Issue no. 30, 2006
Published: Sep 08, 2006 |
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 EU court is advised to reject telecom rebate |
| Scientists claim breakthrough in forecasting force of volcanic eruptions |
| Physicists trap, map tiny magnetic vortex |
| 'Molecular computers' act as tiny ID tags |
| Sound blaster cleans contaminated soil |
| Middle-sized holes best for storing hydrogen |
| Fingerprint compression to aid crime fighting |
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| EU court is advised to reject telecom rebate |
In a setback for the mobile phone industry, an adviser to the European
Court of Justice said Thursday that operators should not receive tax
rebates worth hundreds of millions of euros stemming from their
purchases in 2000 and 2001 of high-speed network licenses.
Juliane Kokott, an advocate general acting as legal adviser to the
court, said that European governments had not included value-added taxes
in the multimillion and multibillion-euro fees operators paid at
government auctions for third-generation network licenses.
The networks, now ubiquitous in most of Europe, can send wireless data
at six times the speed of GSM networks. Operators spent around EUR 100bn
on frequency licenses, but the technology proved troublesome and
services only began reaching most consumers last year.
The biggest 3G investors, including Vodafone, Orange, Hutchison Whampoa
and T-Mobile, have had to write off all or part of their huge
investments. To recoup some of the expenses, operators sued government
tax authorities in Austria and Britain, claiming rebates on value-added
taxes that they argued were included in the license fees. |
| International Herald Tribune
Sep 08, 2006 |
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| Scientists claim breakthrough in forecasting force of volcanic eruptions |
British scientists at Bristol University believe they have made a
breakthrough in being able to predict the effect of volcanic eruptions,
after studying Mount St Helens in the United States.
The mountain, which exploded dramatically in 1980, became active again
two years ago. But using a new technique, scientists believe it is
unlikely to result in another major catastrophe. They have found by
studying rocks coming out of a volcano that it is possible to gauge how
much pressure the magma under the ground is experiencing.
Low pressure and a thick, sticky magma means that a sudden and violent
explosion is unlikely, while high pressure suggests that there is
greater risk. The researchers studied the chemical content and texture
of volcanic rocks from Mount St Helens and Shiveluch in eastern Russia. |
| Scotsman / Nature
Sep 06, 2006 |
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| Physicists trap, map tiny magnetic vortex |
In a research first that could lead to a new generation of hard drives
capable of storing thousands of movies per square inch, physicists at
Rice University have decoded the three-dimensional structure of a
tornado-like magnetic vortex no larger than a red blood cell.
The researchers used a scanning ion microscope to first create and then
measure ultra-thin circular disks of soft magnetic cobalt. Their goal
was to trap and image a single magnetic vortex, a cone-like structure
that is created in the magnetic field at the disk when all the magnetic
moments of the atoms in the disk align into uniform concentric circles.
However, towards the core of the disk, the magnetic moments point more
and more out of the plane of the disk, like a swirling cone. If the
vortex spins in a right-handed direction, the cone points up, and if the
vortex spins left, the cone points down.
In searching for the right sized disk to create the phenomenon, the
researchers used thin films of cobalt. They made disks with diameters as
large as 38 microns and as small as one micron. The single vortex was
found on disks measuring six microns in diameter, slightly smaller than
a red blood cell. |
| Physorg / Rice University
Sep 07, 2006 |
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| 'Molecular computers' act as tiny ID tags |
Molecules capable of basic logic operations have been developed that
could serve as tiny ID tags for identifying individual cells or
nano-devices. The technique, called molecular computational
identification (MCID), could produce tens of millions of unique tags.
The idea comes from research on molecules that work like silicon logic
gates. Created by researchers at Queen's University in Belfast, UK, the
molecules use the presence of a chemical, or a mix of chemicals, as
inputs, and give off light as output. Simple 'YES' and 'NOT' gates
either light up, or not, depending on the presence of a single chemical.
A 'NOR' gate lights up if neither of two chemicals are present, while an
'AND' gate lights up only if two chemicals are present.
The researchers attached five different 'logic molecules' to polystyrene
beads, treated them with chemicals, and showed they could be identified
under a microscope. Eventually the process could be automated, and the
combinations of molecules read off like numbers from a license plate.
Tagging individual cells would allow each to be tracked as it passed
through a 'lab-on-a-chip' for example. |
| New Scientist / Nature Materials
Sep 03, 2006 |
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| Sound blaster cleans contaminated soil |
Soil polluted by organic toxins can be blasted clean with ultrasound,
according to researchers at CSIRO Industrial Physics. The new clean-up
method was inspired by the mining industry, which uses ultrasound to
process some minerals. have shown it can also destroy the toxic or
carcinogenic persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including PCBs and
DDT, that commonly contaminate industrial land.
The contaminated soil is mixed with water and passed through a chamber
that blasts the mixture with ultrasound. The team tested their system on
sand spiked with pollutants as well as samples collected from industrial
sites and claim that it destroys up to 97 per cent of contaminants in
just a few minutes.
Sound waves travel through water as a series of high pressure waves with
low pressure areas in between. The low pressure causes the water to boil
and form microscopic bubbles. The high pressure then forces the bubbles
to collapse, generating a shockwave that produces localised temperature
flashes of more than 4000°C and pressures of about 1000 atmospheres,
enough to break down any complex molecules in the water. |
| New Scientist
Sep 06, 2006 |
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| Middle-sized holes best for storing hydrogen |
Hydrogen fuel needs to overcome a number of stumbling blocks before it
can replace our oil-based economy. Not the least of these is how to
safely store enough hydrogen fuel for cars to cover a reasonable
distance before their supplies must be replenished.
One possible solution is to pack hydrogen into porous materials.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham, UK, have been investigating
so-called metal organic frameworks (MOFs) — molecular scaffolding filled
with tiny cylindrical pores that hydrogen gas can be forced into.
Now a painstaking study has quantified the amount of hydrogen that can
be stuffed into three MOFs made of identical material but with different
pore sizes — holes of 6.5, 7.3 and 8.3 angstroms in diameter. The
middle-sized pores could hold the highest density of hydrogen, the team
reports: 43.6 grams of hydrogen per litre. That is 4.7 grams per litre
better than the little holes, and 2.5 better than the large ones. |
| Nature / Angewante Chemie
Sep 05, 2006 |
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| Fingerprint compression to aid crime fighting |
Researchers at the University of Sheffield in England have developed a
technique to compress fingerprints lifted from a crime scene so they can
be transmitted to a fingerprint bureau within 30-60 seconds in stead of
the normal four to 20 minutes.
Instead of visiting several crime scenes and waiting until the end of
the day to get the prints to a bureau, crime scene examiners can use a
laptop with a wireless card and a small scanner to send them via mobile
phone networks. In an area of England where the system was tested it
takes, on average, four days to get an identity. The system could reduce
that to less than two hours.
The researchers are also working on developing technology to identify
footwear impressions and shoe patterns taken from crime scenes. |
| MSNBC / Reuters
Sep 05, 2006 |
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