UNU-MERIT: I&T Weekly

	Search \| Sitemap \| Intranet \| PhD Intranet

Subscribe to I&T Weekly A free e-zine about Innovation & Technology developments

text html Please type the above code:
	RSS feed

Previous Issues I&T Weekly

>> back to archive

Previous issues of I&T Weekly:

2013: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]

2012: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37]

2011: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

2010: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]

2009: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]

2008: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41]

2007: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]

2006: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

2005: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]

2004: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

2003: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

2002: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

2001: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

Photograph: CERN

Issue no. 37, 2010 Published: Nov 19, 2010
Scientists claim breakthrough in antimatter hunt
Space-time invisibility cloak could 'edit history'
High blood pressure can be treated with radio waves, claims study
Laser camera takes photos around corners
Teabag filter cleans water with nanotechnology
Surfaces that keep the ice away
Solar arrays do double duty
Whip-tailed bacteria could 'tweet' to nanobots

Scientists claim breakthrough in antimatter hunt
An international team of physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have claimed a breakthrough in solving one of the biggest riddles of physics, successfully trapping the first 'anti-atom' in a quest to understand what happened to all the antimatter that has vanished since the Big Bang. The team managed to create an atom of anti-hydrogen and then hold onto it for about one tenth of a second, long enough to demonstrate that it can be studied in the lab. Since their first success, the team has managed to hold the anti-atoms even longer, For decades, researchers have puzzled over why antimatter seems to have disappeared from the universe. Theory posits that matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts at the moment of the Big Bang, which spawned the universe some 13.7bn years ago. But while matter went on to become the building block of everything that exists, antimatter has all but disappeared except in the lab. Scientists have long been able to create individual particles of antimatter such as anti-protons, anti-neutrons and positrons - the opposite of electrons. Since 2002, they have also managed to lump these particles together to form anti-atoms, but until recently none could be trapped for long enough to study them, because atoms made of antimatter and matter annihilate each other in a burst of energy upon contact.
Yahoo / AP / Nature Nov 18, 2010	back to top

Space-time invisibility cloak could 'edit history'
Physicists at the Imperial College, London, and the University of Salfordin the UK have proposed a 'space-time' invisibility cloak that, if built, could be used to prevent signal interference or give the illusion of a Star Trek teleportation device. The idea is to create a tunnel through which an object could perform an action while appearing as though it is doing nothing at all. In practice, the device would need two transparent walls to act as the tunnel, or space-time cloak. As an object enters the cloak to perform its action, the rear wall would compress light waves passing through from a source behind. Once the object completes its action and leaves the cloak, however, the front wall would stretch the light waves passing through so that they would merge seamlessly with those outside, whose profile had not been altered. In principle such a system would enable a thief to enter a room, steal the contents of a safe and leave the scene as it was before, while security personnel watching CCTV are none the wiser. The researchers also have ideas for more savoury applications. In the basic set-up it might appear as similar to a transporter from Star Trek, with a person entering the cloak on one side appearing at the other side moments later, apparently having skipped the journey. But the cloak could also find uses in signal processing: a detector placed inside the cloak would be able to 'pause' a signal travelling through the wall while it first deals with a signal passing through the tunnel.
PhysicsWorld / Journal of Optics Nov 16, 2010	back to top

High blood pressure can be treated with radio waves, claims study
A new technique that lowers blood pressure by blasting the kidneys with radio waves could 'revolutionise' treatment, a study claims. Scientists believe the treatment could lead to a completely new approach to managing high blood pressure, a significant risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Some patients who have high blood pressure are unable to lower it using current medication and recommendations - which suggest changes to diet and lifestyle. The therapy produced a dramatic improvement in patients who had been unable to control their high blood pressure with several different drugs. The study, published in the Lancet, involved 106 patients, with around half subjected to the radio wave treatment and half used as a control group. Those allocated to receive renal denervation, as the technique is called, saw their blood pressure fall by an average 32 over 12 mm Hg over a period of six months. The procedure works by inserting a catheter into a blood vessel near the groin and easing it up towards the kidney. The tube then delivers a burst of high-energy radio waves to deactivate renal nerves, which play a role in raising blood pressure.
The Guardian Nov 18, 2010	back to top

Laser camera takes photos around corners
A camera that can shoot around corners has been developed by scientists at MIT. The prototype uses an ultra-short high-intensity burst of laser light to illuminate a scene. The device constructs a basic image of its surroundings - including objects hidden around the corner - by collecting the tiny amounts of light that bounce around the scene. The team believe it has uses in search and rescue and robot vision. The heart of the room-sized camera is a femtosecond laser, a high-intensity light source which can fire ultra-short bursts of laser light that last just one quadrillionth of a second. The light sources are more commonly used by chemists to image reactions at the atomic or molecular scale. For the femtosecond transient imaging system, as the camera is known, the laser is used to fire a pulse of light onto a scene. The light particles scatter and reflect off all surfaces including the walls and the floor. If there is a corner, some of the light will be reflected around it. It will then continue to bounce around the scene, reflecting off objects - or people - hidden around the bend. Some of these particles will again be reflected back around the corner to the camera's sensor. Unlike a standard camera that just measures the intensity and position of the light particles as it hits the sensor, the experimental set up also measures the arrival time of the particles at each pixel. It then use complex algorithms to construct a probable 3D model of the surrounding area - including objects that may be hidden around the corner.
BBC News Nov 18, 2010	back to top

Teabag filter cleans water with nanotechnology
A new water filter developed at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa could provide millions of people with clean drinking water. The filter, about the size and shape of a teabag, would be inexpensive, easy to distribute and simple to use. Instead of being filled with black or green tea, the bag contains active carbon granules and is made from nanofibres treated with biocide, which kills bacteria rather than simply filtering them from the water. In addition to being inexpensive, the filter is also easy to distribute to rural area and simple to use as it can be place in an adapter that fits on nearly any regular-sized plastic bottle. Each filter can clean one litre of the most polluted water to the point where it is completely safe to drink. Once used, the filter can be disposed of and is biodegradable. The filter is now undergoing testing by the South African Bureau of Standards, after which it can be rolled out to the UN and NGOs that have expressed interest in it, by the end of the year. With over a billion people worldwide living without access to clean drinking water, the need for such a filter is huge. When in mass production, the developers expect the teabag to cost less than a third of a euro cent.
Deutsche Welle Nov 15, 2010	back to top

Surfaces that keep the ice away
Ice is a hazardous fact of winter life, playing havoc with roads, utility lines, buildings, and air travel. Conventional methods of getting rid of the ice, such as direct heating, applying salt, or using chemicals to trigger melting, all have liabilities: they can corrode the materials they are applied to, and damage the environment, and they are only modestly or temporarily effective. But Harvard scientists say they have created materials that can prevent ice from forming on surfaces in the first place. The researchers say their breakthrough could apply not only to aviation but to road paving, construction, power transmission, and virtually any other industry for which chemical and physical de-icing is a concern. When an incipient ice droplet hits a conventional surface, it spreads out and grips, becoming a base for the aggregation of more droplets and ultimately a sheet of ice. But the new surfaces are 'super-hydrophobic'. They contain micron-sized geometric patterns that cause droplets to bounce away before they can adhere. In tests the team found that their materials resist ice accumulation until the temperature drops to about -30° C. Even at ultra-low temperatures, when the ice-repellency starts to break down, less than 10% of the normal force is needed to remove it.
Technology Review / ACS Nano Nov 16, 2010	back to top

Solar arrays do double duty
A US startup called Cogenra Solar recently installed a bank of solar arrays with a difference at a California winery. The arrays combine conventional photovoltaic solar cells with a system for collecting waste heat. This produces electricity for lighting and bottling equipment, and it heats water that can be used for washing tanks and barrels. At the winery several large parabolic dishes lined with mirrors concentrate sunlight onto two strips of monocrystalline-silicon solar cells suspended above. The parabolic dishes sit on top of mechanical arms that move them to follow the sun. Heat is collected with a mixture of glycol and water that flows through an aluminium pipe behind the solar cells. The glycol solution is fed into a heat exchanger, where it heats up water. The water is then pumped to a storage tank, and the cooled glycol solution is fed back to the solar arrays. Similar hybrid solar systems have failed in the past because the solar cells have overheated. Cogenra uses sensors to monitor the temperature of its solar cells and an automated control system to draw fluid away more quickly if they need cooling down. The winery installation will serve as an important test bed for hybrid solar technology in general. The system will generate data showing how efficiently it can produce electricity and heated water under different weather conditions and how well it can meet the fluctuating needs of the winery's operation. The solar arrays will be able to produce 50kw of electricity, and the equivalent of 222kw of thermal energy.
Technology Review Nov 15, 2010	back to top

Whip-tailed bacteria could 'tweet' to nanobots
Injecting bacteria into the bloodstream might sound like a health risk, but those propelled by a whirling helical tail, or flagellum, could one day be used to send messages between cancer-fighting nanobots. Researchers at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, envision a future in which nanobots in the body sense tumour cells and release anticancer drugs to fight them. But one machine can't defeat a tumour single-handedly; it needs some way of telling the others to swarm on the target. The team propose using bacteria with flagella, in this case a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli, to send the information. The idea is to encode a message in a DNA sequence that is inserted into each bacterium's cytoplasm. Each nanobot would contain bacteria inscribed with every message that could be needed. When a nanobot encounters a tumour, it would release the correctly encoded bacteria. These would then swim towards other nanobots, attracted by the nutrients stored there. Once there, the encoded DNA sequence binds with chemical receptors and its message - telling it where to swarm or to release its drugs - is acted upon. In a computer simulation, the team found bacteria that had flagella took about 6 minutes to traverse a distance of 1mm from a transmitting to a receiving nanobot. They used an encoding scheme that enabled them to encode up to 300,000 DNA base pairs - or 600 kilobits of information.
New Scientist / Computer Networks Nov 17, 2010	back to top