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Issue no. 24, 2007 Published: Aug 03, 2007
Electronic implant restores the power of speech
Human skin to replace animal tests
Scientists attempt to roll back emissions
Foam targets heavy metal clean-up
Flying windmills could harness the jet stream
US scientists go pink for green energy
Oil and water flexi-displays
Robot with a sense of humour

Electronic implant restores the power of speech
A seriously injured man has had his speech restored by an electronic implant placed deep inside his brain. The 38-year-old man had suffered serious brain trauma six years ago and was described as being in a 'minimally conscious state'. Scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York implanted an electrode to stimulate his central thalamus, which handles motor control, arousal and in relaying sensory signals to the cerebral cortex. After the operation the man was able name objects on request, make precise hand gestures, and chew food without the aid of a feeding tube. However he is unable to perform many physical tasks because of muscle degradation. The implant is powered by a portable battery pack.
VNUnet UK / Nature Aug 02, 2007	back to top

Human skin to replace animal tests
Episkin - a reconstructed human skin developed by L'Oréal - has been approved for testing if cosmetics are likely to irritate the skin. It is the first complete replacement for animal testing. Te search for animal alternatives became urgent in recent months with the introduction of two pieces of legislation. In December 2006, the EU introduced REACH, which calls for more than 10,000 chemicals used in cosmetics to be tested for skin irritancy by 2019. At the same time, the EU bans the use of animals in such tests from 2009. The L'Oréal team grows the skin layers on collagen, using skin cells called keratinocytes left-over from breast surgery. The safety of cosmetics is tested by simply smothering the skin in the product. The proportion of cells that have been killed off is checked by adding a chemical called MTT which turns blue in the presence of living tissue. Episkin can be adapted to resemble older skin by exposing it to high concentrations of UV light. Adding melanocytes also results in skin that can tan, and by using donor cells from women of different ethnicities, the team has created a spectrum of skin colours which they are using to measure the efficiency of sunblock for different skin tones.
New Scientist Jul 25, 2007	back to top

Scientists attempt to roll back emissions
An environmental scientist at the University of Calgary has built a machine that sucks air into one end of a five-metre high vertical tower and pumps it out at the other end with 30% less CO2. Inside the tower the air is sprayed with droplets of a sodium hydroxide solution, which absorbs CO2 gas. This produces a solution of sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda. By adding calcium oxide - also known as lime - the sodium hydroxide can be recovered for reuse. This lime is then also recovered for reuse, by heating the resulting calcium carbonate - which finally leaves just the CO2. One of the advantages of air capture is that you do not have to capture the carbon near its source, says inventor David Keith. So the CO2 emissions being produced by traffic in Beijing can be captured from the atmosphere by machines in Bogotá. From a geopolitical perspective this is a huge bonus because it allows some nations to take action even if others are dragging their heels. And unlike the carbon capture and storage processes used at power plants where CO2 is captured from smoke stacks, air capture units can be built over the oil wells or deep aquifers where the CO2 would eventually be stored, so there is no need to produce more emissions transporting it. Alternatively it could also be used to make carbon neutral biofuels.
The Guardian Jul 30, 2007	back to top

Foam targets heavy metal clean-up
A type of porous foam can be used to soak up heavy metals from water according to scientists at Northwestern University in Illinois. The rigid material could be used for environmental clean-ups and other jobs that require so-called 'molecular sieves' that can trap heavy metals. Previously, materials called oxides have been used as molecular sieves, but these prefer to form bonds with small metal ions such as magnesium and zinc. But the new foam preferentially absorbs heavy metals such as mercury. The new type of highly absorbent 'aerogel' - a low-density material derived from a gel in which the liquid component has been replaced by gas, is made by linking clusters of chemical groups called chalcogenides with charged metal atoms - called metal ions. The elements sulphur and selenium are examples of chalcogenides. These porous 'chalcogels' have remarkable properties. They are mostly made of air and have enormous surface areas. Importantly, the sulphur or selenium in the chalcogels preferentially bind to heavy metals.
BBC News / Science Jul 26, 2007	back to top

Flying windmills could harness the jet stream
Flying windmills tapping jet stream wind currents may sound far fetched, but groups in the US, Netherlands and Canada say such devices may soon be within reach. If successfully developed, they could harness an enormous amount of reliable, renewable energy. Renewable energy startup Sky WindPower in California will begin building a 220kw Flying Electric Generator (FEG) prototype later in 2007, and hopes to have it flying at 4500 metres in 2009. Sketches of the contraption show four rotary blades connected to an H-shaped aluminium frame, which is tethered to the ground by a high-voltage power line. The device takes off like a helicopter powered by its electric tether. Then, once their rotors catch the jet-stream wind, they feed electricity back to the ground with their rotors rotated to the horizontal. Researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are working on a slightly different high-flying generator called a Laddermill. The mill is made up of a series of wing-shaped kites that generate energy by rotating a large loop to which they are connected. But Canadian startup Magenn Power says high-altitude jet stream currents are not worth the trouble, arguing that there is enough wind in the 180-300 metre range. They created a helium-filled blimp with curved fins that harness this lower altitude wind. This causes the aircraft's midsection to spin, rotating power generators at each end.
New Scientist Jul 26, 2007	back to top

US scientists go pink for green energy
The future of green solar-powered energy may actually be pink. Ohio State University researchers believe that new pink dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs), which get their pink colour from a mixture of red dye and white metal oxide powder, could be used to produce next-generation low-cost solar panels. The researchers report that, currently, the best of these new pink materials convert light to electricity with only half the efficiency of commercially-available silicon-based solar cells – but they do so at only one quarter of the cost. They believe that one day DSSC efficiency can reach levels comparable to any solar cell. The project marks the first time that researchers have made a DSSC from anything other than a simple oxide. The team chose zinc stannate because it belongs to a class of more complex oxides with tunable properties.
VNUnet UK Jul 31, 2007	back to top

Oil and water flexi-displays
Flexible displays that can be rolled up are due to set the world alight, or so we are told. The trick is to find a way to make them cheaply and easily. LG Philips makes flexible displays consisting of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) on a flexible plastic substrate. The only trouble is, these OLEDs need to be made at a higher temperature than the melting point of the plastic substrate, which complicates the manufacturing process significantly – the OLEDs must be first produced on a glass substrate and then transferred to plastic. These extra manufacturing steps increase the cost of the device and decrease the number of defect-free displays that the manufacturing line can produce. So LG Philips has come up with another idea. Instead of making pixels out of OLEDs, it has designed them out of oil and water contained in tiny plastic cells connected to plastic electrodes. The oil, which is opaque, floats on the water and obscures a coloured surface beneath. But applying an electric field forces the oil away from the water, revealing the coloured layer beneath and changing the colour of the pixel. This type of reflective display can be made at low temperatures in a small number of steps, says the company.
New Scientist Jul 30, 2007	back to top

Robot with a sense of humour
Experts in artificial intelligence have built a computer program that can understand simple jokes, marking an important step in making robots seem friendlier to humans. Previous attempts at getting machines to understand humour have failed miserably, because what is funny to humans is subjective and complex - and fiendishly difficult to program. But scientists at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio have devised a prototype joke-detection software. They began by loading a program with a database of words, extracted from a children's dictionary to keep things simple, and then supplied it with examples of how the same word can have different meanings depending on the context. When presented with a text, the program uses that knowledge to work out how new words may relate to each other, and what they probably mean. If it fails to find a word that matches its context, it rummages around in a digital pronunciation guide for similar-sounding words. And if any of those words are a better fit for the rest of the sentence, the passage is flagged, ha ha, as a joke.
Middle East Times / AFP / New Scientist Aug 02, 2007	back to top