Science & TechnologyS


Einstein

Scientists 'Create Simple Life Form'

Danny Buckland
Mirror.co.uk
Fri, 21 May 2010 21:35 UTC
A billionaire biologist claims to have created artificial life.

And he says his designer microbe could have a revolutionary impact on healthcare, ushering in new treatments and drugs.

The £30million research programme, lasting 15 years, manufactured artificial DNA, inserted it in a bacterial cell and watched it reproduce itself.

Dr Craig Venter, who heads his selfnamed research institute in Maryland, believes the work will have applications from synthesising fuel to protecting the environment. Some scientists have hailed the research, published in the journal Science, as a defining moment in biology.
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Satellite

New 'Microlens' Could Lead to Ultra-Powerful Satellite Cameras and Night-Vision Devices

Darren Quick
Gizmag
Thu, 20 May 2010 01:04 UTC
Microlens
© GizmagThe new 'microlens' (left) leverages the unique properties of nanoscale gold to 'squeeze' light into the tiny holes in its surface (magnified on the right).
Anyone who likes to get their gear off for a spot of naked sunbathing in the backyard may have to think twice in the future. Researchers have developed a new nanotechnology-based "microlens" that could lead to a new generation of ultra-powerful satellite cameras and night-vision devices. Thankfully, the new lens is used for infrared imaging, so the technology is more likely to be used for security and monitoring climate change and deforestation than spying on naturists boosting their vitamin D levels.

Developed by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the lens uses gold to boost the strength of infrared imaging. By leveraging the unique properties of nanoscale gold to "squeeze" light into tiny holes in the surface of the device, the researchers have doubled the detection cabability of a quantum dot-based infrared detector. With some refinements, the researchers expect this new technology should be able to enhance this by up to 20 times.

According to project leader Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer, the breakthrough is the first in more than a decade to demonstrate success in enhancing the signal of an infrared detector without also increasing the noise.

"Infrared detection is a big priority right now, as more effective infrared satellite imaging technology holds the potential to benefit everything from homeland security to monitoring climate change and deforestation," said Lin.
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Meteor

First Results on Impact of Large Celestial Body on Jupiter


Asian News International
Fri, 21 May 2010 18:20 UTC
Washington, DC -- Scientists have published the first results dealing with the impact of a celestial body on the planet Jupiter last July.

The results of the research, conducted by Planetary Sciences Group at the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country with its headquarters at the Faculty of Engineering in Bilbao and led by professor Agustín Sánchez Lavega, have appeared in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

An amateur Australian astronomer came across the presence of a large, black spot close to the polar region of the planet Jupiter, the biggest in the Solar System, on July 19, 2009.

The impact had taken place at a very high latitude close to the planet's South Pole barely 3 or 4 hours before the spot was seen on Jupiter's dark side (at night), and this prevented it from being observed directly.

The trajectory was in the opposite direction of the fragments of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that crashed into Jupiter exactly 15 years previously, in July 1994.

After the world's large observatories had been alerted, the confirmation came through in a matter of hours that the spot consisted of the remains of ash left behind following the impact of a comet or asteroid.

The world's main observatories, including the Hubble space telescope among others, immediately set about analysing the phenomenon.
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Take 2

World's dominant internet search company wants to deliver TV programmes ‑ and the adverts - in a marriage of technology

Charles Arthur
Guardian
Fri, 21 May 2010 13:03 UTC
The company most people use to search the internet wants to be the company that delivers your TV programmes - and sells the adverts to run alongside them. That's Google, which has announced the launch of Google TV, hoping to marry the technology of television with the internet.

It wants to turn your TV set - or the set-top box above it - into a computer capable of turning web video into a TV signal so that you can range across the internet.

"We've been waiting a long, long time for this day," Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, told the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, where the company was showing off its latest technology offerings. "It took a lot to make this happen."
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Sherlock

Archaeologists Unearth 7,000-Year-Old Swastika in North-Western Bulgaria


Balkan Travellers
Thu, 20 May 2010 12:00 UTC
Image
© Nartsis Torbov
A pottery fragment with the image of a swastika, dating to 7,000 years ago, and an ancient female adornment with a phallus are among the artefacts shown for the first time as part of the on-going exhibition "Gods, Symbols and Ancient Signs" in the museum in Vratsa in north-western Bulgaria.

The swastika-decorated clay pottery fragment was found by archaeologists during excavations of a ritual pit around the village of Altimir near the town of Vratsa. The find dates back to the beginning of the Stone-Copper Age and shows that this symbol traverses the centuries and cannot be linked solely to Hitler's party, archaeologists explained.

The swastika as a symbol dates to the Neolithic period in Ancient India, according to previous archaeological finds. It can also be seen on Roman and Medieval artefacts. Although it was commonly used all over much of the world without stigma and still occurs widely in religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the swastika has become stigmatized in the Western world, because of its iconic usage in Nazi Germany.
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Magnify

Pagan Altar Unearthed at Building Site in Israel


The Associated Press
Thu, 20 May 2010 18:00 UTC
Jerusalem - Israeli archaeologists say workers have uncovered an ancient pagan altar while clearing ground for construction of a hotly disputed hospital emergency room.

They say the discovery proves an ancient cemetery at the site that has been at the center of protests by ultra-Orthodox Jews does not contain the graves of Jews.

Protesters claim an emergency room extension at Barzilai Hospital in the city of Ashkelon is being built on an ancient Jewish cemetery.

They demonstrated there when officials began removing graves this week, and rioting erupted in ultra-Orthodox areas of Jerusalem.
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Heart

New Computer Program Predicts Heart Attacks


technewsdaily.com
Thu, 20 May 2010 19:54 UTC
Image
© EPFLBlood flows through the left coronary artery in this supercomputer simulation.
A supercomputing lab in Switzerland has developed a flowing 3-D model of the cardiovascular system that should allow for predictions of certain heart diseases before they become dangerous.

The computer program accurately models the complex system of blood flow in the hearts of individual people at a precision of ten millionths of a meter. Based on a detailed heart scan, the simulation juggles over a billion different variables in order to represent a fluid containing ten million red blood cells.
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MIB

How to Secure Privacy on Facebook

Leslie Meredith
technewsdaily.com
Thu, 20 May 2010 19:48 UTC
Facebook this week hinted at new simple option for Facebook privacy settings―high, medium and low―where users could opt to share everything, nothing or an arbitrary set of data with one click. This would supplement the current privacy options that have sparked criticism for being too complex.

Facebook's Public Policy Director, Tim Sparapani talked with Kojo Nnamdi on his WAMU radio program Tuesday and stated that there will be "simplistic bands of privacy that users can choose from in the next couple weeks."
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Info

Magnesium: Super Material of the Future

Jeremy Hsu
technewsdaily.com
Thu, 20 May 2010 19:39 UTC
Cars could use more magnesium alloys to save on both weight and fuel, but only if engineers can figure out how to make one of the most widely available metallic elements on Earth capable of withstanding industrial manufacturing processes.

Magnesium burns at high temperatures with a brilliant white light, which has made it popular for use in fireworks and school science lab experiments. Now an urgent need for more lightweight, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly materials could turn magnesium into a revolutionary material for everything from cars and mobile electronics, according to an article published in the May 21 issue of the journal Science.
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Info

Reconsidering Genghis Khan

Charlie McCollum
Mercury News
Thu, 20 May 2010 19:07 UTC
GenghisKhan_1
© Batsaikhan MThis statue of Genghis Khan is a reproduction of a huge statue that sits in front of a government building in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It is one of many images of Genghis Khan that appear throughout the city.
In history written from a Western perspective, Genghis Khan - the ruler of the 13th-century Mongolian empire - occupies a place of infamy, perceived as a brutal, ruthless and primitive warlord who brought death and destruction to the civilized world.

When Don Lessem - the organizer of "Genghis Khan: The Exhibition," which opens Saturday at the Tech Museum - first traveled to Mongolia in the late 1980s, he had the Western view of Genghis. But then, he says, "I saw all these glowing descriptions of him and all the statues to him and thought, 'Why?' Because I had this impression of him as a bloodthirsty villain. Then the Mongolian people set me straight, and I came away thinking, 'This guy is incredible.' "

In fact, says William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian Institution's Arctic Studies Center, Genghis was an extraordinary ruler whose historical legacy needs to be reassessed in the West.
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