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Issue no. 21, 2008 Published: Jun 27, 2008
Earth 'not at risk' from collider
C60 memory on the horizon
PC population reaches a billion as e-waste piles up
Smart binoculars tell soldiers where the danger lies
CCTV cameras 'taught to listen'
Man-made tornadoes could power the future
Cold calculation predicts death row executions
Dubai 'shape-shifting skyscraper' unveiled

Earth 'not at risk' from collider
Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment. A new report addresses fears that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is so energetic, it could have unforeseen consequences. Critics are worried that mini-black holes made at the soon-to-open facility on the French-Swiss border might threaten the Earth's very existence. But the report, issued by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), says there is 'no conceivable danger'. CERN will operate the collider underground in a 27km-long tunnel near Geneva. The LHC is a powerful and complicated machine, which will smash together protons at super-fast speeds in a bid to unlock the secrets of the Universe. Six 'detectors' - individual experiments - will count, trace and analyse the particles that emerge from the collisions. Most physicists believe the risk of a cataclysm lies in the realms of science fiction. But there have been fears about the possibility of a mini-black hole - produced in the collider - swelling so that it gobbles up the Earth. Critics have previously raised concerns that the production of weird hypothetical particles called strangelets in the LHC could trigger the mass conversion of nuclei in ordinary atoms into more strange matter - transforming the Earth into a hot, dead lump.
BBC News Jun 23, 2008	back to top

C60 memory on the horizon
A new type of non-volatile memory in which single molecules of C60 (buckyballs) are integrated in flash memory cells has been put forward by US researchers. The buckyballs with well-defined energy levels are embedded in silica to form the tunnel barrier between a floating gate and a silicon channel. The C60-embedded memories have a retention: program/erase ratio that is much higher than metal nanocrystal memories, which makes them promising for next-generation data storage devices. Metal nanocrystal memories are often touted as being the best candidates for improving next-generation memory chips. However, data retention times - which need to be more than 10 years - are still much lower than desired. One solution is to form more effective tunnel barriers, or resonant tunnel barriers, that consist of a 1 nm layer of silicon nanocrystals sandwiched between two silica layers. Unfortunately, this is difficult to achieve. Now, researchers at Cornell University have found a solution by utilising self-assembled C60 molecules instead of silicon nanocrystals. They liken the quantum mechanical phenomenon of electrons tunnelling through the silica barrier to crossing a river: the probability for electrons to jump over a wide river is very low. To increase this probability, some stepping-stones – C60 – are placed in the middle of the river. Applying a program/erase voltage is like controlling the water level of the river – at appropriate voltages, the water level goes down and the stepping stones become accessible. During retention without bias, the water level rises and the stones are submerged again to prevent electrons jumping back across the silica barrier.
NanoTechWeb / Applied Physics Letters Jun 19, 2008	back to top

PC population reaches a billion as e-waste piles up
The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed one billion, research firm Gartner reports. Mature markets such as Western Europe and the US account for 58% of the first billion installed PCs, but will only account for about 30% of the next billion the report says. Emerging markets such as India and Brazil are driving rapid growth that will see the number of PCs double to 2bn by 2014, thanks to both continually falling prices and the perception that computers are indispensable for economic advancement, says Gartner. But the rapid growth in the number of new PCs also translates into fast-growing numbers of obsolete computers. Gartner estimates more than 180 million will be replaced this year. Some will be sold on or recycled but large numbers will simply be buried. Seventy per cent of the world's discarded phones and computers are exported to China. Earlier this year it was shown that dust in areas near Chinese e-waste recycling centres had raised levels of lead, with some school grounds harbouring levels that would be illegal in Western countries. Last year it was found that dioxins from Chinese electronics recycling centres were finding their way into breast milk.
New Scientist Jun 23, 2008	back to top

Smart binoculars tell soldiers where the danger lies
When it comes to spotting signs of danger on the horizon, soldiers beat computers hands down. But soldiers with binoculars have only a limited field of view, so can easily miss events elsewhere. Now the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) believes it can help by equipping soldiers with a wide-angle imaging system. The system will be able to focus light from a 120-degree field onto high-resolution detectors, which feed signals to image-processing software. Scalp electrodes in a helmet will record how soldiers' brains react to various objects as they look through the goggles, training the system in what constitutes a threat. The system will ultimately scan scenes automatically and identify threats while the soldier investigates individual targets.
New Scientist Jun 24, 2008	back to top

CCTV cameras 'taught to listen'
CCTV cameras which use artificial intelligence software are being developed by researchers from the University of Portsmouth, UK, to 'hear' sounds like windows smashing. The scientists are working on adapting the software so it can also react to crowd noise. Crimes would be captured on camera faster and response times improved. The existing software is sophisticated enough to identify minor visual cues such as whether a car aerial is up or more complex activity such as violent behaviour, researchers said. By the end of the three-year surveillance study, the researchers hope to have generated algorithms that can be used inside existing CCTV software. Then each successive generation of algorithms would become more sophisticated as they 'learn' what they are looking and listening out for.
BBC News Jun 24, 2008	back to top

Man-made tornadoes could power the future
Coiled up in a tornado is as much energy as an entire power plant and Canadian engineer Louis Michaud has a plan to spin up his own twister and extract energy from its tethered tail. The idea depends on heating the air near the surface so that it is much warmer than the air above creating convective air currents. Michaud proposes using a tornado as a kind of drinking straw between the warm ground below and the cold sky above. Wind turbines placed at the bottom could generate electricity from the sucked-up air. Tornadoes and hurricanes form when sun-heated air near the surface rises and displaces cooler air above. As outside air rushes in to replace the rising air, the whole mass begins to rotate. Michaud calls the man-made tornado an Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE). The AVE structure is a 200-metre-wide arena with 100-metre-high walls. Warm humid air enters at the sides, directed to flow in a circular fashion. As the air whirls around at speeds up to 200 mph, a vacuum forms in the centre, which holds the vortex together as it extends several miles into the sky. With wind turbines at the inlets to the arena, Michaud calculates that as much as 200 megawatts of electricity - enough for a small city - could be extracted without draining the vortex of its power. Michaud imagines the AVE could get its warm air from the exhaust of a power plant.
MSNBC / LiveScience.com Jun 25, 2008	back to top

Cold calculation predicts death row executions
Which inmates on death row will eventually be executed? A new computer system developed by researchers at Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, can predict which death row prisoners will live and which will be killed - with chilling accuracy. Its analysis has confirmed suspicions that the people most likely to be executed are those who have had the least schooling, rather than those who have committed the most heinous crimes. The US, the only western democracy to retain the death penalty, executes only a small proportion of the people it sentences to death. The researchers turned to an artificial neural network (ANN) to find out how they are chosen. The researchers first 'trained' their ANN by entering the profiles of 1000 death row inmates between 1973 and 2000. Half of this sample of prisoners had been executed and the other half had survived. Each profile contained 18 factors, including sex, age, race, marital status, educational level and information on the capital offences. They then fed in profiles for 300 more inmates and ANN correctly predicted the fates of more than 90% of those inmates. Gender turned out to be the most significant factor - women are rarely executed. Race was not found to be an important factor when it came to the decision to execute. The most striking factor was educational level. This may be crucial because it indicates how well an inmate can manage their appeal process.
New Scientist / Int. Journal of Law and Information Technology Jun 25, 2008	back to top

Dubai 'shape-shifting skyscraper' unveiled
Ambitious plans to build a revolutionary 420-metre shape-shifting skyscraper in Dubai have been unveiled by architects. The 80-story Dynamic Tower, described as the 'world's first building in motion', will also be the first skyscraper constructed from prefabricated units, according to architect David Fisher's Dynamic Group. Each floor would be capable of rotating independently, powered by wind turbines fitted between each floor. Apartments will sell for about USD3,000 per square foot, making each unit range in price from about USD4m to USD40m. Work on the tower is to be completed by 2010. Fisher has called prefabricated construction techniques the 'future of architecture' and says they will radically transform 4,000-year-old "brick-on-brick" building methods. By using preconstructed parts, Fisher said each story could be built in just seven days, resulting in environmentally cleaner building methods. He said that just 600 people on an assembly site and 80 technicians on the construction site would be needed to build the tower, compared with about 2,000 workers for a traditional project of a comparable scale.
CNN Jun 25, 2008	back to top