Science & TechnologyS


Sun

New Light-absorbing Layer Makes Polymer Solar Cells More Efficient

Tiffany Kaiser
DailyTech
Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:46 UTC
Image
© Leah Hansen/Iowa State UniversitySumit Chaudhary and Kanwar Singh Nalwa
Thin and uniform layer on textured substrates provides enhanced efficiency in polymer solar cells.

Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory researchers have improved the efficiency of polymer solar cells through the use of a new process that increases light absorption.

Lead researchers working on the study include Sumit Chaudhary, Iowa State assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; Kanwar Singh Nalwa, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering and student associate of the Ames Laboratory; Kai-Ming Ho, an Iowa State Professor of Physics and Astronomy and an Ames Laboratory faculty scientist, and Joong-Mok Park, an assistant scientist in the Ames Laboratory. Together, these researchers have created a new process that increases the efficiency of solar cells.

To do this, researchers took flexible, lightweight polymers and added a textured substrate pattern that provided a uniform and thin light-absorbing layer. Also, this textured substrate pattern remains uniformly thin when going up and down the flat-topped ridges, which are less than a millionth of a meter high.
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Info

New Method Predicts Earthquakes With 80 Percent Accuracy

Cameron Scott
San Francisco Chronicle
Fri, 03 Dec 2010 10:47 UTC
Predicting Earthquakes
© USGSSan Andreas fault.

A new Spanish study that analyzed local earthquake data since 1978 found patterns in the data that can predict a medium to large earthquakes with 80 percent accuracy.

The key factor was the fault's resistance: less resistance leads to lots of small earthquakes, whereas more resistance leads to scarcer but bigger quakes.

Fascinatingly, another recent study, this one out of Israel's Hebrew University, focused on the similar principle of friction. It found that the laws of physics long thought to determine friction don't really hold true: Rather than two blocks - used to simulate tectonic plates in the laboratory - touching at every point along their adjacent faces, there are actually a discrete set of points at which they touch, and the contact points don't all break at the same time.
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Display

IBM Achieves Silicon Photonics

Stephen Shankland
News.Cnet.com
Wed, 01 Dec 2010 05:56 UTC
Image
© IBMIBM's new processors integrate optical communication technology in a development called silicon photonics.
IBM has achieved a major milestone in making the dream of silicon photonics, in which computer chips send signals of light rather than electricity, into reality.

At the semiconductor industry conference Semicon in Tokyo today, IBM photonics leader Yurii Vlasov is detailing how IBM has created a chip that integrates many of the necessary elements of optical communication between a processor and other devices. Significantly, the design uses conventional rather than exotic chip manufacturing technology, involves very small components, and essentially permits a fiber-optic communication line to be attached directly to a processor.

And more significantly, it's headed for real-world use, a sign that IBM's work is serious. That initial use is in IBM's relatively exotic Exascale project to build a computer that can perform a quintillion mathematical calculations per second--roughly 1,000 times that of today's fastest supercomputers.

"In three to five years, silicon photonics will be the main enabler for that level of computation," said Solomon Assefa, an IBM research scientist and one of the members of the team that developed the chip. And in the years after that, it'll follow the traditional computing industry trend and spread to more ordinary products, he predicted.
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Magnify

Autism MRI Test May Detect Disorder Quicker in High-Functioning Patients

Nicole Ostrow
Bloomberg.com
Fri, 03 Dec 2010 15:40 UTC
Doctors diagnosed autism in children by using MRI to track brain circuit activity, according to research that suggests the method may help speed up detection and add to knowledge of the disorder's biological base.

In a study of 60 children, half with mild autism and half with no autism, researchers identified the condition 94 percent of the time using magnetic resonance imaging, according to a study online this week in the journal Autism Research. The scans helped show how information moves and is processed in the brain.
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Ambulance

False Memories Created When the Brain is Damaged

Sergiu Vidican
Metrolic
Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00 UTC
Brain Damage
© Metrolic
The scientists have discovered that some terrible illnesses such as Alzheimer's disorder are much worse than it was believed. Besides the capacity of erasing the memories, it seems that some of these illnesses have the capacity of creating new and false memories as well. These findings might prove to be beneficial for the people who suffer from these illnesses.

It seems that in their case a certain portion of the brain, called perirhinal cortex is affected. The perirhinal cortex is located in the middle of the brain, and it has the main task of forming memories. This part of the brain processes the information received, and it uses the information in order to turn it into a picture of an object. Lisa Saksida, who is a psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England, said that when one suffers from Alzheimer's disease, this portion of the brain will be the first one affected. Because of that, the person who suffers from the disease can no longer form these pictures of the objects in the brain, using very complex processes. Instead of using these complex processes, the brain will use very simple processes which in most of the cases are not as reliable. Because of that, the brain will try to make certain connections between memories. As it can not remember things very well, it will create false memories in order to make the connections.
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Chalkboard

Like to Sleep Around? Blame Your Genes

Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience
Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:45 UTC
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© Unknown
Whether your roommate is Samantha Sleeps-Around or Paul the Prude, cut him or her some slack: People's predilections for promiscuity lie partially in their DNA, according to a new study.A particular version of a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4 is linked to people's tendency toward both infidelity and uncommitted one-night stands, the researchers reported Nov. 30 in the online open-access journal PloS One.

The same gene has already been linked to alcoholism and gambling addiction, as well as less destructive thrills like a love of horror films. One study linked the gene to an openness to new social situations, which in turn correlated with political liberalism. In the new study, researchers gathered a detailed history of sexual behavior and relationships from 181 young adults. They also collected DNA samples from the volunteers' cheeks and analyzed the samples for the presence of the thrill-seeking version of DRD4.

"What we found was that individuals with a certain variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to have a history of uncommitted sex, including one-night stands and acts of infidelity," study researcher Justin Garcia, a postdoctoral fellow at Binghamton University, State University of New York, said in a statement.
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Info

Have they found the elixir of eternal youth? Scientists reverse the aging process in landmark trial

Fiona Macrae
Mail Online
Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:03 UTC
The secret of eternal youth has been unlocked by scientists in remarkable research that paves the way for a 'forever young' drug.

Lives could be longer and healthier, free from illnesses such as Alzheimer's and heart disease, with skin and hair retaining its youthful lustre.

Such a drug might allow men and women to have children naturally until they are a ripe old age.

Comment: For a more natural way to increase telomerase, see New Meditation Research: Putting the 'Om' in 'Chromosome'

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Better Earth

Researchers discover unique, arsenic-based life form

Marc Kaufman
The Washington Post
Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:14 UTC
All life on Earth - from microbes to elephants and us - is based on a single genetic model that requires the element phosphorus as one of its six essential components. But now researchers have uncovered a bacterium that has five of those essential elements but has, in effect, replaced phosphorus with its look-alike but toxic cousin arsenic. News of the discovery caused a scientific commotion, including calls to NASA from the White House and Congress asking whether a second line of earthly life has been found.

A NASA press conference Thursday and an accompanying article in the journal Science, gave the answer: No, the discovery does not prove the existence of a "second genesis" on Earth. But the discovery very much opens the door to that possibility and to the related existence of a theorized "shadow biosphere" on Earth - life evolved from a different common ancestor than all that we've known so far.

Watch the video: "NASA Alien Life News: The Real Story from Science Magazine"
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Sheeple

Dolly's Creator Clones Four New Sheep

Tiffany Kaiser
DailyTech
Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:00 UTC
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© dailymail.co.ukthe Dollies
Seven years after the death of Dolly, a female sheep who was the first to be cloned using an adult somatic cell, four new sheep have been cloned using Dolly's frozen tissue sample that has been sitting in a freezer since her death in 2003.

Professor Keith Campbell, one of the original biologists who cloned Dolly, is keeping the four new quads on his land at the University of Nottingham as pets. They have been nicknamed "the Dollies," since they are exact copies of Dolly genetically.

In 1996, Dolly, who was named after the country singer Dolly Parton, was cloned at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh in Scotland. She was the first mammal to be cloned using an adult cell from a mammary gland, and was praised as a scientific phenomenon in headlines worldwide. But as she aged, Dolly experienced several health complications such as arthritis and advanced lung disease. At the young age of six, Dolly was put down because of her poor health.

But Dolly lives on. Her leftover sample of tissue has remained in the freezer all these years later, and now four exact replicas carry her DNA.
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Beaker

NASA Finds Alien DNA in Californian Lake

Jane McEntegart
TomsGuide
Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:40 UTC
Image
© Unknown
NASA has found DNA with a makeup we never thought possible.

Earlier this week we learned that NASA was gearing up to share some important information relating to an astrobiological discovery. Of course, our minds immediately turned to aliens. Still, deep down, we knew that NASA would not report that it had found Krypton, ALF, ET, or a Cylon war zone. No, though it would likely be something substantial, it would be altogether much more mundane than actual, real life, extraterrestrial aliens.

NASA's event is still a few hours away, but what would embargoed information be if there wasn't someone prepared to leak it a couple of hours in advance? Thanks to Dutch magazine NOS, we know that NASA has indeed found alien life. It's just not extraterrestrial.

Present in the toxic, arsenic-riddled Mono Lake in California is a type of bacteria with a DNA makeup we never thought possible. That is, the building blocks of life -- carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur - are not all present. As opposed to phosphorus, this bacteria's DNA uses arsenic.
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