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Issue no. 17, 2007 Published: May 25, 2007
Promising antispam technique gets nod
Microsoft says open-source software violates 235 patents
Microsoft to tool up 'eco warriors' for free
Radiation-hungry fungi could clean up waste
Tiny tubes set chemical reactions racing
Superconducting power line to shore up New York grid
Researchers promise cheaper and brighter LED displays
Cellphones could warn of imminent lightning strike

Promising antispam technique gets nod
A key internet standards body gave preliminary approval this week to a powerful technology designed to detect and block spam. 'DomainKeys Identified Mail' promises to give internet users the best chance so far of stanching the seemingly endless flow of fraudulent junk e-mail. Yahoo, Cisco Systems, Sendmail and PGP Corporation are behind the push for DomainKeys. The draft standard that the Internet Engineering Task Force adopted is more promising than most other anti-spam and antiphishing technologies because it harnesses the power of cryptographically secure digital signatures to thwart online miscreants. The way it works is straightforward: if PayPal sends an e-mail notice to customers about their accounts, the company's outgoing mail server will quietly insert a digital signature into the legitimate message. The incoming mail servers can automatically check PayPal's internet domain name listing to verify that the digital signature is valid and the message truly originated at Paypal.com. Signatures by authorised third parties are permitted as well, which is useful for outsourced e-mail. If the signature does not check out, the message is probably spam.
ZDnet May 22, 2007	back to top

Microsoft says open-source software violates 235 patents
Making its most detailed intellectual-property challenge to open-source software to date, Microsoft said last week that such software, including the Linux operating system, violated 235 of its patents. Microsoft said it wanted to work out licensing deals with open-source companies instead of fighting the patent disputes in court. Microsoft contends that open-source software violates patents related to its graphical user interface, e-mail programs and other technology. Linux is distributed by Novell and dozens of competitors. Users can get it and other open-source software for free and can download and modify it as long as they share changes with the public. Microsoft heralded a partnership with Novell last year as an example of the type of licensing agreement it wanted to replicate with other open-source vendors. The partnership also made the technology interoperable. That agreement includes a clause saying that Microsoft will not sue Novell's Linux customers, which incensed open-source software developers, because they say it implied that Microsoft held patents that applied to cooperatively developed technology.
International Herald Tribune / Reuters May 15, 2007	back to top

Microsoft to tool up 'eco warriors' for free
Microsoft and the William J Clinton Foundation have announced a partnership to develop new technology tools to help large cities create, track and share strategies to reduce carbon emissions. The new software and web applications are part of broader set of programs being introduced by the Foundation, led by former US President Bill Clinton. The software tools aim to create a standardised way for cities all around world to measure their greenhouse gas emissions. With a common standard, cities would be able to track the effectiveness of carbon-reduction programmes. Microsoft will provide the software and services for free and aims to have a product in place by the end of 2007. Many of the tools will be web-based and can be accessed through an internet browser. They will incorporate features allowing cities to share data and effective policies. Based on a formula developed by environmental groups, a city using the software will add up various factors - such as commercial space, residential buildings and transportation usage - to gauge how much carbon dioxide it produces.
Silicon.com / Reuters May 17, 2007	back to top

Radiation-hungry fungi could clean up waste
From plastic to asbestos, cardboard to jet fuel, fungi will eat just about anything. Now researchers have found another dish in the fungal diet: radiation. Not radioactive compounds, which have long been known to be on the menu - radiation itself. Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have discovered that some fungi can use the pigment melanin to harvest the energy from radiation and use it for growth. Since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown the numbers of 'black fungi', rich in melanin, have risen steeply. The researchers speculated that the fungi could be feeding on the radiation that contaminates the ruin of the nuclear reactor. They tested how three different species of fungus respond to beta-radiation from caesium-137, which is produced during nuclear fission of uranium and plutonium. They found that all three, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, Cryptococcus neoformans and Wangiella dermatitidis, grow faster in the isotope's presence. The researchers the fungi could be useful for nuclear cleanups or in outer space, where ionizing radiation is more prevalent. Astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets, they suggest.
Nature / PLoS One / CBC May 23, 2007	back to top

Tiny tubes set chemical reactions racing
The efficiency of a fuel-generating chemical reaction can be boosted dramatically by mixing chemicals and catalysts inside nanoscopic test tubes, researchers from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in Chinahave shown. They found that a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (known as syngas) makes ethanol more quickly, with the help of tiny particles of a metal catalyst, when poured into carbon nanotubes. The catalytic reaction was found to be more than 10 times faster when performed inside nanotubes, despite the lack of space for fresh reactants to circulate. The team showed multi-wall carbon nanotubes - 4 and 8 nanometres wide on the inside and 400 nm in length - to boost the metal catalyst's efficiency. The researchers think the finding could be important for two reasons: Firstly, it could prove useful for generating ethanol fuel using syngas extracted from natural gas, coal or even biomass. Secondly, they suspect that other catalysts should get a speed boost from being inside nanotubes.
New Scientist / Nature Materials May 23, 2007	back to top

Superconducting power line to shore up New York grid
A superconducting power line may be installed under midtown New York in a step towards building a more resilient power grid capable of withstanding lightning strikes and even terrorist attacks. Energy company Consolidated Edison and technology firm American Superconductor have signed an agreement to test a prototype power line as a step towards upgrading the power grid in New York. The power lines consist of several individual superconducting cables wrapped around a central tube filled with liquid nitrogen. This liquid nitrogen cools the cables until they experience zero electrical resistance, which allows them to carry up to 10 times more power than copper cabling of the same size. The cables use a 'high-temperature' superconductor material, which experiences zero electrical resistance at relatively high temperatures compared to other superconductors. However, the cables must still be cooled to about -230° Celsius. The superconducting wires are also designed to automatically suppress surges that could otherwise cause damage equipment. Connecting many different points on the network should mean that, even if a particular substation goes down, power should be rerouted through another part of the network, preventing a blackout.
New Scientist May 22, 2007	back to top

Researchers promise cheaper and brighter LED displays
Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have reported a breakthrough in LED manufacture that could pave the way for more efficient, cheaper and higher quality flat panel displays. The researchers used a new combination of plastic, or polymer, infused liquid, and claimed that the configuration cost half as much to build as conventional designs. Current red LEDs generally score around 12 lumens per watt. The new device rates a record-breaking 18 lumens per watt. Conventional LEDs are made from a variety of organic semiconductor materials and have a complicated multiple-layer structure formed by expensive thermal evaporation techniques constructed to control charge flow in the device. Using the new polymer light emitting diodes, the device has a very simple single-layer structure generated by a much cheaper solution process. The LED uses a polymer powder and liquid mixture added to a previously top-secret material developed by Canon to create a paint-like product, which is used to coat a layer of glass, and a charge is added. The end result is a slim single layer of glass with two electrodes.
VNUnet UK May 17, 2007	back to top

Cellphones could warn of imminent lightning strike
It could become an indispensable safety device for outdoor enthusiasts - a cellphone that warns you to take cover if lightning is heading your way. Lightning can pose a major risk to people taking part in outdoor pursuits, such as golfing. So Nokia proposes a warning system that uses the fact that a lightning bolt is an electric current that emits radio waves. Each bolt produces frequencies between 10 hertz and 5 gigahertz, and the distribution of these signals depends on how far away the lightning is. The multiple receivers in a phone, such as Bluetooth, FM, tri-band GSM, Wi-Fi and RFID, can be tuned to pick up these signals, says Nokia. Software will then interpret them, work out the distance to the lightning, and tell you if strikes are getting closer.
New Scientist May 19, 2007	back to top