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Issue no. 7, 2006 Published: Feb 17, 2006
Breakthrough brings cold fusion a step closer
New microchips shun transistors
New software to fight child pornography
Eco-farming 'helps world's poor'
Space-elevator tether climbs a mile high
E-paper can be powered by wireless
Flame emails missing the mark
Invention: Viper vision

Breakthrough brings cold fusion a step closer
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop atomic accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature. The device, which uses two opposing crystals to generate a powerful electric field, could lead to a portable, battery-operated neutron generator for a variety of applications, from non-destructive testing to detecting explosives and scanning luggage at airports. The successful demonstration provides confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles, while offering substantial improvements over the original design. The device uses two crystals instead of one, which doubles the acceleration potential. The device is filled with deuterium gas, a more massive cousin of hydrogen with an extra neutron in its nucleus. The electric field rips electrons from the gas, creating deuterium ions and accelerating them into a deuterium target on one of the crystals. When the particles smash into the target, neutrons are emitted, which is the telltale sign that nuclear fusion has occurred.
VNUnet UK Feb 15, 2006	back to top

New microchips shun transistors
For the first time, researchers at the University of Notre Dame, USA, have created a working prototype of a radical new chip design based on magnetism instead of electrical transistors. The chip uses nanoscale magnetic 'islands' to juggle the ones and zeros of binary code. The researchers turned to the process of magnetic patterning to produce a new chip that uses arrays of separate magnetic domains. Each island maintains its own magnetic field. Because the chip has no wires, its device density and processing power may eventually be much higher than transistor-based devices. And it will be much less power-hungry, which will translate to less heat emission. Computers using the magnetic chips would boot up almost instantly. The magnetic chip's memory is nonvolatile, making it impervious to power interruptions, and it retains its data when the device is switched off. The magnetic architecture of the chip can be reprogrammed on the fly and its adaptability could make it very useful for special-purpose computing hardware, from video-game platforms to medical diagnostic equipment.
Wired News Feb 14, 2006	back to top

New software to fight child pornography
European forensic scientists from Germany, Italy and Lithuania have developed a computer program to help track down child victims of sexual exploitation on the internet. The prototype can discriminate between the faces of children, youths, and adults with great precision. Scientists hope to use the software to scan the massive amounts of image data that investigators routinely confiscate. The software would automatically filter out images of children from older people, thereby relieving police of having to do the job manually. The German Police are collaborating with the team of forensic scientists and anthropologists in the further development of the program, which is financially supported by the EU. For the software to work, facial patterns must first be 'logged' into the program. The research team thus photographed the faces of 600 German, Italian and Lithuanian children and entered their facial characteristics into the program. The researchers will photograph another 1,650 children and young people to enhance the software's detection capabilities.
Deutsche Welle Feb 16, 2006	back to top

Eco-farming 'helps world's poor'
Sustainable farming methods can help the poorest farmers in developing nations out of poverty, new research suggests. Scientists found that techniques such as crop rotation and organic farming increased crop yields by an average of 79 per cent, without risking future harvests. The study, possibly the largest of its kind, looked at more than 280 projects in 57 of the world's poorest countries. The team of international scientists who carried out the four-year project found that the farmers enjoyed improved crop productivity, while reducing their use of pesticides and water. The findings challenge the dominate view that the West knows best when it comes to agriculture. The researchers found methods that did not have an adverse effect on local biodiversity allowed farmers to reap the rewards of growing crops in healthy soil. This approach not only cut the use of pesticides but also resulted in farmers having to spend less of their income on chemicals. Healthy soil also required less water to cultivate crops, because soils that are higher in organic matter are better at holding water.
BBC News / Environmental Science and Technology Feb 15, 2006	back to top

Space-elevator tether climbs a mile high
A slim cable for a space elevator has been built stretching a mile into the sky, enabling robots to scrabble some way up and down the line. LiftPort Group, a private US company on a quest to build a space elevator by April 2018, stretched the strong carbon ribbon 1.6 km into the sky from the Arizona desert outside Phoenix in January tests. The company's objective will sound familiar to followers of NASA's Centennial Challenges programme. The desired outcome is a 100,000 km tether that robotic lifters - powered by laser beams from Earth - can climb, ferrying cargo, satellites and eventually people into space. To make the cable, researchers sandwiched three carbon-fibre composite strings between four sheets of fibreglass tape, creating a 1.6 km long cable about 5 centimetres wide and no thicker than six sheets of paper. A platform linking the balloons and the tether was successfully launched and held in place during the test. The idea is to build the actual elevator's ribbon from ultra-strong carbon nanotube composites and to have solar-powered lifters carry 100 tonnes of cargo into space once a week, 50 times a year.
New Scientist Feb 15, 2006	back to top

E-paper can be powered by wireless
Fujitsu has developed E-paper that requires so little power that the colour image can be changed by the energy from a wireless signal. The screen is reflective, and so does not require the power-hungry backlighting of most LCD screens. It is also more efficient in its use of light because it does not use adjacent RGB filters that reject two thirds of the light that falls on them. Instead it uses three layers of what is called cholesteric liquid crystal, which forms spiral structures that reflect different colours according to their pitch; in effect, the colour pixels are stacked on top of each other, rather than side by side as in a conventional screen, boosting resolution and making maximum use of the incident light. Initial uses are expected to be in updatable information displays from price tags to timetables. But Fujitsu says they will be eventually be used in laptops and handhelds.
PC World Feb 10, 2006	back to top

Flame emails missing the mark
Who is to blame when a bitter email exchange escalates into electronic warfare? According to a US report, a simple misunderstanding might be at fault. In a recent study of 30 undergraduate students, researchers from the University of Chicago and New York University said the tone of an email message was only correctly interpreted 50 per cent of the time. The students were paired off and given each a list of 20 statements about general topics such as campus food and the weather and were asked to e-mail the statements to a partner introducing either a serious or sarcastic tone. The senders of the messages expected their partners to correctly interpret their tone nearly 80 per cent of the time, but in fact they only scored just over 50 per cent, said the report. Those attempting to interpret the message believed they had scored 90 per cent accuracy. The researchers said people often believed that the tone in their messages was obvious because they could hear it in their head as they wrote.
The Age / Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Feb 16, 2006	back to top

Invention: Viper vision
Vipers 'see' by sensing the infrared radiation emitted by the heat of their prey using sensitive organs on their head. Inventor John Stapleton of New Jersey, US, thinks same trick could enable the visually impaired to better sense the world around them. Stapleton's device uses an ordinary digital camera light sensor to capture a scene which it converts into a mosaic of light spots. An array of infrared LEDs then transforms this mosaic into a pattern of heat points which can be projected onto a user's forehead. As the human forehead is very sensitive to temperature change, Stapleton believes subjects will be able to translate the heat projection into a coarse image in their mind. The technique could also be used to relay Braille messages, he says.
New Scientist Feb 14, 2006	back to top