Signals from mobile phone masts have been used to measure rainfall patterns in Israel. The University of Tel-Aviv analysed information routinely collected by mobile networks and say their technique is more accurate than current methods used by meteorological services. The data is a by-product of mobile network operators’ need to monitor signal strength. If bad weather causes a signal to drop, an automatic system analyzing the data boosts the signal to make sure that people can still use their mobile phones. The amount of reduction in signal strength gave the researchers an indication of how much rain had fallen
The cloaking devices that are used to render spacecraft invisible in Star Trek might just work in reality, claim mathematicians Nicolae Nicorovici and Graeme Milton
Polar bears and hippos are among more than 16,000 species of animals and plants threatened with global extinction
Grand Master Masaaki Hatsumi is the last living apprentice of the last fighting ninja
, Toshitsugu Takamatsu. At 76, he continues to train would-be ninjas, and the AP’s Hans Greimel spent a day at his studio, collecting ninja wisdom like Always be able to kill your students
— via Boing Boing
An artificial insect eye that could be used in ultra-thin cameras has been developed by scientists in the US.The dimpled eye, contains over 8,500 hexagonal lenses packed into an area the size of a pinhead. The dome-shaped structure, described in the journal Science, is similar to a bee’s eye. The researchers, from the University of California, Berkeley, say the work may also shed light on how insects developed such complex, visual systems. Darpa is also funding this project with applications expected for digital cameras and high speed motion detectors
Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered a material that gives a whole new complexion to the term fridge magnet
. When this alloy is placed in a magnetic field, it gets colder. Karl Sandeman and his co-workers think that their material — a blend of cobalt, manganese, silicon and germanium — could help to usher in a new type of refrigerator that is up to 40 percent more energy-efficient than conventional models
Holographic data storage pioneer InPhase Technologies, has announced that it has demonstrated the highest data density of any commercial technology by recording 515 gigabits of data per square inch. The first generation drive will have a capacity of 300 gigabytes on a single disk with a 20 megabyte per second transfer rate — via digg
A rat nerve cell attached to a semiconductor chip has exchanged a signal with the chip, an achievement that could lead to organic computers that process information like a brain — via Discovery
The world’s strongest glue is made by bacteria. The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it
Vespa has unveiled two prototype hybrid scooters that deliver 25% more power and use 20% less petrol. You plug them into a standard European 220V socket for three hours to charge them or run them on normal gas-engine mode. They can run battery-only at low speeds, which is useful in indoor/zero-emissions environments. The helmet-space under the seat has been replaced with a stack of 12V/26Ah batteries — via Boing Boing
Scientists studying organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) have made a critical leap from single-colour displays to a highly efficient and long-lived natural light source. If the device can be mass-manufactured cheaply interior lighting could look vastly different in the future. Almost any surface in a home, whether flat or curved, could become a light source: walls, curtains, ceilings, cabinets or tables — via Warren Ellis
Sitting in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was printed
, using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering. Droplets of bio-ink
— clumps of living cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter — flow together and fuse when squirted close to each other. They can be made to form layers, rings and tubes — which could serve as blood vessels — depending on how they are deposited. Bioprinting could develop into a fast and cheap way to engineer a variety of tissue types
MIT scientists have harnessed the construction talents of tiny viruses to build ultra-small nanowire
structures for use in very thin lithium-ion batteries
Neurosurgeon Kenneth Smith has performed a revolutionary operation on St Louis resident Cheri Robertson, connecting a camera directly to her optic nerve. The rig is in principle similar to Geordi La Forge’s visor, albeit in very rudimentary form. At present, the image
consists of a number of white dots, as on an LED display. There are also governmental restrictions on this research, forcing Kenneth and his team to fly to Portugal to carry out the operation. If this technology takes off, the future will be bright for the sight-impaired — via Slashdot
A brightly plumaged parrot and a long-tailed forest mouse unique to the Philippines have been discovered in the vanishing rainforest of a tiny tropical island
New Greenpeace research shows that McDonald’s are partners in forest crime that is creating a trail of destruction right into the heart of the Amazon rainforest — via Warren Ellis
Scientists have made one of the most important fossil finds in history: a missing link between fish and land animals, showing how creatures first walked out of the water and on to dry land more than 375m years ago. Palaeontologists have said that the find, a crocodile-like animal called the Tiktaalik roseae and described today in the journal Nature, could become an icon of evolution in action — like Archaeopteryx, the famous fossil that bridged the gap between reptiles and birds
Bladders engineered in the laboratory from patients’ own cells and then implanted into the body have succeeded in their first clinical trial. It is the first time a discrete, complex organ has been grown and transplanted into people — the researchers are now working on hearts and pancreases
Believe it or not, Emilio Gonzalez, a Spaniard amateur began his crater search at home after reading an article about the discovery of Kebira, the biggest one found in the Sahara. After a couple of minutes he located two craters. After checking the records, he realised these were completely new, and now two geologists confirm his findings. And there is more, these craters may be part of a chain studied by NASA geologist Adriana Ocampo, so if it’s confirmed that these new ones are part of the same episode, it could mean the definitive evidence for her theory of an asteroid broken into pieces fallen in that area — via Slashdot
The line between living organisms and machines has just become a whole lot blurrier. European researchers have developed neuro-chips in which living brain cells and silicon circuits are coupled together
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