Such a method could lead to the development of new switches for electronic devices and controlled electron transport as computer chips get smaller

A new cloaking method may be applied to electronics and thermoelectric devices for greater efficiency.

MIT researchers Bolin Laio, Keivan Esfarjani, Gang Chen and Rutgers University Assistant Professor Mona Zebarjadi have applied visual cloaking technology to devices for better thermoelectric applications as well as better electronics.

The team used a cloaking mechanism that makes certain objects "invisible." This is usually performed on metamaterials made of artificial materials with strange characteristics, where composite structures for cloaking bend light beams around an object, then allow them to resume their original path on the other side -- making the object "invisible."

The Bureau of Land Management has new rules governing the collection of meteorites found on public lands.

It's official! A fishing license for the sky

The Bureau of Land Management, under the U.S. Department of the Interior, has issued Instruction Memorandum No. 2012-182. It establishes policy governing the collection of meteorites found on public lands.

The policy, issued Sept. 10, provides guidance to the BLM's field office managers for administering the collection of meteorites on public lands in three "use categories," said Derrick Henry, a public affairs specialist for BLM in Washington, D.C.

They are:

• Casual collection of small quantities without a permit
• Scientific and educational use by permit under the authority of the Antiquities Act
• Commercial collection of meteorites through the issuance of land-use permits

"The policy recognizes that there is interest in collecting meteorites by hobbyists ... but it also is recognition that there are science and commercial interests as well," Henry told SPACE.com.

Henry said the new policy builds upon the guiding authority of the 1976 Federal Lands Policy and Management Act. It is the first time the BLM has formally addressed rules regarding collection of meteorites on public lands, he added.

The most likely source of the water locked inside soils on the moon's surface is the constant stream of charged particles from the sun known as the solar wind, a University of Michigan researcher and his colleagues have concluded.

Over the last five years, spacecraft observations and new lab measurements of Apollo lunar samples have overturned the long-held belief that the moon is bone-dry.

In 2009, NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing satellite, known as LCROSS, slammed into a permanently shadowed lunar crater and ejected a plume of material that was surprisingly rich in water ice. Water and related compounds have also been detected in the lunar regolith, the layer of fine powder and rock fragments that coats the lunar surface.

But the origin of lunar surface water has remained unclear. Is it mainly the result of impacts from water-bearing comets and other chunks of space debris, or could there be other sources? Theoretical models of lunar water stability dating to the late 1970s suggest that hydrogen ions (protons) from the solar wind can combine with oxygen on the moon's surface to form water and related compounds called hydroxyls, which consist of one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen and are known as OH.

In an article published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, U-M's Youxue Zhang and colleagues from the University of Tennessee and the California Institute of Technology present findings that support solar-wind production of water ice on the moon. The first author of the paper is Yang Liu of U-T. She is a U-M alumna who earned her doctorate under Zhang, who is a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

When we read a text, we hear a voice talking to us. Yet the voice changes over time. In his new book titled Poesins röster, Mats Malm, professor in comparative literature at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that when reading older literature, we may hear completely different voices than contemporary readers did - or not hear any voices at all.

'When we read a novel written today, we hear a voice that speaks pretty much the same language we speak, and that addresses people and things in a way we are used to. But much happens as a text ages - a certain type of alienation emerges. The reader may still hear a voice, but will not understand it fully and therefore risks missing important aspects,' says Mats Malm.

In his book, Mats Malm has chosen to focus on a number of examples from different time periods and language areas, and addresses a number of aspects of voices in poetry. In all studied cases, he shows how the voices of the texts have changed.

He spends one whole chapter analysing Swedish poet Georg Stiernhielm's poem Hercules from the mid-1700s, which is well-known among modern readers for its enjoyable language. The language was enjoyable also in the 1600s, but what the modern reader misses is that the language used was associated with bodily pleasures and immoral conduct.

'Back in the day, the language used in Hercules was also perceived as dangerous and even appalling. Stiernhielm and his contemporaries heard an entirely different voice than we do,' says Malm.

Thus, the reason why we do not perceive the language in a poem like Hercules as problematic is that our notions of morality and language are different today than in the 1600s. But the voices of poetry can also change when a new edition is published.

After probing the moon, Chinese satellite Chang'e II left the lunar orbit and began to explore asteroid No. 4179 which is 7 million km away from Earth. The country also set out plans to send retrievable rovers to the moon by 2017.

Chang'e II's successful mission of exploring and orbiting the Moon marks one of China's space exploration milestones. The satellite flew to the 4.6km by 4.6km-asteroid No. 4179, which impact could equal that of 500 million Hiroshima atomic bombs should it hit Earth.

The country also plans to launch Chang'e III, which is equipped with cameras and basic analyzing instruments, to the lunar surface in 2013 and to send Chang'e VI--a retrievable, sample-collecting robot--by 2017.

"We are going to encounter a lot of problems during the course," Ouyang Ziyuan, the chief scientist of China's moon exploring project, told a Chinese technology newspaper. "First is [to focus on] the landing, and also to let the robot function properly in the hash lunar environment."

Theresa Klein talks about Achilles, the first machine to move in a biologically accurate way.
"Our robot, named Achilles, is the first to walk in a biologically accurate way. That means it doesn't just move like a person, but also sends commands to the legs like the human nervous system does.

Each leg has eight muscles - Kevlar straps attached to a motor on one end and to the plastic skeleton on the other. As the motor turns, it pulls the strap, mimicking the way our muscles contract. Some of Achilles' muscles extend from the hip or thigh to the lower leg so they can project forces all the way down the limb. This allows us to put most of the motors in the hips and thighs. Placing them up high keeps the lower leg light, so that it can swing quickly like a human's lower leg.

A team of University of Southampton geologists say they have uncovered the "trigger" mechanism that seems to unleash some of Earth's most massive volcano, including the massive volcanic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland in 2010, which left millions of passengers stranded around the world.

Working in the Canary Islands, the Southampton team examined the causes of trapped magma to see what caused eruptions at the Las Cañadas volcanic caldera on Tenerife, located on one of the Canary Islands. The volcano has generated at least eight major eruptions during the last 700,000 years, according to the team.

By analyzing crystal cumulate nodules (igneous rocks formed by the accumulation of crystals in magma) discovered in pyroclastic deposits of major eruptions, the scientists found that pre-eruptive mixing within the magma chamber - where older cooler magma mixed with younger hotter magma - appears to be the repeating trigger in large-scale eruptions, according to researchers. These nodules trapped and preserved the final magma beneath the volcano immediately before eruption, providing geologists with a potential signature for Earth's most destructive volcanoes.

When an animal grows back a missing body part, the replacement is not as good as the original, new research confirms.

It's been known for a while that regenerated lobster claws and eyes tend to be much smaller, but now a study on regenerated lizard tails reveals that they are far from identical to the first ones.

"The regenerated lizard tail is not a perfect replica," Rebecca Fisher, an associate professor in Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences, and at the UA College of Medicine - Phoenix, said in a press release. "There are key anatomical differences including the presence of a cartilaginous rod and elongated muscle fibers spanning the length of the regenerated tail."

The findings are published in a pair of articles featured in a special October edition of the journal The Anatomical Record.

Fisher and her team studied the regenerated tails of the green anole lizard (Anolis carolinensis). This lizard likely evolved the regrowth ability since predators often bite the lizard's tail off. The little reptile can lose its tail in other ways too.

A team of Australian scientists has proposed a new mathematical theory to explain the mysterious phenomenon known as ball lightning.
Sightings of ball lightning have been made for centuries around the world - usually about 10 cm in diameter and lasting up to twenty seconds - but no explanation of how it occurs has been universally accepted by science.

Previous competing theories have cited microwave radiation from thunderclouds, oxidizing aerosols, nuclear energy, dark matter, antimatter, and even black holes as possible causes.

The new theory, reported in a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres, focuses on how ball lightning occurs in houses and aeroplanes - and how it can pass through glass. The theory also proposes that ball lightning is caused when leftover ions - electric energy, which are very dense, are swept to the ground following a lightning strike.

Early in 2012, I wrote an article regarding India's implementation of the Unique Identification (UID) Program for all of its 1.2 billion residents entitled, "Cashless Society: India Implements First Biometric ID Program Despite Growing Concern," where I detailed the history, mechanisms and ultimate goals of the program. I followed this report by an article entitled, "Japan Proposes Next Phase of Centralized Surveillance," dealing with the new Japanese UID with a similar analysis. But, while news of India and Japan's massive National ID program was met with much surprise by many even in the alternative media, it may once again come as a surprise that yet another push for a National ID push is on the way - this time, in the UK.

Like the Indian and Japanese ice-breaker, the UK program is being developed in concert and collusion between the UK government and international corporations.