The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago. Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack. And now they are heading straight for Britain. At some point this summer they are expected to be spotted on beaches in South-West England. While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss to the bath-time fun of thousands of children, their adventures at sea have proved an innvaluable aid to science
Once manufactured under an exclusive contract with the US government, the recently declassified window film is now available to the public. Currently, Signal Defense Film is only available directly from the manufacturer, CPFilms, at prices that will likely make it prohibitive for all but the wealthiest home owners. The coating, which in its thinnest incarnation is only two one thousandths of an inch thick, can block Wi-Fi signals, mobile phone transmissions, even the near-infrared, yet is almost transparent, making it no more intrusive than conventional window treatments. It can keep signals in (preventing attempts to spy on electronic communications) or out, minimising radio interference and even the fabled electronics-destroying electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by a nuclear blast
US company Global Resource Corporation (GRC) is taking plastics recycling to another level — turning them back into the oil they were made from, and gas. All that is needed, is a finely tuned microwave and a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers). Key to GRC’s process is a machine that uses 1200 different frequencies within the microwave range, which act on specific hydrocarbon materials. As the material is zapped at the appropriate wavelength, part of the hydrocarbons that make up the plastic and rubber in the material are broken down into diesel oil and combustible gas
Brisbane City Council is trialling new solar powered public rubbish bins which compact rubbish and email the council when they are full. In the next few months, 10 bins will be trialled in the CBD and Fortitude Valley at a cost of $30,000. Lord Mayor Campbell Newman says they will help council officers respond quickly to overflowing rubbish
German Scientists have constructed a custom enzyme that reverses the process by which the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) inserts its genetic material into host DNA, suggesting that treatment with similar enzymes could potentially rid infected cells of the virus. In tests on cultured human tissue, the mutated enzyme, Tre recombinase, snipped HIV DNA out of chromosomes. Curing real infections by this or any other technique, however, would require mastering one of HIV’s sneakiest tricks–its ability to hide from the immune system by laying dormant for months or years in host cells
Scientists in the US say they have taken a major step towards producing life from scratch in the laboratory. Dr Craig Venter says in the journal Science that his team successfully transplanted an entire genome from one bacterium cell to another. He says he hopes eventually to use the technique to create designer microbes, which could produce artificial fuel or help clean up toxic waste. Dr Venter was a pioneer in mapping the human genome
A prototype artificial skin used to heal wounds has been developed by British researchers. Writing in the journal Regenerative Medicine, UK-based company Intercytex said it had produced promising results in early trials. It said the skin seemed to incorporate itself much better with real tissue than any other skin substitutes tried in the past. The researchers hope it might provide an alternative to skin grafts
The UK government has announced that it will publish guidance for schools on how creationism and intelligent design relate to science teaching, and has reiterated that it sees no place for either on the science curriculum. It has also defined Intelligent Design
, the idea that life is too complex to have arisen without the guiding hand of a greater intelligence, as a religion, along with creationism
The giant pengiun fossil, which was discovered in Peru and is described today in detail by scientists reveals a creature that was over 1.5 metres tall and weighed as much as a person. The 36 million year old tropical bird’s intimidating appearance was topped off with powerful forearms, a chunky neck and a potentially vicious 18 centimetre long spear-like beak. The discovery of the giant penguin is also shaking up scientists’ understanding of penguin evolution. The finds indicate that penguins made the journey to equatorial regions much earlier in their evolutionary history than researchers had realised
Researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have created a model teleportation system using quantum dots. According to recent research, tiny clusters of atoms known as quantum dots may be excellent media for quantum teleportation, a physics phenomenon in which information — in the form of a quantum state, a very specific mathematical signature of an atom — can be transmitted almost instantaneously to a distant location without having to physically travel through space
Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century’s end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary facelift of Mars — a technique called terraforming
— has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution
In a quiet industrial park in Petaluma, a startup called Raydiance is miniaturising a type of laser that generates an ultrashort burst of photons so intense that it can vapourise matter without creating heat. CEO Barry Schuler, who founded Raydiance based on technology that arose from military research, says it could be used for any number of purposes, such as removing tattoos without burning the skin or killing cancer cells without affecting healthy ones. Now, Schuler is ready to proclaim that the Raydiance laser — which looks like an ordinary slide projector — could spawn an industry based on using brief bursts of photons to poke clean holes, with no burn marks, in anything from skin to steel
Science fiction writer Charlie Stross has written an excellent and comprehensive explanation of why, thousands of SF books, movies, and games notwithstanding, human colonisation of other star systems is impossible. Although interstellar colonisation seems common-sensical to many, Charlie makes a clear-headed and unarguable case, so far as I can see, that it ain’t gonna happen without a magic wand
or two
Lin Zhong and Michael Liebschner at Rice University in Houston, Texas, want to use the human skeleton to transmit commands reliably and securely to wearable gadgets and medical implants. Their research, funded by Microsoft and Texas Instruments, could also lead to new ways for people with disabilities to control devices such as computers and PDAs. Wireless radio signals are already used to control gadgets and implants, but these can suffer interference from Wi-Fi and other sources. This makes them unreliable and, in the case of medical implants, potentially dangerous. They can also be hacked by anyone with an antenna, Liebschner points out. So the Rice team decided to investigate using sound instead of radio waves. Bone is known to be a great conductor of sound, but so far it has only been used to transmit analogue signals in applications such as checking how bone is healing after a fracture, and in hearing aids that transmit sound from outside the skull to the auditory nerve
Corn and potato crops may soon provide information to farmers about when they need water and how much should be delivered, thanks to a University of Colorado at Boulder invention optioned to AgriHouse, a Berthoud, Colorado, high-tech company. The technology includes a tiny sensor that can be clipped to plant leaves charting their thickness, a key measure of water deficiency and accompanying stress, said Research Associate Hans-Dieter Seelig of CU-Boulder’s BioServe Space Technology Centre. Data from the leaves could be sent wirelessly over the Internet to computers linked to irrigation equipment, ensuring timely watering, cutting down on excessive water and energy use and potentially saving farmers in Colorado millions of dollars per year — via denverpost.com
US researchers have taken a leaf out of nature’s book to develop a polymer-based system that can heal itself when it becomes damaged. The material relies on an underlying network of vessels — similar to blood capillaries — that carry a healing agent to areas on the material’s surface that become damaged. Unlike previous self-healing systems that relied on capsules of agent buried in the polymer and which became depleted after one use, the new system can respond to damage at the same point many times over
The tuatara, which is both related to lizards and snakes, is one of the planet’s oldest reptile species. It’s been living in New Zealand for about 200 million years. Scientists still don’t know much about their behavior, so they’ve asked Weta Workshop, a Wellington-based company known for its work on The Lord of the Rings
trilogy, to build a robotic male tuatara. It is equipped with cameras which will help the researchers to discover how real male tuatara attract and keep females. The goal is to help conservation managers to the genetically fittest, most productive males — via Slashdot
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers made a 60-watt light bulb glow by sending it energy wirelessly — from a device 2.1m away — potentially heralding a future in which mobile phones and other gadgets get juice without having to be plugged in. The breakthrough, disclosed Thursday in Science Express, the online publication of the journal Science, is being called WiTricity
by the scientists. The concept of sending power wirelessly isn’t new, but its wide-scale use has been dismissed as inefficient because electromagnetic energy generated by the charging device would radiate in all directions
A Tel Aviv University scientist, Amir Sharon, may have discovered the next best alternative: a funky fungi in the form of a genetically-modified mushroom that yields a large biomass which can be converted into a first-rate biofuel. Sharon and his team have developed a transformation-based approach to cultivating fungi (Aspergillus niger) which means that they have genetically-engineered them to be less sensitive to external conditions and environmental stresses; the mushrooms are more sustainable in culture during fermentation, and have both enhanced growth rate and spore production. As a result, the fungal cultures exhibit a dramatic increase in fresh and dry biomass production, reduced sensitivity to stress conditions, enhanced spore production and extended viability — via tauac.typepad.com
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