Science & TechnologyS


Chalkboard

First Measurement of Energy Released from a Virus During Infection


Science Daily
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:45 UTC
Image
© Carnegie Mellon University3D reconstruction of bacteriophage lambda with (left) and without (right) DNA.
Within a virus's tiny exterior is a store of energy waiting to be unleashed. When the virus encounters a host cell, this pent-up energy is released, propelling the viral DNA into the cell and turning it into a virus factory. For the first time, Carnegie Mellon University physicist Alex Evilevitch has directly measured the energy associated with the expulsion of viral DNA, a pivotal discovery toward fully understanding the physical mechanisms that control viral infection and designing drugs to interfere with the process.

"We are studying the physics of viruses, not the biology of viruses," said Evilevitch, associate professor of physics in the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon. "By treating viruses as physical objects, we can identify physical properties and mechanisms of infection that are common to a variety of viruses, regardless of their biological makeup, which could lead to the development of broad spectrum antiviral drugs."

Current antiviral medications are highly specialized. They target molecules essential to the replication cycle of specific viruses, such as HIV or influenza, limiting the drugs' use to specific diseases. Additionally, viruses mutate over time and may become less susceptible to the medication. Evilevitch's work in the burgeoning field of physical virology stands to provide tools for the rational design of less-specialized antiviral drugs that will have the ability to treat a broad range of viruses by interrupting the release of viral genomes into cells.
Read More...
Saturn

How the face of Pluto changed in just two years (do you think they can blame it on global warming?)


UK Daily Mail
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:01 UTC
Image
© AFP/Getty ImagesChanging face: Scientists are baffled after new images of the surface of dwarf planet Pluto show it has become 20 per cent more red
Nasa scientists have been left stunned after detailed images of the surface of Pluto reveal it has dramatically changed colour over just a two-year period.

The Hubble Telescope captured the images, which are the most detailed and dramatic ever taken of the distant dwarf planet.

They revealed that the cosmic body, demoted from full planet status in 2006, is significantly redder than it has been for the past several decades.

The photos show a mottled world with a yellow-orange hut, but astronomers say it is 20 per cent more red than it used to be. At the same time its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter, while the southern hemisphere has darkened.
Read More...
Meteor

Did an Asteroid Strike in Australia Plunge Anglo-Saxon England into a Mini Ice-Age?

Claire Bates
Mail Online
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:05 UTC
Asteroid
© Mail OnlineA veil of dust thrown up by an asteroid 2,000ft across may have caused a mini ice-age in 535AD
In the mid-sixth century, Europe and Asia experienced the most severe and protracted episode of cooling of the last 2,000 years.

Sources from the time refer to widespread crop failures and famines as the unseasonal weather took hold. The Gaelic Irish Annals recorded 'a failure of bread' from 536 to 539AD.

Tree ring analysis by Mike Baillie from Queen's University in Belfast also suggested a cool period. He found the Irish oak showed abnormally little growth in 536 and 542. This phenomenon was noted in trees in Sweden and Finland as well.
Read More...
Info

Youth who self-identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual at higher suicide risk


Physorg.com
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:31 UTC
Mental health professionals have long-known that gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) teens face significantly elevated risks of mental health problems, including suicidal thoughts and suicidal attempts. However, a group of McGill University researchers in Montreal has now come to the conclusion that self-identity is the crucial risk-factor, rather than actual sexual behaviours. Their results were published in February in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

The researchers administered a detailed, anonymous questionnaire to nearly 1,900 students in 14 Montreal-area high schools, and found that those teens who self-identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, or who were unsure of their sexual identity, were indeed at higher risk for suicidal ideation and attempts. However, teens who had same-sex attractions or sexual experiences - but thought of themselves as heterosexual - were at no greater risk than the population at large. Perhaps surprisingly, but consistent with previous studies, the majority of teens with same-sex sexual attraction or experience considered themselves to be heterosexual.
Read More...
Radar

Imagining The Fate Of Data After The Apocalypse

Alasdair Wilkins
io9
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
If modern civilization collapsed, could the survivors hope to rebuild using our massive stores of data? Unless we can come up with something way more permanent to put them on in the near future, we probably shouldn't bank on it.

A recent article by Tom Simonite and Michael Le Page in New Scientist tackles this question by positing a minor cataclysm: something bad enough to tear apart civilization as we know it, but not quite enough to kill off humans entirely. Candidates include a pandemic, a financial collapse that would make 2008's pale in comparison, a severe natural disaster, or just the slow accumulation of decay in society's foundations.
Read More...
Bulb

First Germanium Laser

Larry Hardesty
MIT News
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:00 UTC
Image
© Christine Daniloff
New results from MIT's Electronic Materials Research Group bring us closer to computers that use light instead of electricity to move data.

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. It's also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature. Unlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data - and maybe even perform calculations - using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers.

As chips' computational capacity increases, they need higher-bandwidth connections to send data to memory. But conventional electrical connections will soon become impractical, because they'll require too much power to transport data at ever higher rates. Transmitting data with lasers - devices that concentrate light into a narrow, powerful beam - could be much more power-efficient, but it requires a cheap way to integrate optical and electronic components on silicon chips.
Read More...
Clock

NIST's Second "Quantum Logic Clock" Based on Aluminum Ion is Now World's Most Precise Clock

Laura Ost
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:08 UTC
Image
© J. Burrus/NISTNIST postdoctoral researcher James Chin-wen Chou with the world's most precise clock, based on the vibrations of a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom). The ion is trapped inside the metal cylinder (center right).
Clock keeps time to 1 second in 3.7 billion years

Boulder - Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world's most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom.

The new aluminum clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years, according to measurements to be reported in Physical Review Letters.

The new clock is the second version of NIST's "quantum logic clock," so called because it borrows the logical processing used for atoms storing data in experimental quantum computing, another major focus of the same NIST research group. (The logic process is described here.) The second version of the logic clock offers more than twice the precision of the original.
Read More...
Network

U.S. teens lose interest in blogging in favor of social networking sites

Dan Whitcomb
Reuters
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:14 UTC
Image
Blogging by teenagers and young adults has dropped by half over the past three years as they turn instead to texting and social networking sites such as Facebook, a new study shows.

The study released this week by the Pew Internet and American Life project also found that fewer than one in 10 teens were using Twitter, a surprising finding given overall popularity of the micro-blogging site. According to the report, only 14 percent of teenagers who use the Internet say they kept an online journal or blog, compared with a peak of 28 percent in 2006 -- and only 8 percent were using Twitter.

"It was a little bit surprising, although there are definitely explanations given the state of the technological landscape," Pew researcher Aaron Smith told Reuters.
Read More...
Laptop

What the World Knows About Your Computer

Bill Christensen
Technovelgy.com
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:02 UTC
Do you believe that you are anonymous when you surf the web? Your computer may reveal more information than you thought - possibly enough to identify your computer uniquely.

Computer experts refer to the idea of a "device fingerprint," which is a summary of the hardware and software settings that can be collected from your computer by web sites that you visit.

Thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), you can now see what web sites can see when they look at your computer.
Read More...
Info

Hubble Catches Pluto Changing With The Years


Space Daily
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:12 UTC
Pluto
© NASAThis is the most detailed view to date of the entire surface of the dwarf planet Pluto, as constructed from multiple NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken from 2002 to 2003. The center disk (180 degrees) has a mysterious bright spot that is unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost. Pluto is so small and distant that the task of resolving the surface is as challenging as trying to see the markings on a soccer ball 40 miles away. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Buie (Southwest Research Institute). Photo No. STScI-PR10-06a More images and captions at Hubble
NASA today released the most detailed set of images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy and dark molasses-colored, mottled world that is undergoing seasonal changes in its surface color and brightness. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter.

These changes are most likely consequences of surface ices sublimating on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. The dramatic change in color apparently took place in a two-year period, from 2000 to 2002.

The Hubble images will remain our sharpest view of Pluto until NASA's New Horizons probe is within six months of its Pluto flyby. The Hubble pictures are proving invaluable for picking out the planet's most interesting-looking hemisphere for the New Horizons spacecraft to swoop over when it flies by Pluto in 2015.
Read More...