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Artist's rendition of a particle event inside the International Linear Collider. Source: ILC

Issue no. 26, 2010 Published: Jul 30, 2010
Plans for an international linear electron smasher - the ILC
Deal finalised on fusion reactor
Graphene could revolutionise DNA sequencing
Drive wheelchairs and surf internet by breathing
Italian autonomous car to drive from Italy to China
Researchers use Twitter tweets to measure moods

Plans for an international linear electron smasher - the ILC
Physicists at the European particle physics laboratory CERN are planning a straight collider 31 kilometres long to complement the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and help them explain the mysteries of the universe. CERN's 27-kilometer ring atom smasher, the LHC, only became fully operational in March this year, but the scientists plan to start building a new International Linear Collider (ILC), at a cost of USD 6.7bn, in 2012 to smash electrons and positrons together. The only other linear electron collider is the 3.2-kilometer-long Stanford Linear Accelerator built in 1962 in California. The tunnel will use superconducting magnets to accelerate electrons and their antimatter equivalents, positrons, towards each other at near light speed. Construction is expected to take seven years. The linear collider will enable physicists to explore in more detail the findings of the LHC, which smashes protons together. The ILC will give more precise information on the high-energy frontier because it smashes electrons together, which are 2,000 times smaller than protons, and are not thought to contain sub-particles. When two electrons collide the released energy is known exactly. Electrons cannot be effectively collided in the LHC because the tunnel is a ring, and when electrons are bent by magnetic fields they emit X-rays, as do other particles. Electrons are so small that most of the energy pumped into an electron would only replace that lost as X-rays.
PhysOrg.com Jul 26, 2010	back to top

Deal finalised on fusion reactor
The EU and six member states have reached a deal on the financing and timetable for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). An explosion in costs had cast a cloud over the project. Additional construction funds for the experimental reactor will have to come from within the EU's budget. Four years ago, the EU, Russia, China, India, Japan, Korea and the US picked Cadarache in the south of France as the location for the experiment. Delegates agreed that the overall costs of the project will be almost EUR 16bn, three times the original price. They also agreed a timeline that would see the first plasma experiments in 2019, with a fusion reactor generating significantly more power than it consumed by 2026/27. The EU has agreed to meet a critical short term shortfall of EUR 1.4bn by using money that has been allocated to other research programmes. But the EU has said it will cap its overall contribution to ITER at EUR 6.6bn, leaving the project to find cuts in costs of around EUR 600m. Some scientists in Europe are unhappy with the EU proposal to take funds from unspent budgets to bail ITER out. In France, a group of physicists - including Nobel prize winner Georges Charpak - have written a letter calling ITER a catastrophe and arguing that it should be shut down. They suggest that making up the shortfall in ITER's budget is costing France alone the equivalent of 20 years investment in physics and biology.
BBC News Jul 29, 2010	back to top

Graphene could revolutionise DNA sequencing
By feeding individual strands of DNA through nanometre-sized holes, researchers in the Netherlands say they have proved the principle of a revolutionary new DNA sequencing technique. The breakthrough is part of a worldwide race to develop fast and low-cost strategies to analyse these codes that underpin the chemistry of life. The genetic profile - or 'genome' - of an organism is determined by recording the full sequence of acid base pairs that make up its DNA. In 2003, the Human Genome Project made history by determining the entire human genetic code - 3 billion DNA base pairs that took 13 years to analyse using a technique that has changed very little since the 1970s. One promising idea to improve sequencing involves passing DNA through tiny punctures in a sheet of graphene - an extremely strong sheet of carbon just one atom thick. A voltage is applied along the graphene surface as DNA strands are passed slowly through the slit one base at a time. The idea is that each of the four bases - A, C, G and T - will have a unique effect on the conductance of graphene across the gap. Now, researchers at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft are the first team to demonstrate DNA motion through graphene, although their technique cannot yet read the genetic code. They created a series of pores ranging from 5 to 25 nm in diameter by placing flakes of graphene over a silicon nitride membrane and drilling nanosized holes in the graphene using an electron beam. By applying a voltage of 200 mV across the graphene membrane, a series of spikes are observed in an electric current that scales the gap corresponding to drops in conductance when DNA strands slide across the gap.
PhysicsWorld Nano Letters Jul 21, 2010	back to top

Drive wheelchairs and surf internet by breathing
People with severe paralysis may soon be able to surf the internet or drive a wheelchair simply by breathing, according to scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The researchers are testing a 'sniff detector' that is able to pick up pressure changes in the wearer's nasal cavity and convert it into electrical signals. The device can then be hooked up to special software and used to move a cursor on a computer screen or control a wheelchair. The device was tested on three people with locked-in syndrome, a paralysis that 'locks' a fully intact mind into a paralysed body. One patient, a 51-year-old woman who was left unable to move, speak or blink after a stroke, was able to communicate for the first time using the new technology. After 19 days learning to produce a sniff on demand with 20 minutes of practice a day, she was able to write her family a message for the first time. To this day, the 'sniff detector' remains her only means of expressing herself. Another man, who had been 'locked in' for 18 years following a car accident, wrote his own name within 20 minutes of using the device. Eleven other quadriplegics were also able to drive a wheelchair and surf the internet using the detector.
Daily Telegraph Jul 27, 2010	back to top

Italian autonomous car to drive from Italy to China
Scientists at the University of Parma in Italy have pioneered robotic cars that can navigate on their own. They are about to drive from Italy to China and plan to arrive there by mid-October. In 2004, scientists from around the world battled it out in the DARPA Grand Challenge, the first long-distance driverless car competition held in the middle of the California desert. Of the 15 teams that competed in that event sponsored by the US Department of Defence research wing DARPA, none actually finished the course. But researchers had two more chances, in 2005 and 2007, and those challenges did have winners. Now, an Italian company called VisLab, staffed by many who designed one of the vehicles in previous DARPA challenges, is now taking their car to an entirely new level. Instead of driving on a pre-determined course, VisLab's car will drive, on its own, from Parma, Italy, to Shanghai, China, over the next three months. The scientists explained they will be using two vehicles. The first vehicle is manned and defines the route. It will be followed automatically by the second vehicle. If the lead vehicle is not visible from the robotic vehicle, it will broadcasts its GPS position, allowing the autonomous car to catch up.
Deutsche Welle Jul 23, 2010	back to top

Researchers use Twitter tweets to measure moods
Using millions of Twitter messages, or tweets, from the popular social networking site, researchers at Northeastern University in Boston have created a Twitter Mood Map to measure the moods of the US. People are happiest in the morning and in the evening, with happiness peaking on Sunday morning and dipping Thursday night, they found. Twitter users appeared most gloomy at mid-afternoon, shifting to better moods in the evening. Not surprisingly, people appeared happier on the weekends, with residents of California, Miami and southern states among the most content, they learned. The researchers are the first to admit the findings are not terribly scientific - Twitter users tend to be tech-savvy, live in large cities and are a fraction of the total population - but according to the results they have potential as a tool for providing real-time analysis of critical issues. The researchers used a psychological word-rating system to analyse key words in some 300 million Twitter messages as happy or sad. They then created maps based on the location of the messages and the general moods they evoke. The map could be useful not only to collect public opinion but to mobilise users quickly, such as in a drive for emergency relief donations.
Reuters Jul 28, 2010	back to top