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Solar Impulse airplane. Image: Solar Impulse

Issue no. 22, 2009 Published: Jun 26, 2009
Solar plane to make public debut
Statistics hint at fraud in Iranian election
'Lightbulb' molecule has a bright future
100 DVDs on one disc within three years?
Intel research tool seeks out conflicting information
Wind's power potential quantified
Cool short cut could speed LHC restart

Solar plane to make public debut
Swiss adventurer Bertrand Picard is set to unveil a prototype of the solar-powered plane he hopes eventually to fly around the world. The initial version, spanning 61m but weighing just 1,500kg, will undergo trials to prove it can fly at night. Picard says he wants to demonstrate the potential of renewable energies. Picard expects to make a crossing of the Atlantic in 2012. The flight would be a risky endeavour. Only now is solar and battery technology becoming mature enough to sustain flight through the night - and then only in unmanned planes. But Picard's Solar Impulse team has invested tremendous energy and money in trying to find what they believe is a breakthrough design. The HB-SIA has the look of a glider but is on the scale - in terms of its width - of a modern airliner. The aeroplane incorporates composite materials to keep it extremely light and uses super-efficient solar cells, batteries, motors and propellers to get it through the dark hours. Solar Impulse plane Picard will begin testing with short runway flights in which the plane lifts just a few metres into the air. As confidence in the machine develops, the team will move to a day-night circle.
BBC News Jun 26, 2009	back to top

Statistics hint at fraud in Iranian election
Allegations that Iran's presidential election on 12 June was rigged are being followed up by statisticians who have found 'moderately strong' evidence that the figures are not genuine, though all are careful to emphasise that maths alone can't prove fraud. Opponents of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was declared to have won by a landslide, have pointed to his wide margin of victory, the speed of the announcement and some unexpected results, such as Mehdi Karroubi's poor showing in his home state of Lorestan. Boudewijn Roukema of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, used a mathematical tool called Benford's law. In many random sets of data, numbers are more likely to begin with 1 than any other digit. The next most frequent starting digit is 2, then 3 and so on, in a precise relationship. The law applies to any set of numbers scattered randomly on a logarithmic scale. Any deviation from this pattern could suggest that figures have been manipulated. Roukema analysed the vote counts in 366 districts. Votes for three of the candidates fit expected patterns, but Karroubi has an unexpectedly large number of counts beginning with the digit 7. The chance of such a large deviation from Benford's law happening without foul play is only 0.7 per cent, Roukema says. Political scientist Walter Mebane of the University of Michigan has found another anomaly. Based on figures from Iran's presidential election in 2005, when Karroubi was also among Ahmadinejad's rivals, he built a statistical model to predict how each would be expected to do in various districts in 2009. The model assumes that the 2005 votes were based on regional differences in policy preferences, ethnicities and demographics that should still show up in 2009. Yet in around 200 of the 366 districts voting numbers were inconsistent with the model - and in two-thirds of these, Ahmadinejad's vote was higher than predicted.
New Scientist Jun 24, 2009	back to top

'Lightbulb' molecule has a bright future
A single molecule that reliably emits white light could speed the development of low-energy LEDs for the next generation of light sources and displays, say chemists at the Seoul National University, South Korea, and the University of Valencia in Spain. Generating white light from organic LEDs or OLEDS is difficult as organic compounds within the films generate light only at very specific colours. Making white involves mixing two or more compounds to create a white light balance, and that drives up the price. But now the researchers have created a molecule able to behave like two separate light-producing molecules. When stimulated with a voltage it produces orange and blue light that mix to create white. Previous attempts using the same basic concept involved linking together two separate molecules into one. But, because energy is able to flow between the two molecular sub-units, one unit typically emits more light than the other, resulting in an unwanted tint. The new molecule does not suffer that problem, and only contains one light-emitting chemical group. When connected to a voltage, this group switches to a high-energy form that emits blue light as it reverts to its original state. Roughly half the time, though, the high-energy form picks up extra oxygen and hydrogen atoms, becoming a short-lived form that produces orange light before reverting to the original state. A large population of the molecules reliably produces equal quantities of orange and blue light that mix to produce an even white.
New Scientist / Journal of the American Chemical Society Jun 23, 2009	back to top

100 DVDs on one disc within three years?
Researchers at General Electric say they have made a key breakthrough in optical data storage that could lead to commercial discs holding the equivalent of 100 DVDs within three years. The new technology is based on the physics of holograms, which enable information to be packed far more densely than with established recording formats. A new device will be needed to play these discs but this will be compatible with established formats like CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs, say the team. Early attempts at creating holographic storage devices have used linear materials such as photopolymers, but these materials have shown significant limitations. Firstly, the micro-holograms tend to have larger dimensions than the beam that is producing them and this leads to errors in data transfer. Secondly, in recording multiple layers of holograms, the earlier layers suffer degradation due to repeated exposure to the recording beam which reduces the quality of recording. The researchers have overcome this problem by crafting a bespoke recording medium. They used a special 'thermoplastic' that can be 'melted' and 'frozen' numerous times without significant damage to its internal structure. In this way, they created a material that only alters its refractive index near the waist of the focussed writing beam and doesn't inflict damage on the plastic above and below where the bit is being stored. General Electric aims to introduce the new discs to professional archival storage market in 2012, followed soon after to consumers.
PhysicsWorld / Japanese Journal of Applied Physics Jun 24, 2009	back to top

Intel research tool seeks out conflicting information
Researchers at Intel are developing a new tool which deliberately seeks out conflicting information and opposing viewpoints on the internet. The Think Link experimental project automatically finds information that contradicts that which the user is currently viewing. A browser plug-in then presents links to additional viewpoints on disputed information or claims. The tool also allows users to vote on contradictory information as a means of better refining both sides of an argument. Researchers suggest that the project could be especially useful to activists looking to gather the latest information on a hotly-debated topic, or for everyday users who are sceptical about the information they read online. Think Link is part of a larger project by researchers at Intel's Berkeley Lab to study what they call 'confrontational computing'. Researchers from Intel and the University of California Berkeley are examining ways that people use the internet to conduct debate, and the tools which can further aid them in discussing information online.
VNUnet UK Jun 20, 2009	back to top

Wind's power potential quantified
A team of US scientists estimates that wind turbines in the continental US could produce 16 times more electricity than is currently used. It is well known that wind can be harnessed to do work. But this power source can be a bit fickle: today it might gust, while tomorrow could bring barely a breeze. So how much can we count on the movement of air to meet all our energy needs? The scientists used data from satellites, balloons, and aircrafts, to estimate wind speeds around the planet. They excluded cities, forests, and ice-covered areas, which would all be hard to harvest. Crunching the numbers, they concluded that a global network of land-based turbines could make 40 times more electricity than the world currently consumes-even if they only operated at 20% of their capacity.
Scientific American / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 26, 2009	back to top

Cool short cut could speed LHC restart
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), possibly science's greatest ever project, was undone in September by one badly soldered join. With 10,000 such joins around the accelerator's ring, it is proving a struggle to check them all in time to restart this autumn as hoped. A splice between two sections of superconducting cable melted when the current was turned up. As well as repairing the one that failed, engineers have so far found and fixed 20 slightly under-par splices. It is a slow process as each of the LHC's eight sectors must be gently warmed from its 1.9 Kelvin operating temperature to about 300 K to be checked and repaired. The repairers are now testing if they can check the splices at a moderately cool 80 K. If so, the last three sectors can be screened much more quickly. Any urgent repairs will delay the start-up, but less serious faults could be left and the LHC switched on anyway, perhaps at reduced energy.
New Scientist Jun 25, 2009	back to top