Chemists at the University of Washington who have made glasses with lenses that can be transparent or dark, in shades of yellow, green or purple, all at the push of a button. The glasses will let the wearer instantly change the colour of their lenses to virtually any hue by tuning a tiny electronic knob in the frame
A device that uses radio waves to heat the muscle lining of patients’ airways appears to treat their asthma. Just three sessions of the new treatment cut the number of mild asthma attacks in patients by a half during a one-year trial. The probe reduces inflammation in the bronchial tubes, doctors believe, and could lessen asthmatics’ need for steroids. The procedure, known as bronchial thermoplasty, involves inserting a long, thin catheter probe through the nose or mouth to reach the lung airways. Once the probe is in place, the tip is heated using radio waves. This raises the temperature in the muscle tissue of the airway up to 65°C for 10 seconds
Two Kiwi schoolgirls are worldwide celebrities after their school experiment forced an international pharmaceutical and food giant to admit it made false claims about vitamin C levels in Ribena. GlaxoSmithKline, the second-largest food and drug company in the world, was yesterday fined NZ$217,500 in the Auckland District Court after it admitted 15 breaches of the Fair Trading Act
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to become the first US city to ban plastic bags from large supermarkets to help promote recycling. Under the legislation, beginning in six months large supermarkets and drugstores will not be allowed to offer plastic bags made from petroleum products — via Darren Barefoot
For the first time, physicists have devised a way to make visible light travel in the opposite direction that it normally bends when passing from one material to another, like from air through water or glass. The phenomenon is known as negative refraction and could in principle be used to construct optical microscopes for imaging things as small as molecules, and even to create cloaking devices for rendering objects invisible — via Warren Ellis
A new electronic spacecraft propulsion concept proposes to utilise electrostatically charged and accelerated nanoparticles as propellant. Millions of micron-sized nanoparticle thrusters would fit on one square centimetre, allowing the fabrication of highly scalable thruster arrays — via Nanowerk
St Louis University researchers have concocted batteries fueled by almost any kind of sugar, from tree sap to flat soda, and that could be used to power everything from computers to mobile phones. Their thinking: If sugar can jack up the human body, why not electronics?
Forget WEP and WPA; try switching over to the EM-SEC Coating System, a recently announced paint developed by EM-SEC Technologies that acts as an electromagnetic fortress, allowing a wireless network to be contained within painted walls without fear of someone tapping in or hacking wireless networks. The EM-SEC Coating System is clearly the most secure option aside from stringing out the CAT5, and can be safely used to protect wireless networks in business and government facilities
A company named Tenebraex is helping colour-blind people to travel. But it’s also developing goggles to help soldiers and physicians to see all colours at night, and not only the green colour of current night vision systems. These goggles, which should become available this northern summer, will be sold for about US$6,000 to the Army. But as states one of the founders of the company, with monochrome night vision, blood is the same colour as water
. So these expensive night vision devices might be more targeted to Army physicians than to regular soldiers
A study in the peer-reviewed journal Science shows that mice transgenetically altered with a single human gene are then able to see in full tri-colour vision. Mice without this alteration are normally colour-blind. The scientists speculate that mammalian brains even from animals that have never evolved colour vision are flexible enough to interpret new colour-sense information with just the simple addition of new photoreceptors. Such a result is also indicated by a dominant X chromosome mutation that allows for quad-colour vision in some women
The spread of cancer and the effect of drugs to combat it could be closely monitored using tiny implants. US researchers are perfecting a way to use microscopic particles which stick to chemicals in cancer cells and show up during scans. Their latest advance is to find a way to keep a supply of the particles inside the body for longer periods. However, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) technique has not yet been tested in humans
For all of his death-defying stunts, Harry Houdini couldn’t escape the Grim Reaper: the unparalleled performer, age 52, expired on Halloween 1926. Many of his trade secrets went with him to the grave — but rumors that Houdini was murdered soon took on a life of their own. Eighty-one years later, Houdini’s great-nephew wants to exhume the escape artist’s body to determine if enemies poisoned his renowned relative for debunking their bogus claims of contact with the dead
The biggest whale fossil ever discovered in Italy has been found in one of the country’s finest vineyards. The five-million-year-old skeleton, 33ft (10m) in length, was dug up in the northern grape-growing area of Tuscany
Philips hopes that fitting-room fiascos will become a thing of the past if it ever forays into the world of fashion. The consumer electronics giant has come up with a way to change the size, shape and style of clothes by weaving muscle wires
into the fabric. The wires are made of shape-memory alloys that change length according to the small current passed through them. Here’s the idea: you try on a special pair of Philips’ trousers, and connect up to a power source that changes the length of the wires in the fabric until the trousers have the correct waist size, inside leg and width. Then simply disconnect to try the trousers in exactly your size. Philips says the technique could also be used to correctly fit shirts, socks and bras, or indeed any other article of clothing
The maple tree already provides Canadians with a beautiful part of the landscape, a national emblem and the sticky sweet syrup created from its sap. Now researchers have tapped into a new use for the sap: a base for a natural, biodegradable polymer, one they say may reduce our dependence on fossil fuel-based plastics. The discovery could potentially provide a new range of biodegradable products such as more environmentally friendly packaging material, and could be used for medical applications like drug delivery systems and surgical sutures
Scientists studying pictures from Nasa’s Odyssey spacecraft have spotted what they think may be seven caves on the surface of Mars. The candidate caves are on the flanks of the Arsia Mons volcano and are of sufficient depth their floors mostly cannot be seen through the opening. The authors say that the possible discovery of caves on the Red Planet is significant
The Tasmanian Devil, a rare carnivorous marsupial found only on Australia’s southern island state of Tasmania, faces extinction in 10 to 20 years without a cure for the facial cancer now decimating the population. With half the population of this fierce, black furry animal now wiped out, leaving less than 75,000 devils, Professor Hamish McCallum at the University of Tasmania is battling to establish offshore colonies of healthy devils
Japan’s Thanko has launched a new music headband just for runners. The VONIA is crafted with the iPod shuffle and other very small audio players in mind. A small pocket at the front holds the player and relays its sound through wires hidden inside the headband itself, preventing tangles during a run. The company has chosen to use bone conduction instead of headphones: sound transmits directly through the skull and leaves the ears free to pick up crucial audio cues from the outside world without affecting audio quality
Future spacecraft may surf the magnetic fields of Earth and other planets, taking previously unfeasible routes around the solar system, according to a proposal funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts. The electrically charged craft would not need rockets or propellant of any kind. Mason Peck of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US, has received a grant to study the idea, which is based on the fact that magnetic fields exert forces on electrically charged objects. He says a satellite could charge itself up in one of two ways — either by firing a beam of charged particles into space, or simply by allowing a radioactive isotope to emit charged particles. The charged satellite would then be gently pushed by Earth’s rotating magnetic field, enabling it to change orbit and even escape to interplanetary space. Early signs suggest the idea may work — via Warren Ellis
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