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Image: Fermilab
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Issue no. 8, 2012
Published: Mar 16, 2012 |
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 Neutrinos send wireless message through the Earth | | Experts develop salt-tolerant, high-yield wheat | | Africa to generate more e-waste than Europe by 2017 | | Laser-powered 'unprinter' wipes documents in a flash | | Climate change beliefs influenced by recession | | Zoomable timeline of the cosmos puts us in our place | | Maglev inventor proposes train to space |
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| Neutrinos send wireless message through the Earth |
Just as neutrinos look likely to lose their faster-than-light crown,
these subatomic particles have a new claim to fame as part of a wireless
communication system that could potentially send messages directly
through the Earth's core. A team at Fermilab in Illinois have used a
beam of the near-massless particles to transmit the word 'neutrino' to a
detector 1 km away, including a 240-metre journey through solid rock.
Neutrinos rarely interact with other forms of matter, so pass through
most objects unimpeded - including the Earth's core. That makes them
potentially useful as messengers. Previous suggestions include using
these ghostly particles to send messages across the planet without
wires, cables or satellites, to communicate with hidden submarines or
even to sync alien clocks. This latest experiment is the first
demonstration that the principle actually works.
The researchers used Fermilab's Neutrinos at the Main Injector (NuMI)
beam to fire pulses containing trillions of neutrinos at the MINERvA
detector, which is underground so as to shield it from cosmic rays,
charged particles that rain down on Earth from space. The team encoded
the word 'neutrino' using a standard binary communications code that
turns letters into strings of zeros and ones. These binary digits were
transmitted using the presence of a pulse to stand for '1' and the
absence to stand for '0'.
The one-word message consisted of 25 pulses separated by a space of just
over two seconds and was repeated around 3500 times over a span of 142
minutes, with an average of just 0.81 neutrinos detected for each pulse.
That corresponds to a transmission rate of 0.1 bits per second, with an
error rate of 1%. |
| New Scientist
Mar 15, 2012 |
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| Experts develop salt-tolerant, high-yield wheat |
Scientists at the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture in
Australia have crossed a popular, commercial variety of wheat with an
ancient species, producing a hardy, high-yielding plant that is tolerant
of salty soil. The researchers hope the new strain will help address
food shortages in arid and semi-arid places where farmers struggle with
high salinity in the soil.
The researchers used a gene believed to be responsible for controlling
the salt content in plants and that was isolated more than 10 years ago
from an ancient wheat variety. The gene makes a protein that is present
in the roots of wheat and it helps block salt from travelling up the
plant, Gilliham said in a telephone interview. Salt lowers yields and
eventually kills the plant.
The researchers grew the new, improved wheat variety in soil with high
salt content and found that it produced yields up to 25% more than
strains without the ancient gene. |
| Reuters / Nature Biotechnology
Mar 12, 2012 |
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| Africa to generate more e-waste than Europe by 2017 |
Better known as a dumping ground for used electronic goods from
developed countries, Africa is set to outstrip Europe in the volumes of
e-waste it generates within five years, according to experts.
The two major contributing factors are population growth and increased
avalibility of mobile phones, computers and accessories, the experts
said on the sidelines of the Pan-African Forum on E-Waste at the UN
environment agency in Nairobi.
Africa, which has traditionally been confronted by thousands of tonnes
of electronic waste shipped from Europe for disposal, often under
dangerous conditions, is increasingly dealing with the e-waste generated
locally. Kenya for example exonerated information and communication
technology (ICT) equipment from import duties in 2008, in an attempt to
boost access. Zambia followed suit last year.
'The use of electric and electronic devices ... is still low in Africa
compared to other regions of the world but it is growing at a staggering
pace,' said a report launched last month summarising findings from the
E-waste Africa Programme of the Basel Convention. The convention, which
regulates the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their
disposal, was adopted in 1989 and took effect three years later. |
| Yahoo / AFP
Mar 15, 2012 |
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| Laser-powered 'unprinter' wipes documents in a flash |
In offices the world over, heaps of printouts and photocopies from laser
printers get used once before being discarded, or tossed on shelves to
collect dust indefinitely. But what if they could be wiped clean and
used again? An engineering team at the University of Cambridge in the UK
has figured out how to erase pages by vaporising common toners using a
laser-based technique that doesn't damage the underlying paper.
Toshiba already sells a special laser printer/copier that uses a blue
toner which can be almost completely erased with heat treatment. The
Cambridge team have taken the idea a step further, though, with a method
that can recover the paper from any laser printed or photocopied
document.
After testing and ruling out toner removal processes that use mechanical
abrasion and chemical solvents, they focused on the most promising
method: laser pulses which vaporise toner particles in thin layers until
they are no more. |
| New Scientist / Proceedings of the Royal Society A
Mar 14, 2012 |
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| Climate change beliefs influenced by recession |
Americans are less likely to believe in man-made climate change as
economic conditions get tougher, new research at the University of
Connecticut shows. It found that the public's belief in climate change
dropped significantly as the economy dipped and unemployment climbed in
the late 2000s. And the suddenness and timing of the change in popular
opinion can't be explained by politics, accusations of biased media
coverage or weather fluctuations.
The study's based on public opinion surveys dating to the late 1980s -
and the researchers found a stark decline in belief in global warming in
the late 2000s. In 2008, for example, a Gallup poll reported that 60 to
65% of people agreed that global warming is imminent, is not exaggerated
and is agreed upon by scientists as a valid theory. By 2010, though,
those numbers had dropped to about 50%.
The authors also found a strong relationship between jobs and people's
prioritisation of climate change. When the unemployment rate was 4.5%,
an average 60% of people surveyed said climate change had already
started. But when the jobless rate reached 10%, that number dropped to
about 50%.
The researchers suggest that cognitive dissonance - which occurs when
people experience conflicting thoughts and behaviours - could explain
the pattern. Many people view economic growth and environmental
protection to be in conflict, so admitting that climate change is real
but should be ignored in favour of economic growth leads to an internal
philosophical clash. It is less troubling to convince themselves that
there isn't a problem in the first place. |
| TG Daily
Mar 14, 2012 |
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| Zoomable timeline of the cosmos puts us in our place |
It certainly makes you feel small. A new interactive website takes you
on a crash course through the history of our universe, all the way from
the present day right back to 13.7bn years ago and the dawn of time.
ChronoZoom - http://www.chronozoomproject.org - is a timeline that is
subdivided into millions of years, which lets users zoom in on the most
interesting eras - whether it's the birth of the first stars or when
humans first walked the Earth.
Manipulating the slider, zooming in from the big bang through to the
Mesozoic era for example, you get an intuitive sense of how our own
existence on Earth occupies such a tiny portion of the scale. Each
segment of time is packed with extras, like video clips or personal
stories, or extra data about the period. Zoom in close to the very
beginning of time and a separate chart appears that illustrates what
happened in the first seconds after the big bang. Submenus let users
switch the focus from the cosmos section of the timeline all the way
down to human prehistory and beyond.
ChronoZoom is a joint project between Microsoft Research, the University
of California, Berkeley, and Moscow State University in Russia. |
| New Scientist
Mar 15, 2012 |
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| Maglev inventor proposes train to space |
One of the inventors of the superconducting maglev train is proposing
building a bigger, better version than ever before - that could fire out
payloads into orbit.
Dr James Powell, along with aerospace engineer Dr George Maise, says
such a system could cut the cost of getting a one-kilogram payload to
orbit to less than USD 40. A passenger trip could come in at around USD
5,000. Their Startram project is based on existing maglev technology and
basic physics.
The principle's fairly simple. A 1,600-km maglev track would run up at
an angle to a height of about 19 km, held there by magnetic levitation.
Superconducting magnets on the moving spacecraft would induce currents
in aluminium loops on the acceleration tunnel walls, currents which
interact with the magnets on the spacecraft to levitate and stabilise
it.
A separate set of aluminium loops on the tunnel wall carries an AC
current that magnetically pushes on the vehicle's superconducting
magnets, accelerating it to the speed of the AC current wave. The tram
would accelerate to a speed of about 9km per second, shooting out like a
bullet from a gun.
One of the most useful aspects of the system, say the developers, could
be its ability to deal with asteroids and comets, by placing large
numbers of interceptors in place around the Earth. Startram is asking
for help with the project, calling on everyone from web designers to
fundraisers. |
| TG Daily
Mar 13, 2012 |
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