January 2012
137 posts
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Cell’s mechanical changes nudge cancer →
Mechanical property changes in cells may be responsible for the progression of cancer—a discovery that could pave the way for new ways to predict, treat, and prevent the disease.
How Disposable, Networked Satellites Will... →
In 1999, professors Robert Twiggs of Stanford University and Jordi Puig-Suari of California Polytechnic State University began to standardize the satellite business. They designed a small orbital unit-–a four-inch cube with little metal feet–-that was wide enough for solar cells, basing their design on a plastic display box for Beanie Babies. Their “CubeSat” had enough room for a...
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Pentagon: Fewer Soldiers, More Drones Will Save... →
That buzz you hear above your head is the sound of the Pentagon cutting its budget.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta detailed today how the Obama administration plans to achieve $487 billion in cuts over the next decade, in part by reducing the number of ships, planes and troops, but continuing to fund elite special forces — and support technologies like unmanned drones.
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Better crops from the roots up →
By altering root growth, scientists believe they are a step closer to breeding hardier crops that are more adaptable to environmental conditions and better able to fend off parasites.
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Airport Laser Lets You Keep Your Liquids →
So, you’re standing in the security line at the airport when you realize that bottle of duty-free Jameson is still in your bag. Also, you just cracked the seal on some not-so-easily-chuggable Kombucha. And that priced-gouged bottle of sunscreen you bought in Tulum? It was almost $10 and it’s still nearly full.
Normally, these liquid-filled bottles would need to be surrendered to the...
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Nanomaterials’ Effects on Health and Environment... →
Tiny substances called nanomaterials have moved into the marketplace over the last decade, in products as varied as cosmetics, clothing and paint. But not enough is known about their potential health and environmental risks, which should be studied further, an expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences said on Wednesday.
Nanoscale forms of substances like silver, carbon, zinc and aluminum...
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Battery drain may influence app design →
The first systematic power profiles of microprocessors could help lower the energy consumption of small and large devices, say researchers.
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Commercial version of MIT Media Lab CityCar... →
A full-scale version of the stackable, electric CityCar, created by researchers at the MIT Media Lab and commercialized by a consortium of automotive suppliers in the Basque region of Spain, was unveiled at the European Union Commission headquarters on January 24.
Branded “Hiriko,” the two-passenger EV vehicle incorporates all of the essential concepts of the MIT Media Lab CityCar: a folding...
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Water sees right through graphene →
A new study by scientists at Rice University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has determined that gold, copper and silicon get just as wet when clad by a single continuous layer of graphene as they would without.
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World's Most Powerful X-Ray Laser Super-Heats... →
In two separate studies, the world’s most powerful X-ray laser has been used to build the first atomic X-ray laser pulse, as well as to superheat and control a clump of 2-million-degree matter. The atomic laser could be used to watch biological molecules at work, while the creation of hot dense matter could be used to understand the processes of nuclear fusion.
Researchers at the SLAC National...
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Probing the Brain's Mysteries →
Researchers for the first time are documenting the basic wiring of the brain, the complex relationships among billions of neurons that are responsible for reason, memory and emotion. The work eventually could lead to better understanding of schizophrenia, autism, multiple sclerosis and other disorders.
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Could lab-grown meat soon be the solution to the... →
In the 1932 essay called “Fifty Years Hence”, in which he offered his notions of how the world might look in 1982, Winston Churchill wrote: “We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”
It might have taken longer than 50 years, but Churchill was certainly on to...
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Police Are Making A Scanner To Detect Concealed... →
The New York Police Department is working with the Department of Defense to develop a scanning device that would allow them to detect concealed firearms on a person 80 feet away. The scanner detects electromagnetic waves with a frequency in the terahertz range. Terahertz waves sit at the higher frequency end of infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum, just before the microwave range. The device...
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DARPA Has a Simple Solution to Authentication:... →
Having contributed in large part to the Internet’s very existence, DARPA is now setting out to make its secure networks more secure. But rather than relying upon the conventional notion of a password—a complex string of letters and numerals that an individual must remember—the agency is looking to create a “cognitive fingerprint” for individuals that constantly authenticates that...
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String Theory is the Only Show in Town →
Every Wednesday, Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science. If you have a question for Dr. Kaku, just post it in the comments section below and check back on Wednesdays to see if he answers it.
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Study supports role of quantum effects in... →
Until a few years ago, photosynthesis seemed to be a straightforward and well-understood process in which plants and other organisms use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars, with oxygen as a waste product. But recent research showing that the light energy entering these organisms’ light-absorbing chromophore molecules may exist in two places at once – as a quantum...
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SARTRE autonomous road-train enters final phase... →
This time last year, the Safe Road Trains for the Environment (SARTRE) program hit a milestone. Using a specially equipped Volvo S60 with a big-rig taking the lead, the EU-funded researchers managed to create the world’s first fully-functional road train, allowing the driver in the sedan to sit back and enjoy the ride without touching the controls.
Today, Volvo – the program’s only...
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DNA motor programmed to navigate a network of... →
Expanding on previous work with engines traveling on straight tracks, a team of researchers at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford have successfully used DNA building blocks to construct a motor capable of navigating a programmable network of tracks with multiple switches. The findings, published in the January 22 online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, are expected to...
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Embryonic Stem Cells Appear Safe, May Help Eye... →
In the first published results from a clinical trial using human embryonic stem cells, two legally blind patients who received an injection of hESC-derived cells in one eye have experienced no harmful side effects and appear to have slightly better vision. Although the result is preliminary, it is an important milestone for the struggling hESC field.
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Transcriptional barcoding of retinal cells... →
By developing a large scale gene expression map for retinal cell types, FMI Neurobiologists have been able to identify the cells in the retina, where the genes causing retinal diseases specifically act. This narrows down the search for a better understanding of the diseases and opens up new avenues for therapeutic approaches.
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Could stem cells save snow leopards? →
Scientists have produced embryonic stem-like cells from the tissue of an adult snow leopard for the first time.
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Researchers boost solar concentrator efficiency →
The advancement could be an important breakthrough for solar energy harvesting, said UC Merced physics professor Sayantani Ghosh, who led the project.
“We tweaked the traditional flat design for luminescent solar concentrators and made them into cylinders,” Ghosh said. “The results of this architectural redesign surprised us, as it significantly improves their efficiency.”
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Startup Makes 'Wireless Router for the Brain' →
Optogenetics has been hailed as a breakthrough in biomedical science—it promises to use light to precisely control cells in the brain to manipulate behavior, model disease processes, or even someday to deliver treatments.
But so far, optogenetic studies have been hampered by physical constraints. The technology requires expensive, bulky lasers for light sources, and a fiber-optic cable attached...
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On the Internet of Things IBM Tracks Your Pork... →
IBM has set out to prove it can revolutionize the food industry with data, starting with China. Six industrial slaughterhouses and 100 markets in Shandong Province are part of a large scale test in tracking pork from farm to customer. Pigs are marked with ear tags containing unique barcodes, those same barcodes appear on the bins that carry their meat during processing, and on the packages for...
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YouTube Reaches 4 Billion Views Per Day →
Google’s video-sharing property YouTube now sees 4 billion video views per day. That’s a 25% increase over the past eight months, the company told Reuters in a report released this morning. There’s now approximately 60 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute, compared with roughly 48 hours uploaded in May.
The last time YouTube released this data was in May 2011, when the company was...
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Microreactors enable safer, more efficient... →
Manufacturing products and drugs will be safer and more efficient in the future, thanks to the use of microreactors being developed at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
The invention promises to make it possible to manufacture drugs, cosmetics and household products in a safer and more efficient manner, using a new kind of microreactor for industry that reinvents how chemical...
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NEOShield to assess Earth defence →
NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision path with our planet.
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Mind Over Motor: Controlling Robots With Your... →
Over recent months, in José del R. Millán’s computer science lab in Switzerland, a little round robot, similar to a Roomba with a laptop mounted on it (right), bumped its way through an office space filled with furniture and people. Nothing special, except the robot was being controlled from a clinic more than 60 miles away—and not with a joystick or keyboard, but with the brain waves of a...
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“Recreational genomics,” 4 years on →
In an exchange with Mark Shriver, I was pointed to this 2007 position paper in Science, The Science and Business of Genetic Ancestry Testing. It’s an interesting historical artifact. Much of the critique was aimed at AncestrybyDNA, but it can be generalized. Now that 23andMe has ~100,000 customers, have the things which they worried about come to be? Perhaps one of the more curious aspects of all...
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Urban gardens: The future of food? →
With penny-farthings, handlebar mustaches and four-pocket vests back in fashion, the rise of urban farming should just about complete our fetish for the late 1800s. Today, you can find chicken coops on rooftops in Brooklyn, N.Y., goats in San Francisco backyards, and rows of crops sprouting across empty lots in Cleveland.
That it fits so snugly into the hipster-steampunk throwback trend is what...
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Why Don’t We Have Abundant Solar Power? Blame... →
In the world of renewable energy resources, solar power is the epitome – abundant, reliable, and green. For decades scientists and engineers have been working tirelessly to improve the efficiency at which photovoltaic cells convert sunlight to electricity. If they can simply make PV cells efficient enough, then they would be cheaper than fossil fuels and most of the world could switch over to...
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Nano Med Tech Researchers Develop Nanoparticle... →
Nano Med Tech researchers are developing multi-chambered nanoparticles that are attracted to infected cells but harmless to healthy tissues. When integrated into antibiotics, they will make the drugs much more effective by ensuring that they reach only those cells in need of treatment. As the particles have been specifically engineered to penetrate through the bacterial cell membranes, researchers...
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Next-gen supercomputers have huge energy cost →
Warehouse-size supercomputers costing $1 million to $100 million can seem as distant from ordinary laptops and tablets as Greek immortals on Mount Olympus. Yet the next great leap in supercomputing could not only transform U.S. science and innovation, but also put much more computing power in the hands of consumers.
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Could the Internet Ever Be Destroyed? →
The raging battle over SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy laws, is looking more and more likely to end in favor of Internet freedom — but it won’t be the last battle of its kind. Although, ethereal as it is, the Internet seems destined to survive in some form or another, experts warn that there are many threats to its status quo existence, and there is much about it that could be...
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6 Predictions For Business Intelligence In 2012 →
When we set New Year’s resolutions in our house, we tend to tweak the list for a few weeks, figuring out what’s more wishful thinking versus realistically achievable. Then up they go, taped to the kitchen cupboard over last year’s lists. It’s always a chuckle, sometimes an inspiration, to compare last year’s list with this year’s.
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CFD Predictions of
Bubbly Flow around an... →
The Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS) was the first air lubrication system in the world to be applied to a newly built ship, and resulted in a substantial reduction in the ship’s resistance. Therefore, a performance estimation method using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) needs to be established as soon as possible to apply the MALS to general commercial ships. In this study, we...
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Chinese Test train can hit 500 km/h (310mph) →
The first test train that can reach speeds of up to 500 km an hour stands on a railway line in Qingdao, Shandong province, on Thursday. Dou Xin / Xinhua
Beijing - China’s largest train maker, CSR Corp Ltd, launched over the weekend its first test train that can reach speeds of up to 500 km an hour.
The six-carriage train with a tapered head is the newest member of the CRH...
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Can drones fly as well as Luke Skywalker? →
Next-generation drones may fly like Luke Skywalker zipping through the Endor forest on a speeder bike, suggests new research which focuses on how birds such as northern goshawks determine their maximum speed limit.
These birds race after prey through the forest canopy without smacking into tree trunks.
They avoid this fate by observing a theoretical speed limit, according to scientists at the...
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Magnetic Nanoparticles Lead to a New Class of... →
How can you make a material that is simultaneously strong, flexible and light? The answer has long been advanced composites that combine plastics, metals and ceramics to get the best characteristics out of each of them.
But achieving a balance between these materials’ qualities of strength, flexibility and lightness is difficult to come by and often comes down to being able to manipulate...
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World IPv6 Launch Solidifies Global Support for... →
Major Internet service providers (ISPs), home networking equipment manufacturers, and web companies around the world are coming together to permanently enable IPv6 for their products and services by 6 June 2012.
Organized by the Internet Society, and building on the successful one-day World IPv6 Day event held on 8 June 2011, World IPv6 Launch represents a major milestone in the global...
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Carbon Nanotubes Get a New and Simple Bulk Sorting... →
Recently researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Stanford University, and the University of California Davis devised methods for sorting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) so that semi-conducting and non-conducting SWNTs are separated. One obvious application is artificial skin.
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“Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these...”
– Nikola Tesla How To Signal To Mars (New York Times, May 23rd, 1909)
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CyberWar “Baby Steps” - Israelis vs. Saudis in... →
On January 3, a Saudi hacker group claimed that it had stolen half a million Israeli credit cards. The Bank of Israel claims their exposure is information on only 15,000 credit cards, all of which were immediately blocked. The hacker group’s stated purpose was to see Israeli cards fall into disrepute, “like the Nigerian cards.” The cracker, “0xOmar” is identified as the individual performing the...
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