SCIENCE NEWSCLIPS
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SCIENCE
NEWSCLIPS
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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.
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Dec 29, 07: Those geniuses at DARPA, the Pentagon's research arm, are hard at work on a new nasal spray that could make sleep obsolete. It's called Orexin A, and just a couple snorts of it could allow you to be awake and alert for tens and tens of hours straight with no negative side effects.
. . Of course, there are sure to be some pretty serious consequences to your body if you go without sleep for a week at a time, no matter how awake your brain is. But for pilots going long distances and narcoleptics (who have a lack of Orexin A in their brains, hence the discovery of this drug), it could be quite useful. Not to mention truckers, college kids during finals week, club kids who don't want to take illegal uppers, and World of Warcraft addicts, all of whom would find Orexin A to be irresistible. Don't look for it on pharmacy shelves anytime soon, however. It's just gone through a successful test run on monkeys, but human tests have yet to be done, and once they do the drug still has the FDA gauntlet to be run through, so it's probably still a decade away.
Dec 27, 07: The Futurist has released its own list of predictions for 2008 and beyond. The organization contends, among other things, that the world will have a billion millionaires by 2025; the earth is on the verge of a "significant extinction event"; and "nonhuman entities", such as robots fueled by artificial intelligence, will make more decisions.
Dec 24, 07: There could be enough computing ability in just one brain cell to allow humans and animals to feel, a study suggests.
. . The brain has 100 billion neurons but scientists had thought they needed to join forces in larger networks to produce thoughts and sensations. The Dutch and German study found that stimulating just one rat neuron could deliver the sensation of touch.
Dec 21, 07: Executing on a Parliamentary commission, a Dutch agency has put together a plan to build a 247,000 acre island off the coast of their country in the shape of a tulip. The project would follow in the dubious tradition of Dubai's The Palm.
Chips built using the 32-nm process can have more than one billion transistors on them.
Dec 18, 07: Italian scientists have cracked open the genetic make-up of Pinot Noir, responsible for the great red wines of Burgundy, in a breakthrough that may lead to hardier vines and cheaper fine wines.
Dec 13, 07: Scientists at Tokyo U say they were able to successfully switch off a mouse's instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats --showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.
. . "Mice are naturally terrified of cats, and usually panic or flee at the smell of one. But mice with certain nasal cells removed through genetic engineering didn't display any fear. If we follow the pathway of related signals in the brain, I think we could discover what kind of networks in the brain are important for controlling fear."
Dec 12, 07: Ocean waves as tall as an eight-story building, once dismissed as maritime folklore, can be studied using waves of light, offering hope of predicting where these monsters may appear, U.S. researchers said. These rogue or freak waves can appear out of nowhere on an otherwise calm sea. Their extreme height --reaching some 30m tall-- can batter a ship, smashing it to bits.
. . Solli was studying the properties of light waves traveling in glass when they discovered optical rogue waves, freak brief pulses of intense light similar to the freak water waves. Solli, a physicist, knew the same physical effect could occur in different physical systems. He began looking at possible explanations and found a stark resemblance between the mathematical equations that describe rogue water waves and his rogue light waves.
. . When they examined these light waves further, they found a predictable change occurred that perturbed an otherwise normal-looking wave into becoming a rogue light wave. He thinks the same thing may be happening in the sea. "Essentially there is a sweet spot or tickle spot we found. If you tickle the wave on this particular spot, it develops into one of these rogue waves", he said.
Dec 12, 07: Climate scientists said they have begun using information from a tropical phenomenon that may give them a one to three-week jump on hurricanes, cyclones, monsoons and other weather patterns.
. . The Madden-Julian Oscillation is a large, slowly evolving weather event originating in the tropics that affects weather globally. MJOs happen about two to six times a year over a 40-to-50 day cycle that includes periods of high and low precipitation. MJO data has revealed their direct influence upon mid-latitude weather, summer monsoons, hurricane development as well as El Nino and La Nina weather events.
Dec 6, 07: Toyota Motor Corp said it aims to put its humanoid and other advanced robots to practical use soon after 2010 to help people in factories, hospitals, homes and around town.
Nov 28, 07: Using T-rays, it would be possible to examine travelers' shoes without the need to disrobe. T-rays have been difficult to generate without using a host of bulky equipment. But researchers at Argonne have found a simple way to generate T-rays --terahertz radiation-- using special, high-temperature superconducting crystals in a compact device.
. . T-rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum that lies between microwaves on the low end and infrared radiation on the high end. Unlike conventional X-rays, which can cause cell damage, T-rays do not have enough energy to alter cell ionization, which can lead to radiation sickness or cancer. And while they cannot see through metals or water, they can penetrate many common materials like leather, fabric, cardboard and paper.
. . "Terahertz radiation is sensitive to characteristics of a lot of chemicals", Welp said, offering the promise of new uses in airport scanners or detecting illicit chemicals or weapons that could not be picked up by an X-ray.
. . T-rays can also penetrate about four-tenths of an inch through human skin, offering some medical applications as well. "Tests have shown this could be a viable diagnostic tool for skin cancer and the spread of skin cancer under the surface of the skin. You could diagnose without having to do an operation", Welp said. "It has been demonstrated that it can detect tooth decay without having to take an X-ray."
Nov 27, 07: Scientists have managed to restore a sense of touch to two patients with prosthetic arms, in what is seen as a step towards creating sensitive limbs.
. . By rerouting the remaining nerves from their lost limbs to their chests, the patients said they could feel their missing arms and hands in their chests. When heat or pressure was applied to the chest, the patients said they felt as if their hand was being touched.
. . The patients involved are believed to be a man and a woman who were the first recipients of "bionic" arms which they could control by thought alone. Using these arms, the two are for instance able to fold clothes, eat bananas and do the washing up. The two involved were able to differentiate between sensation in their actual chest, and one which they attributed to their hand. In some cases, they were able to pinpoint exactly where on the hand the sensation was being felt.
Nov 21, 07: An enormous underwater landslide 60,000 years ago produced the longest flow of sand and mud yet found on Earth.
. . The landslide off the coast of north-west Africa dumped 225 billion metric tons of sediment into the ocean in a matter of hours or days. The flow travelled 1,500km --the distance from London to Rome. The massive surge put down the same amount of sediment that comes out of all the world's rivers combined over a period of 10 years. In places, the flow was over 150km wide, spread across the open sea floor.
. . After blocks from the original landslide disintegrated, the sand and mud travelled hundreds of km suspended in the water, without depositing any sediment on the sea floor that it had passed over.
UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: Censoring science. White House should not hide the facts
. . October 30, 2007
. . Although President Bush has every right to have his policy goals articulated by his appointees, recent reports of top scientists being censored by the administration are indeed troubling. Altering presentations does not alter reality.
. . The Bush White House has a considerable record of charges that it attempted to edit or censor scientific information to conform with political goals. Among them:
. . Earlier this year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was accused of censoring experts on polar bears about the potentially harmful effects of climate change on the creatures.
. . Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director James Hansen said earlier this year that Bush administration officials had attempted to stop him from delivering a speech in which he urged prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.
. . As he was leaving his position as U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Richard Carmona testified before a House committee that the White House would not allow him to speak on aspects of stem cell research, comprehensive sex education, emergency contraception or other politically charged topics.
. . In 2003, Council on Environmental Quality Director Philip Cooney is said to have made more than 300 changes to an Environmental Protection Agency report on global warming, supposedly exaggerating uncertainties about global warming.
. . The latest example of questionable political involvement in matters of science involves Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gerberding, a highly regarded infectious disease specialist, was set to deliver written testimony to a Senate panel on how climate change could effect the spread of disease.
. . Gerberding was prepared to present 12 pages of testimony to the committee, but after submission to the Office of Management and Budget for review, the testimony was reduced to six pages. Gone, among other statements, was one stating: “Populations in Midwestern and Northeastern cities are expected to experience more heat-related illnesses as heat waves increase in frequency, severity and duration.”
. . At this point, more than 12,000 scientists have signed a statement criticizing the Bush administration for manipulating science. With the many public health challenges confronting the nation and the world, Americans have a need and a right to know the truth. All our lives could depend on it.
Nov 12, 07: In a study, the most accurate experiment yet into time dilation has proven the great German physicist Albert Einstein to be bang on target... in 1905.
. . An international team of researchers used a particle accelerator to whizz two beams of atoms around a doughnut-shaped course to represent Einstein's faster-moving clocks. They then timed the beams using high-precision laser spectroscopy and found that, compared with the outside world, time for these atomic travellers did indeed slow down. "We found the observed effect to be in complete agreement."
Nov 9, 07: The international community faces a stark choice: outlaw human cloning or prepare for the creation of cloned humans, U.N. researchers said.
Nov 8, 07: Yellowstone National Park, once the site of a giant volcano, has begun swelling up, possibly because molten rock is accumulating beneath the surface, scientists report. But, "there is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption." Many giant volcanic craters around the world go up and down over decades without erupting, he said.
. . Smith and colleagues report that the flow of the ancient Yellowstone crater has been moving upward almost 3 inches per year for the past three years. That is more than three times faster than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923, the researchers said. "Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock."
Nov 2, 07: The first global map of magnetic peculiarities --or anomalies-- on Earth has been assembled by an international team of researchers. "There are just a few major deposits that can be seen on this map, like the Kursk iron ore deposit.
. . As well as revealing ore deposits, magnetic anomalies can also show areas of ground water and sea weakness zones. It is a useful tool for geologists and geophysics, as well as a teaching resource.
Nov 2, 07: A team of Arizona and Mexican researchers has engineered and tested a new version of a natural toxin to kill pink bollworms that develop a resistance to existing pest control methods.
Oct 24, 07: Researchers at Michigan State U say they have achieved, if not the impossible, then at least the improbable, briefly creating exotic [WRONG word --they did not come from "elsewhere"] new versions of atomic nuclei that some scientists thought could not exist.
. . The modern-day alchemists at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) successfully created super-heavy versions of magnesium and aluminum, by using a particle accelerator to induce extra neutrons into already neutron-rich atomic nuclei. "This result suggests that the limit of stability of matter may be further out than previously expected."
. . At least one of the unusual isotopes they created --magnesium-40-- has been long and unsuccessfully sought by other researchers, while another --aluminum-42-- had been deemed unlikely under leading theories of the atomic nucleus.
Oct 24, 07: Imagine receiving a big chunk of cash in the future. Or winning a prize. Chances are, such optimistic thoughts are coming from two places in the brain that play an important role in enabling people to, as the old song says, accentuate the positive, New York U scientists said.
. . Pinpointing the brain regions involved in optimism and positive thinking about the future, the researchers said, may also have shed light on what might be going wrong in people with depression.
. . "What's interesting is these two regions that we saw that were involved in projecting optimistic futures are also the same two regions that we see affected in depression. Our data would suggest that one of the things they're doing is making it hard to think about things optimistically. Of course, one of the primary symptoms of depression is pessimism", Phelps said.
. . "Humans expect positive events in the future even when there is no evidence to support such expectations", the researchers wrote. People expect to live longer and be healthier than average, they underestimate their likelihood of getting a divorce, and overestimate their prospects for success on the job market."
Oct 19, 07: The race to create life version 2.0 is under way. And rumors abound that closest to the finish line is the J Craig Venter Institute, where scientists are aiming to craft a "minimal genome" --the smallest group of genes an organism needs to survive and function-- and insert it into an empty cell.
. . This stripped-down genome has been established with the help of a simple bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium, by knocking out its genes, one by one, until only the genetic material vital for survival was found. This is described by some as "top-down", meaning that he is taking an existing organism and changing it to create something new.
. . Dr Endy, who is working on standard building blocks, called BioBrick parts, which can be assembled to build larger biological systems. But building life from scratch, from the "bottom-up", is a challenge that some synthetic biologists have decided to take on. If you can build the biological parts, they argue, then creating something that meets the criteria for life --has a metabolism, replicates and evolves-- is surely the next step.
. . The top-down and bottom-up teams have something in common: they are mimicking what nature does already. Some scientists, though, have gone back to the drawing broad in their quest to produce synthetic life. Steen Rasmussen from Los Alamos National Laboratory, US, is one of them. "We are the radical kids on the block. We have abandoned so much of what traditional biology is doing. Many biologists view us as heretics", he says.
. . Rather than turning to biological cell design as his starting point, Dr Rasmussen is looking to see if there might be simpler structures that he can use as the basis of his synthetic organism. He is creating a cell in which the essential parts, such as genes and metabolic chemicals, are stuck to the surface of it rather than held inside like a traditional cell. "This means you can exchange resources and waste directly with the environment and that simplifies things enormously."
Oct 18, 07: The world's tiniest radio is a step closer to reality. US scientists have unveiled a detector thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair that can translate radio waves into sound.
. . According to a U of California team, the study marks the first time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in a working radio system. Made of carbon nanotubes a few atoms across, it is almost 1,000 times smaller than current radio technology.
. . Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen incorporated the microscopic detector into a complete radio system. "Though we have only demonstrated the critical component of the entire radio system out of a nanotube (the demodulator), it is conceivable in the future that all components could be nanoscale, thus allowing a truly nanoscale wireless communications system", they write.
. . He said the real challenge for industry was to miniaturise not just radio technology but other components such as sensors, the power supply and processors.
Such a development would bring the concept of smart dust - a cluster of devices, smaller than a grain of sand, equipped with wireless communications that can detect the likes of light, temperature, or vibration - into the realms of reality rather than science fiction.
. . Future uses might include meteorological, geophysical and biological research sensors. They could also be used for discrete military surveillance, or to create a distributed internet that would be accessible anywhere. [and spyimg!]
Oct 17, 07: A Nobel prize-winning scientist who reportedly claimed Africans and Europeans have different levels of intelligence is no longer welcome to deliver a lecture at London's Science Museum, the museum said.
Oct 17, 07: A strange new material has taken scientists one-step closer to a Star Trek-styled cloaking device. The new substance is a "metamaterial" that negatively refracts light. Metamaterials with this property raise the theoretical possibility that light could bend completely around an object, making it effectively invisible. Scientists are awed by the implications of metamaterials. "These materials would comprise a complete --almost magical-- mastery over light."
. . To generate their light-bending effects, metamaterials are nearly opaque, which means they lose most of the energy that enters them. That's not a great quality for a lens. In a sound system, this "lossiness", as scientists call it, would mean that you could barely hear your music. The solution, however, could be as simple as an amplifier.
. . Previous metamaterials hadn't allowed for energy input, but since this one is built from semiconductors, scientists can pump energy into it to make up for the loss caused by the opacity of the material. Finding the right amp could unlock the wide range of conceptual applications from the cloaking device all the way to a microscope with a superlens that would allow resolution down to the molecular level.
. . But in a field that is just years old, it could take some time to deliver on the considerable promise of the early work. "The push to higher frequencies will enable some really fantastic applications", said Schurig. "But transparent visible light metamaterials are a decade or more away."
Oct 11, 07: Inspired by the toe pads of tree frogs and crickets, researchers in India have created a form of sticky coating that is both strong and reusable. When conventional adhesive tape is pulled off a surface, cracks form on the tape, which also picks up dust and other particles, quickly losing its stickiness.
. . The researchers described how the toe pads of tree frogs contain "microscopic channel patterns" that stop cracks from forming. "Toe pads have patterns on the surface, it's not a smooth layer. Underneath these patterns, there are fluid vessels, glands and blood vessels." Ghatak and his colleagues added tiny fluid vessels in their model adhesive and found they increased adhesion by 30 times.
Oct 6, 07: Illegible words on church headstones could be read once more thanks to a scan technology developed in the US. Scientists at Carnegie Mellon U are making high resolution 3D scans of tombstones to reveal the carved patterns in the stone. A computer matches the patterns to a database of signature carvings which reveals the words.
Oct 4, 07: A new approach to anesthesia using the chemical that gives chili peppers their kick promises an improved way to treat pain in surgery, dentistry and childbirth, researchers said.
. . Current local anesthetics deaden all nerve cells and not just the pain-sensing ones, causing temporary paralysis and numbness. That's why dental patients after a root canal, for example, may leave their dentist's office drooling, with a numb mouth and some muscles temporarily paralyzed.
. . Now, researchers have found a way to target only the pain-sensing nerve cells while avoiding the neurons responsible for muscle movement or sensations such as touch. The first tests on people could begin "in two or three years."
. . Lidocaine interferes with electric currents in all nerve cells. But the lidocaine derivative used in this research, called QX-314, by itself is unable to enter cell membranes to block their electrical activity.
. . That's where the hot chili chemical came into play. Capsaicin is capable of opening pores found only on the cell membrane of pain-sensing nerve cells. With these pores opened by capsaicin, the QX-314 can then enter the cell membrane and selectively block the activity of the pain-sensing neurons while leaving alone other nerve cells.
Sept 27, 07: Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing see-through frogs, letting them observe organs, blood vessels and eggs under the skin without performing dissections. "You can see through the skin how organs grow, how cancer starts and develops", said the lead researcher Masayuki Sumida.
. . The researchers produced the creature from rare mutants of the Japanese brown frog, or Rena japonica, whose backs are usually ochre or brown. Two kinds of recessive genes have been known to cause the frog to be pale.
. . The transparent frogs can also reproduce, with their offspring inheriting their parents' traits, but their grandchildren die shortly after birth. "As they have two sets of recessive genes, something wrong must kick in and kill them", Sumida said.
Sept 27, 07: U.S. physicists have coaxed tiny artificial atoms into communicating in an advance that may lead to super-fast quantum computers, the researchers said. Quantum computers hold the promise of being enormously powerful, capable of solving in seconds problems that take today's fastest machines years to crack.
. . So far, physicists have worked mostly on developing the most basic of elements that can store information known as quantum bits, or qubits. But a series of papers suggest researchers have found a way to get these qubits to communicate over a distance, for instance, across a computer chip. In the past, the best qubits could do was talk to neighboring qubits, much like the childhood game of telephone.
Sept 21, 07: A Department for Science should be created in the UK to boost the subject's profile, a Tory task force says.
Sept 14, 07: SiCortex, Inc., the first company to engineer a Linux(R) cluster from the silicon up, graphically illustrated the opportunity for dramatic power saving today by demonstrating the first high performance computer powered solely by a team of bicyclists. The computer, an SC648, conducted a complex genomics analysis at a rate of billions of calculations per second while being powered by a team of 8-10 bicyclists riding generator-equipped bicycles.
. . "Ten years ago, this analysis was impossible on even the biggest computers, and now it's being done on a bicycle powered machine." It was powered by bicyclists from the Jax Racing team, riding eight Trek bicycles producing an average of 260 watts each. "Teraflops from Milliwatts."
Sept 8, 07: At the center of a black hole, there lies a point called a singularity where the laws of physics no longer make sense. In a similar way, according to futurists gathered today for a weekend conference, information technology is hurtling toward a point where machines will become smarter than their makers. If that happens, it will alter what it means to be human in ways almost impossible to conceive, they say.
. . "The Singularity Summit: AI and the Future of Humanity" brought together hundreds of Silicon Valley techies and scientists to imagine a future of self-programming computers and brain implants that would allow humans to think at speeds nearing today's microprocessors.
. . Artificial intelligence researchers at the summit warned that now is the time to develop ethical guidelines for ensuring these advances help rather than harm. "We and our world won't be us anymore", Rodney Brooks, a robotics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the audience. When it comes to computers, he said, "who is us and who is them is going to become a different sort of question."
. . Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Palo Alto-based Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which organized the summit, researches on the development of so-called "friendly artificial intelligence." His greatest fear, he said, is that a brilliant inventor creates a self-improving but amoral artificial intelligence that turns hostile.
. . The first use of the term "singularity" to describe this kind of fundamental technological transformation is credited to Vernor Vinge, a California mathematician and science-fiction author. High-tech entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil raised the profile of the singularity concept in his 2005 book "The Singularity is Near", in which he argues that the exponential pace of technological progress makes the emergence of smarter-than-human intelligence the future's only logical outcome.
. . Kurzweil, director of the Singularity Institute, is so confident in his predictions of the singularity that he has even set a date: 2029. Most "singularists" feel they have strong evidence to support their claims, citing the dramatic advances in computing technology that have already occurred over the last 50 years.
. . In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore accurately predicted that the number of transistors on a chip should double about every two years. By comparison, according Singularity Institute researchers, the entire evolution of modern humans from primates has resulted in only a threefold increase in brain capacity. With advances in biotechnology and information technology, they say, there's no scientific reason that human thinking couldn't be pushed to speeds up to a million times faster.
. . Some critics have mocked singularists for their obsession with "techno-salvation" and "techno-holocaust" —-or what some wags have called the coming "nerdocalypse." Their predictions are grounded as much in science fiction as science, the detractors claim, and may never come to pass.
. . But advocates argue it would be irresponsible to ignore the possibility of dire outcomes. "Technology is heading here. It will predictably get to the point of making artificial intelligence", Yudkowsky said. "The mere fact that you cannot predict exactly when it will happen down to the day is no excuse for closing your eyes and refusing to think about it."
. . The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, http://www.singinst.org
Sept 14, 07: New genetic tests could help crack down on illegal food or timber trade, fight malaria or even give clues to how to stop bird strikes with planes, scientists said. Experts have identified DNA "barcodes" --named after the black and white lines that identify products in a supermarket-- of more than 31,000 species of animals and plants against 12,700 species in 2005 in a fast-growing branch of science.
. . A snippet of genetic material, such as a sliver of fish or sawdust from a plank of wood, can help identity a species by a DNA "barcode" unique to each species in a laboratory process taking a few hours and costing about $2.
. . Barcoding experts are working with regulators such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek applications for the database such as curbing illegal imports, fighting mosquitoes or helping understand bird migration routes. Barcoding could help, for instance, identify a tiny worm on a shipment of bananas and so settle a dispute about whether it was a harmless pest just picked up at the port of entry or a more dangerous imported species.
. . The FDA warned in May that a shipment labeled monkfish from China might contain a type of puffer fish that can contain a deadly toxin if badly prepared. The same could apply to checking whether a wooden table, for instance, was from an endangered hardwood species.
. . Proper identification of mosquitoes could help slow the spread of malaria, which kills a million people a year, by enabling scientists to pick the right insecticides. "Key to disease management is vector control."
Sept 13, 07: The Russian air force has tested a giant fuel-air bomb which the military says is the biggest non-nuclear explosive device in the world. Such bombs are mainly designed to destroy underground targets.
. . Fuel-air bombs, technically known as thermobaric devices, generally detonate in two stages: a small blast creates a cloud of explosive material, which is then ignited with devastating effect.
. . It contains about seven tons of high explosives compared with more than eight for the Moab but is four times more powerful because it uses a new type of explosive developed with the use of nanotechnology, according to the channel. "Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon", Gen Alexander Rukshin.
. . Russia used such weapons in Afghanistan and Chechnya, Hewson says, and he suspects that the bomb shown on TV was conceived for the Chechen conflict but never actually used because of the sheer scale of the destruction it could wreak.
. . It contains 7.8 tons of 'highly efficient' explosives, as effective as 44 tons of regular TNT, Russia says. Blast radius: 300 meters.
Sept 13, 07: England's Diamond synchotron, a device that covers five football "pitches" and is capable of generating an X-Ray light source that's 10 billion times brighter than the sun, will be used to examine precious antique documents that cannot otherwise be handled.
. . When the beams are fired into a book or a scroll, they bounce off of iron ink, generating a 3D image that can be sliced up and read. It's the best way yet to figure out how to read some of the heretofore unseen portions of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Sept 13, 07: Fragile particles rarely seen in our Universe have been merged with ordinary electrons to make a new form of matter. Di-positronium, as the new molecule is known, was predicted to exist in 1946 but has remained elusive.
. . A US team has created thousands of the molecules by merging electrons with their antimatter equivalent: positrons. The discovery is a key step in the creation of ultra-powerful lasers known as gamma-ray annihilation lasers. "The difference in the power available from a gamma-ray laser compared to a normal laser is the same as the difference between a nuclear explosion and a chemical explosion", said Dr David Cassidy of the U of California.
. . There is a huge interest in the technology from the military as well as energy researchers who believe the lasers could be used to kick-start nuclear fusion in a reactor.
. . Di-positronium was first predicted to exist by theoretical physicist John Wheeler and its component "atoms" --positronium - were first isolated in 1951. These short-lived, hydrogen-like atoms consist of an electron and a positron, a positively charged antiparticle.
. . There is an antiparticle for each type of particle in the Universe. For example, a positively charged proton has a corresponding negatively charged antiproton. Antimatter only makes fleeting appearances in our Universe when high-energy particle collisions take place, such as when cosmic rays impact the Earth's atmosphere. They are also made in the lab in particle accelerators such as Europe's nuclear research facility, Cern.
. . These appearances are always short lived because antiparticles are destroyed when they collide with normal matter. The meeting leaves a trace, often as high energy x-rays or gamma-rays.
. . To make the molecule, Dr Cassidy and his team used a specially designed trap to store millions of the positrons. A burst of 20 million were then focused and blasted at a porous silica "sponge". As the positrons rushed into the voids they were able to capture electrons to form atoms. Where atoms met, they formed molecules. "All we are really doing is implanting lot of positrons into the smallest spot we can, in the shortest time, and hoping that some of them can see each other."
. . By measuring the gamma-rays that signalled their annihilation, the team estimated that up to 100,000 of the molecules formed, albeit for just a quarter of a nanosecond (billionth of a second).
. . Dr Cassidy believes that increasing the density of the positronium in the silicon would create a state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).
. . "At even higher densities, one might expect the material to become a regular, crystalline solid", wrote Professor Clifford Surko, of the U of California.
. . Taking it one step further, scientists could use the spontaneous annihilation of the BEC, and the subsequent outburst of gamma-rays, to make a powerful laser. "A gamma-ray laser is the kind of thing that if it existed people would find new uses for it everyday", said Dr Cassidy.
. . He highlighted an experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the US where scientists envisage using 192 lasers to heat a fuel target to try to kick-start nuclear fusion. "Imagine doing that but you no longer need hundreds of lasers."
Sept 13, 07: Flying in the face of intuition, scientists now find that curly hair gets less tangled than straight hair. They had hairdressers count tangles for a week in the hair of 212 people -—123 with straight hair and 89 with curls. Counting was conducted between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., so that hair had a chance to snag during the day.
. . Masson found straight hair got tangled nearly twice as much as curly hair—the average number of tangles was 5.3 per head of straight hair and 2.9 per head of curly hair.
. . Masson devised a geometrical model of hair that might explain the results. Although straight hairs interact less often with each other than curly hairs do, his math suggests that when straight hairs do rub against each other, they often do so at steep angles that cause tangles.
Sept 9, 07: Has the kilogram gone on a diet? Maybe. For some reason, the official kilo —-a 118-year-old lump of metal stored in a vault at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures outside Paris — has slimmed down by as much as 50 micrograms in the past century. The solution? Build a better kilogram. Researchers at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization are cutting, grinding, and polishing a boule — a big crystal — of ultrapure silicon 28 into two baseball-sized spheres (one is for double-checking). Materials scientists are able to measure precisely how many atoms of that silicon isotope are in any given hunk (the completed orb should contain 215 x 1023 atoms). Creating "the roundest object in the world", says CSIRO engineer Katie Green, means technicians have to worry about only one dimension: diameter. Once finished, it will weigh a perfect kilogram. Give or take an atom.
Meter: Standardized: 1983. Measures: Length
. . Definition: The distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 second. [Why not 300M?!!]
Second. Standardized: 1967. Measures: Time
. . Definition: The time it takes for a cesium-133 atom to cycle 9,192,631,770 times between two specific quantum states.
Ampere. Standardized: 1948. Measures: Electrical current
. . Definition: The current required to create a force of 2 x 10-7 newtons per meter between two parallel wires.
Kelvin. Standardized: 1954. Measures: Temperature
. . Definition: 1/273.16 the temperature of the triple point of water — when it's simultaneously gas, liquid, and solid
Mole. Standardized: 1971. Measures: Amount of stuff
. . Definition: The number of atoms in 12 grams of carbon 12 (6.022 x 1023)
Candela. Standardized: 1979. Measures: Brightness
. . Definition: The intensity of a 1/683-watt yellow-green light spread over a square meter, seen from a meter away.
Measures: score (20 of something), hand (4 inches of horse height), twip (1/20 of a typesetting point), thrave (24 sheaves of wheat), shake (10 nanoseconds), mickey (ratio of computer mouse movement to onscreen cursor movement), jansky (strength of radio signals from space), butt (two hogsheads, or about 126 gallons, of booze)
Sept 5, 07: Weightlessness may sound relaxing, but a new study shows its effects may be stressful for organs that create armies of disease-fighting cells.
Sept 1, 07: Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci avoided the palette and mixed colors directly on the canvas, Italian researchers said after they reconstructed his work step by step "as if watching him while he painted."
Aug 30, 07: Imagine cramming 30,000 full-length movies into a gadget the size of an iPod. Scientists at IBM said they had moved closer to such a feat by learning how to steer single atoms in a way that could create building blocks for ultra-tiny storage devices. Understanding and manipulating the behavior of atoms is critical to harnessing the power of nanotechnology.
Aug 29, 07: A person's entire life could one day be recorded by a network of intelligent sensors, according to a senior scientist.
Aug 29, 07: A "Spiderman" suit that enables its wearer to scale vertical walls like the comic and movie superhero could one day be a reality, according to a study. Natural technology used by spiders and geckos could help a human climb the side of a building or hang upside down from a roof, the analysis suggests. Both spiders and geckos possess tiny "hairs" that allow them to stick to surfaces. Some studies suggest that geckos can hold hundreds of times their own body weight.
. . In 2002, US research suggested this adhesion in geckos was due to very weak intermolecular forces produced by the billions of hair-like structures which are arranged in a hierarchical structure on each gecko foot. These "van der Waals" forces arise when unbalanced electrical charges around molecules attract one another. The cumulative attractive force of billions of gecko hairs allows the reptiles to scurry up walls and even hang upside down on polished glass.
. . But the bigger the surface that needs to stick, the lower its adhesion strength. So a glove able to fit a man's hand, and covered with artificial gecko hairs, should not be as sticky as a gecko's foot. The Turin-based researcher proposes that carbon nanotubes could be used as an artificial alternative to the gecko's hairs.
. . Professor Pugno also outlined three properties which a real Spiderman suit must demonstrate. Firstly, and most obviously, it must be able to demonstrate strong adhesive properties. Secondly, the suit must be able to detach easily from a surface after it has stuck. Thirdly, the suit must, to some degree, be able to clean itself.
Aug 29, 07: The latter requirement is considered important because dirt particles could get in the way, interfering with the adhesive properties of the suit. One way to do it is to make the suit "superhydrophobic", so that it strongly repels water. As water droplets are forced away from the contact areas of the outfit, they should wash away particles of dirt.
Aug 28, 07: [This is more important than it first seems...] China is drafting a law which will allow scientists to report failures with experiments freely without losing face or affecting future funding, state media said.
Aug 23, 07: Dr. Lenton was one of nearly 200 scientists who attended the International Conference on Breath Odor Research this week in Chicago. Attendees ranged from dentists, chemists and microbiologists to psychologists and even flavor researchers.
. . Their research ran the gamut from studies on the most effective natural flavors for treating bad breath --cinnamon is a good choice-- to the development of an artificial nose for sniffing out oral malodor and links between exhaled air and disease.
. . For most, bad breath occurs when bacteria in the mouth breaks down proteins, producing volatile sulfur compounds that make for foul-smelling breath.
Dry mouth, tooth decay, certain prescription drugs, sinus problems, even diseases like diabetes can cause bad breath.
. . Most bad breath originates in the mouth, and about 90% of the smell comes from the tongue. Lenton said good oral care is the best weapon for routine bad breath. She recommends regular brushing and flossing, a tongue scraper to remove bacteria from the back of the tongue, and a final rinse with antibacterial mouthwash.
. . For some, however, it is not actual bad breath that's the problem. Lenton said anywhere from 4 to 17% of the people who seek treatment for breath odor are convinced they have bad breath --even though they do not. It is a condition some refer to as halitophobia, or the fear of bad breath, and it can interfere with daily life. "It's an obsessive compulsive disorder."
Aug 22, 07: Diamonds more than 4 billion years old --nearly as old as the Earth itself-- have been discovered in Western Australia, giving scientists vital clues about the early history of our planet. Found trapped in zircon crystals in the Jack Hills region, the small gems are the oldest identified fragments of the Earth's crust.
. . The time between the creation of the Earth around 4.5 billion years ago and the formation of the oldest known rocks some 500 million years later is known as the Hadean period --the "dark ages" of geology. Many geologists have traditionally thought of it as a time when the surface of the planet was a mass of molten lava. But the discovery of the ancient diamonds challenges that view.
. . Martina Menneken of Westfalische Wilhelms-U Muenster, Germany, and colleagues said the presence of diamonds --which are created under intense pressure-- implied there was a relatively thick continental crust as early as 4.25 billion years ago. This suggests it may have taken only around 200 million years for the Earth's surface to cool enough for water to condense and oceans to form.
. . Radioactive dating showed the crystals from Western Australia varied in age from 3.06 billion to 4.25 billion years, making them almost 1 billion years older than the previous oldest-known diamonds.
Aug 21, 07: At IBM, manipulating magnetic fields are out, and spin-polarized electrons are in.
. . IBM has linked with Japan's TDK to develop so-called spin torque transfer RAM (random access memory) or STT-RAM. In STT-RAM, an electric current is applied to a magnet to change the direction of the magnetic field. The direction of the magnetic field (up-and-down or left-to-right) causes a change in resistance, and the different levels of resistance register as 1s or 0s.
. . Under the current plan, IBM and TDK, an integral player in magnetic recording components for hard drives, will develop a 65-nanometer prototype within the next four years.
. . Grandis, a Silicon Valley start-up, is also trying to commercialize STT-RAM. Grandis is making samples for potential customers in its current facility and hopes to hit the market late next year.
. . Previously, IBM had been working on a more conventional type of magnetic memory called MRAM. However, the company has been having trouble shrinking the transistors on these chips.
Aug 21, 07: A new concept for a time machine could possibly enable distant future generations to travel into the past, research now suggests. Unlike past ideas for time machines, this new concept does not require exotic, theoretical forms of matter. Still, this new idea requires technology far more advanced than anything existing today, and major questions remain as to whether any time machine would ever prove stable enough to enable actual travel back in time.
. . Time machine researchers often investigate gravity, which essentially arises when matter bends space and time. Time travel research is based on bending space-time so far that time lines actually turn back on themselves to form a loop, technically known as a "closed time-like curve."
. . "We know that bending does happen all the time, but we want the bending to be strong enough and to take a special form where the lines of time make closed loops", said theoretical physicist Amos Ori at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. "We are trying to find out if it is possible to manipulate space-time to develop in such a way."
. . Many scientists are skeptical as to whether or not time travel is possible. For instance, time machines often are thought to need an exotic form of matter with so-called "negative energy density." Such exotic matter has bizarre properties, including moving in the opposite direction of normal matter when pushed. Such matter could theoretically exist, but if it did, it might be present only in quantities too small for the construction of a time machine.
. . Ori's latest research suggests time machines are possible without exotic matter, eliminating a barrier to time travel. His work begins with a donut-shaped hole enveloped within a sphere of normal matter. "We're talking about these closed loops of time, and the simplest kind of closed loops are circles, which is why we have this ring-shaped hole", Ori explained. Inside this donut-shaped vacuum, space-time could get bent upon itself using focused gravitational fields to form a closed time-like curve. To go back in time, a traveler would race around inside the donut, going further back into the past with each lap.
. . "The machine is space-time itself", Ori said. "If we were to create an area with a warp like this in space that would enable time lines to close on themselves, it might enable future generations to return to visit our time." Ori emphasized one significant limitation of this time machine -—"it can't be used to travel to a time before the time machine was constructed."
. . A number of obstacles remain, however. The gravitational fields required to make such a closed time-like curve would have to be very strong, "on the order of what you might find close to a black hole", Ori said. "We don't have any way of creating such strong gravitational fields today, and we certainly have no way of manipulating any such gravitational fields."
. . Even if time machines were technically feasible, the gravitational fields involved need to be manipulated in very specific, accurate ways, and Ori said his calculations suggest any time machine could be very unstable, meaning "the tiniest deviations might keep one from working. We need to explore the problem of stability of time machines further."
. . Theoretical physicist Ken Olum of Tufts U in Medford, Mass., who did not participate in this study, was skeptical concerning how this new model claimed to sidestep prior theoretical objections to time travel.
. . Still, Olum noted, "It's important if it's right -—that there really is some kind of loophole. So this should be scrutinized very closely." The point of such work, he added, was to "expand the bounds of what's possible, what kind of things we can have and what kinds of things we cannot have."
Aug 21, 07: Perhaps the most popularized of the "Theories of Everything" is string theory, which describes particles as strands of energy vibrating at different "frequencies." To explain the point-like nature of particles, string theory holds that strings are wrapped up in 10 or 11 dimensions --six to seven more than are currently recognized.
. . The idea is similar to viewing a building from far away. At great distances it looks like a point, but moving closer it appears flat and eventually as a three-dimensional structure. Wrapped within the building are extra dimensions that become smaller and smaller: pipes, and nooks and crannies within the pipes, the spaces between the nooks and crannies and so on.
. . The inability so far for string theory to prove up to 11 tiny dimensions exist is a hang-up for many, but Jackson thinks some strings could have been stretched across the universe into "superstrings" --ones large enough to detect in space today.
Aug 21, 07: Researchers have figured out how to give an entire community a drug test using just a teaspoon of wastewater from a city's sewer plant.
Aug 21, 07: Astronomers using NASA's Swift X-ray telescope have detected a neutron star within 250 to 1,000 light-years of Earth, making it the closest neutron star ever known. If confirmed, it would be only the eighth known "isolated neutron star", or one that does not have supernova remnants, binary companions or radio pulsations.
. . Neutron stars are supernova leftovers that are too small to form black holes. Instead, the leftover gas and dust crams into a glowing, incredibly dense body only a few miles wide --a teaspoon, for example, would weigh millions of tons. "Either Calvera is an unusual example of a known type of neutron star, or it is some new type of neutron star, the first of its kind", Rutledge said.
. . Calvera's location high above the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy is part of its mystery, but researchers think the neutron star is the remnant of a star before exploding as a supernova. In order to reach its current position, it had to wander some distance out of the disk.
. . The explosion blows off the outer layers of the star, forming a supernova remnant. The central region of the star collapses under gravity, causing protons and electrons to combine to form neutrons --hence the name "neutron star".
Aug 21, 07: A giant underground experiment has given researchers their first glimpse into the heart of the sun and the subatomic particles that shine down on Earth everyday. Princeton researchers made the first real-time observations of low-energy solar neutrinos.
. . Scientists have long theorized how these particles, called neutrinos, are formed in the solar inferno, but direct proof has been hard to come by. Neutrinos can give scientists a priceless glimpse into the inner workings of the sun because they arrive on Earth virtually unchanged from when they left the sun's interior.
. . In stars about the size of Sol, most solar energy is produced by a complex chain of nuclear reactions that convert hydrogen into helium. These reactions can take several different routes, but they all end in the same product: sunshine.
. . Steps along two of the routes require the presence of the element beryllium, and physicists have theorized that these steps are responsible for creating about 10% of the sun's neutrinos.
. . The results confirmed the two nuclear steps that involve beryllium, showing that physicists have been on target at least about those routes to neutrinos. However, that confirmation makes scientists more certain that they are also correct about how the other processes that create sunlight work.
Aug 21, 07: Particle physicists have detected neutrinos, which are extremely lightweight particles that pour out of the sun and hardly interact into ordinary matter, but Turner said they make up an extremely small fraction of dark matter in the universe.
. . "We arrested one of the members of the gang, but not the leader of the gang", Turner said of neutrinos. He thinks the leader is actually a WIMP: a weakly interactive, massive particle. Unfortunately, WIMPS are just a theory so far.
. . The thinking goes that WIMPs are very heavy, yet like neutrinos they rarely bump into matter to produce a detectable signal. But the idea that WIMPS --such as theoretical axion or neutralino particles-- can bump into visible matter at all gives scientists hope. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search in the Soudan mine of Minnesota and other experiments below the ground should be sensitive enough to detect a WIMP.
. . Turner described dark energy as "really weird stuff", best thought of as an elastic, repulsive gravity that can't be broken down into particles. "We know what it does, but we don't know what it is."
Aug 16, 07: Earthquakes on long, straight faults can rupture faster than previously thought and trigger powerful shock waves that make quick-moving quakes even more destructive, according to a new study.
. . They hope to pinpoint the most dangerous faults in the world and better predict areas potentially at risk of greater damage from earthquakes. Earthquakes generally move, or rupture, at a pace of about 2.5 km to 3 km per second, a speed many researchers for a long time believed quakes could not exceed, Das said. But this study bolsters theories that they can, in fact, move much faster than that, she added.
. . Using more powerful computers, higher quality seismograms and new imaging techniques, the researchers showed that a 2001 earthquake in Central Tibet along the Kunlun fault line moved at about 5 kilometers per second. That quake was a magnitude 7.8.
. . The study also found that long, straight fault lines create the opportunity for these fast-moving quakes in an effect Das compared to driving in a car on a straight road where it is possible to build up a lot of speed.
. . Das turned her attention to California's San Andreas fault and found that many parts of it run in the kind of long, straight lines that make it prone to these quick quakes.
Aug 16, 07: Minuscule wind engines could help to take computing power to the next level, scientists believe. US researchers have developed a prototype device that creates a "breeze" made up of charged particles, or ions, to cool computer chips. The "ionic wind", the scientists say, will help to manage the heat generated by increasingly powerful, yet ever-shrinking devices.
. . Conventional cooling technologies using fans are limited because they can suffer from air-flow problems. As the spinning blades waft air over a chip, the molecules nearest to the chip can get stuck and remain stationary, hindering the cooling effect.
. . But the new experimental wind engine employs a different strategy. The prototype, which is attached to a mock computer chip, works by shifting charged particles from one end of the device to the other. As a voltage is applied to the ionic engine, positively charged particles (ions) are produced, and are dragged towards a negatively charged wire (a cathode), forcing constant air movement.
. . When it was used in conjunction with a conventional fan, air molecules, rather than getting stuck, were dragged across the chip's surface boosting cooling. "A 250% improvement (3.5 times the cooling rate of a conventional fan) is quite unusual." The team expects the device to be introduced into products within the next three years.
Aug 16, 07: A paradox of measuring solar rays without optic tools such as mirrors and lenses may have been solved by two physicists.
. . A new instrument, designed by Darrell Judge and Leonid Didkovsky, both at the U of Southern California, could provide a hassle-free technique for measuring the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) range of solar radiation. Much important solar research deals with detecting and measuring the high-energy particles in this range, particularly those released during solar flares. A better understanding of solar flares could lead to the development of an early-warning system for weather forecasters, satellite operators, astronauts and others.
. . Having no optical surfaces to calibrate, the OFS should require no maintenance. "It can look at the sun day after day, year after year, without harm."
Aug 12, 07: In deep underground laboratories around the globe, a high-tech race is on to spot dark matter, the invisible cosmic glue that's believed to keep galaxies from spinning apart.
. . Whoever discovers the nature of dark matter would solve one of modern science's greatest mysteries and be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize. Yet it's more than just a brainy exercise. Deciphering dark matter —-along with a better understanding of another mysterious force called dark energy-— could help reveal the fate of the universe.
. . Previous hunts for the hypothetical matter have turned up nothing, but that has not deterred some two dozen research teams from plumbing the darkness of idled mines and tunnel shafts for a fleeting glimpse. Dark-matter detecting machines today are more powerful than previous generations, but even the best has failed so far to catch a whiff of the stuff. Many teams are now building bigger detectors or toying with novel technologies to aid in the hunt.
. . The prevailing theory is that it's made up of tiny, exotic particles left over from the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Dark matter, thought to make up a quarter of the universe's mass.
. . Knowing that dark matter exists is a far cry from knowing what it is. Most experiments are searching for theoretical particles called WIMPS —-or weakly interacting massive particles-— the leading dark-matter candidate.
. . The underground custom-built machines are all waiting for the rare moment when a WIMP hits the atomic nucleus and causes an elastic recoil. Experiments have to run below ground to prevent cosmic rays from interfering with the results. Subterranean experiments are humming in an idled iron mine in Minnesota and in caverns in Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan and Russia.
. . The front-runner for the past several years, called CDMS for cryogenic dark matter search, uses ultracold silicon and germanium crystals each the size of a hockey puck to sift out telltale vibrations of a WIMP collision. Newer contraptions use noble gas such as xenon or emerging technologies like superheated liquid bubble chambers.
. . NASA next year plans to launch the GLAST telescope to study gamma ray bursts that may be created by dark matter collisions. And it's possible researchers will create dark matter in the lab —-like at the Large Hadron Collider buried beneath the Swiss-French border-— even before they confirm it in the cosmos or under ground.
. . Not all dark matter searches are betting their money on WIMPS. The Axion Dark Matter Experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been searching for another theoretical particle called axions. The first phase of the project ended in 2003 with no signal. It recently got the green light from the Energy Department to upgrade the experiment.
Aug 9, 07: A Japanese geneticist said today his research team created the world's first fourth-generation cloned pig, an achievement that could help scientists in medical and other research.
Aug 3, 07: Animals that have eaten genetically modified (GMO) feed show no residual traces in their eggs or meat, the EU's food safety agency said.
July 31, 07: Scientists have discovered the first gene which appears to increase the odds of being left-handed. The Oxford U-led team believe carrying the gene may also slightly raise the risk of developing psychotic mental illness such as schizophrenia.
. . The gene, LRRTM1, appears to play a key role in controlling which parts of the brain take control of specific functions, such as speech and emotion. They also believe people with the LRRTM1 gene may have a raised risk of schizophrenia, a condition often linked to unusual balances of brain function.
. . The brain is set up in an asymmetrical way. In right-handed people, the left side of the brain usually controls speech and language, and the right side controls emotions. However, in left-handed people, the opposite is often true, and the researchers believe the LRRTM1 gene is responsible for this flip. About 10% of people are left-handed.
. . There is evidence to suggest there are some significant differences between left and right-handed people. Australian research published last year found left-handed people can think quicker when carrying out tasks such as playing computer games or playing sport. And French researchers concluded that being left-handed could be an advantage in hand-to-hand combat.
. . However, being left-handed has also been linked to a greater risk of some diseases, and to having an accident.
July 31, 07: Danish agricultural engineers have built a robot to help farmers with weeds. The Hortibot is about a meter square, is self-propelled, and uses global positioning system (GPS). It can recognize 25 different kinds of weeds and eliminate them by using its weed-removing attachments. It’s also very environmentally friendly because it can reduce herbicide usage by 75%. But so far, it’s only a prototype and the Danish engineers need to find a manufacturer for distribution.
. . Depending on the needs of the farmer and the kind of vegetable crop, Hortibot has a variety of weed-removing attachments and methods. It can manually pick weeds, spray, or remove them using flames or a laser. It could work during extended periods of time. And secondly because it should not cost more than US$70K.
July 29, 07: A satellite that can measure tiny variations in the Earth's gravity field will be one of Europe's most challenging space missions to date. Goce, due for launch next year, looks like a spyplane from a movie. Its arrow shape, fins, and electric engine help keep the satellite stable as it flies through the wisps of air still present at an altitude of 260km.
. . Goce data will have many uses, probing hazardous volcanic regions and bringing new insight into ocean behavior. The latter, in particular, is a major driver for the mission.
. . By combining the gravity data with information about sea-surface height gathered by other spacecraft, scientists will be able to track the direction and speed of ocean currents. "If we want to improve our climate models, then we need to improve our knowledge of how the oceans move. To get a proper handle on sea level rise, for example, demands that ocean height measurements from satellites be combined with gravity and tide gauge readings and even GPS.
. . The planet is far from a smooth sphere; the radius of the globe at the equator is about 20km longer than at the poles. This ellipsoid is then marked by tall mountain ranges and cut by deep ocean trenches. The Earth's interior layers are also not composed of perfect shells of homogenous rock --some regions are thicker or denser.
. . The 'standard' acceleration due to gravity at the Earth's surface is 9.8m per second squared. In reality, the figure varies from 9.78 at the equator to 9.83 at the poles.
. . The instrument's performance is phenomenal: it will register accelerations that are less than one millionth of a millionth of the g-force we experience when standing on the Earth. But to make the most of this sensitivity, Goce has to fly so low it will flirt with the top of the atmosphere; and that has proved to be a headache for the engineers because any buffeting on the spacecraft from air molecules will introduce noise into the data. So, Goce uses an innovative drag-free propulsion system that throttles a special engine up and down to make compensations.
July 26, 07: Researchers working with laboratory mice have found a way to reverse the effects of cocaine on the brain, according to a study that could lead to better treatments for drug addicts.
July 25, 07: Suspended in laser light, thousands of atoms pair up and dance, each moving in perfect counterpoint to its partner. They are the building blocks of what may one day become an enormously powerful quantum computer capable of solving in seconds problems that take today's fastest machines years to crack, U.S. physicists said.
. . Porto's team isolated pairs of atoms in a lattice of light formed by six laser beams all fixed on one point, suspending the atoms in a uniform pattern. "There is no container. It is levitated by the laser beams." They trapped these pairs in wells or dips formed by ripples in the light. When forced together in tight spaces, the atom pairs began to oscillate between zero and one, passing in and out of a state of entanglement.
July 24, 07: The American military is interested in a working device because unlike traditional chips, nano mechanical devices are not susceptible to electromagnetic pulses, which could be used by an enemy to knock out computing systems. The mechanical devices run much cooler than silicon and should therefore not suffer from the same problem.
July 24, 07: Mechanical computers are nothing new. The remains of a 2,000 year old analogue computer known as the Antikythera mechanism were discovered in Greece in 1902. And during the nineteenth century, English mathematician and engineer Charles Babbage designed various steam-powered mechanical computers.
His "difference engine", for example, consisted of more than 25,000 individual levers, ratchets and cogs and weighed more than 13 tons. Although none of his designs were ever finished, recent reconstructions by London's Science Museum show they were capable of carrying out complex calculations.
. . The blueprint for a tiny, ultra-robust mechanical computer has been outlined by US researchers. The scientists say the machine would be built from nanometer sized components. Chips based on the design could be used in places, such as car engines, where silicon can be too delicate.
. . "We are not going to compete with high-speed silicon, but where we are competitive is for all of those mundane applications where you need microprocessors which can be slow and cheap as well." The team's tiny, hypothetical number-cruncher could be built out of ultra-hard materials such as diamond or piezoelectric materials, which change shape when an electric current is applied.
. . Unlike today's computers, which are based on the movement of electrons around circuits to do useful calculations, the nano mechanical computer would use the push and pull of each tiny part to carry out calculations.
July 23, 07: U.S. researchers today unveiled a computerized prosthetic ankle and foot that could change the lives of a growing number of amputees returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.
July 18, 07: About 450,000 years ago, a "megaflood" breached a giant natural dam near the Dover strait and began the formation of the English Channel , according to a study. Following this first disastrous flood, a second deluge finished the job.
. . "The first was probably 100 times greater than the average discharge of the Mississippi River", said Sanjeev Gupta, a geologist at Imperial College London and co-author of the study. "But that's a conservative estimate -—it could have been much larger."
. . Prior to the first megaflood, which originated from an enormous lake of freshwater in what is now the North Sea, a quaint river valley was the only waterway obstructing France and Britain. Inattentive to building materials, nature contained the monstrous, ice-locked lake with chalky stone.
. . When the 19-mile-wide barrier failed, the deluge that followed carved an impressive basin 10 meters deep and 50km wide in a matter of weeks. "The dimensions are enormous", Gupta said. "This was when sea levels were about 100 meters lower than today, when a lot of ocean water was locked up in ice sheets."
. . An even larger and more cataclysmic event, however, outdid the first megaflood, sometime prior to 180,000 years ago. This second deluge created the characteristic English Channel bottom seen today. Gupta is uncertain what initiated the second megaflood, but he thinks a large embankment of glacial deposits could have released freshwater.
July 5, 07: A tiny generator powered by natural vibrations could soon be helping keep heart pacemakers working. The generator has been developed to power devices where replacing batteries is very difficult. Its expected initially to be used to power wireless sensors on equipment in manufacturing plants. The creators say the generator is up to 10 times more efficient than similar devices.
. . The tiny device --less than one cc in size-- uses vibrations in the world around it to make magnets on a cantilever at the heart of the device wobble to generate power. Although the generator produces only microwatts, this was more than enough to power sensors.
. . In a pacemaker, the beating of the human heart would be strong enough to keep the magnets inside the device wobbling. It could also be used to power sensors attached to road and rail bridges to monitor the health of such structures.
July 4, 07: Titan is a transmission electron microscope, the first of its kind in the UK and one of only a handful found in labs around the world. When it is running at full power it will be used to probe everything from new materials for ultra fast computers to tissue samples that may shed light on diseases such as Alzheimer's. The £2.4m ($4.8m) scope is capable of imaging objects just 0.14 nanometers in diameter, useful for probing the atomic structure and chemistry of materials.
With a machine that is able to image individual atoms, even the vibrations caused by talking too loudly are enough to shunt a sample. When scientists are operating at such small scales, tiny shifts can appear huge. "The drift rate has got to be better than one nanometer per minute." One nanometer is a billionth of a meter. "It's about how much your finger nail grows in one minute.
. . It works by firing electrons through an incredibly thin sample, just microns (one millionth of a meter) thick, and observing the changes to the particles as they pass through and out the other side.
. . The trajectories of the electrons can be mapped, like snooker balls scattering on a table. Knowing their trajectory as they exit allows scientists to build up a picture of the internal structure of the sample. In addition, measuring the energy lost by electrons gives scientists clues about the identity of the atoms in the sample and how they bond together.
July 3, 07: Scientists proposed a new theory this week for how identical twins are formed as embryos, in a discovery that may improve a broad range of artificial reproduction techniques.
. . Using specialized computer software, they took photos every two minutes of 33 embryos growing in a laboratory, documenting for the first time the early days of twin development.
. . Payne and colleagues found that identical twins are formed after an embryo essentially collapses, splitting the progenitor cells —-those that contain the body's fundamental genetic material-— in half. That leaves the same genetic material divided in two on opposite sides of the embryo. Eventually, two separate fetuses develop.
. . While conducting the research, Payne also found a possible explanation for why in-vitro fertilization techniques are more likely to create twins. Only about three pairs of twins per thousand deliveries occur as a result of natural conception. But for IVF deliveries, there are nearly 21 pairs of twins for every thousand.
. . To date, scientists have been at a loss to explain the discrepancy. Payne suggests that the laboratory conditions in which embryos are grown — in solutions that attempt to reproduce the uterus environment — are different enough to somehow provoke the development of twins.
July 2, 07: The first test-tube baby created from an egg matured in the laboratory and then frozen has been born in Canada, in a breakthrough offering hope to women with cancer and others unsuited to normal IVF treatment.
Jun 29, 07: Imagine something that looks like a sheet of glass, but if you could get really close... okay, electron microscope-close, you'd see a carpet of tiny fibers.
. . This newly developed nanomaterial can be made to repel or attract water, oil and dirt, and can even conduct electricity. The potential applications are mind-boggling. They'd create almost self-cleaning surfaces; windows would stay clear longer. By making them attractive, they'd make a good anti-fog coating, since they'd pull at water droplets and make them flatten out on a surface.
. . Since they can conduct electricity, organic LEDs can be embedded in the surface and powered without wires.
Jun 28, 07: A Japanese company has created a home appliance the size of a paperback novel that can warn of earthquakes seconds before they strike. Japan accounts for about 20% of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater. Using the early warning system network and data provided by Japan's Meteorological Agency (JAMA) via the Internet, the appliance sounds off a loud countdown of up to 20 seconds to the moment the tremor begins. The appliance sends alerts once it detects primary waves, or the first waves of an earthquake that do not cause major rattling but travel faster than the secondary waves that are responsible for the actual shaking. The alerts could precede the shaking by 10 to 20 seconds, although the period would be much shorter --and in some cases absent-- if the tremor's center is near.
. . Security firm SunShine Co. Ltd says this should give people enough time to hide under tables, turn off gas and fire sources. The JAMA warnings will also be broadcast on television and radio and sent to mobile phones equipped to receive them, which will go on sale later this year.
Jun 28, 07: Scientists have taken a first step toward making synthetic life by transferring genetic material from one bacterium into another, transforming the second microbe into a copy of the first. They intend to use their technique to custom-design bacteria to perform functions such as producing artificial fuel or cleaning up toxic waste, the researchers report.
. . "This is equivalent to changing a Macintosh computer to a PC by inserting a new piece of software", Craig Venter, a genome pioneer who now heads his own institute in Rockville, Maryland, told reporters.
. . Venter has been trying for years to create a microbe from scratch. This is not quite it, but his team re-programmed one species of bacteria by adding in the genetic material from a closely related species. They gene-engineered the replacement chromosome to resist an antibiotic and then flooded their experiment with the drug. The bacteria that survived all carried only the genes that had been spliced in.
Jun 27, 07: If it weren't for the hot rocks down below Earth's crust, most of North America would be below sea level, report researchers who say the significance of Earth's internal heat has been overlooked.
. . Without it, mile-high Denver would be 727 feet below sea level, the scientists calculate, and New York City, more than a quarter-mile below. Los Angeles would be almost three-quarters of a mile beneath the Pacific. In fact, most of the US would disappear, except for some major Western mountain ranges, according to research at the U of Utah.
. . "Researchers have failed to appreciate how heat makes rock in the continental crust and upper mantle expand to become less dense and more buoyant", said Derrick Hasterok. In what they said was the first calculation of its kind, the researchers said heat inside the planet accounts for half the reason land rises above sea level or higher to form mountains.
. . The Utah team calculated how much of North America would sink if the engine of heat was taken away, leaving regions as relatively cold as the bottom of the vast Canadian shield —-bedrock that hasn't changed for billions of years.
. . They did it by estimating temperatures under the North American plate based on previous experiments that bounced seismic waves deep underground. The waves travel faster through colder, denser rock. That data allowed the researchers to calculate how much of an area's elevation is due to the thickness and composition of its rock and how much is due to the heating and expansion of rock.
. . Chicago would sink 2,229 feet below sea level. Most of the country, in fact, would disappear, leaving only ridges of the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra-Nevada Range and the the area west of the Cascade Range in the Pacific Northwest.
. . The Colorado plateau, a major uplift of land driven by 1,200-degree underground heat, consists of much the same layers of rock found deep under the Great Plains, where the base of the Earth's crust is relatively cooler, 930 degrees
. . Their scenario actually lifts Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. The region sits on a cold slab of oceanic crust that is diving under the continent, insulating the land mass from the Earth's heat. Heat from Earth's deep interior and from radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium in Earth's crust will stay around for a long time to come. Even if the planet's interior cooled, it would take billions of years for continents to sink.
Jun 28, 07: First proposed in the early eighties by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, the quantum computer is an idea that defies common sense. Whereas today's computers obey the classical physics that govern our everyday lives, a quantum computer relies on the seemingly magical physics associated with very small particles, such as atoms.
. . With a classical computer, transistors store bits of information, and each bit has a value of either 1 or 0. Turn a transistor on, for instance, and it represents a 1. Turn it off and it holds a 0. With a quantum computer, the classical bit gives way to something called a quantum bit, or qubit. A qubit is stored not in a transistor or some other classical system, but in a quantum system, such as the spin of an atom's nucleus. An "up" spin might indicate a 1, and a "down" spin might indicate a 0.
. . The trick is that, thanks to the superposition principle of quantum mechanics, a quantum system can exist in multiple states at the same time. At any given moment, the spin of a nucleus can be both up and down, holding values of both a 1 and a 0. Put two qubits together and they can hold four values simultaneously (00, 01, 10, and 11). That makes a quantum computer exponentially faster than the classical model—fast enough, for instance, to crack today's most secure encryption algorithms.
. . But there's a problem. When a quantum system interacts with the classical world, it decoheres: It loses its ability to exist simultaneously in multiple states, collapsing into a single state. This means that when you read a group of qubits, they become classical bits, capable of holding only a single value.
. . Bell researchers are tying quantum systems into knots. "In exotic circumstances, such as very low temperature and high magnetic field, we're essentially grabbing onto the particles and moving them around each other, forming knots in what we call the space-time path", Simon explains. "If you can form the right knot, you can do the right quantum computation."
. . At IBM's Almaden Research Center, just south of South Francisco, Dharmendra Modha and his team are chasing the holy grail of artificial intelligence. They aren't looking for ways of mimicking the human brain, they're looking to build one—neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse.
. . Three years into this Cognitive Computing project, Modha's team isn't just building a brain from an existing blueprint. They're helping to create the blueprint as they build. It's reverse engineering of the highest order.
. . Their first goal is to build a "massively parallel cortical simulator" that re-creates the brain of a mouse, an organ 3,500 times less complex than a human brain (if you count each individual neuron and synapse). But even this is an undertaking of epic proportions. A mouse brain houses over 16 million neurons, with more than 128 billion synapses running between them. Even a partial simulation stretches the boundaries of modern hardware.
. . The team has been able to fashion a kind of digital mouse brain that needs about 6 seconds to simulate 1 second of real thinking time. That's still a long way from a true mouse-size simulation, and it runs on a Blue Gene/L supercomputer with 8,192 processors, four terabytes of memory, and 1 Gbps of bandwidth running to and from each chip. "Even a mouse-scale cortical simulation places an extremely heavy load on a supercomputer."
. . The team plans on tackling a rat cortex, which is about three and a half times larger. And then a cat brain, which is ten times larger than that. And so on, until they've built a cortical simulator on a human scale.
Jun 20, 07: DARPA, the crazy research arm of the Pentagon, is looking to make science fiction a reality. Their current goal? To create shoot-through, invisible, healable body armor. Yeah, we're talking armor that soldiers can see and fire through on one side, but is invisible and impenetrable on the other.
Jun 17, 07: Researchers in Brazil are claiming to have established as a scientific fact that the Amazon is the longest river in the world. The Amazon is recognized as the world's largest river by volume, but has generally been regarded as second in length to the River Nile in Egypt.
. . The claim follows an expedition to Peru that is said to have established a new starting point further south. It puts the Amazon at 6,800km, compared to the Nile's 6,695km. The Amazon is now said to begin in an ice-covered mountain in southern Peru called Mismi. Researchers travelled for 14 days, sometimes in freezing temperatures, to establish the location at an altitude of 5,000m.
Jun 16, 07: They will be the earth's roundest spheres, crafted by Australian scientists as part of an international hunt to find a new global standard kilogram. Ever since scientists discovered that the current standard --a bar of platinum and iridium held in a French vault since 1889-- was slowly deteriorating, the search has been on for a replacement.
. . Using a single crystal of silicon-28 grown by Russian and German scientists over three years, a team of Sydney scientists and engineers will grind and polish two silvery balls, each weighing precisely one kg, with imperfections of less than 35 millionths of a millimeter. "We are doing everything to really create a perfect object. It's not only near-perfect in roundness, but also the crystal purity, the atomic species and so on."
. . The two balls will take 12 weeks to create and, because they are made from a stable element, they will not fall victim to moisture, corrosion and contamination like the current kilogram standard. The spheres will be a step along the perfect kilogram road, with the project's ultimate aim to re-define the kilogram in terms of numbers of atoms, rather than an object open to damage from earthquake or environmental changes.
. . "The aim is not to change the value of the kilogram, but to ensure its stability for all future times", Giardini said. "It will no longer depend on an actual physical object and this is going to allow us to relate the mass to the individual atoms."
. . On completion, the spheres will be measured for volume in Australia, Germany and Japan, then measured for mass. Belgian scientists will look at the molar mass of the crystal used to calculate the number of molecules in each sphere.
Jun 16, 07: An experimental jet engine has been successfully tested at speeds of up to 11,000 kph, or 10 times the speed of sound, during trials in Australia's outback, defense scientists said.
. . The experimental scramjet engine is an air-breathing supersonic combustion engine being developed by Australian and U.S. defense scientists that researchers hope will lead to super-high speed flight.
. . Scramjets need a rocket to propel the vehicle to high-speed before the engine can take over. They also need to operate in the thin atmosphere far above the altitude of commercial airliners. It could presage new low-cost ways to launch satellites into space.
Jun 14, 07: Scientists in Costa Rica have run a plasma rocket engine continuously for a record of more than four hours, the latest achievement in a mission to cut costs and travel time for spacecraft.
. . The Ad Astra ("to the stars") Rocket Company, led by Costa Rican-born former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, said on Wednesday it hopes to use its rocket engines to stabilize space stations in a few years, and then to power a trip to Mars within two decades. "The first objective is to move small spacecraft in low orbit by 2010."
. . Scientists believe propulsion engines that run on plasma, a material composed of atoms stripped of electrons and found in high-pressure and -temperature environments like stars and lightning bolts, will be faster and cheaper than rockets currently used in space travel.
. . Considered the fourth state of matter because it is neither a solid, liquid or gas, plasma can reach millions of degrees, making it a potentially light but powerful fuel. It's hoped that the engine, which uses Variable Specific-Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket technology conceived in the 1970s, could eventually cut travel time to Mars by about a third, to around three months.
Jun 13, 07: US scientists have identified the genes behind silk spun by the black widow spider, which they say could help make super-strong body armor. With that genetic code, they plan to synthesise the so-called "dragline" silk --which is apparently one of the strongest in the spider kingdom. The biologists are using tomato plants into which they are injecting genetic material in the hope that the tomato seed will yield this spider-silk constituent.
Jun 13, 07: Maryland beekeepers have lost 45% of their bees since last year —-but the death toll is likely attributable to weather, not a national trend of mysterious die-offs, Maryland's top bee inspector said.
. . An unusually warm November and December likely caused high fatalities in the state's 8,200 bee colonies, said Jerry Fischer, state apiary inspector. In a briefing to the state Agricultural Commission, Fischer said the warm early winter fooled bees into continuing reproduction —-called "brood bearing." When temperatures dropped in January, Fischer said, the bees died.
. . In Maryland, though, commercial colonies have been spared the disorder.
Jun 12, 07: Testing chemicals in live animals can be expensive and slow, and newer test-tube methods may work better, the National Research Council reported.
Jun 7, 07: There's a new wrinkle in the argument over patenting life: can you patent synthetic life?
. . Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute have applied for a U.S. patent on a minimal bacterial genome that they built themselves. According to the patent application, it's "a minimal set of protein-coding genes which provides the information required for replication of a free-living organism in a rich bacterial culture medium." The ETC group sent out a press release this morning which I have to say comes off as terribly alarmist using terms like "Microbe-soft", evoking Dolly the cloned sheep and naming the organism Synthia.
. . The ETA group also says in April the institute filed an international patent application at the World Intellectual Property organization. Craig Venter is not named in the patent, which was filed on October 12, 2006.
Jun 7, 07: imagine an aircraft able to fly nonstop for five years. That's exactly what the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has asked aerospace companies to build, for a new aerial surveillance project that DARPA calls VULTURE.
. . So serious is DARPA about demonstrating five-year flight duration that it scheduled an industry-day event on June 7 so it could discuss the project in detail with likely bidders.
. . DARPA wants VULTURE, which will almost certainly be solar-powered, to be able to carry a 1,000-pound payload. This would include onboard sensors and communications equipment and would generate 5 kw of electricity to power the aircraft's systems.
Jun 5, 07: Digital paper that can speak to you has been created by scientists. Researchers from Mid-Sweden U have constructed an interactive paper billboard that emits recorded sound in response to a user's touch. The prototype display uses conductive inks, which are sensitive to pressure, and printed speakers.
. . The team envisages that the technology could be used by advertisers, and in the future, it might even be employed for product packaging.
Jun 5, 07: A major new particle accelerator is to be built at Hamburg, Germany, that is capable of producing super-brilliant, ultra-short flashes of X-ray light. The intense beam made in the 3.4km-long machine will probe how matter is pieced together atom by atom. The properties of the X-ray Free-Electron Laser (XFEL) should make it possible, for example, to film the very moment a chemical reaction occurs.
. . It becomes operational in 2013. The insights they gain are expected to lead to a raft of discoveries across biology, chemistry, physics and Earth sciences. "This will be a fundamental research tool that is needed, for example, to make advances in the pharmaceutical industry and in the domain of new materials, in particular nano-materials. It will also lead to a lot of advances in plasma physics, in high-energy density matter because its pulses generate plasmas in conditions that you cannot generate any other way. This is relevant for astrophysics and for understanding fusion for energy production."
May 22, 07: Dark-colored fungi devour radiation and convert it to fuel & edible biomass, researchers said, in a study that may offer applications from more efficient solar cells to feeding astronauts in space. The study may also explain why it feels so good to soak up the sun on the beach, the researchers report.
. . The fungi use the same compound as people do --melanin, the pigment that makes both skin and truffles dark. "Just as the pigment chlorophyll converts sunlight into chemical energy that allows green plants to live and grow, our research suggests that melanin can use a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum -- ionizing radiation -- to benefit the fungi containing it", Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York said.
. . "It's pure speculation but not outside the realm of possibility that melanin could be providing energy to skin cells", said Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of microbiology and immunology at Einstein.
. . Their experiment was fairly simple. Casadevall was reading about fungi found growing in and around the reactor at Chernobyl, closed and heavily contaminated by an accident in 1986. So they grew some fungi, some types with melanin and others without melanin, and zapped them with gamma radiation. The dark fungi grew better when radiated.
. . Scientists have discovered life in recent years that does not rely on the sun --sulfur-eating bacteria and extremophiles that live deep beneath the sea or under Antarctic ice. Perhaps fungi can live in seemingly inhospitable places as well, said Casadevall, so long as there is some radiation.
. . His lab will test fungi against a range of electromagnetic radiation, from ultraviolet light to visible light. They will also test species of edible fungi, including mushrooms.
May 22, 07: A Chinese zoo is monitoring its animals extra carefully to study how their behaviour predicts earthquakes. They'll set up observation points near peacocks, frogs, snakes, turtles, deer and squirrels to monitor and record their behavior. "Hibernating animals, for example, will wake up and flee from their caves, while the aquatic ones will leap from the water's surface. Mice and snakes, for instance, normally do not leave their hiding places during day time, but you will see them scurrying about when an earthquake is about to strike. Of all the creatures on Earth, snakes are perhaps the most sensitive to earthquakes."
. . According to the seismology office, abnormal behaviour can be observed among 130 animals before an earthquake.
May 21, 07: Liquefaction: the process of soil turning from a solid into a liquid as the result of shaking. Liquefaction happens when saturated soil is released from high pressure. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the storm surge, which reached a high of 30 feet along some parts of the Mississippi coast, inundated the sand, saturating it and pressing down on it. But when the water retreated, the pressure disappeared, causing the sand to decompress so quickly that no friction held the sand particles together. “Then the sand would just flow out like a heavy liquid”, Young said, which can undermine buildings and bridges and cause them to collapse.
. . Similar processes can happen in tsunamis.
May 17, 07: When professor Yukio Hirose at Kanazawa U in Japan heard that pigeons avoided perching or pooping on a 120-year-old bronze statue (pictured) in a local park, he wondered why. The answer: a chemical element called gallium in the bronze seems to keep the birds at bay.
May 17, 07: A cheap glue that gets stronger at high temperatures might be useful around the house, but make it 100,000 times thinner than a human hair and you have nanoglue, a sticky substance that could help make extremely tiny computer chips.
. . Developed by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, nanoglue is made from ultrathin materials that are already commercially available. "Our work shows the possibility of having organic-based nanolayers that are about a 1,000 times thinner than the thinnest organic-based glues."
. . The glue has a backbone of carbon molecules. On one end of the chain is silica and oxygen and on the other is sulfur. These different end molecules act as hooks that bind with other surfaces. Ramanath topped off the chain with a thin layer of copper that acts as a protective coating that helps keep the molecules intact.
May 15, 07: In testing, a startup called Shark Defense has found that sharks dramatically avoid magnets made from neodymium, iron and boron.
May 11, 07: Scientists have developed an artificial plastic blood which could act as a substitute in emergencies. Researchers at Sheffield U said their creation could be a huge advantage in war zones. They say that the artificial blood is light to carry, does not need to be kept cool and can be kept for longer.
. . The new blood is made up of plastic molecules that have an iron atom at their core, like hemoglobin, that can carry oxygen through the body. The scientists said the artificial blood could be cheap to produce and they were looking for extra funding to develop a final prototype that would be suitable for biological testing.
May 11, 07: Scientists have known that the Hudson Bay region features lower gravity than surrounding areas. While two theories have emerged to explain the strange phenomenon, conclusive evidence has been elusive. One theory involved a change in the area's overlying glacial weight as the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted. The new results provide a crude map of the ice sheet’s structure as it was during the most recent ice age. Turns out, the now-melted ice left behind an imprint from which the Earth is still rebounding, and that imprint contributes to the weird gravity.
. . The gravity measurements reveal that the slight deformation could explain about 25 to 45% of the unusually low gravity that has persisted over a large section of Canada. The rest of the “missing gravity” can be explained by some sort of mantle tugging, the scientists say.
May 9, 07: Democrats said an Interior Department official who pressured government scientists to alter their research was just one example of a larger problem.
. . Julie MacDonald resigned last week as deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks after the department's inspector general said she bullied federal scientists and improperly leaked information about endangered species to private groups.
. . Democrats welcomed MacDonald's departure, but accused the administration of abdicating its responsibility to protect endangered species. "This is an agency that seems focused on one goal: weakening the law by administrative fiat, and it is doing much of the work shrouded from public view", said Rep. Nick Rahall , D-W.Va., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.
. . Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said MacDonald's resignation was "no gift to the country. She wandered around the department for three years changing documents and ... making determinations based on her beliefs." He and other Democrats pressed Scarlett to agree to review dozens of decisions in which MacDonald was involved, including a case in which she acknowledged giving internal agency documents to the California Farm Bureau and other organizations considering litigation against the government.
. . In another case, MacDonald demanded that scientists reduce the nesting range for the Southwest willow flycatcher from a radius of 2.1 miles to a radius of 1.8 miles, so it would not cross into California where her husband has a ranch, the inspector general said. Miller called that an outrage.
Apr 11, 07: Cornell researchers claim to have built one of the smallest organic light-emitting devices to date. The synthetic fibers, made of a compound based on ruthenium, are just 200 nm wide. They believe that their findings prove that tiny light-emission devices can be made with simple fabrication methods. Applications for the nanolamps could include integration into smaller and flexible electronics, sensing devices and microscopes.
And...
Apr 05, 07: Scientists at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated a nano-scale generating that could provide electricity to microscopic machines by harvesting different types of energy from their environment.
. . The generator can convert mechanical energy from environmental sources such as ultrasonic waves, mechanical vibration or blood flow into continuous direct-current electricity. The device could enable nano-machines that are integrated into silicon or even into the human body without requiring batteries or external power sources.
. . The complete electrode is positioned on top of the nanowire array, leaving just enough space to allow a “significant” number of the nanowires to swing free within the gaps created by the tips. Moved by mechanical energy such as waves or vibration, the nanowires periodically contact the tips, transferring their electrical charges. By capturing the tiny amounts of current produced by hundreds of nanowires kept in motion, the generators produce a direct current output in the nano-Ampere range
. . It could produce as much as 4 watts of power per cc. That does not sound much, but the electricity generated would be enough to power bio-sensors, environmental monitors and even nanoscale robots.
This event didn't take place in Paris or Milano, but at Cornell U during their Cornell Design League fashion show on April 21. It's now official: "nanotechnology has entered the fashion world." Fashion designers and fiber scientists have unified their efforts at Cornell to show a two-toned gold dress and a metallic denim jacket made of cotton fabrics coated with nanoparticles. And these garments can prevent colds and flu, destroy noxious gases and never need washing.
May 3, 07: As SETI's scientists plan for their first contact with other worlds, who better to consult with than anthropologists, who specialize in encounters with exotic cultures? And thus, over the past several years, the SETI Institute has repeatedly brought together anthropologists and scholars from other disciplines, in an attempt to bridge the gap between humans and extraterrestrials.
May 3, 07: The task of these savants is twofold: to try to uncover any universals of culture, and then apply these insights to constructing messages that might be intelligible to independently evolved civilizations. "Although it is impossible to predict the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence", admitted NASA's Chief Historian, Steven Dick, "the one certainty is that, if it exists, it will have undergone cultural evolution."
. . If extraterrestrials can build a radio transmitter or high powered laser beacon, we and they already have something vital in common. Indeed, there may be dolphin-like forms of intelligence in the oceans of other planets, but unless they can erect transmitters to send signals across interstellar space, we may never know of their existence. And to build the technology that makes such contact possible, it has often been argued, extraterrestrials would certainly need to know some of the same mathematics that we do. Extraterrestrials might not understand English or Chinese or Swahili, but they'd certainly be familiar with algebra and geometry.
. . Or would they? "Reliance on mathematics as a major means of communication with extraterrestrial intelligence may be misplaced", cautioned historian Shirley Woolf. In contrast to the view that mathematics is a direct reflection of the structure of the universe, which would necessarily be known by scientists on other worlds, Woolf emphasized a view espoused by some prominent cognitive scientists, that "mathematics is an artifact derived from the specific structure of human embodiment."
. . The simplest example might be the link between the way humans count and the number of digits we use for counting: it may not be a coincidence that humans have ten fingers and that we're also are very comfortable using a base 10 number system, where there are ten different digits that can be added, subtracted, and otherwise manipulated. For extraterrestrials with arms or tentacles ending in a different number of digits, other number systems may seem equally natural.
. . After all, we humans are quite capable of converting the numbers of everyday life into binary formats or an endless array of variations, and base 10 number systems are by no means universal even on Earth. But what if the differences run even deeper?
May 6, 07: Researchers have identified a link between a series of recently discovered earth movements that they believe may hold the key to better forecasting major earthquakes.
. . Instances of deep tremors, low-frequency and silent earth"quakes" have only been observed in the past two decades, with the advent of equipment like the Global Positioning System (GPS), and researchers have been studying them as disparate events. But scientists in Japan and the US say these events may be symptoms of what is known as a "slow earthquake", if they occur in the same place and around the same time.
. . Slow earthquakes, which can last for months, give off little or no seismic energy. The researchers said slow earthquakes occur in places where there are regular quakes. "Slow earthquakes occur very close to areas of regular earthquakes. Although slow earthquakes don't radiate seismic waves, they increase the stress in areas of regular earthquakes."
. . The researchers made their observations in the Nankai trough in western Japan. Similar phenomena were also detected elsewhere, such as the Cascadia subduction zone along the North American Pacific coast.
May 1, 07: Scientists have finally figured out what might have caused a series of devastating earthquakes that struck the Midwest nearly 200 years ago at a set of faults that have confused geologists for a long time.
. . And the results suggest the region, still seismically active today, is going to keep shaking for a long time, and another big one will hit on the same 500-year cycle that has rocked the Heartland for as far back as records, legends and memory serve.
. . The largest of three or four big seismic events that stretched from December 1811 to February 1812 is called the New Madrid Earthquake and had an estimated 8.0 magnitude, strong enough to cause the nearby Mississippi River to temporarily flow backward. Hundreds of aftershocks followed for several years.
. . With many more people and buildings now in the area, a similar event in the region today would be devastating, seismologists and engineers agree. The seismic zone today generates about 200 tiny quakes annually, but it also let loose a magnitude 4.1 quake in February 2005 and a magnitude 4.0 quake in June 2005. The
U.S. Geological Survey says there is a 9-in-10 chance of a magnitude 6 or 7 temblor occurring in this area within the next 50 years.
. . Allessandro Forte of the Université du Québec à Montréal and his colleagues have arrived at a more dramatic mechanism -—an ancient, giant slab of Earth called the Farallon slab that started its descent under the West Coast 70 million years ago and now is causing mayhem and deep mantle flow 580km beneath the Mississippi Valley where it effectively pulls the crust down an entire kilometer. Slabs like this that sink oceanic crust are called subduction zones, and those adjacent to Japan produce intense and damaging seismic activity.
. . They based their findings on high-resolution seismic tomography images that were used to predict the topography and viscous flow of the mantle under and around North America. The Farallon plate will continue to descend into the deep mantle and thus to cause mantle downwelling in the New Madrid region for a long time.
. . The fault structure under the New Madrid region is a "failed rift" created by the opening of the ocean that later became the Atlantic Ocean 650 to 600 million years ago, Forte said. That activity also caused rifts in the St. Lawrence, Saguenay and Ottawa river valleys in Canada, where there is similar mid-continental quaking, he said. Another set of faults far from the boundaries of the North American Plate are associated with the Keweenawan Rift, a 1240-mile-long rift in the area surrounding Lake Superior.
Apr 28, 07: [The Singularity approaches!! Inevitably, someday, they'll create a human equivalent. Interesting, then obvious, that they need only one side. If they make one human side first, which side?] US researchers have simulated half a virtual mouse brain on a supercomputer. The scientists ran a "cortical simulator" that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse brain on the BlueGene L supercomputer. In other smaller simulations, the researchers say they have seen characteristics of thought patterns observed in real mouse brains.
. . Now the team is tuning the simulation to make it run faster and to make it more like a real mouse brain --thought to have about eight million neurons, each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibers. Modelling such a system, the trio wrote, puts "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform". A BlueGene L supercomputer has 4,096 processors, each one of which used 256MB of memory.
. . Using this machine, the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000 neurons that had up to 6,300 synapses. The vast complexity of the simulation meant that it was only run for ten seconds, at a speed ten times slower than real life --the equivalent of one second in a real mouse brain.
. . On other smaller simulations, the researchers said they had seen "biologically consistent dynamical properties" emerge as nerve impulses flowed through the virtual cortex. In these other tests, the team saw the groups of neurons form spontaneously into groups. They also saw nerves in the simulated synapses firing in a ways similar to the staggered, co-ordinated patterns seen in nature.
. . For future tests, the team aims to speed up the simulation, make it more neurobiologically faithful, add structures seen in real mouse brains and make the responses of neurons and synapses more detailed.
Apr 27, 07: What happens when you compress water in a nano-sized space? According to Georgia Tech physicists, water starts to behave like a solid. "The confined water film behaves like a solid in the vertical direction by forming layers parallel to the confining surface, while maintaining it's liquidity in the horizontal direction where it can flow out", said one of the researchers. "Water is a wonderful lubricant, but it flows too easily for many applications. At the one nanometer scale, water is a viscous fluid and could be a much better lubricant", added another one.
Apr 27, 07: Rice U scientists have designed —-on computers-— a buckyball made of 80 boron atoms. The shape of this very stable molecule is very similar to the original fullerene made of 60 carbon atoms placed on the corners of hexagons. But in order to get a stable structure, they've added another boron atom in the center of each hexagon. What will be the use for these boron buckyballs? Even the researchers don't know yet.
. . Why Boron? Simply because of proximity in the atomic table: boron is only one atomic unit from carbon. They started with 60 atoms, like the original fullerene, but it didn't look like a stable structure. This is the reason why they've added another boron atom into the center of each hexagon. "There should be a strong effort to find it experimentally. That may not be an easy path, but we gave them a good road map", said Yakobson.
Apr 26, 07: Scientists have managed to weigh a single living cell to an unprecedented level of accuracy. Previously, such precise measurements of living cells were impossible because any sample would need to be dried - a process that kills the cells. Samples as light as one thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of a gram (one femtogram) can now be weighed while they remain in fluid.
Apr 24, 07: Kryptonite, which robbed Superman of his powers, is no longer the stuff of comic books and films. A mineral found by geologists in Serbia shares virtually the same chemical composition as the fictional kryptonite from outer space, used by the superhero's nemesis Lex Luther to weaken him.
. . Stanley, who revealed the identity of the mysterious new mineral, discovered the match after searching the Internet for its chemical formula - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide. "I was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns", he said.
. . The substance has been confirmed as a new mineral after tests by scientists. instead of the large green crystals in Superman comics, the real thing is a white, powdery substance which contains no fluorine and is non-radioactive. It will be named Jadarite.
Apr 23, 07: Scientists have expressed concern about the use of autonomous decision-making robots, particularly for military use. As they become more common, these machines could also have negative impacts on areas such as surveillance and elderly care, the roboticists warn. Discussions about the future use of robots in society had been largely ill-informed so far, they argued.
. . Autonomous robots are able to make decisions without human intervention. At a simple level, these can include robot vacuum cleaners that "decide" for themselves when to move from room to room or to head back to a base station to recharge.
Apr 23, 07: A man convicted of rape in 1982 was exonerated today on the basis of DNA evidence, the 200th time in the US that such technology has reversed a conviction, lawyers who worked for the man said.
Apr 16, 07: Early results from a Nasa mission designed to test two key predictions of Albert Einstein show the great man was right about at least one of them. It will take another eight months to determine whether he got the other correct.
. . Gravity Probe B uses four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure two effects of Einstein's general relativity theory. One of these effects is called the geodetic effect, the other is called frame dragging. A common analogy is that of placing a heavy bowling ball on to a rubber sheet. The bowling ball will sit in a dip, distorting the rubber sheet around itself in much the way a massive object such as the Earth distorts space and time around itself.
. . In the analogy, the geodetic effect is similar to the shape of the dip created when the ball is placed on to the rubber sheet. If the bowling ball is then rotated, it will start to drag the rubber sheet around with it. In a similar way, the Earth drags local space and time around with it --ever so slightly-- as it rotates. Over the course of a year, these effects would cause the angle of spin of the gyroscopes to shift by minute amounts.
. . The data from Gravity Probe B's gyroscopes clearly confirm Einstein's geodetic effect to a precision of better than 1%. The scientists from Stanford are still trying to extract its signature of frame-dragging from the data. They plan to announce the final results of the experiment in December 2007, following eight more months of data analysis.
Apr 14, 07: Bada revisited the famous experiment first done by his mentor, chemist Stanley Miller, at the University of Chicago in 1953. Miller, along with his colleague Harold Urey, used a sparking device to mimic a lightning storm on early Earth. Their experiment produced a brown broth rich in amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The disclosure made the pages of national magazines and showed that theories about the origin of life could actually be tested in the laboratory.
. . But the Miller-Urey results were later questioned: It turns out that the gases he used (a reactive mixture of methane and ammonia) did not exist in large amounts on early Earth. Scientists now believe the primeval atmosphere contained an inert mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen—a change that made a world of difference.
. . When Miller repeated the experiment using the correct combo in 1983, the brown broth failed to materialize. Instead, the mix created a colorless brew, containing few amino acids. It seemed to refute a long-cherished icon of evolution—and creationists quickly seized on it as supposed evidence of evolution's wobbly foundations.
. . But Bada's repeat of the experiment—armed with a new insight—seems likely to turn the tables once again. Bada discovered that the reactions were producing chemicals called nitrites, which destroy amino acids as quickly as they form. They were also turning the water acidic—which prevents amino acids from forming. Yet primitive Earth would have contained iron and carbonate minerals that neutralized nitrites and acids. So Bada added chemicals to the experiment to duplicate these functions. When he reran it, he still got the same watery liquid as Miller did in 1983, but this time it was chock-full of amino acids.
Apr 14, 07: THE GRAPHENE HORIZON: A new carbon jewel has the caught the eyes of nanotech researchers, some of whom are already speculating that it might pick up where nanotubes left off in their bid to be the savior of electronics. Oh, and by the way, you can make it with Scotch tape.
. . Called graphene, it is essentially a nanotube unrolled—a single layer of atoms arranged like a honeycomb. The difference may sound cosmetic, but when the goal is manipulating things that are a few atoms thick, going from tube to sheet makes a big difference.
. . Graphene, like the carbon nanotube, meets the first requirement: it is a snappy conductor of electricity—better than many semiconductors. As in the nanotube, each carbon atom has three neighbors and an unused electron that is free to skitter around, hence conduction.
. . With graphene, researchers envision stamping out circuits from large wafers, much as they already do with silicon. But perfecting those wafers has proved challenging. Graphite is simply a stack of graphene layers loosely stuck to each other, like a deck of cards. But most assumed that isolating a single pristine layer would be impossible.
. . They applied a magnetic field to graphene and observed that its resistance (the drag on a current) increased in a stepwise pattern called the quantum Hall effect. The effect comes in two varieties, both of which have garnered Nobel Prizes. Graphene, they observed, supports yet a third kind.
. . What Geim and Kim confirmed is graphene's electrons effectively lose their mass. No matter how much energy they carry, they scurry at one four-hundredth the speed of light.
Apr 14, 07: The first results from a long anticipated experiment have heaped doubt on decade-old observations that hinted at the existence of a fourth type of neutrino, a ghostly particle that rarely interacts with ordinary matter.
. . Confirmation of the fourth neutrino would have given researchers a sign that something was wrong with their highly successful Standard Model, which describes the known particles.
. . Neutrinos come in three types, or flavors: electron, muon and tau. Experiments conducted over the past decade have confirmed that neutrinos can oscillate back and forth between flavors.
Apr 13, 07: Scientists say they have successfully made immature sperm cells from human bone marrow samples. If these can be grown into fully developed sperm, which the researchers hope to do within five years, they may be useful in fertility treatments.
. . "Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatagonial cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments."
Apr 10, 07: While the core mantle temperature is supposed to be about 3,700 degrees Celsius under North America, it only reaches 500 degrees under Central America.
Apr 10, 07: NEC has developed a corn-based bioplastic that conducts heat faster than stainless steel, and it aims to mass-produce the material starting in April 08 for use in mobile phones and other portable devices.
Researchers at Harvard U and BBN Technologies have designed a wireless network capable of reporting real-time sensor data across an entire city. Scientists will initially use the CitySense network to monitor urban weather and pollution, and the network could eventually be adopted to provider better public wireless Internet access.
. . The researchers plan to install 100 sensors by 2011 on streetlamps throughout the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, mounting each node on a municipal streetlamp where it draws power from city electricity. That approach opens up a new range of uses for the sensors, performing long-term experiments like real-time environmental monitoring, correlating micro-climates with population health, or tracking the spread of bio-chemical agents.
. . Each CitySense node includes an embedded single-board computer running the
Linux OS. The network could even grow to include mobile sensors attached to cars and buses.
Apr 8, 07: Scientists have finally come up with a workable design for an invisibility cloak. Physicists figured out the complex mathematical equations for making objects invisible by bending light around them last year.
. . A group of engineers at Purdue University in Indiana have now used those calculations to design a relatively simple device that ought to be able to - one day soon - make objects as big as an airplane simply disappear.
. . The design calls for tiny metal needles to be fitted into a hairbrush-shaped cone at angles and lengths that would force light to pass around the cloak. This would make everything inside the cone appear to vanish because the light would no longer reflect off it. Shaleav said he needs to secure funding to build the device and expects it would take two to three years to come up with a working prototype.
. . The major limitation is that the current design can only bend the light of a single wave-length at a time. The cloak could shield soldiers from night-vision goggles which use only one wavelength of light. It could also be used to hide objects from "laser designators" used by the military to illuminate a target, he said.
. . This new design is the first for cloaking objects of any size in the range of light visible to humans. It works by using tiny needles to alter the "index of refraction" around the cone. Every material has its own refractive index, which determines how light bends and slows down as it passes from that material into another. It's commonly described as the bent-stick-in-water effect.
Apr 6, 07: The force of this week's Solomons earthquake has lifted an island in the South Pacific archipelago and pushed out its shoreline by tens of metres, exposing surrounding reefs. The remote island of Ranongga in the western Solomon Islands used to have submerged coral reefs that attracted scuba divers from around the world.
. . But since Monday's massive earthquake in the Solomon Islands, the reefs are now exposed above the water and are dying, an AFP reporter and photographer have seen. The AFP team, which travelled to Ranongga on a chartered outboard after the quake, saw exposed reefs bleaching in the sun, and covered with dead fish, eels, clams and other marine life.
. . The 8.0-magnitude quake, caused by a shift in the Earth's tectonic plates, triggered a tsunami that killed at least 34 people in the remote western Solomons and left 5,500 homeless.
Mar 25, 07: Scientists have identified an expanse of rock in Greenland as a remnant of Earth's crust dating back 3.8 billion years, a finding that shows the dynamic geological process called plate tectonics was occurring early in our planet's history.
. . A team led by Harald Furnes of the U of Bergen in Norway said these ancient layered rocks from southwestern Greenland originally were formed on the sea floor of primordial Earth. They are made up of thin sheets of formerly molten rock, and look a bit like a multilayered cake. There is evidence that the first inhabitants of the planet had appeared in the form of bacterial life forms.
. . The Greenland rocks were originally mostly basalt, a hard volcanic rock, but over the eons have been transformed into a type of metamorphic rocks known as amphibolites, Furnes said.
These rocks are not the oldest-known ones on Earth, Furnes said, noting that rock dating to 4.2 billion years ago has been found in Canada.
Mar 22, 07: Your saliva contains 1,500 proteins and 3,000 mRNA species. Dentists can analyze it for conditions from oral cancer to bodywide afflictions. Researchers have already nailed down one disease they can diagnose through saliva: primary Sjogren's Syndrome, an autoimmune disease that causes the white blood cells to attack your moisture-producing glands. It can involve multiple organs and effects about 4 million people, 90% of whom are women.
. . Dental researchers have been working diligently to decode the "human salivary proteome." Who knew? It even has its own website. They’ve identified more than 1,500 proteins and 3,000 mRNA species in saliva.
Mar 18, 07: Oil exploration work in California's Central Valley region has uncovered a possible space impact crater. The 5.5 km-wide bowl is buried under shale sediments west of Stockton, in San Joaquin County, and is thought to be between 37 and 49 million years old.
. . Data from a 3D seismic survey of an ancient sea bed clearly shows a circular structure buried 1,490-1,600m below sea level. The Victoria Island structure, as it has been named, has a concentric rim surrounding a "central uplift" - a peak at the center-- which are both characteristic of impact craters.
. . Victoria Island is not the first crater proposed for the Central Valley. A 1.3km-wide feature to the north known as the Cowell structure, dating to the Miocene (5 to 24 million years ago), has also been put forward as the location of a space impact.
Mar 14, 07: Australian oceanographers have discovered a giant cold water eddy off Sydney which has lowered sea levels almost one meter and impacted a major ocean current. The eddy, which has diameter of about 200 km and reaches to depth of 1 km, lies about 100 km off Sydney. The sea surface has lowered by 70cm at its center.
. . The CSIRO said what had caused the giant eddy was a mystery. "What we do know is that this is a very powerful natural feature which tends to push everything else aside --even the mighty East Australian Current."
. . It said the dip in the surface of the ocean was invisible to the eye, but had been accurately measured by European and U.S. satellites. "Until 20 years ago, we would not have known they (giant ocean eddies) even existed without accidentally steaming through them on a research vessel."
. . Ocean eddies can have a life of up to three weeks although similar eddies off South Australia and Western Australia are known to have survived several months.
Mar 12, 07: While the idea makes for great fiction, some scientists now say traveling to the past is impossible.
. . There are a handful of scenarios that theorists have suggested for how one might travel to the past, said Brian Greene, author of the bestseller, “The Elegant Universe” and a physicist at Columbia U.“And almost all of them, if you look at them closely, brush up right at the edge of physics as we understand it. Most of us think that almost all of them can be ruled out.”
. . A handful of proposals exist for time travel. The most developed of these approaches involves a wormhole—a hypothetical tunnel connecting two regions of space-time. The regions bridged could be two completely different universes or two parts of one universe. Matter can travel through either mouth of the wormhole to reach a destination on the other side.
. . “Wormholes are the future, wormholes are the past”, said Michio Kaku, author of “Hyperspace” and “Parallel Worlds” and a physicist at the City U of New York. “But we have to be very careful. The gasoline necessary to energize a time machine is far beyond anything that we can assemble with today’s technology.”
. . To punch a hole into the fabric of space-time, Kaku explained, would require the energy of a star or negative energy, an exotic entity with an energy of less than nothing.
. . Greene, an expert on string theory—which views matter in a minimum of 10 dimensions and tries to bridge the gap between particle physics and nature's fundamental forces, questioned this scenario. “Many people who study the subject doubt that that approach has any chance of working,” Greene said in an interview . “But the basic idea if you’re very, very optimistic is that if you fiddle with the wormhole openings, you can make it not only a shortcut from a point in space to another point in space, but a shortcut from one moment in time to another moment in time.”
. . Cosmic strings are either infinite or they’re in loops, with no ends, said J. Richard Gott, author of “Time Travel in Einstein's Universe” and an astrophysicist at Princeton U. “So they are either like spaghetti or SpaghettiO’s.” The approach of two such strings parallel to each other, said Gott, will bend space-time so vigorously and in such a particular configuration that might make time travel possible, in theory.
Mar 10, 07: It may sound like something from a sci-fi flick, but South Korea is writing up a code of ethics to protect robots from being abused by humans and vice versa. Tops on their list is the issue of safety, especially now that more people are interacting with robots. Roboticists in Europe are also lobbying their governments for some form of robot rights. Scientists are already beginning to think seriously about the new ethical problems posed by current developments in robotics.
. . This week, experts in South Korea said they were drawing up an ethical code to prevent humans abusing robots, and vice versa. And, a group of leading roboticists called the European Robotics Network (Euron) has even started lobbying governments for legislation.
. . As these robots become more intelligent, it will become harder to decide who is responsible if they injure someone. Is the designer to blame, or the user, or the robot itself? Isaac Asimov was already thinking about these problems back in the 1940s, when he developed his famous "three laws of robotics".
. . #1: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
. . #2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
. . #3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
. . In fact, programming a real robot to follow the three laws would itself be very difficult. [I think IA himself wrote an essay: "What Do You Mean... Human?] For a start, the robot would need to be able to tell humans apart from similar-looking things such as chimpanzees, statues and humanoid robots. This may be easy for us humans, but it is a very hard problem for robots.
. . Similar problems arise with rule two, as the robot would have to be capable of telling an order apart from a casual request, which would involve more research in the field of natural language processing.
. . Asimov's three laws only address the problem of making robots safe, so even if we could find a way to program robots to follow them, other problems could arise if robots became sentient. If robots can feel pain, should they be granted certain rights? If robots develop emotions, as some experts think they will, should they be allowed to marry humans? Should they be allowed to own property?
. . Debates over animal rights would have seemed equally far-fetched to many people just a few decades ago. Now, however, such questions are part of mainstream public debate.
. . More pressing moral questions are already being raised by the increasing use of robots in the military. The US military plans to have a fifth of its combat units fully automated by the year 2020. Asimov's laws don't apply to machines which are designed to harm people. When an army can strike at an enemy with no risk to lives on its own side, it may be less scrupulous in using force.
. . If we are to provide intelligent answers to the moral and legal questions raised by the developments in robotics, lawyers and ethicists will have to work closely alongside the engineers and scientists developing the technology. And that, of course, will be a challenge in itself.
Mar 7, 07: Nautilus is on track to begin mining the seabed by 2009. The content of the rock a probe pictured of a rock outcropping off the coast of Papua New Guinea, 1.6km down: 12.2 percent copper, 4.2 percent zinc, and a substantial amount of silver and gold. It was once part of a black smoker.
. . Nautilus has laid claim to 106,500 square miles of seabed, an area larger than the UK. Heydon is moving so fast that most environmentalists aren’t aware of Nautilus’ plans. There are no international or regional regulations on how to govern it.
. . Malnic tried to raise money for a proof-of-concept dig. He figured he needed about $10 million to hire a drilling ship to get an initial batch of rocks. But by 2002, he had run out of steam. Everyone told him it was impossible. And they had proof: In the 1970s, French, American, and German companies had tried to mine manganese off the deep ocean seabed. The endeavor cost more than $700 million and, in the end, didn’t produce enough commercial manganese to make the venture worthwhile.
Mar 5, 07: The highest temperature achieved for the onset of superconductivity, the so-called transition temperature, was a frigid 23 Kelvin (-250C).
. . The breakthrough came in 1986. Two IBM researchers discovered a new family of ceramic superconductors, known as the copper oxide perovskites, that operated at 35K (-238C). The work was rapidly followed up Paul Chu, of the U of Houston, who discovered materials operating at 93K (-182C). The discovery meant that superconductors had entered the temperature range of liquid nitrogen (77K, -196C), an abundant and well understood coolant.
. . "Trying to bend them was like a dry stick of spaghetti." To get around this brittleness, the company embeds up to 85 tiny filaments of superconducting ceramic in a ribbon of metal 4.4mm wide. Short sections of the wires have already been installed in Columbus, Ohio, and a further half-mile of cable will soon be laid on Long Island, New York. In the short term, longer stretches of the supercooled cable will be difficult to install, as it requires an infrastructure to pump liquid nitrogen around the grid.
. . Electric motors are used by most commercial cruise liners, but are typically very bulky. Using HTSC technology, dramatically shrinks their size and also increases their efficiency. The company is just about to start testing its latest 36.5-megawatt motor that is cooled by off-the-shelf liquid helium refrigerators and weighs 75 tons. By comparison, an engine based on copper wires would weigh 300 tons. "That's great for cruise ships and the navy, because they can use that space for other things like passenger cabins or munitions."
. . A new mercury-based compound has a transition temperature of 134K (-139C) "When we applied pressure we raised it up to 164K (-109C) - that's a record", said Professor Chu.
. . A new theory, outlined in a paper in the journal Nature Physics by Dr Newns and his IBM colleague Dr Chang Tsuei, seeks to explain the elusive mechanism of superconductivity in the class of ceramics discovered in 1986. "We don't see any fundamental limits", said Dr Tsuei. "If someone discovered a room-temperature superconductor tomorrow that fits with what is outlined by our theory, we wouldn't be surprised at all."
Mar 5, 07: At a laboratory in Germany, volunteers slide into a donut-shaped MRI machine and perform simple tasks, such as deciding whether to add or subtract two numbers, or choosing which of two buttons to press. They have no inkling that scientists in the next room are trying to read their minds — using a brain scan to figure out their intention before it is turned into action.
. . In the past, scientists had been able to detect decisions about making physical movements before those movements appeared. But researchers at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have now, for the first time, identified people's decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity — in this case, adding versus subtracting.
. . The techniques may eventually have wide-ranging implications for everything from criminal interrogations to airline security checks. And that alarms some ethicists who fear the technology could one day be abused by authorities, marketers, or employers.
. . Only 21 people have been tested so far. And the 71% accuracy rate is only about 20% more successful than random selection.
Mar 5, 07: Scientists scanning the deep interior of Earth have found evidence of a vast water reservoir beneath eastern Asia that is at least the volume of the Arctic Ocean. The discovery marks the first time such a large body of water has found in the planet’s deep mantle.
. . They analyzed more than 600,000 seismograms -—records of waves generated by earthquakes traveling through the Earth—- collected from instruments scattered around the planet. They noticed a region beneath Asia where seismic waves appeared to dampen, or “attenuate”, and also slow down slightly. “Water slows the speed of waves a little.” Although they appear solid, the composition of some ocean floor rocks is up to 15% water.
. . “Look at our sister planet, Venus”, Wysession said. “It is very hot and dry inside Venus, and Venus has no plate tectonics. All the water probably boiled off, and without water, there are no plates. The system is locked up, like a rusty Tin Man with no oil."
Feb 27, 07: Cave divers in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula have discovered what may be the world's longest underground river, connecting two cave systems with a waterway at least 95 miles long. They believe it could be connected to two other major systems, adding more than 125 miles to its length. There's a Swiss-cheese subsoil of limestone dotted with deep wells that are entrances to tunnels that have fascinated divers for decades.
Feb 27, 07: Scientists are to sail to the mid-Atlantic to examine a massive "open wound" on the Earth's surface. Dr Chris MacLeod, from Cardiff U, said the Earth's crust appeared to be completely missing in an area thousands of kilometres across. The hole in the crust is midway between the Cape Verde Islands and the Caribbean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The team will survey the area, up to 5km under the surface.
. . "Usually the plates are pulled apart and to fill the gap the mantle underneath has to rise up. As it comes up it starts to melt. That forms the magma", he said. "That's the normal process. Here it has gone awry for some reason. As a result, the mantle is exposed to seawater, creating a rock called serpentinite.
. . Dr MacLeod said the hole in the Earth's crust was not unique, but was recognized as one of the most significant.
Feb 28, 07: It is obvious, water is heavy and it takes a lot to plow through it (compared to air, at least). The Pentagon has developed the Underwater Express, a submarine capable of going 127 mph (compared to modern sub speeds of 29 mph, by encasing the entire sub in a bubble. Bubbles can move through the water quicker and therefore cause no drag on the actual submarine.
. . Supercavitation offers 60-70% reduction in total drag on an underwater body. It can be attained by going fast enough to develop a full vaporous cavity, or it can be induced at lower speeds by injecting gas into a partially-developed cavity. Although the technology has been applied to weapons with minimal control capability, its application to larger vessels with transport missions will require thorough development. Our goal is to achieve tractable management and control of the dynamics of a supercavitating underwater body so that an eventual system, manned or unmanned, could be envisioned to travel in this state.
. . DARPA is interested in proposals that will advance the understanding and use of supercavitation technology through research and development, small-scale experimentation, and a final at-sea demonstration. The Underwater Express final demonstration will be conducted at 1/4 to 1/2 scale of a notional future craft of about 8-ft diameter and 60 tons, a "super-fast submerged transport" (SST) craft. The ability to generate and maintain the large cavity needed for this scale vehicle has never been demonstrated, nor has a control system for maneuvering the vehicle.
Feb 28, 07: Your low-tech stapler is about to get a huge makeover if Swingline has its way. They're looking to embed RFID tags onto staples so that when an important (stapled) document goes missing, it'll be able to radio its location.
Feb 28, 07: At least 300,000 Italians living near the Vesuvius volcano would be killed the next time it erupted if they were not evacuated beforehand, according to the first 3-dimensional super-computer simulation.
Feb 27, 07: Chinese scientists have succeeded in implanting electrodes in the brain of a pigeon to remotely control the bird's flight, state media said. They used the micro electrodes to command the bird to fly right or left, and up or down. The implants stimulated different areas of the pigeon's brain according to electronic signals sent by the scientists via computer, mirroring natural signals generated by the brain.
Feb 14, 07: Neuroscientists are making such rapid progress in unlocking the brain's secrets that some are urging colleagues to debate the ethics of their work before it can be misused by governments, lawyers or advertisers.
. . The news that brain scanners can now read a person's intentions before they are expressed or acted upon has given a new boost to the fledgling field of neuroethics that hopes to help researchers separate good uses of their work from bad. The same discoveries that could help the paralyzed use brain signals to steer a wheelchair or write on a computer might also be used to detect possible criminal intent, religious beliefs or other hidden thoughts, these neuroethicists say.
. . The new boost came from a research paper published last week that showed neuroscientists can now not only locate the brain area where a certain thought occurs but probe into that area to read out some kinds of thought occurring there.
. . They compared this to learning how to read books after simply being able to find them before. "That is a huge step." They hastened to add that neuroscience is still far from developing a scanner that could easily read random thoughts. "But what we can do is read out some simple things that are quite useful for applications, such as simple intentions, attitudes or emotional states", he said. "We're finding we can read out yes-or-no situations."
. . Haynes and his research team used a brain scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to detect a volunteer's unspoken decision to add or subtract two numbers flashed on a screen. They got it right 70% of the time. One saw possible misuse of this similar to the plot of Steven Spielberg's 2002 movie Minority Report.
. . "People want to know if, when they go to an airport, their luggage will go through one scanner and their brains will go through another. Do I think that's around the corner? I do." Haynes estimated his research into unspoken intentions could yield simple applications within the next 5 to 10 years, such as reading a person's attitude to a company during a job interview or testing consumer preferences through "neuromarketing."
. . There are already companies trying to use brain scanners to build a more accurate lie detector, a technology that could dazzle judges and juries so much that they could mistake it for the final word in deciding a case, the researchers said. Law enforcement officials might use the technology, which tracks heightened activity in areas linked to mental responses to outside stimuli, to screen people for pedophilia, racial bias, aggression or other undesirable tendencies, they said.
Feb 8, 07: The final design for a "doomsday" vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government.
. . The Svalbard International Seed Vault will be built into a mountainside on a remote island near the North Pole. The vault aims to safeguard the world's agriculture from future catastrophes, such as nuclear war, asteroid strikes and climate change.
. . Construction begins in March, and the seed bank is scheduled to open in 2008. The Norwegian government is paying the $5m (£2.5m) construction costs of the vault, which will have enough space to house three million seed samples.
. . The seed vault will be built 120m inside a mountain on Spitsbergen, one of four islands that make up Svalbard. Dr Fowler said Svalbard, 1,000km north of mainland Norway, was chosen as the location for the vault because it was very remote and it also offered the level of stability required for the long-term project. "We also modelled climate change in a drastic form 200 years into future, which included the melting of ice sheets at the North and South Poles, and Greenland, to make sure that this site was above the resulting water level."
. . By building the vault deep inside the mountain, the surrounding permafrost would continue to provide natural refrigeration if the mechanical system failed.
. . The samples will be stored at -18C (0F). The length of time that seeds kept in a frozen state maintain their ability to germinate depends on the species. Some crops, such as peas, may only survive for 20-30 years. Others, such as sunflowers and grain crops, are understood to last for many decades or even hundreds of years.
. . Once the collection has been established at Svalbard, Dr Fowler said the facility would operate with very little human intervention.
Feb 7, 07: Western governments must take seriously the possibility of terrorists exploding a nuclear bomb as the necessary materials and know-how become easier to acquire, security analysts argue in two new reports.
Feb 7, 07: Vikings may have used a special crystal called a sunstone to help navigate the seas even when the sun was obscured by fog or cloud, a study has suggested. Researchers from Hungary ran a test with sunstones in the Arctic ocean, and found that the crystals can reveal the sun's position even in bad weather. This would have allowed the Vikings to navigate successfully, they say.
. . The sunstone theory has been around for 40 years, but some academics have treated it with extreme scepticism. Researcher Gabor Horvath from Eotvos U in Budapest led a team that spent a month recording polarization --how rays of light display different properties in different directions-- in the Arctic.
. . Polarization cannot be seen with the naked eye, but it can be viewed with what are known as birefringent crystals, or sunstones. Birefringence, or double refraction, is the splitting of a light wave into two different components --an ordinary and an extraordinary ray.
Feb 7, 07: MIT says optical chips are coming in 5 Years. Engineers and physicists at MIT have devised a new method for integrating photonic circuitry onto a silicon chip, a discovery that could soon add the power and speed of light waves to traditional electronics.
Sientists say the Indian plate sped up about 69 million years ago --moving from 8 to 18 centimeters per year. This faster rate was sustained for about 20 million years, and then slowed as India began to plow into the Eurasian continent.
. . At the time of the K-T extinction, India was an island located over the Reunion hotspot. Hotspots are fixed points where hot material from the mantle rises to the Earth's surface. This underground welling flooded portions of India with a vast amount of lava. Today, these cooled lava fields are called the Deccan Traps.
. . The slow outpouring of Deccan lava probably began a few million years before the K-T extinction. Then about 65 million years ago, the trickle became a torrent. "I think most people believe that the Deccan Traps was the culmination of a mantle plume that was long in the making --millions if not tens of millions of years."
. . While geologists haven't pinned down the exact connection between the ridge jump and the volcanic event that triggered the Deccan Traps, Dyment says that most believe both events may be the result of the head of the Reunion hotspot finally reaching the Earth's surface.
. . Chatterjee says there is an underwater mountain as high as Mount Everest within the Shiva crater. He says this structure has been dated to be 65 million years old, and he thinks it could be the central peak that is often seen within large impact craters.
. . Finally, Chatterjee says the crater contains shocked quartz, a key sign of impact. And because the K-T clay boundary layer in India is one meter thick - the thickest in the world - Chatterjee thinks a meteorite impact must have been close by. While all this evidence seems compelling, Chatterjee has so far failed to convince a majority of scientists that it adds up to proof of impact. "If Shiva were indeed an impact crater, it would be the largest crater so far preserved on Earth."
Rather than a single meteorite impact 65 million years ago, could Earth have been hit with a scattershot of several rocks from space? It may have happened before. There is evidence that about 35 million years ago, at least five comets or asteroids collided with Earth. If the effects of a single large meteorite impact seem overwhelming, imagine how life on Earth would reel from a barrage of rocks from space.
. . The Boltysh crater in the Ukraine may be proof that multiple impacts occurred during the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction. Kelley has dated the crater to be about 65 million years old.
. . The Boltysh crater measures only 24 km in diameter --compared to Chicxulub's nearly 200-km-wide monster-- so even if the smaller meteorite that made this crater hit around the same time as Chicxulub, its effects wouldn't have been as catastrophic. Boltysh crater became a fresh water lake.
Feb 1, 07: This winter, a sparkling diamond landed in front of a technician at the Gemological Institute of America in New York City. He ran tests, noted the stone was man-made, and graded it as he would any diamond. It was the gem industry’s strongest acknowledgment yet that lab-grown diamonds are just as real as natural ones.
. . For years, De Beers, the world’s largest purveyor of natural diamonds, argued against the acceptance and GIA grading of lab-grown stones. But since 2003, synthetic diamond production has taken off, driven by consumer demand for merchandise that’s environmentally friendly (no open-pit mines), sociopolitically neutral (no blood diamonds), and monopoly-free (not controlled by De Beers). As a result, Gemesis, the leading manufacturer of gem-quality diamonds, has expanded operations rapidly. Three years ago, the company had 24 diamond-producing machines; now it has hundreds --matching the cash-value output of a small mine-- and is turning out a new one every other day.
Jan 24, 07: Scientists have built a memory chip that is roughly the size of a white blood cell, about one-2,000th of an inch on a side. The density of bits on the chip --about 100 billion per square cm-- is about 40 times as much as current memory chips, Heath said. Improvements to the technique could increase the density by a factor of 10, he said.
Jan 20, 07: Polymeric nanocomposites, synthetic substances that are both strong and stretchy, like organic spider silk, have baffled scientists looking to replicate their unique properties. A team from MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN) announced they had devised a new way to create such Lycra-like materials in a lab.
. . Scientists have previously suggested that a mere pencil-thick strand of silk could actually stop a Boeing 747 in mid flight. The naturally occurring substance—on a weight basis—is stronger than even steel. The secret of spider silk's combined strength and flexibility, according to scientists, has to do with the arrangement of the nano-crystalline reinforcement of the silk as it is being produced—in other words, the way these tiny crystals are oriented towards (and adhere to) the stretchy protein.
. . Emulating this process in a synthetic polymer, the MIT team focused on reinforcing solutions of commercial rubbery substance known as polyurethane elastomer with nano-sized clay platelets instead of simply heating the mixing the molten plastics with reinforcing agents.
Jan 19, 07: Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it, U.S. researchers reported. When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task but then other brain regions get busy during down time. "There is [a] network of regions that always seems to be active when you don't give people something to do." Her team has chosen to call it stimulus-independent thought or mind wandering.
. . Neurologists and psychologists have debated what goes on when people are not specifically thinking about or doing something, and there had been general agreement that the mind does not simply go blank.
. . Mason's team set up an experiment using the relatively new technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI to see what is going on. Kramer imaged the brains of 60 participants before and after six months of walking —-and saw an increase in crucial areas of the brain responsible for memory and decision making.
. . "I was surprised how much plasticity, how much flexibility older brains have, because the general belief up until a decade ago was that brains deteriorated as we age. That's not true", he says. Not true at all. Plasticity is the actual strengthening of connections between neurons, stopping, yes, even reversing memory loss. Physical exercise helps, and so do mental exercises.
Jan 18, 07: An international team of scientists is developing what they say will be the world's first microrobot --as wide as two human hairs-- that can swim through the arteries and digestive system.
. . The scientists are designing the 250-micron device to transmit images and deliver microscopic payloads to parts of the body outside the reach of existing catheter technology. It will also perform minimally invasive microsurgeries.
. . Friend believes his team will succeed because they are the first to exploit piezoelectric materials --crystals that create an electric charge when mechanically stressed-- in their micromotor design.
. . The tiny robot, small enough to pass through the heart and other organs, will be inserted using a syringe. Guided by remote control, it will swim to a site within the body to perform a series of tasks, then return to the point of entry where it can be extracted, again by syringe.
. . For example, the microrobot might deliver a payload of expandable glue to the site of a damaged cranial artery -- a procedure typically fraught with risk because posterior human brain arteries lay behind a complicated set of bends at the base of the skull beyond the reach of all but the most flexible catheters. There's a high risk of puncturing one of these arteries, which almost always results in the death of the patient.
. . The microrobot's design is based on the E. coli bacterium, complete with flagella that will propel it through the body. Scientists will make the flagella out of human hair in the preliminary research stages, and eventually they want to try using Kevlar. For the riskiest procedures, the robot could be tethered by a microcatheter.
Jan 18, 07: Fears that switching to genetically modified (GMO) crops could harm the habitat of wild birds, insects and other plants may be overblown, British scientists who have developed a forecasting model say.
Jan 18, 07: Gold as we see it is a non-reactive metal. And it's because it's so inert that it has been used for centuries in jewelry. But at the nanoscale, it's a very different story. Gold clusters containing only a small number of atoms can show very different properties and exhibit chemical reactivity that make them potent catalysts.
. . Clusters start out as two-dimensional structures till 13 or 14 atoms in size, changing to three-dimensional hollow cages from about 16 atoms, and developing a face-centered-cubic tetrahedral structure at 20 atoms, resembling the bulk gold crystalline structure. However, at 24 atoms the gold clusters take an unexpected capped tubular cigar shape.
. . So what will be the next shapes of these gold clusters when they reach 26, 30, or 40 atoms?
Jan 16, 07: The hunt for elusive gravitational waves has a new target: singing cosmic superstrings that theoretically emit the long-sought waves as they vibrate. The superstrings are 'so light that they can't have any effect on cosmic structure, but they create [a] bath of gravitational waves just by decaying,' said Craig Hogan, a cosmologist with the U of Washington (UW).
. . Gravitational waves, ripples of gravity caused by moving matter as it warps the fabric of space and time, were first theorized by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity in 1916, though the phenomena have yet to be observed in real time.
. . String theory posits that hidden dimensions are tightly wound in strings of elementary particles. An offshoot of this theory suggests that some such strings can form into narrow tubes of energy stretched across vast distances by the expansion of the universe. These theoretical cosmic superstrings, which researchers described as ultra-thin tubes filled with ancient vacuum created in the early universe, can coil into galactic-sized, vibrating loops that emit gravitational waves as they decay into oblivion.
. . Since gravitational waves are thought to be extremely weak, cosmologists believe that only those generated by massive collisions will be strong enough to be observed. A black hole smash up, for example, could spew waves of up to a million times the more power than those produced by every galaxy in the universe, researchers said. Hogan added that while some gravity ripples could occur at frequencies perceptible to the human ear, many sources are likely to have extremely low frequencies of 10 to 20 octaves below the range of human hearing.
Jan 10, 07: At Nature's web site is a new calculation for the mass of the W particle, the particle that carries the weak nuclear force -—the one that does radioactive decay.
. . If the W is lighter, then so must be the much-sought-after Higgs boson, the theoretical particle that is responsible for mass -—everything weighs something, and the Higgs is thought to explain why. It's so important that physicists have nicknamed it "the God particle."
. . And if the Higgs is lighter than physicists thought, then we might not have to wait for the Large Hadron Collider, a brand new, massive particle smasher, to come online at CERN, the European particle physics lab. The LHC is scheduled to start smacking stuff into each other this year. Instead, the folks who run the Tevatron, the big collider at Fermilab in Illinois, might be able to nab the Higgs first.
One study shows that milk can help people lose weight. Another shows that tomato juice might prevent cancer and a third shows benefits to fizzy sodas.
. . But consumers should take those studies with a grain of salt, researchers reported. If a study was industry-funded, it was far more likely to have a positive finding than if it was paid for by the government or an independent group, the researchers found. The study echoes other findings that show industry-funded research on drugs is more likely to be favorable to the drugs than independent research.
. . Ludwig's team reviewed 111 studies on soft drinks, juice and milk that were published between 1999 and 2003. Studies funded entirely by industry were four times to eight times more likely to be favorable to the financial interests of the sponsors than those paid for by other groups.
. . Ludwig said the studies could be set up differently if they are funded by industry. Or it could be that sponsors choose not to publish studies that turn out unfavorable to their product, he said. Researchers funded by industry may do rigorous work, but may choose to ask certain questions more likely to produce a result favorable to the product, Ludwig said.
Jan 8, 07: ABOUT TIME!!! When NASA returns astronauts to the Moon, the mission will be measured in kilometers, not !@#$%)^&*(#! miles. The agency has decided to use metric units for all operations on the lunar surface. The decision comes after a series of meetings between NASA and 13 other space agencies around the world, where metric measurements rule.
. . The change will standardize parts and tools. It means Russian wrenches could be used to fix an air leak in a U.S.-built habitat. It will also make communications easier, such as when determining how far to send a rover for a science project.
. . NASA has ostensibly used the metric system since about 1990, the statement said, but English units are still employed on some missions, and a few projects use both. The dual strategy led to the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter robotic probe in 1999; a contractor provided thruster firing data in English units while NASA was calculating in metric.
Jan 8, 07: Scientists have created a tiny cable --much thinner than a human hair-- through which they can transmit visible light, potentially paving the way for improvements in solar energy, computing and medicine.
Jan 5, 07: The most powerful earthquake in Australian history —December 28, 1989, magnitude 5.6, epicenter Newcastle, New South Wales, killed 13 people, $3.5 billion damage— was caused by human beings! Too much coal mining which apparently uncorked a local fault line. Salient bits from Richard A. Lovett's interesting article at National Geographic Online:
. . That quake was triggered by changes in tectonic forces caused by 200 years of underground coal mining, according to a study. The quake wasn't enormous, but Australia isn't generally considered to be seismically active and the city's buildings weren't designed to withstand a temblor of that magnitude, Klose said. All told, he added, the monetary damage done by the earthquake exceeded the total value of the coal extracted in the area. The removal of millions of tons of coal from the area caused much of the stress that triggered the Newcastle quake, Klose said.
. . But even more significant was groundwater pumping needed to keep the mines from flooding. "For each ton of coal produced, 4.3 times more water was extracted."
. . Klose has identified more than 200 human-caused temblors, mostly in the past 60 years. "They were rare before World War II", he said. Most were caused by mining, he said, but nearly one-third came from reservoir construction.
. . Oil and gas production can also trigger earthquakes, he added. Three of the biggest human-caused earthquakes of all time, he pointed out, were a trio that occurred in Uzbekistan's Gazli natural gas field between 1976 and 1984. Each of the three had a magnitude greater than 6.8, and the largest had a magnitude of 7.3.
Jan 1, 07: A new report by scientists studying Louisiana's sinking coast says the land is not just sinking, it's *sliding ever so slowly into the Gulf of Mexico. The new findings may add a kink to plans being drawn up to build bigger and better levees. If the land is shifting —-even slightly-— engineers may need to take that into consideration as they build new levees and draw lines across the coast to identify areas that should and shouldn't be protected.
. . Researchers have known for years that the swampy land under south Louisiana is sinking (potholed streets and wobbly porches and floors are visible evidence of that) but a lateral movement of the land into the Gulf is largely unstudied.
. . The report says the bedrock under heavily populated southeast Louisiana is breaking away at a glacial speed —-the pace fingernails grow. It moved about the width of two credit cards this year. The southward movement is triggered by deep underground faults slipping under the enormous weight of sediment dumped by the Mississippi River. The slippage, though, is confined to a large egg-shaped area approximately 250 miles long and 180 miles wide that encompasses the delta of the Mississippi, which was built up by river deposits over the past 8,000 years, the report says.
. . Since the 1930s, more than 2,000 square miles of coast sank or eroded.
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