Science & TechnologyS


Evil Rays

Towards Cloaking Visible Light: Three-dimensional Metamaterials For The Optical Wavelength Range


ScienceDaily
Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:30 UTC
Last year researchers from Duke University stunned the world when they announced a cloaking device for the microwave range. This device made use of metamaterials that had a negative refractive index for electromagnetic radiation. The metamaterials were carefully designed split-ring resonators with a structure size much smaller than the wavelength. Only 10 stacked layers of metamaterials were necessary to achieve the desired invisibility effect.

©Stuttgart University/ MPI
3D metamaterials. Gold nano split ring resonators are stacked.
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Bulb

Astrobiology Top 10: Brought Back to Life


Astrobiology Magazine
Wed, 26 Dec 2007 07:17 UTC
Astrobiology Magazine is looking back over 2007, highlighting the Top 10 astrobiology stories of the year. At number 8 is the recovery of DNA from ancient microorganisms. The DNA showed an "exponential decline" after 1.1 million years, indicating how long DNA could be preserved in rocks in cold places. Such knowledge could help astrobiologists in their quest to understand early life on Earth and to look for life in cold places like Mars and Europa. (This story was originally published on August 15, 2007.)
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Laptop

Explosives On A Chip: Unique Structure Enables New Generation Of Military Micro-detonators


ScienceDaily
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 06:41 UTC
Tiny copper structures with pores at both the nanometer and micron size scales could play a key role in the next generation of detonators used to improve the reliability, reduce the size and lower the cost of certain military munitions.

©Gary Meek
Copper structure shown here is a precursor material for explosive compounds used in military detonators. The copper structure can be formed on chips, then converted to an explosive compound. The compound is being used to improve US Navy detonator devices.

Developed by a team of scientists from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and the Indian Head Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, the highly-uniform copper structures will be incorporated into integrated circuits -- then chemically converted to millimeter-diameter explosives. Because they can be integrated into standard microelectronics fabrication processes, the copper materials will enable micro-electromechanical (MEMS) fuzes for military munitions to be mass-produced like computer chips.
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Telescope

Mysterious Cosmic Powerhouses Explored


Science Daily
Tue, 25 Dec 2007 06:33 UTC
By working in synergy with a ground-based telescope array, the joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/NASA Suzaku X-ray observatory is shedding new light on some of the most energetic objects in our galaxy, but objects that remain shrouded in mystery.

These cosmic powerhouses pour out vast amounts of energy, and they accelerate particles to almost the speed of light. But very little is known about these sources because they were discovered only recently. "Understanding these objects is one of the most intriguing problems in astrophysics," says Takayasu Anada of the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science in Kanagawa, Japan. Anada is lead author of a paper presented last week at a Suzaku science conference in San Diego, Calif.

Suzaku resolved an X-ray source (left) that was also seen in gamma rays by the H.E.S.S. array (right). The object, HESS J1614-518, is accelerating protons to nearly the speed of light (Credit: JAXA/H.E.S.S.)
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Eye 1

New method enables scientists to see smells


Rockefeller University
Wed, 26 Dec 2007 05:20 UTC
Animals and insects communicate through an invisible world of scents. By exploiting infrared technology, researchers at Rockefeller University just made that world visible. With the ability to see smells, these scientists now show that when fly larvae detect smells with both olfactory organs they find their way toward a scented target more accurately than when they detect them with one.
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Bulb

The Quest for a New Class of Superconductors


Los Alamos National Laboratory
Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:09 UTC
Fifty years after the Nobel-prize winning explanation of how superconductors work, a research team from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Edinburgh, and Cambridge University are suggesting another mechanism for the still-mysterious phenomenon.
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Alarm Clock

Near-Earth Asteroid Fly-By to Occur Jan. 29


spaceweather.com
Mon, 24 Dec 2007 19:00 UTC
Mark your calendar: On Jan. 29, 2008, one night before a Tunguska-class (50m-wide) asteroid threatens to strike Mars, an even larger asteroid will fly past our own planet.
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Magnet

'Drilling Up' Into Space for Energy

Charles J. Hanley
Statesman.com
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 18:47 UTC
BALI, Indonesia - While great nations fretted over coal, oil and global warming, one of the smallest at the U.N. climate conference was looking toward the heavens for its energy.

The annual meeting's corridors can be a sounding board for unlikely "solutions" to climate change - from filling the skies with soot to block the sun, to cultivating oceans of seaweed to absorb the atmosphere's heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Unlike other ideas, however, one this year had an influential backer, the Pentagon, which is investigating whether space-based solar power - beaming energy down from satellites - will provide "affordable, clean, safe, reliable, sustainable and expandable energy for mankind."


Comment: For mankind? or for the pathocracy?

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Cow Skull

Where and why humans made skates out of animal bones


Wiley-Blackwell
Tue, 25 Dec 2007 09:05 UTC
Archaeological evidence shows that bone skates (skates made of animal bones) are the oldest human powered means of transport, dating back to 3000 BC. Why people started skating on ice and where is not as clear, since ancient remains were found in several locations spread across Central and North Europe.

In a recent paper, published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Dr Formenti and Professor Minetti show substantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that the birth of ice skating took place in Southern Finland, where the number of lakes within 100 square kilometres is the highest in the world.
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Bulb

Sleep chemical central to effectiveness of deep brain stimulation


University of Rochester Medical Center
Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:54 UTC
A brain chemical that makes us sleepy also appears to play a central role in the success of deep brain stimulation to ease symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease and other brain disorders. The surprising finding is outlined in a paper published online Dec. 23 in Nature Medicine.

The work shows that adenosine, a brain chemical most widely known as the cause of drowsiness, is central to the effect of deep brain stimulation, or DBS. The technique is used to treat people affected by Parkinson's disease and who have severe tremor, and it's also being tested in people who have severe depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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