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Red blood cells breaking open to release young malaria parasites.

Image: wetenschap24.nl

Issue no. 44, 2011 Published: Dec 23, 2011
New approach to malaria vaccine revealed
Killer flu research to be censored
LHC reports discovery of its first new particle
Self-healing electronic chip tests may aid space travel
Metal undergoes novel transition under extreme pressure
Sony's bio battery turns waste paper into electricity
Paint-on solar cells could power homes
Ultrasonic screwdriver to make plastic planes safer
Chinese 'water army' hijacks online product reviews
Mind reading just five years away, says IBM

New approach to malaria vaccine revealed
A potential new malaria vaccine has shown promise in animal studies, according to research. An Oxford University team is to start safety trials in human volunteers after lab tests showed the vaccine works against all strains of the parasite. UK scientists recently found the route malaria uses to enter blood cells. They hope to target this pathway in a new approach to developing a vaccine against malaria, which kills hundreds of thousands of people a year. Several potential malaria vaccines are already being tested in clinical trials; although no vaccine has yet been licensed for use. Early clinical trials in Africa suggest a vaccine known as RTS,S appears to protect about half of people vaccinated from malaria. While these results are encouraging, some scientists believe a more effective vaccine is needed to fight the disease. One possibility is to exploit a recently-discovered potential weakness in the parasite's life cycle. A team at the Sanger Institute found in November that a single receptor on the surface of red blood cells and a substance known as 'PfRh5' on the parasite are crucial to the success of malaria in invading blood cells. Early lab tests suggest a vaccine against the protein may prove effective, at least in animals. If safety tests of the vaccine prove successful, clinical trials in patients could begin within the next two to three years, says the Oxford team.
BBC News / Nature Communications Dec 20, 2011	back to top

Killer flu research to be censored
It was probably the most important research on flu in years, but most people won't be allowed to read it all. Researchers at the University of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, created a mutated H5N1 bird flu that could go pandemic - and would be lethal to half its victims. Bioterrorism experts in the US immediately questioned whether the method for making such a plague should be published. Now the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has recommended that the 'general conclusions be published, but that the manuscripts not include the methodological and other details that could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm'. 'We will respect the advice and try to publish in censored form,' says the study's lead author, Ron Fouchier of the University of Rotterdam. 'But we still believe the detailed data should be published. We have the moral obligation to share the details with those that need to know.' Researchers must investigate the threat posed by H5N1 evolving in the wild, he believes, as that far outweighs the harm that hypothetical bioterrorists might do. The bioterrorism science advisory board says that the US government is developing a mechanism to give 'secure access' to risky information 'to those with a legitimate need', and an 'oversight policy [for] evaluating research that has the potential to be misused'. The Rotterdam research will be published in the journal Science accompanied by explanations about why it was done, and the measures taken to ensure the virus did not escape.
New Scientist Dec 21, 2011	back to top

LHC reports discovery of its first new particle
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the Franco-Swiss border has made its first clear observation of a new particle since opening in 2009. It is called Chi_b (3P) and will help scientists understand better the forces that hold matter together. The as-yet unpublished discovery is reported on the Arxiv pre-print server. The LHC is exploring some of the fundamental questions in 'big physics' by colliding proton particles together in a huge underground facility. Detail in the sub-atomic wreckage from these impacts is expected to yield new information about the way the Universe is constructed. The Chi_b (3P) is a more excited state of Chi particles already seen in previous collision experiments. It is made up of a 'beauty quark' and a 'beauty anti-quark', which are then bound together. The LHC is designed to fill in gaps in the Standard Model - the current framework devised to explain the interactions of sub-atomic particles - and also to look for any new physics beyond it. In particular, it is using the collisions to try to pin down the famous Higgs particle, which physicists hypothesize can explain why matter has mass.
BBC News Dec 22, 2011	back to top

Self-healing electronic chip tests may aid space travel
Self-repairing electronic chips are one step closer, according to a team of researchers from the University of Illinois. The group has created a circuit that heals itself when cracked thanks to the release of liquid metal which restores conductivity. The process takes less than an eye blink to bring the circuit back to use. The process works by exploiting the stress that causes the initial damage in the chips to break open tiny reservoirs of a healing material that fills in the resulting gaps, restoring electrical flow. To test their theory the team patterned lines of gold onto glass to form a circuit. They then either placed microcapsules 0.01mm wide directly onto the lines or added a thin laminate into which they embedded larger 0.2mm microcapsules. In both cases the microcapsules contained eutectic gallium-indium - a metallic material chosen for its high conductivity and low melting point. This device was then sandwiched between another layer of glass and acrylic and connected to electricity. The researchers then bent the circuit until it cracked causing the monitored voltage to fall to zero. The ruptured microcapsules then healed most of the test circuits within one millisecond and restored nearly all of the measured voltage. The devices were then monitored for four months during which time the researchers said there was no loss of conductivity. The team think that their work could eventually lead to longer-lasting gadgets as well as solving one of the big problems of interplanetary travel.
BBC News / Advanced Materials Dec 22, 2011	back to top

Metal undergoes novel transition under extreme pressure
Under extreme pressures and temperatures, one of the main materials of the Earth's interior has exhibited a never-before-seen transition. Iron oxide was subjected to conditions similar to those at the depth where the Earth's innermost two layers meet. At 1,650C and 690,000 times sea-level pressure, the metal changed the degree to which it conducted electricity. But the metal's structure was surprisingly unchanged. The finding could have implications for our as-yet incomplete understanding of how the Earth's interior gives rise to the planet's magnetic field. While many transitions are known in materials as they undergo nature's extraordinary pressures and temperatures, such changes in fundamental properties are most often accompanied by a change in structure. These can be the ways that atoms are arranged in a crystal pattern, or even in the arrangement of subatomic particles that surround atomic nuclei. A team at the Carnegie Institution for Science subjected the material to pressures up to 1.4 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level, and temperatures up to 2,200C. They found that it pulls off the trick of changing its electrical properties without any shifting of shape - it can be an insulator or conductor depending just on temperature and pressure. Combined with computer simulations of just what was going on with the material's electrons, the group claim that the results show a new type of metallisation. A mixture of magnesium and iron oxide makes up much of the Earth's mantle. The fact that iron oxide behaves as a metal means it will electrically link the core and mantle, affecting the way the magnetic field makes its way to the Earth's surface and beyond.
BBC News / Physical Review Letters Dec 20, 2011	back to top

Sony's bio battery turns waste paper into electricity
Sony has unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype in Japan. The technology generates electricity by turning shredded paper into sugar which in turn is used as fuel. If brought to market, the innovation could allow the public to top up the power of their mobile devices using waste material. The Japanese electronics giant showed off its invention at the Eco-Products exhibition in Tokyo last week. The process works by using the enzyme cellulase to decompose the materials into glucose sugar. These are then combined with oxygen and further enzymes which turned the material into electrons and hydrogen ions. The electrons are used by the battery to generate electricity. Water and the acid gluconolactone, which is commonly used in cosmetics, are created as by-products. Researchers involved in the project liken the mechanism to the one used by white ants and termites to digest wood and turn it into energy. Their work builds on a previous project in which they used fruit juice to power a Walkman music player. While the battery is already powerful enough to run basic music players, it is still falls far short of commercially sold batteries.
BBC News Dec 21, 2011	back to top

Paint-on solar cells could power homes
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have developed a 'solar paint' that could be slapped on the outside of a house to help generate power for the devices inside. The 'Sun-Believable' paint uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy - and while it is nowhere near as efficient as the current standard, it is inexpensive and easy to produce in large quantities. The team created the paint using nano-sized particles of titanium dioxide, which were coated with either cadmium sulphide or cadmium selenide. The particles were then suspended in a mixture of water and alcohol to create a paste. When the paste was brushed onto a transparent conducting material and exposed to light, it generated electricity. The best light-to-energy conversion efficiency reached so far is 1%, which is well behind the usual 10 to 15% efficiency of commercial silicon solar cells, according to the researchers. The team will now try to improve the paint's efficiency and also plan to study ways to improve the stability of the new material.
TG Daily Dec 22, 2011	back to top

Ultrasonic screwdriver to make plastic planes safer
When the plastic rudder of a Canadian Airbus airliner exploded off Cuba in March 2005 the aviation industry began waking up to the risks of carbon fibre aircraft structures. Invisibly, water had got into the layers of its carbon composite structure, forming ice at altitude that blasted the rudder structure to pieces. That was followed by FedEx finding that a hydraulic fluid leak had had a similar invisible effect on the tail of one of its reinforced plastic Airbus planes. The problem? Unlike aluminium which buckles or cracks visibly, damage to lightweight carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) - comprising hundreds of layers of epoxy resin shot through with carbon fibre - can remain hidden deep within those layers. Engineers can only tap on it with a small hammer (or even a coin) to listen out for a hollow sound that might indicate trouble within. Even if a plane is struck on the ground by a catering or luggage truck, structure-weakening damage can often remain invisible - and that's a major-league concern now entire pressurised fuselages, like that of the Boeing 787 and the upcoming Airbus A350, are being made from CFRP. Now EADS, owner of Airbus, alongside DolphiTech of Norway, are close to developing an answer: an ultrasonic camera gun with which ramp engineers can scan CFRP airplane surfaces to visualise in 3D any damage that's hidden to the eye and/or the ear. Dolphitech say the technology, which fires ultrasound and deduces from the reflections what lies beneath, is the first to be geared for composite aircraft.
New Scientist Dec 21, 2011	back to top

Chinese 'water army' hijacks online product reviews
Looking for online product reviews before you buy holiday gifts? Watch your step. Many of those 'user reviews' may come from professionals paid to post favourable comments about their employers' products and denigrate their competitors', says a computer scientist who worked undercover in the industry. Fortunately, though, there may be a way to spot the fakery automatically. Cheng Chen of the University of Victoria, Canada, worked as a paid poster in China's 'Internet water army', so-called because its soldiers flood websites with posts about particular products. In a paper posted on arXiv, Chen and his colleagues describe how project managers organise teams of paid posters, supplying them with comments and video clips to post, and setting rules for when and how often to post, so that they avoid appearing part of a coordinated campaign. To see if they could recognise paid posters despite this deception, Chen's team focused on online comments relating to a dispute between two Chinese antivirus companies. The researchers sifted through two months' worth of comments on one of China's leading internet news sites and pulled out 552 users who commented on the antivirus companies. Based on his experience in the industry and the contents of their posts, Chen suspected 70 of these might be paid posters. These suspected paid posters had a higher proportion of new comments (as opposed to replies), posted more often but for a shorter period of time, and were more likely to post similar comments several times than posters not suspected of being paid. Sure enough, when the researchers applied these criteria to comments on a second news site, the suspected paid posters they flagged matched Chen's subjective classification with a false-positive rate of 1% and a false negative rate of 10%. With a little more refinement, the algorithm could lead to software that screens comments automatically, they say.
New Scientist Dec 22, 2011	back to top

Mind reading just five years away, says IBM
In five years' time, we'll be reading one another's minds, according to IBM eggheads' annual 5 in 5 predictions. We'll also be generating our own energy through body movements, saying goodbye to the digital divide and doing away with passwords and junk mail. 'IBM scientists are among those researching how to link your brain to your devices, such as a computer or a smartphone. If you just need to think about calling someone, it happens. Or you can control the cursor on a computer screen just by thinking about where you want to move it,' says IBM. 'Within five years, we will begin to see early applications of this technology in the gaming and entertainment industry. Furthermore, doctors could use the technology to test brain patterns, possibly even assist in rehabilitation from strokes and to help in understanding brain disorders, such as autism.' IBM also predicts that harvesting energy from body movements or, say, the water flowing through pipes will become commonplace. Biometrics will be more widely used so that cash withdrawals will be authorised using iris recognition and the like. And we'll all be online, and getting more of the information we want, says IBM. The digital divide is narrowing, and 80% of the current global population will have a mobile device. Meanwhile, ads will become so precisely targeted - and spam filters so efficient - that we'll never have to see an unwanted ad again. The company's been issuing its 5 in 5 for six years now, and hasn't done badly so far. Its first set, for example, contained the predictions that we'd be able to access healthcare remotely from just about anywhere in the world and address areas of environmental importance using nanotechnology - both of which have to a large extent come true. Other more recent predictions include the widespread use of speech recognition and personalized genetic medicine.
TD Daily Dec 19, 2011	back to top