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The Tevatron and Main Injector rings

Image: Wikipedia

Issue no. 13, 2011 Published: Apr 08, 2011
Tevatron accelerator yields hints of new particle
Climate 'technical fix' may yield warming, not cooling
Genetically modified fungus could fight malaria
New engine sends shock waves through auto industry
Diverse algae make best pollution sponge
Twitter predicts future of stocks
Designers describe memristor made with human blood
Richard Branson unveils deep-sea submarine plans
Barcode scanner for zebras

Tevatron accelerator yields hints of new particle
The Tevatron particle accelerator in the US has shown compelling hints of a never-before-seen particle, researchers say. The find must be fully confirmed, but researchers are racing to work through existing data. If proved, it will be a completely new, unanticipated particle and could signal a new fundamental force of nature, and the most radical change in physics for decades. The team was analysing data from collisions between protons and their anti-matter counterparts antiprotons. In these collisions, particles known as W bosons are produced, along with a pair of 'jets' of other particles. It was in these jets that the unexpected 'bump' in the data came to light, potentially representing a particle that the current Standard Model does not include. However, the result is at what is known as the 'three-sigma' level of certainty, which means there is still about 0.1% chance that the result is attributable to some statistical fluctuation in the data. For a formal discovery, the level is traditionally taken to be five-sigma - or about a one-in-a-million chance that the 'bump' is just a fluke. Confirming the result more fully is simply a matter of working through the numbers the team already have to hand. Further, the coming experimental run at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) should provide even more data to confirm or refute the new particle - whatever it is. All that is clear is that the bump definitely does not represent the Higgs boson - the hunt for which has popularly been pitched as a race between the Tevatron and the LHC.
BBC News Apr 07, 2011	back to top

Climate 'technical fix' may yield warming, not cooling
Whitening clouds by spraying them with seawater, proposed as a 'technical fix' for climate change, could do more harm than good, according to research. Whiter clouds reflect more solar energy back into space, cooling the Earth. But a study presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting found that using water droplets of the wrong size would lead to warming, not cooling. Cloud whitening was originally proposed in 1990. It has since been developed by a number of other researchers joining a number of other 'geoengineering' techniques that would attempt either to reduce solar radiation reaching earth or absorb CO2 from the air. One version envisages specially designed ships, powered by wind, operating in areas of the ocean where reflective stratocumulus clouds are scarce. The ships would continually spray fine jets of seawater droplets into the sky, where tiny salt crystals would act as nuclei around which water vapour would condense, producing clouds or thickening them where they already exist. But Kari Alterskjaer from the University of Oslo came with a cautionary tale. Her study, using observations of clouds and a computer model of the global climate, confirmed earlier findings that the best areas for cloud whitening would be to the west of North and South America, and to the west of Africa. But it concluded that about 70 times more salt would have to be carried aloft than proponents have calculated. And using droplets of the wrong size, she found, could reduce cloud cover rather than enhancing it - leading to a net warming, not the desired cooling.
BBC News Apr 06, 2011	back to top

Genetically modified fungus could fight malaria
Scientists at Westminster University in the UK have engineered a new weapon in the battle against malaria: a mutant fungus. For years the team have been testing whether they could genetically tweak a fungus to kill the malaria parasite carried by mosquitoes. Now they have found that in lab experiments, mosquitoes exposed to the fungus show a sharp drop in levels of the parasite. The found mosquitoes exposed to the mutated fungus had malaria parasite levels about 85% lower than normal. When they added a scorpion toxin to the mix, levels dropped by 97%. No tests have shown whether using the fungus would curb human malaria cases, but experts think fewer malaria parasites should translate into fewer cases. The mutant fungus could simply be sprayed onto walls and bednets like insecticides and could be manufactured for a comparable cost. The same process of genetic modification could also be used to target other insect-spread diseases like dengue and West Nile virus. Using the fungus might be less environmentally invasive than other genetic approaches, scientists say. Some critics have warned that competing biological approaches, like scientists creating mutant mosquitoes, could wreak havoc to ecosystems if billions of the insects are released into the wild. The fungus technology could be a new way of dealing with insecticide-resistant mosquitoes, an increasing problem that has meant the return of controversial sprays like DDT.
Yahoo / AP / Science Apr 07, 2011	back to top

New engine sends shock waves through auto industry
Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer's green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine. However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype petrol engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90% when compared with conventional combustion engines. The engine has a rotor that is equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy. The Wave Disk Generator uses 60% of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15%. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines. Researchers estimate the new model could shave almost 450 kilograms off a car's weight currently taken up by conventional engine systems. The team hope to have a car-sized 25-kw version of the prototype ready by the end of the year.
MSNBC / Discovery Channel Apr 06, 2011	back to top

Diverse algae make best pollution sponge
A stream rich in different kinds of algae can better filter out harmful nutrient pollutants like nitrates from fertiliser runoff. Now Bradley Cardinale of the University of Michigan has determined how algal biodiversity protects against such pollution. Based on 150 different flumes, lined with differently shaped surfaces to mimic different water habitats, Cardinale discovered that those with more kinds of algae were better at maximising the particular shape of their flume. Those flumes with more species acted as better 'sponges', sopping up a higher proportion of nitrates: a waterway with an eight-species mix removed nitrate 4.5 times faster than a single species. But when Cardinale eliminated the lining, this powerful filtration was lost. The findings suggest preserving biodiversity could key to protecting the environment from excess nutrients that seep into the water.
New Scientist / Nature Apr 07, 2011	back to top

Twitter predicts future of stocks
Twitter may not yet have found a way to make money for itself but it is doing a good job of generating cash for its users, research suggests. A study conducted by a PhD researcher at the Technical University of Munich found that investors following stock market tweets could have achieved an average return rate of 15%. Timm Sprenger analysed 250,000 tweets sent over a six-month period. He predicts Twitter will increasingly offer specialised information to users. Thousands of stock-related messages are sent every day via tweets. Tweeting investors mark tweets according to company stock symbols. There was a striking co-ordination between what Twitter was saying about shares and other information from investors and analysts, he found. He also found that more valuable information was retweeted, meaning that it reached a wider audience. The study formed the basis of the website TweetTrader.net where the real-time sentiment for individual stocks can be accessed. The site is currently in beta. Sprenger conducted similar research on the federal elections in Germany last year. Using Twitter, he was able to predict the final results for each political party to within 2% of the votes they received.
BBC News Apr 06, 2011	back to top

Designers describe memristor made with human blood
Circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to an electronic device, such as a robotic limb or artificial eye might one day be possible thanks to the development of biological components. 'Memristors' were a theoretical electronic component first suggested in 1971 and finally developed in the laboratory by HP using titanium dioxide in 2008. A memristor is a passive device, like a resistor, with two terminals but rather than having a fixed electrical resistance, its ability to carry a current changes depending on the voltage applied previously; it retains a memory of the current, in other words. Now, a team in India describes how a liquid memristor can be made using human blood. They constructed the laboratory-based biological memristor using a 10 ml test tube filled with human blood held at 37 Celsius into which two electrodes are inserted; appropriate measuring instrumentation was attached. The experimental memristor shows that resistance varies with applied voltage polarity and magnitude and this memory effect is sustained for at least five minutes in the device. Having demonstrated memristor behaviour in blood, the next step was to test that the same behaviour would be observed in a device through which blood is flowing. This step was also successful. The next stage will be to develop a micro-channel version of the flow memristor device and to integrate several to carry out particular logic functions.
R&D Mag / International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics Mar 30, 2011	back to top

Richard Branson unveils deep-sea submarine plans
Virgin Group founder Richard Branson has unveiled plans this week to explore the deepest parts of the world's oceans with a jet-like submarine. The 5.5 metre vessel is capable of descents of more than 11,000 metres below the surface. The new project, called Virgin Oceanic, will undertake five dives over two years. The first is set for later this year, when the team plans to explore the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench at a depth near 11,000 metres. Branson plans to pilot a second dive himself, into the Puerto Rico Trench in the Atlantic Ocean. Other areas to be explored are the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean, South Sandwich Trench in the Southern Ocean and Diamantina in the Indian Ocean. Branson said Virgin Oceanic could one day take passengers on deep sea dives, just as his Virgin Galactic project may one day take wealthy passengers on suborbital spaceflights.
Reuters Apr 06, 2011	back to top

Barcode scanner for zebras
Ever thought that the zebra's black-and-white striped markings resemble a biological barcode? Well now a team of US computer scientists and biologists have come up with a scanner, allowing them to identify individual animals from a single still photo. The system, dubbed StripeSpotter, only requires a small amount of human input. Users draw a rectangle around the zebra's side, then this part of the image is automatically sliced into a number of horizontal bands and each pixel is made fully black or fully white, creating a low-resolution version of the zebra's stripes. Each band is then encoded as a StripeString, a sequence of coloured blocks with particular lengths and the collection of StripeStrings forms a StripeCode, the zebra equivalent of a barcode. When a zebra has been entered into the database and given a StripeCode, the researchers match another picture of the same animal by comparing the StripeStrings of the new and original images. Each image will generate a different set of StripeStrings, but the underlying ratios of black and white should remain similar. By finding the StripeCode with the most similar StripeStrings in the database, the system is able to accurately identify the correct animal. Other existing zebra identification systems are less accurate, more complex, and require a greater level of manual input from the user.
New Scientist Apr 07, 2011	back to top