Science & TechnologyS


Wine

Self-cleaning wool and silk developed using nanotechnology

Roger Highfield
Telegraph
Mon, 11 Feb 2008 06:29 UTC
Good news for those who hate washing socks, are worried about hygiene or resent spending money on dry cleaning: self cleaning forms of wool and silk have been developed with the help of nanotechnology.

Wool socks, skirts and silk ties may soon clean themselves of smells and stains in the sunshine, researchers in Australia and China suggest.

Self cleaning wool
©Unknown
Red wine stained wool with no treatment (top), a stain-treating agent (middle) and nano particle coating (bottom)
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Einstein

Gravitational Waves: Einstein's Elusive Children

Andrew Bridges
Space.com
Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:29 UTC
Gravitational waves are distortions or the warping of the very fabric of space-time, which Einstein described as different aspects of reality itself. As a fabric, space-time can be measured either in terms of distance or time.

However, large amounts of mass or energy think here of the incredibly dense core of an exploded star known as a neutron star can curve space-time, resulting in the warping of the fabric which can be observed as gravitational shifts.
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Evil Rays

Scientists create the sound of silence

Roger Highfield
Telegraph.co.uk
Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:18 UTC
Scientists have created the sound of silence, an "acoustic cloak" that could one day block out the din of noisy neighbours.

Two teams have come up with a design of special materials that could cloak an object from sound and a third has already devised a scheme to create them, so sound waves travel seamlessly around them.

The work follows recent research on "invisibility cloaks", where a number of teams have shown that synthetic materials, called metamaterials - which are designed down to the microscopic level - can make beams of light flow around an object to make it invisible.
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Bug

Like ants, humans are easily led

Roger Highfield
Telegraph.co.uk
Sat, 16 Feb 2008 01:10 UTC
When it comes to being misled, humans are no more sophisticated than ants or fish.

Implications for evacuations and how to guide people safely in an emergency will arise from the discovery that most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we are trailing after someone who does not know where they are going and taking the most meandering route.

Even more striking, even when we are shown a faster route, we prefer to stick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too, a finding that could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuating a building or ship in an emergency.
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Eye 2

How believing can be seeing: study shows how context dictates what we believe we see


University College London
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:07 UTC
Scientists at UCL (University College London) have found the link between what we expect to see, and what our brain tells us we actually saw. The study, published in this week's PLoS Journal of Computational Biology, reveals that the context surrounding what we see is all important - sometimes overriding the evidence gathered by our eyes and even causing us to imagine things which aren't really there.
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Pharoah

Archaeologists dig up 'oldest' African human sacrifice


Associated Press
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:02 UTC
French archaeologists in Sudan say they have uncovered the oldest proof of human sacrifice in Africa, hailing the discovery as the biggest Neolithic find on the continent for years.
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Sheeple

Human Sheep - study reveals flock mentality, how 5% can influence the crowd

University of Leeds
brainmysteries.com
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:01 UTC


Flock of humans
©Unknown
People will naturally 'flock' when they are unsure of the direction to travel.

Have you ever arrived somewhere and wondered how you got there? Scientists at the University of Leeds believe they may have found the answer, with research that shows that humans flock like sheep and birds, subconsciously following a minority of individuals.

Results from a study at the University of Leeds show that it takes a minority of just five per cent to influence a crowd's direction - and that the other 95 per cent follow without realising it.
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Bulb

Identical twins not as identical as believed


Uppsala University
Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:18 UTC
Contrary to our previous beliefs, identical twins are not genetically identical. This surprising finding is presented by American, Swedish, and Dutch scientists in a study being published today in the prestigious journal American Journal of Human Genetics. The finding may be of great significance for research on hereditary diseases and for the development of new diagnostic methods.
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Telescope

Possible Progenitor of Special Supernova Type Detected


Chandra Press Room
Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:11 UTC
Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have reported the possible detection of a binary star system that was later destroyed in a supernova explosion. The new method they used provides great future promise for finding the detailed origin of these important cosmic events.
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Laptop

Doctors Will Soon Be Able To Feel Organs Via A Display Screen


sciencedaily.com
Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:54 UTC
With the aid of computerized image analysis, it may be possible in the future for radiologists to feel images with the help of a three-dimensional mouse. Erik Vidholm at Uppsala University has been involved in developing the new technology, which makes it easier to diagnose and plan the treatment of cancer, for instance.

Computerized image analysis can be used to determine the size of organs like the liver, or to construct three-dimensional models of organs when surgery or radiation is being planned. The quality of these images often varies, however - what's more we humans can actually look very different from each other inside, which makes it difficult for the computer to find the information that is relevant fully automatically.

liver
©Uppsala University
Adaptation of a computer model to an image of a liver. With the aid of the adapted model it is possible to measure the volume of the liver, for instance, or calculate changes in shape and migrations.
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