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Issue no. 35, 2008 Published: Nov 07, 2008
Once thought safe, WPA Wi-Fi encryption is cracked
Rainforest fungus could be new source of biofuel
Magnetic shield for spacefarers
Ants have a simple solution to traffic congestion
Hairy subs could feel their way through turbulence
Invention: Self-replicating materials

Once thought safe, WPA Wi-Fi encryption is cracked
Security researchers say they have developed a way to partially crack the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption standard used to protect data on many wireless networks. The attack will be discussed at the PacSec conference in Tokyo next week. There, researcher Erik Tews will show how he was able to crack WPA encryption, in order to read data being sent from a router to a laptop computer. The attack could also be used to send bogus information to a client connected to the router. To do this, Tews and his co-researcher Martin Beck found a way to break the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) key, used by WPA, in a relatively short amount of time: 12 to 15 minutes. They have not, however, managed to crack the encryption keys used to secure data that goes from the PC to the router in this particular attack. To pull off their trick, the researchers first discovered a way to trick a WPA router into sending them large amounts of data. This makes cracking the key easier, but this technique is also combined with a 'mathematical breakthrough', that allows for cracking WPA much more quickly than any previous attempt.
PCWorld Nov 06, 2008	back to top

Rainforest fungus could be new source of biofuel
A fungus found living in the rainforests of South America could be a new source of biofuel, scientists claim. Experts believe the organism, Gliocladium roseum, which produces almost pure bio diesel could potentially be a completely new source of green energy. The fungus, which lives inside the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces hydrocarbon fuel similar to the diesel used in cars and trucks. Scientists were amazed to find that it was able to convert plant cellulose or matter directly into the biofuel, dubbed 'myco-diesel'. Crops normally have to converted to sugar and fermented before they can be turned into useful fuel. Researchers from Montana State University studied novel fungi in the rainforests of northern Patagonia, which cross the borders of Argentina and Chile. They found that when the diesel fuel fungus was exposed to potentially toxic antibiotics, it reacted defensively by generating a plethora of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives.
The Telegraph / Microbiology Nov 04, 2008	back to top

Magnetic shield for spacefarers
Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic 'umbrella' that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say. The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere. Our star is a constant source of charged particles, and storms that arise on the Sun's surface result in huge numbers of these particles spilling into space. As well as this 'solar wind', high velocity particles known as cosmic rays also flood through our galaxy. The Earth's magnetosphere deflects many of these particles that rain down on the planet, and our atmosphere absorbs most of the rest. In its experimental set-up, the team simulated the solar wind in the laboratory and used magnetic fields to isolate an area inside the plasma, deflecting particles around the 'hole'. The team has had to take into account the physics of plasmas at the comparatively tiny human scale. To create its metre-sized trial, the team used a plasma jet and a simple magnet.
BBC News / Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion Nov 03, 2008	back to top

Ants have a simple solution to traffic congestion
Ants seem to have cracked a problem we humans haven't. While our cars get clogged in jams, ants help each other to move around their colony much more efficiently. Understanding how they do this could inspire more effective routing of road traffic. Collective intelligence experts at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany investigated how ants move around their colony. They set up an ant highway with two routes of different widths from the nest to some sugar syrup. Unsurprisingly, the narrower route soon became congested. But when an ant returning along the congested route to the nest collided with another ant just starting out, the returning ant pushed the newcomer onto the other path. However, if the returning ant had enjoyed a trouble-free journey, it did not redirect the newcomer. The researchers created a computer model of more complex ant networks with routes of different lengths. The team found that even though ants being rerouted sometimes took a longer route, they still got to the food quickly and efficiently. If human drivers travelling in opposite directions could pass congestion information to each other in this way, we would all be better off.
New Scientist Nov 06, 2008	back to top

Hairy subs could feel their way through turbulence
A team of engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and the Northwestern University in Illinois, US, has developed artificial hairs like those used by fish to sense water flow around them to avoid predators or take the most efficient path through complex turbulence. Robotic subs with the same ability could save fuel by hitch-hiking on turbulent flows as real fish do. The researchers constructed 550-micrometer-long hairs from a common polymer. These are mounted on a piezoelectric material that gives off a voltage when a water current deflects the hairs. But the 'bare' hair sensor will only deflected by water flowing at speeds above 100 micrometers per second. So, to increase sensitivity, the researchers used a gel to mimic the mucus cupula that caps the hairs in fish. Tests showed that the hydrogel-capped hair sensors could detect flow velocities of just 2.5 micrometers per second - 40 times more sensitive than without the gel. The artificial sensors are around five times as long as those on fish, but that is an appropriate size for AUVs, which tend to be a few metres in length.
New Scientist / Soft Material Nov 04, 2008	back to top

Invention: Self-replicating materials
Researchers at New York University want to create artificial material that can repeatedly copy itself by using micrometre-scale particles that, when in solution, self-organise into units able to reproduce. Their idea is based on the fact that sequences of DNA can be designed to recognise and bond with each other. By carefully designing these sequences, it is possible to build structures from them - for example, microscopic relief maps of the Americas. The researchers point out that these techniques can be used to build with micrometre-sized particles of plastic, glass or metal, by coating them with DNA. Using the right sequences, they can induce such particles to assemble themselves into complex objects. These assemblies can in turn self-replicate by corralling other DNA-tagged particles into more versions of the same thing. Heating and cooling the mixture can forge or break the DNA bonds, and chemicals can be used to modify the binding sequences in between each round of replication so as to produce very complex structures. The ability to create new materials in this way could provide new routes to building regular structures like those used in microelectronics. Or it could produce entirely new materials, such as photonic crystals that control the movement of light through them in a way akin to how electricity flows through a semiconductor.
New Scientist Nov 03, 2008	back to top