Science & TechnologyS


Bug

New GM worms mean large scale spider-silk production

Lewis Page
The Register
Fri, 01 Oct 2010 02:11 UTC
Boffins sidestep difficulties of farming spiders

Scientists in Indiana have announced success in producing a genetically modified abomination-style combo creature which is part spider and part silkworm. They believe that their creation will be handy for the production of next-generation bulletproof vests, among other things.

The cunning thing about the new arachno-worms is that they can produce spider silk, one of the strongest fibres known to science, while not actually being spiders. It is mainly the difficulty of farming spiders for their silk that has prevented the super-stuff from being widely used*.

"The generation of silk fibers having the properties of spider silks has been one of the important goals in materials science," says Malcolm Fraser Jr, biology prof at Notre Dame uni.
Read More...
Nuke

Iran nuclear plant shutdown due to 'leak'

John Leyden
The Register
Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:54 UTC
Delays in bringing Iran's nuclear plant online at Bushehr are due to a "small leak" and nothing to do with the infamous Stuxnet worm, according to the country's energy minister.

Bushehr was due to begin producing electricity in November, following the transfer of fuel to the core in September, but power production is being delayed until "early 2011" following a leak in a storage pool, according to Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's vice president and political boss of its nuclear programme, AP reports. Salehi did not specify whether radioactive material was involved in the leak, much less whether any plant personnel were exposed to danger

"During a washing process prior to loading the actual nuclear fuel, a small leak was observed in a pool next to the reactor and was fixed," Salehi said, Iran's IRNA news agency reports. "This leak delayed activities for a few days."

Plant officials have previously admitted that the Stuxnet worm, a sophisticated strain of malware capable of sabotaging industrial plant control systems, had infected the laptops of an unspecified number of workers.
Read More...
Satellite

Last-minute Reprieve Keeps NASA Telescope in the Hunt

Debra Werner
SpaceNews.com
Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:57 UTC
Image
© NASANASA's sky-mapping spacecraft, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
A NASA space-based telescope that has been gathering imagery of comets, asteroids and distant galaxies since it was launched in December, received a last-minute reprieve in late September. Just as the hydrogen used to cool the detectors on the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) ran out, the space agency's Planetary Division stepped forward with $400,000 to continue the mission, albeit in a limited manner, for one month, said NASA spokesman J.D. Harrington.

Without the hydrogen coolant, only two of the WISE mission's four infrared detectors will operate. However, those two detectors still will be useful in finding asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter and near-Earth objects, the asteroids and comets moving relatively close to Earth's orbit, said Ned Wright, WISE principal investigator and professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

If the data from the extended mission, known as Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) proves useful, the Planetary Division will continue funding the effort to find near-Earth objects for three additional months, Harrington said.
Read More...
Rocket

Mars probe to solve 'lost atmosphere' mystery


Cosmos Online
Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:38 UTC
Washington: The U.S. space agency NASA announced it has given the green light to a mission to Mars aimed at investigating the mystery of how the 'red planet' lost its atmosphere.

NASA gave the approval for "the development and 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission," the agency said in a statement, noting that the project may also show Mars' history of supporting life.
Read More...
Magnify

Super-Strong Yarn for Spacesuits and Bullet-Proof Vests

Charles Q. Choi
TechNewsDaily
Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:21 UTC
Image
© Kai Liu.Fabrics woven using novel carbon-nanotube-loaded yarns.
Super-strong, highly conductive yarns made from extraordinarily thin carbon tubes could one day find use in spacesuits, bulletproof vests and radiation suits, researchers now suggest.

Carbon nanotubes are hollow pipes just nanometers or billionths of a meter in diameter - dozens to hundreds of times thinner than a wavelength of visible light. They can possess a range of extraordinary physical and electrical properties, such as being roughly 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight.
Read More...
Einstein

For Wonder Material Graphene, Nobel Prize is Just The Start

Stuart Fox
TechNewsDaily
Wed, 06 Oct 2010 10:14 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The Nobel Prize in physics serves as a signpost for measuring the progress of an idea from theoretical math to an inescapable part of everyone's lives. It was 42 years from Philip Eduard Anton von Lenard's Nobel Prize for cathode ray experimentation to regular TV broadcasts from NBC, CBS and ABC; 42 years from the Curies' award for discovering radiation to the ruins of Hiroshima; and 28 years from Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley's win for semiconductor research to the release of the personal computer.
Read More...
Info

SkyLifter, a Flying Inflatable Saucer, Could Carry Entire Buildings

Adam Hadhazy
TechNewsDaily
Wed, 06 Oct 2010 09:58 UTC
Image
© SkyLifter Pty Ltd
A new airship that is part flying saucer and part blimp could soon carry entire buildings and offer airgoers a fresh way to travel and explore.

Called the SkyLifter and currently in development by an Australian company of the same name, the concept airship relies on a lighter-than-air chamber for its buoyancy, just like a blimp or a balloon. But rather than a standard spherical, cigar, or "bomb" profile for its air-filled envelope, or aerostat, the SkyLifter has a flat, disk shape.

This innovative, flying saucer-esque configuration does not catch the wind like a sail as much as some other airship designs, and in effect gives the craft greater directional control even in gusty conditions, its designers said.
Read More...
Sherlock

Oldest Dinosaur Fossils Found


The Telegraph, UK
Wed, 06 Oct 2010 01:00 UTC
Image
© Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki/University of WarsawThe footprints are thought to be about 250 million years old
Evidence of the oldest dinosaurs yet discovered suggests the reptiles may have been walking the earth far earlier than was previously thought.

A study of footprints found in Poland from the early Triassic age found they dated from just a few million years after what scientists describe as the greatest mass extinction of all time, the ''Permo-Triassic mass extinction''.

The footprints, thought to be about 250 million years old, are ''the indisputably oldest fossils of the dinosaur lineage'', according to the researchers who carried out the study.

The scientists, from Poland, Germany and the US, said the prints, along with those from two other slightly younger sites, provided important insight into the origin and early evolutionary history of dinosaurs.

As well as suggesting that the origin of the animals occurred in the immediate aftermath of the Permo-Triassic event, they indicate that the earliest dinosaur relatives were very small animals.
Read More...
Einstein

Mental muscle: Six ways to boost your brain

Helen Thomson
New Scientist
Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:56 UTC
Image
© New Scientist
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. I crack open an eye. Everyone else has theirs closed. I shut it again. Breathe in, breathe out. Around me people are sitting crossed-legged, meditating. For some it's spiritual, for others an oasis of calm. Me? I'm building a better brain.

A few months ago I would probably have bought a brain-training game, but alas, it turns out they are probably useless. Although your performance on the games improves, that effect doesn't seem to translate into the real world (see "The rise and fall of brain training" at end of article). With that in mind, I wondered if there was anything else I could do to give my grey matter a boost.

Our brains are constantly adapting to information from the world around us. However, some activities make a bigger impression than others. In recent years, researchers have been probing how outside influences, from music to meditation, might change and enhance our brains.

One of the most promising is music - and not via the famous but controversial "Mozart effect", whereby merely listening to classical music is supposed to improve brain performance. Learning to play an instrument brings about dramatic brain changes that not only improve musical skills but can also spill over into other cognitive abilities, including speech, language, memory, attention, IQ and even empathy. Should I dust off my trumpet and get practising?
Read More...
Telescope

Lunar rainbow recreates "Dark Side of the Moon"

Cian O'Luanaigh
New Scientist
Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:51 UTC
Image
© NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
This image of the moon's surface was snapped by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Wide Angle Camera with the sun directly overhead. Under these conditions, surface features show no shadows, causing an increase in brightness in the image called an "opposition surge".

The camera uses different filters to observe different pieces of the ground at different times. Here, the 689, 643, and 604 nanometre filters are displayed in red, green, and blue, respectively.

Because the opposition surge is seen by different filters at different times, when the observations from separate filters are combined to a single colour image, the shifting bright spot is seen as a rainbow, inadvertently recreating Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon".
Read More...