Science & TechnologyS


Telescope

Black holes are the ultimate particle smashers

Jessica Griggs
New Scientist
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:00 UTC
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© NASA / CXC / S.Allen (Kavli Inst., Stanford) et al; Radio in blue - NRAO / G.Taylor (VLA ); Infrared in green - NASA / ESA / W.Harris (McMaster Univ.)When material falls toward the black hole in the centre of the galaxy NGC 4696, energy is produced as some of the matter is blasted back out in jets.
What will happen to fundamental physics when our descendants reach the limit of particle accelerator technology? We'll surely run out of space and money long before the smallest building blocks of the universe can be probed with machines, because of the massive energies required.

One saviour may be the universe's own particle smashers - black holes. If two particles are accelerating towards a rotating black hole with a certain velocity then they should collide with energies higher than anything we could hope to achieve on Earth.

The singularity at the centre of a black hole is so dense that any matter and light that reaches the black hole's point of no return, or event horizon, gets sucked in due to the extreme gravitational attraction. The closer that particles get to the black hole, the greater the energy they have.
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Control Panel

Hubble Opens New Eyes On The Universe


Science Daily
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:50 UTC
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© NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO TeamButterfly emerges from stellar demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, ready to uncover new worlds, peer ever deeper into space, and even map the invisible backbone of the universe.

The first snapshots from the refurbished Hubble showcase the 19-year-old telescope's new vision. Topping the list of exciting new views are colorful multi-wavelength pictures of far- flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation," and a "butterfly" nebula.

With the release of these images, astronomers have declared Hubble a fully rejuvenated observatory. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., unveiled the images at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 9, 2009.

With its new imaging camera, Hubble can view galaxies, star clusters, and other objects across a wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. A new spectrograph slices across billions of light-years to map the filamentary structure of the universe and trace the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life.
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Cow

Pain-free animals would not be guilt-free


New Scientist
Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:34 UTC
In Douglas Adams's novel The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, the character Arthur Dent is horrified when a cow-like creature is wheeled to the restaurant table, introduces itself as the dish of the day and proceeds to describe the cuts of meat that are available from its body. The cow has been bred to want to be eaten, and to be capable of saying so.

As so often happens with Adams's work, the truth isn't too far behind. This week we report on proposals to genetically engineer livestock to be untroubled by pain - something all too common in intensively farmed animals (see Pain-free animals could take suffering out of farming). The concept treats cows, pigs and chickens as if they were inanimate objects whose suffering is like a computer program in need of debugging.

As with Adams's fictional cow, there is something deeply unsettling about an animal engineered to be pain-free. One researcher called the idea "icky", and conversations about it around our office often ended in awkward silence, the thought too unsavoury to discuss.

But also as with Adams's cow, there is a cold logic that is hard to argue against. Eating an animal that wants to be eaten is surely better than eating one that doesn't; engineering a farm animal so it does not suffer from pain is surely more humane. If factory farming must exist, then surely we have a moral duty to limit the distress it inflicts.
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Propaganda

Science and media disconnect? Maybe not, says a new study

Sharon Dunwoody
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:34 UTC
Madison - The prevailing wisdom among many scientists and scientific organizations is that, as a rule, scientists are press shy, and those who aren't are mavericks.

However, a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, published in the current issue (summer 2009) of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, suggests otherwise. The study, conducted by journalism professor Sharon Dunwoody, life sciences communication professor Dominique Brossard and graduate student Anthony Dudo, provides evidence that many mainstream scientists occasionally work with journalists and some do so routinely. And the interplay between scientists and journalists, say Brossard and Dunwoody, has been remarkably stable since the 1980s.
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Info

Cement's Basic Molecular Structure Finally Decoded

Denise Brehm
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thu, 10 Sep 2009 00:28 UTC
In the 2,000 or so years since the Roman Empire employed a naturally occurring form of cement to build a vast system of concrete aqueducts and other large edifices, researchers have analyzed the molecular structure of natural materials and created entirely new building materials such as steel, which has a well-documented crystalline structure at the atomic scale.

Oddly enough, the three-dimensional crystalline structure of cement hydrate - the paste that forms and quickly hardens when cement powder is mixed with water - has eluded scientific attempts at decoding, despite the fact that concrete is the most prevalent man-made material on earth and the focus of a multibillion-dollar industry that is under pressure to clean up its act. The manufacture of cement is responsible for about 5 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, and new emission standards proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could push the cement industry to the developing world.
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Attention

Gecko Tail Has A Mind Of Its Own, Scientists Discover


Science Daily
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:22 UTC
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© Stockphoto/Fedor SelivanovGreen gecko. New research shows that the tails of geckos and other lizards exhibit not only rhythmic but also complex movements, including flips, jumps and lunges, after the tails are shed.
Geckos and other lizards have long been known for their incredible ability to shed their tails as a decoy for predators, but little is known about the movements and what controls the tail once it separates from the lizard's body.

Anthony Russell of the University of Calgary and Tim Higham of Clemson University in South Carolina are closer to solving this mystery as outlined in a paper they co-authored published in the journal Biology Letters.

The scientists demonstrate that tails exhibit not only rhythmic but also complex movements, including flips, jumps and lunges, after the tails are shed. Although one previous study has looked at movement of the tail after it is severed, no study up to this point has quantified movement patterns of the tail by examining the relationship between such patterns and muscular activity.
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Family

Fairy Tales have Ancient Origin

Richard Gray
Telegraph UK
Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:58 UTC
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© GettyDr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world
Popular fairy tales and folk stories are more ancient than was previously thought, according research by biologists.

They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

The researchers adopted techniques used by biologists to create the taxonomic tree of life, which shows how every species comes from a common ancestor.
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Magnify

Colossal Apollo Statue Unearthed in Turkey

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:41 UTC
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© Francesco D'Andria The bust of the recently discovered statue of the Greek god Apollo appears above. The massive statue, around four meters (13 feet) in height, is one of only about a dozen in existence.
A colossal statue of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, music and poetry, has emerged from white calcified cliffs in southwestern Turkey, Italian archaeologists announced.

Colossal statues were very popular in antiquity, as evidenced by the lost giant statues of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Colossus of Nero. Most of them vanished long ago -- their material re-used in other building projects.
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Info

Electrical circuit runs entirely off power in trees

Hannah Hickey
University of Washington
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:35 UTC
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© University of WashingtonElectrical engineers Babak Parviz and Brian Otis and undergraduate student Carlton Himes (right to left) demonstrate a circuit that runs entirely off tree power.
You've heard about flower power. What about tree power? It turns out that it's there, in small but measurable quantities. There's enough power in trees for University of Washington researchers to run an electronic circuit, according to results to be published in an upcoming issue of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Transactions on Nanotechnology.

"As far as we know this is the first peer-reviewed paper of someone powering something entirely by sticking electrodes into a tree," said co-author Babak Parviz, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering.
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Info

Houseplants cut indoor ozone

Michael W. Neff
American Society for Horticultural Science
Tue, 08 Sep 2009 23:21 UTC
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© Dennis DecoteauExperimental chambers in a Penn State University greenhouse were equipped with a charcoal filtration air supply system to measure ozone depletion rates.
University Park, Pennsylvania - Ozone, the main component of air pollution, or smog, is a highly reactive, colorless gas formed when oxygen reacts with other chemicals. Although ozone pollution is most often associated with outdoor air, the gas also infiltrates indoor environments like homes and offices. Ozone can be released by ordinary copy machines, laser printers, ultraviolet lights, and some electrostatic air purification systems, all of which contribute to increased indoor ozone levels. Topping the extensive list of toxic effects of ozone on humans are pulmonary edema, hemorrhage, inflammation, and reduction of lung function.
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