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Image: twinleaves

Issue no. 32, 2011 Published: Sep 23, 2011
Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at CERN
Harvesting 'limitless' hydrogen from self-powered cells
Scientists find way to 'disarm' AIDS virus
Glowing wound dressing indicates infection
Laser detects roadside bombs
Rescue tool 'cuts' concrete
Carnivorous plant inspires super-slippery material
Graphene bubbles could make better lenses

Speed-of-light experiments give baffling result at CERN
Puzzling results from CERN have confounded physicists, because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light. Neutrinos sent through the ground from CERN towards a laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early. The result, which threatens to upend a century of physics, will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists. The speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it. Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit. But the CERN team have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that. Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another. The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from CERN to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos. In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance. The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery. But the group understands that what are known as 'systematic errors' could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements.
BBC News Sep 22, 2011	back to top

Harvesting 'limitless' hydrogen from self-powered cells
US researchers from Pennsylvania State University have demonstrated how cells fuelled by bacteria can be 'self-powered' and produce a limitless supply of hydrogen. Until now an external source of electricity was required in order to power the process. The technology to utilise this process to produce hydrogen is called microbial electrolysis cell (MEC). The MECs use something called 'reverse electrodialysis' (RED), which refers to the energy gathered from the difference in salinity, or salt content, between saltwater and freshwater. In their paper, the team explained how an envisioned RED system would use alternating stacks of membranes that harvest this energy; the movement of charged atoms move from the saltwater to freshwater creates a small voltage that can be put to work.
BBC News / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 20, 2011	back to top

Scientists find way to 'disarm' AIDS virus
Scientists have found a way to prevent HIV from damaging the immune system and say their discovery may offer a new approach to developing a vaccine against AIDS. Researchers from the US and Europe working in laboratories on the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) found it is unable to damage the immune system if cholesterol is removed from the virus's membrane. The team now plans to investigate how to use this way of inactivating the virus and possibly develop it into a vaccine. Usually when a person becomes infected with HIV, the body's innate immune response puts up an immediate defence. But some researchers believe HIV causes the innate immune system to overreact. This weakens the immune system's next line of defence, known as the adaptive immune response. For this study the team removed cholesterol from the membrane around the virus and found that this stopped HIV from triggering the innate immune response. This in turn led to a stronger adaptive response, orchestrated by a type of immune cells called T cells.
Reuters / Blood Sep 19, 2011	back to top

Glowing wound dressing indicates infection
A wound dressing that glows to indicate an infection has been developed. Scientists at Sheffield University have produced a gel containing molecules that bind to bacteria and activate a fluorescent dye. The dressing emits a pinkish glow under ultraviolet light when harmful levels of bacteria are present. It should help doctors treating chronic wounds such as ulcers. Army medics could also use it to identify soldiers with infected battlefield injuries. It is hoped that testing on patients will begin within two years. As well as shining a spotlight on bacteria, the gel can rid a wound of up to 80% of surface bugs in about three hours. Currently, it takes several days to determine significant levels of bacterial infection by growing swab samples in the laboratory. Bacteria highlighted by the dressing include those which cause legionella, salmonella, E. coli, MRSA, C difficile, meningitis and peritonitis.
BBC News Sep 16, 2011	back to top

Laser detects roadside bombs
Lab scientists at Michigan State University are pitching a new high-tech laser that is able to detect roadside bombs before they explode, potentially thwarting the deadliest weapon in Iraq and Afghanistan. Improvised explosive devices or IEDs, account for 60% of coalition soldiers' deaths, according to NATO figures. Finding a way to improve on bomb sniffing dogs is therefore a priority abroad and at home. Using lasers to do the dirty work is an ongoing effort. This latest approach combines short and long pulses of light to excite and 'listen' to the fingerprint of individual molecules, allowing soldiers to pick out explosives in a crowded urban environment. This vibration can be likened to an individual ring tone people might put on their cellphones. The longer laser pulse 'listens' to this ring tone, allowing soldiers to know if the target is a bomb. The technique is so sensitive that it can distinguish between molecules that have the same chemical formula but a slight different arrangement of atoms. What's more, a laser no more powerful than the ones used during PowerPoint presentations is required for the technique to work. The laser bomb sniffing technology is currently undergoing development in the laboratory. It has been shown to work at distances up to about 121 metres, though should be possible at distances of 100 metres.
MSNBC Sep 19, 2011	back to top

Rescue tool 'cuts' concrete
When earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters send emergency responders racing to rescue people trapped under piles of rubble, they now have a tool that allows them to cut through concrete with speed and precision. The device, called the Controlled Rescue Impact Tool (CRIT), was developed by the US Department of Homeland Security. It uses blank ammunition cartridges to drive a piston that generates a high-energy jolt to create a contained hole in the concrete. Emergency responders can make enough of these holes to create an opening large enough to pass supplies such as water, food and medication to victims as the work to remove the debris. The force generated by the tool is concentrated in a localized area, the agency adds, which minimizes the risk that its use would further destabilize the surrounding structure or threaten victims. In a demonstration at a conference last month the CRIT busted an 45-cm-diameter hole through a 15-cm slab of reinforced concrete in less than 3.5 minutes. The concrete blaster joins a list of high-tech search and rescue tools that have already gained field experience such as the communication grids set up in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the robots sent to Japan this March.
MSNBC Sep 21, 2011	back to top

Carnivorous plant inspires super-slippery material
A new super-slippery material, created by scientists at Harvard University, takes a cue from one of the plant world's few meat-eaters: the carnivorous pitcher plant Nepenthes. The plants prey on insects, whose oily feet normally allow them to walk up walls. But pitchers' tube-shaped leaves have microscopic bumps that hold a thin layer of water in place. The water repels the oils, sending hapless insects slipping straight into their gaping mouths. The team's most slippery surface resulted when they added a layer of the perfluorinated fluid 3M Fluorinert FC-70 to Teflon. The liquid oozed into all the pores in the Teflon, and left a nanometres-thin layer of liquid at the top. The material still feels dry to the touch, and other liquids simply hydroplane off the surface. The team calls the material 'slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces,' or SLIPS. Liquids from water to oil to blood lose contact with the surface when it's tilted by an angle as shallow as 2 degrees, whereas liquids held to other surfaces tilted from 5 to 30 degrees. They can also recover from damage, because the lubricating liquid naturally seeps back in to any holes. And because liquid is incompressible, the material can be used at pressures equivalent to 7 kilometres underwater.
New Scientist / Nature Sep 21, 2011	back to top

Graphene bubbles could make better lenses
A tiny bubble of graphene could be used to make an optical lens with an adjustable focal length, according to physicists in the UK, who have shown that the curvature of such bubbles can be controlled by applying an external voltage. Devices based on the discovery could find use in adaptive-focus systems that try to mimic how the human eye works. Graphene is extremely elastic and can be stretched by up to 20%, which means that bubbles of various shapes can be 'blown' from the material. This, combined with the fact that graphene is transparent to light yet impermeable to most liquids and gases, could make the material ideal for creating adaptive-focus optical lenses. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov - who shared the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics for discovery of graphene - have built tiny devices that show how graphene could be used in adaptive optical systems. Working with colleagues at the University of Manchester, the physicists began by preparing large graphene flakes on flat silicon-oxide substrates. When the air underneath the graphene cannot escape, a bubble of the material naturally forms. The bubbles are extremely stable and range in size from a few tens of nanometres to tens of micrometres in diameter. The team made devices that contained titanium/gold electrodes contacted to the bubbles in a transistor-like arrangement. In this way, the researchers were able to apply a gate voltage to the set-up. They then obtained optical-microscope images of the structures while tuning the gate voltage from -35 to +35 V. As expected, they saw the shape of the bubbles go from being highly curved to more flat as the voltage changed.
PhysicsWorld Sep 19, 2011	back to top