SCIENCE NEWSCLIPS

SCIENCE
NEWSCLIPS
from 1-06

See 15 Answers to Creationism (in Scientific American).)

DNA is made with the molecules: adenine, guanine, thymine & cytosine --represented as A, G, T and C. (Mnemonic: CATGut)

The Phi Ratio [Golden Mean?] is one to 1.618 --that's .618 to one, the other way around. [Yes, coincidentally same numbers...] It's not quite 3/2.

Technology Review.com offers both the latest news on emerging technologies and keen analysis of the implications these new innovations will have on business and society at large. See the file.

Dec 28, 06: The mysteries of the Antarctic deep will be probed by a new vessel capable of plunging 6.5km down. Isis, the UK's first deep-diving remotely operated vehicle (ROV), will comb the sea-bed in the region in its inaugural science mission. Researchers hope to uncover more about the effects of glaciers on the ocean floor, and also find out about the animals that inhabit these waters.
. . The project cost about Ł4.5m. It measures 2.7m long, 2m (6.5ft) high and 1.5m wide, and weighs about 3,000kg in the air. Ten kilometers of cable connect it to its "mother ship", allowing scientists to control the vehicle and receive the data it collects in real-time.
. . On the ROV, Mr Mason said, were lights, cameras to produce high-quality video and still pictures, sonars for acoustic navigation and imaging, and two remotely controlled manipulator arms to collect samples or place scientific instruments on the sea-bed. Isis, he added, also had extra capacity to carry a range of scientific tools, such as borers, nets etc, so that scientists could tailor the vehicle to their research needs.

Dec 27, 06: China has come up with an earthquake prediction system which relies on the behavior of snakes, state media said, two days after two quakes struck off neighboring Taiwan. They developed the system using a combination of natural instinct and modern technology.
. . Experts at the bureau monitor snakes at local snake farms via video cameras linked to a broadband Internet connection. The video feed runs 24 hours per day.
. . "Of all the creatures on Earth, snakes are perhaps the most sensitive to earthquakes." Jiang said snakes, a popular restaurant dish in the south in the winter, could sense an earthquake from 120 km away, three to five days before it happens. They respond by behaving strangely. "When an earthquake is about to occur, snakes will move out of their nests, even in the cold of winter."

Dec 27, 06: A leading industry group has given scientists the go-ahead to build genetically engineered peanuts that could be safer [they're deadly poison to some people!], more nutritious and easier to grow than their conventional version.

Dec 20, 06: Robots might one day be smart enough to demand emancipation from their human owners, raising the prospects they'll have to be treated as citizens, according to a speculative paper released by the British government. Among the warnings: a "monumental shift" could occur if robots were developed to the point where they could reproduce, improve or think for themselves.
. . "Correctly managed, there is a very real possibility for increased labor output and greater intelligence to be provided by robots that will ultimate lead to greater human prosperity and an improvement of the human condition", it said.
. . However, it warned that robots could sue for their rights if these were denied to them. Should they prove successful, the paper said, "states will be obligated to provide full social benefits to them including income support, housing and possibly robo-healthcare to fix the machines over time."
. . The research, commissioned by the U.K. Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Center, looks ahead to the year 2056 to identify issues "of potentially significant impact or opportunity." It was put together by British research company Ipsos-MORI, the consultancy Outsights and the American-based Institute for the Future. The paper did not address the likelihood such a rights-seeking robot would be developed, and it predicted the issue would not come up for at least another 20 years.

Dec 14, 06: Some 10,000 US researchers have signed a statement protesting about political interference in the scientific process. The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy.
. . According to the American Union of Concerned Scientists, data is being misrepresented for political reasons. It claims scientists working for federal agencies have been asked to change data to fit policy initiatives.
. . The Union has released an "A to Z" guide that it says documents dozens of recent allegations involving censorship and political interference in federal science, covering issues ranging from global warming to sex education.
. . Campaigners say that in recent years, the White House has been able to censor the work of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration because a Republican congress has been loath to stand up for scientific integrity.
. . "It's very difficult to make good public policy without good science, and it's even harder to make good public policy with bad science", said Dr Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. "In the last several years, we've seen an increase in both the misuse of science and I would say an increase of bad science in a number of very important issues; for example, in global climate change, international peace and security, and water resources."

Dec 8, 06: Here's the latest buzz on detecting explosives: bomb-sniffing bees. A study at Los Alamos National Laboratory has found that honeybees can be trained to detect explosives, even in tiny quantities.

Dec 1, 06: Anthropologists said they have pieced together Leonardo da Vinci's left index fingerprint —-a discovery that could help provide information on such matters as the food the artist ate and whether his mother was of Arabic origin. The reconstruction of the fingerprint was the result of three years of research and could help attribute disputed paintings or manuscripts.
. . The research was based on a first core of photographs of about 200 fingerprints —-most of them partial-- taken from about 52 papers handled by Leonardo in his life.
. . The artist often ate while working, and Capasso and other experts said his fingerprints could include traces of saliva, blood or the food he ate the night before. It is information that could help clear up questions about his origins. Certain distinctive features are more common in the fingerprints of some ethnic populations, experts say. "The one we found in this fingertip applies to 60% of the Arabic population, which suggests the possibility that his mother was of Middle Eastern origin", Capasso said. Other experts, however, say that determining ethnicity based on fingerprints is vague.
. . The idea that Leonardo's mother could have been a slave who came to Tuscany from Constantinople —-now Istanbul-— is not new, and has been the object of other research. Alessandro Vezzosi, a Leonardo expert and the director of a museum dedicated to the artist in his hometown of Vinci, said there are documents that appear to back this up. "Still, her name was Caterina, the most common name among slaves in Tuscany."
. . The artist, who was generally but not exclusively left-handed, used his fingers to paint, and his thumb print recurs on the manuscripts.

Nov 29, 06: Chemically treated wood that enhanced the sound of the instrument may have been used in violins made by the Italian masters Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu. Tests of maple wood shavings from instruments made by the craftsmen in the 18th century show differences from other violins that probably originated from wood preservation methods that affected their mechanical and acoustical properties.
. . Nagyvary and his colleagues used techniques including magnetic resonance and infra-red spectroscopy to analyze the wood taken from inside five of the instruments during repairs. But they found no evidence of any chemical treatments in instruments made in Paris and London at the same time or in more recent woods from central Europe and Bosnia.

Nov 29, 06: Dutch researchers have made what they call the world's smallest piano wire. In fact, these wires are made of carbon nanotubes measuring approximately 1 micrometer long and approximately 2 nanometers in diameter. After attaching these nanotubes to electrodes and applying alternating current of various frequencies, the nanotubes started to vibrate like real piano wires. These nano-electromechanical systems could soon be used as mass sensors to detect viruses.

Nov 29, 06: A leading U.S. scientific journal that published phony stem cell findings lacks adequate procedures to detect fraudulent work and must do a better job scrutinizing "high-risk" research, a panel appointed by the publication found.

Nov 28, 06: A new satellite data network will give poorer countries access to essential crop, health, and climate data in real time and at low cost, helping them forecast and prevent natural disasters and health crises.

Nov 27, 06: American researchers have built a carbon nanotube knife. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), this nanoknife will be used to cut and study cells. With this new tool, scientists and biologists will be able to make 3D images of cells and tissues for electron tomography, which requires samples less than 300 nanometers thick. And as cells are usually stored in wax for dissection, the researchers plan to test their nanoknives on a block of wax later this year.
. . The researchers have "found that the welds were the weakest point of the nanoknife, and they are now experimenting with alternative welding techniques."

Nov 27, 06: Scientists say trained bees can sniff bombs. Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war.

Nov 21, 06: Engineers and scientists at Cardiff U are appearing in this year's edition of the Guinness World Records book for the smallest hole ever drilled — at least with human-made tools. By using a process named 'electro-discharge machining' (EDM), they've drilled holes just 22 microns wide. Now they want to use another process, borrowed from nanotechnologists, to create holes with a width of only 100 nanometers. And they hope that their tools will help designers in medical and electronic sciences.
. . They're already busy trying to beat their current record by using new nanotechnology equipment which include a focused ion beam (FIB, link to Wikipedia) which can create holes of only 100 nanometers in width.

Nov 20, 06: A U of Utah news release explains what quantum computing is and what nuclear 'spin' is. Here are some details.
. . Spin is difficult to explain. A simplified way to describe spin is to imagine that each particle —like an electron or proton in an atom— contains a tiny bar magnet, like a compass needle, that points either up or down to represent the particle's spin. Down and up can represent 0 and 1 in a spin-based quantum computer, in which one qubit could have a value of 0 and 1 simultaneously. The concept is that the nuclear spin from one atom of phosphorus would store one qubit of information.

Nov 20, 06: In 1993, science minister William Waldegrave was so stumped by the notion of a God particle --correctly known as Higgs boson after the Edinburgh U physicist Peter Higgs who proposed it-- that he offered a bottle of champagne to anyone who could explain it on one side of A4 paper. The winning entry used the analogy of Margaret Thatcher gathering hangers-on as she moved through a cocktail party, to explain how Higgs bosons make other particles heavy by clinging to them like treacle. Finding the Higgs boson will confirm scientists' most complete theory of the universe and the matter from which it is created.
. . At security posts dotted around the fields between the Jura mountains and Lake Geneva scientists are installing a hi-tech machine --bolted together inside a tunnel 27km long. The machine, the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, Europe's particle physics laboratory, in Switzerland, was commissioned as a Ł4.2bn sledgehammer to crack some of the most compelling mysteries of the universe.
. . Inside the collider, vanishingly small protons, the particles at the heart of every atom, will be propelled to nearly the speed of light and slammed into other protons hurtling the other way. By the time they collide each proton will pack as much punch as a 400-ton train travelling at 190kph. Every second, an estimated 800m head-on collisions are expected, each unleashing a shower of subatomic debris for scientists to sift through.
. . Other detectors will investigate a theory called supersymmetry which predicts that there is a heavy invisible twin for every particle in the universe and which could explain why 90% of the material in the universe appears to be "missing" --a mystery that led scientists to name it "dark matter".
. . In the beginning: scientists get ready to hunt for God particle. It should recreate conditions of the big bang, & may create miniature black holes.

Nov 17, 06: Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported. The flying robot, nicknamed the "bionic hornet", would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers.

Nov 16, 06: Scientists said they created a brainy, four-legged robot resembling a starfish that can sense damage to its body and, on its own, think up a way to recover.
. . They made a robot that observed its own motion using built-in sensors in its joints and then generated its own concept of itself, or at least its physical structure, in its internal computer. It used this internal model of itself to figure out how to walk on its four legs and eight motorized joints. The robot used various movements of its joints, first to generate hypotheses and then to formulate an accurate conception of itself. The researchers then tested the robot's ability to adapt to new situations --in this case injury-- by shortening one of its legs. "The robot knows something's wrong."
. . Animals can compensate for injury by changing movements, like limping to favor an injured leg. Machines can be programmed to react to a problem in a certain way. But when they are damaged in unexpected ways, they usually are doomed.
. . This plucky robot responded by generating on its own a new concept of its structure, accurately sensing it had been altered, and then devising a new way to walk using a different gait to compensate for the injury. The robot's smarts, awareness of itself and ability to adapt on its own separates it from its mechanical brethren.
. . "We don't really think this is self-consciousness, which is a robot thinking about itself thinking", Lipson said. "But I do think it is moving in the direction of consciousness, like a cat, that kind of level."
. . They envision sending robots that can adapt to unforeseen circumstances to explore other worlds or the ocean floor. "There is a need for planetary robotic rovers to be able to fix things on their own", Bongard said in a statement. "Robots on other planets must be able to continue their mission without human intervention in the event they are damaged and cannot communicate their problem back to Earth."
. . Adami described how a robot like this one might perform in unknown territory, exploring the landscape and then "dreaming" of new methods to overcome obstacles it had encountered.

Oct 28, 06: If you think we know all there is to know about water, think again. Scientists claim they have created a totally new alloy of hydrogen and oxygen molecules by splitting water. It takes high-energy X-rays and an extremely high pressure, but the end result is a solid mixture of H2 and 02 that has never been identified before, they say. The discovery could change our understanding of the complex chemistry of water. The new alloy is "a highly energetic material. "It may help us find a way of storing energy."
. . Mao’s team subjected water to a pressure 170,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure at sea level. Then they bombarded it with X-rays, causing the water molecules to split and reform into a previously unknown crystalline solid made of H2 molecules and 02 molecules. The phenomenon has been missed by hundreds of previous experiments, researchers say, because it only happens after several hours of exposure to 10-kiloelectronvolt-X-rays. "We managed to hit on just the right level of X-ray energy input."
. . After making several nanograms (billionths of a gram) of the new alloy, researchers tested its properties by subjecting it to a range of temperatures and pressures, and further bombardment by X-rays and laser radiation. As long as it remained under a pressure 10,000 times greater than at sea level, it was "surprisingly stable", they say.
. . Under pressure, water is known to form 15 different types of ice, with a variety of crystal structures. But in all of them, hydrogen and oxygen atoms remain bound to each other. The discovery that molecules of oxygen and hydrogen can form an alloy opens up fresh avenues of research, including new possibilities for studying molecular interactions between oxygen and hydrogen. "Given high enough pressures, even hydrogen will behave as a metal. All, the other heavier elements in hydrogen's group of the periodic table are metals."

Oct 27, 06: A massive underwater landslide in Lake Tahoe thousands of years ago caused a tsunami and left ripplelike stony ridges on the lake bottom, according to a new study. Three scuba divers, a robot submarine and researchers from the University of Nevada in Reno and the U.S. Geological Survey spent two years surveying the bottom of Lake Tahoe.
. . Radioactive carbon dating and fossil evidence suggest it occurred between 7,000 and 15,000 years ago. The waves created by the slide traveled 12 miles and must have splashed tremendously high when they reached the lake's eastern shore. The landslide weakened the Tahoe shore on the lake's west side where McKinney Bay is today, sending a cascade of boulders, rocks and soil plunging more than 1,500 feet to the lake bottom.
. . Other researchers have discovered at least two significant seismic faults on the lake floor. They estimate the faults could trigger earthquakes with a magnitude as high as 7 that could generate waves 3 to 10 meters high.

Oct 26, 06: A controversial drug which can keep people awake for days has been tested by the UK military.

A microscopic robot hand, made of silicon and plastic balloons, could help perform surgery and defuse bombs. The "microhand" is so tiny that when clenched into a fist it measures a little over one millimeter across, or roughly as thick as a dime [image]. It is made using silicon finger bones and balloons for joints that inflate and deflate to flex the fingers.

The robot hand was designed by microelectromechanical systems scientist Yen-Wen Lu at Rutgers U, and mechanical engineer Chang-Jin Kim at UCLA. The prototype has four fingers arranged into a cross, each digit roughly a half-millimeter long, made via conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques normally used to assemble electronics.

Oct 24, 06: The world's largest river, the Amazon, once flowed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific --the opposite of its present direction, a study shows.
. . Sedimentary rocks in the central part of South America contain ancient mineral grains that must have come from the eastern part of the continent. Geologist Russell Mapes says this must mean that about 145-65 million years ago, the Amazon flowed east to west.
. . If the Amazon had continuously flowed eastward, as it does now, much younger mineral grains would be found in the sediments, because they would have been washed down from the Andes. "We didn't see any. All along the basin, the ages of the mineral grains all pointed to very specific locations in central and eastern South America", said Mr Mapes, a graduate student from the University of North Carolina.
. . He explained that these sediments of eastern origin were washed down from a highland area that formed in the Cretaceous Period, when the South American and African tectonic plates broke away from each other. That might have tilted the river's flow westward, sending sediment as old as two billion years toward the centre of the continent.
. . Afterwards, a relatively low ridge, called the Purus Arch, rose in the middle of the continent, running north and south. This divided the Amazon's flow, so that one half flowed eastward toward the Atlantic and the other westward toward the Andes.
. . In the late Cretaceous, mineral grains younger than 500 million years old began to fill in the basin between the Andes mountains -in the west- and the arch running down the centre of the continent. After millions of years of build up, the Amazon river finally broke through these sediments and flowed past the Purus arch and into the eastern side of South America.
. . Previous research has identified a reverse flow, but only in segments of the river.

Oct 19, 06: The massive jolt that rocked Hawaii damaged some of the world's most advanced equipment for gazing into outer space. Scientists at many of the 13 telescopes atop Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island, are still examining their implements to gauge the extent of the problems.
. . Inspection showed the telescopes came down on the radial pads and brakes with about 100,000 pounds of force during Sunday's temblor. Once these are replaced, the Keck's engineers will have to recalibrate both telescopes to account for the seismic shifts that moved the Keck I telescope more than 1/8 inch and the Keck II telescope almost 3cm. "In astronomy, even a movement by a few nanometers makes a significant impact on the accuracy of our systems", Kinoshita said. "So we need to update our systems to factor in the new position of the telescope."

Oct 19, 06: A team of American and British researchers has made a Cloak of Invisibility. Well, OK, it's not perfect. Yet. But it's a start, and it did a pretty good job of hiding a copper cylinder.
. . In this experiment, the scientists used microwaves to try and detect the cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar —a possibility that will fascinate the military.
. . Cloaking differs from stealth technology, which doesn't make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track. Cloaking simply passes the radar or other waves around the object as if it weren't there, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.
. . The new work points the way for an improved version that could hide people and objects from visible light.

Oct 18, 06: While North Korea was testing a nuclear bomb, France was verifying its nuclear arms, too —-with a battalion of soundless, black, cabinet-sized calculators buried beneath a meadow. The world's established nuclear powers have for the past decade foregone real test blasts for the onscreen kind, harnessing the world's most powerful computers to simulate as best as possible what happens when a nuclear bomb explodes.
. . So why should any nation test-blast weapons anymore if supersimulators can do the job? Because, nuclear experts say, it has turned out to be tougher than most people thought to mimic the "real thing." Scientists working in this secretive compound south of Paris, are still several years away from being able to replicate nuclear fusion, or trying out a new bomb design without detonating it. At the heart of France's program to test its 300 or so warheads is the Tera-10 supercomputer, capable of 50 teraflops, or 50 trillion calculations, per second. Their American counterparts are only slightly closer, despite billions of dollars spent on supercalculators and superlasers.
. . France conducted its last nuclear tests in 1995-96 to glean a last round of data before giving up test blasts in favor of full-time simulations.
. . In the most basic nuclear weapon, like that dropped on Hiroshima, two loads of highly enriched uranium are slammed together to create a critical mass, a fission chain reaction, and a blast. Most modern weapons are implosion devices, in which conventional explosives surround a radioactive core and rapidly compress it into a supercritical state.

Oct 18, 06: At least for now, the idea of a beanstalk-like space elevator connecting Earth and space is a stretch. It's an uphill battle. But at least physics is in your favor. But there are those who believe the innovations and breakthroughs needed, like nanotubes, might not work.
. . Elevator 2010 is the flagship project of The Spaceward Foundation, based in Mountain View, California. In a partnership with NASA, the group is carrying out power beaming and tether strength challenges to be held during the X Prize Cup festivities. The challenge is divided into two categories, each with their own set of contest rules.
. . * $200,000 Power Beam Challenge with teams designing and building a "climber" - a payload-carrying device capable to moving up and down a tether ribbon that is energized via a transmitter/receiver beam of power.
. . * $200,000 Tether Challenge whereby teams showcase very strong tether material for use in various structural applications - but also a key material in linking terra firma with space.
. . A dozen teams are showing up to take part in the space elevator competition during the X Prize Cup, said Ben Shelef, engineer and founder of The Spaceward Foundation.
. . The contest appears to be maturing quickly, said Brad Edwards, a leading space elevator architect, as well as a Spaceward Foundation Board member and competition judge. "This year we expect a dozen teams for the climber competition... some will struggle and some will race up the ribbon. It will be a great show and it really will demonstrate part of the technology needed for the space elevator."
. . Michael Laine, President of the LiftPort Group in Bremerton, Washington is also on the board of The Spaceward Foundation. Laine's LiftPort Group has sketched out a soon-to-be-released roadmap to further the cause--a step by step elevated action plan. Today, high-altitude balloon test systems, the elevator games with their ribbon and power beaming competitions, along with the dedicated research partners --these are all "mile-markers" that show where the concept is now.
. . The Space Elevator Games will be held next month in conjunction with the X Prize Cup in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Oct 17, 06: American and Russian scientists announced today that they had created a superheavy element, known as 118, albeit one that has only existed in three different atoms lasting a fraction of a second over months of experiments.
. . Scientists discovered the last naturally occurring element on the periodic table in 1925 but have since sought to create new heavier elements. In the latest experiments, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, bombarded californium with calcium ions to create 118 -- the heaviest ever created. They bombarded californium with calcium ions.
. . The atoms of element 118 --also known as ununoctium-- lasted 0.9 milliseconds.

Oct 12, 06: Large veins of gold in the Pacific island country of Papua-New Guinea may have been deposited in a relative blink of time, geologically speaking.
. . With an estimated 1,300 tons of gold, the Ladolam deposit is one of the largest and youngest gold fields in the world, according to researchers. The gold precipitated from hot volcanic water rising up from below. Ladolam, on Lihir Island, is the only known active hydrothermal gold deposit and could have been built up in 55,000 years or less at the current rate of deposit.
. . The gold is deposited as the water cools from about 480 degrees F to about 300 degrees, they reported. About 50 pounds of gold is deposited per year, they calculated. Deposits from water circulating in the Earth's crust have produced valuable deposits of not only gold but also such minerals as zinc and copper.
. . The Ladolam deposit might have formed even more quickly than suggested by Simmons. The deposit is located in an extinct volcano and might have formed when the mountain erupted causing a sudden release of pressure on the mineral-rich water beneath.

Oct 10, 06: Westward swirling clouds of dust from the Sahara Desert might be putting a damper on Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, a new study suggests.
. . Researchers analyzing satellite data from the past 25 years found that during years when the dust storms rose up, fewer hurricanes swept across the Atlantic, while periods of low dust storm activity were followed by more intense hurricane activity. Hurricanes are fueled by heat and moisture, and it's thought the dust storms help muffle the storms before they fully develop.
. . By doing so, however, the dust storms could shift a hurricane's direction further to the west, the researchers say, increasing the likelihood that it would hit the United States and Caribbean Islands.
. . Some years, millions of tons of the fine tan-colored particles form thick clouds that can traverse the oceans in as little as five days. But other years, for reasons still not understood, hardly any dust storms form at all.
. . Recently, Saharan dust storms have been implicated in everything from the spread of disease and epidemics to a harmless reddening of U.S. sunsets.

Oct 10, 06: Mexico's Teotihuacan, once the center of a sprawling pre-Hispanic empire, is set to become the launch pad for an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life.
. . Starting today, enthusiasts from around the world will have a chance to submit text, images, video and sounds that reflect human nature to be included in the message. Those contributions --part of media company Yahoo's "Time Capsule" project-- will be digitalized and beamed with a laser into space on October 25 from the Pyramid of the Sun.

Oct 9, 06: Sewer gas can induce 'suspended animation' in mice, say US scientists, and may help to preserve organ function in critically ill patients. Hydrogen sulphide, a toxic gas that smells of rotten eggs, occurs naturally in swamps, springs and volcanoes.
. . But in mice, it was found to slow down heart rate and breathing and decrease body temperature, while keeping a normal blood pressure. In the study carried out at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, mice were administered the gas at a concentration of 80 parts per million - a tenth of the dose which is lethal in humans.
. . The researchers reported that the heart rate fell from 500 to 200 beats per minute and respiration fell from 120 to 25 breaths per minute. Core body temperature also fell from 39 to 30 degrees C. Despite the reduction in heart rate, the blood pressure of the mice did not drop, which tends to happen with other techniques such as lowering body temperature.
. . Some anaesthetics and sedatives can be used to slow down metabolism in the brain, but currently the only way to protect other organs is to cool the body and induce hypothermia.
. . The mice returned to normal two hours after the mice started to breathe normal air again.
. . But Dr Chris Pomfrett said further studies were needed to clarify whether the reduced blood pressure and respiration were really associated with hibernation or whether the findings were a result of poisonous effects of the gas. "Although the mice appeared normal, they didn't look to see if there was any damage to the mice post-mortem. "I would also do an electroencephalogram to measure brain activity in the mice."

There are several different types of stainless steels. The two main types are austenitic and ferritic, each of which exhibits a different atomic arrangement. Due to this difference, ferritic stainless steels are generally magnetic while austenitic stainless steels usually are not.

To the list of wonders of the ancient world, perhaps another should be added: nanotechnology. It seems that a hair-dye formula dating to Greek and Roman days works by causing tiny nanocrystals to form deep inside strands of hair.

Oct 4, 06: Until now, scientists have teleported similar objects such as light or single atoms over short distances from one spot to another in a split second.
. . But Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter. "It is one step further because for the first time it involves teleportation between light and matter, two different objects. One is the carrier of information and the other one is the storage medium", Polzik explained in an interview today.
. . The experiment involved, for the first time, a macroscopic atomic object containing trillions of atoms. They teleported the information a distance of half a meter, but believe it can be extended further. "Our method allows teleportation to be taken over longer distances because it involves light as the carrier of entanglement."
. . Quantum entanglement involves entwining two or more particles without physical contact. "Creating entanglement is a very important step but there are two more steps at least to perform teleportation. We have succeeded in making all three steps --that is entanglement, quantum measurement and quantum feedback."

Oct 4, 06: Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist who wrote the best-selling "A Brief History of Time", is to start work on a new book that will examine how and why the universe was created.

"I've speculated about permanent sensorium enhancers; here are a few "extra-sensory" phenomena I wish I could detect more or less continuously: Lies, weather (with greater accuracy than my naked eyeball supplies), the criminal records of people near me (particularly those following me), North (so I can stay oriented as I flee the five-time offender) and calories (especially in restaurant food, which is often deceptive)."

Sept 30, 06: The continual advancement of technology will be critical in determining whether humanity will evolve into a true global civilization or destroy itself in the next century, a panel of experts said this week.
. . In the next 100 years, humanity could leap forward into a true global civilization -—complete with a unified language, culture and planet-wide technological prowess—- but the way is fraught with dark turns like war, terrorism and irresponsible science, string theorist Michio Kaku said. "We are watching the birth pangs of a Type 1 civilization and it's not clear that we'll make it", Kaku said, describing a Type 1 civilization as a global community capable of sustaining and controlling its planet
. . Kaku spoke during a panel discussion on the influence of technology on the world at large, and how it can be wielded to address issues such as global warming, alternative energies and fuels, and other issues.
. . "I think we're at the early stage of the next great scientific revolution", said futurist Peter Schwartz, adding that encouraging today's youth to embrace the study of science will be key for tomorrow's advances in computing, engineering and other fields.
. . Managing the planet's resources effectively should also be a priority for today's generation in order to build up more sustainable technologies for future populations, panel members said. "We have to figure out how to do more with less", said Kate Brass, who manages GE Energy's Ecomagination program. "We have to make a quantum leap now in 'I wonder if.'"

Sept 28, 06: The parasitic dodder plant doesn't have a nose, but it knows how to sniff out its prey. The dodder attacks such plants as tomatoes, carrots, onions, citrus trees, cranberries, alfalfa and even flowers, and is a problem for farmers because chemicals that kill the pesky weed also damage the crops it feeds on. So discovering how it finds its prey might help lead to a way to block the weed, or for crops to defend themselves.
. . The question of how dodder finds a host plant has puzzled researchers. Many thought it simply grew in a random direction, with discovery of a plant to attack being a chance encounter.
. . But the researchers led by Consuelo M. De Moraes found that if they placed tomato plants near a germinating dodder, the parasite headed for the tomato 80% of the time. And when they put scent chemicals from a tomato on rubber, 73% of the dodder seedlings headed that way.
. . Dodder will infect wheat if there is no choice, he said, but they discovered that one of the volatile chemicals given off by wheat repels dodder, so it will choose the tomato if allowed to pick. So, finding one compound that tends to be repellant could lead to ways to either treat crops to resist dodder or even engineer them to produce the compound themselves.
. . It's not clear how they sense the chemicals given off by potential host plants. When the seedlings start out, they tend to rotate in various directions, and they somehow sense the direction where the chemicals are strongest and then grow toward them.
. . Dodder is listed as one of the top 10 noxious weeds by the Department of Agriculture. The vine-like dodder doesn't have roots and cannot produce its own food. If it doesn't find a host within a few days of germinating, it dies. When it germinates and the shoot finds a victim, it begins growing in a coil around the host plant. It inserts a peg-like tendril into that plant and feeds off it.

Sept 27, 06: Smolin and Penrose take a look at the diverging paths beyond string theory.
. . Twistor String Theory. This retooling of string theory uses Penrose's twistors, which reduce the number of dimensions in the theory to the familiar four -- three spatial dimensions plus time. Twistors are by definition four-dimensional objects that locate not a position in space and time but rather a network of possible causal relationships between space-time events. Depicting a particle such as an electron as occupying a definite x, y, z and t gives a false sense of definiteness: Space and time are fuzzy at quantum scales. But cause and effect are not, and cause and effect are effectively what twistor space maps.
. . "What's rather striking about this twistor string approach is that it really is four dimensions", said Penrose just after a conference on twistor string theory. "So my objections (about string theory's extra hidden dimensions) essentially evaporate."
. . Pros: The mathematical beauty of string theory remains mostly unassailed, while the universe gets its four dimensions. Actual predictions for future particle accelerator experiments may yet emerge.
. . Cons: It's still unclear what this "theory" is -- and it may just be a sidelight on the 10-dimensional theory that yields more solvable equations. The inventor of twistors himself said, "I need to see a clear theory which I might be able to use, but I didn't get that."

Loop Quantum Gravity. If string theory evaporated tomorrow, something called Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) would probably be the odds-on favorite to take its place. LQG, and a related approach called Spin Foam theory, posits that Einstein's theories of space and time break down at very small scales (called the Planck scale, one-billion-billionth the size of an atomic nucleus) and in its place are entities described by another mathematical tool Penrose invented, called spin networks.
. . These graphs represent loops of field lines that, like string theory, become the fundamental building blocks of the universe. But unlike strings, no extra hidden dimensions are needed. The end result is that LQG predicts specific, quantifiable ways in which classical Einsteinian relativity would break down --and could soon be observable in fine-tuned measurements of the Big Bang's microwave background or in observations by GLAST, a gamma-ray telescope scheduled to launch next year.
. . Pros: Smolin, one of the originators of LQG, makes an eloquent and persuasive case for the theory, which has been able to make bold new predictions. And it reduces to something resembling classical, Newtonian gravity at low-energy and long-distance limits.
. . Cons: No one has yet been able to get spacetime itself, the stuff Einstein made famous, to emerge from LQG's spin networks.

Causal Dynamical Triangulations. Here we encounter one of a couple ideas that, if its profile ever increases, will probably need a catchier title. CDT breaks down tiny units of volume and area --the crucial stuff that makes up any spacetime-- into tiny tetrahedra, a little like a computer graphics chip renders complex surfaces by decomposing them into many itsy bitsy squares and triangles.
. . CDT can be seen, says Smolin, "as a very simplified form of Loop Quantum Gravity". And even if it is not The Ultimate Theory, CDT's practitioners have developed clever solutions and approximation methods that could be used for the real thing.
. . Pros: Classical spacetime, as described by Einstein, does emerge from CDT models.
. . Cons: It's not clear yet if falsifiable predictions can be made that would distinguish CDT from LQG or other theories.

Non-Commutative Geometry. Behind this clunky name lies a clever idea, developed by a French mathematician named Alain Connes. It recognizes that observable quantities of a particle such as position and momentum cannot both be precisely measured --a quintessential aspect of quantum systems. Connes and his colleagues have outlined the spatial geometry that would produce this kind of "non-commutative" algebra. (Technically, a non-commutative operation is one in which AB does not equal BA.)
. . "Connes keeps one eye on what the physics tells us and the other eye on his mathematical notions, and tries to build from these a specific ... geometry which he claims goes more deeply into how physics and spacetime structure combine with one another", said Penrose.
. . Pros: An extremely useful mathematical toolkit that has turned up both in string theory and in LQG.
. . Cons: May just be another extremely useful mathematical tool -- along the lines of twistors and spin networks -- and not a physical theory unto itself.

No Ultimate Theory. Some holdouts maintain that the universe may simply have two sets of operators' manuals --the Einsteinian for the massive and cosmic and the quantum mechanical for the tiny and energetic.
. . Of course, as Smolin points out in The Trouble With Physics, science is littered with present-day commonplaces that were once radical and courageous acts of unification: Copernicus said the Earth and the other planets were not two separate things but one. Giordano Bruno said the sun and the stars were not two separate things but one. Isaac Newton said the force that makes an apple fall from a tree is the same force that moves the planets through the heavens.
. . Skeptics of previous scientific grand unification efforts are often, though certainly not always, proved to have been lacking only in imagination.

Sept 26, 06: Researchers in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Germany are pursuing a project to transform female freshwater fish into males, a sex change they hope will put bigger fish on the dinner table. Male fish are larger, grow faster and weigh about a third more than females. They'll inject compounds from plants found in the occupied West Bank and often used as seasonings into food fed to newborn Nile Tilapia fish. "This will have an effect on the fish's metabolic (structure). Scientists at Hebrew University had previously used synthetic steroids, which are regarded as less healthy, to create male fish.
. . Palestinians in the West Bank import most of their fish from Israel and the coastal Gaza Strip. But their consumption of fish, especially those from fresh water sources, has fallen in recent years due to rising costs and tighter Israeli travel and trade restrictions on Palestinians.
. . While Israel has been building a controversial separation barrier in the West Bank, cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian academics has been growing over the past few years despite a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000.

Sept 20, 06: Stimulating a certain area of the brain can produce a creepy feeling that someone is watching you when no one is, scientists said today.
. . Swiss researchers made the discovery while evaluating a young woman for surgery to treat epilepsy. They believe their finding could help explain feelings such as paranoia which afflict patients suffering from schizophrenia.
. . When they electrically stimulated the left temporoparietal junction in her brain, which is linked to self-other distinction and self-processing, she thought someone was standing behind her. If they repeated the stimulus while she leaned forward and grabbed her knees, she had an unpleasant sensation that the shadowy figure was embracing her.

Sept 20, 06: Will the CERN machine destroy the Earth w black holes? CERN spokesman and former research physicist James Gillies also pointed out that Earth is bathed with cosmic rays powerful enough to create black holes all the time, and the planet hasn't been destroyed yet.

Sept 18, 06: Scientists have put Einstein's theory of gravity to a remarkable test using two distant, dead stars. An international team studied a double pulsar system, a pair of dense neutron stars whose properties mean they act like near-perfect space clocks.
. . It consists of the remnant neutron cores of two giant stars that blew themselves apart when they exhausted their nuclear fuel. The cores orbit each other every 2.4 hours at speeds of a million km per hour. These rapidly rotating objects each weigh more than our Sun, but their masses are compacted into spaces no larger than a big city.
. . They are referred to as pulsars because both emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves that are seen as radio "pulses" every time the beams sweep past the Earth. The pulses are akin to the ticks of a clock; and the properties of the very stable neutron stars make for ultra-precise time-keeping. By monitoring the pulses' arrival at Earth, the team was able to measure how the beams from each neutron star were being disturbed as they passed through the curved space-time near their companion.
. . "We can measure the signal from the [far] pulsar so precisely that we can see the delay of the signal as its beam passes through the curved space-time of the pulsar sitting in the way; the signal has to travel an extra distance. It's called 'Shapiro delay'."
. . The astronomers observed the way each stellar timepiece behaved in the other's curved space-time to run the rule over General Relativity. The results, match Einstein's predictions to within 0.05%.

Sept 18, 06: Scientists in England investigated super-water-repellant surfaces. These possess infinitesimally tiny structures that rise like trees in a forest, on which water droplets rest. The structures trap air between the surface they jut up from and the water on top of them.
. . Insects and spiders usually drown when submerged. However, aquatic insects such as the great diving beetle Dytiscus marginalis possess rigid hairs on their abdomen that repel water so much they create a silvery film of air that does not collapse.
. . Glen McHale, a physicist at Nottingham Trent University in England, and colleagues investigated whether synthetic materials could mimic this natural effect. They created a hollow cylinder made of super-water-repellant porous foam, inside which they sealed a device that consumed oxygen. When submerged in aerated water, sensors within the cylinder showed oxygen made its way inside.
. . The most likely use for this effect would be to supply oxygen for fuel cells to enable miniaturized machines to work underwater without need for stored or external oxygen supplies, the scientists say.
. . They also note that a surface area of roughly 970 square feet could provide enough oxygen for a single person to survive. McHale also cautioned they did not measure CO2 levels within the cylinder, "and it is a buildup of CO2 that would kill people before lack of oxygen." Still, "the rate of removal of CO2 is expected to be high as the gas is very soluble in water."

Sept 18, 06: Women are being filtered out of high-level science, math and engineering jobs in the United States, and there is no good reason for it, according to a National Academies report today.

Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have developed a video projector as small as a sugar cube. This projector contains only a single mirror which can be rotated around two axes. Light sources also need to be miniaturized. Red and blue diode lasers are small enough to fit in such a mini-projector, but green ones are still too big. So you will not find such a projector in PDAs or cellphones before a while.

Sept 10, 06: Nanotechnology deals with construction blocks only billionths of a meter or nanometers large, hundredths of a wavelength of visible light. Substances at that scale can take on radically different properties not seen in their bulk counterparts.
. . For instance, while gold is normally chemically inert, which keeps gold rings lustrous, gold nanoparticles can prove highly reactive.
. . As nanotechnology takes advantage of these novel traits for use in a wide and growing range of applications, concerns are growing as to whether nanoparticles, nanotubes and other nanoscale components might have unforeseen consequences when exposed to humans or the environment. For instance, a great deal of conflicting data surrounds the issue of whether or not carbon nanotubes are toxic.
. . What is a concern is that there is not enough information on the toxicity of some nanomaterials mentioned with regard to food and agriculture -—for instance, carbon nanotubes, or silver or titanium dioxide nanoparticles. One project proposes to use carbon nanotubes on the surfaces of milk pasteurization equipment to prevent the equipment from getting fouled.

Sept 6, 06: Scientists have found a new underground trigger for volcanic eruptions which, combined with other monitoring methods, could help predict when one will happen, a British science conference heard.
. . They have determined that it heats itself up as it rises from deep below the surface. The scientists studied eruptions of Mount St. Helens in the United States, and Shiveluch on Kamchatka peninsula in far-eastern Siberia. The temperature can rise by 100 degrees C.
. . To determine just how hot it gets, the researchers analyzed the water content, trace metals and chemical composition of droplets of volcanic liquid, or melt inclusions, encased in crystals in the magma as it makes its way to the surface. "We analyzed a whole suite of these melt inclusions and that basically gives us an accurate record of the depth, the temperature and the proportion of crystals in the magma as it is rising to the surface", Humphreys said.
. . Scientists usually monitor volcanic activity from the surface, but the latest findings provide new clues about what is happening underground before the eruption.

Sept 7, 06: Swiss authorities gave the green light last month to the world's tallest elevator, which will lift train passengers using the new rail tunnel 800 meters in the heart of the Alps.

Sept 6, 06: Construction workers made the first breakthrough in what will be the world's longest rail tunnel today, meeting under the Swiss Alps to join up its northern and southern sections.
. . Engineers and miners from the AlpTransit consortium made the breakthrough to meet at Faido, in southern Switzerland. The tunnel will be 57 km (35.42 miles) long when completed in 2016 and cut Zurich-Milan journey times by an hour compared to an existing tunnel link.
. . Some of the workers climbed through a small gap between the two tunnel sections of the new Gotthard link and waved national and local flags in celebration. More than 1,000 people witnessed the breakthrough. The two bores met almost exactly, with a discrepancy of just 2 cm vertically and 5 cm horizontally, AlpTransit said.

Sept 5, 06: Previous high-resolution images of cellular machinery have always involved killing the cells, so that scientists could not see them at work. The new Cambridge method, called Scanning Ion Conductance Microscopy, is described by Dr Klenerman as a major breakthrough. Resolutions of 10 nanometers (billionths of a meter) can now be achieved. "It's like an electron micrograph with live cells", he said. "It opens up the possibility of watching biology at the nanoscale."
. . Researchers could now examine the tiny proteins on a cell's surface in detail, or watch a virus force its way inside, he explained. The instrument can also be used to study tiny cellular gateways, called ion channels, and to push and pull the cell wall to see how it responds.

Sept 1, 06: Like tiny automatons, the cells that form a fish embryo's eyes are chemically programmed to individually amass at the site where the eyes will develop, according to a new study that contradicts traditional views of how organs develop before birth. The study was done only on fish eyes and might or might not apply to humans.
. . Scientists previously thought that the eyes formed as cells at the sides of the tube-like structure that eventually forms the embryo's head and brain collectively bulged out—like blowing up the ears of a Mickey Mouse balloon, Rembold said. But she and her colleagues learned that the cells actually independently travel from the center of the tube out to the site of eye formation.

Sept 1, 06: Snoring is commonly caused by what scientists call sleep apnea, in which you stop breathing and the body has to do something to restart the rather vital process. There are two types.
. . Make that three. Researchers have identified a new type they call "complex sleep apnea." More than one-third of adults snore at least a few nights each week, according to the Mayo Clinic. Air flowing past relaxed tissues in your throat causes the tissues to vibrate as you breathe, creating those awful noises that keep your partner awake.
. . In obstructive sleep apnea, the more common form, the throat muscles relax and the airway is narrowed, momentarily cutting off breathing and resulting in noisy snoring. With central sleep apnea, the brain does not send proper signals to the muscles that control breathing.
. . The newly discovered complex variety is a combination of the other two. Patients with complex sleep apnea at first appear to have obstructive sleep apnea and stop breathing 20 to 30 times per hour each night. For that problem, a continuous airway pressure machine, or CPAP, works like a pneumatic splint and can open a patient's airway. But in patients with complex sleep apnea, CPAP opens the airway but they still don't breathe right, and symptoms of central sleep apnea then crop up.

Aug 30, 06: Scientists have pinned down the region of the brain that encodes the category or meaning of visual information.
. . The ability to take a piece of information through our senses, assign meaning to it and categorize it helps people make sense of the world around them and behave accordingly. Because of this, when a chair is seen by the eyes, it's deemed appropriate for sitting on.
. . Freedman was interested in how learning gives people the ability to recognize things they see around them. And how the brain changes to encode that new information as a result of that learning.

Aug 29, 06: Scientists have yoked bacteria to power rotary motors, the first microscopic mechanical devices to successfully incorporate living microbes together with inorganic parts.

Aug 28, 06: A 14-year-old Nepali boy who is only 50 centimeters (20 inches) tall has been put forward for a Guinness world record as the world's smallest person.

Aug 28, 06: Scientists have generated rats from mice that developed rat sperm. The breakthrough marks the first time researchers produced healthy offspring [Photo] from sperm cells fostered in a different species. The hope is this method could help generate spermfrom endangered species or prize bulls.

Aug 25, 06: Genetically modified food has gotten a chilly reception from consumers, especially in Europe and Asia. Just last week, Japan suspended imports of American long-grain rice after authorities discovered that a genetically modified variety had accidentally mixed with conventional rice.
. . To skirt such problems altogether, biotech companies are creating superior plants using genetics technology that is advanced but which falls short of grafting genes from one organism into another.
. . Some of the largest agricultural biotech companies in the world, including Monsanto and DuPont, are turning to marker-assisted selection, or MAS, as a way to circumvent the controversy surrounding genetically modified foods. Scientists say it's an efficient and relatively noncontroversial way to create designer fruit and vegetable crops with superior disease and pest resistance, as well as enhanced flavor, texture, skin color or shelf life.
. . MAS involves analyzing plants for genetic markers associated with desirable traits, then using conventional breeding methods to introduce the genes into a host. The markers are used to quickly identify which seedlings are the superior progeny.

Aug 17, 06: The island continent of Australia was once three continents which collided 1.64 billion years ago, a new study has found, prompting speculation of new mineral deposits in the outback. Central Australia's main minerals include copper, uranium and opals.
. . "If you looked south from Alice Springs (in central Australia) before 1.64 billion years ago, you would have seen an ocean. The huge forces involved in this collision produced volcanoes which actually helped create the crust of central Australia", she said.
. . Using a geophysical technique called magnetotellurics allowed her to penetrate sediment along the border of the three previous continents and measure the electrical conductivity of the Earth up to hundreds of km below the surface. The study found northern Australia was more conductive than central Australia and that the boundary between the two areas extended to at least 150km in depth.

Aug 11, 06: Linguists have long believed that the sound of a word reveals nothing about its meaning, with a few exceptions of words like “buzz” or “beep” that are known as onomatopoeia. But a new study analyzing the sounds of nouns and verbs challenges that view.
. . However, if you are mouthing a whole bunch of nouns or verbs and listening for a similar sound in each group, you're out of luck. The researchers took the sounds of more than 3,000 words in English and subdivided each by its phonetic features—what a person does with their mouth to produce the sounds of each word.
. . The nouns were closer to other nouns, and the verbs were closer to other verbs. About 65% of all nouns have another noun as its nearest neighbor and about the same percentage of all verbs have another verb next door.
. . They measured how long it took to read each word. The researchers found that volunteers had an easier time processing verbs that sound more like the typical sounding verbs, such as "amuse." The same went for nouns that were more "nouny", like the word "marble."
. . The volunteers used the relationship between how words sound and how they are used to guide their comprehension of sentences.
. . The researchers performed the analysis for the English language only, but suspect that there are cues in words of other languages as well.

Aug 11, 06: Australian scientists have begun looking at smell sensors in worms and insects to help them build an electronic "cybernose" they hope will one day be capable of measuring aromas and flavors in wine.

July 31, 06: Little-known T-rays see through clothing, identify explosives and drugs, and detect tumors. Often overlooked, T-rays are even being used to explore the universe.
. . The electromagnetic spectrum runs from long-wavelength radio at one end to high-energy, short-wavelength X-rays and gamma rays on the other. Between microwaves and X-rays, in the least explored region of the spectrum, lie T-rays, or terahertz radiation, the most common form of radiation in the universe.
. . If you've never heard of T-rays, it's because scientists have had trouble harnessing them. Although the first scientific paper on the subject was published in the 1890's on the first page of the first issue of the journal Physical Review, the challenges of generating, detecting, and manipulating terahertz radiation have hindered the technology's research and development --until now.
. . With more efficient sources and detectors of terahertz radiation, researchers in the last decade have begun to develop waveguides, filters, and beam splitters to manipulate T-rays.
. . Many everyday materials, such as clothing, plastics, and wood look transparent under terahertz imaging. In addition, materials will absorb the radiation at varying frequencies, depending on the type of material. Based on absorption frequencies, researchers have been able to identify specific explosives and drugs that have unique "fingerprints."
. . Scientists at the University of Liverpool, England, hope to kill skin cancer cells by bombarding them with terahertz radiation.
. . T-rays have astronomical applications as well. The Herschel Space Observatory, a satellite due to launch in 2008 is the terahertz version of the Hubble telescope. In Chile, one of the world's largest telescope arrays, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), is being constructed; it will monitor terahertz wavelengths in hopes of spotting objects in the very early universe.

July 31, 06: Invisibility could be possible in the not too distant future, according to research. Invisibility is an optical illusion that the object or person is not there. Leonhardt uses the example of water circling around a stone. The water flows in, swirls around the stone, then leaves as if nothing was there.
. . In the research published in the New Journal of Physics, Leonhardt described the physics of theoretical devices that could create invisibility. "There are advances being made in metamaterials that mean the first devices will probably be used for bending radar waves.

July 28, 06: Three processes are responsible for the formation of volcanoes on Earth, according to theories:
. . * The planet's tectonic plates, which move around something like broken eggshells on water, can move away from each other, allowing magma to seep up.
. . * The plates can also move towards each other, forcing eruptions.
. . * Plumes of magma well up from deep inside the Earth.

Researchers report the discovery of tiny active volcanoes on the Pacific Plate that aren't caused by any of these mechanisms. These small volcanoes may be widespread on ocean floors where the mantle just under the crust is squeezed out by tectonic forces when one plate moves under another, the researchers explained.

July 26, 06: Bumblebees can navigate their way home over distances of up to 13km, a UK research team has shown. Bees normally forage within 5km. The study also found only worker bees seemed to have this homing ability. Bees pollinate flowering plants and therefore play a crucial role in food webs, but numbers of the insect in Britain have been declining recently.

July 26, 06: Scientists have extracted marrow from the bones of frogs and salamanders that died 10 million years ago in the muddy swamps of north-eastern Spain --the first fossilized bone marrow known to science. The soft tissue may yield traces of protein and DNA. It is preserved in remarkable detail; usually only hard tissue such as bone survives. The ancient bone marrow was preserved in 3D, retaining the original texture and red and yellow color.
. . They believe many other examples of preserved bone marrow will be found, raising the possibility of investigating the proteins and DNA of prehistoric animals. Last year, US researchers extracted some flexible filaments that resembled blood vessels from dinosaur bone. They also found traces of what look liked red blood cells.

July 26, 06: Scientists Write on Water. The AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin), a circular tank created by Mitsui Engineering at their Akishima laboratory, is able form letters with standing waves.

July 24, 06: Your parents were right --don't study with the TV on. Multitasking may be a necessity in today's fast-paced world, but new research shows distractions affect the way people learn, making the knowledge they gain harder to use later on.
. . As Poldrack explains it, the brain learns in two different ways. One, called declarative learning, involves the medial temporal lobe and deals with learning active facts that can be recalled and used with great flexibility. The second, involving the striatum, is called habit learning.
. . For instance, in learning a phone number you can simply memorize it, using declarative learning, and can then recall it whenever needed. Memorizing is a lot more useful, he pointed out. "If you use the habit system, you have to be at a phone to recreate the movements."
. . The problem, Poldrack said, is that the two types of learning seem to be competing with each other, and when someone is distracted, habit learning seems to take over from declarative learning.
. . In general, "distraction is almost always a bad thing."

July 24, 06: Even a small hill can mean a big expenditure of energy for an elephant. So they avoid slopes, a new study suggests.
. . Researchers used the Global Positioning System (GPS) to track elephants in northern Kenya, in a region where some 5,400 of the pachyderms roam. They found that elephant density dropped off significantly with increasing hill slopes.
. . Could be the beasts just didn't find water up there or wanted to avoid injury. But the researchers calculate that the energy required to climb a hill could be a main factor. Climbing uphill for 100 meters would require a half-hour of foraging to replace the energy used.

July 21, 06: The sinking of Louisiana's Gulf coast could be due to the shallowest delta sediments pushing down the underneath layers, a new study suggests. Louisiana's coastal erosion causes the loss of land at a catastrophic rate of 25 to 35 square miles per year, equivalent to one football field every 15 minutes. [This is besides sea-level rise, of course.]
. . The new study suggests, instead, that compaction of the most recent sediments, near the surface, causes the land to subside. The young delta sediments, rich in water and heavy, are pressing down and squeezing the water out of the older sediments beneath and allowing the surface to sink, Tornqvist explained.

July 20, 06: The largest tear in the Earth's crust seen in decades, if not centuries, could carve out a new ocean in Africa, according to satellite data.
. . Geologists say a crack that opened up last year may eventually reach the Red Sea, isolating much of Ethiopia and Eritrea from the rest of Africa. The 60km-long rift was initially sparked by an earthquake in September. Follow-up observations suggest the split is growing at an unprecedented rate.
. . Tectonic plates that form Africa are gradually moving apart from the Arabian plate, causing the crust to stretch and thin. If the ripping of the crust continued, the horn of Africa would eventually split off from the rest of the continent, in about a million years.
. . The event took place in September last year, opening up a 60km-long stretch of a fault-line that runs from Ethiopia to the southern edge of the Red Sea. Scientists have calculated that 2.5 cubic km of magma has flowed up through the crack in the Earth's crust.

July 20, 06: Tiny tropical Costa Rica is now home to scientists working on a plasma rocket engine they hope will slash travel times to Luna and beyond. The company hopes to sell the finished rocket engine, propelled by super-hot plasma, to NASA.
. . Considered the fourth state of matter because it is neither a solid, liquid or gas, plasma is a high energy form of matter that can reach millions of degrees, making it a potentially powerful fuel. Plasma is found in lightning bolts and neon signs.
. . The extreme power of his proposed rocket, which uses Variable Specific-Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket, or VASIMR, technology, conceived in the 1970s, could eventually cut travel time to Mars by about a third, he said.
. . A prototype of the rocket, to be built in Ad Astra's Houston laboratory, should be completed by the end of 2007 with a price tag of $10 million. Ad Astra hopes to unveil two operational rockets by the end of 2010 and 2011 at a cost of $150 million.

July 17, 06: IBM, in Switzerland, is working on the first complete computer-based model of a human brain.
. . Using the IBM supercomputer Blue Gene, the fastest computer in the world, researchers have been noodling with a software-driven version of the neocortex, a part of the brain that is unique to mammals and that handles most of our cognitive functions.
. . Project head Henry Markram calls the effort, dubbed the Blue Brain Project, "one of the most ambitious research initiatives ever undertaken in neuroscience." When the working model of a complete brain is completed, scientists hope that it will teach us about how thought, memory, and perception work. The model brain could also serve as an example for infusing future robots and artificial intelligence systems with humanlike responses and capabilities.
. . Meanwhile, European researchers have created neuro-chips that fuse together brain cells and microprocessors. Scientists put 16,000 transistors and hundreds of capacitors onto a tiny chip and glued neurons on in such a way that they can pass electrical signals to the chip. The hope is that the technology could lead to prosthetic devices for people with neurological handicaps and to organic computers that perform humanlike tasks.

July 17, 06: A mercury atomic clock "would neither gain nor lose a second in about 400 million years" while it would take "only" 70 million years to NIST-F1, based on a "fountain" of cesium atoms, to gain or lose a second.
. . Ultra-precise clocks can be used to improve synchronization in navigation and positioning systems, telecommunications networks, and wireless and deep-space communications. Better frequency standards can be used to improve probes of magnetic and gravitational fields for security and medical applications, and to measure whether "fundamental constants" used in scientific research might be varying over time --a question that has enormous implications for understanding the origins and ultimate fate of the universe.

July 17, 06: Japanese students succeeded today in making a manned flight in a plane powered only by household batteries.
. . The group from the Tokyo Institute of Technology flew the plane a distance of 1,283 feet at an airfield north of the capital, in what was the first such battery-powered flight, said a spokesman for Matsushita, the project's sponsors.
. . The plane, with a 31-meter wing span but weighing just 44 kg, was piloted by a 63-kg student for the trip, which lasted about one minute. The power was provided by 160 AA batteries. It "stayed in the air for 59 seconds and covered a distance of 391 meters. The plane did a second flight of 269 meters, powered by only 96 AA batteries.

July 14, 06: This Is a Computer on Your Brain. Scientists are developing a brain-computer interface for Darpa that could help security officers sift through surveillance video or images 10 times faster than an unaided human.

July 14, 06: This week's space shuttle mission will bring a breath of fresh air to the International Space Station with the delivery and installation of a new device from NASA that can turn astronaut pee into oxygen.
. . The Oxygen Generation System, or OGS, is essentially a copycat of Russia's Elektron, which uses electrolysis to turn purified urine into breathable air and has been used on the space station for the past six years. The new setup offers an important backup for the existing systems, experts said, and a chance to test technology that could prove instrumental for deep-space exploration and colonization.
. . The current shuttle mission is carrying the refrigerator-size OGS, but it won't be put into use until a urine-water recovery system is launched on a future shuttle mission. That system will use a vacuum-distillation system to remove the dissolved solids in urine so the resulting water is pure enough to put into the OGS.
. . Each day, the human body needs 1.5 pounds of oxygen. For space missions of less than three weeks, the best solution is large containers of liquid oxygen. But for long missions, like extended stays on space stations, it isn't practical to keep the oxygen below the super-cold -297 degrees F needed to keep it liquid. And every kg of oxygen you have to carry up from Earth is a kg of payload that could be used for something else.

July 13,06: A Paralyzed man using a new brain sensor has been able to move a computer cursor, open e-mail and control a robotic device simply by thinking about doing it, a team of scientists said.

July 11, 06: Recent research has found evidence that the value of certain fundamental parameters, such as the speed of light or the invisible glue that holds nuclei together, may have been different in the past. "There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant", says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. "These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are." The observed differences are small --roughly a few parts in a million-- but the implications are huge: The laws of physics would have to be rewritten, not to mention we might need to make room for six more spatial dimensions than the three that we are used to.
. . A popular alternative to relativity, which assumes that sub-atomic particles are vibrating strings and that the universe has 10 or more spatial dimensions, actually predicts inconstant constants. According to string theory, the extra dimensions are hidden from us, but the "true" constants of nature are defined on all dimensions. Therefore, if the hidden dimensions expand or contract, we will notice this as a variation in our "local" 3D constants.

July 9, 06: California's Sierra Nevada, an impressive mountain range that includes the popular Yosemite National Park, has done a great job of keeping its age a secret. But now a new study provides evidence that it's at least 40 million years old.
. . Deuterium is a heavier form of hydrogen. Drops of rainwater that contain deuterium isotopes often fall at lower elevations. These drops of water get trapped into molecules of minerals such as clay, which then provide a geological record that can be compared with modern samples of the same elevation. If both ancient and modern samples are identical or contain similar isotopes, then their elevation must have been comparable.

July 5, 06: Locating so-called "silent earthquakes" [small ones, from slow movement] may help scientists better predict the probability of severe temblors.

July 5, 06: Silent earthquakes --slow-moving events tracked by satellites measuring subtle changes on the earth's surface because they do not broadcast shock waves-- appear to build pressure on fault zones, contributing to weak magnitude-two and magnitude-three earthquakes, said Stanford geophysicist Paul Segall.
. . Locating silent earthquakes could help better understand how small temblor activity develops and that could help scientists better gauge the likelihood of more powerful quakes, Segall said.
. . Seismologists estimate severe earthquakes strike Japan every 200 years and the Pacific Northwest region of the United States every 500 years. Scientists in the past six years have found southwestern Japan and parts of the US Pacific Northwest to be experiencing silent earthquake activity, Segall said.
. . "It's possible that each time a slow event occurs, and as we get later and later in the cycle, or closer and closer to the really big one, these slow events should start to get bigger, because the area that's getting closer to failure will have grown larger."

July 5, 06: Researchers have discovered that ordinary cellulose is a piezoelectric and smart material that can flap when exposed to an electric field. ScienceNOW reports that electricity can give life to cellophane. When you put a very thin layer of gold on each side of cellophane, and that you apply electric current to the gold layers, one positive, one negative, the cellophane curved toward the positive side. If you switch the voltage fast enough, the cellophane starts to act as a wing. So it should be possible to use it to build lightweight flying robots carrying cameras, microphones or sensors for surveillance missions.
. . No wires or batteries are needed because a special microstrip antenna and other lightweight electronic components can be integrated into it.

July 3, 06: A shiny coating found on rocks in many of Earth's deserts suggest a new way to search for signs of life on Mars, scientists said today. The coating, known as desert varnish, binds traces of DNA, amino acids and other organic compounds to desert rocks over the eons.
. . The logic is simple: Samples of Martian desert varnish could perhaps show whether there has been life on Mars at any time during its 4.5-billion-year history.
. . New investigations with electron microscopes and other techniques finds instead that the varnish is mostly silica, which has mixed with other minerals to form a glaze that traps organic traces from the surroundings.

June 27, 06: A new radar system is virtually undetectable because its signal resembles random noise, according to researchers at Ohio State University.

June 26, 06: Scientists say changes in the weather cause small wobbles in the entire planet's spin. As it rotates, the Earth wobbles on its axis like a spinning top. And like a top as it slows down, the planet develops a host of different wobbles, ranging in period from a few minutes to billions of years.
. . The daily rotation of the planet creates a bulge at the equator, and the gravity of the Sun and Moon tends to pull this bulge back toward the orbital plane. But Earth resists this pull. The result is that the axis moves in a cone-shaped pattern, called a precession, with the celestial North Pole describing a full circle every 26,000 years or so. Right now, the north celestial pole points towards Polaris, the North Star, but it used to point to Vega, and in 14,000 years it aim at Vega again. During this precession, the planet's tilt remains at 23.5 degrees.
. . Some of the major wobbles are well studied, such as the 433-day Chandler wobble and the annual wobble, which together can tilt the Earth's axis up to 30 feet from its nominal center.
. . From November 2005 to February 2006, the Chandler and annual wobbles essentially cancelled each other out. This allowed Sebastien Lambert of the Royal Observatory of Belgium and colleagues to study the minor variations and determine why they occur when they do.
. . Using newly-available GPS data that establishes the exact location of the poles, the team determined that weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere play a significant role the small wobbles.
. . The location of high- or low-pressure centers and the relation of these systems to each other played a measurable role in generating small, short-term wobbles, the scientists report. Moving weather systems caused the pole positions to swing in small loops ranging from the size of a cell phone to a sheet of paper.
. . The motion of the ocean [where've I hear that before?] also affects short-term wobbles; the study showed that oceanic pressure variations also coincided with the polar loops. This is the first study to demonstrate that day-to-day changes in atmospheric pressure produce a measurable effect on Earth's rotation.

June 26, 06: One of the great scientific experiments of our age is now fully underway. A German/UK team has put the giant GEO 600 gravitational wave detector in a continuous observational mode. The Hanover lab is trying to detect the ripples created in the fabric of space-time that sweep out from merging black holes or exploding stars.
. . GEO 600 is working alongside a US project known as Ligo (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory). It may also be joined in the hunt by an Italian lab within a year.
. . A confirmed detection would require the super-sensitive equipment at more than one of these widely spaced facilities to record an event simultaneously. Success would confirm fundamental physical theories and open a new window on the Universe, enabling scientists to probe the moment of creation itself.
. . Gravitational waves are extremely weak. If one were to pass through the Earth, it would alternately stretch its space in one dimension while squashing it in another; but the changes are tiny. Laser interferometers are looking for disturbances in their experimental set-ups that are equivalent to mere fractions of the diameter of a proton.

June 21, 06: Edible, lab-grown ground chuck that smells and tastes just like the real thing might take a place next to Quorn at supermarkets in just a few years, thanks to some determined meat researchers. Scientists routinely grow small quantities of muscle cells in petri dishes for experiments, but now for the first time, a concentrated effort is under way to mass-produce meat in this manner.
. . Henk Haagsman, a professor of meat sciences at Utrecht University, and his Dutch colleagues are working on growing artificial pork meat out of pig stem cells. They hope to grow a form of minced meat suitable for burgers, sausages and pizza toppings within the next few years.
. . Currently involved in identifying the type of stem cells that will multiply the most to create larger quantities of meat within a bioreactor, the team hopes to have concrete results by 2009. The 2 million euro ($2.5 million) Dutch-government-funded project began in April 2005. The work is one arm of a worldwide research effort focused on growing meat from cell cultures on an industrial scale.
. . "To produce the meat we eat now, 75% to 95% of what we feed an animal is lost because of metabolism and inedible structures like skeleton or neurological tissue", says Matheny. "With cultured meat, there's no body to support; you're only building the meat that eventually gets eaten."
. . The sheets would be less than 1 mm thick and take a few weeks to grow. But the real issue is the expense. If cultivated with nutrient solutions that are currently used for biomedical applications, the cost of producing one pound of in vitro meat runs anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000. Matheny believes in vitro meat can compete with conventional meat by using nutrients from plant or fungal sources, which could bring the cost down to about $1 per pound.
. . If successful, artificially grown meat could be tailored to be far healthier than any type of farm-grown meat. It's possible to stuff if full of heart-friendly omega-3 fatty acids, adjust the protein or texture to suit individual taste preferences and screen it for food-borne diseases.
. . "Cultured meat isn't natural, but neither is yogurt", says Matheny. "And neither, for that matter, is most of the meat we eat. Cramming 10,000 chickens in a metal shed and dosing them full of antibiotics isn't natural. I view cultured meat like hydroponic vegetables. The end product is the same, but the process used to make it is different. Consumers accept hydroponic vegetables. Would they accept hydroponic meat?"

June 21, 06: The southern end of the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles, which has not had a major rupture for more than 300 years, is under immense stress and could produce a massive earthquake, a new study said today.
. . Given average annual movement rates in other areas of the fault, there could be enough pent-up energy in the southern end to trigger a cataclysmic jolt of up to 10 meters. That would be among the largest ever recorded. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake that destroyed San Francisco in 1906 was produced by a sudden movement of the northern end of the fault of up to 7 meters.
. . Fialko said there had been no recorded movement at the southern end of the fault --the 800-mile--long geological meeting point of the Pacific and the North American tectonic plates-- since the dawn of European settlement in the area. He said this lack of movement correlated with the predicted gaps between major earthquakes at the southern end of the fault of between 200 and 300 years.

June 18, 06: A molecule-sized switch just 50 nanometers wide may someday control microscopic machines and also could make DNA sequencing faster, less expensive, and more precise.

June 18, 06: The small gray and black rocks stored in meter-long clear plastic tubes at a Texas A&M University lab could be mistaken for the leftovers after a kitchen countertop installation. But the surprisingly heavy pebbles are much more significant. They're part of the only intact section of oceanic crust ever recovered, pulled from beneath the Pacific Ocean by geologists drilling more than 1.5 km into the sea floor.
. . Scientists hope this latest effort in the generations-old attempt to get closer to the center of the planet — achieved as part of the world's biggest earth science program — can help unlock some of earth's longest-held secrets.
. . The pebbles, known as gabbros, were found in the crust below the Pacific Ocean about 400 miles west of Costa Rica. They were once red-hot magma boiling from deep within the earth that formed the sea floor when it contacted water 15 million years ago.

June 16, 06: A form of solid carbon dioxide that could be used to make ultra-hard glass or coatings for microelectronic devices has been discovered. The material, named amorphous carbonia, was created by an Italian led team. The scientists said that the material was always thought to be possible but, until now, had never been created in the lab. It was made by squeezing dry ice.
. . All chemical elements can be classified in the periodic table, which groups elements with similar properties. Carbon is part of the group IV (now more properly named group 14) elements that also includes silicon, germanium, tin and lead. However, unlike these other elements that form solids when they react with oxygen at normal atmospheric pressure, carbon forms the gases carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. This happens because carbon atoms are lighter than other elements in the group.
. . When silicon reacts with oxygen it forms silica, known as the mineral quartz, which is commonly used to make glass. Germanium reacts similarly and is often used to produce a glass material for lenses and fiber optic cables. Both of these glasses are formed of a disorderly network of atoms. But when carbon reacts at room temperature and pressure it does not form a network. Instead, carbon atoms join with oxygen atoms to form discrete molecules and therefore gases.
. . Carbon dioxide can be formed into a solid, such as dry ice, by cooling and squeezing. However, even in this solid form, the molecules resist linking up with their neighbors and remain as discrete units.
. . Recently, scientists in California coaxed carbon dioxide molecules to form a solid network by applying extreme pressure at high temperatures. Their discovery could lead to a way of storing or disposing of carbon dioxide gas, a major contributor to global warming, deep in the Earth's interior.
. . To create the glassy amorphous carbonia, the team heated solid carbon dioxide between diamond teeth at pressures over 400,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure. The material was then cooled to room temperature to form the glass. Atomic analysis of the material confirmed the glass had a similar structure to silica, but is thought to be much harder and stiffer, like diamond. When the material is depressurized, it returns to a solid formed of discrete molecules.
. . The next stage of the research is to work out how to make the glass stable at room temperature and pressure. Applications could include ultra-tough glass or protective coatings for micro electronics. It would give planetary scientists insights into what happens in the interior of huge planets known as gas giants.

June 14, 06: Famed physicist Stephen Hawking said today that Pope John Paul II tried to discourage him and other scientists attending a cosmology conference at the Vatican from trying to figure out how the universe began.
. . The British scientist joked he was lucky the pope didn't realize he had already presented a paper at the gathering suggesting how the universe was created. "I didn't fancy the thought of being handed over to the Inquisition like Galileo."
. . Galileo ran afoul of the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century for supporting Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the sun. The church insisted the Earth was at the center of the universe. In 1992, John Paul issued a declaration saying the church's denunciation of Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension." [ya, right.]
. . Hawking said the pope told the scientists, "It's OK to study the universe and where it began. But we should not inquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God." Hawking questioned whether an almighty power was needed to create the universe.
. . He also said his unfulfilled ambitions, among many, were to find out what happens inside black holes, how the universe began and how the human race can survive in the next 100 years. He said he had one more great ambition: "I would also like to understand women."

He'll be in Beijing where he will give a lecture on string theory.

June 8, 06: A new type of sensor may give robots a truly light touch --using electricity and tiny particles to allow a machine to "feel" surfaces. They said their device gave a robot tactile sensitivity equivalent to that of human fingers, and said one early use might be in minimally invasive surgery.
. . Their electroluminescent film glowed in response to an applied force. A specialized camera captures this light and translates it into a picture that is the equivalent of touching and feeling an object.
. . To illustrate, Maheshwari and Saraf pressed coins against the device. A U.S. penny produced an image detailed enough to show the wrinkles in the clothing of Abraham Lincoln. The hope is to coat a robot's "hands" with a film like this, and use the resulting signals to help guide the device. Thickness: about 10 to 40 microns --the human cell is about 10 microns.
. . There is great interest in developing humanoid robots that can sense shapes, textures, and hardness and manipulate complex objects, which are not readily possible by vision alone", they wrote.
. . Maheshwari and Saraf's film is made of alternating layers of gold and semiconducting cadmium-sulfur nanoparticles separated by nonconducting, or dielectric, films. When pressure is exerted on the film, the layers are pressed together. This releases light and an electric current that can be measured; the amount of light and current emitted depends on the amount of pressure applied. Most robotic systems in use today have so-called binary touch sensors which can only tell if something is touching them or not.
. . The new sensor can also operate in an alternative mode that doesn't require a camera and which is just as sensitive. Where other sensors have a maximum resolution of about 2 millimeters, the new sensor can make out objects that are only a few tens of microns in width.

June 8, 06: Although the glass most people are familiar with is quite clear, physicists' understanding of glassy materials, which exist as a state of matter between solid and liquid, isn't quite so.
. . One popular scientific idea is that matter turns from liquid to solid at a discrete point, but a new study suggests that the shift is continuous. This realization could frustrate researchers in the field, as it makes transition-physics calculations all the more difficult. While the finding is mainly useful for future physics research, it might help scientists better understand the structure of the universe and could also lead to the development of golf clubs that pack a greater wallop.
. . By nature, glassy materials are tricky to define. They have the disordered configuration of a liquid, but at cool temperatures they're so viscous and the molecules flow so slowly that they exhibit the brittle characteristics of a solid.
. . The effect can be seen in old, handmade windows that over the years have grown thicker at the base, as the molecules have slowly flowed downward due to gravity. [I've also read that this takes literally eons to happen...]
. . The finding will dismay some physicists. The previous and ideal explanation fit nicely within the already well-defined laws of thermodynamics—the description of the movement of energy in a system—and following these normal laws makes calculations simpler.
. . "Glasses can be formed from any substance, and the way their molecules interact places them somewhere at the border between solids and liquids, giving them some properties that manufacturers can exploit", Torquato said. "Golf club heads made of metallic glasses, for example, can make golf balls fly farther."

June 7, 06: New research suggests ground-shaking from an earthquake, not underground stress, can trigger aftershocks as far as 30 miles from the fault. That may help scientists forecast where aftershocks will strike next. It also counters the popular view that aftershocks tend to cluster near the epicenter.

June, 06: Why limit yourself to the senses we evolved with? Two private experimenters came up with a new application when a mutual friend suffered an accident that left a shard of iron in his finger. He worked with audio equipment, and found that he could tell which speakers were magnetized from the sensation that passed through his finger at close range. That gave Jarrell and Haworth a new direction: Could they obtain that effect deliberately, extending the sense of touch into a sense of magnetism?
. . The fingertip was chosen because of the high nerve density, and because the hands are constantly interacting with the environment, increasing the chances of sensing electromagnetism in the world. They chose the ring finger.
. . The magnet works by moving very slightly, or with a noticeable oscillation, in response to EM fields. This stimulates the somatosensory receptors in the fingertip, the same nerves that are responsible for perceiving pressure, temperature and pain. Huffman and other recipients found they could locate electric stovetops and motors, and pick out live electrical cables. Appliance cords in the United States give off a 60-Hz field, a sensation with which Huffman has become intimately familiar. "It is a light, rapid buzz", he says.
. . In time, bits of my laptop became familiar as tingles and buzzes. Every so often I would pass near something and get an unexpected vibration. Live phone pairs on the sides of houses sometimes startled me.
. . It can't erase hard drives or credit cards. They don't set off airport metal detectors or get stuck to refrigerators. The magnets are small, and once encased in skin, all they do is react next to nerves, conveying the presence of sufficiently strong electromagnetic fields. "The magnetic implant is not the most sophisticated or rich sensation, it was just the easiest to implement with our available technology", says Huffman.
. . Some magnets begin to turn dark under the skin, suggesting the bio-neutral silicone sheath is failing. My shielding breached and the implant area became infected. The infection resolved, but the region turned black and my sixth sense evaporated.
. . Four months after I lost all effect, the spot darkened and the magnetism returned. The magnet --being a magnet-- had reassembled itself in my finger. While it's nowhere near as sensitive as it once was, I can once again pick up other magnets.
. . Haworth plans to try a new generation of magnets with a 70-durometer-hardness liquid silicone rubber coating, up from the previous 30 to 40 durometers. That's going from the hardness of a pencil eraser to the hardness of a car tire.

June 7, 06: Dubbed a "death trap" by a team of scientists from The University of Western Australia Murdoch University, CSIRO and three American, French and Spanish research institutions, a 200km in diameter and 1000m deep ocean vortex has been discovered off the Rottnest Canyon. Visible from space, scientists claim is has the potential to affect the local climate and the climate further abroad, the vortex is acting as a "death trap" by sucking in fish larvae from closer to the shore.

June 6, 06: Moonlight glistens off a huge zeppelin airship as it glides over Botswana's Kalahari desert. High-tech sensors on board probe the arid sands below, looking for buried diamonds. This is De Beers' latest tool in its search for gems in Botswana, the world's leading diamond producer by value. They had used small airplanes, but vibrations caused false readings
. . As the airship floats 80 meters above the desert, the equipment pinpoints rock formations with lower density --where "kimberlite pipes" with diamonds may be found. Only one in 10 kimberlites typically contain diamonds.

June 1, 06: Bombarding a carbon nanotube with electrons causes it to collapse with such incredible force that it can squeeze out even the hardest of materials, much like a tube of toothpaste. The researchers suggest that carbon nanotubes can act as minuscule metalworking tools, offering the ability to process materials as in a nanoscale jig or extruder.
. . The results also demonstrate the impressive strength of carbon nanotubes against internal pressure, which could make them ideal structures for nanoscale hydraulics and cylinders. In the experiments, nanotubes withstood pressures as high as 40 gigapascals, just an order of magnitude below the roughly 350 gigapascals of pressure at the center of the Earth.
. . In one test, the diameter of iron carbide wire decreased from 9 nanometers to 2 nanometers as it moved through the tube, only to be pinched off when the nanotube finally collapsed.

June 1, 06: The mystery of how tree frogs cling to surfaces --even if their feet are wet-- may have been solved by scientists. The findings may aid the development of anti-slip devices, such as wet-weather tires.
. . The study has revealed their toe pads are covered in tiny bumps that can directly touch a surface to create friction. The scientists found this direct contact occurs even though the pads are covered with a film of watery mucus. "The toe pads are patterned with a fine structure of hexagonal cells with channels running between them." If you look closer still, he said, each cell is covered in bumps at the nanometer scale.
. . The team measured the thickness of the mucus. They found it was just one to 100nm thick; much thinner that they had expected. The mucus also proved much less viscous than previously thought. "We found that the fluid is just 1.6 times more viscous than water. If you have syrup it is thousands of times more viscous than water --so really this mucus is really very watery." Very viscous mucus would also make it difficult for the frog to jump.

June 1, 06: Parts of New Orleans experienced major subsidence in the three years before Hurricane Katrina struck last summer, scientists said. They devised a map using radar images which shows that most of the city is sinking at an average rate of about 6 mm (0.24 inch) a year, but in some parts of the metropolitan area it is up to 15 mm and at the edge of the levees as much as 29 mm. In some cases, the ground had subsided a minimum of 1 meter, which probably put the levees that were built more than 40 years ago lower than their design level.
. . The researchers said they did not know what was causing the subsidence. One possibility was that the whole area is slowly sliding into the Gulf of Mexico. It could also be due to the drainage of shallow sediment. "It's probably a combination of both."
. . Scientists said this should be considered in reconstruction plans for the city. If the annual rate is added over decades or even a century... "By 2106, for example, the ground will be nearly three feet lower on average."
. . "My concern is the very low-lying areas", said lead author Tim Dixon, a University of Miami geophysicist. "I think those areas are death traps. I don't think those areas should be rebuilt."
. . The subsidence "is making the land more vulnerable; it's also screwed up our ability to figure out where the land is", Dokka said. And it means some evacuation roads, hospitals and shelters are further below sea level than emergency planners thought. So when government officials talk of rebuilding levees to pre-Katrina levels, it may really still be several feet below what's needed.

May 30, 06: Scientists funded by the European Space Agency have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.
. . Just as a moving electrical charge creates a magnetic field, so a moving mass generates a gravitomagnetic field. According to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, the effect is virtually negligible. However, Martin Tajmar, ARC Seibersdorf Research GmbH, Austria; Clovis de Matos, ESA-HQ, Paris; and colleagues have measured the effect in a laboratory. Their experiment involves a ring of superconducting material rotating up to 6,500 rpm.
. . Although just 100 millionths of the acceleration due to the Earth's gravitational field, the measured field is a surprising one hundred million trillion times larger than Einstein's General Relativity predicts. Initially, the researchers were reluctant to believe their own results.
. . "We ran more than 250 experiments, improved the facility over 3 years and discussed the validity of the results for 8 months before making this announcement. Now we are confident."

May 30, 06: University of Washington scientists using gravity measurements to hunt for evidence of dimensions in addition to those already known have found that those dimensions would have to occupy a space smaller than 0.2 millimeter.
. . In making that finding, the team headed by UW physics professors Eric Adelberger and Blayne Heckel gained new insights into gravity. One of the biggest mysteries in physics is why gravity is so weak compared with all other natural forces. A small magnet suspended above a table, for instance, can easily overcome the downward gravitational pull of the entire Earth and pick up a nail.
. . One idea --string theory-- involves "extra" dimensions. It requires that there be 10 space dimensions, and it usually assumes that seven of those dimensions are curled up in regions so tiny they cannot be detected by current technology. A new development in that theory suggests that gravity's apparent weakness could be caused by a unique property allowing gravity to leak off into "extra" dimensions, while everything else is confined to the normal dimensions of length, width and height. Extra dimensions would be a millimeter in size or smaller and, until now, no experiment could have detected them. The Adelberger-Heckel team looked for anomalies at small distances that might signal the presence of extra dimensions.
. . "No one had ever detected that gravity even existed at distances less than a millimeter", said Heckel. "We find that if the extra dimensions exist, they have to be smaller than two-tenths of a millimeter."
. . The Adelberger-Heckel team will continue trying to measure at smaller distances to explore whether some gravitational force might be spilling over from other very tiny dimensions. "If certain theories of nature are correct, then black holes would be produced in high-energy collisions of particles in particle accelerators", said Giddings. These theories go by the generic name of "TeV-scale gravity. TeV-scale gravity is expected to be tested in the next generation of particle accelerators, with the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland being the first.
. . Giddings explained that the only scenarios we know that allow black holes to be produced at energies around a TeV are those with extra dimensions of space-time. There may, however, be other scenarios not yet discovered. And if black holes are produced in accelerators, their properties will depend on properties of the extra dimensions. So scientists will be able to study the extra dimensions. In fact, the creation of bigger and bigger black holes may allow exploration of the geography of the extra dimensions.
. . One of British physicist Stephen Hawking's greatest discoveries is that black holes evaporate. Small ones evaporate exceedingly quickly, in around 10 to the minus 17 seconds. "They simply don't have time to absorb an appreciable amount of matter before they explode", he said. When they explode they are expected to send out a tiny amount of radiation, which scientists will be able to detect.
. . Hawking has also showed that black holes behave as if they have a temperature --which decreases as the black holes get bigger. The little ones are quite hot, and therefore radiate their energy away very quickly.
. . Giddings expects miniature black holes to increase understanding about the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity. Black hole evaporation is a quantum-mechanical phenomenon.
. . In three spatial dimensions, it is a close relative of the quark-gluon plasma, the super-hot state of matter that hasn't existed since the tiniest fraction of a second after the big bang that started the universe. When viewed in 10 dimensions, the minimum number prescribed by what physicists call "string theory", it is a black hole.
. . No matter what you call it, though, that substance and others similar to it could be the most-perfect fluids in existence because they have ultra-low viscosity, or resistance to flow, said Dam Thanh Son, an associate physics professor in the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington.
. . Son and two colleagues used a string theory method called the gauge/gravity duality to determine that a black hole in 10 dimensions --or the holographic image of a black hole, a quark-gluon plasma, in three spatial dimensions-- behaves as if it has a viscosity near zero, the lowest yet measured.

May 30, 06: Minerals crunched by intense pressure near the Earth’s core lose much of their ability to conduct infrared light, according to a new study from the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory. Since infrared light contributes to the flow of heat, the result challenges some long-held notions about heat transfer in the lower mantle, the layer of molten rock that surrounds the Earth’s solid core. The work could aid the study of mantle plumes -—large columns of hot upwelling magma believed to produce features such as the Hawaiian Islands and Iceland.

May 26, 06: Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is working on a new set of safety guidelines for next-generation robots. This set of regulations would constitute a first attempt at a formal version of the first of Asimov's science-fictional Laws of Robotics, or at least the portion that states that humans shall not be harmed by robots.
. . The first law of robotics, as set forth in 1940 by writer Isaac Asimov, states: . . . A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
. . Japan's ministry guidelines will require manufacturers to install a sufficient number of sensors to keep robots from running into people. Lighter or softer materials will be preferred, to further prevent injury. Emergency shut-off buttons will also be required.

May 25, 06: New materials that can change the way light and other forms of radiation bend around an object may provide a way to make objects invisible, researchers said.
. . Two separate teams of researchers have come up with theories on ways to use experimental "metamaterials" to cloak an object and hide it from visible light, infrared light, microwaves and perhaps even sonar probes.
. . Their work suggests that science-fiction portrayals of invisibility, such as the cloaking devices used to hide space ships in Star Trek, might be truly possible. The materials must be used in a thick shell.
. . The concept begins with refraction --a quality of light in which the electromagnetic waves take the quickest, but not necessarily the shortest, route. This accounts for the illusion that a pencil immersed in a glass of water appears broken, for instance. "Imagine a situation where a medium guides light around a hole in it", Physicist Ulf Leonhardt of Britain's University of St. Andrews, wrote in one of the reports, published in Science. The light rays end up behind the object as if they had traveled in a straight line. "Any object placed in the hole would be hidden from sight.
. . Metamaterials are composite structures that deliberately resemble nothing found in nature.
. . Anyone making such a cloak would have to choose what form of radiation one wanted invisibility from, Shurig said. The invisibility would work both ways -- a person hidden from the visible light spectrum would have to use infrared or sonar or microwaves to see out. "If want to cover the whole visible spectrum that would a tall order."
. . Early versions that could mask microwaves and other forms of electromagnetic radiation could be as close as 18 months away.

Google this: The Falkirk Wheel is a boat lift connecting two canals near Falkirk, Scotland. Thanks to Archimedes’ principle (floating objects displace their own weight), each water-filled caisson weighs the same amount. That allows the entire counter-balanced tip to bring boats -—water and all—- up or down to the next canal using just a 1.5 kilowatt-hours of energy -—the energy it takes to boil eight kettles of water.

Computer chips will be printed on a man-made diamond substrate (stedda silicon)... perhaps by 2011. Diamond conducts heat incredibly fast.

May 19, 06: Mice are especially good at sniffing out cheese in a maze, and a new study reveals their sperm are just as good at tracking an egg cell's scent. Even when ovary extracts were extremely diluted, sperm still flocked toward an unknown smell. Scientists call this type of attraction chemotaxis.
. . Understanding how sperm are attracted to ovaries and eggs might lead to treatments for problems with human conception.
. . Although scientists are still trying to figure out the exact chemicals that urge such an attraction, sperm swim vigorously in the direction of extracts from various female reproductive organs, especially ovaries. Even when the extract was diluted 100,000 times, some sperm still swam toward it.

May 19, 06: 50 million years ago, a mountain near the Montana-Wyoming border moved 62 miles in a half-hour in a catastrophic scenario that could be repeated elsewhere, scientists say. [That's over 120 mph!] The era was one of serious mountain building with a series of volcanic eruptions that formed the now extinct volcanoes of the Absaroka Range.
. . Rock at the summit of Heart Mountain is 250 million years older than at its base. That suggests the top and the bottom have not always been together. The presumed migration to its present home has puzzled scientists for years. They have known the mountain moved, but no one has explained how it happened or how long it took.
. . A new explanation comes from deep underground, where lava bubbled up to the surface. A large number of vertical cracks, or dikes, in the rock sets the geology of the wandering hill apart from others. The dikes filled with lava, funneling it through a zone of limestone saturated with water.
. . The dikes directed the lava into the water, heating both the rock and the water. The water was trapped, and as in a pressure cooker, its pressure rose as it was heated. Caught between layers of impermeable slate, the boiling water couldn't escape. With nowhere to go but up, the tension finally lifted the rock, and the mountain began to glide.
. . Heart Mountain isn't the only moveable mountain. Aharonov warns that, sitting on a volcanic site, the Canary Islands could be traveling soon—posing a significant tsunami risk.

May 18, 06: It sounds nuts, but a scientist says his team has made light go backward. And this is not a simple trick of mirrors. Previous work has slowed light to a crawl. But in the new research, a pulse of light is given a negative speed and --as if just to make your head spin—- the researcher says the experiment made light appear to exceed its theoretical speed limit.
. . "We sent a pulse through an optical fiber, and before its peak even entered the fiber, it was exiting the other end. Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward, linking the input and output pulses."
. . "The pulse of light is shaped like a hump with a peak and long leading and trailing edges. The leading edge carries with it all the information about the pulse and enters the fiber first. By the time the peak enters the fiber, the leading edge is already well ahead, exiting. From the information in that leading edge, the fiber essentially 'reconstructs' the pulse at the far end, sending one version out the fiber, and another backward toward the beginning of the fiber."
. . Let's put that another way, verbatim from a statement issued by the University of Rochester: "As the pulse enters the material, a second pulse appears on the far end of the fiber and flows backward. The reversed pulse not only propagates backward, but it releases a forward pulse out the far end of the fiber. In this way, the pulse that enters the front of the fiber appears out the end almost instantly, apparently traveling faster than the regular speed of light."
. . What about Einstein, who said nothing can exceed light-speed? "Einstein said information can't travel faster than light, and in this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light", Boyd said.
. . A spokesperson at the university's communications department added this: "Everything that defines the pulse that enters, also defines the pulse that exits. But the energy of the light does not travel faster than light."

May 17, 06: A huge slab of folded Earth that scientists think used to be part of the ocean floor has been detected near the planet's core. The discovery supports the theory that Earth's crust is constantly recycled deep into the planet as molten material from below simultaneously pushes up to refresh the surface.
. . The structure is about 200 km deep and at least 200 km wide and 600 km in the north-south direction. In consistency, it is more like a giant, folding mush of taffy, researchers said. "It's like a carpet sliding off the dining room table."
. . The slab began its plunge toward the center of the Earth about 50 million years ago. It is denser than surrounding material, which is why it sinks. Its lower reaches are near the core, about 2,800 km down. Yet it is still attached to the surface, much like a conveyor belt.
. . "Since there is a conservation of mass in the mantle, something must return as the slab sinks into the Earth", Garnero explained. "This return flow can include plumes of hot material that gives rise to volcanism."
. . The slab was found by monitoring seismic waves—generated by earthquakes in South America—reflecting from deep inside the mantle and recorded in the United States. The diving crust is made of essentially the same material as the lower mantle, the researchers said, but it is much cooler, by about 1,260 degrees F. The lower mantle is roughly 4,500 degrees.

The European Union no longer wants to accept products containing labels with dual systems, and has set a deadline for all exported products to be labeled in metric units, which they feel may force the United States to convert.

May 16, 06: Predictions on when human level machine intelligence would exist ranged from 2029 (Kurzweil) to 2100 (Hofstader, although he said he is not a 'futurist').
. . Kurzweil responded that the hardware and software are two sides of the problem. On the software side 10 to the 16th calculations per second should be sufficient to reach human level intelligence. "It's a matter of getting to the right level of representation of brain regions…it's a fairly complex system but at level we can handle." Hardware will follow Moore's Law, continue to deliver cheaper, faster, smaller, cooler systems.

May 10, 06: The epic journeys taken by dragonflies searching for warmer climates have been revealed by scientists in the US. The team found that the insects are capable of flying up to 135 km in a day. The group describes how it tracked the movements by attaching tiny radio transmitters to the insects. Each transmitter weighed about a third of a gram [!] and had enough battery life to track an individual for 10 days.

May 9, 06: Concentrations of the natural pigment chlorophyll in coastal waters have been shown to rise prior to earthquakes. These chlorophyll increases are due to blooms of plankton, which use the pigment to convert solar energy to chemical energy via photosynthesis. They say that monitoring peaks in chlorophyll could provide early information on an *impending* earthquake.
. . The authors say the chlorophyll blooms are linked to an underwater release of thermal energy. This causes the sea surface temperature to rise and increases the surface latent heat flux --the amount of energy moving from the surface to the air due to evaporation. And in turn, there is enhanced upwelling --the process by which cold, nutrient-rich water is transported from the deep sea to the surface. Upwelling boosts phytoplankton productivity and gives rise to blooms.
. . The researchers used as case studies four recent earthquakes in Gujarat, India (2001), Algeria (2002), the Andaman Islands (2002) and Bam, Iran (2003). Using satellite images and measurements of sea temperatures, they found a correlation between peaks in chlorophyll and proximity to an impending earthquake. The amount of "advance notice" depended on the ocean depth and proximity to the epicentre of the quake, with the second factor taking precedence.
. . In the event of heavy cloud cover preventing satellites from monitoring chlorophyll production, sea temperatures could serve as a parallel means of information on impending earthquakes, argue the researchers.

May 3, 06: The cloaking devices that are used to render spacecraft invisible in Star Trek might just work in reality, two mathematicians have claimed. They have outlined their concept in a research paper in one of the UK Royal Society's scientific journals.
. . Nicolae Nicorovici and Graeme Milton propose that placing certain objects close to a material called a superlens could make them appear to vanish. It's made of recently discovered materials that force light to behave in unusual ways. It would rely on an effect known as "anomalous localized resonance". The phenomenon is analogous to a tuning fork (which rings with a single sound frequency) being placed next to a wine glass. The wine glass will start to ring with the same frequency; it resonates. The cloaking effect would exploit a resonance with light waves rather than sound waves.
. . The concept is at such a primitive stage that the scientists talk only at the moment of being able to cloak particles of dust. An illuminated speck of dust would scatter light at frequencies that induce a strong, finely tuned resonance in a cloaking material placed very close by. The resonance effectively cancels out the light bouncing off the speck of dust, rendering the dust particle invisible.
. . Even though light is hitting the speck of dust, scattering of the light is prevented by the cloak. But they admit the cloaking effect works only at certain frequencies of light, so that some objects placed near the cloak might only partially disappear.

May 1, 06: Minnesota-based Cargill Inc., which supplies about 20% of the nation's beef, is working on a genetic screen to sort its cattle by the quality of their meat, something that can't be done now until the animal is slaughtered.
. . Cargill is testing the screen on 30,000 of its cattle. If it works, the company can reserve the best feed and care for its prime beef producers, or ensure that the best animals mate with each other.
. . Poultry producers and cattle ranchers are also developing genetic screens that will show them which animals are more prone to carry the best meat. The chicken genome cost about $50 million and swine scientists said they can sequence the pig in a year for about $20 million.
. . Rothschild previously discovered a gene variation that causes sows to produce more piglets per litter than average. He developed a test for the variation that is now widely used throughout the industry, and he said it could be useful in the Third World.

Apr 27, 06: An artificial insect eye that could be used in ultra-thin cameras has been developed by scientists in the US. The dimpled eye, contains over 8,500 hexagonal lenses packed into an area the size of a pinhead. The dome-shaped structure, described in the journal Science, is similar to a bee's eye. A dragonfly has 30,000 of the structures in each eye. As each unit is orientated in a slightly different direction, the honeycombed eye creates a mosaic image which, although low in resolution, is excellent at detecting movement.
. . The work may also shed light on how insects developed such complex, visual systems. However, it could be attached to an image sensor, similar to those used in a digital camera, to complete the setup. This would allow the eye to be used in tiny, omni-directional surveillance devices, ultra thin cameras or for high-speed motion sensors. Further down the line, Professor Lee believes that the work could help develop artificial retinas for the blind.

Apr 27, 06: Tiny semiconductor crystals called quantum dots may soon light their own paths through the human body. Scientists are splicing modified proteins from a glow-in-the-dark ocean creature onto the microscopic semiconductors to make self-illuminated dots.
. . Quantum dots, which are 10 to 50 or so atoms wide, have been around for at least two decades. Although scientists have high hopes for the dots in fields such as super computing, most current applications cash in on the dots' optical characteristics. Because quantum dots light up, or fluoresce, when struck by narrow bands of light energy, they are especially useful for medical imaging.
. . At Stanford University, scientists have joined quantum dots to glowing proteins. The proteins themselves aren't imaged. Instead they release bioluminescent energy that excites the dots to glow red. Effectively, each dot carries its own energy source on board.

Apr 23, 06: In their quest to create the super warrior of the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on organs like muscles or hearts. They're looking at tongues. By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish.
. . A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the tongue where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through nerve fibers to the brain. Instead of holding and looking at compasses and bluky-hand-held sonar devices, the divers can processes the information through their tongues.
. . In testing, blind people found doorways, noticed people walking in front of them and caught balls. A version of the device, expected to be commercially marketed soon, has restored balance to those whose vestibular systems in the inner ear were destroyed by antibiotics.

Apr 20, 06: It's not quite the center of the Earth, but scientists have drilled nearly a mile into the planet's ocean crust, retrieving samples from the pristine layer of igneous rock for the first time. Scientists onboard the drilling ship JOIDES Resolution in the Pacific Ocean, about 750km west of Costa Rica, bored into the planet's crust and recovered black rocks called gabbro from intact crust.
. . Gabbro is a dense type of rock formed from the slow cooling of magma chambers beneath mid-ocean ridges. Along with gabbro, the team hauled up a complete stratified core of the overlaying crust.
. . By studying the gabbro along with the crust section, scientists will better understand the formation and structure of oceanic crust, a process that affects plate tectonics, builds mountains, and sets off earthquakes and volcanoes. "This process covers 60% of the Earth's surface, and it's an ongoing process that has replaced all of the seafloor since 180 million years ago."

Apr 20, 06: The Pacific and Atlantic oceans were separated by a giant landmass once, but then a chink formed in this supercontinent and their waters intermingled. New fossil dating reveals that this event occurred about 41 million years ago, millions of years earlier than some scientists had estimated.
. . The southern supercontinent, Gondwana, which once included land from most of the continents in the Southern Hemisphere, started to break up about 160 million years ago due to the same forces that drive plate tectonics. During this breakup, an oceanic passageway, called the Drake Passage, formed between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America. This opening connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and encircles Antarctica in a ring of cool water known as the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC).
. . The ACC thermally isolated Antarctica from the warmer, lower latitudes. This played an important role in cooling the continent down and developing Antarctic ice sheets about 34 million years ago. "The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the largest current in the world,. and studying isotopic signatures of neodymium, or Nd, a rare earth element contained in fossilized fish teeth, the researchers were able to come up with a more precise estimate.

Apr 18, 06: A common bacteria that clings to the inside of water pipes stays in place with the strongest glue known to exist in nature, according to a team of scientists. It can withstand a force equivalent to five tons per square inch --the pressure exerted by three or four cars balanced atop a quarter.
. . The super adhesive the bacteria produces could theoretically be mass-produced for engineering and medical purposes, including as a biodegradable glue to replace sutures and staples in surgery. "The challenge will be to produce large quantities of this glue without it sticking to everything that is used to produce it."
. . C. crescentus attaches itself to surfaces with a long, slender stalk tipped with chains of sugar molecules that are the source of its tenacity. That substance is the strongest glue known to occur in nature and is three times as strong as commercial "super" glue products.
. . Because it works underwater, even in salty water, he said it could be used as a surgical adhesive, in joint-replacement surgery and in dental procedures. But figuring out how to do it will require solving scientific and engineering problems of surface chemistry and manufacturing processes.

Apr 15, 06: Dartmouth professor Victor Petrenko has designed PETD—pulse electrothermal de-icing. This thin film can completely clear a windshield in a second. It is already being use in Sweden to cover the Uddevalla Bridge to prevent icing over. PETD can also work in reverse by creating better bonds between ice an surfaces, great for snowboarders or skiers.
. . It works by breaking the first two bonds between the ice and whatever surface it is on. An electric charge is used to heat up a micron layer of the surface breaking the bond, then the resulting water acts as a lubricant and all of the ice slides away.

Apr 13, 06: Tremors deep inside the Earth are usually produced by magma flowing beneath volcanoes, but a new study suggests they can also be produced by the shifting and sliding of tectonic plates. Scientists have recorded vibrations from underground tremors at a geologic observatory along the San Andreas Fault. The Earth's surface is made up of about ten major tectonic plates and many more minor ones.
. . "Unlike the sharp jolt of an earthquake, tremors within Earth's crust emerge slowly, rumbling for longer periods of time."

Apr 13, 06: Synthehol is a science-fictional substitute for alcohol that appears on the Star Trek:The Next Generation television series. It allows drinkers to experience all of the enjoyable, intoxicating effects of alcohol without unpleasant side-effects like hangovers.
. . Alcohol works in the brain mainly by latching onto signalling molecules called GABA-A receptors. There are dozens of subtypes of these; not all of them are associated with specific effects of alcohol. For example, memory loss may occur in conjuction with drinking because alcohol binds to alpha-5, a GABA-A receptor subtype in the hippocampus.

Apr 13, 06: Last year, scientists announced they had made the smallest car ever, a molecule-sized vehicle that rolled on tiny wheels. But what good is a car without a motor? In another feat in the effort to truly downsize Detroit, the researchers have now installed a miniature, light-powered motor in their diminutive automobile. The nanocar is about as wide as a strand of DNA. Roughly 20,000 of them could park side-by-side in a lot no wider than a human hair.
. . Such small devices will one day be used to transport drugs to specific destinations inside the human body, researchers say. They could also be used to manufacture tiny factories or help run miniscule computers. For now, the itty bitty cars are largely an exercise in nano-construction, a way to test various assembly methods and materials.

Apr 12, 06: Singapore's siren song is growing increasingly more irresistible for scientists, especially stem cell researchers who feel stifled by the U.S. government's restrictions on their field.
. . Two prominent California scientists are the latest to defect to the Asian city-state, announcing earlier this month that they, too, had fallen for its glittering acres of new laboratories outfitted with the latest gizmos.
. . They weren't the first defections, and Singapore officials at the Biotechnology Organization's annual convention in Chicago this week promise they won't be the last. Other Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea and even China, are also here touting their burgeoning biotechnology spending to the 20,000 scientists and biotechnology executives attending the conference.
. . Copeland said he's leaving for Singapore because of its unfettered support of human embryonic stem cell research. In the United States, federal funding has been severely restricted by President Bush because of moral opposition to the work, which requires destroying days-old embryos. Copeland and Jenkins spurned an attractive offer to join Stanford University's stem cell department in favor of Singapore.

Apr 11, 06: Using hand-me-down technology from the Cold War, scientists have discovered that the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest is a jumping kind of place, with thousands of small, swarming earthquakes and tectonic plates that are slowly rearranging themselves. The findings could mean that a "Big One" earthquake may not be as severe as previously thought.
. . Much of the data was collected using once-secret Cold War "hydrophones" the Navy uses to track submarine movements in the Pacific Ocean. Dziak says the evidence is that multiple tectonic plates off the Pacific Northwest appear to be rearranging themselves. The plates have been slowly jamming into each other. Dziak said one boundary among them appears to be turning into a fault that's more like the San Andreas Fault to the south in California. Instead of ramming together, the plates are rubbing past each other.
. . The hydrophone project has turned up evidence of intense earthquake activity, intense clusters of quakes that previously had gone undetected. These are associated with underwater volcanic activity and are like the swarms of earthquakes that can precede volcanic eruptions such as that at Mount St. Helens.
. . The quakes were small, on the order of magnitudes 2-4, but numerous, Dziak said, with as many as a thousand of them in a three-week period.

Apr 11, 06: Two Swedish researchers are hoping to unravel the secrets behind the unique sound of a Stradivarius violin, an acoustic mystery that has enthralled music lovers and perplexed scientists for centuries.
. . Thay're using advanced computer models to analyze the famed instruments created by Italian luthier Antoni Stradivari some 300 years ago. Their goal is to build a replica with the same acoustic properties as Stradivari's violins. Stradivari built more than 1,100 violins in Cremona, Italy, and some 600 survive.
. . "There are so many parameters involved that it will be very difficult to put the computer findings into practice", said Roland Nilsson, a violin builder.
. . A Stradivarius violin was sold at Christie's auction house in New York last year for just over $2 million.

Apr 10, 06: The bacterium Caulobacter crescentus uses the toughest glue on Earth to stick to river rocks, and now scientists are trying to figure out how to produce the stuff.
. . The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it. That’s two to three times more force than the best retail glues can handle.
. . The single-celled bacterium uses sugar molecules to stay put in rivers, streams, and water pipes, a new study found. It’s not clear how the glue actually works, however, but researchers presume some special proteins must be attached to the sugars.
. . "There are obvious applications since this adhesive works on wet surfaces. One possibility would be as a biodegradable surgical adhesive." But making it has proved challenging. Like a mess of chewing gum, the gunk globs to everything, including the tools used to create it. [It's the old saw: if you make a perfect solvent, what do you store it in?!]

Apr 7, 06: Researchers trying to make tiny machines have turned to the power of nature, engineering a virus to attract metals and then using it to build minute wires for microscopic batteries. The resulting nanowires can be used in minuscule lithium ion battery electrodes, which in turn would be used to power very small machines.
. . They modified the M13 virus' genes so its outside layer, or coat, would bind with certain metal ions. They incubated the virus in a cobalt chloride solution so that cobalt oxide crystals mineralized uniformly along its length. They added a bit of gold for the desired electrical effects. The resulting nanowires worked as positive electrodes for battery electrodes. They hope to build batteries that range from the size of a grain of rice up to the size of existing hearing-aid batteries.
. . Each virus, and thus each wire, is only 6 nanometers --6 billionths of a meter-- in diameter, and 880 nanometers long.

Apr 3, 06: In theory, carbon nanotubes are 100 times stronger than steel, but in practice, scientists have struggled make nanotubes that live up to those predictions, in part, because there are still many unanswered questions about how nanotubes break and under what conditions.

Apr 3, 06: Scientists trying to make artificial life forms in the lab may have more work ahead of them than they thought. The simplest life forms could require twice as many genes to survive than was previously believed, a research team claims. The "minimal genome" is the least number of genes an organism needs to survive in its environment.
. . Dr Craig Venter --the man behind the privately funded human genome sequence-- has announced his intention to create a man-made microbe with the minimum number of genes needed to sustain life.

Apr 1, 06: Fingerprints could soon help police narrow down their list of suspects by giving clues about the lifestyle of whoever left the prints at the scene of a crime. Researchers in the UK are uncovering the ways fingerprints are changed by age, smoking, drug use and even some personal grooming products. The work also promises to help obtain good quality copies of prints that have gone unnoticed for days or weeks.
. . Much of the material left behind when people touch anything are fat molecules, or lipids. Adults, children and the elderly lay down different sorts of organic compounds in the prints. Furthermore, drug users typically excrete the metabolised products of the chemical they use. For instance, smokers are known to secrete cotinine, a chemical produced when the human body breaks down nicotine.
. . Work is now going on with methadone maintenance clinics and cocaine addiction centers to see how drug use changes the prints users leave behind. It is possible to recover fingerprints from the metal surfaces of bullets and shrapnel. Print patterns have been found even on metal that has been subjected to temperatures of 600C.

Apr 3, 06: A new study reveals that dragline silk, the stuff spiders use to rappel, has a molecular structure that makes it resilient to twisting.
. . Researchers attached a small object that weighed about the same as an Araneau diadematus spider to three types of thread and gave it a spin. They twisted the weight though several 90-degree rotations and recorded how long it took for the thread material to return to its original position.
. . First up, Kevlar thread. Although this stuff is used in bullet-proof vests, it doesn't make for very good spider silk because it does little to dampen the effects of twisting.
. . Next, researchers tested soft metallic copper thread. Copper dampened the twisting the best as the rod barely oscillated. But the copper became brittle after just a few twist cycles.
. . The winner: spider silk. Silk drawn from an A. diadematus spider did not dampen twisting as well as copper, but it proved highly resilient. Examination at the microscopic scale revealed that dragline silk's molecular configuration gives it shape "memory", which means it totally recovers its initial form and reduces twisting.
. . This is good news for spiders, since twisting can lead to swinging, not good when you're trying to sneak up on prey or avoid predators.

Apr 1, 06: There are three types of neutrinos, each associated with a different charged particle: the electron neutrino, the muon and the tau. The neutrinos changing from one form to another, a phenomenon called "neutrino oscillation".
. . Neutrinos are incredibly elusive. They rarely interact with matter. They can pass right through you with ease and even through the entire Earth. This makes studying neutrinos very difficult. And, as it turns out, the scientists at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are happy they lost a few.
. . The scientists sent a beam of these ghostly particles from the Fermi site in Batavia, Illinois to a particle detector in Soudan, Minnesota, 750 km away. Rather than flying through the air, the beam was directed right through the planet. As theory predicted, some of the particles didn’t make it.
. . The test results provide further evidence that neutrinos must have mass, the scientists say. If the masses of all three types were zero, neutrino oscillation would not occur.
. . Neutrinos are believed to be vital to our understanding of the Universe. "In particle physics, there is the Standard Model which describes how the fundamental building blocks of matter behave and interact with each other", explained Dr Falk Harris. "And this model tells us that neutrinos should have no mass. So the fact that we have now got independent measurements of neutrinos saying that they must have mass, means that this Standard Model is going to have be revised or superseded by something else."
. . In the longer term, the findings may also help us to better understand the mystery of "missing mass" in the Universe. "We are surrounded by neutrinos, so in every cubic centimeter there are hundreds at any instant. To put it simply, if they are heavy, it means that there is a lot more mass in the Universe than we thought there was."
. . Neutrinos are also thought to have played an important role in the formation of the Universe. The Minos findings and future ones may help to shed light on how matter formed, and why so much of the Universe's antimatter has disappeared.

March, 06: The Pigeon that Blogs --an early protozoa on the the Blogject species evolutionary chain. The Pigeon that Blogs is a project by Beatriz da Costa. It's a pigeon, or more precisely, a flock of pigeons that are equipped with some telematics to communicate on the Internet wirelessly, a GPS device for tracing where its been flying, and an environmental sensor that records the levels of toxins and pollutants in the air through which they fly. These are the bits of data that the flocks "blog." They disseminate their flight paths, probably viewable on a Google Map, together with information about the current toxic state of the local atmosphere. The Pigeon that Blogs is a mash-up of GPS, GSM communications technology and pollution sensors represents a full-order species evolution. It's a pigeon pollution Google Maps mash-up.
. . So will these blogjects succeed to transform "the Internet of Things into a platform for World 2.0"? Will they help to create a better world? We'll see.

Mar 22, 06: In January, Lester R. Brown published the second edition of his planetary prescription, Plan B. Championed by Ted Turner and Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the original Plan B proposed concrete steps to "rescue a planet under stress and a civilization in trouble." Now, just three years hence, Brown has updated and revised his map for a saner future --Plan B 2.0 (W.W. Norton).
. . WN: The world, you write, needs more economists who think like ecologists. Please explain.
. . Brown: One of the most interesting manifestations of realizing this at the government level came in China in the summer of 1998, when there was extensive flooding in the Yangtze River basin. It went on for weeks and weeks. It eventually caused $30 billion worth of damage, which is roughly the value of the annual rice harvest in China. After some weeks of this, the government held a press conference in Beijing. And they said we've been saying this is an act of nature, and that's true. But we've now determined that there's a human contribution to this. And they then said they were going to ban all tree cutting in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River basin. They soon thereafter extended it to the entire country. They justified it in economic terms, and they said the value of trees standing is three times the value of trees cut. And what they were recognizing is that the flood-control services provided by forests are three times as valuable to society as the timber in those trees.

Mar 31, 06: The company that cloned the first horse to be sold commercially said it plans to market 22 similar animals before 2008.

Mar 29, 06: The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed "neuro-chips" in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together.The achievement could one day enable the creation of sophisticated neural prostheses to treat neurological disorders or the development of organic computers that crunch numbers using living neurons.
. . They used special proteins found in the brain to glue brain cells, called neurons, onto the chip. However, the proteins acted as more than just a simple adhesive. "They also provided the link between ionic channels of the neurons and semiconductor material in a way that neural electrical signals could be passed to the silicon chip."
. . The proteins allowed the neuro-chip's electronic components and its living cells to communicate with each other. Electrical signals from neurons were recorded using the chip's transistors, while the chip's capacitors were used to stimulate the neurons.
. . It could still be decades before the technology is advanced enough to treat neurological disorders or create living computers, the researchers say, but in the nearer term, the chips could provide an advanced method of screening drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. "Pharmaceutical companies could use the chip to test the effect of drugs on neurons."

Mar 24, 06: Nanoscience takes one more step forward as the first single-molecule computer circuit was just built by United States researchers. Take a look at the picture here and you’ll see the circuit which is so tiny it measures less than a fifth of the width of a human hair. It was assembled on a single carbon nanotube, and even though it can only achieve a poky speed of 50MHz, that’s 100,000 times faster than any other devices that have ever been made with carbon nanotubes.
. . This proof of concept shows that it will probably be possible to use nanotech to dramatically increase processor speed, keeping Moore’s law going a few years longer --leading to faster computer chips. The finished circuit is just 18 micrometers (millionths of a meter) long.
. . The researchers envisage that chip components like this would make it into computers as a hybrid device, combining the best of silicon with the best of the new carbon technology. The carbon would improve the speeds at which the chip can operate by being more heat effiicient than silicon, while manufacturers could continue to take advantage of the fabrication techniques they have invested so heavily in over the last 40 years.

Mar 24, 06: A new jet engine design able to fly seven times the speed of sound is scheduled to launch over Australia tomorrow. The scramjet engine, known as Hyshot III, has been designed by British defence firm Qinetiq. If successful, it could pave the way for ultrafast, intercontinental air travel, and substantially cut the cost of putting small payloads into space.
. . A supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet, is mechanically very simple. It has no moving parts and takes all of the oxygen it needs to burn hydrogen fuel from the air. This makes it more efficient than conventional rocket engines as they do not need to carry their own oxygen supply.
. . However, scramjets do not begin to work until they reach five times the speed of sound. At this speed, the air passing through the engine is compressed and hot enough for ignition to occur. Rapid expansion of the exhaust gases creates the forward thrust.
. . To reach the critical speed, Hyshot III will be strapped to the front of a conventional rocket and blasted to an altitude of 330km before being allowed to plummet back to Earth. On its descent, the engine is expected to reach a top speed of Mach 7.6 or over 9,000km/ hour.
. . These engines could probably be used to launch satellites into low earth orbit but many have speculated that they could also allow passenger airlines to fly between London and Sydney in just 2 hours. Although this vision maybe many years off, it was given a huge boost when Nasa successfully flew its X-43A plane over the Pacific Ocean in 2004. The unmanned aircraft flew at 10 times the speed of sound, a new world speed record.
. . The team at the University of Queensland is also currently designing a vehicle that can fly under its own power. If the plane works, it could be flying over the Australian desert within the next two years.

Mar 20, 06: UK scientists have used a plant virus to create nanotechnology building blocks. The virus, which infects black-eyed peas, was employed as a "scaffold" on to which other chemicals were attached. By linking iron-containing compounds to the virus's surface, the John Innes Centre team was able to create electronically active nanoparticles. The researchers tell the journal Small that their work could be used in the future to make tiny electrical devices.

Mar 20, 06: Physicists from Austria and in the U.S. have built a system of three atoms of cesium leading to a new state of matter. In their experiments, two of these atoms couldn't even be assembled as pairs because of their weak attraction. But by adding a third atom, they formed a new stable form of matter similar to Borromean rings. In fact, these atoms behaved like three musketeers: all for one, one for all. Even if the physicists think this can open a new field in quantum mechanics, please remember that these experiments need extremely low temperatures to be successful, a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, to be precise.
. . "Efimov quantum states". In this new state of matter, any two of the three atoms–in this case cesium atoms– repel one another in close proximity. "But when you put three of them together, it turns out that they attract and form a new state.

Mar 20, 06: A new plastic that could rival silicon as the material of choice for some electronic devices has been developed. The invention could eventually slash the cost of flat panel screens and bring electronic paper into common use. The new material can also be laid down using simple printing techniques rather than the expensive and elaborate methods used to process silicon.
. . The performance of the plastics has always made them second choice for more mainstream applications. The new semi-conducting polythiophene could change all that. It has been tweaked by chemists to alter its molecular structure, meaning it is more efficient at carrying an electrical current and can also be dissolved in a solution to produce an ink. These modifications give the material its edge over traditional silicon which must be processed at high temperatures and in vacuums. This is not only slow and expensive but produces a large amount of waste.
. . Instead, the new polymer can be printed using traditional inkjet printers or techniques similar to those used to produce magazines and wallpaper. This means it can easily be printed on large flexible surfaces, making it attractive for use in electronic paper where rigid silicon cannot be used. It is unlikely that the material will ever rival silicon in the manufacture of high-speed computer chips.

Mar 17, 06: Just as the space program seemed to be just the thing for combating communism during the Cold War, lie detection looks like just what we need in the fight against terrorism.
. . There's little evidence that the polygraph is accurate, and most courts won't admit test results as evidence. But many people in law enforcement, including the FBI, believe in lie detectors, so strapping a defendant to a polygraph can be a useful tool in convincing prosecutors to drop borderline charges.
. . In 2003, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed scientific evidence on the polygraph. The study found that there is a lack of scientific evidence that the physiological reactions the polygraph measures are uniquely related to deception, as opposed to some other psychological process, like anxiety or fear. In the lab, with a trained examiner and a cooperative subject who is not trying to game the device by pressing his feet against the floor or squeezing his fists during the control questions, a polygraph can distinguish lies from truth better than random chance. [that's not saying much...] Beyond that, it's science fiction.
. . And that's why there's a significant push underway to develop more-reliable lie-detection devices. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, and electroencephalography, or EEG, are the most promising modern techniques vying to replace the polygraph. One reason researchers think these methods might be superior is that instead of using sweat and heartbeat to tell us what's going on in the mind, these technologies map the brain itself. Another reason is that both methods are better suited than the polygraph to identifying whether the subject has guilty knowledge, and this is more useful in security screening than the highly targeted interrogation required by the control-question test.

May 29, 06: Short for "functional magnetic resonance imaging", fMRI allows researchers to look at events instead of just structures, and does so with a great degree of precision. Color changes on fMRI scans show researchers which part of the brain is active when a subject performs a mental task such as speaking, listening to a bell ring, or solving a math problem. It adds function to structure.
. . Draw a blueprint of the digestive tract and you've come a long way toward understanding how the body processes food. But take the brain apart and all you'll get is a mosaic of gray and white tissue -—anatomy without obvious purpose.
. . The sensitivity of an EEG is limited to synchronous firing in large groups of neurons, and it has poor depth resolution—since the electrodes can only be stuck to the scalp
. . Positron emission tomography (PET) scans can perform a function similar to fMRI by monitoring increased sugar metabolism. Active cells use more of the simple sugar glucose than resting cells do. If glucose is radioactively "tagged", and then injected into the subject, its path through the body can be observed.

Mar 14, 06: A team of researchers in the Materials Science Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has managed to imitate the complex structures found in ice and mollusk shells, and the ultra-strong material could lead to everything from stronger artificial bone to airplane parts.
. . The scientists used the physics of ice formation to develop ceramic composites four times stronger than current technology. Much like bone, mollusk shells are extraordinarily strong, despite being made from weak components. Nacre, the primary component of mollusk shells, has a brick-and-mortar architecture comprised of thin layers of calcium carbonate interspersed with organic material.
. . The breakthrough came after the Berkeley team realized that similar layered structures formed when mineral-rich water froze. So they tried freezing a mixture of water and hydroxyapotite, the mineral component of bone. As the ice formed, the minerals became trapped between the layers of ice crystals. They freeze-dried the material to remove the ice, leaving behind hydroxyapotite layers similar to nacre's. By increasing the speed of the freezing process, they could decrease the layers' thickness to just 1 micron --nearly reproducing the scale found in nature.
. . By using metal or changing the composition of the ceramic layers the scientists envision a range of applications including dental implants, automotive and aerospace manufacturing, and computer hardware.

You could imagine a life-form based on a different set of chemicals interacting in a substrate of liquid ammonia, which, like water, is polar. (Ammonia isn't a liquid at the same temperatures as water, but its properties could be similar on a planet with the right atmospheric pressure.) The discovery of liquid methane (and methane rain) on another of Saturn's moons has led some biologists to imagine a methane-based biology.

Mar 11, 06: Researchers at Cornell University have created mice whose heart muscles are genetically engineered to fluoresce when the muscles contract.

Mar 8, 06: A new exact solution of Albert Einstein's 90-year-old gravitational field equation was offered at STAIF by physicist Frank Felber, Vice President and co-founder of Starmark, Inc., based in San Diego, California. Felber's solution of Einstein's gravitational field equation is the first to calculate the changing gravitational field of a mass moving near the speed of light. "I wasn't looking for antigravity or a means of propulsion ... and I wasn't looking ‘to push the boundaries'", Felber said. Instead, he was looking for a way to relate inertial forces to the gravity of distant mass in the Universe.
. . "In order to do this, I figured I needed to know the gravitational field of relativistic mass, since most of the mass in the Universe is moving away from us at relativistic speeds", Felber explained. His analysis found that a mass moving faster than 57.7% of the speed of light will gravitationally repel other masses lying within a narrow "antigravity beam" in front of it. The closer a mass gets to the speed of light, the stronger this antigravity beam becomes. Thus, the forward antigravity field of a suitably heavy and fast mass might be used to propel a payload from rest to relativistic speeds, Felber explained.
. . A healthy dose of skepticism is key, said John Cole, formerly in the Advanced Space Transportation Project Office at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "Right now, there's not enough signal in the noise to be convinced that there's anything there. One has to be strongly skeptical of all these kind of things", Cole said. "But you have got to be open-minded too. Maybe somebody will find something. But if they do, it has got to be solid."
. . Cassanova cautions: "Just because you can write an equation that describes something ... doesn't mean that such an equation describes the real physics that are going on."

Mar 8, 06: Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin. This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.
. . They don't know how they did it. The feat was accomplished in the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories. "At first, we were disbelieving", said project leader Chris Deeney. "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result." Thermonuclear explosions are estimated to reach only tens to hundreds of millions of degrees Kelvin; other nuclear fusion experiments have achieved temperatures of about 500 million degrees Kelvin.
. . Part of it is probably due to the replacement of the tungsten steel wires with slightly thicker steel wires, which allow the plasma ions to travel faster and thus achieve higher temperatures. One thing that puzzles scientists is that the high temperature was achieved after the plasma’s ions should have been losing energy and cooling. Also, when the high temperature was achieved, the Z machine was releasing more energy than was originally put in, something that usually occurs only in nuclear reactions.

Mar 8, 06: A giant crater made by a meteorite impact millions of years ago has been discovered in Egypt's western desert. Boston University experts found the 31km-wide crater while studying satellite images of the area. It is more than twice the size of the next largest Saharan impact depression and more than 25 times the size of Arizona's famous Meteor Crater. The American team that found it says its sheer size may have helped it escape detection all these years. Water and wind erosion may also have helped hide its extra-terrestrial origin. The heat from this impact may be responsible for the extensive field of "Desert Glass", yellow-green silica glass fragments found on the desert surface between the giant dunes of the Great Sand Sea in southwestern Egypt.
. . The location may have been hit by a meteorite 1.2km across. The impact would have wreaked devastation for hundreds of kilometers. The 65.51 million-year-old Chicxulub crater in Mexico is estimated to be 160 to 240km wide and is a likely culprit in the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Mar 8, 06: Scientists have made the fastest ever observations of motion in a molecule. They "watched" parts of a molecule moving on an attosecond timescale --where one attosecond equals one billion-billionth of a second. The researchers say the study gives a new in-depth understanding of chemical processes and could be used in future technologies such as quantum computing.
. . The researchers devised a new technique to "see" the motion of protons, one of the building blocks of an atom, in molecules of hydrogen and methane. The technique involves firing a very short but intense laser pulse at a molecule, which rips an electron away, leaving the molecule in an excited ionized state. The electron is then drawn back to the molecule, and when it collides a very short burst of x-rays is released.
. . It's like chopping up the 630 million kilometers from here to Jupiter into pieces as wide as a human hair."

Mar 6, 06: Sun-spawned cosmic storms that can play havoc with earthly power grids and orbiting satellites could be 50% stronger in the next 11-year solar cycle than in the last one, scientists said. Using a new model that takes into account what happens under the sun's surface and data about previous solar cycles, astronomers offered a long-range forecast for solar activity that could start as soon as this year or as late as 2008. They offered no specific predictions of solar storms, but they hope to formulate early warnings that will give power companies, satellite operators and others on and around Earth a few days to prepare.
. . The prediction, roughly analogous to the early prediction of a severe hurricane season on Earth, involves the number of sunspots on the solar surface, phenomena that have been monitored for more than a century. Every 11 years or so, the sun goes through an active period, with lots of sunspots. This is important, since solar storms --linked to twisted magnetic fields that can hurl out energetic particles-- tend to occur near sunspots.
. . The sun is in a relatively quiet period now, but is expected to get more active soon, scientists said. However, there is disagreement as to whether the active period will start within months --late 2006 or early 2007-- or years, with the first signs in late 2007 or early 2008.

Mar 3, 06: Ground-based astronomy could be impossible in 40 years because of pollution from aircraft exhaust trails and climate change, an expert says. Aircraft condensation trails --known as contrails-- can dissipate, becoming indistinguishable from other clouds.

Mar 2, 06: A newly discovered surface bulge in Yellowstone National Park may be responsible for some unexpected geothermal activity in recent years, according to a study by U.S. Geological Survey scientists. The bulge, about 37km across, rose 12cm from 1997 to 2003 and may have triggered some thermal unrest at Norris Geyser Basin, including a sudden rise in temperatures, new steam vents and the awakening of Steamboat geyser.
. . Steamboat geyser erupted in May 2000 after nine years of dormancy, and then erupted five more times between 2002 and 2003. The nearby Porkchop geyser also sprang to life after 14 years of dormancy. Scientists studying the shore of Yellowstone Lake found that the caldera has been rising and falling for at least 15,000 years, sometimes swinging more than 3 meters.

Feb 28, 06: Scientists have found what they believe are traces of the lost Indonesian civilization of Tambora, which was wiped out in 1815 by the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history. Mount Tambora's cataclysmic eruption on April 10, 1815, buried the inhabitants of Sumbawa Island under searing ash, gas and rock and is blamed for an estimated 88,000 deaths. The eruption was at least four times more powerful than Mount Krakatoa's in 1883.
. . Guided by ground-penetrating radar, U.S. and Indonesian researchers recently dug in a gully where locals had found ceramics and bones. They unearthed the remains of a thatch house, pottery, bronze and the carbonized bones of two people, all in a layer of sediment dating to the eruption.
. . The eruption shot 400 million tons of sulfuric gases into the atmosphere, causing global cooling and creating what historians call "The Year Without a Summer." Farms in Maine suffered crop-killing frosts in June, July and August. In France and Germany, grape and corn crops died, or the harvests were delayed.

Feb 24, 06: Aerogel is the lightest solid known to science. It's also one of the most insulating materials on Earth, the most porous, and it's nearly transparent. Those last two properties made it an ideal choice for catching flecks of comet and interstellar dust on the recently-returned Stardust mission.
. . It was invented in 1931 by Steven Kistler, in response to a bet made by a fellow scientist. Kistler found a way to remove the liquid from a silica gel without destroying the long silica molecule chains that gave the gel its structure. It's nearly weightless, like a chunk of solidified fog or smoke. It feels a bit like Styrofoam, and it squeaks when you rub your finger on it.
. . Modern scientists make aerogel by pressurizing and heating an ordinary gel to its "supercritical" point, where the liquid's fluid and gaseous phases are indistinguishable, and then draining off the supercritical liquid. Because there's no gas-liquid interface, there is no surface tension and so the liquid can be removed without destroying the gel's polymer structure. With the liquid gone, air fills up the spaces between the polymers, and the result is a meringue-like aerogel.
. . "As an insulator, aerogel is two to four times more efficient than anything else out there", said George Gould, the director of research for Aspen Aerogels. Aspen Aerogels makes economical aerogel textiles by impregnating "blankets" of fabric with silica gel, then pressurizing the impregnated fabric and extracting the now-supercritical liquid. The result is a flexible fabric with aerogel integrated into its matrix.
. . Prices for the material vary, but a typical price is a few dollars per square foot for quarter-inch thick material. When Aspen Aerogel's second factory is completed later this year, Gould said, the company will be able to produce 100 million square feet per year of its aerogel textiles, bringing costs even lower. The problem these companies face is that, while aerogel is a vastly superior insulator, the alternatives (like fiberglass or plain glass windows) are dirt-cheap.
. . The high pressure needed to create aerogel (around 800 pounds per square inch) means that producing even a tiny amount requires costly lab equipment.

Feb 23, 06: Ball lightning is one of the most mysterious phenomena in nature. Now scientists have created a laboratory version of the eerie floating orbs using technology taken from a common microwave oven. The work could help scientists figure out how the lightning forms in nature and lead to practical applications that harness its properties.
. . In the wild, the little bundles of energy are typically only a few centimeters across, although some have been reported to be the size of beach balls or larger. They are closely associated with regular lightning and thunderstorms and have been seen in many different colors. Witnesses report hissing sounds and an acrid ozone odor when the lightning balls appear. The vivid apparitions normally hover or float around for only a few seconds before vanishing suddenly, either silently or with an explosive bang. Although people have known about ball lightning for centuries, scientists have yet to come up with an explanation that accounts for all of the strange properties.
. . Eli Jerby and Vladimir Dikhtyar from the University of Tel Aviv in Israel created a laboratory version of ball lightning using a "microwave drill." The device consists of a 600-watt magnetron taken from a domestic microwave oven and uses a powerful microwave beam to bore through solid objects. The researchers aimed the beam through a pointed rod and into a solid object made from glass, silicon and other materials.
. . The energy from the drill created a molten hot spot in the solid object; when the drill was pulled away, it dragged some of the superheated material along with it, creating a fire column that then collapsed into a bright fireball that floated and bounced across the ceiling of the metal enclosure. The glowing object measured just slightly over an inch across and lasted only about 10 milliseconds.
. . According to one popular theory, ball lightning forms when lightning strikes the ground and vaporizes mineral grains in the soil. The vaporized nanoparticles could then link together into chains and form a fluffy ball of silicon that floats on the wind. The particles react with oxygen in the air and release light as they burn.
. . Jerby thinks that his laboratory lightning balls could one day find practical uses in industry. "My imagination leads me to speculate on applications like 'bulb-less' light sources, coating and deposition or energy production", he said.

Feb 22, 06: Forensic scientists could use DNA retrieved from a crime scene to predict the surname of the suspect, according to a new British study. It is not perfect, but could be an important investigative tool when combined with other intelligence. "You might have a situation where the Y chromosome predicts 25 names. So you could go and see in the pool of suspects whether the names are there."
. . The method exploits genetic likenesses between men who share the same surname, and may help prioritize inquiries. The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found only in males. It is passed down from father to son, just like a surname. Mining the information would require building a database of at least 40,000 surnames and the Y chromosome profiles associated with them.

Feb 17, 06: The first experimental demonstration of quantum telecloning has just been accomplished by scientists at the University of Tokyo, the Japan Science and Technology Agency and the University of York. Telecloning is a combined achievement; it combines quantum teleportation with quantum cloning into a single step.
. . In ideal quantum teleportation, the original particle is destroyed and its exact properties are transmitted to a distant particle. In telecloning, the original is destroyed and its properties are sent to two distant particles with an accuracy of less than 100%. The Heisenberg principle limits cloning fidelity; researchers would otherwise be able to make enough clones to learn everything about the original particle.
. . In their telecloning experiment, researchers cloned a beam of laser light, transmitting its electric field amplitude and phase --but not its polarization-- to two distant beams with 58% fidelity. The theoretical limit on the experiment was 66%. This demonstration may cause problems in another field of application for quantum teleportation. Until now, quantum cryptography had offered a perfectly secure communication standard. Now, however, an enemy within your communication center might arrange to send a copy of the message to a distant eavesdropper.

Feb 17, 06: Scientists have successfully imaged tiny biological structures that are normally hidden by surrounding material. The structures are less than 150 nanometers across. The details in these images can be less than 10 nanometers. This technology can pinpoint structures normally hidden among other, similar structures, almost like taking a snapshot of the proverbial needle in a haystack while passing overhead in a jumbo jet. And someday this work may allow medical technicians to process biopsies more efficiently. The structure in question was a single protein fiber that was embedded in tooth enamel. But this technique could work with any human, animal, or plant tissues.
. . They form the images by harnessing the piezoelectric effect. Piezoelectric materials either move when an electric current is applied to them or produce an electric current when they are compressed. Perhaps the best known piezoelectric materials are quartz crystals, whose electricity-prodded vibrations controlled oscillators in watches and early radios. Many biological materials, such as bones, tendons, and wood, also move slightly when electrically shocked.
. . Using a custom-built tip extension for a scanning force microscope, the scientists direct a tiny voltage, which alternates polarity 50,000 times per second, at small groups of piezoelectric-sensitive molecules. The molecules then vibrate 50,000 times per second while the surrounding non-piezoelectric materials remain still. Current imaging technologies require technicians to spend time staining biopsy samples. The new technique wouldn't require a stain. Another possible future application would be to image and then use the same tool, at a higher voltage, to selectively zap viral contaminants from biological samples.

Feb 16, 06: In recent years, scientists have photographed mysterious flashes atop thunderstorms and come up with interesting names for them: elves, blue jets, tigers and sprites. The flashes are associated with thunderstorms, and each type is incredibly brief and behaves differently.
. . A new effort has produced the best images and video of sprites ever obtained. "By analyzing the high-speed images in sequence, we've been able to clearly define, for the first time, the processes by which sprites develop and what happens inside of them", said Steven Cummer of Duke University. "This understanding of sprite structure is a necessary step to further elucidate sprite dynamics and their possible effects on the upper atmosphere."
. . Like lightning, sprites are electrical discharges. They are driven by a strong electrical field above a thunderstorm and so are associated with regular lightning. The duration of a sprite is literally less than the blink of an eye. They generally occur 20 to 50 miles above a thunderstorm, so spotting them from the ground requires a vantage point away from the clouds.
. . The new videos, shot last summer from a mountain in Colorado overlooking Kansas and Nebraska, were taken at 5,000 frames per second. The trickiest part: Because the cameras gather so much data, they could only be turned on when the researchers thought they spotted a sprite. Over the course of two months, the team captured 66 sprites on seven different nights.
. . The observations show that sprites normally start nearly 50 miles high. Streamers rain down from the bottom of an initial, diffuse halo. The streamers branch out on the way down. As all this is unfolding in the blink of an eye, a bright column of light expands vertically from the starting point, reaching toward both Earth and space. Bright streamers then shoot higher into the night. Bright dots appear. Other researchers have spotted these, but nobody knows what they are. The dots glow longer than the rest of the sprite. Some of the dots occur where streamers collide, the new images reveal. The dots might be important for understanding the chemistry of sprites and how they affect the atmosphere.
. . "Electrons with enough energy to produce light can also produce interesting chemical species not normally generated", Cummer said. "Such chemicals might be long-lived and could be transported to other locations through the atmosphere."
. . Future research could yield insight into the connection between sprites and the traditional lightning we see below a storm.

It knows when you're lying. The U.S. Department of Defense has unveiled plans to develop a lie detector, called Remote Personnel Assessment, that can detect falsehoods or signs of stress without the person being evaluated knowing about the test.

Feb 15, 06: For the first time, researchers have created a working prototype of a radical new chip design based on magnetism instead of electrical transistors. As transistor-based microchips hit the limits of Moore's Law, a group of electrical engineers at the University of Notre Dame has fabricated a chip that uses nanoscale magnetic "islands" to juggle the ones and zeroes of binary code.
. . They turned to the process of magnetic patterning to produce a new chip that uses arrays of separate magnetic domains. Each island maintains its own magnetic field. Because the chip has no wires, its device density and processing power may eventually be much higher than transistor-based devices. And it won't be nearly as power-hungry, which will translate to less heat emission and a cooler future for portable hardware like laptops.
. . Computers using the magnetic chips would boot up almost instantly. The magnetic chip's memory is nonvolatile, making it impervious to power interruptions, and it retains its data when the device is switched off. This method of transistorless processing --known as magnetic quantum cellular automata-- originally used individual electrons as quantum dots, arranged in a matrix of cells to handle logic operations. But nanoscale magnets proved to be a much better alternative because they were not subject to stray electrical charges, and they were easier to fabricate.

Jan 25, 06: Antarctica has at least 145 small lakes buried under its ice and one large one called Vostok. Now scientists have found the second and third largest known bodies of subsurface liquid water there.

Jan 24, 06: Scientists have developed tiny four-stroke engines that run on sunlight. The nanomotors --so small that 3.8 million of them lined up end-to-end would barely span the width of a penny-- generate absolutely no waste. Each little motor is just 5 nanometers in length, macaroni-like in shape, and has a ringed structure at one end that moves back-and-forth like the pistons under your car's hood. Energy, in the form of photons from sunlight, excites one end of the molecule, which sets off a four-step process. Electrons are transferred along the molecule until they reach the ring structure, causing it to slide 1.3 nanometers forward on the molecule. As the electron continues its path, it reaches a section that recycles it back to the beginning. This causes the molecule to "reset", and the ring returns, piston-like, to its original position. The whole process takes about 100 microseconds. [1/10] In this case, the exhaust is an electron.
. . The molecule, called rotaxane, forms naturally. It's also autonomous, meaning that it will continue operating as long as energy is available. It can work with others, or function all by itself. It can be driven at high frequency, and in mild environmental conditions it is quite durable, staying stable for at least 1,000 cycles. [but... that's 100 seconds!]

Jan 24, 06: Researchers have discovered nature's miniature springs within the proteins of many living cells. These proteins could one day be used in developing incredibly small machines in the nano realm. Like most machinery, nanomachines require parts such as motors, valves, and springs. Constructing these tiny parts is challenging. An alternative may be to use what nature has already made available. Nature's tiny coils, which are protein components called ankyrin repeats, "resemble 'classical' springs made of a steel wire. Looking at the structure of other proteins, Marszalek and colleagues had an inkling that ankyrin repeats would posses some elastic properties, but nobody had stretched them far enough.
. . Ankyrin repeats are important for cell functioning, so understanding them should help scientists better grasp how certain things in the body function. They mediate the interaction between other proteins. For example, within the specialized hair cells of the inner ear, they participate in converting mechanical signals, such as sound, to electrical ones -—a key to hearing. The spiral shaped ankyrin repeats are found in more than 400 human proteins in different tissues. Cells most likely use them to interpret and sense forces from their surroundings.

Jan 12, 06: Using new machinery, researchers have drilled holes narrower than a human hair in stainless steel and other materials. They say the holes are likely the smallest ever made by humans. The effort is geared toward future uses in electronics and medicine. It uses the new electro-discharge machining (EDM) process.
. . The holes are as small as 22 microns in diameter, or 0.022 millimeters. Human hairs range from 50 to 80 microns wide. Laser technology had previously made holes down to 150 microns. "Lasers make holes that taper, whereas EDM makes parallel or vertical holes."
. . Engineering at the nanotechnology level requires such tools to make hoped-for advances in smaller computers, industrial machines and even medical devices that could be inserted into the human body to deliver drugs or monitor health.

Jan 9, 06: A new handheld radar scope from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) can provide troops with an ability that was formerly the province of science fictional superheroes alone --the ability to sense through up to 12 inches of concrete whether someone is in the next room.
. . The Radar Scope is expected to be in use in Iraq by spring of this year, according to DARPA's Edward Baranoski. Weighing just 1.5 pounds, the device is about the size of a telephone handset and will cost about $1,000. Waterproof and rugged, it runs on AA batteries. Held up to a wall, users will be able to sense movements as small as breathing up to fifty feet into the next room.

Jan 5, 06: The Higgs boson explains why all other particles have mass. According to the theory, particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson. Finding the Higgs could shed light on another great mystery in physics: dark energy.
. . The Standard Model cannot explain the best known of the so-called four fundamental forces: gravity; and it describes only ordinary matter, which makes up but a small part of the total Universe.
. . The $2.3bn Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern (The European Centre for Nuclear Research), which is paid for by contributions from Cern's European member countries (including the UK), should reinvigorate physics' biggest endeavour: a grand theory to describe all physical phenomena in nature.
. . According to John Ellis, however, the Higgs field is the perfect candidate for the source of dark energy. "The Higgs mechanism fills all of space with a field. Unlike the gravitational field, which is strong around the Sun and the centre of the galaxy, the Higgs field would have essentially the same value everywhere", he explains. "It would give you dark energy, in the sense that dark energy is energy density in empty space a long way away from any matter." There's just a small problem with the idea, says John Ellis: it gives 120 orders of magnitude too much dark energy.
. . The Standard Model is a theory devised to explain how sub-atomic particles interact with each other. There are 16 particles that make up this model (12 matter particles and 4 force carrier particles). But they would have no mass if considered alone.
. . The Higgs boson explains why these particles have mass. Particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field, called the Higgs field, which is carried by the Higgs boson.

Jan 1, 06: Scientists at top American and Russian nuclear laboratories have created two new elements. If researchers elsewhere confirm their results, the new elements will be christened ununtrium and ununpentium. After 90 milliseconds, ununpentium decays into ununtrium, which lingers for 1.2 seconds. With the creation of elements 113 and 115, the number of known elements rises to 116.

Jan 1, 06: Scientists had considered fish to move as though unaffected by gravity. But fish still have to push water out of the way to move forward, Bejan said, and the only way to do this is to move the water over the fish. This raises the water's surface --albeit an imperceptible amount spread across a lake-- and increases the force of gravity on the fish. Because fish have to work against gravity to lift an amount of water equal to their own mass for each body length they move forward, they are subject to the same physical constraints that a bird experiences in one flap or a runner experiences in one stride.

Jan 1, 06: French physicists have found why an uncooked spaghetti can break into three, seven or even ten pieces, but rarely two. It's because of elastic waves travelling along the pasta when dry spaghetti is bent and suddenly released at one end. Don't think this is a minor discovery: the researchers think their findings can be applied to civil engineering to make structures like buildings and bridges more stable.

Jan 1, 06: Some simple mathematical equations, known as quarter-power scaling laws, can explain the metabolic rates of living organisms. For example, an animal's metabolic rate appears to be proportional to mass to the 3/4 power. And this 3/4-power law appears to hold sway from microbes to whales, creatures of sizes ranging over a mind-boggling 21 orders of magnitude.
. . A simple observation. Although a mouse has a shorter life than an elephant, both clock approximately the same number of heartbeats during their lives. Simply, their metabolisms are different.
. . An animal's metabolic rate appears to be proportional to mass to the 3/4 power, and its heart rate is proportional to mass to the –1/4 power. An organism's metabolism, they proposed, is proportional to its mass to the 3/4 power times a function in which body temperature appears in the exponent.

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