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Location of the new SuperB particle collider

Issue no. 1, 2010 Published: Jan 07, 2011
Italy approves SuperB particle collider
Nanotube yarns let smart clothing survive the laundry
Stem cells hold key to cure for baldness
Mexican scientists to test radon earthquake predictors
How hornets harvest solar power
Sewage holds untapped power
Saving water, one field at a time
Laser makes new shade of ultraviolet

Italy approves SuperB particle collider
The Italian government has given final approval for building a new collider that will investigate the small but significant differences between matter and antimatter. The SuperB facility will smash electrons and positrons together to produce particle/antiparticle pairs of B-mesons, D-mesons and tau-leptons. Measuring the differences in how these particles and antiparticles decay could help explain the mystery of why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. The SuperB facility will be built by Italy's national institute for nuclear and particle-physics research (INFN). It will consist of a 2 km circumference ring with two accelerators - one for electrons and the other for positrons. Collisions will occur within a large detector that will track the decay products and measure their energy. The facility is expected to produce B-mesons at a rate 50-100 times greater than existing and previous 'B factories' such as Belle in the US and BaBar in Japan. The experiment could begin taking data by 2016. SuperB will also produce synchrotron radiation, which will be used in a wide range of experiments in condensed-matter physics, chemistry, biology and materials science. The synchrotron facility will have six beamlines - three extracting light from the electron beam and three from the positron beam. Although this is a small number of beamlines compared with other facilities, the brilliance of the light will be greater than any existing synchrotron, according to the SuperB project board.
Physicsworld.com Jan 06, 2011	back to top

Nanotube yarns let smart clothing survive the laundry
One of the biggest hurdles in the way of 'smart clothing' may finally have been jumped. Nanotechnologists from the University of Texas have developed conducting fabrics that can survive a washing machine. Garment makers would like to introduce novel materials into textiles to create conducting paths that, say, connect sports performance sensors. However, such applications have been limited by the ability to spin important materials into yarns and stay there even after washing. To solve this problem, the researchers set about making a yarn that could be peppered with 'guest' particles of interest and hold onto them through a hot dunking in detergent. When a commercially produced 'forest' of multiwalled carbon nanotubes is cut into with a razor, drawing the blade out slowly pulls out an exquisitely fine web of nanotubes held together by intramolecular van der Waals forces. To trap the guest particles within their yarn the researchers take their nanotube web and place it on a filter paper soaked in a solution of the guest material. Once the particle-populated nanoweb is dry, it is clamped at one end while the other is twisted by a spinning magnet. The result is a yarn that holds onto the guest particles within it and can be woven alongside woollen and cotton threads for clothing manufacture. The scientists ran tests in a washing machine at 40 °C - and in a three-hour soak at 80 °C. In neither case did they find guest material to have been depleted.
New Scientist / Science Jan 06, 2011	back to top

Stem cells hold key to cure for baldness
Patches of hair may be gone in many men, but the stem cells that make hair are still there. This unexpected finding by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia is raising hopes of a cure for baldness. By comparing bald and hairy patches in scalp samples from 54 men undergoing restoration treatments, the team discovered that although both had similar numbers of stem cells, most of those in the bald patches fail to develop to the next stage. In samples from the same individuals, stem cells that had matured into so-called 'progenitor cells' were 10 to 100 times as abundant on hairy patches as on bald ones, suggesting they are the key to hair growth. If a way can be found to reawaken the stem cells, it could provide a shortcut to new hair for millions of men with male-pattern baldness. Now the team is investigating why some of the stem cells become dormant while others remain active. Encouragingly, the team reports in the same paper that mouse progenitor cells were capable of regenerating entire hair follicles. This suggests that the same might be possible in people, if progenitor cells can be made from reawakened stem cells. One possibility would be to take stem cells from balding men, multiply these into progenitor cells, and then return them to the scalp. Another is to find a chemical signal that reawakens the stem cells, so it could simply be rubbed onto the bald areas of the scalp.
New Scientist / The Journal of Clinical Investigation Jan 05, 2011	back to top

Mexican scientists to test radon earthquake predictors
A device that can detect gas being squeezed out of rocks could become the first reliable method for predicting earthquakes, according to its developers, who are about to test the device for the first time. Scientists suspect that radon gas is released from cavities and cracks in rocks into soil and groundwater before an earthquake strikes. But commercially available detectors are too expensive to test this theory in a wide scale trial. Now, Mexican and European scientists have developed a prototype of a simple detector cheap enough to use in large tests. They aim to use a network of the cheaper detectors to test the theory that radon is released as layers of rock around a strained fault line deform before a sudden quake-causing slip. The device is based on a technology that is already used in extreme environments such as the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. It consists of a 20-centimetre long, nine-centimetre wide aluminium tube which contains a number of wires along its length connected at either end to electrodes. When radon gas enters the tube it strips air molecules of electrons, triggering an electric current in the wire. Unlike existing detectors it works in ambient air. If the device is proven reliable in upcoming field trials then they may be of particular interest to developing nations where the human impacts of earthquakes and related tsunamis are often at their most devastating.
SciDev / arXiv Jan 04, 2011	back to top

How hornets harvest solar power
In the process of photosynthesis plants take the sun's energy and convert it to electrical energy. Now a Tel Aviv University team has demonstrated how a member of the animal kingdom, the Oriental hornet, takes the sun's energy and converts it into electric power as well. Oriental wasps, unlike other wasps and bees, are active in the afternoon rather than the morning when the sun is just rising. Also the hornet digs more intensely as the sun's intensity increases. The team studied different weather conditions such as temperature, humidity and solar radiation to determine if these factors also affected the hornet's behaviour, but found that UVB radiation alone dictated the change. The team also found that the yellow and brown stripes on the hornet abdomen enable a photo-voltaic effect. The stripes can absorb solar radiation, and the yellow pigment transforms that into electric power. The team found that the brown shell of the hornet was made from grooves that split light into diverging beams. The yellow stripe is made from pinhole depressions, and contains a pigment called xanthopterin. Together, the light diverging grooves, pinhole depressions and xanthopterin change light into electrical energy. To see if the solar collecting prowess of the hornet could be duplicated, the team imitated the structure of the hornet's body but had poor results in achieving the same high efficiency rates of energy collection. In the future, they plan to refine the model to see if this 'bio-mimicry' can give clues to novel renewable energy solutions.
Physorg / Naturwissenschaften Jan 05, 2011	back to top

Sewage holds untapped power
Wastewater streaming out of our households contains nearly 20% more potential energy than previously believed, a new study by researchers at Newcastle University in the UK has found. If confirmed, the results could spur efforts to extract methane, hydrogen and other fuels from this largely untapped resource. The team felt the estimates from the only other study analysing the energy potential of wastewater were too low, primarily because too many energy-rich compounds were lost in the oven-drying method that was used to capture them. For their study, the team freeze-dried wastewater to conserve more of its energy-rich compounds. They then measured the energy content of the compounds and found them to be 20% more than previously reported. While the technologies used to extract these compounds and then turn them into energy require further development, the team concludes that converting wastewater into fuels could transform sewage from an energy drain to an energy source.
MSNBC Jan 05, 2011	back to top

Saving water, one field at a time
NASA researchers have developed a computer program to help farmers better manage irrigation systems in real time. The software uses data from NASA satellites, local weather observations, and wireless sensor networks installed in agricultural fields to calculate water balance across a field and provide farmers with information on crop water needs and forecasts that can be accessed from computers or handheld devices. Nearly 70% of the US water supply is used for irrigation. Providing detailed information to farmers will help them make the most efficient use of the water available to them, according to NASA. The agency is working with farmers and vineyard managers in the San Joaquin Valley in California to beta-test the new software as part of an 18-month research project to optimise irrigation management. The researchers developed algorithms that can process raw satellite data from NASA and link it with wireless sensor networks' measurements of ambient conditions like temperature, humidity, and rainfall. The system can also incorporate local weather observations and forecasts. The NASA project will look specifically at crop development over time to provide a complete picture and history of how crops grow. It will look at, for example, what kind of crops grow, when they reach optimal growth, and the density of crop canopies under different conditions. In addition, the project will summarize solar-water balance, estimate crops' water use, and forecast irrigation demands. The information will be stored in a central database so farmers can compare past and current seasons and better manage their irrigation systems.
Technology Review Jan 06, 2011	back to top

Laser makes new shade of ultraviolet
A new laser light colour that shines 100 times brighter than any other laser could lead to a new method for determining the age of materials between 100,000 and 1 million years. The colour is called 'vacuum ultraviolet' because it is absorbed by molecules in the air, requiring its use in a vacuum, according to scientists at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, where the colour was created. Scientists hope to use the new laser light in radio-krypton dating, a technique that uses laser light to measure isotopes of krypton. The ultraviolet laser would be used to create so-called metastable atoms for use in this dating method. Targets for dating include the polar ice cap. Carbon dating, the most familiar method, peters out at about 62,000 years. Potassium-argon dating is a widely used technique to date more ancient materials - including fossils representing extinct branches of humanity's family tree. Radio-krypton dating could serve as another method for documenting dates in this key geologic era. Jefferson Lab's free-electron laser (FEL) produces laser light by accelerating electrons through these cryomodules and then into a wiggler, where electrons give off photons of light. In the FEL, electrons are stripped from their atoms and whipped up to high energies by a linear accelerator. The electrons are then sent into the ultraviolet beamline, where they encounter the UV wiggler. A wiggler is a device that uses magnetic fields to shake the electrons, forcing them to release some of their energy in the form of photons. As in a conventional laser, the photons bounce between two mirrors in the optical system and are then emitted as a coherent beam of light.
MSNBC Dec 28, 2010	back to top