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In Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears

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© Jim Wilson/The New York TimesA huge geothermal project north of San Francisco has raised fears of earthquakes
BASEL, Switzerland - Markus O. Häring, a former oilman, was a hero in this city of medieval cathedrals and intense environmental passion three years ago, all because he had drilled a hole three miles deep near the corner of Neuhaus Street and Shafer Lane.

He was prospecting for a vast source of clean, renewable energy that seemed straight out of a Jules Verne novel: the heat simmering within the earth's bedrock

All seemed to be going well - until Dec. 8, 2006, when the project set off an earthquake, shaking and damaging buildings and terrifying many in a city that, as every schoolchild here learns, had been devastated exactly 650 years before by a quake that sent two steeples of the Münster Cathedral tumbling into the Rhine.

Hastily shut down, Mr. Häring's project was soon forgotten by nearly everyone outside Switzerland. As early as this week, though, an American start-up company, AltaRock Energy, will begin using nearly the same method to drill deep into ground laced with fault lines in an area two hours' drive north of San Francisco.

Residents of the region, which straddles Lake and Sonoma Counties, have already been protesting swarms of smaller earthquakes set off by a less geologically invasive set of energy projects there. AltaRock officials said that they chose the spot in part because the history of mostly small quakes reassured them that the risks were limited.

Like the effort in Basel, the new project will tap geothermal energy by fracturing hard rock more than two miles deep to extract its heat. AltaRock, founded by Susan Petty, a veteran geothermal researcher, has secured more than $36 million from the Energy Department, several large venture-capital firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Google. AltaRock maintains that it will steer clear of large faults and that it can operate safely.

But in a report on seismic impact that AltaRock was required to file, the company failed to mention that the Basel program was shut down because of the earthquake it caused. AltaRock claimed it was uncertain that the project had caused the quake, even though Swiss government seismologists and officials on the Basel project agreed that it did. Nor did AltaRock mention the thousands of smaller earthquakes induced by the Basel project that continued for months after it shut down.

The California project is the first of dozens that could be operating in the United States in the next several years, driven by a push to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and the Obama administration's support for renewable energy.

Info

Artificial noise saves energy

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© Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Against the background of climate change, how can xDSL systems function more energy-efficiently and cost-effectively? Scientists are providing a solution combining existing methods which network providers could implement immediately.

Evil Rays

Mini-beamer in a cell phone or PDA

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© FraunhoferLooking at photos on a cell phone display can be somewhat arduous. A new mini-beamer will make it easier. The beamer is so small that it can be integrated in a cell phone or a PDA. As it does not need an extra light source it also conserves the battery.
A summer barbecue by the lake - as the sausages sizzle on the grill some of the party would like to watch the soccer on TV. Today, a choice has to be made whether to stay by the lake or watch the match on a big public screen or the TV set at home. In future, barbecue enthusiasts and football fans will be able to enjoy both at the same time. Cellphone TV is coming closer and with an innovative mini beamer it will be possible to create a public viewing event on a small scale - for example on a white bathing towel by the side of a lake.

Control Panel

First acoustic metamaterial 'superlens' created by U. of I. researchers

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© L. Brian Stauffer A team of Illinois researchers led by Nicholas X. Fang, left, a professor of mechanical science and engineering, have created the world's first acoustic "superlens." Doctoral student Shu Zhang holding the lens and Leilei Yin, a microscopist at Beckman Institute, were co-authors.
Champaign, Ill. - A team of researchers at the University of Illinois has created the world's first acoustic "superlens," an innovation that could have practical implications for high-resolution ultrasound imaging, non-destructive structural testing of buildings and bridges, and novel underwater stealth technology.

The team, led by Nicholas X. Fang, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at Illinois, successfully focused ultrasound waves through a flat metamaterial lens on a spot roughly half the width of a wavelength at 60.5 kHz using a network of fluid-filled Helmholtz resonators.

Magnify

CSHL scientists harness logic of 'Sudoku' math puzzle to vastly enhance genome-sequencing capability

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. - A math-based game that has taken the world by storm with its ability to delight and puzzle may now be poised to revolutionize the fast-changing world of genome sequencing and the field of medical genetics, suggests a new report by a team of scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). The report will be published as the cover story in the July 1st issue of the journal Genome Research.

Combining a 2,000-year-old Chinese math theorem with concepts from cryptology, the CSHL scientists have devised "DNA Sudoku." The strategy allows tens of thousands of DNA samples to be combined, and their sequences - the order in which the letters of the DNA alphabet (A, T, G, and C) line up in the genome - to be determined all at once.

Saturn

Saturn moon may harbour life-giving ocean

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This 2006 NASA Cassini space probe mosaic image shows Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Huge geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus may be fed by a salty sea below its surface, boosting the odds of extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System, according to a study released Wednesday.

Researchers in Europe detected salt particles in the volcanic vapour-and-ice jets that shoot hundreds of kilometres (miles) into space, the strongest evidence to date of a liquid ocean under the moon's icy crust.

Scientists already knew that tiny Enceladus, only 500 kilometers across, had two of the three essential ingredients for the emergence of life.

Red Flag

Shifts in Earth's Magnetic Field Driven by Oceans?

The flow of seawater across Earth's surface could be responsible for small fluctuations in the planet's magnetic field, a controversial new study says.

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If so, the research would challenge the widely accepted theory that Earth's magnetic field is generated by a churning molten core, or dynamo, in the planet's interior.

"If I am correct, then the dynamo theory is in bad shape, and all kinds of things about core dynamics also fall apart," said study author Gregory Ryskin, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Ryskin's study has attracted fierce criticism from other geophysicists, with some experts dismissing the idea as "junk" science.

Satellite

NASA Moon Impactor completes Lunar Maneuver

Moon as seen from LCROSS satellite
© NASAOne of the first images from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) using the visible light camera during the swingby of the moon. LCROSS has nine science instruments that collect different types of data which are complementary to each other. These instruments provide for a robust collection of data about the composition of the lunar regolith.
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, successfully completed its most significant early mission milestone Tuesday with a lunar swingby and calibration of its science instruments. The satellite will search for water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon's south pole.

With the assist of the moon's gravity, LCROSS and its attached Centaur booster rocket successfully entered into polar Earth orbit at 6:20 a.m. PDT on June 23. The maneuver puts the spacecraft and Centaur on course for a pair of impacts near the moon's south pole on Oct. 9.

Hourglass

Stone age water well discovered in Cyprus

Archaeologists in Cyprus have found what they believe are some of the world's oldest water wells, dating from the Stone Age 10,500 years ago and containing the skeleton of a young woman.

The wells, unearthed by an excavator at a building site close to the western coastal town of Paphos, adds to another five previously excavated in the region by a team from the University of Edinburgh.

"Radiocarbon dates indicate that these wells are 9,000 to 10,500 years old, which places them amongst the earliest water wells known in the world," the Antiquities Department said in a statement Tuesday.

Radar

Time Travel: Fantasy or Science?

Storrs, Connecticut--For some, the idea of time travel is about fantasy. For others it's science. But for Ronald Mallett, it was love -- a son's love for his father.

You might even call it his lifelong mission.

"I thought if I could build a time machine to save my father's life and see him again," said Mallett, whose father died when he was just 10.

"My father was someone who was the center of my life -- I was the oldest of four children and we grew up in the Bronx. And my father was a television repairman," Mallet said.