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Latest Articles: Science/Tech
Chinese chemists pioneer water-jet printing
Post Date: 2014-02-19 20:58:44 by Tatarewicz
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BEIJING, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- Most people are quite familiar with ink-jet printing. But a team of chemists from northeast China's Jilin University has recently attracted worldwide attention by inventing a water-jet printer. Like any ordinary printer, the machine takes a blank page and covers it with print. But instead of ink, this printer uses water. Although this does mean that the text will fade away within 22 hours of being printed, Professor Zhang Xiao'an, leader of the team, said that 40 percent of printed pages are thrown away after being read only once anyway. In addition, the printer can switch between water and ink in case the user wants a more permanent print. What ...
Why does the brain remember dreams?
Post Date: 2014-02-18 01:59:39 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily The reason for dreaming is still a mystery for the researchers who study the difference between "high dream recallers," who recall dreams regularly, and "low dream recallers," who recall dreams rarely. In January 2013 (work published in the journal Cerebral Cortex), the team led by Perrine Ruby, Inserm researcher at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, made the following two observations: "high dream recallers" have twice as many time of wakefulness during sleep as "low dream recallers" and their brains are more reactive to auditory stimuli during sleep and wakefulness. This increased brain reactivity may promote awakenings during the ...
Japan's Rakuten to acquire Israeli chat app Viber
Post Date: 2014-02-15 04:50:52 by Tatarewicz
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JERUSALEM, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- Rakuten Inc., Japan's largest e- commerce company, is acquiring the mobile chat application Viber developed by Israelis for 900 million U.S. dollars, Rakuten said in a statement on Friday. Viber was established by four Israelis with a 30 million U.S. dollar-investment out of their own pocket. Rakuten said the acquisition of Viber, with its over 100 million active users per month, is part of the company's strategy to strengthen its global platform in the area of e-commerce and digital content services. Viber lets users connect via mobile calls or messages free of charge. Users can also share photos, videos or locations. The business has ...
Huge US thermal plant opens as industry grows
Post Date: 2014-02-15 02:44:39 by Tatarewicz
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PRIMM, Nevada (AP) — A windy stretch of the Mojave Desert once roamed by tortoises and coyotes has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, a milestone for a growing industry that is testing the balance between wilderness conservation and the pursuit of green energy across the American West. Related Stories India to Build World's Largest Solar Power Plant Takepart.com Duke Energy Indiana seeks solar power proposals Associated Press The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles (13 sq. kilometers) of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opened ...
Nuclear fusion breakthrough: US scientists make crucial step to limitless power
Post Date: 2014-02-13 01:33:07 by Tatarewicz
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RussiaToday... A team of scientists in California announced Wednesday they are one step closer to developing the almost mythical pollution-free, controlled fusion-energy reaction, though the goal of full “ignition” is still far off. Researchers at the federally-funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory revealed in a study released Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature that, for the first time, one of their experiments has yielded more energy out of fusion than was used in the fuel that created the reaction. In a 10-story building the size of three football fields, the Livermore scientists “used 192 lasers to compress a pellet of fuel and generate a reaction in ...
Plastic shopping bags make a fine diesel fuel
Post Date: 2014-02-13 01:00:16 by Tatarewicz
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Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, researchers report. The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels -- diesel, for example -- that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulfur diesels and biodiesels. Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, researchers report. The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels -- diesel, for example -- that can be blended ...
China's Jade Rabbit rover comes 'back to life'
Post Date: 2014-02-12 23:59:26 by Tatarewicz
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Beijing (AFP) - China's troubled Jade Rabbit lunar rover, which experienced mechanical difficulties last month, has come "back to life", state media reported on Thursday. "It came back to life! At least it is alive and so it is possible we could save it," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Pei Zhaoyu, spokesman for the lunar programme, as saying on a verified account on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter. The probe, named Yutu or Jade Rabbit after the pet of Chang'e, the goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology, had experienced a "mechanical control abnormality" last month, provoking an outpouring of sympathy from weibo users. Concerns ...
Global-Warming Slowdown Due to Pacific Winds, Study Shows
Post Date: 2014-02-09 16:05:36 by Ada
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Stronger Pacific Ocean winds may help explain the slowdown in the rate of global warming since the turn of the century, scientists said. More powerful winds in the past 20 years may be forcing warmer seas deeper and bringing cooler water to the surface, 10 researchers from the U.S. and Australia said today in the journal Nature. That has cooled the average global temperature by as much as 0.2 degree Celsius (0.36 Fahrenheit) since 2001. Scientists have been trying to find out why the rate of global warming has eased in the past 20 years while greenhouse-gas emissions have surged to a record. Today’s paper elaborates on a theory that deep seas are absorbing more warmth by explaining ...
Bottle released by Mass. scientist in 1956 found
Post Date: 2014-02-09 16:04:10 by X-15
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BOSTON — It was April 1956, and the No. 1 song was Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." At the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, scientist Dean Bumpus was busy releasing glass bottles in a large stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. Nearly 58 years later, a biologist studying grey seals off Nova Scotia found one of the bottles in a pile of debris on a beach, 300 miles from where it was released. "It was almost like finding treasure in a way," Warren Joyce said Friday. The drift bottle was among thousands dumped in the Atlantic Ocean between 1956 and 1972 as part of Bumpus' study of surface and bottom currents. About 10 percent of the 300,000 ...
Fact Check: Did Bill Nye Tell A Huge Lie About The Fossil Layers?
Post Date: 2014-02-07 11:06:23 by Ada
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Did you get a chance to see the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye “the Science Guy” the other night? It was definitely entertaining. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much to clarify the issues that millions of Americans tuned in to learn more about. In fact, viewers got a lot of information from Bill Nye that simply is not true. For example, Bill Nye made it sound like science has discovered fossil layers all over the earth that are neatly stacked on top of one another with less evolved creatures in the earlier layers and more advanced creatures in the upper layers. He also made the incredible claim that you cannot find a single fossil which is in the wrong layer. This is ...
In Dallas, ex-CIA chief (Gen. Michael Hayden) details growing cybersecurity threat
Post Date: 2014-02-06 01:54:07 by X-15
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DALLAS — Land, sea, air and space were considered the country’s top security battlegrounds for decades. But in recent years, as technology has evolved, a fifth front has emerged — cyberspace. “I don’t think we realize how much [cellphones and technology] have changed our lives,” retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and the National Security Agency, told a crowd at the Hyatt Regency Dallas on Tuesday. “Your armed forces now treat cyber as a domain,” said Hayden, a four-star general who spent nearly four decades in the Air Force. “The thumb is the largest.....ungoverned space ever. This is a digital Somalia.” Hayden spoke ...
How Amazon Does It - amazing
Post Date: 2014-02-03 18:10:08 by Lod
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When No One Is Just a Face in the Crowd
Post Date: 2014-02-02 13:46:43 by X-15
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Hey, big spenders. Facial recognition technology, already employed by some retail stores to spot and thwart shoplifters, may soon be used to identify and track the freest spenders in the aisles. The NEC Corporation, for instance, is working on “V.I.P. identification” software, based on face recognition, for hotels and other businesses “where there is a need to identify the presence of important visitors.” And companies like FaceFirst, in Camarillo, Calif., hope to soon complement their shoplifter-identification services with parallel programs to help retailers recognize customers eligible for special treatment. “Just load existing photos of your known ...
MIT researchers create wearable books
Post Date: 2014-02-02 06:55:01 by Tatarewicz
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PressTV... Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States have developed a wearable book that enables the readers to experience the characters’ feelings as they read the story. The book, which has been created under a project dubbed sensory fiction, is covered in sensors and actuators and is hooked up to a vest. The vest has a personal heating device to change the temperature of the readers’ skin as well as a compression system to make them feel tightness or loosening via airbags. It also alters vibrations to match the mood of the book. The book itself possesses 150 LEDs to create ambient light, which changes based on the setting and mood of the ...
Cell cycle speed is key to making aging cells young again
Post Date: 2014-02-01 02:22:10 by Tatarewicz
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ScienceDaily: Researchers identified a major obstacle to converting cells back to their youthful state -- the speed of the cell cycle, or the time required for a cell to divide. When the cell cycle accelerates to a certain speed, the barriers that keep a cell's fate on one path diminish. In such a state, cells are easily persuaded to change their identity and become pluripotent, or capable of becoming multiple cell types. Researchers have identified a major obstacle to converting cells back to their youthful state -- the speed of the cell cycle, or the time required for a cell to divide. A fundamental axiom of biology used to be that cell fate is a one-way street -- once a cell ...
Scientific breakthrough wins Australian team place in solar energy research
Post Date: 2014-01-30 00:00:17 by Tatarewicz
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SYDNEY, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- The race to catch China's groundbreaking solar energy research just got a lot hotter, with a team from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, this week taking out the global industry equivalent of the Oscars. Professor Stuart Wenham and his team at the UNSW, were already flying close to the sun in May last year, when they discovered hydrogen atoms could counter defects in silicon cells within solar panels, delivering improvements in photovoltaic panel design that had not been expected for another decade. The process makes cheap silicon "better than the best-quality material," according to the head of UNSW's photovoltaics (PV) ...
Stem cells made quickly in acid in possible game-changing technique
Post Date: 2014-01-29 13:33:44 by scrapper2
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NEW YORK -- Scientists are reporting a stem cell breakthrough using a simple lab technique that may create reprogrammed cells after dipping them in acid for under 30 minutes. The technique turned ordinary cells from mice into stem cells, according to the surprising new study that hints at a possible new way to grow tissue for treating illnesses like diabetes and Parkinson's disease. Researchers in Boston and Japan exposed cells from spleens of newborn mice to a more acidic environment that they're used to. In lab tests, that turned them into stem cells, showing enough versatility to produce the tissues of a mouse embryo, for example. Cells from skin, muscle, fat and other tissue ...
INNOVATION IN OIL FRACKING
Post Date: 2014-01-26 07:18:30 by Tatarewicz
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Bob says: Reading this article from the newsroom on the http://ussensorsystems.com site - Frack Music Attracts Halliburton to Submarine Spy Tool – I come across this line: “One of the biggest challenges for acoustic fiber in the oilfield is making the business case to use it onshore, Robart said. Installing the technology can cost as much as several hundred thousand dollars a well, meaning it doesn’t pay off as easily on a $6 million land well as it would on a $50 million offshore well, he said.” US Land is the mother lode for fracking services. If this service is generally too costly for land ops then the market for it would seem to be much more limited than all the ...
USA gripped by Polar Vortex
Post Date: 2014-01-26 06:14:47 by Tatarewicz
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Pravda... 07.01.2014 The United States of America is set to face what is known as a Polar Vortex, a large-scale cyclone located near the North Pole sending freezing air circulating thousands of miles away, promising to bring a winter freeze of unprecedented proportions to over one hundred and fifty million Americans. The center of the current stratospheric Polar Vortex is located near Baffin Island. Just occasionally, the wind flows reach much farther south than usual, and 2014 promises to witness one of these events, the last of which was in 1985. Such events occur when the jet stream develops meanders in its currents of air and a vortex occurs, with warmer air swirling over the Pole, ...
Apple to Build Mobile-Payments Service, Report Says
Post Date: 2014-01-25 22:01:45 by Tatarewicz
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UTCApple is preparing to expand its presence in the mobile-payment space, according to a new report. Eddy Cue, the company's senior vice-president of Internet software and services, has met with "industry executives" to discuss Apple's role in handling payments for physical goods and services, The Wall Street Journal reported. See also: Report: Mobile Payments to Top $1 Billion in 2013 WSJ also said Jennifer Bailey has been promoted from her role running Apple's online store to a new position focused on building a payment business. The mobile-payments space is hot, with companies such as Square, PayPal and Stripe all working to make it easier for users to pay for ...
South Korea Is Building A $1.5 Billion 5G Service That Can Download Movies In A Second
Post Date: 2014-01-23 03:29:24 by Tatarewicz
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How much would you pay for instant download ability? South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology announced plans to spend about $1.5 billion to build a national 5G wireless network to be commercially available by 2020. With the new 5G -- which would be 1,000 times faster than most 4G LTE networks -- users would be able download a full-length, 800-megabyte film in just one second. Yep, just one second. That's it. Related: An Accelerated History of Internet Speed (Infographic) The country's science ministry sees this plan as "preemptive," noting in a statement on Wednesday, "Countries in Europe, China and the US are making aggressive efforts to develop 5G ...
Iran has unveiled a new indigenously designed and manufactured ‘flying robot’ which can be used for a number of civilian purposes.
Post Date: 2014-01-22 22:16:39 by Tatarewicz
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Seyyed Amiduddin Mousavi, the head of the Zanjan branch of Sama Technical and Vocational Training College, said on Tuesday that the aircraft has been developed by seven Iranian researchers at the faculty, can fly up to 400 meters (1,312 feet) above the earth’s surface, weighs 1.3 kilograms, and is capable of carrying a three-kilogram payload. He added that the radio-controlled aircraft can remain steady in flights, and can fly without an operator. Mousavi further noted that the vehicle can be used to perform videography missions; transport freight and goods; monitor electricity and telephone lines; as well as identify, track, and chase people and objects. On November 18, 2013, Iran ...
Sun falling asleep, ice age dream to come true
Post Date: 2014-01-20 22:51:18 by Tatarewicz
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PressTV...A new ice age could be on its way to Europe and some other parts of the Earth following an alarming fall occurred in the performance power of the Sun, scientists have warned. While the number of gas explosions on the Sun's surface should be at the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity, but the recent research has indicated an unexpected drop off, researchers say. The occurred phenomenon has not been observed during recent 30 years and there are fears the temperatures could drop so low leading to a mini ice age. "It would feel like the Sun is asleep... a very dormant ball of gas at the centre of our Solar System," explained Dr Lucie Green, from University College ...
Is a mini ice age on the way? Scientists warn the Sun has 'gone to sleep' and say it could cause temperatures to plunge
Post Date: 2014-01-20 08:34:19 by Ada
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2013 was due to be year of the 'solar maximum' Researchers say solar activity is at a fraction of what they expect Conditions 'very similar' a time in 1645 when a mini ice age hit The Sun's activity is at its lowest for 100 years, scientists have warned. They say the conditions are eerily similar to those before the Maunder Minimum, a time in 1645 when a mini ice age hit, Freezing London's River Thames. Researcher believe the solar lull could cause major changes, and say there is a 20% chance it could lead to 'major changes' in temperatures. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2541599/Is-mini-ice- ...
Solar Company Uses Contrarian Funding
Post Date: 2014-01-20 07:57:56 by BTP Holdings
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Solar Company Uses Contrarian Funding by Sara Nunnally, Editor, Macro Money Strategist and Tipping Point Prospector I'm not naïve... I know that when folks think of solar power, they think of some crunchy hippie waging sit-ins to save trees and stop oil spills. Big-name investors still dismiss this sector. Our friend Rick Rule famously says, "You know what the problem is with solar? Night." Heck, I've gotten some strongly worded letters from my readers over the years, even after I made triple-digit gains from the renewable energy sector. Sometimes you can't change people's minds, no matter what you do. And that, despite some interest from the mainstream ...
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