Nano-Sized ‘Cargo Ships’ to Target and Destroy Tumors

“The idea involves encapsulating imaging agents and drugs into a protective ‘mother ship’ that evades the natural processes that normally would remove these payloads if they were unprotected,” said Michael Sailor, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSD who headed the team of chemists, biologists and engineers that turned the fanciful concept into reality. “These mother ships are only 50 nanometers in diameter, or 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, and are equipped with an array of molecules on their surfaces that enable them to find and penetrate tumor cells in the body.”

These microscopic cargo ships could one day provide the means to more effectively deliver toxic anti-cancer drugs to tumors in high concentrations without negatively impacting other parts of the body.

More HERE.

Synthetic Tree May Lead To Technologies For Heat Transfer, Soil Remediation

The researchers' work, reported in the Sept. 11 issue of the journal Nature, bolsters the long-standing theory that transpiration in trees and plants is a purely physical process, requiring no biological energy. It also may lead to new passive heat transfer technologies for cars or buildings, better methods for remediating soil and more effective ways to draw water out of partially dry ground.

Of course, the synthetic tree doesn't look much like a tree at all. It consists of two circles side by side in the gel, patterned with evenly spaced microfluidic channels to mimic a tree's vascular system.

More HERE.

NASA Mars Lander Raises Vapor Quandary

A fork-like conductivity probe has sensed humidity rising and falling beside NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, but when stuck into the ground, its measurements so far indicate soil that is thoroughly and perplexingly dry.

"All the measurements we've made so far are consistent with extremely dry soil," Zent said. "There are no indications of thin films of moisture, and this is puzzling."

More HERE.

Surviving Nuclear Attack

Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life

...a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.

Szostak's protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a self-replicating, evolving system that satisfies the conditions of life, but isn't anything like life on earth now, but might represent life as it began or could exist elsewhere in the universe.

While his latest work remains unpublished, Szostak described preliminary new success in getting protocells with genetic information inside them to replicate at the XV International Conference on the Origin of Life in Florence, Italy, last week. The replication isn't wholly autonomous, so it's not quite artificial life yet, but it is as close as anyone has ever come to turning chemicals into biological organisms.

More HERE.

Plans unveiled to convert human waste to energy

Some communities are using methane gas harvested from solid waste to power smaller facilities like sewage treatment plants, but San Antonio is the first to see large-scale conversion of methane gas from sewage into fuel for power generation, he said.

Following the agreement, more than 90 percent of materials flushed down the toilets and sinks of San Antonio will be recycled, he said. Liquid is now used for irrigation, many of the solids are made into compost, and now the methane gas will be recycled for power generation.

More HERE.

Helium Ion Microscope Measures Up

Better nanoscale measurements are critical for setting standards and improving production in the semiconductor and nanomanufacturing industries.

This new microscope technology uses helium ions to generate the signal used to image extremely small objects, a technique analogous to the scanning electron microscope, which was first introduced commercially in the 1960s. Paradoxically, although helium ions are far larger than electrons, they can provide higher resolution images with higher contrast. The depth of field is much better with the new technology too, so more of the image is in focus.

“It is the physics,” explains Andras Vladar, SEM project leader in NIST’s Nanoscale-Metrology Group. “Ions have larger mass and shorter wavelength than electrons, so they can be better for imaging.” The images, he says, appear almost three-dimensional, revealing details smaller than a nanometer—the distance spanned by only three atoms in the silicon crystal.

More HERE.

Cell phone microscope

GeoEye-1 launched

GeoEye Inc. said it successfully launched into space on Saturday its new GeoEye-1 satellite, which will provide the U.S. government, Google Earth users and others the highest-resolution commercial color satellite imagery on the market.

GeoEye-1 will be able to capture images at .41 meters (16 inches) resolution in black and white and 1.65 meters (5.5 feet) in color, but under current government rules, the company can only offer the public half-meter (1.64 feet) images.

More HERE.

Definition: Hadrons

Any of the subatomic particles that are built from quarks and thus interact via the strong force. The hadrons fall into two groups: mesons and baryons. Except for protons and neutrons, which are bound in nuclei, all hadrons have short lives and are produced in high-energy collision of subatomic particles. All hadrons are subject to gravitation; charged hadrons are subject to electromagnetic forces. Some hadrons break up by way of the weak force (as in radioactive decay); others decay via the strong and electromagnetic forces.

More HERE and HERE.

Paul Rothemund on DNA folding

Cassini Pinpoints Source of Jets on Enceladus

In a feat of interplanetary sharpshooting, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the surface of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus.

New carefully targeted pictures reveal exquisite details in the prominent south polar "tiger stripe" fractures from which the jets emanate. The images show the fractures are about 300 meters (980 feet) deep, with V-shaped inner walls. The outer flanks of some of the fractures show extensive deposits of fine material. Finely fractured terrain littered with blocks of ice tens of meters in size and larger (the size of small houses) surround the fractures.

More HERE.

'Nanonets' Able To Snare Added Energy

Using two abundant and relatively inexpensive elements, Boston College chemists have produced nanonets, a flexible webbing of nano-scale wires that multiplies surface area critical to improving the performance of the wires in electronics and energy applications.

Researchers grew wires from titanium and silicon into a two-dimensional network of branches that resemble flat, rectangular netting...

By creating nanonets, the team conquered a longstanding engineering challenge in nanotechnology: creating a material that is extremely thin yet maintains its complexity, a structural design large or long enough to efficiently transfer an electrical charge.

More HERE.

Unique Laser Illuminates Microscopic Activity In Body's Chemical Messenger System

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have developed a unique technology that will allow scientists to look at microscopic activity within the body’s chemical messenger system for the very first time, live as it happens.

The Nottingham researchers have... [created] novel drug molecules which have fluorescent labels attached. Using a cutting edge laser technology called fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, the fluorescent drug molecules can be detected as they glow under the laser beam of a highly sensitive microscope. This allows their binding to the receptor to be followed for the first time in real time at the single molecule level.

More HERE.

Strange Blue Clouds Spotted at the Edge of Space

The noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds are at an altitude of 47 to 53 miles (76 to 85 km), where meteors and bright aurora lights are not uncommon and the atmosphere gives way to the blackness of space. The clouds remain a scientifically baffling phenomenon more than 120 years after their discovery.

"It's lovely," said Gary Thomas, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado after looking at a photo taken from the space station. "And it shows just how high these clouds really are – at the very edge of space."

The clouds form at dizzying heights where the air is one hundred million times drier than the Sahara. By contrast, the common high-altitude cirrus clouds only reach heights of 11 miles (18 km) up.

"We have a fairly good idea that the water vapor from below gets transported upwards," Thomas told SPACE.com. "That is in essence the fuel."

More HERE.

Simple fertilizer technique promises to feed Africa's hungry

Farmers are quick to learn and can be trained in just one week, Ramadjita Tabo told AFP.

He said they are shown that only six grams of fertilizer per plant is enough, and that small holes dug in the dry ground and filled with manure before the rainy season will hold water for a longer time.

When it starts to rain, a micro-dosis of fertilizer and a plant are placed in each hole so roots can spread quickly an retain even more water, Tabo said.

More HERE.

Mars Rover Ascends To Level Ground

"The rover is back on flat ground," an engineer who drives it, Paolo Bellutta of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announced to the mission's international team of scientists and engineers.

Opportunity used its own entry tracks from nearly a year ago as the path for a drive of 6.8 meters (22 feet) bringing the rover out over the top of the inner slope and through a sand ripple at the lip of Victoria Crater. The exit drive, conducted late Thursday, completed a series of drives covering 50 meters (164 feet) since the rover team decided about a month ago that it had completed its scientific investigations inside the crater.

More HERE.

Artificial Bone Blends Into Tendons

Engineers at Georgia Tech have used skin cells to create artificial bones that mimic the ability of natural bone to blend into other tissues such as tendons or ligaments. The artificial bones display a gradual change from bone to softer tissue rather than the sudden shift of previously developed artificial tissue, providing better integration with the body and allowing them to handle weight more successfully.

They created the tissue by coating a three-dimensional polymer scaffold with a gene delivery vehicle that encodes a transcription factor known as Runx2. They generated a high concentration of Runx2 at one end of the scaffold and decreased that amount until they ended up with no transcription factor on the other end, resulting in a precisely controlled spatial gradient of Runx2. After that, they seeded skin fibroblasts uniformly onto the scaffold.

More HERE.

Defition: Schüfftan process

A movie special effect named after its inventor, Eugen Schüfftan (1893–1977). He placed a plate of glass at a forty-five-degree angle between the camera and the miniature buildings. He used the camera's viewfinder to trace an outline of the area into which the actors would later be inserted onto the glass. This outline was transferred onto a mirror and all the reflective surface that fell outside the outline was removed, leaving transparent glass. When the mirror was placed in the same position as the original plate of glass, the reflective part blocked a portion of the miniature building behind it and also reflected the stage behind the camera.

More HERE.

Czech firm plans giant wind farm

Czech power firm CEZ is to build what it says will be Europe's largest onshore wind farm, in a 1.1bn-euro ($1.6bn; £886m) project.

The wind farm is set to have a generation capacity of 600 megawatts and will be located in Romania.

Construction of the wind farm will start in September and it is due to begin operating in 2009.

More HERE.

'Formula Zero' race

The world's first international hydrogen-powered motorsport race was held in Rotterdam this weekend. Dubbed the Formula Zero championship, the contest pitted teams from five countries against each other in a zero-emissions go-kart race. Each team's entry was powered by a commercial fuel cell that produces electricity from hydrogen.

A Dutch team won the endurance event, while a Spanish team clinched the award for fastest lap.

Founded by Dutch motorsport enthusiasts Godert van Hardenbroek and Eelco Rietveld, Formula Zero is already recognised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the world's motorsport governing body. The championship consisted of several events, with teams from the UK, US, the Netherlands, Spain, and Belgium competing for the top honour: zeroth place.

More HERE.

Doing things that don't make sense

...he held what looked like a huge yellow clockwork key over my skull. Then he pressed a button, and the key's "transcranial magnetic stimulation" induced a small current in my brain. One of my fingers moved.

He shifted the position of the key slightly and pressed the button again. A different finger moved. If he had ramped up the current in his magnets and found the right place on my skull, he could have moved my arms or legs. It was like being someone else's puppet, and I didn't like it one bit.

More HERE.

Cattle shown to align north-south

Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction. Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.

More HERE.

'Queen' Guitarist Publishes Astrophysics Thesis

The founder of the legendary rock band Queen has completed his doctoral thesis in astrophysics after taking a 30-year break to play some guitar.

Brian May's thesis examines the mysterious phenomenon known as Zodiacal light, a misty diffuse cone of light that appears in the western sky after sunset and in the eastern sky before sunrise. Casual observers can best see the light two to three hours before sunrise as they look east, and many people have been fooled into seeing it as the first sign of morning twilight.

May's work focuses on an instrument that recorded 250 scans of morning and evening Zodiacal light between 1971 and 1972. The Fabry-Perot Spectrometer is located at the Observatorio del Teide at Izana in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands. The completed thesis appears as the book "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" (Springer and Canopus Publishing Ltd., 2008).

More HERE.

Scan 3D images on the cheap

3D3 Solutions’ FlexScan3D lets you use an ordinary LCD projector and digital camera to help produce wireframes that can be imported into 3D computer graphics programs for use in art, animation, or rapid prototyping. Scans take just seconds, and can measure complex surfaces with an accuracy of +/- .01 inches and over 1 million points per scan.

More HERE.

Solar plane makes record flight

A UK-built solar-powered plane has set an unofficial world endurance record for a flight by an unmanned aircraft.

The Zephyr-6, as it is known, stayed aloft for more than three days, running through the night on batteries it had recharged in sunlight.

The flight was a demonstration for the US military, which is looking for new types of technology to support its troops on the ground.

More HERE.

Definition: Topology

Unlike geometry, topology is not concerned with metric properties such as distances between points. Instead, topology involves the study of properties that describe how a space is assembled, such as connectedness and orientability.

The motivating insight behind topology is that some geometric problems depend not on the exact shape of the objects involved, but rather on the way they are put together. For example, the square and the circle have many properties in common: they are both one dimensional objects (from a topological point of view) and both separate the plane into two parts, the part inside and the part outside.

One of the first papers in topology was the demonstration, by Leonhard Euler, that it was impossible to find a route through the town of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) that would cross each of its seven bridges exactly once. This result did not depend on the lengths of the bridges, nor on their distance from one another, but only on connectivity properties: which bridges are connected to which islands or riverbanks.

More HERE.

Intel: wireless power

Intel on Thursday showed off a wireless electric power system that analysts say could revolutionize modern life by freeing devices from transformers and wall outlets.

Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner demonstrated a Wireless Energy Resonant Link as he spoke at the California firm's annual developers forum in San Francisco.

Electricity was sent wirelessly to a lamp on stage, lighting a 60 watt bulb that uses more power than a typical laptop computer.

More HERE.

Microbattery built by viruses

"To our knowledge, this is the first instance in which microcontact printing has been used to fabricate and position microbattery electrodes and the first use of virus-based assembly in such a process," wrote MIT professors Paula T. Hammond, Angela M. Belcher, Yet-Ming Chiang and colleagues.

Further, the technique itself "does not involve any expensive equipment, and is done at room temperature," said Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering.

More HERE.

Aboriginal children 'can count without numbers'

The study found that four to seven-year-olds from two Aboriginal communities have an "innate system" to count with, even though their languages only have normal words for one, two, few and many.

"Recently, an extreme form of linguistic determinism has been revived which claims that counting words are needed for children to develop concepts of numbers above three," said Professor Brian Butterworth of UCL.

"That is, to possess the concept of 'five' you need a word for five," he said, adding that evidence from numerate societies as well as Amazonians whose language does not have counting words have been used to support the claim.

"However, our study of Aboriginal children suggests that we have an innate system for recognising and representing numerosities... and that the lack of a number vocabulary should not prevent us from doing numerical tasks," he said.

More HERE.

Robot with a biological brain

Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of the blockbuster animation "Wall-E", Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons.

Once removed from rat foetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialised nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an eight-by-eight centimetre array of 60 electrodes.

This "multi-electrode array" (MEA) serves as the interface between living tissue and machine, with the brain sending electrical impulses to drive the wheels of the robots, and receiving impulses delivered by sensors reacting to the environment.

More HERE.

Plastic Spin Transistors

University of Utah physicists successfully controlled an electrical current using the "spin" within electrons – a step toward building an organic "spin transistor": a plastic semiconductor switch for future ultrafast computers and electronics.

The study also suggests it will be more difficult than thought to make highly efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) using organic materials. The findings hint such LEDs would convert no more than 25 percent of electricity into light rather than heat, contrary to earlier estimates of up to 63 percent.

More HERE.

Newly detected air pollutant mimics damaging effects of cigarette smoke

"Free radicals from tobacco smoke have long been suspected of having extremely harmful effects on the body," Dellinger said. "Based on our work, we now know that free radicals similar to those in cigarettes are also found in airborne fine particles and potentially can cause many of the same life-threatening conditions. This is a staggering, but not unbelievable result, when one considers all of diseases in the world that cannot currently be attributed to a specific origin."

More HERE.

Key Photosynthesis Step Replicated

"The breakthrough came when we coated a proton conductor, called Nafion, onto an anode to form a polymer membrane just a few micrometres thick, which acts as a host for the manganese clusters."

"Normally insoluble in water, when we bound the catalyst within the pores of the Nafion membrane, it was stabilised against decomposition and, importantly, water could reach the catalyst where it was oxidised on exposure to light."

This process of "oxidizing" water generates protons and electrons, which can be converted into hydrogen gas instead of carbohydrates as in plants.

"Whilst man has been able to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for years, we have been able to do the same thing for the first time using just sunlight, an electrical potential of 1.2 volts and the very chemical that nature has selected for this purpose," Professor Spiccia said.

More HERE.

Flexible nanoantenna arrays capture solar energy

Researchers at Idaho National Laboratory, along with partners at Microcontinuum Inc. (Cambridge, MA) and Patrick Pinhero of the University of Missouri, are developing a novel way to collect energy from the sun with a technology that could potentially cost pennies a yard, be imprinted on flexible materials and still draw energy after the sun has set.

The new approach, which garnered two 2007 Nano50 awards, uses a special manufacturing process to stamp tiny square spirals of conducting metal onto a sheet of plastic. Each interlocking spiral "nanoantenna" is as wide as 1/25 the diameter of a human hair.

Because of their size, the nanoantennas absorb energy in the infrared part of the spectrum, just outside the range of what is visible to the eye. The sun radiates a lot of infrared energy, some of which is soaked up by the earth and later released as radiation for hours after sunset. Nanoantennas can take in energy from both sunlight and the earth's heat, with higher efficiency than conventional solar cells.

More HERE.

New bacterial species found in human mouth

A brand new species of bacteria has been found by scientists among the hundreds which thrive in our mouths. The bug, named "Prevotella histicola" by its discoverers at King's College London, is thought to contribute to gum disease and tooth decay.

Every millilitre of saliva is a cocktail of millions of bacteria, half of them unknown. The finding may help scientists understand the changes in bacterial activity that lead to mouth problems.

Professor William Wade, from the Dental Institute at King's College London, found three strains of the new organism lurking within the flesh lining the mouth, and the name "histicola" reflects this, meaning "inhabitant of tissues" in Latin.

More HERE.

Why conservatives are happier than liberals

The exuberance displayed by Barack Obama's supporters might make Republicans look like geriatric chess enthusiasts, but a new survey suggests that conservatives are happier than liberals - and offers one reason why. Liberals, claim New York University psychologists Jaime Napier and John Tost, have a tougher time rationalising social and economic inequality than conservatives.

The recent surge in home foreclosures, for instance, is due to poor economic choices on the part of borrowers, a conservative might think. Liberals, on the other hand, seethe at predatory lenders and lax government regulation of the mortgage industry. The result: conservatives mix a martini and hit the country club, while liberals write angry letters and stage protests.

Of course, American political views aren't so binary, yet the happiness divide seems to be real. Previous studies, including a 2006 survey from Pew Research Center have found the same general trend, much to the delight of conservative pundits like George Will, who noted that "liberalism is a complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding, creed."

More HERE.

Giant Retailers Look to Sun for Energy Savings

In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market

have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.

So far, most chains have outfitted fewer than 10 percent of their stores. Over the long run, assuming Congress renews a favorable tax provision and more states offer incentives, the chains promise a solar construction program that would ultimately put panels atop almost every big store in the country.

The trend, while not entirely new, is accelerating as the chains seize a chance to bolster their environmental credentials by cutting back on their use of electricity from coal.

More HERE.

Researchers correct decline in organ function associated with old age

"Our study showed that functions can be maintained in older animals so long as damaged proteins continue to be efficiently removed — strongly supporting the idea that protein buildup in cells plays an important role in aging itself," says Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo. "Even more important, these results show that it's possible to correct this protein 'logjam' that occurs in our cells as we get older, thereby perhaps helping us to enjoy healthier lives well into old age."

More HERE.

Compressor-free Refrigerator

"This is the first step in the development of an electric field refrigeration unit," says Qiming Zhang, distinguished professor of electrical engineering. "For the future, we can envision a flat panel refrigerator. No more coils, no more compressors, just solid polymer with appropriate heat exchangers."

Other researchers have explored magnetic field refrigeration, but electricity is more convenient.

Zhang's approach uses the change form disorganized to organized that occurs in some polarpolymers when placed in an electric field. The natural state of these materials is disorganized with the various molecules randomly positioned. When electricity is applied, the molecules become highly ordered and the material gives off heat and becomes colder. When the electricity is turned off, the material reverts to its disordered state and absorbs heat.

More HERE.

Complex decision? Don't sleep on it

Neither snap judgements nor sleeping on a problem are any better than conscious thinking for making complex decisions, according to new research.

The finding debunks a controversial 2006 research result asserting that unconscious thought is superior for complex decisions, such as buying a house or car. If anything, the new study suggests that conscious thought leads to better choices.

Since its publication two years ago by a Dutch research team in the journal Science, the earlier finding had been used to encourage decision-makers to make "snap" decisions (for example, in the best-selling book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell) or to leave complex choices to the powers of unconscious thought ("Sleep on it", Dijksterhuis et al., Science, 2006).

More HERE.

BBC's 'Horizon' program HERE.

New metamaterials bring invisibility cloaks 1 step closer

Shown is a schematic and two scanning electron microscope images with top and side views of a metamaterial developed by UC Berkeley researchers. The material is composed of parallel nanowires embedded inside porous aluminum oxide. As visible light passes through the material, it is bent backwards in a phenomenon known as negative refraction.

More HERE.

Galaxy Zoo's blue mystery

Nearly a year ago, astronomers at several universities recruited citizen scientists to help them catalog distant galaxies that had recently been photographed as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. A high-school physics teacher in the Netherlands who was participating in this project, known as Galaxy Zoo, appears to have scored a major coup. She brought a weird blue object to the attention of the professional zookeepers, according to a cosmologist associated with the zoo.

That novelty appears to be a quasar whose intense radio emissions have been fueling star births.

More HERE.

Battery-Powered Airplane Makes Its Debut

Take your everyday metal moni motoglider, trick it out with a custom battery pack and you've got the ElectraFlyer C, a small electric airplane that debuted at the AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, last week.

The plane, which received its airworthiness certificate in April, features a 5.6 kWh lithium battery with a projected life cycle (the number of times it can be depleted and recharged) of 1,000 cycles. The battery has a max weight of 78 pounds and can be custom-built to fit the available space in an airplane. It provides juice for a motor driving a 45-inch superlight PowerFin propeller made of a foam core surrounded by an outer shell of carbon fiber and glass fabric.

More HERE.

Quantum-"Uncollapse" Hypothesis Verified

Most scientists have believed that the instant a quantum object was measured it would "collapse" from being in all the locations it could be, to just one location like a classical object. Andrew Jordan proposed that it would be possible to weakly measure the particle continuously, partially collapsing the quantum state, and then "unmeasure" it, causing the particle to revert back to its original quantum form, before it collapsed.

Jordan's hypothesis suggests that the line between the quantum and classical worlds is not as sharply defined as had been long thought, but that it is rather a gray area that takes time to cross.

More HERE.

People who 'hear' movement

Individuals with synesthesia perceive the world in a different way from the rest of us. Because their senses are cross-activated, some synesthetes perceive numbers or letters as having colors or days of the week as possessing personalities, even as they function normally in the world. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology have discovered a type of synesthesia in which individuals hear sounds, such as tapping, beeping, or whirring, when they see things move or flash. Surprisingly, the scientists say, auditory synesthesia may not be unusual--and may simply represent an enhanced form of how the brain normally processes visual information.

Psychologists previously reported visual, tactile, and taste synesthesias, but auditory synesthesia had never been identified. Caltech lecturer in computation and neural systems Melissa Saenz discovered the phenomenon quite by accident.

More HERE.

Quantum chaos unveiled?

A University of Utah study is shedding light on an important, unsolved physics problem: the relationship between chaos theory – which is based on 300-year-old Newtonian physics – and the modern theory of quantum mechanics.

The study demonstrated a fundamental new property – what appears to be chaotic behavior in a quantum system – in the magnetic "spins" within the nuclei or centers of atoms of frozen xenon, which normally is a gas and has been tested for making medical images of lungs.

Quantum mechanics – which describes the behavior of molecules, atoms electrons and other subatomic particles – "plays a key role in understanding how electronics work, how all sorts of interesting materials behave, how light behaves during communication by optical fibers," Saam says.

"When you look at all the technology governed by quantum physics, it's not unreasonable to assume that if one can apply chaos theory in a meaningful way to quantum systems, that will provide new insights, new technology, new solutions to problems not yet known."

More HERE.

Trove of Endangered Gorillas Found in Africa

A grueling survey of vast tracts of forest and swamp in the northern Congo Republic has revealed the presence of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas, a rare example of abundance in a world of rapidly vanishing primate populations.

As recently as last year, this subspecies of the world’s largest primate was listed as critically endangered by international wildlife organizations because known populations — estimated at less than 100,000 in the 1980s — had been devastated by hunting and outbreaks of Ebola virus. The three other subspecies are either critically endangered or endangered.

More HERE.

Definition: Astatine

A highly radioactive element has been confirmed by mass spectrometers to behave chemically much like other halogens, especially iodine (it would probably accumulate in the thyroid gland like iodine^[1]), though astatine is thought to be more metallic than iodine. Researchers at the Brookhaven National Laboratory have performed experiments that have identified and measured elementary reactions that involve astatine; however, chemical research into astatine is limited by its extreme rarity, which is a consequence of its extremely short half-life. Its most stable isotope has a half-life of around 8.3 hours.

More HERE.

Plant Parasite 'Wiretaps' Host

A parasitic plant that sucks water and nutrients from its plant host also taps into its communications traffic, a new report finds. The research could lead to new ways to combat parasites that attack crop plants.

Plants often use small RNA molecules as messengers between different parts of the plant. In a paper published in Science in 2001, Sinha's group showed that RNA could travel from a graft into the rest of the plant and affect leaf shape. Plants can also use specific RNAs to fight off viruses.

Picking up these RNA messengers could help the parasite synchronize its lifecycle with that of the host plant, Sinha said.

"It might be important for the parasite to know when the host is flowering, so it can flower at the same time," before the host dies, she said.

More HERE.

Mars lander finds water

"We have water," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. "We've seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time martian water has been touched and tasted."

More HERE.

Biofilms in fossils

Paleontologists in 2005 hailed research that apparently showed that soft, pliable tissues had been recovered from dissolved dinosaur bones, a major finding that would substantially widen the known range of preserved biomolecules. The finding would also help astrobiologists understand the types of biosignatures that could be used to search for signs of past life on other planets.

But new research challenges that finding and suggests that the supposed recovered dinosaur tissue is in reality biofilm – or slime.

More HERE.

Lensless On-Chip Microscope

Researchers hope that a new kind of small portable microscope may give health workers the ability to quickly and cheaply scan blood for tumor cells and life-threatening parasites.

Scientists shine light onto a liquid sample flowing through a narrow channel. Below the channel are a series of three-micron-wide apertures, or holes, punched through a layer of metal such as gold or aluminum. The light shines through the holes onto a semiconductor chip studded with a series of sensor pixels. Such chips cost about $10 a pop, says Caltech bioengineer and study leader Changhuei Yang.

Objects that float over the apertures block some of the incoming light received by the pixels, which reconstruct an image of the object based on the variations in light intensity across multiple apertures.

More HERE.

Personalized Stem Cells One Step Closer to Reality

Researchers from Harvard and Columbia Universities used skin cells from two patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, to create stem cells and then reprogrammed them to morph into replacement motor neurons.

"It opens doors to making patient-specific stem cell lines," said Dr. Kevin Eggan, principle faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and lead author of a study that was released today in the journal Science. "You can use these cells to make the actual cell type for that person's disease."

More HERE.

Electric cars in Houston

Mars Express acquires sharpest images of martian moon Phobos

Mars Express closed in on the intriguing martian moon Phobos at 6:50 CEST on 23 July, flying past at 2.96 km/s, only 100 km from the centre of the moon. The ESA spacecraft’s fly-bys of the moon have returned its most detailed full-disc images ever, also in 3-D, using the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board.

Phobos is what scientists call a ‘small irregular body’. Measuring 27 km × 22 km × 19 km, it is one of the least reflective objects in the Solar System, thought to be a captured asteroid or a remnant of the material that formed the planets.

More HERE.

Titan Has Liquid Surface Lake

Scientists have confirmed that at least one body in our solar system, other than Earth, has a surface liquid lake. Using an instrument on NASA's Cassini orbiter, they discovered that a lake-like feature in the south polar region of Saturn's moon, Titan, is truly wet. The lake is about 235 kilometers, or 150 miles, long.

The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, or VIMS, an instrument run from The University Arizona, identifies the chemical composition of objects by the way matter reflects light.

When VIMS observed the lake, named Ontario Lacus, it detected ethane, a simple hydrocarbon that Titan experts have long been searching for. The ethane is in liquid solution with methane, nitrogen and other low-molecular weight hydrocarbons.

More HERE.

Thermoelectric Materials Double Efficiency

A team of researchers led by Dr. Joseph Heremans at Ohio State University has developed a new thermoelectric (TE) material with twice the efficiency of TE materials currently on the market. The most efficient commercial material in thermoelectric power generators is sodium-doped lead telluride (Na-PbTe), which has a thermoelectric figure of merit (zT) of 0.71. The new material, thallium-doped lead telluride (Tl-PbTe), has a zT of 1.5. The new material is most effective between 450° and 950°F—a typical temperature range for power systems such as automobile engines.

More HERE.

Definition: Brocken Spectre

A Brocken spectre (German Brockengespenst), also called Brocken bow or mountain spectre is the apparently enormously magnified shadow of an observer, cast upon the upper surfaces of clouds opposite the sun. The phenomenon can appear on any misty mountainside or cloud bank, or even from an aeroplane, but the frequent fogs and low-altitude accessibility of the Brocken, a peak in the Harz Mountains in Germany, have created a local legend from which the phenomenon draws its name.

More HERE. And HERE.

Warehouse robots

Will We Recognize The Future?

Interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil. Audio broadcast from Science Friday.

New Mexico cavers chart 'Snowy River' formation

Thought to be the longest continuous cave formation in the world. The survey expedition by members of the Fort Stanton Cave Study Project in early July added several thousand feet to the measurement of the spectacular formation, which is at least four miles long. The explorers who have been following the passage under the rolling hills of southeastern New Mexico say there's still more of Snowy River to be discovered.

See a photo gallery HERE.
Learn more about the cave HERE.

MMALV: Morphing Micro Air & Land Vehicle

Bio-fuel power boat makes world record

Sagunto, Spain, 27 June 2008, 12.24.00 GMT/14.24.00 CET: Earthrace, the world’s fastest eco-boat, has smashed the world speed record for a powerboat to circumnavigate the globe, knocking almost 14 days off the previous record.

The boat crossed the finish line in Sagunto having taken 60 days 23 hours and 49 minunutes to travel almost 24,000 nautical miles fuelled by biodiesel to demonstrate the efficiency of, and draw global attention to, the potential for alternative fuel sources.

More HERE.

And more HERE.

Cell calls in Japan outnumber others

Mobile phones are gradually making land-line telephones a thing of the past in Japan. For the first time, fixed-line telephones accounted for less than half of all calls made in a fiscal year, losing out to mobile units and Internet-based services, a government report said this week.

Calls placed from fixed-line phones at home, offices or public phones fell 6.4 percent to 59.6 billion, some 49.7 percent of the total calls made in Japan between April 2006 and the end of March 2007, the report said. Mobile and Internet calls accounted for 50.3 percent.

More HERE.

V598 Puppis, the star that everyone missed

On 9 October 2007, ESA’s orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton was turning from one target to another. As it did so, it passed across a bright source of X-rays that no one was expecting. The source was not listed in any previous X-ray catalogue, yet XMM-Newton was receiving some 50 X-rays every second from this mysterious object.

Calculations show that the explosion must have been clearly visible to the unaided eye but was missed by the legions of star watchers around the planet.

More HERE.

Pathologists Believe They Have Pinpointed Achilles Heel Of HIV

The weak spot is hidden in the HIV envelope protein gp120. This protein is essential for HIV attachment to host cells, which initiate infection and eventually lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Normally the body’s immune defenses can ward off viruses by making proteins called antibodies that bind the virus. However, HIV is a constantly changing and mutating virus, and the antibodies produced after infection do not control disease progression to AIDS. For the same reason, no HIV preventative vaccine that stimulates production of protective antibodies is available.

More HERE.

First 100% Wind-powered Community In USA

Rock Port Missouri, with a population of just over 1,300 residents, has announced that it is the first 100% wind powered community in the United States. Four wind turbines supply all the electricity for the small town.

Rock Port’s 100% wind power status is due to four wind turbines located on agricultural lands within the city limits of Rock Port (Atchison County). The city of Rock Port uses approximately 13 million kilowatt hours of electricity each year. It is predicted that these four turbines will produce 16 million kilowatt hours each year.

Excess wind generated electricity not used by Rock Port homes and businesses is expected to be move onto the transmission lines to be purchased by the Missouri Joint Municipal Utilities for use in other areas.

More HERE.

Goodbye to faulty software?

“The software industry is still very immature compared to other branches of engineering,” says Dr Bengt Nordström, a computer scientist at Chalmers University in Göteborg. “We want to see programming as an engineering discipline but it’s not there yet. It’s not based on good theory and we don’t have good design methods to make sure that at each step we produce something that’s correct.”

Nordström believes that the whole approach to software design needs to be rethought. The usual approach is to validate a program via a lengthy testing process. Instead, he would like to see a design philosophy that guarantees from first principles that a program will do what it says on the box.

The key lies in an esoteric reformulation of mathematics called ‘type theory’ based on the notion of computation. In this approach, the specification for a computational task is stated as a mathematical theorem. The program that performs the computation is equivalent to the proof of the theorem. By proving the theorem the program is guaranteed to be correct.

More HERE.

Definition: Neutron star

A neutron star is a type of remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type Ic supernova event. Such stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles with zero electrical charge and roughly the same mass as protons. Neutron stars are very hot and are supported against further collapse because of the Pauli exclusion principle. This principle requires that no two neutrons can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously.

In general, compact stars of less than 1.38 solar masses, the Chandrasekhar limit, are white dwarfs; above 2 to 3 solar masses (the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit), a quark star might be created, however this is uncertain. Gravitational collapse will always occur on any star over 5 solar masses, inevitably producing a black hole.

More HERE.

New Method To Fabricate Ultra-thin Silicon Solar Cells

IMEC is developing a new method to produce ~50µm thin crystalline silicon wafers for use in solar cells. The process involves mechanically initiating and propagating a crack parallel to the surface of a Si wafer. In this way, Si foils with an area of 25cm² and a thickness of 30-50µm have already been produced. The method makes use of industrially available tools (screen printer, belt furnace) and is potentially kerf-loss free.

Adding an ultra-thin wafer or foil of active silicon on top of a low-cost substrate is a promising solution to reduce the amount of high-grade silicon used in solar cells. IMEC is pursuing different paths to produce such foils of crystalline Si at an acceptable cost. One of the promising methods is a lift-off process that only requires the use of a screen printer and a belt furnace; no ion-implanted or porous layer is needed.

More HERE.