Issue no. 14, 2009
Published: Apr 17, 2009 |
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 Experts identify compound that may fight bird flu |
| California utility to capture solar power in space |
| New method could lead to narrower chip patterns |
| Cheap and noisy chips could improve climate predictions |
| Graphene made easy |
| Fake feathers could take the drag out of flights |
| Are Twitter tweets too fast-paced for our moral good? |
| New exoskeleton gives soldiers super-strength |
| Researchers study ears for unbeatable biometrics |
| Digital portraits probe the contagion of emotion |
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| Experts identify compound that may fight bird flu |
Scientists in Hong Kong and the United States have identified a
synthetic compound which appears to be able to stop the replication of
influenza viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus.
The search for such new 'inhibitors' has grown more urgent in recent
years as drugs have become largely ineffective against certain flu
strains, such as the H1N1 seasonal flu virus. Experts now question how
well and how long the drug would stand up against the H5N1, should it
unleash a pandemic.
Researchers in Hong Kong and the Unites States screened some 230,000
compounds that were catalogued with the US National Cancer Institute,
and found 20 that could potentially restrict the proliferation of the
H5N1. They say that one of the compounds, compound 1 or NSC89853, showed
promise.
In their experiment, the researchers infected separate batches of
cultured human cells with seasonal flu virus and H5N1 and found that
compound 1 prevented the replication of both types of viruses
effectively. |
| Reuters / Journal of Medicinal Chemistry
Apr 15, 2009 |
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| California utility to capture solar power in space |
Solar power beamed down from space will generate electricity for
California homes as soon as 2016, under a new plan by a utility company
to ramp up renewable energy technology far beyond solar panels on roofs.
PG&E would buy 200 megawatts of space solar power from Solaren over 15
years under a power purchase agreement, enough to power tens of
thousands of homes.
Solaren will use solar panels on satellites in orbit to capture the
sun's power, and then convert it into radio frequency energy that could
beam down to a receiving station. The energy will then undergo a
conversion to electricity and feed into PG&E's power grid.
Having solar panels in orbit could provide a clean, reliable source of
solar power that avoids the interruptions of cloudy days and bad weather
on Earth. That tempting prospect has led NASA and the US Defence
Department to investigate possibilities for space solar power, despite
the hefty cost of launching solar panels into orbit.
The pilot power satellites designed by Solaren will make use of existing
launch capabilities, meaning that the plan does not require new types of
rockets. The ground receiving station would also sit close to existing
power transmission lines. |
| FoxNews / Imaginova
Apr 15, 2009 |
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| New method could lead to narrower chip patterns |
Researchers at MIT have found a novel method for etching extremely
narrow lines on a microchip, using a material that can be switched from
transparent to opaque, and vice versa, just by exposing it to certain
wavelengths of light. Such materials are not new, but the researchers
found a novel way of harnessing that property to create a mask with
exceptionally fine lines of transparency. This mask can then be used to
create a correspondingly fine line on the underlying material.
Producing such fine lines is crucial to many new technologies, from
microchip manufacturing to a whole host of emerging fields based on
nano-scale patterns. But these technologies have faced fundamental
limits because they tend to rely on light to produce these patterns, and
most techniques cannot produce patterns much smaller than the
wavelengths of light itself. This method overcomes that limit.
The new technique, which the researchers call absorbance modulation,
makes it possible to create lines that are only about one-tenth as wide
as the wavelength of light used to create them. Part of the trick was to
find a suitable photochromic material whose clear and opaque parts would
remain stable after the initial exposure to light. Using this method,
the team produced lines just 36 nanometres wide, and say they could also
place many such lines spaced a similar distance apart. |
| MIT / Science
Apr 09, 2009 |
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| Cheap and noisy chips could improve climate predictions |
As scientists start to fill out the picture of a future globe
dramatically changed by global warming, the use of climate models is
increasingly important when forecasting the risks faced by various
regions. Researchers at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts say that running simulations on cheap computer chips that
produce results tainted with random noise could improve those models.
Many climate processes - such as cloud formation or the movement of air
currents - are too complex to simulate exactly. While researchers are
striving to make the models more realistic, they are limited by the
processing power of the supercomputers that run climate models.
Adding a degree of randomness to a particular model and running it
multiple times could provide a cheaper way to increase realism, the
researchers argue, as it could be a 'poor man's surrogate for
high-resolution models'. If multiple, slightly different runs of a model
come up with the same answer, it provides a hint of the strength of a
prediction, according to the team. The technique has already been shown
to work for weather forecasting over periods of a few weeks.
Just generating randomness to feed such models can eat up a lot of
computing power. A way around this could be to use cheap hardware -
low-cost computer chips that generate output with some random noise due
to the way electrons bounce through them. Essentially, those chips
produce the necessary randomness for free. |
| New Scientist
Apr 17, 2009 |
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| Graphene made easy |
Since its discovery in 2004, graphene continues to fascinate physicists
with its growing list of exceptional electronic and mechanical
properties. While small pieces of the material - which is a sheet of
carbon just one atom thick - are easy to make, it has proven more
difficult to make large-area, high-quality samples that could be used in
graphene-based devices.
Now researchers at the Pierre and Marie University in Paris, France, may
have come up with a simple way of making relatively large pieces of
graphene. They showed that bulk graphite can be bonded onto borosilicate
glass and then cleaved off to leave a single layer of graphene on the
substrate.
The researchers used a technique known as anodic bonding, which sticks a
conductor or semiconductor onto a glass substrate using large
electrostatic forces that come from the ionic conductivity of the
substrate. This means that no adhesive is required. The method is widely
used in the microelectronics industry to bond silicon wafers to glass.
Because the samples are bonded to a rigid glass substrate, this produces
larger surface area samples of high quality in an efficient and simple
way. The method might be used for other layered materials as well. |
| PhysicsWorld / Solid State Communications
Apr 14, 2009 |
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| Fake feathers could take the drag out of flights |
Coating the rigid wings of airplanes with artificial bristles that mimic
feathers could make them more efficient, according to engineers.
Birds use long, stiff flight feathers to help generate the lift and
thrust needed to get off the ground and to stay aloft. But researchers
at the University of Genoa are more interested in how a set of smaller
feathers - called coverts - keep birds flying efficiently. Although they
may not look like they can have much of an effect, during gliding some
covert feathers stick up at right angles to the wing's surface and
vibrate in the airflow. To test whether this has any effect on flight
performance the team added synthetic coverts to a computer model of a
20-centimetre-diameter cylinder and put it in a virtual wind tunnel.
Their synthetic feathers are modelled as rigid keratin bristles 4 to 6
centimetres long and 0.5 millimetres in diameter, coating the cylinder
at a density of around three fibres per square centimetre. As the wind
speed increased the bristles started to vibrate in a similar way to real
covert feathers, reducing the drag on the cylinder by 15%.
The researchers think artificial feathers could be added to aircraft or
underwater vehicles to improve their efficiency. Though they might need
a self-cleaning system to mimic the way birds preen their feathers to
ensure efficient performance. |
| New Scientist / Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Apr 13, 2009 |
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| Are Twitter tweets too fast-paced for our moral good? |
Researchers at the University of Southern California probing the
workings of the brain have found that it takes longer for feelings of
social compassion and admiration to register on our neural circuits -
and they worry that the rapid-fire effect of texting and tweeting could
have 'potentially negative consequences' for our moral fibre.
The researchers studied how the some of the noblest emotions we can
summon - admiration for the virtues of others, and compassion for
others' distress - are processed. In an experiment thirteen interview
subjects were told five kinds of stories about anonymous men and women.
After the subjects heard all the stories, they were put into MRI
brain-scanning machines and asked to recall the stories as well as the
emotions associated with those stories. The researchers then looked for
differences in brain activity as the various stories were recalled.
The stories that focused on social interactions registered in parts of
the brain that were close to but not identical to the areas activated by
tales about great skill or physical pain. It took several seconds longer
for the emotional response associated with virtue or psychological
distress to peak (10 to 12 seconds for psychological pain vs. six
seconds for physical pain). The response lasted longer as well.
Heavy reliance on a rapid stream of info snippets through TV, online
feeds and social networks may cut down on the time required for feelings
of admiration or compassion to sink in fully, the researchers said. |
| MSNBC / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Apr 14, 2009 |
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| New exoskeleton gives soldiers super-strength |
Stronger, faster and harder is the promise of a new exoskeleton
developed by Lockheed Martin for US soldiers. Dubbed the Human Universal
Load Carrier, or HULC, the device helps a soldier carry up to 90
kilogrammes at a top speed of 16 kilometres per hour
Unlike most exoskeletons built to boost human ability, the HULC, is not
limited to the length of its power cable. The titanium HULC instead runs
on a four lithium ion batteries nestled into the small of a soldier's
back. Eight batteries can power the HULC on missions up to 96 hours.
The HULC is easy to put on. It arrives folded into a small package. The
soldier stretches a leg out and steps into foot beds underneath the
boot. Straps wrap around the thighs, waist and shoulders. The foot pads
ensure that the weight from the soldier's load rests directly on the
ground, not on the soldier's body. Inside the foot pads are pressure
sensors that relay information about the speed and walking style of the
soldier to an onboard computer. The computer's artificial intelligence
moves the hydraulic system to amplify and enhance that movement.
The HULC allows a soldier to walk, run, kneel and crawl, among other
things. It can impede other movements however, but if a soldier comes
under fire and needs more flexibility, the HULC can be removed in about
30 seconds. |
| MSBNC / Discovery Channel
Apr 06, 2009 |
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| Researchers study ears for unbeatable biometrics |
The UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is
funding a major new study into the possibilities of using the human ear
as a biometric security system.
Researchers at the University of Southampton will study otoacoustic
emissions (OAE), which are sounds that the ear generates in response to
auditory stimuli. The study envisages a system whereby mobile phones can
be fitted with sensitive microphones, and callers could be identified by
the OAE response of their ears. This would allow for secure calls to be
made. Another application could be to disable mobile phones if they have
been stolen by automatically shutting them down if the owner's
biometrics are not found.
There are, however, some hurdles to be overcome before the system can be
put into practice. Drinking heavily mutes OAE, and would make
recognition harder, as does excessive ear wax build-up.
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| VNUnet UK
Apr 16, 2009 |
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| Digital portraits probe the contagion of emotion |
If you're surrounded by smiling faces, you're more likely to feel happy
than if everyone around you is looking glum. But we know relatively
little about how emotions spread from one person to another. The
Chameleon Project, a collaboration between artist Tina Gonsalves -
currently in residence at the MIT Media Lab - and neuroscientists could
help. The installation involves using face recognition software that
analyses a person's expression as they walk into a room and shows them a
video portrait of another person displaying a related emotion.
The project employs an algorithm that tries to read and respond to the
emotions of a person in the same way another person would. That
algorithm builds on research that suggests that when we interact with
someone, we try to reach a neutral emotional state where communication
can occur more easily. People tend to mirror the expression of someone
who is happy or scared, but try to calm down someone who is angry.
As well as producing a unique art installation, the Chameleon Project
should provide neuroscientists with new insight into how people respond
to less-studied emotions such as anger. The underlying technology could
be used with little modification for research into empathy - for
example, investigating how people with mental illnesses like autism and
schizophrenia respond to the emotions of people around them. |
| New Scientist
Apr 16, 2009 |
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