The X PRIZE Foundation and Google has announced the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon to win a $30 million prize purse
Using lasers to drive spaceships has been a subject of interest for many years, but making a photonic engine powerful enough for practical use has been elusive. Dr Young Bae, a California physicist, has built a demonstration photonic laser thruster that produces enough thrust to micro-maneuver a satellite. This would be useful in high-precision formation flying, such as using a fleet of satellites to form a space telescope with a large virtual aperture. Scaled up, a similar engine could speed a spacecraft to Mars in less than a week — via Slashdot
The Rational Response Squad have lost their YouTube account, which is the account that we’ve been posting videos with ever since RichardDawkins.net lost theirs. Apparently Creation Science Evangelism Ministries
had been submitting false DMCA copyright requests and after RRS came to their defence, they were banned
Technology that translates spoken or written words into British Sign Language (BSL) has been developed by researchers at IBM. The system, called SiSi (Say It Sign It) was created by a group of students in the UK. SiSi will enable deaf people to have simultaneous sign language interpretations of meetings and presentations
For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn’t be burned. So when an Erie man announced he’d ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he’d invented, some thought it a was a hoax. John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube. Within days, he had the salt water in the test tube burning like a candle, as long as it was exposed to radio frequencies. His discovery has spawned scientific interest in using the world’s most abundant substance as clean fuel, among other uses
Hewlett-Packard is licensing a medical patch it has developed to Ireland’s Crospon that potentially can replace hypodermic needles or pills for delivering vaccines or other types of medication to patients. The patch contains up to 90,000 microneedles per square inch, microprocessors and a thermal unit. Medications contained in the patch are heated and then injected through the needles. Processors can monitor drug delivery, deliver doses over extended periods of time or deliver drugs in response to a patient’s vital signs (eg, blood pressure or heart rate), depending on how it is programmed
A solar-powered, unmanned craft has flown for 54 hours — a record for both unmanned aerial vehicles and solar craft. None before has managed to store enough solar energy to fly through more than one night — via Slashdot
Microchip implants have induced cancer in laboratory animals and dogs. A series of research articles spanning more than a decade found that mice and rats injected with glass-encapsulated RFID transponders developed malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers in up to 1% to 10% of cases. The tumours originated in the tissue surrounding the microchips and often grew to completely surround the devices. To date, about 2,000 RFID devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip — via Slashdot
Physicists at the University of Michigan have demonstrated how two separate atoms can communicate with a sort of quantum intuition
which Albert Einstein referred to as spooky
. In doing so, the researchers have made an advance towards super-fast quantum computing and even a quantum internet
A Toronto-led team of researchers has found a way to use stem cells derived from skin to treat spinal cord injuries in rats. The finding lends promise to the idea that stem cells could one day be used to heal spinal cord injuries in humans, helping thousands of Canadians to walk again. Injured rats injected with skin-derived stem cells regained mobility and had better walking co-ordination, according to the study published yesterday in the Journal of Neuroscience. The skin-derived stem cells, injected directly into the injured rats’ spinal cords, were able to survive in their new location and set off a flurry of activity, helping to heal the cavity in the cord
Scientists at UC Davis have discovered that some eels have an extra set of jaws deep in their throats that launch forward into their mouths to help pull prey in. It looks like a funny pair of forceps with curved sharp teeth,
said evolutionary biologist Rita Mehta, lead author of the research. Before the discovery, scientists thought that all aquatic predators swallowed their prey using suction. By dropping the lower jaw and creating a flow of water into their mouths, they draw in the prey. The two species of moray eels studied by Mehta and functional morphologist Peter Wainwright are the first examples of an alternative feeding method
A small US startup has announced it has created a system for running Wi-Fi routers in remote places using only the power of the sun. Among the first round of products from Solis Energy is the Solar Power Plant, touted as being capable of supplying 12, 24 and 48 Volts DC for use in stand-alone applications such as surveillance cameras and outdoor Wi-Fi
A Spiderman
suit that enables its wearer to scale vertical walls like the comic and movie superhero could one day be a reality, according to a study. Natural technology used by spiders and geckos could help a human climb the side of a building or hang upside down from a roof, the analysis suggests. Both spiders and geckos possess tiny hairs
that allow them to stick to surfaces. Some studies suggest that geckos can hold hundreds of times their own body weight
With a 50-year collection of photos, videos, films and other material, NASA’s archives from manned and unmanned space missions is almost as vast as outer space. And now, NASA is undertaking a project to put all of that material into a central archive that can be searched by space flight aficionados. NASA said it has reached a deal with the nonprofit, San Francisco-based Internet Archive to scan, archive and manage the agency’s vast collection. The effort will be paid for solely through grants, foundations and individual contributions received by the Internet Archive
Scientists have suspected that the three known domains of life — eukaryotes, bacteria, and archaea — branched off and went their separate ways around three billion years ago. But pinning down the time of that split has been an elusive task. Now, a team of scientists present direct evidence that the three domains of life coexisted at least as long as 2.7 billion years ago. The discovery came from chemical examination of shale samples, loaded with oily lipid remains of archaea found in a deep Canadian gold mine near Timmins, Ontario, about 400 miles north of Toronto
Joop Houtkooper of the University of Giessen, Germany, said the Viking spacecraft may in fact have found signs of a weird life form based on hydrogen peroxide on the subfreezing, arid Martian surface. His analysis of one of the experiments carried out by the Viking spacecraft suggests that 0.1 percent of the Martian soil could be of biological origin
National Geographic is reporting on a deep-sea expedition in the North Atlantic where a team of 31 scientists have discovered new and rare marine animals, including a Jewel Squid (Histioteuthis) and Glass Squid — via Squid
Redheads are becoming rarer and could be extinct in 100 years. Less than two per cent of the world’s population has natural red hair, created by a mutation in northern Europe thousands of years ago. Global intermingling, which broadens the availability of possible partners, has reduced the chances of redheads meeting and producing little redheads of their own. It takes only one red-haired parent to produce ginger-headed babies, but two redheads obviously create a much stronger possibility. If the redheads really want to save themselves they should move to Scotland. An estimated 40 per cent of Scots carry the red gene and 13 per cent actually have red hair
Brazil’s government has promised to investigate allegations that its policy of settling landless communities in the Amazon is encouraging deforestation. Greenpeace has claimed that some of these areas are being exploited by logging companies, after what it says was an eight-month investigation. Brazil’s environment ministry says deforestation in those areas is falling but it will investigate the claims. The government says land distribution to the poor is an important objective. But Greenpeace says the implementation of the policy is encouraging uncontrolled logging and deforestation in some parts of the Amazon
The US Army recently unveiled a new hybrid-electric propulsion system for use in a new line of manned ground vehicles (MGVs). The new line will have eight different variants, all using the same chassis. The unique feature of the new MGVs is that the traditional engine has been decoupled from the drive train and is used only to recharge the battery and power other systems within the vehicle
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