SCIENCE NEWSCLIPS

SCIENCE
NEWSCLIPS
from 1-08

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.

July 14, 09: Scientists have for the first time grown a mature human egg from an immature follicle, which may help cancer patients who cannot delay treatment for egg harvesting.

July 9, 09: Below are humanity's top challenges, as distilled by The World Future Society, the association that publishes The Futurist.
. 1. Creating long-term solutions to meet our energy demands sustainably.
. 2. Launching a bio-industrial revolution with sustainable manufacturing.
. 3. Understanding and enhancing the human brain to avert age-related impairments.
. 4. Improving agriculture to reduce costs and increase its energy and water efficiency.
. 5. Building sustainable cities through better urban planning and “smart architecture.”
. 6. Stimulating job growth and economic development.
. 7. Fusing the technological with the spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of human culture.
. 8. Advancing technological instruments to drive scientific discovery forward.
. 9. Harnessing biological tools to advance human evolution.
. 10. Discovering new ways to lower the costs and environmental impact of space flight and development.

July 9, 09: A new Pew Research Center poll indicates that 27% of Americans say the nation's greatest achievements are in science, medicine and technology, more than any category other than don't know. But that's down from 47% in a similar study a decade ago, the center reported.
. . Among the findings:
. . • About 91% of the general public knew that aspirin is recommended to prevent heart attacks, 82% knew that global positioning systems rely on satellites and 65% correctly linked CO2 gas to rising temperatures.
. . _On the other hand, just 54% understood that antibiotics do not kill viruses and fewer than half — 46% — knew that electrons are smaller than atoms.
. . _A majority of the public —58%— favor federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but that is well short of the 93% of scientists who feel that way.

July 9, 09: In the past year, researchers have developed technology that makes it possible to use thoughts to operate a computer, maneuver a wheelchair or even use Twitter — all without lifting a finger. But as neural devices become more complicated —- and go wireless-— some scientists say the risks of “brain hacking” should be taken seriously.
. . “Neural devices are innovating at an extremely rapid rate and hold tremendous promise for the future”, said computer security expert Tadayoshi Kohno of the U of Washington. “But if we don’t start paying attention to security, we’re worried that we might find ourselves in five or 10 years saying we’ve made a big mistake.”
. . Hackers tap into personal computers all the time — but what would happen if they focused their nefarious energy on neural devices, such as the deep-brain stimulators currently used to treat Parkinson’s and depression, or electrode systems for controlling prosthetic limbs?
. . In November 2007 and March 2008, malicious programmers vandalized epilepsy support websites by putting up flashing animations, which caused seizures in some photo-sensitive patients.
. . Hacking into these devices could enable patients to “self-prescribe” elevated moods or pain relief by increasing the activity of the brain’s reward centers.
. . Until now, few groups have considered how neural devices might be hijacked to perform unintended actions. This is the first time an academic paper has addressed the topic of “neurosecurity,” a term the group coined to describe their field.

July 3, 09: The Catholic Church should not fear scientific progress and possibly repeat the mistake it made when it condemned astronomer Galileo in the 17th century, a Vatican official said, in a rare self-criticism.
. . Galileo, who lived from 1564 to 1642, was condemned by the Inquisition in 1633 for asserting that the earth revolved around the sun. Known as the father of astronomy, he wasn't fully rehabilitated by the Vatican until 1992, nearly 360 years later.
. . "I am thinking of stem cells, I am thinking of eugenics, I am thinking of scientific research in these fields. Sometimes I have the impression that they are condemned with the same preconceptions that were used back then for the Copernican theory", he said.
. . The Inquisition, which sought out heresies, condemned Galileo for backing a theory of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus because it clashed with the Bible which said: "God fixed the Earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever."

June 16, 09: After more than 120,000 years trapped beneath a block of ice in Greenland, a tiny microbe has awoken. The long-lasting bacteria may hold clues to what life forms might exist on other planets. The new bacteria species was found nearly 3 km beneath a Greenland glacier, where temperatures can dip well below freezing, pressure soars, and food and oxygen are scarce.

More than a billion billion electrons pass through a 60W light bulb every second.

June 11, 09: Typhoons trigger "imperceptible" earthquakes, and potentially reduce the number of more powerful ones, say researchers.

June 11, 09: Element 112 has become the latest and heaviest addition to the periodic table, but it doesn't yet have a name.

June 7, 09: A new technique has been helping scientists piece together how the Earth's continents were arranged 2.5 billion years ago. The novel method allows scientists to recover rare minerals from rocks. By analysing the composition of these minerals, researchers can precisely date ancient volcanic rocks for the first time. By aligning rocks that have a similar age and orientation, the early landmasses can be pieced together.
. . The approach has already shown that Canada once bordered Zimbabwe, helping the mining industry identify new areas for exploration.
. . Much of the geology that exists today formed around 300 million years ago when the supercontinent Pangea existed. "We really don't understand the [Earth's] history prior to Pangea."

May 3, 09: A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River. The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval. Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC.
. . If we're wrong, it was one heck of a storm. It may have been a large storm, but evidence is increasingly pointing to a rare Atlantic Ocean tsunami. The origin of such a tsunami is also under debate. An undersea landslide is the most likely source, but one research group has proposed that an planetisimal impact provided the trigger.
. . In 300BC, barrier beaches and marsh grass embroidered the coast, and Native Americans walked the shore.

Apr 22, 09: Spider silk is already tougher and lighter than steel, and now scientists have made it three times stronger by adding small amounts of metal. The technique may be useful for manufacturing super-tough textiles and high-tech medical materials, including artificial bones and tendons.

Apr 22, 09: A molecule that until now existed only in theory has finally been made. Known as a Rydberg molecule, it is formed through an elusive and extremely weak chemical bond between two atoms. The new type of bonding occurs because one of the two atoms in the molecule has an electron very far from its nucleus or center.
. . It reinforces fundamental quantum theories, developed by Nobel prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, about how electrons behave and interact. The Rydberg molecules in question were formed from two atoms of rubidium --one a Rydberg atom, and one a "normal" atom.
. . Unimaginably cold temperatures are needed to create the molecules, as Vera Bendkowsky from the U of Stuttgart who led the research explained. "The nuclei of the atoms have to be at the correct distance from each other for the electron fields to find each other and interact", she said. "We use an ultracold cloud of rubidium --as you cool it, the atoms in the gas move closer together."

Apr 20, 09: A newly discovered type of brain cell may help us prep for social interactions. The cells are a special type of "mirror neurons", which are thought to aid understanding of the actions and intentions of others. Mirror neurons fire both when you do something, like grab a bottle of wine, and when you watch another person do the same thing. Instead of carrying out a step-by-step reasoning process to figure out why a friend is grabbing a bottle of wine, we instantly understand what's going on inside his head because it's going on in our heads too.
. . Now, researchers have discovered some mirror neurons don't just care about what another individual is doing, they also care about how far away they're doing it, and, more importantly, whether there's potential for interaction.
. . Distance shouldn't make a difference for understanding or imitating a task, or for any of the commonly attributed functions of mirror neurons. However, distance plays a fundamental role in deciding how to respond to behaviors.

Apr 14, 09: Our teeth are put to the test every day, withstanding all the crunching and munching of meals and snacks. This remarkable resilience appears to be due to the microscopic "basket-weave" structure of human tooth enamel, a new study finds.
. . Tooth enamel, which forms the outer coating of teeth, is a strong but brittle substance. Given the brittleness of teeth, which is comparable to that of glass, it's a wonder that for the most part, they can last a lifetime without cracking to pieces.

Apr 7, 09: When patients had both hands transplanted, their brains re-established connections much more quickly with the left hand than the right, a team of researchers in France reports. The sample was small, just two patients, but both had been right-handed before losing their hands, and both followed a pattern of reconnection with their brain that was quicker for the left hand.
. . The research shows that even years after the loss of hands the brain can reorganize and rewire itself to recognize and connect to a replacement.
. . He was checked periodically and the researchers found his brain had re-established nerve connections to control the left hand by 10 months, while it took 26 months to complete the rewiring needed for the right hand. "Interestingly, despite that LB was right-handed, and that after his amputation, he used his prosthetic device mostly with his right hand, hand preference shifted from right to left after he had the graft."

Apr 11, 09: The development of a drug that controls a chemical used to form memories sparked heady scientific and philosophical speculation this week.
. . Granted, the drug has only been tested in rats, but other memory-blunting drugs are being tried in soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. It might not be long before memories are pharmaceutically targeted, just as moods are now.
. . Some think this represents an opportunity to eliminate the crippling psychic effects of past trauma. Others see an ill-advised chemical intrusion into an essential human facility that threatens to replace our ability to understand and cope with life's inevitabilities.
. . We have a preoccupation with amnesia, and are more fearful of losing something than adding falsehoods. The problem is that it's the falsehoods that really mess you up. If you don't know something, you can look it up, remedy your lack of information. But if you believe something falsely, that might make you act much more erroneously.

Apr 6, 09: Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit. Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.
. . The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

Apr 6, 09: More than 50 conditions can cause serious itching, including AIDS, Hodgkin's disease and the side effects of chronic pain treatment. Nobody knows just how scratching relieves itch. Now scientists have watched spinal nerves transmit that relief signal to the brain in monkeys, a possible step toward finding new treatments for persistent itching in people. Scratching can lead to serious skin damage and infections in people with chronic itch, he said. So scientists want to find ways for such people to relieve their distress "without tearing up their skin."
. . The scientists focused on a kind of spinal nerve that transmits the "itch" signal to the brain. These nerves reach into the brain from near the bottom of the rib cage. The researchers sedated long-tailed macaques for the experiment and placed recording electrodes on their spinal nerves. They injected a chemical into the skin of a leg to produce itching. The nerves fired electrical signals in response.
. . Then the researchers scratched the leg with a hand-held metal device that simulates three monkey fingers. The firing rate dropped —-the apparent signature of the "relief" signal. In contrast, when researchers scratched the leg without causing an itch first, the firing rate jumped. So the nerves somehow "know" to react much differently if there's an itch to be relieved than if there isn't. "It's like there's a little brain" in the spinal cord, Giesler said.

Apr 2, 09: Two teams of researchers said they had created machines that could reason, formulate theories and discover scientific knowledge on their own, marking a major advance in the field of artificial intelligence. Such robo-scientists could be put to work unraveling complex biological systems, designing new drugs, modeling the world's climate or understanding the cosmos. For the moment, though, they are performing more humble tasks.
. . At Aberystwyth U in Wales, Ross King and colleagues have created a robot called Adam that can not only carry out experiments on yeast metabolism but also reason about the results and plan the next experiment. It is the world's first example of a machine that has made an independent scientific discovery --in this case, new facts about the genetic make-up of baker's yeast. "On its own it can think of hypotheses and then do the experiments, and we've checked that it's got the results correct."
. . Their next robot, Eve, will have much more brain power and will be put to work searching for new medicines.
. . In a second paper from Cornell U in New York, who have developed a computer program capable of working out the fundamental physical laws behind a swinging double pendulum. Just by crunching the numbers --and without any prior instruction in physics-- the Cornell machine was able to decipher Isaac Newton's laws of motion and other properties.
. . Lipson does not think robots will make scientists obsolete any day soon, but believes they could take over much of the routine work in research laboratories.

Apr 2, 09: Gold, silver, copper, zinc and lead --at 2-3K underwater and encased in massive mineral deposits. New technology and worldwide demand have combined to make mining for these metals economically feasible for the first time.
. . A breakthrough project is moving forward in New Guinea, and new rules to govern deep ocean mining will be set by an international authority this spring.
. . Hydrothermal vents" spew out mineral-laden water as hot as 750 degrees. The minerals cool in the frigid sea water and solidify into the deposits. About 200 active vents have been found, though only 10 nearby deposits are considered prolific enough to mine.
. . Canada-based Nautilus Minerals Inc is negotiating to mine an area about 1,600 meters deep off Papua, New Guinea, and hopes to be operating by 2011 or 2012. The project is piggybacking on technology developed by oil companies for deep water drilling.
. . The unique species that thrive near the vents are a chief concern of scientists. Creatures there include footlong clams, man-length tubeworms and a shrimp species that has no eyes, but may have sensors that detect the vents' infrared radiation. The species there may tell us more about the origins of life of earth, and even what life elsewhere might look like.

Apr 1, 09: When dark matter is destroyed, it leaves behind a burst of exotic particles, according to theory. Now scientists have found a possible signature of these remains. The discovery could help prove the existence of dark matter and reveal what it's made of.
. . An Italian satellite called PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light nuclei Astrophysics), launched in 2006 to measure radiation in space, found an overabundance of particles called positrons, which are the antimatter counterpart to electrons (matter and antimatter annihilate each other).
. . This positron signature could have a variety of causes, but a prime candidate is dark matter. When two dark matter particles collide they can sometimes destroy each other and release a burst of energy that includes positrons.
. . Kane's personal bet for the particle behind dark matter in these findings is called a wino (pronounced WEE-no) —-a specific type of neutralino, which is a theorized category of particles that could exist as "supersymmetric partners" for all the Standard Model particles such as electrons, quarks, etc. The wino is the supersymmetric partner of a particle called the W boson.
. . If dark matter is made up of neutralinos, then dark matter particles would be their own antimatter particles, because the anti-neutralino is simply a neutralino. Thus, when two dark matter particles collide, they can self-destruct like any other interaction of matter and anti-matter.
. . Luckily, this does not happen very often. Dark matter particles are thought to be extremely tiny, and the chances of them hitting each other perfectly square on, and under the right conditions for destruction, are very low. This fact allows dark matter to clump together throughout the universe, scaffolding up galaxies and clusters, without destroying itself every time two dark matter particles come near each other.
. . Even though annihilations are rare, the positrons they produce could survive for up to a few million years, so they can stick around long enough for detectors like PAMELA to find them.

Mar 27, 09: With $55 million, a collection of frozen human brains and robots capable of processing 192 brain slices a day, the Allen Brain Institute is attempting to do the impossible: systematically map out the expression patterns of more than 20,000 genes that make our grey matter tick.
. . The science behind the techniques isn't new. Researchers have probed neurons with specific RNA bits in a revealing game of genetic hide-and-seek for 40 years. But the speed and scope with which they're tackling the problem with specially-constructed robots that automate most of the data-gathering and analysis is unprecedented. When the Atlas is finished in 2012, scientists will start untangling the whys and hows of our neural network.

Mar 25, 09: This month, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to study the potential of body odor as a means of identifying criminals and figuring out when they're lying. The work will expand on basic research into the chemistry of the so-called human "odorprint", which scientists say is as distinct as DNA.

Mar 24, 09: A distinct pattern of brain waves which occurs just before we make a mistake has been pinpointed by scientists.

Mar 19, 09: Baughman and his colleagues have produced a formulation that's stronger than steel, as light as air and more flexible than rubber —-a truly 21st century muscle. It could be used to make artificial limbs, "smart" skins, shape-changing structures, ultra-strong robots and — in the immediate future — highly-efficient solar cells. "We can generate about 30 times the force per unit area of natural muscle."
. . "This apparently unprecedented degree of anisotropy" —-direction-dependent physical properties-— "is akin to having diamond-like behavior in one direction, and rubber-like behavior in the others." Natural muscles, said Baughman, contract at a maximum rate of 10% per second. In the same amount of time, his latest nanotube sheaths can contract by 40,000%.
. . The nanotube bundles retain their properties at temperatures ranging from the -320 degree F of liquid nitrogen to the 2800 degree F melting point of iron.

Mar 19, 09: Super-fast quantum computers are now a step closer to becoming a reality, thanks to a breakthrough by scientists. Researchers have created a molecular device which could act as a building block for super-fast computers --components that could be used to develop quantum computers, which can make intricate calculations faster than conventional machines.
. . They used molecular scale technology instead of silicon chips --combining tiny magnets with molecular machines that can shuttle between two locations without the use of external force. The manuvrable magnets could one day be used as the basic component in quantum computers.
. . Quantum computers will use quantum binary digits, or qubits, which are far more sophisticated as they are capable of representing not only zero and one, but a range of values simultaneously. Their complexity will enable quantum computers to perform more quickly than conventional machines.

Mar 18, 09: Frustrated by the inadequacies of human-engineered medical adhesives, researchers hope to take a lesson from mussels, barnacles, tubeworms and other animals that can resist the ocean's buffeting currents.
. . "Marine organisms exploit multiple bonding mechanisms. By using multiple chemical bonds, they're able to bond to multiple substrates" —-a fancy way of saying they can stick to anything. Chemists recently made prototype bandages with an inkjet printer filled with adhesive proteins taken from mussels, whose remarkable "feet" —-a tangle of fibers that anchor them to rocks-— have made them the most widely-studied specialist in marine clinging. Mussels can also attach themselves to wood, iron, steel, each other, and even Teflon.
. . The inside of a body poses many of the same challenges as an intertidal zone. Marine glues need to stick to wet surfaces. They do so by employing a variety of chemical bonds to displace the water, right down to the last molecule. Then they need to keep their glue from dissolving in water.

Mar 17, 09: Indian scientists have discovered three new species of bacteria in Earth's upper stratosphere that are resistant to ultraviolet radiation, researchers said. The bacteria do not match any species found on Earth. They were found in samples that scientists collected when they sent a balloon into the stratosphere.

Mar 8, 09: Engineers and scientists at The U of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called "graphene" as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power. Storage is vital for times when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.
. . The researchers believe their breakthrough shows promise that graphene (a form of carbon) could eventually double the capacity of existing ultracapacitors, which are manufactured using an entirely different form of carbon.
. . An ultracapacitor can be used in a wide range of energy capture and storage applications and are used either by themselves as the primary power source or in combination with batteries or fuel cells. Some advantages of ultracapacitors over more traditional energy storage devices (such as batteries) include: higher power capability, longer life, a wider thermal operating range, lighter, more flexible packaging and lower maintenance.

Mar 8, 09: U.S. scientists said they have taken an important step toward making an artificial life form by making a ribosome --the cell's factory.

QUOTE: to Charles Rubin, a political scientist at Duquesne University, comparing neuroelectronics to antidepressants is misleading. The more seamless the union between man and machine, said Rubin, "the less I am a user of the 'machine' and the more I become the machine."

Feb 11, 09: German scientists using new imaging technology said they have watched a single cell give rise to blood cells, bolstering understanding of stem cells.

Feb 9, 09: The human cortex has about 22 billion neurons and 220 trillion synapses. A supercomputer capable of running a software simulation of the human brain doesn't exist yet. Researchers would require at least a machine with a computational capacity of 36.8 petaflops and a memory capacity of 3.2 petabytes --a scale that supercomputer technology is expected to hit in only three years.
. . Each neuron connects to others through 8,000 synapses. It takes about 20 transistors to implement a synapse, so building the silicon equivalent of 220 trillion synapses is a tall order.

Feb 4, 09: Pressure from a dam, its reservoir's heavy waters weighing on geologic fault lines, may have helped trigger China's devastating earthquake last May, some scientists say.

Feb 2, 09: The sewage plant in the Nagano Prefecture, Japan, is mining gold from sludge. The gold to crap ratio is quite impressive by mining standards: 4.2 pounds of gold for each ton of molten ash, which is generated after the plant—located in the town of Suwa —incinerates the sludge. However, this ratio may be exceptional in that area because the high concentration of industries that use the prized element for their operations.

Jan 15, 08: Scientists are moving closer to creating a real cloak of invisibility. Researchers at Duke U, who developed a material that can "cloak" an item from detection by microwaves, report that they have expanded the number of wavelengths they can block.
. . In 2006, the team reported they had developed so-called metamaterials that could deflect microwaves around a three-dimensional object, essentially making it invisible. "The new device can cloak a much wider spectrum of waves —-nearly limitless-— and will scale far more easily to infrared and visible light. The approach we used should help us expand and improve our abilities to cloak different types of waves", senior researcher David R. Smith said.
. . The new cloak is made up of more than 10,000 individual pieces of fiberglass arranged in parallel rows. The mathematical formulas are used to determine the shape and placement of each piece to deflect the electromagnetic waves.

Jan 7, 08: U.S. scientists have found a way to levitate the very smallest objects using the strange forces of quantum mechanics, and said they might use it to help make tiny nanotechnology machines.
. . They said they had detected and measured a force that comes into play at the molecular level using certain combinations of molecules that repel one another. The repulsion can be used to hold molecules aloft, in essence levitating them, creating virtually friction-free parts for tiny devices.
. . The team has not yet levitated an object, but Capasso said he now knows how to do it. "This is an experiment we are sure will work."

Dec 30, 08: Cattle-rustling is an age-old problem on Argentina's legendary Pampas plains, but genetic testing is helping police crack down on thieves.

Dec 30, 08: Plants do just as well with human hair as a source of nitrogen as they do with manure or synthetic natural-gas-based fertilizer. A new study shows lettuce and wormwood thrive.

Dec 23, 08: Police in Finland believe they have caught a car-thief thanks to a DNA sample taken from a sample of his blood found inside a mosquito.

Dec 17, 08: Japanese researchers have reproduced images of things people were looking at by analyzing brain scans, opening the way for people to communicate directly from their mind.

Dec 10, 08: Normal surgical lasers aren't very precise. Heat from their pulses tends to build up and vaporize healthy tissue. That makes them lousy for delicate tasks like brain surgery, where all the tissue is, you know, important. So engineer Adela Ben-Yakar, an assistant professor at the U of Texas who cut her teeth in rocket science—designing supersonic engines for scramjets—decided to come up with a laser capable of vaporizing individual cells, one at a time.
. . Using a so-called femtosecond laser, her device emits ultrafast light pulses that don't have enough time to damage surrounding tissue. While femtosecond lasers themselves aren't exactly new—they're standard gear for laser eye surgery—Ben-Yakar is the first to figure out how to make one small enough to be used inside a person. Her blaster fits in a 15-mm surgical probe that shoots the laser's light through a crystal fiber (similar to a fiber-optic strand).
. . Paired with another fiber for microimaging, it lets surgeons work through a small incision and burn off individual cells in places like the pituitary gland (normally accessed rather awkwardly through the nose) and the spinal cord, which is hidden behind bundles of sensitive neurons and axons.

Dec 10, 08: The government needs a more comprehensive plan for studying the risks of nanotechnology, the National Research Council said. The U.S. plan lacks vision, fails to assess risk and leaves the industry vulnerable to public mistrust, the National Research Council said in a report.

Dec 9, 08: Very large earthquakes can trigger an increase in activity at nearby volcanoes, according to a new study. The controversial findings come from an analysis of records in southern Chile. It showed that up to four times as many volcanic eruptions occurred during the year following very large earthquakes than did so in other years.

Dec 4, 08: The solution to a perennial problem of farming could be, well, perennials.
. . Researchers at Iowa State U are experimenting with the placement of perennial prairie strips in corn and soybean fields as a way of lessening runoff and soil erosion. Preliminary research shows that placing the strips at key points in and around crop fields can lead to a 10% to 20% reduction in sediment loss.

10 Best NASA Spinoffs:
. . Life's DHA and ARA: Algae- and fungus-based baby formula additives that are chock-full of brain-developing fatty acids.
. . Liquidmetal: A unique alloy —also known as metallic glass— that's more flexible and twice as strong as titanium.
. . Paragon CRT contacts:: Lenses that reshape your corneas while you sleep, temporarily fixing nearsightedness.
. . LifeShear LS-100 Cutter: Pyrotechnic cutting tool that's 50% lighter and 70% cheaper than older explosive-powered choppers. FEMA uses it for rescues.
. . Zeno: A zit-zapping device that transmits heat to pimples, causing the offending bacteria to self-destruct.
. . EagleEyes StimuLights: Specs built for poor light -—they let in vision-enhancing rays while blocking those that muddy your vision.
. . Insuladd: An additive consisting of hollow ceramic microcapsules that turn ordinary paint into insulation.
. . GameReady Injury Treatment System: Based on spacesuit tech, these wraps provide precise cold and compression therapy.
. . PRP Powder: Beeswax microcapsules that absorb oil and float at the surface to help clean up spills.

Nov 20, 08: Here's something you don't see every day: water bouncing. GE has developed some pretty incredible superhydrophobic surfaces in it's Global Research Nanotechnology lab, and they've captured the results with super-high speed cameras.
. . The water droplet spreads, recoils, breaks into satellite droplets, and completely lifts off... that's what we really want for an impacting-droplet resistant surface!
. . Imagine applications that involve high speed water droplets, such as wind turbine blade, airplane wing, or even just your car in motion.

Nov 20, 08: They could have detected "Kaluza-Klein" electron-positron pairs resulting from the annihilation of WIMPS.
. . The KK particles are predicted by multiple-dimension theories of the universe and have long-been a leading candidate as the substance of dark matter. The new discovery then, if confirmed, would provide evidence that the fabric of space-time has many "compact" dimensions beyond the four that humans perceive.

Nov 3, 08: Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic "umbrella" that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say. The super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun pose a significant threat to any long-duration mission, such as to Luna or Mars.
. . But the research team says a spaceship equipped with a magnetic field generator could protect its occupants. The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere.
. . Even the spacecraft themselves are not immune to the effects. A solar flare crippled the electronics on Japan's mission to Mars, Nozomi, in 2002, for example.
. . In its experimental set-up, the team simulated the solar wind in the laboratory and used magnetic fields to isolate an area inside the plasma, deflecting particles around the "hole". "The first time we switched it on, it worked", said Dr Bamford. What is more, the trial field seems to adjust itself automatically. "It does have the capacity to be somewhat self-regulating."
. . A practical implementation is probably 15 to 20 years away. "I don't think it'll come down to as little as sticking fridge magnets on the outside of the spacecraft."

Nov 3, 08: Japanese scientists have cloned mice whose bodies were frozen for as long 16 years and said it may be possible to use the technique to resurrect mammoths and other extinct species.

Oct 28, 08: A dreaded major earthquake in Tokyo would set off a crisis of "toilet refugees", with a restroom shortage for nearly 820,000 people, a government study said.

Oct 27, 08: A study found that the vast majority of errors tennis referees make is calling balls out that are in.

Oct 25, 08: Some scientists believe neutrinos could be the mechanism for the creation of our matter-filled universe. Almost all other particles have an antiparticle twin that, if it comes into contact with the particle, immediately annihilates it. But if neutrinos are their own antiparticles they could conceivably be knocked onto matter's "team", thereby causing the cascading win for matter over antimatter that we know occurred. As the Indian theoretical physcist G. Rajasekaran put it in a speech earlier this year, neutrinos that are their own antiparticles would explain "how, after [the] annihilation of most of the particles with antiparticles, a finite but small residue of particles was left to make up the present Universe."

Oct 22, 08: Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape.
. . It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.
. . Who knew? Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays.
. . With some refinements, the process might be harnessed for making inexpensive X-ray machines for paramedics or for places where electricity is expensive or hard to get. After all, you could peel tape or do something similar in such machines with just human power, like cranking.

Oct 17, 08: It could revolutionize the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made. Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass.
. . The ultra-tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Due to its unique properties, it is envisioned as a wondrous new material for light, energy-efficient aircraft and automobiles, more powerful computers, improved TV screens and many other products.
. . The secret of its strength is the huge surface area of each nanotube. "If you take a gram of nanotubes, just one gram, and if you unfold every tube into a graphite sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field."
. . Electrical circuits and even natural causes such as the sun or Northern Lights can interfere with radios and other electronic gear. Buckypaper provides up to four times the shielding specified in a recent Air Force contract proposal, Wang said. Typically, conventional composite materials have a copper mesh added for lightning protection. Replacing copper with buckypaper would save weight and fuel.
. . Other near-term uses would be as electrodes for fuel cells, super capacitors and batteries. Buckypaper could be a more efficient and lighter replacement for graphite sheets used in laptop computers to dissipate heat, which is harmful to electronics. The long-range goal is to build planes, automobiles and other things with buckypaper composites. The military also is looking at it for use in armor plating and stealth technology.

Oct 15, 08: Scientists have shown it is possible to harness brain signals and redirect them to make paralysed limbs move. Monkeys were taught to play a computer game were able to overcome wrist paralysis with an experimental device. The technology bypasses injuries that stop nerve signals travelling from the brain to the muscles, offering hope for people with spinal damage. They've only tested their "brain-machine interfaces" in monkeys. The hope is to develop implantable circuits for humans without the need for robotic limbs.

Oct 15, 08: that might lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal cord injury.

Oct 12, 08: Computers argued, cracked jokes and parried trick questions, all part of an annual test of artificial intelligence carried out at the U of Reading.
. . Typing away at split-screen terminals, a dozen volunteers carried out two conversations at once: one with a chat program, the other with a human. After five minutes, they were asked to say which was which. Some were not sure who —-or what-— they were talking to.
. . The contest draws on the ideas of British mathematician Alan Turing, who came up with a subjective but simple rule for determining whether machines were capable of thought. Writing in 1950, Turing argued that conversation was proof of intelligence. If a computer talked like a human, then for all practical purposes, it thought like a human too.
. . "I feel terrible today", Elbot replied. "This morning I made a mistake and poured milk over my breakfast instead of oil, and it rusted before I could eat it."

Oct 9, 08: Scientists discovered the only known ecosystem that consists of just one organism. Found in a gold mine in South Africa, the ecosystem could be a model for early life on Earth or other planets.

Oct 9, 08: A new type of dry glue designed to mimic gecko feet is 10 times stickier than the gravity-defying lizards, and three times stickier than other gecko-inspired glues, U.S. researchers said. Like other gecko-inspired glues, a new glue uses a carpet of carbon nanotubes, thin filaments of carbon molecules. But attached to the ends of these filaments are curly strands of carbon that expand the surface area of the glue's gripping action.
. . This design matches the structure of real gecko feet, which have microscopic hairs that branch off in different directions. "Our sticky glue has a force 10 times that of gecko feet and three times more than previous sticky glues trying to mimic the gecko feet."
. . The design is meant to maximize the effect of atomic-scale attractive forces known as van der Waals forces. When the curly part of the tubes are pressed onto a surface, the tubes become aligned with the surface, forming a strong bond. But, when lifted at an angle, this bond is broken.

Oct 8, 08: Police could one day predict the surname of male suspects or victims of crime from DNA alone, British researchers said.
. . Scientists at Leicester U, where DNA fingerprinting was invented in 1984, said they had demonstrated that men with the same surname were highly likely to be genetically linked. The technique is based on analyzing DNA from the Y chromosome that imparts maleness and which, like surnames, is passed down from father to son.
. . Not surprisingly, the likelihood of a good genetic match depends on the rarity of the name, with the most unusual names having the strongest links. A study of 2,500 men found that on average there was a 24% chance of two men with the same surname sharing a common ancestor but this increased to nearly 50% when the surname was rare. Over 70% of men with surnames such as Attenborough and Swindlehurst shared the same or near identical Y chromosome types.

Sept 25, 08: A traveler walking along the eastern bank of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec can stand on the oldest bedrock known on Earth. This ancient section of the planet's crust may be as much as 4.28 billion years old, researchers report. Some zircon grains found in Western Australia have been dated to 4.36 billion years, but those are individual materials, not intact sections of bedrock.

Sept 18, 08: Genetically engineered animals moved closer to the dinner table as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the process it will use to review new proposals public.

Sept 15, 08: A fingerprinting method that uses salt in people's sweat could result in more arrests for criminals with a diet high in fast food.

Sept 11, 08: Scientists who tricked monkeys by swapping images of sailboats for teacups have figured out how the brain learns to recognize objects, a finding that could lead to robots that "see."

Sept 8, 08: A lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.
. . Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.
. . Protocellular work is even more radical than the other field trying to create artifical life: synthetic biology. Even J. Craig Venter's work to build an artificial bacterium with the smallest number of genes necessary to live takes current life forms as a template. Protocell researchers are trying to design a completely novel form of life that humans have never seen and that may never have existed.
. . Szostak's earlier work has shown that the container probably took the form of a layer of fatty acids that could self-assemble based on their reaction to water (see video). One tip of the acid is hydrophilic, meaning it's attracted to water, while the other tip is hydrophobic. When researchers put a lot of these molecules together, they circle the wagons against the water and create a closed loop.
. . These membranes, with the right mix of chemicals, can allow nucleic acids in under some conditions and keep them trapped inside in others. That opens the possibility that one day, in the distant past, an RNA-like molecule wandered into a fatty acid and started replicating. That random event, through billions of evolutionary iterations, researchers believe, created life as we know it.

Aug 21, 08: Your tongue might be able to taste calcium. The capability to taste calcium has now been discovered in mice. With these rodents and humans sharing many of the same genes, the new finding suggests that people might also have such a taste.
. . The four tastes we are most familiar with are sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Recently scientists have discovered tongue molecules called receptors that detect a fifth distinct taste - "umami", or savory.
. . "There are actual receptors for calcium, not just bitter or sour compounds." There may be a strong link between the bitterness of certain vegetables and their calcium level. High-calcium vegetables include collard greens, bok choy, kale and bitter melon. One reason some people might avoid these veggies, Tordoff suggests, is because of their calcium taste. Ironically, while milk and other dairy products are loaded with calcium, the mineral tends to bind to fats and proteins, which prevents you from tasting it in these foods.
. . A taste receptor designed specifically for calcium makes sense for our survival, since the mineral is key to cell biology and good bones. Low calcium intakes have been implicated in several chronic diseases in people, including osteoporosis, obesity and hypertension.

Aug 19, 08: DEET, the widely used mosquito repellent, does not block the insects' sense of smell but simply stinks to them, U.S. researchers reported.

Aug 13, 08: Travel by bubble might seem more appropriate for witches in Oz, but two physicists suggest that a future spaceship could fold a space-time bubble around itself to travel faster than the speed of light. We're talking about the very distant future, of course.
. . The idea involves manipulating dark energy --the mysterious force behind the universe's ongoing expansion-- to propel a spaceship forward without breaking the laws of physics. "Think of it like a surfer riding a wave", said Gerald Cleaver, a physicist at Baylor U. "The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light."
. . Strange as it sounds, current evidence supports the notion that the fabric of space-time can expand faster than the speed of light, because the reality in which light travels is itself expanding. Their notion is based on the Alcubierre drive, which proposes expanding space-time behind the spaceship while also shrinking space-time in front.
. . String theorists had believed that a total of 10 dimensions exist, including height, width, length and time. The other six dimensions exist largely as unknowns, but everything is based on hypothetical one-dimensional strings. A newer theory, called M-theory, suggests that those strings all vibrate in yet another dimension.
. . Manipulating that additional dimension would alter dark energy in terms of height, width, and length, Cleaver and Obousy theorize. However, the Baylor physicists estimate that manipulating dark energy through the extra dimension requires energy equivalent to the converting the entire mass of Jupiter into pure energy —-enough to move a ship measuring 10 meters square. "That is an enormous amount of energy", Cleaver said. "We are still a very long ways off before we could create something to harness that type of energy."

Aug 13, 08: Douglas firs are unlikely to surpass 138m because they are not be able to supply water any higher, a study suggests.

Aug 10, 08: MIT researchers hope to provide very soon: super realistic "passive 6-D reflectance field displays" that not only look great, but also respond to stimuli, like lighting conditions. And, not only will these uber images do all that, they'll be able to change over time as lighting conditions change, with "no electronics or active control" from we mere humans. Oh, and the displays will respond the changes in viewpoint, meaning these visual wonders will have a creepy degree of interactivity to them too.

Aug 4, 08: Deadly rogue waves 100 feet tall or higher could suddenly rise seemingly out of nowhere from the ocean, research now reveals. Understanding how such monstrous waves form could lead to ways to predict when they might emerge or, potentially, even drive them at enemy vessels, scientists added.
. . For centuries, these killer waves had been dismissed as myths --towering walls of water blamed for mysterious disappearances of ships. But on New Year's Day on 1995, a wave that reached more than 80 feet high was detected with scientific instruments at an oil platform in the North Sea.
. . To investigate these waves, the researchers experimented with liquid helium in a cavity just an inch wide, whose fluid properties they could readily tinker with. Normally, a large wave breaks up into smaller and smaller waves over time, until the viscosity of a fluid damps out these small waves. Now the scientists demonstrate the opposite can happen in fluids - tiny waves can concentrate together to become abnormally large waves "that emerge surprisingly quickly."

July 30, 08: A team of researchers working in New Mexico has found traces of life inside salty halite crystals. The finding may even help scientists search for signs of life on other planets.
. . These crystals may not seem all that interesting at first glance. However, inside of them are tiny pockets of water that can be very valuable for scientists. Halite crystals form in liquid as evaporation occurs. The crystals naturally trap small amounts of liquid during this process. These water pockets and all that they contain can be protected inside halite crystals for extremely long periods of time. The crystals in the recent study had drops of water that were 250 million years old.
. . Scientists discovered abundant amounts of cellulose fibers inside the water. Cellulose is present in many living cells. One of the most common places to find cellulose is as a component in the cell walls of plants. Cellulose is also produced by single-celled organisms like cyanobacteria. Most importantly for astrobiologists, cellulose is only formed by living organisms. If cellulose is present, there must have been life.
. . Cellulose is a very sturdy material and the fibers were stable enough to survive until today. Additionally, the samples were collected from deep below the ground, where they had been protected from radiation. The cellulose found in the New Mexico halite is now the oldest biological macromolecules ever isolated. In addition, the researchers were able to visualize the fibers and study their biochemistry. Because of this, the 250 million-year-old cellulose is now providing a window into the history of life on Earth. If cellulose can survive for 250 million years inside halite on Earth, it may be possible for similar molecules to survive in halite crystals on other planets.

July 30, 08: “Azobenzene-containing liquid-crystalline elastomers (LCEs) and their composite materials have the potential to show three-dimensional movement by light irradiation. With the LCE laminated films, a first light-driven plastic motor has been developed, which can convert light energy directly into a continuous rotation without the aid of batteries, electric wires, or gears.”
. . “This first-of-a-kind motor converts light directly into mechanical energy, thanks to a belt made from a special elastomer whose molecular structure expands or contracts when illuminated, depending on the wavelength of light.”

July 22, 08: Berkeley researchers have discovered that one nanotube can be used as a tiny platform to determine of mass of a single atom. When placed on the nanotube, the atom vibrates it ala diving board. This vibration is the key to the atom's mass, but measuring it proved a feat in itself. Researchers realized that by using radio waves they could overcome this obstacle and record the data. The system could replace the mass spectrometer as the "holy grail" of atomic-level mass measurement tools.

July 22, 08: Tomatoes, japaleño peppers, serrano peppers and now avocadoes: all four of these produce items are classified as fruits by scientists, regardless of what consumers, grocers and nutritionists think. A squash or a string bean or a cucumber is also a fruit. Eggplant, green pepper and okra are all technically fruits.
. . In botany, a fruit is the structure that bears the seeds of a plant. It is formed in the plant's flower. In the center, the female parts of the flower include the ovary. The ovary has structures inside that become the seeds when fertilized. So the ovary will develop into the fruit.
. . The term vegetable has no meaning in botany. Rhubarb and celery are the stems, albeit very enlarged and juicy stems, of a leaf. Lettuce, kale, spinach and cabbage are the leaves of a plant.
. . Legumes are family of plants and they all have the same type of fruit - a bean , actually, that is technically called a legume. Examples: snow peas, string beans or sugar snap peas. All fruits (of the legume variety).
. . Peas (also kidney beans, chick peas and fava beans) might fool you. They are fleshy and don't look like stems or leaves, but they are not fruit. The pea (or bean) is the seed. They all grow in the same kind of pod that is the fruit, and are very high in protein. The plant, the pod and the vegetable are all called legumes.
. . Berries are fruits. Botanists agree with us on that one. Mostly. To botanists, a berry is a fleshy fruit that has multiple seeds on the inside, embedded in the flesh of the ovary, such as a blueberry. Strangely to us, that makes all these other things berries to botanists: tomatoes, eggplants, grapes, persimmons and chili peppers. And guess what aren't berries to botanists? Strawberries, blackberries, mulberries and raspberries, of course. They are aggregate fruits, because they form little fruitlets from many ovaries that remain separate, rather than being fused into a single structure.
. . Strawberries, with their seeds on the outside, are especially weird. In your classic fruit, the apple or the peach, the seeds inside are surrounded by the ovary wall. That applies to blueberries. But in strawberries, for instance, "the ovary wall sort of drops off and what enlarges is the patch of tissue that is underneath the structures that contain eggs (the ovules) which then develop into seeds", Litt said. "As it enlarges, it separates all the seeds from each other and they end up on the outside of the fruit", she explained. In another twist, pineapples are called a multiple fruit. Each one is actually a whole bunch of fruits, formed from the fused ovaries of many different flowers.

July 17, 08: The scientific community has been praising graphene as some sort of miracle material for years now -—even going so far as to say that it could eventually replace silicon. Well, graphene can now add another statistic to its impressive resume now that researchers have confirmed it as the strongest material ever tested.
. . Two engineering professors at Columbia U tested graphene's strength at an atomic level by indenting a perfect sample of the material with a sharp probe made of diamond. The results confirm what many had suspected all along -—and that will go a long way to bolster the case that graphene would be able to handle the heat produced in future ultrafast processors.

July 14, 08: Unlike most of us, subatomic particles don't gain weight as they get older. The mass of these tiny bits of matter has remained constant over the last 6 billion years, recent astronomical observations indicate.
. . Believe it or not, but whether an electron was lighter or heftier in the past is a question of fundamental importance. Variations in particle masses and other so-called constants of nature, such as the speed of light, may help explain the mystery of dark energy and determine if hidden dimensions exist. "Some theorists claim the physical constants should have varied over time. This is something that is part of the modeling of the universe."
. . Henkel and his colleagues have placed new limits on wavering constants. the researchers have shown that the mass ratio between two particles —-the proton and the electron-— has not changed from its present value by more than 2 parts in a million. The results call into question previous measurements that claim to have seen variations in this mass ratio.

July 8, 08: A team of US researchers has detected stress-induced changes in rocks that occurred hours before two small tremors in California's San Andreas Fault. The observations used sensors lowered down holes drilled into the quake zone. The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope.

July 6, 08: Diamonds and precious metals found in the eastern United States might have rained down during the last Ice Age after a comet shattered over Canada and set North America ablaze, all leading to a mass die-off of animals and humans. The discovery is consistent with a theory proposed by West and colleagues that a 3-mile-wide comet splintered over glaciers and ice sheets in eastern Canada about 12,900 years ago
. . For several months following the comet strike, the skies rained precious stone and metals, the researchers speculate. Diamonds drizzled down by the tons. The larger diamonds were visible to the naked eye and dropped like hail stones within seconds of the blasts. North America's grassland, the furs of animals, the hair and clothing of humans --all would have been set ablaze.
. . West and his colleagues have proposed that the comet strike contributed to the extinction of several species of North American megafauna, including mammoths and mastodons, and led to the early demise of the Clovis culture, a Stone Age people who had only recently immigrated to the continent.
. . The multiple airbursts might have also caused large amounts of fresh water to be dumped into the Atlantic Ocean, temporarily disrupting currents and prompting a sudden global cold snap called the Younger Dryas period.

July 3, 08: Scientists at U of Pennsylvania have been tinkering with germanium-tellurium nanowires and have figured out how to make them store data in three states. That's 0,1 and 2... binary seems passé now doesn't it? According to the team, storing trits instead of bits "could allow for a huge increase in the memory density of potential future devices", meaning higher capacity storage in the same size. And using nanowires is a particularly good way to make memory chips because it may be possible to make them self-organize.

Jun 24, 08: A single dose of a new insecticide killed cockroaches that ate it and other roaches that fed off their bodies, U.S. researchers said.

May 31, 08: Some people hear colors, see flavors. Synesthesia is eight times more common among poets, artists and novelists than the general population.
. . The essence of art is, arguably, metaphor, and its practitioners are especially prolific -- and metaphor is just a convenient shorthand for the connection of unlinked cognitive phenomena. That's exactly what appears to happen in the minds of synesthetes. Far-flung parts of their brain have unusually high levels of cross-wiring. For people of a poetic bent, this is quite useful: You get to tell your date that her eyes glow like the moon, hair ripples like the ocean.

May 29, 08: The trouble with tiny bubbles is they pop, but U.S. researchers have made bubbles that last as long as a year --a finding that could improve many consumer and industrial products, they said.

May 29, 08: A computer has been trained to "read" people's minds by looking at scans of their brains as they thought about specific words, researchers said.

May 29, 08: Robotic rovers have patrolled deep space and the deepest seas, but scientists are still struggling to create drones that can overcome the multiple challenges of exploring Antarctica. Georgia Tech researchers think the SnoMote —-a small robot designed like a snowmobile-— will be able to deal with the nasty weather and with slippery terrain that constantly cracks and shifts. They envision dozens of SnoMotes roving Antarctica's vast expanses to add to data already collected by satellites and a handful of weather stations and sensors.

May 28, 08: The leaning tower of Pisa has been successfully stabilized and is out of danger for at least 300 years, said an engineer who has been monitoring the iconic Italian tourist attraction.

May 28, 08: Using only its brainpower (detected by sensors), a monkey directed a robotic arm to pluck a marshmallow from a skewer and stuff it into its mouth, researchers said.

May 26, 08: Researchers have identified seven possibilities for the next generation of mosquito repellant, some of which may work several times longer than the current standard-bearer, DEET. The next step: safety testing.

May 25, 08: Two of the best known crystal skulls --artefacts once thought to be the work of ancient American civilizations-- are modern fakes, a scientific study shows. They are the focus of the story in the latest Indiana Jones film.
. . Their results show the skulls were made using tools not available to the ancient Aztecs or Mayans. "Some of them look like they were produced with a Black & Decker in someone's garage."
. . The researchers used an electron microscope to show that the skulls were probably shaped using a spinning disc-shaped tool made from copper or another suitable metal. The British Museum skull was worked with a harsh abrasive such as corundum or diamond. But X-ray diffraction analysis showed a different material, called carborundum, was used on the artefact in the Smithsonian. Carborundum is a synthetic abrasive which only came into use in the 20th Century: "The suggestion is that it was made in the 1950s or later."

May 22, 08: New Hampshire's governor is considering a bill that would outlaw dissolving human remains as an alternative to cremation but provide for studies to allow it again eventually.

May 15, 08: Researchers at Darpa, the Pentagon's advanced tech-development group, are exploring the use of electromagnetic fields and sonic waves as viable alternatives for snuffing out fires.

May 12, 08: Researchers at Caltech are pioneering new ways to make superstrong metals that are twice as tough as titanium, and twice as elastic. These "metallic glass" composites are so strong a 3mm rod can support a 2-ton truck and they bend instead of snapping like most other metals of their kind, which are called "glass metals."
. . The new metals can potentially be used in industries from aerospace to automotive, as well as in consumer electronics. Because the alloy is so strong, less metal is needed, so spacecraft and cars would be lighter.
. . Glass metals have been around since the '50s. They get their exceptional strength from their disordered atomic structure (hence the "glass" name), whereas most metals have a weaker, crystalline atomic structure that follows a pattern. The downside of the glass structure is that it makes the metal brittle when it's put under too much pressure. The new composites have dendrites of normal crystalline metal structures running through the glass component, which greatly increases the pressure threshold of the alloys.

May 8, 08: A new biometric face scanner from the Japanese company Sagawa Advance has taken the technology to the next level, able to differentiate between identical twins with no problems at all. It does this by using an infrared scanner.

May 8, 08: Since they first walked the planet, humans have either buried or burned their dead. Now a new option is generating interest —-dissolving bodies in lye and flushing the brownish, syrupy residue down the drain.
. . The process is called alkaline hydrolysis and was developed in this country 16 years ago to get rid of animal carcasses. It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers.
. . No funeral homes in the U.S. —-or anywhere else in the world, as far as the equipment manufacturer knows-— offer it. In fact, only two U.S. medical centers use it on human bodies, and only on cadavers donated for research. But because of its environmental advantages, some in the funeral industry say it could someday rival burial and cremation.

May 7, 08: THE EVERGLADES, Fla, a mammoth construction project: a reservoir bigger than Manhattan designed to revive the ecosystem of the once-famed River of Grass.
. . More than a century after the first homes and farms took shape in the Everglades, decades of flood-control projects have left the region parched and near ecological collapse. Now crews are building what will be the world's largest aboveground manmade reservoir to restore some natural water flow to the wetlands.
. . The wetlands once covered more than 6,250 square miles, but they have shrunk by half, replaced with homes and farms and a 2,000-mile grid of drainage canals. In the process, the Everglades has lost 90% of its wading birds. Other creatures are at risk, too, including 68 species that are considered threatened or endangered.
. . The reservoir, estimated to cost up to $800 million, is the largest and most expensive part of a sweeping state and federal restoration effort. Planners hope to eventually double its size.
. . Bulldozers and dump trucks are removing 30 million tons of dirt and muck from the reservoir site, which will then be surrounded by a 26-foot high, 21-mile levee of crushed rock and compacted soil. The levee will also have a 2-foot-thick concrete wall built into it to reduce seepage and add stability. Major construction began in 2007. When the reservoir is compete in 2010, the shorelines will be so far apart —-10K at the widest-— an onlooker won't be able to see from one side to the other.
. . The lake will be filled to an average depth of about 12.5 feet by diverting a nearby canal and adding pumps to push water into it. Officials also are considering allowing boating and fishing. The state insists 80% of the water will be for environmental purposes, but critics fear that without a legally binding agreement, the water could be sent elsewhere for agriculture or development.
. . In 2000, the key parts of the restoration were estimated to cost $7.8 billion and take 30 years to finish. The price tag has now ballooned by billions of dollars because of rising construction and real estate costs. It's unknown when all the work will be complete, if ever.

May 6, 08: Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of the weekend's cyclone, a top politician suggests.
. . A study of the 2004 Asian tsunami found that areas near healthy mangroves suffered less damage and fewer deaths. "Encroachment into mangrove forests, which used to serve as a buffer between the rising tide, between big waves and storms and residential areas; all those lands have been destroyed."
. . More deaths were caused by the cyclone's storm surge rather than the winds which reached 190km/h. "The wave was up to 3.5m high and it swept away and inundated half the houses in low-lying villages", the minister said. "They did not have anywhere to flee."
. . While two people died in the settlement with dense mangrove and scrub forest, up to 6,000 people lost their lives in a nearby village without similar vegetation.
. . Some nations, such as Bangladesh, had actually increased mangrove cover. "This has been allowed to grow, or in part at least, because Bangladesh was really hammered by a typhoon that killed something like 300,000 people a couple of decades ago", Dr McNeely said. "They realized that if they did not have that mangrove buffer, another typhoon heading up the Bay of Bengal would cause even worse damage because the population is even more dense than it was then."

May 6, 08: The planetisimal linked to dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula with such force it pulverized Earth's crust. The result was a veil of airborne carbon beads that blanketed the planet, a new study finds. Spanning about 200 km, the giant indentation left by the planetisimal impact continues to be a treasure trove of clues for scientists.
. . More perplexing has been the formation of carbon particles called cenospheres hiding out in rocks of the Chicxulub Crater and other sites. One idea was that the carbon beads were charred remnants formed as a result of the plant-burning.
. . Flames were not needed, say the current researchers, who find besides that the combustion of plants wouldn't produce such paleo-beads. Rather than a flammable origin, the carbon beads could have formed from the violent pulverization of the Earth's carbon-rich crust. "Carbon embedded in the rocks was vaporized by the impact, eventually forming new carbon structures in the atmosphere", said researcher Simon Brassell.

Apr 29, 08: A team at the Technical U of Munich in Germany has designed a glass chip pierced with micro-sized tubes that act the same way as spider silk glands, and can be used to replicate the initial stages of natural silk production.

Apr 29, 08: An analysis of century-old bottles of absinthe --the kind once quaffed by the likes of van Gogh and Picasso to enhance their creativity-- may end the controversy over what ingredient caused the green liqueur's supposed mind-altering effects.
. . The culprit seems plain and simple: The century-old absinthe contained about 70% alcohol, giving it a 140-proof kick. In comparison, most gins, vodkas and whiskeys are just 80- to 100-proof.
. . The modern scientific consensus is that absinthe's reputation could simply be traced back to alcoholism, or perhaps toxic compounds that leaked in during faulty distillation. Still, others have pointed at a chemical named thujone in wormwood, one of the herbs used to prepare absinthe and the one that gives the drink its green color.
. . After uncorking old, sealed bottles, they found relatively small concentrations of thujone in that absinthe, about the same as those in modern varieties. Laboratory tests found no other compound that could explain absinthe's effects.

Apr 29, 08: Researchers have often debated the maximum amount of items we can store in our conscious mind, in what's called our working memory, and a new study puts the limit at three or four.
. . Working memory is a more active version of short-term memory, which refers to the temporary storage of information. Working memory relates to the information we can pay attention to and manipulate.
. . Early research found the working memory cut-off to be about seven items, which is perhaps why telephone numbers are seven digits long. "For example, when we present phone numbers, we present them in groups of three and four, which helps us to remember the list."
. . While the average person may only be able to hold three or four things in mind at once, some people have achieved amazing feats of working memory. Contestants at the World Memory Championships (most recently held in Bahrain in September 2007) often recall hundreds of digits in order after only five minutes. But even these masters of memory seem to start with the same basic capacities as everyone else, and improve their abilities with strategies and tricks.
. . Interestingly, those that test well on working memory tasks also seem to do well at learning, reading comprehension and problem solving.

Apr 28, 08: Federal researchers say they've developed a human identification test that's faster and possibly cheaper than DNA testing. It would be a handy new weapon in the arsenal for detectives, forensic experts and the military, though no one expects it to replace DNA analysis — and its promoters say it is not intended to. The new method analyzes antibodies. Each person has a unique antibody bar code that can be gleaned from blood, saliva or other bodily fluids.
. . The company has not yet put a price tag on the field kits. But executives say their product will be significantly cheaper than DNA analysis, which can run anywhere from $500 to $3,000 per sample because it requires sophisticated equipment and lab time.

Apr 24, 08: Improved argon-argon dating method places the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or K/T, boundary at 65.95 million years ago [in late June], give or take 40,000 years. Earlier estimates had put it at 65.5 million years ago, with a 300,000-year margin of error.

Apr 21, 08: Research on 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 360 miles beneath the Mississippi Valley, where it effectively pulls the crust down an entire kilometer.

Apr 11, 08: Helium is only one-seventh as dense as air, so your vocal cords vibrate faster. Extracted from natural gas, our supply accumulated in the planet's crust over billions of years —-the result of radioactive decay. One-third of that stash lies in the Texas panhandle. Although helium is the second-most-plentiful element in the cosmos, if it continues to be consumed at the current rate, it'll be gone in nine years.

Apr 17, 08: Scientists have been able to take control of flies' brains to make females behave just like males. Researchers genetically modified the insects so that a group of brain cells that control sexual behavior could be "switched on" by a pulse of light. The team was able to get female fruit flies to produce a courtship song --behavior usually only seen in males. The study suggests that the wiring in male and female flies' brains is similar.

Apr 16, 08: British researchers have unveiled the world's smallest transistor, which measures one atom thick and ten atoms across. The newly announced transistor is more than three times smaller than the 32 nanometer transistors at the cutting edge of silicon-based electronics. This may extend Moore's Law for a while longer.
. . The transistor is made out of graphene, a new material exactly one-atom thick that was discovered by Novoselov' s research team in 2004. Made of intricately linked carbon atoms, graphene has the ability to retain several important properties when only one atom thick --most importantly, conductivity.
. . When current silicon transistor technology goes below 10 nanometers in size, it's predicted it will run into the laws of physics and will no longer be able to create reliable transistors. Graphene, on the other hand, is already seeing working transistors in the sub-10 nanometer range. The researchers say their latest, unpublished work has used graphene to make transistors a single nanometer across. The researchers created the graphene transistors using standard semiconductor fabrication technology.
. . For all the new transistors' promise, Novoselov noted that it is currently impossible to produce large amounts of graphene. They can only produce graphene crystals about 100 microns or 0.1 millimeters across, far too small for industrial production at Intel's scale. But the scientist believes that a process for producing graphene wafers is already in the foreseeable future. "Probably this problem will be solved in the next couple of years", he said.

Apr 16, 08: Scientists have developed a pair of robotic hands that are both strong and sensitive. The tweezers can guide themselves to pick up and move individual cells without damaging them, and have a grip that can be as slight as 20 nanoNewtons of force. In fact, so advanced are the little grippers, that they can be hitched up to a microscope and, with the right software, function without human control.
. . The tweezers were developed by a team from the U of Toronto, and use basic robotic concepts, but on a microscopic scale. What is so extraordinary about them, however, is that they can sense when they are getting close to things, such as surfaces or cells, and so avoid collisions. The tweezers are also aware of the strength of their grip. Manipulated by the software, they can get into position much faster than they could if they were controlled by a person.
. . The tweezers are just three millimeters long, and their tips just ten micrometers wide. Expect to see them being used in tissue engineering or for creating nano- and microscale devices.

Apr 16, 08: Earth gives off a relentless hum of countless notes completely imperceptible to the human ear, like a giant, exceptionally quiet symphony, but the origin of this sound remains a mystery. Now unexpected powerful tunes have been discovered in this hum. These new findings could shed light on the source of this enigma.
. . The planet emanates a constant rumble far below the limits of human hearing, even when the ground isn't shaking from an earthquake. (It does not cause the ringing in the ear linked with tinnitus.) This sound, first discovered a decade ago, is one that only scientific instruments --seismometers-- can detect. Researchers call it Earth's hum.
. . In the past, the oscillations that researchers found made up this hum were "spheroidal" - they basically involved patches of rock moving up and down, albeit near undetectably. Now oscillations have been discovered making up the hum that, oddly, are shaped roughly like rings. Imagine, if you will, rumbles that twist in circles in rock across the upper echelons of the planet, almost like dozens of lazy hurricanes.

Apr 8, 08: Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in graying Japan by 2025, a thinktank says, helping to avert worker shortages as the country's population shrinks.

Apr 7, 08: British physicist Peter Higgs said it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible --as he first argued 40 years ago. Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson", which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research center on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.
. . The existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago. Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right.
. . Scientists at the center hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the "God particle" by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist. He came up with his theory to explain why mass disappears as matter is broken down to its smallest constituent parts --molecules, atoms and quarks.

Apr 14, 08: California faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong earthquake by 2037, scientists said Monday in the first statewide temblor forecast. New calculations reveal there is a 99.7% chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will strike in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97% versus 93%.
. . More than 300 faults crisscross the state, which sits atop two of Earth's major tectonic plates, the Pacific and North American plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.
. . Of all the faults in the state, the southern San Andreas, which runs from Parkfield to the Salton Sea, appears most primed to break, scientists found. There is a 59% chance in the next three decades that a Northridge-size quake will occur on the fault compared to 21% for the northern section.

Apr 14, 08: Scientists using brain scanners prove a long-standing theory that your brain makes decisions long before you are aware of them --as much as seven seconds before.

Apr 11, 08: An MIT engineer has a radical idea for determining just how strong a hurricane is: Analyze the sound of its roar, recorded by hydrophones 800 meters under the surface, to calculate the speed of its winds. The new system could unfortunately reduce the number of $100 million hurricane-monitoring planes and their quiver of nature-measuring gadgets. The system could have its largest impact in southeast Asia where the expense of cyclone monitoring is harder for countries' governments to bear.
. . "The theoretical models were saying this should work and that there should be some kind of relationship between the sound and wind", Makris said. "That is exactly what we saw. It worked out beautifully."

Apr 10, 08: In five to 10 years, supermarkets might have some new products in the meat counter: packs of vat-grown meat that are cheaper to produce than livestock and have less impact on the environment.
. . According to a new economic analysis presented at this week's In Vitro Meat Symposium in Ås, Norway, meat grown in giant tanks known as bioreactors would cost between $5,200-$5,500 a ton, which the analysis claims is cost competitive with European beef prices.
. . With a rising global middle class projected by the UN to double meat consumption by 2050, and livestock already responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases, the symposium is drawing a variety of scientists, environmentalists and food industry experts.
. . Growing muscle cells on an industrial scale is the next step, scientists say. The cutting edge of in vitro meat engineering is the attempt to get cells to grow as if they were inside a living animal. Meat like steak is a complex combination of muscle, fat and other connective tissue. Reproducing the complexity of muscle is proving difficult.

Apr 10, 08: Nature released the results of an online survey in which 20% of respondents, largely drawn from the scientific community, admitted to using brain-enhancing drugs like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Provigil (modafinil).
. . 62% of the scientists who had taken drugs used Ritalin while 44% reported using Provigil and only 14% had tried beta blockers like propranolol. The 1,427-person survey was launched after a duo of articles this winter touched off a storm of questions about widespread neuroenhancer use by the scientific community.

Apr 10, 08: Russian scientists say they have obtained the most detailed pictures so far of the insides of a prehistoric animal, with the help of a baby mammoth called Lyuba found immaculately preserved in the Russian Arctic. "We could see for the first time how internal organs are located inside a mammoth."
. . The mammoth species has been extinct since the Ice Age. Tests on Lyuba showed she was fed on milk and was three to four months old when she died 37,000 years ago. Her skin was intact, protecting her internal organs from contamination by modern-day microbes.
. . Computer tomography provided a sharp three-dimensional image of Lyuba's insides, & revealed no injuries or fractures. The scans showed her airways and digestive system were clogged with what scientists believe was silt, leading them to conclude that she must have drowned.
. . The genetic map (of the mammoth) will be decoded within a year or two. "There were species that died out during the human era. And while I do not think someone would attempt to reproduce the mammoth, it would still make sense to bring back to life gigantic birds from Madagascar or New Zealand, or the Steller's sea cow."

Apr 9, 08: A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said.
. . The baby, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali's facial features are duplicated —-she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes. "She drinks milk from her two mouths and opens and shuts all the four eyes at one time", Ali said.

Apr 9, 08: A $205 million upgrade will allow a laser-wielding observatory to monitor tens of thousands of galaxies for mysterious gravitational waves. Leading investigators are confident that the Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatories) Project will be able for the first time to detect gravitational waves from neutron stars and black holes, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
. . Gravitational waves are ripples thought to occur in the fabric of space-time that result from interstellar collisions, explosions, or the dramatic movement of large and extremely dense objects such as neutron stars. Those ripples can then pass through the space-time that Earth occupies, causing a slight distortion which Advanced LIGO is meant to pick up on.
. . A thousand-fold increase in coverage comes from boosting LIGO's sensitivity 10 times over. Larger mirrors made of better materials will reduce the background "noise" from the random motion of atoms at room temperature, and the laser power is being pumped from 10 watts to 180 watts. Advanced LIGO will also be better cushioned from any terrestrial vibrations coming through the ground, thanks to an active servo-controlled system that replaces an older, passive spring system.

Apr 9, 08: Solobacterium moorei is the organism largely responsible for chronic bad breath, or halitosis, biologists reported.
. . Persistent bad breath, which can be very embarrassing, is often caused by the breakdown of bacteria in the mouth, producing foul-smelling sulfur compounds that reside on the surface of the tongue. "Tongue bacteria produce malodorous compounds and fatty acids, and account for 80 to 90% of all cases of bad breath." Some cases of bad breath originate in the lungs or sinuses.
. . Clark and colleagues found S. moorei in every patient that had halitosis compared with only four comparison subjects. The four people without halitosis infected with S. moorei all had periodontitis, an infection of the gums that can also lead to chronically bad breath.
. . At present, "not much is known about this particular organism. As we identify and find out more about the bacteria that cause bad breath, we can develop treatments to reduce their numbers in the mouth."

Mar 27, 08: The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
. . Lawrence Berkeley scientists used optical imaging and a “virtual stylus” on high-resolution scans of the phonautogram, deploying modern technology to extract sound from patterns inscribed on the soot-blackened paper almost a century and a half ago.
. . David Giovannoni, an American audio historian who led the research effort, will present the findings and play the recording in public on Friday at the annual conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at Stanford U in Palo Alto, Calif.
. . The April 1860 phonautogram is more than a squawk. On a digital copy of the recording provided to The New York Times, the anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The voice, muffled but audible, sings, “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” in a lilting 11-note melody —-a ghostly tune, drifting out of the sonic murk.

Mar 25, 08: Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital used hydrogen sulfide --the gas that makes rotten eggs smell so bad-- to completely supend the metabolism of mice, who were revived several minutes later without any apparent side effects.
. . Earlier studies had suggested the metabolism-slowing power of hydrogen sulfide, but scientists weren't sure whether to credit the gas or the hypothermia attendant to metabolic shutdown. To distinguish between these effects, the MGH researchers dosed two groups of mice, then kept one group at room temperature while heating the other.
. . Both groups experienced the same metabolic effects. Hydrogen sulfide, not hypothermia, was responsible. Scientists next need to see whether this works in larger animals, and whether it's damaging when maintained for more than a few minutes in species more complicated than mice.

Mar 23, 08: Imagine a man you know but whose name you can't remember approaches you, and your mobile phone uses face-recognition capability to give you his name and information about him before he says hello. This is the kind of application that researchers hope will be developed.

Mar 13, 08: The bug repellent DEET works by making mosquitoes and their brethren unable to smell the sweet aroma of human sweat that alerts them that a meal of blood is nearby, scientists said.

Mar 13, 08: The science-fiction sounding Audeo can apparently detect nerve impulses your brain sends to your vocal cords, and then translate them into meaningful electronic speech without a sound escaping from your mouth. While secret agents everywhere are presumably rejoicing at the idea, it's actually intended to help people whose disabilities mean they can't speak. Don't believe it? The designers recently demonstrated it by making a cellphone call at a Texas Instruments conference, and recorded it on video.
. . For the brain to send the right nerve impulses, it apparently requires the user to think about speaking in a particular way—one designer calls it "a level above thinking." Despite the learning curve this causes, requiring users to go through lots of training, it brings another benefit: you can intersperse talking normally with voiceless speech.
. . The company has been working on the technology for a while, starting by using it to control an electric wheelchair. For the time being, though, the speech system is a technology in its infancy. The processing delay is evident from the video, and it has a limited vocabulary of only 150 words and phrases. By the end of 2008, the company is hoping to release a new version that recognizes the phonemes that comprise normal words, effectively giving it an unlimited vocabulary.

Mar 6, 08: [THIS is how science works!] A Nobel laureate and her co-authors on a 2001 paper on the sense of smell have retracted the study, saying they had discovered problems in the data and were unable to duplicate their findings.

Mar 6, 08: The Grand Canyon, carved out over the eons by rushing river water, began to form 17 million years ago, making it nearly three times older than previously thought, scientists said.

Mar 6, 08: The mysterious properties of black holes can be recreated on a tabletop, scientists now reveal. Solving mysteries concerning black holes could yield key clues toward a "theory of everything" that unites how we conceive of all the natural forces.
. . Black holes rank among the greatest enigmas of the universe. Scientists theorize black holes have gravitational pulls so powerful that nothing, including light, can escape after falling past a border known as the event horizon. Direct experiments with black holes are unlikely.
. . Now, scientists have created an artificial event horizon on a tabletop using fiber optics. The artificial event horizons Leonhardt and his colleagues have devised could help researchers explore bizarre aspects of black holes, such as radiation they are supposed to emit. Black holes are not entirely black — instead, physicist Stephen Hawking discovered that all black holes should evaporate at least a bit, leaking energy dubbed "Hawking radiation."
. . Scientists have not yet seen this mysterious energy —-Hawking radiation from normal black holes is completely obscured by the cosmic microwave background. Leonhardt suggests that with their new lab model, "we can create artificial event horizons that would generate enough Hawking radiation to be detectable."
. . A greater understanding of Hawking radiation could help unite our currently disparate theories of physics into one "theory of everything." that could conceive of all the natural forces.

Mar 5, 08: Brain imaging may make it possible to someday see what others are seeing, U.S. researchers reported. Such a device would make it possible to decode brain signals and track attention. It may even be possible to "see" someone else's dream. "Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person's visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone."
. . Gallant's team did not get that far but they used a type of real-time imaging called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to predict which photograph a volunteer looked at. They got the right answer 92% of the time for one researcher and 72% of the time for the second.
. . They acknowledged it is a long step from being able to tell what a person is looking at to being able to look at brain activity and reconstruct what someone is seeing. But they said their experiment shows it is, in principle, possible.

Mar 4, 08: When infant eyes absorb a world of virgin visions, colors are processed purely, in a pre-linguistic parts of the brain. As adults, colors are processed in the brain's language centers, refracted by the concepts we have for them. How does that switch take place? And does it affect our subjective experience of color? How does the switch to a language-bound perception of color take place?
. . "As an adult, color categorization is influenced by linguistic categories. It differs as the language differs", said Kay, who is renowned for his studies on the ways that different cultures classify colors. He cited recent research on the ability of Russian speakers to detect shades of blue that English speakers classify as a single color.

Feb 29, 08: A presenter at T.E.D.: British scholar Susan Blackmore, delivered a presentation on memes. "The whole idea of a meme is that it's information that is copied with variation and selection. So any idea that is copied from person to person is a meme. But an idea that you think up for yourself and is not expressed is not a meme. The emphasis has to be on copying, because that's what makes evolution possible. Lots of ideas are never copied at all. They just go to a couple people and then they fizzle out. Some memes will succeed because they make you talk about them even though you think they're bad.
. . Some other memes succeed, in spite of not being beautiful or true or useful, by using tricks. So religions, for example, have some value, but by and large they're false ideas that use tricks to get into people's heads --threats of hell, promises of heaven, the allure of being a good person or of God loving you. There are also memes that trick you into thinking that you're going to get popular or that you're going to get rich or that you're going to get a bigger penis, whatever it is.
. . We are not in control of the growth of new media. And we are getting less and less able to control what goes on out there. We are so ego-centric. We think of ourselves as the center of the universe. We need to do a flip and see us as a player in a vast evolutionary process, which we're not in control of.
. . What I believe is happening now is that true team machines are arriving --that is, machines that copy and produce variations and then select. That's what you need for an evolutionary process; that's natural selection.
. . It will look like humans are just a minor thing on this planet with masses (of) silicon-based machinery using us to drag stuff out of the ground to build more machines."

Feb 27, 08: Babies need to move around independently and explore their environments. Not doing so can impair their cognitive development. So the U of Delaware has developed prototype driving robots for babies. James C. Galloway, associate professor of physical therapy, and Sunil Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering, have equipped the robots with environmental sensors and safety features that will help babies explore without crashing into pets, furniture, or other obstacles. The robot's simple joystick control is easy enough for infants as young as seven months to operate.

Feb 26, 08: A sold-out confab of celebrities, industry titans and alpha geeks will converge on Monterey, California, for a four-day, invitation-only celebration of big ideas this week.
. . Now in its 24th year, it is an elite event where leaders in technology, entertainment and design gather to cross-pollinate ideas and gain inspiration from presentations on the latest developments in sciences and the arts. This year's conference theme is "Big Questions", and speakers will be looking at core issues like who we are, where we came from and what our place is in the universe.
. . The 50-plus speakers will include theoretical physicist Garrett Lisi, who garnered headlines last year after publishing his Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything online, which proposes a unified theory of the universe's structure that rivals the widely supported string theory.
. . Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo will look at why people become evil by discussing his famous 1971 Stanford prison experiment, in which students playing "prison guards" in a simulation quickly became abusive toward their "prisoners." Zimbardo will discuss how the abuses perpetrated by the students in his study parallel what guards at the Abu Ghraib prison did to inmates in Iraq.
. . Former Vice President Al Gore is also slated to give a presentation, though organizers haven't revealed the subject of his talk yet.
. . The TED prize, an annual award that was launched in 2005 to recognize individuals whose work has had and will have a powerful and positive impact on society. It provides each recipient with $100,000 and the chance to ask for help from the TED community in achieving one grand wish to change the world. The three winners of this year's TED prize will announce their wishes at the conference on Thursday.

Feb 25, 08: Scientists have filmed an electron in motion for the first time, using a new technique that will allow researchers to study the tiny particle's movements directly. Previously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event.
. . Extremely short flashes of light are necessary to capture an electron in motion. A technology developed within the last few years can generate short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses, to get the job done. It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe.
. . Using another laser, scientists can guide the motion of the electron to capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film.

Feb 25, 08: Scientists can now tell where in the US a person may have been by analyzing a single strand of hair, offering a new tool for crime investigators trying to identify a body or track criminals.

Feb 25, 08: Brits, obsessed with their CCTV cameras, dirty hot water and blood pudding, have decided to mix it all into a single gadget: road cameras which can detect blood and water inside the car using an infrared beam. The system will be able to pinpoint who's abusing the carpool lanes, fining you in case you were trying to fool the police using Marge, your special "inflatable friend."

Feb 23, 08: Researchers at Kansai U in Japan have developed a machine that has the capability to scientifically measure the quantity of a person's laugh as well as the sincerity.

Feb 20, 08: A material that is able to self-repair even when it is sliced in two has been invented by French researchers. The as-yet-unnamed material --a form of artificial rubber-- is made from vegetable oil and a component of urine. The substance produces surfaces when cut that retain a strong chemical attraction to each other. Pieces of the material join together again as if never parted without the need for glue or a special treatment.
. . One obvious use, says Dr Leibler, is for self-healing seals. Puncture a seal in a compression joint with a nail, and the hole would automatically repair itself.

Feb 20, 08: The apparent inability of physics' string theory to be proved right or wrong is one of the stickiest –-and argument-generating-– problems in modern science. But now researchers at the U of Illinois say they might have a way to test some of string theory's predictions. Only problem? It'll be very, very expensive.
. . String theory is probably the most well-fleshed out candidate today for a so-called Theory of Everything. That means that it would integrate virtually everything we know about physics thus far, including the microscopic observations of the sub-atomic world and events that happen on a galaxy-wide scale, and follow the rules of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Those two scales –-the micro and the macro-– have proven difficult to reconcile on a mathematical level.
. . String theorists say they're on track to doing just this. But their answer requires mind-bogglingly complicated mathematics, and recourse to theories about the universe that some physicists find fanciful. The "strings" involved are exquisitely tiny strings that bend and vibrate in ten- or 11-dimensional space, with different configurations leading to the different kinds of matter we see in our 4-D universe. More advanced versions include the prospect of "branes", (think membrane, but in more dimensions), one of which might have our own universe embedded in it completely.
. . But because none of these descriptions of the universe offered any obvious way to be tested or proven, skeptics have called string theory "not even wrong" –-meaning that it doesn't fulfill the most basic requirement of a proper scientific theory, the ability to be be proven wrong.
. . Now, Illinois cosmologist Benjamin Wandelt, along with graduate student Rishi Khatri, say that some of these predictions can be tested, or at least addressed, by looking at remnants of conditions shortly after the Big Bang.
. . At that time, string theorists believe that so-called cosmic strings also existed, essentially creating slight discontinuities in space, that would manifest as fluctuating densities in the gas around them. These slight discontinuities could have imprinted themselves on the surrounding hydrogen atoms, which would have absorbed radiation at the specific wavelength of 21 centimeters, Wandelt and his co-author say.
. . Fast forward about 14 billion years. The universe has expanded dramatically, and the wavelength of the radiation absorbed and re-emitted by those original hydrogen atoms would have been stretched to nearly 21 meters before reaching Earth.
. . But build a radio telescope big enough to pick up that early radiation, and maybe we can see the echoes of those early cosmic string imprints, Wandelt says. That won't be easy. It would require an array of telescopes with a collective area of more than 1000 km. That's not as insane as it sounds, since the telescopes don't have to be located next to each other (the Very Long Baseline Array radio telescope is made of ten antennae, scattered from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands, for example).

Feb 20, 08: For decades, physicists have accepted the notion that the universe started with the Big Bang, an explosive event at the literal beginning of time. Now, computational physicist Neil Turok is challenging that model --and some scientists are taking him seriously.
. . According to Turok, who teaches at Cambridge University, the Big Bang represents just one stage in an infinitely repeated cycle of universal expansion and contraction. Turok theorizes that neither time nor the universe has a beginning or end.
. . It's a strange idea, though Turok would say it's no stranger than the standard explanation of the Big Bang: a singular point that defies our laws of physics, where all equations go to infinity and "all the properties we normally use to describe the universe and its contents just fail."
. . That inconsistency led Turok to see if the Big Bang could be explained within the framework of string theory, a controversial and so-far untested explanation of the universe as existing in at least 10 dimensions and being formed from one-dimensional building blocks called strings. Within a school of string theory known as m-theory, Turok said, "the seventh extra dimension of space is the gap between two parallel objects called branes. It's like the gap between two parallel mirrors. We thought, What happens if these two mirrors collide? Maybe that was the Big Bang."
. . Turok's proposition has drawn condemnation from string theory's many critics and even opposition from the Catholic Church.
. . But my main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we can't understand what happened at the singularity we came out of, then we don't seem to have any understanding of the laws of particle physics. I'd be very happy just to understand the last singularity and leave the other ones to future generations.
. . If the universe sprung into existence and then expanded exponentially, you get gravitational waves traveling through space-time. These would fill the universe, a pattern of echoes of the inflation itself. In our model, the collision of these two branes doesn't make waves at all. So if we could measure the waves, we could see which theory is right. Stephen Hawking bet me that we'll see the signal from inflation. I said that we won't."

Feb 19, 08: A new way to decipher a person's age by looking into the lens of the eye could help forensic scientists identify bodies, etc, Danish researchers said.

Feb 18, 08: Scientists have long admired the gecko lizard for its gravity-defying feet. Now U.S. researchers have made a waterproof bandage inspired by the sticky surface of a gecko's paws.

Feb 18, 08: Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted. Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent, said Ray Kurzweil. The engineer believes machines and humans will eventually merge through devices implanted in the body to boost intelligence and health. "But that's not going to be an alien invasion of intelligent machines to displace us."
. . Machines were already doing hundreds of things humans used to do, at human levels of intelligence or better, in many different areas, he said. "I've made the case that we will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029. We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons."
. . Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering. The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter.
. . The 14 challenges were announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, which concludes today.
. . CHALLENGES FACING HUMANITY
. . Make solar energy affordable
. . Provide energy from fusion
. . Develop CO2 sequestration
. . Manage the nitrogen cycle
. . Provide access to clean water
. . Reverse engineer the brain
. . Prevent nuclear terror
. . Secure cyberspace
. . Enhance virtual reality
. . Improve urban infrastructure
. . Advance health informatics
. . Engineer better medicines
. . Advance personalised learning
. . Explore natural frontiers

Feb 18, 08: New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems. Michael Meyer, an astronomer from the U of Arizona, said "Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets."
. . Nasa's Kepler mission to search for Earth-sized and smaller planets, due to be launched in 09, is expected to reveal more clues about these distant undiscovered worlds. Some astronomers believe there may be hundreds of small rocky bodies in the outer edges of the Solar System, and perhaps even a handful of frozen Earth-sized worlds. Speaking at the AAAS meeting, Nasa's Alan Stern said he thought only the tip of the iceberg had been found in terms of planets within our own Solar System. More than a thousand objects had already been discovered in the Kuiper belt alone, he said, many rivalling the planet Pluto in size [& 1 bigger].

Feb 18, 08: A beam that inserts voices into your head? Yes, you could be minding your own business looting a Best Buy during a riot and all of the sudden there's a voice coming from inside your own brain saying "We're really disappointed with you."
. . It's a pretty insane idea, but one that's actually been proven to work, at least in a basic form. Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person's head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using "speech modulated" microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up the sound. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities.

"This technology requires no extrapolation to estimate its usefulness. Microwave energy can be applied at a distance, and the appropriate technology can be adapted from existing radar units. Aiming devices likewise are available but for special circumstances which require extreme specificity, there may be a need for additional development. Extreme directional specificity would be required to transmit a message to a single hostage surrounded by his captors. Signals can be transmitted long distances (hundreds of meters) using current technology. Longer distances and more sophisticated signal types will require more bulky equipment, but it seems possible to transmit some of the signals at closer ranges using man-portable equipment."

This is taken from a recently declassified document that was initially written about 10 years ago. There are no hints that one of these things has been developed, but it's certainly possible that it's happening in the still-classified vaults of the Pentagon. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see whether the voices in your head are really being beamed there from black helicopters or if you're just crazy.

Feb 15, 08: A new precision clock traps atoms in light to keep time. It's so accurate it will neither gain nor lose even a second in more than 200 million years.

Feb 5, 08: Phase-change memory differs from other solid-state memory technologies such as flash and random-access memory because it doesn't use electrons to store data. Instead, it relies on the material's own arrangement of atoms, known as its physical state. Previously, phase-change memory was designed to take advantage of only two states: one in which atoms are loosely organized (amorphous), and another where they are rigidly structured (crystalline).
. . Now, Intel has discovered that there are two more distinct states between amorphous and crystalline that can be used to store information, doubling the capacity of the memory.

Feb 4, 08: Ancient light absorbed by neutral hydrogen atoms could be used to test certain predictions of string theory, say cosmologists. Making the measurements, however, would require a gigantic array of radio telescopes to be built on Earth, in space or on Luna.

Feb 1, 08: Scientists are chafing at the U.S. government's unfulfilled pledge to boost funding for basic scientific research, the source of innovations ranging from the World Wide Web to high-tech cancer treatments.

Jan 31, 08: Oh, it brings such relief and now scientists can tell you why --scratching an itch temporarily shuts off areas in the brain linked with unpleasant feelings and memories. Prior studies have shown that pain, including vigorous scratching, inhibit the need to itch. They said understanding what goes on in the brain may lend clues about how to treat people tormented by chronic itch, including people with eczema and many kidney dialysis patients.Yosipovitch and colleagues looked at what goes on in the brain when a person is scratched.
. . They used a technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging to see which areas of the brain are active during scratching. They scratched 13 healthy people with a soft brush on the lower leg on and off in 30-second intervals for a total of five minutes.
. . Scratching reduced activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex --areas linked with pain aversion and memory. And the more intensely a person was scratched, the less activity they found in these areas of the brain.

Jan 30, 08: Using DNA, the blueprint of life, U.S. researchers said they have made a three-dimensional structure from particles of gold in a development that could lead to a host of custom-designed materials. The technique helps solve a basic problem in nanoscience: getting impossibly small particles to assemble themselves according to a predetermined design.

Jan 27, 08: Squarks, photinos, selectrons, neutralinos. These are just a few types of supersymmetric particles, a special brand of particle that may be created when the world's most powerful atom smasher goes online this spring.
. . The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at a particle physics lab called the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, will very likely change our understanding of the universe forever. The 17-mile-long underground particle accelerator will send protons flying around its circular track until they smash into each other going faster than 99% of the speed of light. When the particles impact, they will unleash energies similar to those in the universe shortly after the Big Bang, the theoretical beginning of time.
. . Many researchers are hoping to see supersymmetric particles, called sparticles for short. Sparticles are predicted by supersymmetry theory, which posits that for every particle we know of, there is a sister particle that we have not yet discovered. For example, the superpartner to the electron is the selectron, the partner to the quark is the squark and the partner to the photon is the photino.
. . When sparticles were first imagined, scientists wondered why we don't observe them in the universe now. The explanation, they think, is that sparticles are much heavier than their normal sister particles, so they have all disintegrated. "The heavier an unstable particle is, the shorter its lifetime", Nath said. "So as soon as it is produced it begins to decay."
. . "The most popular supersymmetric theories predict the existence of a stable supersymmetric particle, the neutralino", said Enrico Lunghi, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago. "This is an excellent candidate for dark matter. The problem is that we haven't seen any. It's another good reason for hoping to find supersymmetry at the LHC." Neutralinos may be the lightest sparticles, so they might be able to exist in nature without decaying immediately.
. . Supersymmetry also helps resolve the fundamental problems between physics at the very small scale of particles (quantum physics) and physics at the very large scale, where Einstein's general relativity takes over.
. . Additionally, if supersymmetry is proven correct, it could offer a boost to string theory, which includes the concept of supersymmetry. However, supersymmetry could still exist even if string theory is wrong.

Jan 27, 08: Transistor radios tinier than a grain of sand, made using nanotechnology, can not only tune in to the traffic report, but may end up outperforming current silicon-based electronics, U.S. researchers said. The researchers made the microscopic radios out of carbon nanotubes --tiny strands of carbon atoms-- and say in theory they could lead to faster devices.
. . They overcame a series of obstacles that have defeated efforts to make nano-radios, including getting amplification, by making their devices on quartz wafers. "Our goal is not to make tiny radios per se, but really to develop nanotubes as a higher-performing semiconductor", said John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the U of Illinois. He said the devices are meant to showcase a new way of making carbon nanotubes in perfectly aligned rows, much like strands of silky hair that have been combed flat. These strands are a hundred thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, forming a thin layer of semiconductor material that can be used in electronics devices and circuits.

Jan 22, 08: Researchers have assembled the entire genome of a living organism --a bacterium-- in what they hope is an important step to creating artificial life. The bug, Mycoplasma genitalium, has the smallest known genome of any truly living organism, with 485 working genes. Viruses are smaller, but they are not considered completely alive as they cannot replicate by themselves.

"We consider this the second in significant steps of a three-step process in our attempts to make the first synthetic organism", Craig Venter, founder of the institute, told a telephone briefing. "This entire process started with four bottles of chemicals." They started by chemically making DNA fragments in the lab. Their first step was to make the four building blocks of DNA -- adenine, guanine, cytosine and thiamine or the A, G, C and T that make up the genetic code. For M. genitalium, these four letters repeat in pairs 580,000 times.
. . Venter said the chromosome had been disabled so that it could not live outside the lab and so that it could not take over some other organism by mistake. The plan also underwent ethical review by a panel at the U of Pennsylvania.
. . Venter's hope is to eventually make synthetic microorganisms that could be used for producing biofuels, cleaning up toxic waste or pulling excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Jan 22, 08: The ancient Romans may have mastered the art of building impressive aqueducts to deliver water across their empire, but modern day Italian engineers seem to be struggling with water retention, a study shows.
. . The aqueduct serving Puglia, the important agricultural region that forms the heel of the Italian boot-shaped peninsula, is riddled with so many holes that it leaks more water than it delivers, according to a study by Italian investment bank Mediobanca. The 102-years-old Acquedotto Pugliese, Europe's largest with about 16,000 kms of conduits, loses 50.3% of the water it carries.
. . Overall, Italy wastes 14% more water than France, 36% more than Spain, 56% more than Britain and 311% more than Germany.
. . The aqueduct serving the northern Italian city of Milan was rated the most efficient in the country, losing only 10.3% of its contents en route. The conduits serving Rome lose 35.4% of their water.

Jan 15, 08: U.S. researchers said they have made the darkest material on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9% of light. Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness. And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colors of light and reflect none.
. . The substance has a total reflective index of 0.045% --which is more than three times darker than the nickel-phosphorous alloy that now holds the record as the world's darkest material. Basic black paint, by comparison, has a reflective index of 5% to 10%. Ajayan said the material could be used in solar energy conversion.
. . It gets its blackness from three things. It is composed of carbon nano-tubes, tiny tubes of tightly rolled carbon that are 400 hundred times smaller than the diameter of a strand of hair. The carbon helps absorb some of the light. These tubes are standing on end, much like a patch of grass. This arrangement traps light in the tiny gaps between the "blades". The researchers have also made the surface of this carbon nano-tube carpet irregular and rough to cut down on reflectivity.
. . The researchers have tested the material on visible light only. Now they want to see how it fares against infrared and ultraviolet light, and other wavelengths such as radiation used in communications systems. "If you could make materials that would block these radiations, it could have serious applications for stealth and defense."

Jan 14, 08: An earthquake may have displaced more than 77 million cubic feet of water in Yellowstone Lake, creating huge waves that essentially unsealed a capped geothermal system.
. . Though much has been made in recent years of a possible eruption of Yellowstone's "super volcano", geologists studying the park have long said that the likelihood is greater for a large hydrothermal explosion. Morgan said that over the last 14,000 years, there have been 20 hydrothermal explosions in Yellowstone that mostly left craters bigger than football fields.
. . The explosions happen when hot water just below the surface flashes into steam and breaks through the surface. Smaller explosions in Yellowstone happen about once every two years but rarely when people are around or in danger. But geologists are still trying to better understand the larger explosions that happen about once every 700 years in Yellowstone and have left behind the biggest hydrothermal explosion craters in the world.
. . The explosion's column may have reached more than a mile in the air and spread debris across some 18 square miles, she said. "You would not want to be here when this occurred."

Jan 5, 08: Ministers want Britain's top IT and science companies to encourage "career switchers" to go into teaching. Ministers want professional scientists, mathematicians, information technology experts and engineers to help fill the skills gaps in classrooms. Many of England's science teachers have not studied science to degree level.

Jan 3, 08: Scientists are investigating the possibility of using the "tiny assembly line that powers the whip-like tail of sperm" to send medical nanobots racing throughout the body. In order to work, these devices would have to be made from biomedical components —and at that size, "biology would provide the best functional motors." This approach seems bizarre, but apparently it could help solve the problem of supplying energy to thousands of minuscule internal devices that can fight or ward off disease. How long it will be before these spermbot slave drivers become a reality is anyone's guess.

Jan 2, 08: A Hampton U professor is shedding new light on night-shining clouds that might be affected by climate change. Jim Russell is the lead scientist for the NASA-funded AIM satellite, the first to study the wispy "noctilucent" clouds, which only appear above Earth's poles. These clouds coalesce as icy dust particles about 60 to 90 km above the Earth's surface.
. . He found that the clouds get brighter and stretch farther as the uppermost atmosphere gets colder. He thinks that the changes might be caused by human-generated global warming.
. . The mapping showed that the clouds are more sensitive to changes in the upper atmosphere than was previously thought, as they are changing in brightness and reach. Scientists say that's why people as far south as Colorado and Utah have spotted the clouds in recent years. Previously, they had only been visible to people in regions of northern Europe and Canada.

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