security pass codes. Assuming these people used the same password for other accounts, as is common, their email accounts would also be compromised.

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Monday August 01, 2011

Cropping Up:
Are Crop Circles Made With Microwaves?

Crop circles are generally assumed to be the work of hoaxers rather than aliens.

But some high-tech may be used in their creation as scientists suspect they are made using microwaves.

From The Institute of Physics:

Microwaves, Taylor suggests, could be used to make crop stalks fall over and cool in a horizontal position – a technique that could explain the speed and efficiency of the artists and the incredible detail that some crop circles exhibit.

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Friday July 29, 2011

The Whole Truth:
Is Space-Time Holographic?

Could everything we see around us actually be a hologram?

Some scientists are wondering if our 3D universe is generated from a 2D interference pattern, much like the way a hologram is created.

From New Scientist:

It sounds crazy, but we have already seen a sign that it may be true. Theoretical physicists have long suspected that space-time is pixelated, or grainy. Since a 2D surface cannot store sufficient information to render a 3D object perfectly, these pixels would be bigger in a hologram. "Being in the [holographic] universe is like being in a 3D movie," says Craig Hogan of Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois. "On a large scale, it looks smooth and three-dimensional, but if you get close to the screen, you can tell that it is flat and pixelated.

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Wednesday July 27, 2011

Hot Side of the Moon:
Lunar Volcanos Discovered

Scientists have discovered a volcanic complex on the far side of the moon.

Professor Bradley Joliff of Washington University in St. Louis and his colleague found an upsurge of magma composed of molten silicon and radioactive thorium among other elements.

From ScienceDaily:

"We don't have a way to get an absolute date on the Compton-Belkovich volcanic feature because we don't have rocks in hand," Jolliff says, "but since there are relatively few craters, the surface actually looks pretty fresh. And we see small-scale features that haven't been completely beaten up and obliterated by the impact process.

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Monday July 25, 2011

Evolved:
Texas Rejects Creationist Textbooks

The Texas Board of Education has approved textbooks based on scientific theories of evolution over those proposing creationism.

Two years ago, the board changed the curriculum to allow teaching of 'intelligent design', but the creationist textbooks submitted for approval were riddled with errors.

"This is a huge victory for Texas students and teachers," said Josh Rosenau, NCSE programs and policy director, who testified at the hearings this week. In his testimony, Rosenau urged the board to approve the supplements--recommended by a review panel largely composed of scientists and science educators--without amendments, and to reject International Database's creationist submission. The board did just that, and asked for only minimal changes to the approved supplements.

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Friday July 15, 2011

Memory Drain:
Is Google Affecting Our Ability to Remember?

Technology is meant to improve our lives yet it could have unintended consequences.

Researchers are investigating whether our increasing reliance on tools such as search engines is compromising our ability to remember information.

From Wired:

These results suggest that processes of human memory are adapting to the advent of new computing and communication technology. Just as we learn through transactive memory who knows what in our families and offices, we are learning what the computer “knows” and when we should attend to where we have stored information in our computer-based memories. We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found.

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Thursday July 14, 2011

The 18.5 Million Dollar Man:
Cyborg Research Centre Established

The US National Science Foundation has endowed $18.5 million to the University of Washington for a new centre researching mind-machine interfaces.

The new centre will investigate ways for the brain to control robotic devices and even prosthetic implants.

From Science Blog:

“The center will work on robotic devices that interact with, assist and understand the nervous system,” said director Yoky Matsuoka, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering. “It will combine advances in robotics, neuroscience, electromechanical devices and computer science to restore or augment the body’s ability for sensation and movement.”

Posted in: Science by bubblejam at 02:57 PM | Comments (0) | Email This Entry

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Wednesday July 13, 2011

By The Book:
Computer Learns Language by Playing Games

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) that can read a game manual and go on to learn language through gameplay.

Giving the AI a manual increased its rate of victory from 46 per cent to 79 per cent.

From MIT:

“Games are used as a test bed for artificial-intelligence techniques simply because of their complexity,” says Branavan, who was first author on both ACL papers. “Every action that you take in the game doesn’t have a predetermined outcome, because the game or the opponent can randomly react to what you do. So you need a technique that can handle very complex scenarios that react in potentially random ways.”

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Wednesday July 06, 2011

Small Wonder:
Pinhead Sized Camera Invented

Researchers have developed a lens-free camera that is as small as a pinhead.

The camera is based on a piece of silicon and could be manufactured at a very low cost.

From Gizmag:

"To me, the most exciting aspect of our invention is that this is the first camera that doesn't use mirrors, lenses, or moving parts," Gill told us. "This is a new class of camera that challenges the ideas of what we've always thought a camera had to be."

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Wednesday June 29, 2011

Near Miss:
Space Debris Threatens Space Station

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) prepared for an emergency evacuation when a piece of debris passed by the station.

The debris came within 335 metres of the ISS.

From BBC News:

The US space agency's (Nasa) Associate Administrator for Space Operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, said it was the closest a debris object had ever come to the station. An analysis was now under way to try to understand its origin, he added.

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Tuesday June 28, 2011

Noted Weed:
Did Shakespeare Smoke Dope?

An archaeologist wants to exhume Shakespeare's corpse to discover if he was a cannabis smoker.

Francis Thackeray previously found traces of cannabis in pipe fragments found in the Bard's garden.

From io9:

Thackeray says that if there is any hair or nail fragments left on the corpse, his team would be able to perform chemical analyses that could detect even highly minute quantities of marijuana. Thackeray says he plans to use laser surface scanning, which could image the skeletons of Shakespeare, his wife Anne Hathaway, and his daughter Susanna without directly disturbing them. There's also the possibility of taking DNA samples from the bard's teeth, which could also reveal what Shakespeare's diet was like.

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Sunday June 26, 2011

Give Me A Hand:
Gadget Hijacks Your Hand

Researchers have developed a way to control someone's hand movements.

The technique has already been used to help novices learn to play musical instruments.

From New Scientist:

Having successfully hijacked a hand, the researchers tried to teach it how to play the koto, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument. Koto players wear different picks on three fingers, but pluck the strings with all five fingertips, so each finger produces a distinctive sound. A koto score tells players which fingers should be moved and when, and from this Tamaki and her team were able to generate instructions telling their device how and when to stimulate the wearer's muscles.

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Thursday June 23, 2011

Snappy:
Revolutionary Camera Announced

A new start-up has revealed a innovative approach to photography.

Lytro's camera captures the entire 'light field' rather than a single shot, meaning you can tweak focusing post-shot and even create 3D images.

From TechCrunch:

Of course there are big risks with any business this jaw-droppingly innovative. Will they be able to get the price point low enough that people will buy the camera? Right now, the closest Ng will commit on price is somewhere between north of $1 and less than $10,000. That’s a pretty broad ballpark. We won’t be able to see the devices until the also vague “sometime this year.” An equally important question is whether the user experience be as simple as the company claims.

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Wednesday June 15, 2011

Global Cooling:
Decline in Solar Activity Could Chill Earth

Solar activity may decline in the next few years according to recent research.

This may lead to a drop in temperatures here on Earth.

From Network World:

"This is highly unusual and unexpected," stated Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO's Solar Synoptic Network, in a statement. "But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation. We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all."

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Saturday June 11, 2011

Truth Be Told:
Russia Develops Lie Detecting ATM

Russia’s biggest retail bank is testing an ATM with a built-in lie detector.

New customers can talk to the machine to open an account and apply for credit.

From The New York Times:

The machine scans a passport, records fingerprints and takes a three-dimensional scan for facial recognition. And it uses voice-analysis software to help assess whether the person is truthfully answering questions that include “Are you employed?” and “At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?”

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Tuesday June 07, 2011

Checking Into The Future:
Futuristic Airport Checkpoint Unveiled

The International Air Transport Association has unveiled a mock-up of what it describes as the 'Checkpoint of the Future'.

Tomorrow's air travellers will have to contend with iris scanners and pedestrian tunnels that analyse passengers for contraband such as drugs or explosives.

From Yahoo Finance:

"It's something that's long overdue," Pistole said at IATA's annual conference. "We're not at the checkpoint of the future yet but we're working toward that. I think eventually we will see something similar."

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Monday June 06, 2011

Antimatter Matters:
Physicists Create Antimatter Briefly

Physicists at Cern have created antimatter and held onto it for several minutes.

The ALPHA (Antihydrogen Laser PHysics Apparatus) experiment represents a breakthrough in the study of antimatter.

From Scientific American:

The lifetime of antihydrogen in the ALPHA trap is probably sufficient to begin those studies. "We think we're in a position to start measuring something," says ALPHA spokesperson Jeffrey Hangst of Aarhus University in Denmark. Initial studies will involve irradiating the anti-atoms with microwaves to try to engage them in a resonant interaction, flipping their spin like a compass needle swinging from north to south.

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Wednesday June 01, 2011

Bad Call:
WHO Identifies Mobile Phone as 'Cancer Risk'

The World Health Organisation has announced that the radiation from mobile phones may be carcinogenic.

The risk of developing cancer after using a mobile phone is considered to be on a par with exposure to petrol engine exhaust fumes.

From CNET:

The new determination from the WHO's IARC was established at a meeting in France where a team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, considered peer-reviewed studies about the safety of cell phones. The team said that it had found enough evidence to consider exposure to cell phone radiation as "possibly carcinogenic to humans."

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Sunday May 29, 2011

By The Light of The Watery Moon:
The Moon Has More Water Than Previously Expected

Scientists now believe that the Moon has far more water than previously suspected.

Analysis of volcanic glass beads found on the Moon in 1972 has revealed a water level comparable to that found in Earth's upper mantle magma.

From Discover:

In this new research, the scientists found (in 2008, actually, but their results are now confirmed) that the beads have a water content of about 750 parts per million, roughly equivalent to what you’d find in magma in the Earth’s upper mantle. That’s very surprising; many of the rocks on the Moon’s surface are very dry*, which for years has led scientists to assume the Moon itself was very dry.

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Wednesday May 25, 2011

The New Line:
Amazon Tribe Show Geometry is Innate

Researchers have conducted tests on an Amazonian tribe to show that our understanding of geometry is innate rather than learned.

The Mundurucu have only approximate terms for numbers and no words for shapes such as squares and triangles but they found concepts of geometry easy to grasp.

From BBC News:

The Mundurucu people's responses to the questions were roughly as accurate as those of the French and US respondents; they seemed to have an intuition about lines and geometric shapes without formal education or even the relevant words.

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Tuesday May 24, 2011

Taking The Piss:
Netherlands Exports Urine For Drug Manufacture

Pregnant women in the Netherlands are donating their urine in a unique exercise.

A hormone is extracted from their urine and used to create a fertility drug.

From Radio Netherlands Worldwide:

The pregnant women’s urine contains the hormone Human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG. It’s used in the pharmaceutical industry to make a drug for women with fertility problems, to increase their chances of getting pregnant. Mothers for Mothers has been collecting urine from volunteer donors for as long as 80 years. The scheme is unique in the world.

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Sunday May 15, 2011

Looking for ET:
Searching for Alien Life on 86 Planets

Scientists have launched a new search for extra-terrestrial life on 86 Earth-like planets.

While none of these worlds are guaranteed to be habitable, they have surface temperatures that could support life as we know it.

From PhysOrg:

"Our search employs the largest fully steerable radio telescope on the planet, and the most sensitive radio telescope in the world capable of undertaking a SETI search of this kind," Siemion told AFP.

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Sunday May 08, 2011

Sorry, Where Was I?
The Easily Distracted Have Too Much Grey Matter

Oh there's a robin pecking outside the window. Sorry, I should be paying more attention.

It turns out that the easily distracted may have an excess of grey matter.

From New Scientist:

The most obvious difference between those who had the highest questionnaire scores – the most easily distracted – and those with low scores was the volume of grey matter in a region of the brain known as the left superior parietal lobe (SPL). Specifically, the easily distracted tended to have more grey matter here.

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Sunday May 01, 2011

Time's Up:
Time May Not Be Dimension

Does time exist or is it a human creation?

Two recent scientific papers suggest that time may not be a discrete entity but is the result of human cognition.

From PhysOrg:

“Einstein said, ‘Time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it,’” Sorli told PhysOrg.com. “Time is exactly the order of events: this is my conclusion.”

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Saturday April 30, 2011

Sunny Delight:
Nanotech Boosts Solar Cell Efficiency 80%

Researchers have used nanotech to boost the efficiency of solar cells by 80%.

They developed a way to construct solar cells from 'nanocones', resulting in higher efficiency.

From Science Blog:

“The important concept behind our invention is that the nanocone shape generates a high electric field in the vicinity of the tip junction, effectively separating, injecting and collecting minority carriers, resulting in a higher efficiency than that of a conventional planar cell made with the same materials,” Xu said.

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Friday April 29, 2011

Porked:
Chinese Pork Tainted With Steroids

Chinese consumers are falling ill after eating pork contaminated with steroids.

Hundreds of people are thought to have consumed pork tainted with Clenbuterol and Ractopamine.

From NPR:

Chinese livestock farmers began using clenbuterol in pig feed in the late 1980s to boost growth and get animals to market faster, but it was banned in 2002 as the health risks of eating the meat became better understood. Clenbuterol-tainted meat can cause dizziness, headaches, hand tremors, and other unpleasantness. It's especially risky for people with heart troubles.

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Wednesday April 27, 2011

Starting Line:
Did the Universe Start Out as a 1D Line?

Whilst the Big Bang Theory is favoured by most physicists as an explanation for the universe's origins, there are alternative theories being advanced.

One states that our 3D universe originated as a 1D line that grew to become more intricate.

From MMN:

"In 1-D, there's a new sense of unification," Stojkovic told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to SPACE.com. "Right now, you see the diverse world because you're in 3-D. When you go down to 1-D, things become much simpler. Properties that distinguish all the different particles don't exist anymore, so they all become alike. There is no rotation. All you have is forward and backward, and energy moving in either direction."

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Sunday April 24, 2011

Deus Ex Machina:
Has the God Particle Been Discovered?

Rumours are growing that the elusive Higgs Boson may have been detected at the Large Hadron Collider.

Speculation began after a purported memo revealing the discovery made its way onto the web.

From LiveScience:

The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 17-mile-long particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. It's not entirely clear at this point if the memo is authentic, or what the data it refers to might mean — but the note already has researchers talking.

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Saturday April 16, 2011

Beam Me Up:
Quantum Teleportation Breakthrough

Researchers have successfully teleported light, a breakthrough in the emerging fields of quantum communications and computing.

While quantum teleportation has been theorised about for a decade, it has been difficult to put into practice.

From PhysOrg:

"Just about any quantum technology relies on quantum teleportation. The value of this discovery is that it allows us, for the first time, to quickly and reliably move quantum information around. This information can be carried by light, and it’s a powerful way to represent and process information. Previous attempts to transmit were either very slow or the information might be changed. This process means we will be able to move blocks of quantum information3 around within a computer or across a network, just as we do now with existing computer technologies.

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Monday April 04, 2011

The New Aspirin?
Non-Euphoric Cannabis Breakthrough

Cannabis is considered by many to be a wonder drug, but its euphoric qualities have held back widespread use as a mediciine.

Now a breakthrough has identified a way to use cannabis compounds for pain relief without the high.

From io9:

Physiologist Li Zhang and colleagues discovered that THC targets several parts of the nervous system, some of which are called inhibitory glycine receptors (GlyRs). These receptors, according to Zhang, help regulate "neuromotor activity, pain sensation, muscle relaxation and anxiety." He and his fellow researchers speculate that a synthetic THC could be made that targets just GlyRs - hence, a form of cannabis that works as a painkiller but doesn't get you high.

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Saturday April 02, 2011

Breast of Breed:
GM Cows Produce 'Human-Like' Milk

Scientists have genetically modified cows to produce milk similar to that from humans.

But GM campaigners are likely to be critical of the new development.

From The Sunday Telegraph:

The scientists also revealed at an exhibition at the China Agricultural University that they have boosted milk fat content by around 20 per cent and have also changed the levels of milk solids, making it closer to the composition of human milk as well as having the same immune-boosting properties.

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Friday April 01, 2011

Making Ripples:
Comets Perturb Jupiter and Saturn's Rings

Ripples in the rings of Saturn and Jupiter have been traced back to collisions with cometary fragments that took place more than a decade ago.

In Jupiter's case, the culprit was the transit of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 through our solar system in 1994.

From Science Daily:

"What's cool is we're finding evidence that a planet's rings can be affected by specific, traceable events that happened in the last 30 years, rather than a hundred million years ago," said Matthew Hedman, a Cassini imaging team associate, lead author of one of the papers, and a research associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "The solar system is a much more dynamic place than we gave it credit for."

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Thursday March 24, 2011

Hide & Seek:
Covert Robot Knows How to Hide

Lockheed Martn have developed a surveillance robot that can infiltrate a building whilst avoiding humans.

The robot uses lasers to create a 3D map of the building and has sensors to detect approaching footsteps.

From New Scientist:

"Lockheed Martin's approach does include a sort of basic theory of mind, in the sense that the robot makes assumptions about how to act covertly in the presence of humans," says Alan Wagner of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who works on artificial intelligence and robot deception.

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Sunday March 20, 2011

Seeing the Light:
Minature Lasers Could Revolutionise Computing

As ever increasing amounts of data are transmitted over the internet, conventional technologies will begin to struggle with heavy loads.

But a newly developed minature laser could revolutionise the way we communicate.

From Science Daily:

"The new laser diodes represent a sharp departure from past commercial devices in how they are made," Deppe said from his lab inside the College of Optics and Photonics. "The new devices show almost no change in operation under stress conditions that cause commercial devices to rapidly fail."

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Thursday March 10, 2011

Steel This Bike:
Bicycle Made From Nylon as Strong as Steel

Aerospace company EADS have developed a bicycle made from nylon that is as strong as steel.

The bike's components are 'grown' from a fine nylon powde using a technique similar to 3D printing.

From Gizmag:

Complete sections are "grown" from the chosen structural material, with the wheels, bearings and axle incorporated within the process and built at the same time. EADS says that the nylon components produced by the ALM process are strong enough to replace steel or aluminum. Unsurprisingly perhaps for the company, the eight-bladed wheels are based on the scimitar propeller design of the Airbus A400M, and the bike's name follows a similar line to that of Airbus, the first EADS company to use the technology.

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Sunday March 06, 2011

Heavy Drinking:
Happy Hours Lead to Violence

Researchers at Cardiff University have established a link between 'happy hour' drinks promotions and alcohol-fuelled violence.

The study highlights the need for bar staff to be more vigilant about serving drinks to already intoxicated customers.

From ScienceDaily:

Dr Simon Moore, of Cardiff University's award-winning Violence and Society Research Group, who led the study, said: "Our findings clearly show that alcohol misuse and violence are not simply caused by drinkers' weaknesses. The way premises are run also contributes, suggesting the industry still has more to do in playing its part."

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Sunday February 27, 2011

A Quantum of Solace:
Quantum Computers Come One Step Closer

Quantum computers have come one step closer with the development of a quantum 'antenna'.

The antenna allows communication between memory cells on a quantum computing chip.

From Science Daily:

"The new technology offers the possibility to distribute entanglement. At the same time, we are able to target each memory cell individually," explains Rainer Blatt. The new quantum computer could be based on a chip with many micro traps, where ions communicate with each other through electromagnetic coupling. This new approach represents an important step towards practical quantum technologies for information processing.

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Tuesday February 22, 2011

Rocket Science:
ISS Could Go Interplanetary

Nasa researchers have come up with an innovative and inexpensive solution for interplanetary travel.

They want to attach rockets to the International Space Station and turn it into a spaceship.

From Discovery:

The designers optimistically believe that such a planet-roaming "space station with rockets" could be ready by 2020 at a cost of under $4 billion. If this number is realistic, the vehicle would be cheaper than the projected costs for the "Apollo-on steroids" Orion capsule.

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Sunday February 20, 2011

Hot Stuff:
Iceland Looks to Magma for Energy

Iceland has been looking into hot springs as a way of generating energy.

When a borehole struck magma in 2009, it was seen as a setback initially.

But now researchers think that magma could be a huge source of energy for the country.

From PhysOrg:

"Because we drilled into magma, this borehole could now be a really high-quality geothermal well," said Peter Schiffmann, professor of geology at UC Davis and a member of the research team along with fellow UC Davis geology professor Robert Zierenberg and UC Davis graduate student Naomi Marks. The project was led by Wilfred Elders, a geology professor at UC Riverside.

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Wednesday February 16, 2011

Source Code:
CEO Open Sources His Genome

Open source software has made today's net possible -- many of the servers you use everyday rely on code released by the author for public use.

Manu Sporny, founder and CEO of Digital Bazaar, has taken the idea to the next level.

He has released around one million of his genetic markers into the public domain and ceded all rights to the data.

From Geek:

The body has around 10 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) – the genetic markers Manu shared – of which 23andme analyze 1 million by placing your saliva sample on a genotyping beadchip. Of those million, only 14,515 are known about in science, and only 160 are used by 23andme for analysis.

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Monday February 07, 2011

Skynet Edges Closer:
Robots Share Abilities on Web

Researchers are working on a 'web for robots' that will allow the devices to share information over a network.

This could mean that robots could extend their programming to take on tasks they were not originally developed to do.

From Engadget:

It's not quite war-ready, but a new Skynet-like initiative called RoboEarth could have you reaching for your guide to automaton Armageddon sooner than you think. The network, which is dubbed the "World Wide Web for robots," was designed by a team of European scientists and engineers to allow robots to learn from the experience of their peers, thus enabling them to take on tasks that they weren't necessarily programmed to perform.

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Sunday February 06, 2011

Electricity in Mind:
Electric Brain Fields Unlock Secrets of Cognition

It has been assumed that brain function depends on neurons connected directly by synapses.

Now scientists believe that electric fields generated in the brain could cause unconnected neurons to fire.

From Caltech:

The brain—awake and sleeping—is awash in electrical activity, and not just from the individual pings of single neurons communicating with each other. In fact, the brain is enveloped in countless overlapping electric fields, generated by the neural circuits of scores of communicating neurons. The fields were once thought to be an "epiphenomenon" similar to the sound the heart makes—which is useful to the cardiologist diagnosing a faulty heart beat, but doesn't serve any purpose to the body, says Christof Koch, the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology and professor of computation and neural systems at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

New work by Koch and neuroscientist Costas Anastassiou, a postdoctoral scholar in biology, and his colleagues, however, suggests that the fields do much more—and that they may, in fact, represent an additional form of neural communication.

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Thursday February 03, 2011

Fingered:
Getting Fingerprints From Clothing

It has been virtually impossible to get fingerprints from clothing until now.

Researchers have found a way to reveal prints using gold vapour.

From Gizmag:

The researchers used a method known as vacuum metal deposition that's already been used to recover print detail on smooth surfaces like carrier bags, plastics and glass since the 1970s, but has not previously been applied to fingerprint detection on fabrics.

The fabric is placed in a vacuum chamber. Gold is heated and evaporated and spread in a fine layer over the fabric. Heated zinc is then applied, which attaches to the gold layer where the fabric has no fingerprints, leaving the original fabric to show through where contact has been made.

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Wednesday February 02, 2011

Bigger Than It Looks:
Universe Could Be 250 Times Larger Than Previously Thought

The size of the Universe is a topic that has exercised cosmologist's brains for decades.

A new statistical analysis indicates that the Universe may be 250 times larger than previously thought.

From Technology Review:

They say that the curvature of the Universe is tightly constrained around 0. In other words, the most likely model is that the Universe is flat. A flat Universe would also be infinite and their calculations are consistent with this too. These show that the Universe is at least 250 times bigger than the Hubble volume. (The Hubble volume is similar to the size of the observable universe.)

Saturday January 29, 2011

A Load of Gas?:
Synthetic Petroleum From Hydrogen

Scientists have developed a synthetic form of petroleum derived from hydrogen.

The hydrogen-based fuel may be suitable for use in petrol engines without modification.

From Gizmag:

“We have developed new micro-beads that can be used in an existing gasoline or petrol vehicle to replace oil-based fuels,” said Voller. “Early indications are that the micro-beads can be used in existing vehicles without engine modification.”

“The materials are hydrogen-based, and so when used produce no carbon emissions at the point of use, in a similar way to electric vehicles”, said Voller.

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Thursday January 20, 2011

Old Amoeba Had a Farm:
The Amoeba That Farms Bacteria

A species of amoeba that farms its own food source has been discovered.

Dictyostelium discoideum spores contain the bacteria that the slime mould relies on.

From BBC News:

Once Ms Brock spotted the amoebas' fruiting bodies carrying bacteria, she measured how many of the spores were responsible, finding that about a third of them traveled with their bacterial seeds.

The behaviour seems to be genetically built-in; clones of the "farmer" amoebas in turn developed into farmers, while clones of the "non-farmers" did not.

"To think of a single-celled amoeba performing something that you could consider farming, I think, is surprising," Ms Brock said.

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Monday January 17, 2011

The Worm That Turned:
Controlling Worms With Laser Light

Scientists have discovered a way to control the behaviour of worms using laser light.

Individual neurons can be turned on and off using an emerging technique known as Optogenetics.

From Science News:

“This tool allows us to go in and poke and prod at those neurons in an animal as it’s moving, and see exactly what each neuron does,” says study coauthor Andrew Leifer of Harvard University.

The system is based on the emerging field of optogenetics, in which light is used to turn cells on or off. Leifer and his colleagues genetically engineered light-responsive molecules into particular groups of cells in the worm.

Then, a computer program that the team developed figures out where in the microscope’s field of view a target cell is. Once the cell is pinpointed, the program directs lasers so that a tiny beam of light hits the cell.

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Sunday January 16, 2011

Woolly Thinking:
Scientist Plans to Resurrect Mammoths

Advances in genetics have opened up the possibility that long extinct species could be resurrected.

So a Japanese scientist is on the hunt for a sample of soft tissue from a Wooly Mammoth that could lead to the return of the species.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.

But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.

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Friday January 14, 2011

That Which is Not Dead Can Eternal Lie:
34,000 Year Old Bacteria Discovered

A scientist has discovered 34,000 year old bacteria still living inside salt crystals.

As their DNA would have been damaged over the years, the discovery could shed light on how DNA repair takes place.

From Yahoo News:

"It was actually a very big surprise to me," said Brian Schubert, who discovered ancient bacteria living within tiny, fluid-filled chambers inside the salt crystals.

Salt crystals grow very quickly, imprisoning whatever happens to be floating - or living - nearby inside tiny bubbles just a few microns across, akin to naturally made, miniature snow-globes.

"It's permanently sealed inside the salt, like little time capsules," said Tim Lowenstein, a professor in the geology department at Binghamton University and Schubert's advisor at the time.

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Monday January 10, 2011

There's a Fly in My Soup:
Insects as a Green Source of Protein

Environmental problems could pose a threat to the world's food supply. Our current system of intensive farming may not have much of a future.

But scientists have come up with an alternative to the resource-intensive raising of livestock: insects.

From Science Daily:

The study indicates that proteins originating from insects in principle form an environmentally-friendly alternative to proteins from meat originating from conventional livestock. Further research is required to ascertain whether the production of a kilogram of insect protein is also more environmentally friendly than conventional animal protein when the entire production chain is taken into account.

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Wednesday January 05, 2011

Regeneration:
Turning Old Black & White TV Programmes Into Colour

The BBC is notorious for having wiped hundreds of TV programmes in the 1970s to save on the costs of video tape.

Over a hundred episodes of Doctor Who were lost. But a number of episodes were transferred to black & white 16mm film for export to countries such as Australia that were still broadcasting in monochrome.

Now restoration experts are using a clever application of science to restore these black and white prints to full colour.

From Wired UK:

Their method is a refined version of that trialled on the 2009 Planet of the Daleks rerelease; it is now being deployed on a seven-part 1970 Jon Pertwee adventure, The Ambassadors of Death. "It seemed almost impossible," says Steve Roberts, 35, the team's supervisor and a BBC senior engineer. "But when they made the black-and-white recordings, they didn't filter off the colour carrier [encoded as a 'chroma dot' pattern in each frame], which for the last few decades has been nothing more than an annoyance." Team member Richard Russell used the signal to reverse-engineer raw colour pictures that could be retouched frame by frame. "It's very, very labour intensive -- several hundred man hours' work every episode," says Roberts. Luckily, a new "quadrant editor" is helping them to produce better source material upfront, so they hope to deliver the Ambassadors episodes to the BBC within weeks.

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Wednesday December 29, 2010

Everything:
Project Aims to Simulate Entirety of Earth

A group of scientists hope to create a simulator that can replicate everything happening on Earth.

The Living Earth Simulator aims to improve scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet.

From BBC News:

Thanks to projects such as the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator built by Cern, scientists know more about the early universe than they do about our own planet, claims Dr Helbing.

What is needed is a knowledge accelerator, to collide different branches of knowledge, he says.

"Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying societies constitutes the most pressing scientific grand challenge of our century."

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Monday December 27, 2010

The Rules of Attraction:
Why Does Earth's Magnetic North Pole Drift?

As well as the geographic north pole, there is a magnetic north pole nearby. But the location of the magnetic pole moves from year to year for reasons unknown.

Finding an explanation for the phenomenon could unlock some of the secrets held beneath Earth's crust.

From Scientific American:

The north magnetic pole (NMP), also known as the dip pole, is the point on Earth where the planet's magnetic field points straight down into the ground. Scottish explorer James Clark Ross first located the NMP in 1831 on the Boothia Peninsula in what is now northern Canada, and with the planting of a flag claimed it for Great Britain.

But the NMP drifts from year to year as geophysical processes within Earth change. For more than 150 years after Ross's measurement its movement was gradual, generally less than 15 kilometers per year. But then, in the 1990s, it picked up speed in a big way, bolting north–northwest into the Arctic Ocean at more than 55 kilometers per year. If it keeps going it could pass the geographic north pole in a decade or so and carry on toward Siberia. But why?

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Sunday December 26, 2010

Wildlife:
Drug-Using Animals

It may come as a surprise to learn that animals in the wild make use of psychoactive substances just like humans.

Many recreational drugs may in fact have been discovered by observing the behaviour of animals.

From PJ Online:

On the prairies of the south-west US, horses and other grazing mammals can become addicted to hallucinogen-containing plants known generically as locoweed. These plants, mainly species of Astragalus and Oxytropis, are normally avoided, but animals that try them can come back time and again for a repeat fix. Symptoms include altered gait, aimless wandering, impaired vision, erratic behaviour and listlessness.

In South America’s rain forests, jaguars have been filmed behaving in a kittenish manner after gnawing the bitter roots and bark of yage (Banisteriopsis caapi), a hallucinogenic vine that is also used by native tribes in ritualistic ceremonies. Some anthropologists believe that man first learnt to use the drug after watching jaguars

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Thursday December 23, 2010

Light Touch:
A Hands-free Way to Review Radiological Images

Microsoft's Kinect motion-controller has been adapted to provide doctors with a hands-free way to review radiological images.

This allows them to maintain sterility by eliminating the need to touch any physical controls that could harbour pathogens.

From Gizmag:

With software based on ofxKinect, libfreenect and open frameworks, the prototype uses a mix of voice control via a wireless headset and gesture control via the Kinect’s 3D video camera to control OsiriX, an image processing application specially designed for navigation and visualization of medical images. The user can switch modes using voice commands and then navigate the images – zooming in or out and moving the view through a 3D image – using one or two-handed gestures.

While the focus of the Virtopsy project is to make use of new technologies to replace standard autopsy with minimally invasive procedures, such a touch-free interface also has obvious benefits for surgeons needing to navigate medical images in a surgery environment. Gesture and voice controls would allow them to maintain sterility by doing away with the need to directly touch any keyboards, buttons, joysticks or touchscreens.

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Monday December 20, 2010

The End of the World is Not Nigh:
Large Hadron Collider Doesn't Create Black Holes

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was mired in controversy before its launch when some thought that it could generate microscopic black holes. There were even allegations that the Earth could get sucked into one of these black holes.

But it turns out that Armageddon will probably not be caused by the LHC. Experiments that theoretically could have generated microscopic black holes have failed to yield any evidence of their existence.

From PhysOrg:

Microscopic black holes are predicted to exist in some theoretical models that attempt to unify General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics by postulating the existence of extra "curled-up" dimensions, in addition to the three familiar spatial dimensions.

At the high energies of the Large Hadron Collider, such theories predict that particles may collide "closely enough" to be sensitive to these postulated extra dimensions. In such a case, the colliding particles could interact gravitationally with strengths similar to those of the other three fundamental forces – the Electromagnetic, Weak and Strong interactions. The two colliding particles might then form a microscopic black hole.

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Friday December 17, 2010

The Meme Pool:
Tracing The Development of Culture Through Books

Since 2004, Google have scanned over 15 million books, an electronic archive that represents 12 per cent of all the books ever published.

Researchers have used this database to trace the development of language and culture over two centuries.

From Discover:

The project began back in 2007, when the duo published a paper showing that verbs become more regular over time. From Beowulf to Harry Potter, the past forms of many irregular verbs have taken on the standard “-ed” suffix, in a way that fits a startlingly simple mathematical formula. On wrapping up the project, they marvelled at how hard it was to collect the data in the first place. Michel says, “We realized that the study of the evolution of culture needed something like a genome, a dataset so powerful that it would enable such analyses to be done rapidly, on any topic, not just irregular verbs. And we noticed that some of those really obscure books we used… had meanwhile popped up on Google Books. We put two and two together.”

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Thursday December 16, 2010

Iran Out of Time:
Stuxnet Virus 'Delays Iranian Nuclear Programme by Two Years'

According to a computer expert, the Stuxnet virus that attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities has set back the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program by two years.

It is believed that Israel’s Military Intelligence Unit 8200 was the creator of the software, possibly in league with the US.

From The Jerusalem Post:

Eric Byres, a computer security expert who runs a website called Tofino Security, which provides solutions for industrial companies with Stuxnet-related problems, told the Post on Tuesday that the number of Iranians visiting his site had jumped tremendously in recent weeks – a likely indication that the virus is still causing great disarray at Iranian nuclear facilities.

“What caught our attention was that last year we maybe had one or two people from Iran trying to access the secure areas on our site,” Byres said. “Iran was never on the map for us, and all of a sudden we are now getting massive numbers of people going to our website, and people who we can identify as being from Iran.”

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Tuesday December 14, 2010

Hot Destination:
Chernobyl Open For Tourism

Ukraine is planning to open up the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl reactor to visitors from next year.

The exclusion zone, a 30 mile radius from the exploded reactor, was evacuated and sealed off in the aftermath of the explosion.

Several hundred evacuees have returned to their villages in the zone inspite of a government ban. Unofficial tours of the area also take place illegally.

From The Washington Post:

Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Yulia Yershova said experts are developing travel routes that will be both medically safe and informative for Ukrainians as well as foreign visitors. She did not give an exact date when the tours were expected to begin.

"There are things to see there if one follows the official route and doesn't stray away from the group," Yershova told The Associated Press. "Though it is a very sad story."

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Monday December 13, 2010

Gut Thinking:
Programming Bacteria Like a Computer

Scientists have found a way to program bacteria like a computer. Logic gates -- the basic building blocks of all computers -- are constructed using genes and inserted into E. coli bacteria.

The genes mimic digital processes and result in computational communication between cells.

From CNN:

“DNA is sort of the programming language for life,” Voigt told CNN in a telephone interview over the weekend.

“It's not that we're trying to replace computers with living cells. But it means we could gain programmable control of everything biology can do. You'd like to be able to control all these programs.”

Voigt said the ultimate aim is to create intricate computer code that can be read by living cells.

“We want to create a programming language for bacteria,” he said. “We want to program code for bacteria just like you would for a computer. A lot of the other work my lab does has to do with coming up with algorithms – just like a programmer would do – and converting that into a DNA sequence.”

Image credit: UCSF

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Friday December 10, 2010

Smokin':
Batteries Enhanced With Tobacco Virus

While electronics get smaller and faster all the time, batteries remain stubbornly large. A clever application of a virus that blights tobacco plants could change all that.

Scientists have found a way to bind the Tobacco Mosaic Virus perpendicularly to the metallic surface of a battery electrode. This results in a ten-fold increase in energy capacity over a standard lithium-ion battery

From PhysOrg:

"The resulting batteries are a leap forward in many ways and will be ideal for use not only in small electronic devices but in novel applications that have been limited so far by the size of the required battery," said Ghodssi, director of the Institute for Systems Research and Herbert Rabin Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Clark School. "The technology that we have developed can be used to produce energy storage devices for integrated microsystems such as wireless sensors networks. These systems have to be really small in size--millimeter or sub-millimeter--so that they can be deployed in large numbers in remote environments for applications like homeland security, agriculture, environmental monitoring and more; to power these devices, equally small batteries are required, without compromising in performance."

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Wednesday December 08, 2010

Something for Nothing:
Generating Matter From a Vacuum?

New equations show that a high-energy electron beam combined with an intense laser pulse could rip apart a vacuum into its fundamental matter and antimatter components.

A resulting cascade of events would also additional pairs of particles and antiparticles. From a single electron, several hundred particles could be produced.

From Science Daily:

At the heart of this work is the idea that a vacuum is not exactly nothing.

"It is better to say, following theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, that a vacuum, or nothing, is the combination of matter and antimatter -- particles and antiparticles.Their density is tremendous, but we cannot perceive any of them because their observable effects entirely cancel each other out," Sokolov said.

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Monday December 06, 2010

Blue Genes:
Propensity for Casual Sex May Be Genetic

Genetics and neurobiology seem to influence sexual propensities and tendencies. But the exact mechanisms are poorly understood.

A new study has now identified a gene that could result in behaviours such as uncommitted sex and one night stands.

From Medical Daily:

In a first of its kind study, a team of investigators led by Justin Garcia, a SUNY Doctoral Diversity Fellow in the laboratory of evolutionary anthropology and health at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has taken a broad look at sexual behavior, matching choices with genes and has come up with a new theory on what makes humans 'tick' when it comes to sexual activity. The biggest culprit seems to be the dopamine receptor D4 polymorphism, or DRD4 gene. Already linked to sensation-seeking behavior such as alcohol use and gambling, DRD4 is known to influence the brain's chemistry and subsequently, an individual's behavior.

"We already know that while many people experience sexual activity, the circumstances, meaning and behavior is different for each person," said Garcia. "Some will experience sex with committed romantic partners, others in uncommitted one-night stands. Many will experience multiple types of sexual relationships, some even occurring at the same time, while others will exchange sex for resources or money. What we didn't know was how we are motivated to engage in one form and not another, particularly when it comes to promiscuity and infidelity."

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Thursday December 02, 2010

Aliens Amongst Us:
Arsenic-loving Lifeform Discovered in Californian Lake

All life on earth has been previously been thought to contain six key elements: oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus.

But Nasa scientists have discovered a bacterium in a Californian lake that seems to use arsenic in its molecular make-up instead of phosphorus.

From The Guardian:

Christened GFAJ-1, the microbe lends weight to the notion held by some astrobiologists that there might be "weird" forms of life on Earth, as yet undiscovered, that use elements other than the basic six in their metabolism. Among those who have speculated is Prof Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and an author on the latest research.

"This organism has dual capability – it can grow with either phosphorus or arsenic," said Davies. "That makes it very peculiar, though it falls short of being some form of truly 'alien' life belonging to a different tree of life with a separate origin. However, GFAJ-1 may be a pointer to even weirder organisms. The holy grail would be a microbe that contained no phosphorus at all."

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Wednesday December 01, 2010

Grown & Flown:
First Airbus Fuelled by Biofuel Flies

Aviation is an industry under fire for contributing to climate change through massive carbon dioxide emissions.

For the industry to survive, it has to find ways to overcome environmental objections. Dependence on fossil fuels also makes airlines vulnerable to volatility in the oil industry.

Now Brazil’s largest airline, TAM Airlines, has successfully conducted the first test flight of an Airbus passenger jet fuelled with biofuel derived from Jatropha.

From Gizmag:

The biofuel used to power the TAM Airlines A320 was a 50 percent blend of conventional aviation kerosene and locally-sourced Brazilian Jatropha-based bio-kerosene. Jatropha is seen as one of the best candidates for biofuel production as it is drought and pest resistant and produces seeds containing 27–40 percent oil, averaging 34.4 percent. As it contains several toxic compounds, it also avoids the controversy surrounding the use of traditional food crops for the production of biofuel.

The A320, powered by CFM56 engines, took off from Galeão Antonio Carlos Jobim International airport in Rio de Janeiro and performed a 45-minute flight before returning to its point of origin. The technical flight was approved by Airbus, the engine provider CFM International, and was authorized by aviation authorities in Europe (the European Aviation Safety Agency - EASA), and Brazil (National Civil Aviation Agency - ANAC).

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Thursday November 18, 2010

Lights, Camera, Amazon:
Online Retail Giant Launches Movie Studio

Amazon have made millions of dollars by selling movies online. But the studio is going further by going into the moviemaking business.

A new online site will allow anyone to submit scripts that other users can use to make test movies. The best movies will attract cash prizes from Amazon and could even be picked up by Warner Bros.

From Good Gear Guide:

The new Internet movie studio will allow writers to upload screenplays to its website where the global Internet audience can read them and offer feedback, or producers/directors can use them to make test movies. The test movies, which must be at least 70 minutes in length, can also be uploaded.

Amazon Studios will also award monthly cash prizes to the top submissions of US$100,000 for the best movie each month and US$20,000 to the two best scripts. They'll also be an annual award of $1 million for the best movie and $100,000 for the best script. In all, the company expects to hand out up to US$2.7 million for submissions received by Dec. 31, it said on its website.

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Wednesday November 17, 2010

The Sweet Science:
Making Graphene With Sugar

Graphene, a single-layer of carbon atoms, has the potential to be one of the most revolutionary materials ever created.

One obstacle to its widespread adoption is whether mass production of graphene can be economically viable.

Now Zhengzong Sun, a fourth-year graduate student at Rice University, has discovered a way to manufacture graphene from ordinary table sugar.

From Gizmag:

For pristine graphene, Sun started with a thin film of poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) – better known as Plexiglass – spun onto a copper substrate that acted as a catalyst. Under heat and low pressure, hydrogen and argon gas was flowed over the PMMA for 10 minutes, reducing it to pure carbon and turning the film into a single layer of graphene. Sun was able to control the thickness of the PMMA-derived graphene by changing the gas-flow rate.

When he turned to other carbon sources, including a fine powder of sucrose – aka table sugar – is when things got interesting, says Sun. "We thought it would be interesting to try this stuff," he said. "While other labs were changing the metal catalysts, we tried changing the carbon sources."

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Tuesday November 16, 2010

Mirror, Mirror:
How We Share Actions & Emotions

Experiencing empathy is a truly human trait -- when we see someone in distress, we feel that emotion.

Now neurologists have made a breakthrough discovery that explains this phenomenon.

'Mirror neurons' allow our brain to emulate what we see. Unlocking their secrets could revolutionise neurology in the same way that the discovery of DNA changed biology forever.

From The Daily Galaxy:

Vilayanur Ramachandran is a neurologist at the University of California-San Diego and co-author of Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind writes that "Giacomo Rizzolatti at the University of Parma has elegantly explored the properties of neurons - the so-called "mirror" neurons, or "monkey see, monkey do" neurons. His research indicates that any given cell in this region will fire when a test monkey performs a single, highly specific action with its hand: pulling, pushing, tugging, picking up, grasping, etc. In addition, it appears that different neurons fire in response to different actions."

Image credit: Exploratorium / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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Monday November 15, 2010

See The Light:
Using Light to Kill Superbugs

Hospitals are struggling to cope with so-called superbugs such as MRSA and C. difficile.

These diseases are easily transmissible in confined environments and resist conventional drug treatment.

Now researchers in Scotland have developed a pioneering lighting system that can kill superbugs.

From ScienceDaily:

The technology decontaminates the air and exposed surfaces by bathing them in a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths, known as HINS-light.

Clinical trials at Glasgow Royal Infirmary have shown that the HINS-light Environmental Decontamination System provides significantly greater reductions of bacterial pathogens in the hospital environment than can be achieved by cleaning and disinfection alone, providing a huge step forward in hospitals' ability to prevent the spread of infection.

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Friday November 12, 2010

Gulp:
Scientist Discover How Cats Lap Up Water

A black cat has inspired scientists to study how felines use their tongues to lap up water.

While dogs form their tongues into a scoop that shovels water into their mouths, cats have a much more sophisticated technique.

Using their instinct, cats exploit gravity and inertia to flick water into their mouths with only the tip of the tongue.

From the New York Times:

Cats lap water so fast that the human eye cannot follow what is happening, which is why the trick had apparently escaped attention until now. With the use of high-speed photography, the neatness of the feline solution has been captured.

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Thursday November 11, 2010

The Golden Age:
Nanoscale Gold Turns Trees Into Street Lights

Street lights consume valuable energy and are often made with toxic chemicals. One scientist wondered if there was a better way to provide lighting.

Now a new process could turn trees into sources of light that provide their own power.

From Inhabitat:

By implanting the gold nanoparticles into the leaves of the Bacopa caroliniana plants, the scientists were able to induce the chlorophyll in the leaves to produce a red emission. Under a high wavelength of ultraviolet light, the gold nanoparticles were able to produce a blue-violet fluorescence to trigger a red emission in the surrounding chlorophyll.

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Wednesday November 10, 2010

Hi-Tech Heroes:
Real-Life Superheroes & Their Gadgets

You probably think that superheroes are only found in comic books and movies. Think again.

It turns out that there's a sub-culture of costumed avengers on the streets of America. The same ingenuity behind Silicon Valley is now being employed to arm these crimefighters with futuristic gadgets.

From Gizmag:

Yes, there are real-life superheroes. And no, we’re not just referring to firefighters, paramedics, and other heroic people who we’re used to seeing coming to the rescue of others. We’re talking about costume-wearing, identity-concealing, cool-name-having people who fight crime, pollution, or other evils in their own communities, on their own time, and at their own risk. Many of them actually patrol the city streets, ready to intervene if they see trouble brewing – and being ready includes having the right tools.

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Saturday October 30, 2010

The Spice of Life:
Turmeric Could Prevent Liver Damage
by Simon Magus

Curcumin, a compound found in turmeric, holds promise in preventing or treating liver damage from an advanced form of a condition known as fatty liver disease.

As well as giving flavour to curry, turmeric has been used by the Chinese to make traditional medicines for thousands of years.

Researchers hope that curcumin could be the key to treating an increasingly common kind of fatty liver disease called non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

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Thursday October 28, 2010

A Snowball's Chance:
Ice-Covered Earth Facilitated Rise of Life on Earth
by Sir Thomas More

Scientists have found new evidence linking 'Snowball Earth' glacial events to the rise of early animals.

The controversial Snowball Earth hypothesis posits that 750 to 580 million years ago, the Earth was covered from pole to pole by a thick sheet of ice lasting for millions of years.

The researchers argue that the oceans in the aftermath of these events were rich in phosphorus, a nutrient that controls the abundance of life in the oceans.

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Sunday October 24, 2010

Sting in the Tail:
Scorpion Venom Could Reduce Heart Bypass Failures
by Simon Magus

A toxin found in the venom of the Central American bark scorpion (Centruroides margaritatus) could hold the key to reducing heart bypass failures.

Margatoxin is at least 100 times more potent at preventing neointimal hyperplasia -- the most common cause of bypass graft failure -- than any other known compound.

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Saturday October 23, 2010

Love is the Drug:
The Science of Falling in Love
by Sir Thomas More

A new meta-analysis study, 'The Neuroimaging of Love', reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine.

Researchers also found that falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second.

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Sunday October 17, 2010

Push & Pull:
Correcting Sensory Eye Dominance
by Sir Thomas More

Researchers appear to have found a better way to correct sensory eye dominance, a condition in which an imbalance between the eyes compromises fine depth perception.

The key is a push-pull training method in which the weak eye is made to work while vision in the strong eye is actively suppressed.

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Sunday October 17, 2010

Spin When You're Winning:
Graphene Yields Electron Spin Computing Breakthrough
by Simon Magus

Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have taken an important step forward in developing a 'spin computer' by successfully achieving 'tunnelling spin injection' into graphene.

Spin computers, when developed, would utilise the electron's spin state to store and process vast amounts of information while using less energy, generating less heat, and performing much faster than conventional computers in use today.

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Tuesday October 05, 2010

Russian Nobels:
Graphene Pioneers Win Nobel Prize
by Simon Magus

Two Russian-born scientists based in Manchester have been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for physics.

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester conducted experiments with graphene, a form of carbon just one atom thick.

One hundred times stronger than steel, graphene is both the thinnest and toughest material known to science.

It is hoped that graphene could revolutionise practical science in many fields from quantum physics to consumer electronics.

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Sunday October 03, 2010

The Heat is On:
Turning Waste Heat Into Power
by Sir Thomas More

What do a car engine, a power plant, a factory and a solar panel have in common? They all generate heat -- a lot of which is wasted.

Physicists have discovered a new way of harvesting waste heat and turning it into electrical power.

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Sunday October 03, 2010

Stub It Out:
Call For Research Into Non-Addictive Cigarettes
by Simon Magus

After a major review of scientific literature, six leading tobacco research and policy experts have concluded that a nicotine reduction strategy should be an urgent research priority.

Reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels could have a significant public health impact on prevention and smoking cessation.

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Saturday September 25, 2010

Let's Stick Together:
Oysters' Ability to Glue Together Revealed
by Simon Magus

Scientists have discovered the chemical components of the adhesive produced by oysters.

Understanding how oysters stick together to form complex reefs could help conservation efforts, yield environmentally friendly 'anti-fouling' agents to keep hulls clean, and even lead to wet-setting adhesives for use in medicine and construction.

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Wednesday September 22, 2010

Neanderthal Order:
Neanderthals More Advanced Than Previously Thought
by Simon Magus

Scientists have long believed that Neanderthals developed 'modern' tools and ornaments solely through contact with Homo sapiens.

But new study shows these sturdy ancients could adapt, innovate, and evolve technology on their own.

The findings challenge a half-century of conventional wisdom maintaining that Neanderthals were thick-skulled, primitive 'cavemen'.

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Sunday September 19, 2010

Leave The Light On:
Artifical Light Boosts Bird Reproduction
by Sir Thomas More

Scientists have shown that permanent night lighting alters the reproductive behaviour of birds.

In those habitats that are affected by artificial light, males started to sing earlier and females advanced the onset of breeding activities.

Moreover, males occupying territories with street lights had a higher number of extra-pair mates than males living in dark forests.

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