A carbon membrane only a single atom thick has been used to create a pressurised balloon
that is impermeable to gas. To make it, researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York inflated a sheet of graphene. This is a recently discovered carbon material just one atom thick, and is tipped to succeed silicon as the basis of computing
Scientists have discovered a virus that can infect another virus. The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not. Check out Nature for a slightly more technical article about the virophage — via Slashdot
A new report from CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship and the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation contains exciting news for oil dependent rural and urban Australians. This podcast explains how plant matter which is currently wasted can be easily harnessed to make fuels at an equivalent cost of oil at $US40-60 a barrel
Criminals who use firearms may find it much harder to evade justice in future, thanks to an ingenious new bullet tagging technology developed in the UK. The tiny tags — just 30 microns in diameter and invisible to the naked eye — are designed to be coated onto gun cartridges. They then attach themselves to the hands or gloves of anyone handling the cartridge and are very difficult to wash off completely. Crucially, some of these nanotags
also remain on the cartridge even after it has been fired. This should make it possible to establish a robust forensic link between a cartridge fired during a crime and whoever handled it
A gravity tractor
could deflect an Earth-threatening asteroid if it was deployed when the asteroid was more than one orbit away from the potential impact, according to a new study. If the space rock was found heading straight for Earth, a combination of techniques — including a gravity tractor — might save the day. The study, carried out by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shows that the weak gravitational pull of a nearby spacecraft could deflect a hypothetical asteroid 140 metres across, big enough to cause regional devastation if it hit Earth
A Filipino scientist says he has created a new composite building board made of chicken feathers that could be a major breakthrough for the construction industry in Asia
Researchers have found what appear to be remnants of pigment in fossilised feathers, opening the possibility of reconstructing the colors of many long-extinct animals
Brian May, guitarist for Queen for the last 30 years, submitted his thesis for a PhD in astrophysics. The news now is that the thesis has been published. You, too, can read all about the population of tiny asteroids and space dust that cause the Zodiacal light. The completed thesis appears as the book A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud
. May was awarded his PhD last summer and accepted a position as chancellor at a British university in November — via Slashdot
A US scientist has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night. A new catalyst produces the oxygen and hydrogen that fuel cells use to generate electricity, while using far less energy than current methods. With this catalyst, users could rely on electricity produced by photovoltaic solar cells to power the process that produces the fuel
US space scientists say liquid has been discovered on the surface of Titan, the largest moon of the planet Saturn
A research paper has suggested that a warp drive capable of moving a craft at faster than light speed could indeed be possible. The paper, Putting the ‘Warp’ into Warp Drive
[PDF] by Gerald Cleaver and Richard Obousy, two Baylor University physicists, suggests that the speed of light could be broken by manipulating the fabric of space to create a bubble that a craft would ride upon. Einstein’s laws of relativity would not be violated by such a drive since the craft itself would remain stationary and the bubble of space it moves in would be mobile. This would also shield passengers from the enormous G forces from such acceleration
A new $1,000 spray claims to protect notebook computers, iPods, mobile phones and other electronic gadgets from liquid, making them completely waterproof. The spray, called Golden Shellback Splash Proof Coating, is one thousandth of an inch thick. Sid Martin of the Northeast Maritime Institute, which created the product, said the spray forces the water to roll off electronic gadgets like water off a duck’s back or just like after you waxed your car
The historic site of Britain’s crucial code-breaking programme during the second world war is so shabby it has become a national disgrace
. Bletchley Park, which helped launch the modern computer, is in a terrible state of disrepair
because of a lack of investment, say professors and heads of science from universities across the country in a letter to the Times
Researchers at Purdue University have overcome a major obstacle in reducing the cost of solid state lighting
, a technology that could cut electricity consumption by 10 percent if widely adopted
Researchers say they have grown in mice the kind of functioning heart blood vessels that cardiac surgeons create with bypass operations. One ultimate goal is to replace some heart surgery with injections of laboratory-grown cells that would establish themselves in the body, providing a system of blood vessels for damaged hearts that need more oxygen
A discovery leads to questions about whether the odds of people sharing genetic profiles are sometimes higher than portrayed. Calling the finding meaningless, the FBI has sought to block such inquiry
Scientists are searching within the virtual world and finding real viruses. Every hour, HealthMap, an infectious disease-tracking Web site, culls through news Web sites, public health list servs, the World Health Organization’s online pages, and other Web sites in six different languages to pinpoint outbreaks of disease that real-world doctors can then act on
Materials scientists have been singing graphene’s praises since it was first isolated in 2005. The one-atom-thick sheets of carbon conduct electrons better than silicon and have been made into fast, low-power transistors. Now, for the first time, researchers have measured the intrinsic strength of graphene, and they’ve confirmed it to be the strongest material ever tested. The finding provides good evidence that graphene transistors could take the heat in future ultrafast microprocessors
Flash memory chips with a potential lifetime of hundreds of years have been developed by Japanese scientists. The new chips also work at lower voltages than conventional chips, according to the scientists from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and the University of Tokyo. Current Flash chips are estimated to have a useful lifetime of around a decade for most applications
Tissue engineering has stalled in part because bioengineers haven’t been able to replicate the structural complexity of human tissues. Now researchers have taken an important first step toward building complex tissues from the bottom up by creating what they call living Lego. These building blocks, biofriendly gels of various shapes studded with cells, can self-assemble into complex structures resembling those found in tissues
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