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Issue no. 11, 2007 Published: Mar 23, 2007
Think small for water management, say scientists
Google, free online services to African universities
GM mosquito 'could fight malaria'
Nanotechnology online journal is launched
Sea sponge leads way to cheaper solar cells
Researchers craft CPU-less supercomputer
Engineers tout 'morphable' computers
Hard disk shredder eliminates data for good
Invention: Auto-snug clothing

Think small for water management, say scientists
A report published this week by the International Water Management Institute calls for big changes in water management policy for agriculture. It says policymakers need to change the way they think about water and agriculture, moving away from big dam projects. Based on an assessment of water management strategies by 700 experts, the report says that three quarters of the additional food needed globally in the coming decades can be met by supporting the world's low-yield farmers. Since smallholder farmers make up the majority of the world's rural poor, initiatives should focus on small-scale, individually managed water technologies - such as small pumps, water storage tanks and low-cost drip irrigation - especially in the (semi-)arid tropics. These are affordable even for the poorest members of the community and can be implemented quickly, without the long delays of large projects. The report recommends enhancing agricultural systems that rely on rain, by improving moisture conservation and providing supplemental irrigation.
SciDev.net Mar 22, 2007	back to top

Google, free online services to African universities
Google announced it will provide free online communication services such as e-mail and internet telephone calling to universities in Kenya and Rwanda. Google said it had partnered with the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure and the Kenya Education Network to deliver hosted Google Apps software applications. Students in both African countries as well as Rwandan government officials will get to use online tools including shared calendars, instant messaging, and word processing, Google said. The National University of Rwanda, Kigali Institute for Education, and the Kigali Institute for Science and Technology in Rwanda will get access to Google Apps Education Edition in the initial phase of the project. Rwanda's government ministries will use Google Apps Standard Edition. Initially, approximately 20,000 users in Rwanda will be able to use the Google services. The University of Nairobi's 50,000 students will be the first to be offered Google Apps for Education in Kenya. The services will later be extended to 150,000 Kenyan students at universities across the country.
Middle East Times / AFP Mar 20, 2007	back to top

GM mosquito 'could fight malaria'
A genetically modified (GM) strain of malaria-resistant mosquito has been created by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, US, that is better able to survive than disease-carrying insects. The insect carries a gene that prevents infection by the malaria parasite. The approach exploits the fact that the health of infected mosquitoes is itself compromised by the parasite they spread. Insects that cannot be invaded by the parasite are therefore likely to be fitter and out-compete their disease-carrying counterparts. In the team's experiments, equal numbers of genetically modified and ordinary 'wild-type' mosquitoes were allowed to feed on malaria-infected mice. As they reproduced, more of the GM, or transgenic, mosquitoes survived. After nine generations, 70% of the insects belonged to the malaria-resistant strain.
BBC News / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 19, 2007	back to top

Nanotechnology online journal is launched
US scientists have started an online journal that offers citations and links to articles about environmental and health effects of nanotechnology. The nanotechnology coalition that launched the first online database of scientific findings related to the benefits and risks of nanomaterials Thursday launched the Virtual Journal of Nanotechnology Environment, Health & Safety. The monthly journal is a product of The International Council on Nanotechnology and Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology. The journal is available at icon.rice.edu/virtualjournal.cfm.
UPI Mar 22, 2007	back to top

Sea sponge leads way to cheaper solar cells
Some marine sponges can harvest silicon from seawater, and use it to build the spiky filaments that cover their body. Now this process has inspired researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to develop a cheap, low-energy method of manufacturing solar cells. The orange puffball sponge Tethya aurantia naturally synthesise pristine layers of silica. It does this using an enzyme called silicatein to catalyse the conversion of silicic acid in seawater into its silica spikes. Structures like this are known to make photovoltaic cells more efficient, so the researchers set about developing an analogous low-energy process that produces structured layers of zinc oxide - a widely used solar cell semiconductor. They replaced the seawater with aqueous zinc nitrate and the silicatein with ammonia, which catalyses the breakdown of zinc nitrate into crystalline zinc oxide. By regulating the rate at which they diffused the ammonia into the zinc nitrate, and hence the pH of the solution, they were able to control the structure of the zinc oxide film that was slowly deposited on a glass substrate in the reaction chamber. In this way, they have built crystalline layers ranging in thickness from 100 to 300 nanometres.
New Scientist magazine Mar 24, 2007	back to top

Researchers craft CPU-less supercomputer
Researchers in Scotland have built a small, power-efficient supercomputer that does not use any conventional microprocessors. The Maxwell machine was built at the University of Edinburgh by the FPGA High Performance Computing Alliance (FHPCA). The computer eschews conventional CPU processors in favour of 64 field programmable gate array (FPGA) chips which can be programmed to carry out specific computing functions. Users can fine-tune the chips to perform only the instructions needed for a certain task, making them chips more efficient and better optimised for the operation at hand. The system is housed in a 32-way blade centre enclosure which makes the computer 10 times more efficient and up to 300 times faster than a conventional system of comparable size, according to the FHPCA. Maxwell will be targeted at conventional supercomputing areas such as seismology, defence planning, computer modelling and financial engineering. Early demonstrations of the system tackled oil prospecting and medical imaging tasks.
VNUnet UK Mar 22, 2007	back to top

Engineers tout 'morphable' computers
Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, a developer of sensor systems for the US military, says it has developed the world's first computers that can morph into different forms. The Morphable Networked Micro- Architecture (Monarch) system has been developed to address the large data volumes of sensor systems as well as their signal and data processing throughput requirements. Raytheon claims that Monarch is the most adaptable processor ever built for the US Department of Defense. Monarch performs as a single system-on-a-chip, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of processors required for computing systems, and performs in an array of chips for teraflop throughput. In laboratory testing Monarch outperformed Intel's quad-core Xeon chip by a factor of 10, the company claims. The architecture's polymorphic capability and super efficiency enable the development of systems that need very small size, low power, and in some cases radiation tolerance for purposes such as GPS, airborne and space radar and video processing systems. A Monarch system contains six microprocessors and a highly interconnected reconfigurable computing array, providing 64 gigaflops with more than 60Gbps of memory bandwidth and more than 43Gbps of off-chip data bandwidth.
VNUnet UK Mar 22, 2007	back to top

Hard disk shredder eliminates data for good
One of the more novel products exhibited at this year's CeBIT show was a hard drive shredder. The offering from Neumann AG makes sure that data from discarded hard drives is never recoverable by literally shredding the device into small pieces. Irretrievably deleting data from a hard disk is easier said than done. True professionals can retrieve information from almost any data carrier, even damaged ones. Traditional methods of securely wiping drives, either by writing over the entire drive with a series of ones or zeros, or by destroying the partition table, can be ineffective and time consuming. This ultimate destroyer is similar to a shredder for garden cuttings. The 'hard disk crasher' can completely destroy up to 15 hard disks or 60 magnetic tapes per minute. Users simply insert the drive into a small slot and the hard disk crasher chops them up into tiny bits. Not even the world's most capable IT pro can put the data together again.
VNUnet UK Mar 22, 2007	back to top

Invention: Auto-snug clothing
Philips hopes that fitting-room fiascos will become a thing of the past if it ever forays into the world of fashion. The company has come up with a way to change the size, shape and style of clothes by weaving 'muscle wires' into the fabric, which are made of shape-memory alloys that change length according to the small current passed through them. When you try on a special pair of Philips' trousers, a connected power source changes the length of the wires in the fabric until the trousers have the correct waist size, inside leg and width. Then simply disconnect to try the trousers in exactly your size. Philips says the technique could also be used to correctly fit shirts, socks and bras, or indeed any other article of clothing.
New Scientist Mar 19, 2007	back to top