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Malaria parasite (Wikipedia)

Issue no. 3, 2011 Published: Jan 21, 2011
Malaria parasite caught on camera invading cell
Study marks step towards quantum computers
Heat engine may be world's smallest
Breakthrough in converting heat waste to electricity
How fruit flies could improve wireless networking
'Killer paper' eyed for safer food
Chameleon tanks blend into background
Swarm of net satellites planned

Malaria parasite caught on camera invading cell
Researchers in Australia have for the first time captured in moving pictures the moment when a Plasmodium parasite, responsible for malaria, invades a human red blood cell. The team from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, used transmission electron microscopy and 3D immuno-fluorescence microscopy to record a series of still images during the 30-second-long invasion, and combined them into a movie. To boost their chances of catching a Plasmodium parasite in the act of attacking a red blood cell the team controlled the process using two drugs. The first - heparin - prevents parasites entering a new red blood cell, while the second - E64 - prevents their exit. The parasites produce a protein called the tight junction marker and use it to attach to and drill into red blood cells. The movie shows that invasion is not a well-ordered process, as previously thought. Initial attachment using the tight junction marker is the main switch, and then the parasite simultaneously releases a vacuole to live in and switches on a motor complex allowing it to move within the cell. The movie could have implications for the treatment of malaria. The results confirm that interfering with the master switch would stop the parasites from entering red blood cells and thereby stop disease. Malaria is thought to kill almost 1 million people worldwide each year.
New Scientist / Cell Host & Microbe Jan 19, 2011	back to top

Study marks step towards quantum computers
Scientists have moved a step closer to creating ultra-fast quantum computers by generating 10bn bits of quantum entanglement in silicon for the first time. The achievement in silicon, the basis of the computer chip, has important implications for integration with existing technology, according to a international team led by Oxford University. Super-fast quantum computers, based on quantum bits, or qubits, will be able to test many possible solutions to a problem at once. Conventional computers based on binary 'switches', or bits, can only do one thing at a time. Quantum entanglement involves the notion that particles can be connected in such a way that changing the state of one instantly affects the other, even when they are miles apart. Other areas of quantum- related research include ultra-precise measurement and improved imaging. The researchers used high magnetic fields and low temperatures to produce entanglement between the electron and the nucleus of an atom of phosphorous embedded in a silicon crystal. The procedure was applied in parallel to a vast number of phosphorous atoms, they said. The electron and the nucleus behave as a tiny magnet, or so-called 'spin', each of which can represent a bit of quantum information. When controlled in the right way, these spins can interact with each other.
Reuters / Nature Jan 19, 2011	back to top

Heat engine may be world's smallest
Physicists in the Netherlands have built a heat engine that might be the tiniest ever created. Based on 'piezoresistive' silicon, and smaller than a typical biological cell, the engine could find applications in watch mechanisms or as a mechanical sensor. Heat engines, which usually rely on the expansion and contraction of liquids or gas, are difficult to downscale. As the devices get smaller, engineers find it harder to design structures that can handle the high pressures and fluid velocities required for a reasonable power output. The efficiency also tends to decrease, because it requires large temperature differences. For these reasons heat engines rarely get smaller than around 107 µm3. However, a team at NXP Semiconductors in Eindhoven have overcome this threshold with a heat engine driven by the movement of a solid - a piezoresistive mass of crystalline silicon. The engine consists of a flat resonator of crystalline silicon, 1125 µm3 in size, with two small parallel beams, 0.34 µm3 in size, at one end - rather like a tuning fork with a heavy base. Both beams are anchored such that the compression or extension of one beam, the 'engine' beam, heated by a tiny DC current bends the entire device up or down. The key to the technology is an interplay between the engine beam's temperature, compression and resistance. When it is compressed its resistance is greatest, and this resistance, owing to the DC current, increases the temperature. But the increased temperature makes the engine beam expand, which lowers the resistance and hence lowers the temperature. The low temperature again makes the engine beam compressed, and the process thereon repeats in an oscillatory motion.
PhysicWorld / Nature Physics Jan 16, 2011	back to top

Breakthrough in converting heat waste to electricity
Researchers at Northwestern University have created a material that can harness electricity from heat-generating items such as vehicle exhaust systems, industrial processes and equipment and sun light more efficiently than previous technologies. The material exhibits a high thermoelectric figure of merit that is expected to enable 14% of heat waste to electricity, a scientific first. The team dispersed nanocrystals of rock salt (SrTe) into the material lead telluride (PbTe). Past attempts at this kind of nanoscale inclusion in bulk material have improved the energy conversion efficiency of lead telluride, but the nano inclusions also increased the scattering of electrons, which reduced overall conductivity. In this study, the Northwestern team offers the first example of using nanostructures in lead telluride to reduce electron scattering and increase the energy conversion efficiency of the material. The automotive, chemical, brick, glass and any industry that uses heat to make products could make their system more efficient with the use of this scientific breakthrough, according to the researchers.
PhysOrg / Nature Chemistry Jan 18, 2011	back to top

How fruit flies could improve wireless networking
Fruit flies have long been a favourite research subject for biologists, but now they are unlocking secrets for computer scientists as well. Specifically, researchers used insights into how a fruit fly's nervous system develops to design a new algorithm that could prove useful for wireless networking, routing, and other network protocols. When a wireless network gets deployed, it has to be organised to get information to every node in the network efficiently. One way to do this is to assign certain nodes to be leaders responsible for their own smaller areas of the network. But assigning these leaders quickly and efficiently, with a minimum of back and forth communication, has been an open problem in distributed computing for a long time. Current algorithms are designed to know things about how a network is set up-such as how many neighbours each node is connected to. This doesn't jibe well the flexibility that wireless networks offer. In the fruit fly, the researchers saw the flexibility and efficiency they wanted for wireless networks expressed in nature. While the fly's nervous system is developing in the larval and pupal stages, it selects 'sensory organ precursors' that play a similar role to the leader nodes in a wireless network. The fly's nervous system does this, however, without having any information about how cells are connected - or, to follow the analogy, about how the network is built. The researchers studied this process and came up with an algorithm for distributed computing based on it. They say it runs slightly slower than current solutions, but can be applied more broadly because it can work in more difficult conditions.
Technology Review / Science Jan 14, 2011	back to top

'Killer paper' eyed for safer food
Scientists have developed a technique to coat paper with nanoparticles of silver - a combination that makes the paper lethal to bacteria such as E. coli and potentially suitable as a food packaging material. Silver is widely used to fight bacteria, and can already be found in textiles, fibres, plastics and metals for biomedical applications. The technology is used in wound dressings and microbial resistant catheters, as well as consumer products such as odour-resistant socks. Until now, scientists have been unable to deposit the particles of silver onto paper. The new method involves the use of ultrasound, or high-frequency sound waves, to anchor the particles on paper. The technique was pioneered by a research team at the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. In laboratory tests, the so-called 'killer paper' showed lethal antibacterial activity against E. coli and S. aureus, two causes of bacterial food poisoning, suggesting its potential application as a food packaging material for longer shelf life, the researchers say. In addition to food packaging, the coating method could be extended to other nanomaterials to create properties such as water resistance, various degrees of conductivity, and roughness.
MSNBC / Langmuir Jan 19, 2011	back to top

Chameleon tanks blend into background
Even at a distance, a tank is hard to miss. Yet if it is a tank with adaptive camouflage you might barely realise you are looking straight at it. At least that's the aim of the 'chameleon' system being developed by BAE Systems in Sweden. The system, which will be tested later this month, is part of a broad push to find ways of making tanks less conspicuous in the battlefield, according to the company. At the moment, the visual camouflage system is the technology that is at the most advanced stage and is being developed to conceal the tank's sides. A pair of 'bug-eyed' compound video cameras on each side capture the tank's surroundings. Each one contains nine small cameras, giving a wide field of vision. The images from these cameras are then fed to displays built into the outer surface of the armour on the tank's opposite side. The displays project the image onto a screen contained within the armour, much like a rear-projection TV. The screen will be built in to a layer of a transparent composite armour on the tank's side. How to hide the tank's tracks and roof are challenges that the researchers have yet to overcome. While this should make a tank more difficult to see, hiding its thermal appearance is more challenging. Researchers are modelling ways to capture the water component of the engine exhaust and channel it to composite armoured tiles along the tank's sides. The water could then evaporate off, cooling the tank's surface just like sweating. Rather than just hiding the vehicle's heat signature, though, the researchers want to be able to move water over the tank's body very quickly and create specific shapes. Individual composite tiles could be switched on and off and used like pixels to depict simple shapes.
New Scientists Jan 19, 2011	back to top

Swarm of net satellites planned
Microsat Systems Canada has announced a plan to put 78 small satellites in orbit to carry the internet. Called the 'CommStellation', the system would be deployed from 2014-2015. It would require six rockets to take the platforms to an altitude of 1,000km. The network will act as backhaul, linking the traffic of local telecoms and internet service providers to the global fibre infrastructure. The company said many regions across North America and the rest of the world are falling behind in terms of the bandwidth available to users. Space offers a simple solution to that problem, the company says. CommStellation would do something very similar to O3b, which is planning a constellation of eight internet backhaul satellites in a medium-Earth orbit (MEO - 8000km) around the equator. This system is expected to start to roll out in the middle of this decade. The Canadian venture would be very much lower in the sky and circle the Earth via the poles. Its 78 microsatellites would sit in six planes - with a spare in each plane - providing up to 15 times the speed and 10 times the total bandwidth capacity of a MEO constellation of comparable satellites. The total throughput of each platform is expected to be 15Gbps. One the of advantages of having a low-orbiting system is the reduced latency, or delay, introduced into the transmission of data as it passes back and forth to the satellites in the sky. This latency can be quite severe on geostationary systems positioned 36,000km above the Earth.
BBC News Jan 20, 2011	back to top