Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Better than Superman? X-Ray Microscope Enables Nanovision

Stephanie Pappas
Live Science
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:20 UTC
Nano X-Ray
© UC San DiegoMagnetic domains appear like the repeating swirls of fingerprint ridges. As the spaces between the domains get smaller, computer engineers can store more data.
Forget X-ray glasses. A new X-ray microscope can see details a small as a billionth of a meter - without even using a lens.

Instead, the new microscope uses a powerful computer program to convert patterns from X-rays bouncing off materials into images of objects as small as a one nanometer across, on the scale of a few atoms.

Unlike Superman's X-ray vision, which allows him to look through walls to see the bad guys beyond, the new technology could be used to look at different elements inside a material, or to image viruses, cells and tissue in great detail, said study researcher Oleg Shpyrko, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego. But one of the most important applications is in nano-sized engineering, Shpyrko said.

"We can make things at nanoscale, but we can't see them very well," Shpyrko told LiveScience. "So our paper pushes the characterization [of the nanomaterials] forward," he added, referring to their research article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Aug. 8.
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Magic Wand

Wood may be 10 million years older than thought


Discoveryon
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 12:45 UTC
Image
© wanderinweeta.blogspot.com
A study of 400-million-year-old samples of fossils has revealed that woody plants appeared about 10 million years earlier than previously thought.

The samples revealed rings of cells characteristic of wood, a team of scientists observed.

They also suggested that the woody substance appeared to be a mechanism to transport water rather than acting as a support to allow plants to grow taller.

Phillipe Gerrienne, a geologist from the University of Liege, Belgium, told BBC News that the samples are the first and, to date, only samples of woody plants that had been placed in the Early Devonian period.
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Beaker

Rewinding Evolution: Scientists Alter Chicken DNA to Create Embryo with "Alligator-Like" Snout


The Daily Mail, UK
Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:30 UTC
Process could help detect birth defects in human children

Scientists have undone the progress made by evolution by altering chicken DNA to create embryos with alligator-like snouts instead of beaks.

Experts changed the DNA of chicken embryos in the early stage of their development, enabling them to undo evolutionary progress and give the creatures snouts which are thought to have been lost in the cretaceous period millions of years ago.

The scientific revelation of 'rewinding' evolution could pave the way for scientists altering DNA in the other direction and use the same process to create species better able to adapt to Earth's climate.

Image
© Alamy (L) Rex (R)Rewind evolution: The research changed the DNA of a chicken egg so the embryo developed an alligator-like snout
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Satellite

Scientists, Telescope Hunt Massive Hidden Object in Space


CNN
Tue, 15 Feb 2011 09:03 UTC
Image
Some scientists think a brown dwarf or gas giant bigger than Jupiter could be at the outer reaches of the solar system. In this image showing relative size, the white object at the upper left edge represents the sun.
You know how you sometimes can sense that something is present even though you can't see it? Well, astronomers are getting that feeling about a giant, hidden object in space.

And when we say giant, we mean GIANT.

Evidence is mounting that either a brown dwarf star or a gas giant planet is lurking at the outermost reaches of our solar system, far beyond Pluto. The theoretical object, dubbed Tyche, is estimated to be four times the size of Jupiter and 15,000 times farther from the sun than Earth, according to a story in the British paper The Independent.

Astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette think data from NASA's infrared space telescope WISE will confirm Tyche's existence and location within two years.
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Attention

Flashback Magnetic Storms Affect Humans As Well As Telecommunications

Yuri Zaitsev
Science Daily
Mon, 29 May 2006 00:00 UTC
Image
© Steele Hill/NASASolar storms—when explosions from the sun send blasts of charged particles toward Earth—can cause satellites to malfunction, threaten spacewalkers, and wipe out power grids
It has long been established that magnetic storms not only affect the performance of equipment, upset radio communications, blackout radars, and disrupt radio navigation systems but also endanger living organisms. They change the blood flow, especially in capillaries, affect blood pressure, and boost adrenalin.

The young and fit couldn't care less, but those who are older, may develop problems. They have to consider the state of magnetosphere in their daily plans. Before, people were glued to weather forecasts. Now they are obsessed with the geomagnetic situation.
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Laptop

New Computer Chip Modeled on a Living Brain Can Learn and Remember

Rebecca Boyle
IBM Research
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:30 UTC
IBM, with help from DARPA, has built two working prototypes of a "neurosynaptic chip." Based on the neurons and synapses of the brain, these first-generation cognitive computing cores could represent a major leap in power, speed and efficiency.

New Chip
© IBM Research Zurich IBM's "Neurosynaptic" chip prototype.
A pair of brain-inspired cognitive computer chips unveiled today could be a new leap forward - or at least a major fork in the road - in the world of computer architecture and artificial intelligence.

About a year ago, we told you about IBM's project to map the neural circuitry of a macaque, the most complex brain networking project of its kind. Big Blue wasn't doing it just for the sake of science - the goal was to reverse-engineer neural networks, helping pave the way to cognitive computer systems that can think as efficiently as the brain. Now they've made just such a system - two, actually - and they're calling them neurosynaptic chips.

Built on 45 nanometer silicon/metal oxide semiconductor platform, both chips have 256 neurons. One chip has 262,144 programmable synapses and the other contains 65,536 learning synapses - which can remember and learn from their own actions. IBM researchers have used the compute cores for experiments in navigation, machine vision, pattern recognition, associative memory and classification, the company says. It's a step toward redefining computers as adaptable, holistic learning systems, rather than yes-or-no calculators.
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Control Panel

IBM Unveils Chips that Mimic the Human Brain

Stuart Sumner
Computing
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00 UTC
brain graphic
© Computing
IBM has unveiled a new experimental computer chip that it says mimics the human brain in that it perceives, acts and even thinks.

It terms the machines built with these chips "cognitive computers", claiming that they are able to learn through experience, find patterns, generate ideas and understand the outcomes.

In building this new generation of chip, IBM combined principles of nanoscience, neuroscience and supercomputing.

It has been awarded $21m (£12.7m) of new funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the next phase of the project, which it terms "Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics" (SyNAPSE).

"This is a major initiative to move beyond the von Neumann paradigm that has been ruling computer architecture for more than half a century," said Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research.
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Blackbox

Moon May Be 200 Million Years Younger Than Thought


International Business Times
Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:30 UTC
Image
© NASA/JPL/USGS
The history of our satellite friend may need some reexamination, after scientists investigated moon rock samples collected during NASA's Apollo lunar landings and re-dated one of the rocks to find it was only 4.36 billion years old.

The finding suggests that the Moon itself may turn out to be 4.36 billion years old, up to 200 million years younger than previously thought. The study was detailed in Aug. 17 issue of the journal Nature.

On the surface of the Moon, a group of rocks called ferroan anorthosites (FANs) are thought to have been one of the last things to crystallize out of the magma oceans, forming the first lunar crust. Though FANs have been difficult date, the new research uses improved methods to calculate the ages of FANs with unprecedented precision, through analyzing isotopes of lead, samarium and neodymium within carefully purified samples of these rocks.
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Telescope

Mystery Behind Gigantic Space Blob Revealed


International Business Times
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 09:23 UTC
The mystery behind the power source of the giant "Lyman-alpha blob," one of the largest single objects known in the universe, has finally been revealed by astronomers at the European Southern Observatory. Observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope have led to the conclusion that rare vast cloud of glowing gas from the earliest days of the universe must be powered by galaxies embedded within it. The results appear in the Aug. 18 issue of the journal Nature.

This animation of a Lyman-alpha blob begins with a close-up view of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. Material falls into the black hole via a hot, rotating disk, and powers an outflow that pushes out into the galaxy:


Lyman-alpha blobs are huge gaseous structures emitting Lyman-alpha frequency light. Some of these are more than 400,000 light years across in size. The ESO team found that the light coming from one of these blobs is polarized. This is the first time that polarization has ever been found in a Lyman-alpha blob, and this observation will help unlock the mystery of how the blobs shine.

"We have shown for the first time that the glow of this enigmatic object is scattered light from brilliant galaxies hidden within, rather than the gas throughout the cloud itself shining." explains Matthew Hayes of the University of Toulouse in France, lead author of the paper.
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Magnify

Unusual form of carbon seen in space


UPI
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 05:24 UTC
Graphene graphic
© IAC/NASA/NOAO/ESA/STScI/NRAO An artist's concept of graphene and other forms of carbon superimposed on an image of the Helix planetary nebula, a puffed-out cloud of material expelled by a dying star
NASA says its Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted the signature of a form of carbon called graphene in space, the first-ever cosmic detection of the material.

Graphene, which is arranged like chicken wire in flat sheets that are one atom thick, was first synthesized in a lab in 2004, and a Nobel prize was awarded for subsequent research on its unique properties.

Graphene is as strong as it is thin, conducts electricity as well as copper and is considered by many the "material of the future" with applications in computers, electrical devices, solar panels and more, a NASA release said Tuesday.
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