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Issue no. 18, 2006 Published: May 19, 2006
Economists claim carbon cuts won't break the world's bank
Europe's new nuclear reactors will not be 9/11-proof
Fake chip research shocks China
Algae tested to fight warming, grow fuel
'Fly-by-wireless' plane takes to the air
LEDs move into the ultraviolet
Smokeless rockets launching soon?
Patent filing: Human cannonballs

Economists claim carbon cuts won't break the world's bank
Transforming the world's energy industry to stop the flood of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere might actually be quite cheap. Measures such as the Kyoto Protocol are often said to be too expensive. But according to a suite of new economic models, the costs of stabilising CO2 levels could be tiny. In some cases, the right policies for limiting carbon emissions could even lead to an increase in global wealth. The Innovation Modelling Comparison Project is a two-year effort involving eleven different models that represent the latest thinking on the problem. The results are striking. Nine of the models predict that stabilising CO2 levels at 450 parts per million, widely seen as the most ambitious target worth discussing, would set back global GDP by less than 0.5% or so by 2100. In each scenario, the regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions persuades the private sector to shift investment into low-carbon technologies, which then become competitive with traditional energy sources. In some cases, this shift in investment stimulates growth and actually boosts overall wealth. Two models suggest that stabilisation policies would give an added boost to global GDP of up to 1.7% over 100 years. They assume such climate policies will bring about side benefits, such as increased investment in new technologies.
Nature May 17, 2006	back to top

Europe's new nuclear reactors will not be 9/11-proof
New nuclear reactors planned to be built across Europe are not designed to withstand a 9/11-style aircraft attack by terrorists, a leaked report has revealed. The European pressurised water reactor (EPR) is capable of resisting an accidental crash by a five-tonne military fighter, says the French nuclear power company, EDF. But only by extrapolation does it argue that the reactor will also withstand the impact of a 250-tonne commercial airliner flown deliberately into it. Because the reactors are designed to withstand a military jet crash, the report contends, they will also withstand the hardest parts of a passenger airline - its engines. It also claims that terrorists would have difficulty steering an aircraft towards a reactor at a low enough angle. But EDF does not give any absolute guarantees. The leaking of the document has provoked a fierce controversy in France. A French anti-nuclear activist was detained by police for 14 hours this week in connection with the leaked report. The French green movement responded by distributing the document as widely as possible, making it available on a dozen websites. So far, EDF has declined to comment.
New Scientist May 18, 2006	back to top

Fake chip research shocks China
A top Chinese academic has been fired after it emerged he faked research into computer chips that aimed at ending the nation's reliance on foreign suppliers. Chinese officials would not say if Chen Jin, the former head of Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Microelectronics School, will face criminal charges. The scandal comes as China tries to boost its home-grown technologies. According to reports, Chen used chips made by another firm to fool university and government inspectors. China's Xinhua state news agency said that the Hanxin digital signal processing chips were not based on research carried out by Chen. Nor could the chips carry out the functions, such as reading fingerprints or playing MP3 files, that they were supposed to, it reported. Chen would now have to pay back state funding, Xinhua quoted the Science and Technology Ministry, and the State Development and Reform Commission as saying. The Financial Times estimated that Chen and his team had received funding worth some 114m yuan (EUR 11.11m).
BBC News May 15, 2006	back to top

Algae tested to fight warming, grow fuel
How's this for a green idea: Remove carbon dioxide, a gas that many scientists tie to global warming, by having algae turn it into clean fuel? The state of New York along with independent power producer NRG Energy and GreenFuel Technologies will be testing the technology. In a partnership announced Tuesday, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority is funding the project, which will test GreenFuel's CO2 recycling technology at NRG's coal-fired power plant. GreenFuel will use a mini-bioreactor system to assess the technical and economic viability of its technology, which would use algae to consume CO2 emitted by the power plant. The algae could then be converted into biofuel. GreenFuel said it expects its bioreactors will be able to be retrofitted to existing sources with minimal impact on existing generation operations.
MSNBC / Reuters May 17, 2006	back to top

'Fly-by-wireless' plane takes to the air
A plane with no wires or mechanical connections between its engine, navigation system and onboard computers - only a wireless network - has been built and flown by engineers at Minho University in Portugal. The 3-metre-long uncrewed plane 'AIVA' relies entirely upon a Bluetooth wireless network to relay messages back and forth between critical systems - a technique dubbed 'fly-by-wireless'. Tests flights carried out in Portugal have shown that the system works well. Many modern planes already use electronic wires, instead of the mechanical links and cables found in older planes, to connect components. This is a lighter and more compact way to control these systems. However, wireless links could be susceptible to electromagnetic interference or even jamming, and it could be more difficult to build in back-up wireless connections. But the researchers say they are working on this. Bluetooth is already fairly resistant to disruption as it is designed to guarantee a certain minimum data stream will always get through, they say.
New Scientist May 16, 2006	back to top

LEDs move into the ultraviolet
Physicists at NTT Basic Research Laboratories in Atsugi, Japan, have made a diode that emits light at the shortest wavelength ever. The device is made from aluminium nitride and emits deep in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum at 210 nanometres. The work represents an important step towards the development of very low-wavelength light emitters that could find use in a wide variety of applications, including medicine, photolithography and to destroy bacteria in contaminated water. A light-emitting diode (LED) generally consists of a junction between two types of semiconducting materials: an 'n-type' layer in which current is carried by mobile electrons and a 'p-type' layer where the carriers are positively charged holes. The electrons and holes recombine at the junction to emit light. The researchers made their LED by sandwiching an undoped layer of aluminium nitride between n- and p-type layers. When current is passed through the structure, it emits ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 210 nm.
PhysicsWeb / Nature May 17, 2006	back to top

Smokeless rockets launching soon?
Only time and money separate the current state of rocket propulsion science from the engine rooms of Star Trek's Starfleet, according to James Woodward, a history professor at California State University in Fullerton. He presented his research into Mach-Lorentz thrusters Wednesday at the Future in Review conference. Mach-Lorentz thrusters (MLTs) are based on Mach's principle, which suggests that all particles in the universe have an effect on each other, and the work of Hendrik Lorentz, who conducted research into the movement of charged particles in a magnetic field. Woodward has constructed an engine that takes advantage of the fact that objects produce energy when their mass changes slightly. Woodward used capacitors to change the mass of an object and then applied a current to that mass. That produces a small amount of thrust. Increasing the voltage and frequency of the current increases the strength of the thrust, to the point where the engine could be used to adjust the orbit of a satellite, or push a rocket into space.
CNET News May 17, 2006	back to top

Patent filing: Human cannonballs
The old circus trick of firing a person from a cannon is being considered by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a way to get special forces, police officers and fire fighters onto the roofs of tall buildings in a hurry. A ramp with side rails would be placed on the ground near the target building at an angle of about 80°. A person would then sit in a chair, like a pilot's ejection seat, attached to the ramp. Compressed air from a cylinder underneath would be rapidly released to shoot the chair up the ramp's guide rails. At the top the chair would come to an instant halt, leaving the person to fly up and over the edge of the roof, to hopefully land safely on top of the building. Of course, the trick is to get the trajectory just right. But the DARPA patent suggests a computer could automatically devise the correct angle and speed of ascent. It also claims that a 4-metre-tall launcher could put a man on the top of a 5 storey building in less than 2 seconds.
New Scientist May 16, 2006	back to top