In the seminal science fiction book Dune
, Frank Herbert envisioned the Fremen collecting water from the air via moisture traps and dew collectors. Science Daily reprints a press release from the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, where scientists working with colleagues from Logos Innovationen have developed a closed-loop and self-sustaining method, no external power required, for teasing the humidity out of desert air and into potable water via Slashdot
As if flying around in the dark swooping and diving to catch insects was not tricky enough, bats also listen for their fellow hunters. A study has revealed how these winged mammals recognise other bats’ voices
An extrasolar planet has been found by observing subtle changes in a star’s position in the sky for the first time. The technique, called astrometry, is best suited to finding planets at great distances from their stars, complementing more common techniques, which tend to turn up planets orbiting their stars at close range. The planet’s star is also the lightest known to host a planet, and researchers hope other such discoveries will shed light on how common planets are around low-mass stars, which far outnumber their higher-mass cousins
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now genetically engineered a strain of mice whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for the human version. Svante Paabo, in whose laboratory the mouse was engineered, promised several years ago that when the project was completed, We will speak to the mouse
. He did not promise that the mouse would say anything in reply, doubtless because a great many genes must have undergone evolutionary change to endow people with the faculty of language, and the new mouse was gaining only one of them. So it is perhaps surprising that possession of the human version of FOXP2 does in fact change the sounds that mice use to communicate with other mice, as well as other aspects of brain function
Australian scientists have found they can restore the sight of people with one damaged eye using contact lenses coated with stem cells from their healthy eye
A commonly-used cancer drug can make patients’ fingerprints disappear, potentially causing problems for foreign travel, a doctor warns. One patient was held by US immigration officials for four hours before they allowed him to enter the country
Rooks have a remarkable aptitude for using tools, scientists have found. Tests on captive birds revealed that they could craft and employ tools to solve a number of different problems. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came as a surprise as rooks do not use tools in the wild. Despite this, the UK team said the birds’ skills rivalled those of well-known tool users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows
One hundred million years ago a termite was wounded and its abdomen split open. The resin of a pine tree slowly enveloped its body and the contents of its gut. In what is now the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar, the resin fossilised and was buried until it was chipped out of an amber mine. The resin had seeped into the termite’s wound and preserved even the microscopic organisms in its gut. These microbes are the forebears of the microbes that live in the guts of today’s termites and help them digest wood. The fossil is the earliest example of a relationship between an animal and the microbes in its gut
Just when you thought invisibility cloaks couldn’t get any weirder, researchers come up with this: a way to make one object look like any other. Invisibility cloaks work by steering light around a region of space, making any object inside that region invisible. In effect, an invisibility cloak creates the illusion of free space. This is possible because of a new generation of artificial materials called metamaterials that can, in principle at least, steer light in any way imaginable. Indeed, various teams have built real invisibility cloaks that hide objects from view in both the microwave and optical bands. Now Che Chan and pals from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology say that metamaterials could be used for an even more exotic effect: for cloaks that create the illusion that a different object is present
In Get Smart, the 1960s TV spy comedy, secret agents wanting a private conversation would deploy the cone of silence
, a clear plastic contraption lowered over the agents’ heads. It never worked — they couldn’t hear each other, while eavesdroppers could pick up every word. Now a modern cone of silence that we are assured will work is being patented by engineers Joe Paradiso and Yasuhiro Ono of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their idea, revealed in US patent application 2009/0097671 on 16 April, is to make confidential conversations possible in open-plan offices and canteens. It will even let a conversing group move around a room and still remain in a secure sound bubble
Austria is pulling out of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns. The 20-million-euro (26.9-million-dollar) yearly membership in CERN — which is responsible for Europe’s Big Bang atom-smasher — makes up 70 percent of the money available in Austria for participation in international institutes and could be better used to fund other European projects, he said
The discovery of giant trilobites in northern Portugal reveals the once ubiquitous marine creature mated en masse and used its numbers for protection. The new find, published in the current issue of the journal Geology describes giants that grew to 90 centimetres in length, the largest ever found
It’s not quite as advanced as Terminator technology. But a new concrete that can heal its own wounds may soon bring futuristic protection to bridges and roads. Traditional concrete is brittle and is easily fractured during an earthquake or by overuse. By contrast, the new concrete composite can bend into a U-shape without breaking. When strained, the material forms hairline cracks, which auto-seal after a few days of light rain
Highlighting a vast underestimation
of Madagascar’s natural riches, up to 221 new species of amphibians have been found on the island country. The find nearly doubles the number of known amphibians in Madagascar. An international team of scientists discovered the new species after collecting 2,850 specimens from more than 170 sites, including the country’s most visited and studied national parks
Adding small amounts of metal to spider silk — a material already stronger and lighter than steel — makes it up to 10 times tougher. The scientists devised a way to incorporate zinc, titanium and aluminium ions into natural spider silk. They say the method could one day prove useful for creating super-strong textiles, surgical thread or even synthetic bones
Astronomers have recorded the light of a gamma-ray burst, which they believe comes from the oldest, and most distant object ever observed in the universe. At 13 billion light-years away, the burst occurred when the universe was just five per cent of its current age, or 630 million years old. This provides the first evidence that the young universe, only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, was already home to exploding stars and black holes
Scientists have rendered objects invisible under near-infrared light. Unlike previous such cloaks
, the new work does not employ metals, which introduce losses of light and result in imperfect cloaking. Because the approach can be scaled down further in size, researchers say this is a major step towards a cloak that would work for visible light
Researchers have developed a material that almost instantaneously (30 ms) changes from clear to dark blue when exposed to ultraviolet light, and it just as quickly reverts to clear when the light is turned off. The new material, one of a class called photochromics, could be useful in optical data storage as well as in super-fancy sunglasses — via Slashdot
A cloned beagle named Ruppy — short for Ruby Puppy — is the world’s first transgenic dog. She and four other beagles all produce a fluorescent protein that glows red under ultraviolet light. A team led by Byeong-Chun Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea created the dogs by cloning fibroblast cells that express a red fluorescent gene produced by sea anemones. Lee and stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang were part of a team that created the first cloned dog, SnuppyMovie Camera, in 2005. Much of Hwang’s work on human cells turned out to be fraudulent, but Snuppy was not, an investigation later concluded
A revolutionary Australian National University-developed propulsion system will be the first of its kind to be tested in space. The new type of rocket engine, called a plasma thruster is being modified to be launched within the next four years as part of a prototype satellite
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