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Issue no. 38, 2006 Published: Nov 03, 2006
Microsoft makes Linux pact with Novell
AU congress suggests how to boost African science
Los Alamos lab to test giant magnet
Photoswitches offer hope for macular degeneration cure
Artificial memory aid mimics the brain's audio cues
'Next step' in science studies: the web
Mobile-phone network reveals the ties that bind
The quantum world is about to get bigger
Pulsing gels could power tiny devices
'Beep beep, time to make a baby'

Microsoft makes Linux pact with Novell
In an unusual partnership, old foes Microsoft and Novell have joined forces to work on harmonizing their products. The companies said Thursday they will collaborate on development of specific technologies, for example to help Microsoft's proprietary Windows work with Novell's Suse Linux, which is based on open-source code. On the business side, they will promote each other's products. In addition, the software makers have struck a deal on patents designed to give customers peace of mind about using Novell's open-source products. The companies will create a joint research facility at which they will build and test new products, and work with customers and the open-source community. The focus will be on three technical areas: virtualisation, web services for server management, and Microsoft Office-OpenOffice.org compatibility, the companies said.
CNET News Nov 02, 2006	back to top

AU congress suggests how to boost African science
African scientists and politicians have proposed a wide range of measures to boost science and technology on the continent. The proposals were made at a three-day congress of African scientists and policymakers, held in Alexandria, Egypt this week, which was convened for the first time by the African Union (AU). The delegates put forward 50 individual suggestions, of these 10 will be chosen to be submitted to a meeting of African science and technology ministers later this month in Cairo, Egypt. If approved, these will be presented at the next AU summit meeting of heads of state being held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in January 2007 under the theme of science, technology and innovation. The conference drew up a declaration urging African governments to 'create favourable conditions for mobility of scientists, engineers and technicians' by introducing more flexible visa laws for scientists and dedicating future summits to science, technology and innovation. Other recommendations included strengthening intellectual property rights to encourage innovation, establishing specialised research centres for developing local technologies and upgrading science and technology education in schools.
SciDev Nov 02, 2006	back to top

Los Alamos lab to test giant magnet
Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, expects researchers from around the world to use its new facility for high magnetic field science. After 10 years of work, lab officials announced this week that the world's most powerful pulsed, non-destructive magnet is ready for use at 85 tesla. A tesla, a measuring unit for magnetic fields, takes its name from Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American whose inventions formed the foundation of our alternating current system. Researchers can combine very low temperatures with a powerful magnetic field to examine materials at a nanometre scale. Expected applications include studying large organic molecules, such as drugs. The magnet has achieved 87.8 tesla and is expected to reach 100 tesla in time. According to the laboratory, a generator which came from an abandoned nuclear power project supplies 1.4bn watts of power and is itself the largest magnetic power source. The generator produces power that is stored, then pulsed, to create the powerful magnetic fields.
MSNBC / AP Oct 26, 2006	back to top

Photoswitches offer hope for macular degeneration cure
Researchers are working on light-sensitive switches they believe can help restore sight to patients with macular degeneration. These optical switches can trigger a chemical reaction, spark a muscle contraction, activate a drug or stimulate a nerve cell with just a flash of light, according to a team of scientists at UC Berkeley-LBNL Nanomedicine Development Center in the US. The researchers want to equip cells of the retina with photoswitches, which they believe would restore light sensitivity in people with degenerative blindness such as macular degeneration. After the researchers injected photoswitches into the eyes of rats that had macular degeneration - which destroys the rods and cones, the retina's photoreceptors - they discovered some light sensitivity had been restored to the remaining retinal cells. They are hoping to develop the viruses that can carry the optical switches into the correct cells, so that their biological functions can be controlled effectively.
CBC Nov 01, 2006	back to top

Artificial memory aid mimics the brain's audio cues
An artificial memory aid that mimics the way the human brain replays verbal information could help people with brain damage, Alzheimer's or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, US. The handheld device is modelled on a function of the brain known as the 'phonological loop', which uses short snippets of acoustic information as a memory cue. For example, it provides a way to remember a name before writing it down, and is the reason why songs sometimes become stuck in a person's mind. The memory device has a speaker, a microphone and controls for recording and playing audio. To use it, a user presses 'record' and says a phrase they want to keep in mind. The aid repeats this phrase at intervals of two minutes or it prompts the user to repeat the phrase at the similar intervals, repeatedly bugging them if they fail to do so. The brain's phonological loop 'records' short clips of speech and uses an inner voice to repeatedly replay them. People with an impaired phonological loop frequently forget a task because the words disappear from their working memory.
New Scientist Nov 01, 2006	back to top

'Next step' in science studies: the web
In little more than a decade, the internet has grown to become such a pervasive force in commerce and culture that a group of leading university researchers is trying to make the web a field of study on its own. MIT in the US and the University of Southampton in the UK will launch a joint research programme in web science. Web science, the researchers say, has both social and engineering dimensions. It extends well beyond traditional computer science, they say, to include emerging research on social networks and the social sciences that is being applied to study how people behave on the web. Privacy, for example, will be one area of research in web science. The traditional approach to protecting privacy has been to try to deny access to computers whose databases contain personal information. But so much personal information is already available on the web, often given voluntarily on sites like MySpace and Facebook, that the old approach of trying to deny access to personal information will not work, said Daniel Weitzner, technology and society director at the web consortium.
EJC Medianews / IHT Nov 02, 2006	back to top

Mobile-phone network reveals the ties that bind
If you and your best friend stop talking to each other after a massive row, you might think that would break up your entire social network. In fact, researchers found that your social circle is more likely to break up if you lose contact with more casual acquaintances. The study, which used 18 weeks of call records from a European mobile phone network, assumed that two users were 'tied' if they both phone each other at least once. The strength of that tie is then defined as the total duration of all calls between two users. This reveals a social network, linking a significant number of individuals. The researchers removed ties between individuals in rank order from weakest to strongest. To their surprise, the network split into a collection of unconnected islands, in which individuals were linked to only a small number of other phone users. However, if ties were removed in rank order from strongest to weakest, there was little effect. Weak links could be important because they tend to be 'long-range' interactions that link individuals in different social groups. Conversely, strong ties tend to be 'short-range', linking individuals in the same social group. As a result, the removal of the weak links had a much greater effect on the overall structure of the network.
PhysicsWeb Oct 31, 2006	back to top

The quantum world is about to get bigger
The quantum world is about to get bigger thanks to a technique that will allow objects big enough to see with the naked eye to exist in two places at once. Quantum properties are most prominent in single particles. In bigger objects thermal vibrations destroy the quantum effects. So in theory, chilling a large object should allow its quantum properties to shine through. This week, three teams of physicists have perfected a way of doing this. Their technique is to bombard a mirror of roughly 1014 atoms with photons in a way that damps out thermal vibrations, cooling it to 135 millikelvin. However, the researchers will need sophisticated techniques to see the quantum behaviour. 'You can see the mirror with the naked eye but you won't be able to resolve the quantum effects,' says Markus Aspelmeyer, at the University of Vienna in Austria.
New Scientist / Nature Nov 01, 2006	back to top

Pulsing gels could power tiny devices
A gel that pulses regularly when doused with certain chemicals has been modelled in detail for the first time. The modelling may one day be used to power miniature robots or other devices, scientists say. Belousov-Zhabotinsky gels were first discovered in 1996. They consist of long polymer molecules containing a metal catalyst made from ruthenium - a rare metal similar in structure to platinum. When the right nitrogen compound solution is added to the gel, a cyclical reaction starts. The ruthenium catalyst alternately gains and loses electrons, causing the polymer strands within the gel to oscillate in length. Such materials have the potential to power small mechanical devices, but until now only crude models describing the gel's transformative properties have existed. But now, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, US, have created a model that describes these changes in two dimensions. Their model describes the gel as a lattice of tiny springs connected at specific points. The gel's pulsing movements are defined through thermodynamic equations that calculate the energy liberated by chemical reactions. From that energy the force on every point on the lattice can be considered and used to calculate how the points move.
New Scientist / Science Nov 02, 2006	back to top

'Beep beep, time to make a baby'
Proving that truth is often stranger than fiction, a mobile phone that rings to inform its user she is ovulating has been launched in Japan, with other 'female-friendly' functionality. Would-be mothers can key data on menstruation dates into their phone and they will receive alerts informing them when they may be most likely to get pregnant. Japan's fertility rate sunk to a new low for the fourth year running in 2005. The D702iF, available through Japan's NTT DoCoMo, comes in pastel pink and was the idea of female designer Momoko Ikuta. The handset also provides other features, including a recipe database and a button to set off a dummy ringtone, allowing the user to pretend to receive a call if she is receiving unwanted attention or a date is going downhill.
Silicon.com Oct 31, 2006	back to top