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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Bioelecronics
Post Date: 2012-04-21 01:57:26 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2012) — The boundary between electronics and biology is blurring with the first detection by researchers at Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory of ferroelectric properties in an amino acid called glycine. A multi-institutional research team led by Andrei Kholkin of the University of Aveiro, Portugal, used a combination of experiments and modeling to identify and explain the presence of ferroelectricity, a property where materials switch their polarization when an electric field is applied, in the simplest known amino acid -- glycine. "The discovery of ferroelectricity opens new pathways to novel classes of bioelectronic logic and ...
Prospects of storing energy in biobatteries
Post Date: 2012-04-20 06:44:32 by Tatarewicz
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New research at Concordia University is bringing us one step closer to clean energy. It is possible to extend the length of time a battery-like enzyme can store energy from seconds to hours, a study published in the Journal of The American Chemical Society shows. Concordia Associate Professor László Kálmán -- along with his colleagues in the Department of Physics, graduate students Sasmit Deshmukh and Kai Tang -- has been working with an enzyme found in bacteria that is crucial for capturing solar energy. Light induces a charge separation in the enzyme, causing one end to become negatively charged and the other positively charged, much like in a battery. In ...
Breast cancer rules rewritten in 'landmark' study
Post Date: 2012-04-20 03:35:55 by Tatarewicz
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Cancerous cells Breast cancer cells should be classified into one of 10 different diseases, say researchers. What we currently call breast cancer should be thought of as 10 completely separate diseases, according to an international study which has been described as a "landmark". The categories could improve treatment by tailoring drugs for a patient's exact type of breast cancer and help predict survival more accurately. The study in Nature analysed breast cancers from 2,000 women. It will take at least three years for the findings to be used in hospitals. Cancer cartography Researchers compared breast cancer to a map of the world. They said tests currently used in ...
synthetic DNA Created, Evolves on Its Own
Post Date: 2012-04-20 00:07:47 by Tatarewicz
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"XNA" may help answer basic questions of biology, study says. The work of DNA strands (shown in a computer model) can be done in part by new polymers. Step aside, DNA—new synthetic compounds called XNAs can also store and copy genetic information, a new study says. And, in a "big advancement," these artificial compounds can also be made to evolve in the lab, according to study co-author John Chaput of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. (See "Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: 6 Bones of Contention.") Nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA are composed of four bases—A, G, C, and T. Attached to the bases are sugars and phosphates. ...
Physicists continue work to abolish time as fourth dimension of space
Post Date: 2012-04-18 03:12:14 by Tatarewicz
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Light clocks A and B moving horizontally through space. According to length contraction, clock A should tick faster than clock B. In a new study, scientists argue that there is no length contraction, and both clocks should tick at the same rate in accordance with special relativity. Image credit: Sorli and Fiscaletti. (Phys.org) -- Philosophers have debated the nature of time long before Einstein and modern physics. But in the 106 years since Einstein, the prevailing view in physics has been that time serves as the fourth dimension of space, an arena represented mathematically as 4D Minkowski spacetime. However, some scientists, including Amrit Sorli and Davide Fiscaletti, founders of the ...
GE announces next-generation fuel injector design project
Post Date: 2012-04-17 02:59:28 by Tatarewicz
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A new high-performance computing project is aiming to design next-generation fuel injectors for GE’s engine fleet. GE Global Research will partner with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Arizona State University (ASU) and Cornell University on the project. ‘Currently fuel injectors are designed after lengthy optimisation trials, partly because today’s fuel injectors have complex geometries that challenge conventional wisdom on how these injectors work,’ said GE mechanical engineer Madhu Pai. ‘High-fidelity computer simulations can significantly reduce the number of trials and can provide insight into why a fuel injector behaves the way it does.’ ...
Chromosomes Organize Into 'Yarns': May Explain Why DNA Mutations Can Affect Genes Located Thousands of Base Pairs Away
Post Date: 2012-04-15 05:51:23 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily (Apr. 11, 2012) — Chromosomes, the molecular basis of genetic heredity, remain enigmatic 130 years after their discovery in 1882 by Walther Flemming. New research published online in Nature by the team of Edith Heard, PhD, from the Curie Institute and Job Dekker, PhD, from the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), reveals a new layer in the complex organization of chromosomes. The scientists have shown that chromosomes fold in a series of contiguous "yarns" that harbor groups of genes and regulatory elements, bringing them in contact with each other and allowing them to work in a coordinated manner during development. Chromosomes are relatively ...
Microsoft helps find long-sought physics particle
Post Date: 2012-04-14 05:07:15 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily (Apr. 13, 2012) — Scientists at TU Delft's Kavli Institute and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM Foundation) have succeeded for the first time in detecting a Majorana particle. In the 1930s, the brilliant Italian physicist Ettore Majorana deduced from quantum theory the possibility of the existence of a very special particle, a particle that is its own anti-particle: the Majorana fermion. That 'Majorana' would be right on the border between matter and anti-matter. Nanoscientist Leo Kouwenhoven already caused great excitement among scientists in February by presenting the preliminary results at a scientific congress. Today, the scientists ...
Baboon Reading Skills: Research Shows Baboons Can Learn To Spot Real Words
Post Date: 2012-04-13 09:04:56 by Ada
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WASHINGTON — Dan the baboon sits in front of a computer screen. The letters BRRU pop up. With a quick and almost dismissive tap, the monkey signals it's not a word. Correct. Next comes, ITCS. Again, not a word. Finally KITE comes up. He pauses and hits a green oval to show it's a word. In the space of just a few seconds, Dan has demonstrated a mastery of what some experts say is a form of pre-reading and walks away rewarded with a treat of dried wheat. Dan is part of new research that shows baboons are able to pick up the first step in reading – identifying recurring patterns and determining which four-letter combinations are words and which are just gobbledygook. The ...
First-Ever Model Simulation of the Structuring of the Observable Universe
Post Date: 2012-04-13 06:38:18 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2012) — A team of researchers from the Laboratoire Univers et Théorie (LUTH, Observatoire de Paris/CNRS/Université Paris Diderot)(1) coordinated by Jean-Michel Alimi has performed the first-ever computer model simulation of the structuring of the entire observable universe, from the Big Bang to the present day. The simulation has made it possible to follow the evolution of 550 billion particles. This is the first of three runs which are part of an exceptional project called Deus : full universe run (2), carried out using GENCI's new supercomputer CURIE at the CEA's Très Grand Centre de Calcul (TGCC). This simulation, along with the ...
Zoos want to import polar bears to save the species
Post Date: 2012-04-12 01:01:52 by farmfriend
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Zoos want to import polar bears to save the species By — Juliet Eilperin, Published: April 9 Polar bears are perfectly suited to life in the Arctic: Their hair blends in with the snow; their heavy, strongly curved claws allow them to climb over blocks of ice and snow and grip their prey securely; and the rough pads on their feet keep them from slipping. The one thing they cannot survive is the loss of the ice, and the changes in worldwide climate threaten to melt the summer sea ice on which they hunt. Scientists say two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could disappear by about 2050. So a group of American zoo and aquarium officials are asking the federal government to let ...
Fusion energy progress by Livermore scientists
Post Date: 2012-04-11 05:25:13 by Tatarewicz
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Livermore scientists report that after years of experiments, they have moved closer to reproducing the blazing energy of the sun's interior in the laboratory. A team of physicists and engineers at the $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility said they fired an array of 192 laser beams, focused "in perfect unison," and created a single pulse of energy that for 23 billionths of a second generated a thousand times more power than the entire United States consumes in a single second. The experiment March 15 delivered to the center of the facility's target chamber 1.87 megajoules of ultraviolet light, amounting to 100 times more energy than any other laser system in the ...
Iranian-American researcher produces smart anti-cancer medicine
Post Date: 2012-04-10 04:15:08 by Tatarewicz
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Iranian researcher Dr. Omid Farrokhzad of Harvard Medical School has produced a smart cancer drug that is capable of targeting cancer cells in animals. Farrokhzad and his colleagues made the drug in nano scale which enables it to distinguish and target cancer cells without causing common side effects of chemotherapy. In popular cancer treatment with chemotherapy, both cancer cells and healthy ones are damaged. “The method does not include chemotherapy side effects and the animal tests show that it can reach cancer cells 500-1000 percent more than chemotherapy,” Farrokhzad explained. He also noted that the medicine will be ready to be used after the clinical studies are ...
Healthy polar bear count confounds doomsayers
Post Date: 2012-04-07 12:31:56 by farmfriend
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Healthy polar bear count confounds doomsayers paul waldie The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing. The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming ...
Alarmed about botnet trojan, Apple releases update for Macs
Post Date: 2012-04-07 01:50:47 by Tatarewicz
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As Apple grows, so will the number of viruses that can affect it systems. Today, it issued a Java update to keep one of these viruses, the Flashback trojan, at bay. Flashback is a type of malware that is transferred to your computer by masquerading as a safe browser plug-in. When a person goes to an infected website housing the malware, he will be prompted to download a plugin, such as flash, in order to view content. Giving permission allows the malware to execute and download to your computer. Evolved versions of the virus use a hole in Apple’s version of Java to download to your Mac immediately after you open the webpage. Russian antivirus vendor Doctor Web estimates up to ...
High fructose corn syrup even bad for bees?
Post Date: 2012-04-06 23:50:13 by Tatarewicz
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Since 2006, something strange has been happening to North America's commercial beehives. Beekeepers are finding that many of the boxed hives ranged throughout their apiaries have been inexplicably abandoned by worker bees. These ghost-hives typically have ample stores of honey and pollen, and hold gestating colony broods, sometimes even a lone queen. This phenomenon is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and two papers published recently in the journal Science say that it is correlated with the presence of a ubiquitous class of insecticide called neonicotinoids. A newer study published in the Bulletin of Insectology suggests that this insecticide is introduced into bee colonies ...
MIT's 'Smart Sand' Can Duplicate Any Object, Creep Out Any Blogger
Post Date: 2012-04-06 15:54:44 by FormerLurker
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To test their algorithm, the researchers designed and built a system of "smart pebbles"--cubes about 10 millimeters to an edge, with processors and magnets built in. [Photo: M. Scott Brauer via MIT News]MIT researchers from the Distributed Robotics Laboratory (DRL) are working on the very first steps towards nano-bot technology. In their “Smart Sand” project, the researches hope to make tiny, sand-grain-sized, self-contained computers that can duplicate any object. One day, the researchers imagine that you will be able to deposit an object into a box of sand-grain-sized computers and pull out a full-size replica of the original object a few seconds later. (3D printing, ...
New way to keep bacteria at bay
Post Date: 2012-04-06 05:01:41 by Tatarewicz
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“By allowing bacteria to stay alive after antibiotic treatment, we believe we can also prevent the emergence of antibiotic resistance..." New treatments that combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance by disarming rather than killing bacteria may be on the horizon, according to a new study. Published in Nature Structure and Molecular Biology, research led by Monash University showed a protein complex called the Translocation and Assembly Module (TAM), formed a type of molecular pump in bacteria. The TAM allows bacteria to shuttle key disease-causing molecules from inside the bacterial cell where they are made, to the outside surface, priming the bacteria for ...
PENTAGON BRIEFING ON REMOVING "The God Gene"
Post Date: 2012-04-03 15:54:19 by CadetD
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Click for Full Text!Poster Comment:
Scientists find clue to human evolution’s burning question
Post Date: 2012-04-03 08:31:29 by Ada
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The discovery in Africa of a one million year old fireplace may enable us to identify when humans first began using fire Cooking is a universal in human culture. The mixing and heating of raw ingredients to make dinner is a fundamental part of our lives, one of the most noticeable things that separates us from even our closest animal cousins. The advantage of this method of preparing food is clear: it makes food tastier, easier to digest and makes the extraction of energy from raw ingredients quicker and more efficient. All useful things if you want to power an over-sized, energy-hungry brain without having to spend all your time foraging and chewing food. Richard Wrangham, a ...
Faith in Science?
Post Date: 2012-04-02 11:05:14 by Ada
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Why skepticism is rising So, we’re told, liberals trust science more than conservatives do. The implication — freely peddled in much news coverage — is that conservatives are either dumber or more politicized than liberals. This fits in neatly with a narrative established in screeds like Chris Mooney’s 2005 book, “The Republican War Against Science.” The only problem is it’s not true. Consider an interesting new study by Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The folks at Inside Higher Ed summarized it this way: “Just over 34 percent of conservatives had confidence in science as an ...
Strange Computer Code Discovered Concealed In Superstring Equations!
Post Date: 2012-03-31 21:27:03 by gengis gandhi
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Aizhai Bridge [in China]
Post Date: 2012-03-31 09:51:12 by Eric Stratton
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http://highestbridges.com/wiki/index.php?title=Aizhai_BridgePoster Comment:I found this while looking at another link here. This bridge just opened in March. The pics are fantastic! ... there are two pages of them.
Could a Nine-Volt Battery Be Better Than Coffee?
Post Date: 2012-03-26 21:57:48 by F.A. Hayek Fan
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"Flow." Although it can be annoyingly difficult to define with any precision and virtually impossible to measure objectively, everyone intuitively knows what it is, and most people have experienced some form of it at one time or another. It's that state of effortless concentration that leads to superior performance, either mental or physical. Everything superfluous to the task at hand is shut out of the mind. At the highest level, Michael Jordan sees a basketball hoop that's four feet wide and cannot be missed; Einstein is able to conjure the complete structure of the universe inside his head. Attempts to find the flow are not new. For most of human existence, it has had ...
Is this finally proof we're NOT causing global warming? The whole of the Earth heated up in medieval times without human CO2 emissions, says new study
Post Date: 2012-03-26 20:00:23 by Ada
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Evidence was found in a rare mineral that records global temperatures Warming was global and NOT limited to Europe Throws doubt on orthodoxies around 'global warming' Current theories of the causes and impact of global warming have been thrown into question by a new study which shows that during medieval times the whole of the planet heated up. It then cooled down naturally and there was even a 'mini ice age'. A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ‘consensus’, the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe. In ...
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