Softpedia News - Science

New Solar Telescope Launches this Winter

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:22:00 GMT

In spite of being right under our noses, the Sun is still very little understood. While its physical and chemical traits have been established some time ago, there is still confusion about the underlying mechanisms that trigger the formation of events such as solar storms. Predicting them is of vital importance for our safety. As such, engineers at the American space agency NASA will launch a new telescope this winter, called the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), Space reports.

The field of solar dynamics is very complex one, especially because it carries so much importance. Very large solar storms can penetrate the magnetosphere – our planet's protective shield – and wreak havoc among electrical grids. But, most importantly, they can “fry” satellites in orbit, bringing down communications networks and strategic capabilities for a large number of countries. Additionally, there is currently a permanent, six-member crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which will basically be doomed if they are in the way of such a massive solar storm.

It will be the SDO's job to ensure that the intricate workings of the Sun's magnetic fields are revealed. It is scheduled to spend more than 5 years studying the stars, hopefully sufficient time to figure out the mechanisms that govern the 11-ye... (read more)

Smaller Brains Sometimes Think Better

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:46:00 GMT

In a new comparative study of animal brains, it was revealed that the size of the brain is not necessarily a clear indicator that more mass equals more smarts. In a paper published in the November 17 issue of the respected scientific journal Current Biology, researchers report that insects with brains the size of a pinhead can at times outsmart much bigger animals, with brains several orders of magnitude larger. Past studies suggest that larger animals have larger brain mass simply because they need to control more things, and not on account of the fact that they are smarter, LiveScience reports.

One of the reasons for larger cortical mass could be the fact that larger creatures, such as mice, men and elephants, need to control a lot more organs than insects do. These organs are also more complex, and require a lot of special attention, especially from the circulatory system. Species such as humans also need to control larger, more powerful muscles, and ensuring smooth control over the limbs – such as when performing delicate tasks – requires a lot of superior brain functions.

“In bigger brains we often don't find more complexity, just an endless repetition of the same neural circuits over and over. This might add detail to remembered images or sounds, but not add any degree of complexity. To use... (read more)

The 'Quantum Internet' Is Possible

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:32:00 GMT

Quantum computers are one of the most promising and hard-to-reach goals in the world today. These machines promise unprecedented calculation power, that would make today's supercomputers look like mere pocket calculators. But achieving stable quantum operations is tremendously difficult, and groups around the world are hitting their heads against the wall trying to figure this thing out. The same is the case with quantum communications, where data is handled on similarly-unstable structures.

Now, two researchers at the University of Potsdam believe that they may have discovered a way of weeding out unwanted knots that form in this type of communications. The thing that makes this endeavor incredibly difficult is the fact that quantum states are very hard to achieve and maintain. The goal is to produce structures that can code information in three or more states at the same time, which would roughly translate into rows of “1s”, “0s” and “1s and 0s” flowing at the same time on a single quantum state carrier (for example a photon or group of photons).

What the two researchers did was to produce a theoretical mathematical model that shows how knots in quantum communications can be “combed out”, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the data being carried from one... (read more)

Hiding Workplace Anger May Result in Heart Attacks

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:52:00 GMT

Swedish researchers have recently finished compiling a new report, which seems to suggest that holding in the anger caused by colleagues or bosses at the workplace could be detrimental to people's health. The correlation is especially true in the case of working men. In their case, it was revealed that the risk of heart attacks more than doubles. The investigation was made on a large number of males in Sweden and so the results are representative for the entire population, the BBC News reports.

More than 2,755 employees from the city of Stockholm were observed in the new survey. None of the participants had suffered from heart attacks before the study began. Each of the participants was asked about the state of their relationships with their colleagues at work, as well as about the problems that they had with people at the work place. According to the team, the relation between heart diseases and held-up anger is clearly visible and statistically very significant. Details of the conclusion appear in the latest issue of the respected Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The researchers also invented a new word to describe the various processes associated with men keeping all of their accumulated anger deep inside – covert coping. They argue that this is naturally wrong and that men should... (read more)

IBM Enters the Microfluidic Devices Market

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:21:00 GMT

The IBM Corporation has officially entered the lab-on-a-chip market, with the development of its first microfluidic device. Their new instrument could offer a potent diagnostics tool against numerous diseases and virus types, as it makes use of capillary action to draw its conclusions. According to the company, the tool only requires a small drop of blood to operate and the results are almost always to the point, Technology Review reports.

The device is, of course, filled with tiny channels, which draw in the drop of blood and then pass it through intricate networks of smaller channels. The chip itself is laden with numerous markers that react to the pathogens creating a large number of medical conditions and the results are then displayed within 15 minutes, representatives from IBM say. One of the co-developers of the new device is Emmanuel Delamarche, a scientist with the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, in Switzerland.

University Hospital Basel researcher Luc Gervais, who also works for IBM says that one of the main advantages the new instrument has is the fact that it features no moving parts. Rather than employing an active blood-sorting method, it uses capillary action to separate blood in its components and then pump it through the various arrays of channels that make up its interior. At this point, &ldq... (read more)

Wheel Stall Stopped Spirit's Second Drive

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:08:00 GMT

On Sol 2092 (Saturday, November 21), the Spirit rover received a new set of commands to drive, as experts were trying to move ahead with the plan of extricating it from its trap. The robot drove into a patch of loose soil called Troy in late April, and the powder-like dust did not allow for it to move since. Only recently have engineers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manage the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission, decided to attempt and drive the machine out of its predicament.

The first drive attempt ended prematurely, just seconds after it was initiated. The fault was owed to the fact that the mission planner had set the rover's tilt limits too tight. As soon as the wheels began spinning, the robot exceeded its maximum allowed tilt, and the onboard computer stopped the drive. JPL engineers then spent the next days assessing Spirit's situation, until finally coming to a conclusion about how to proceed next. The initial plans called for the robot to be driven back on its tracks, until it reached harder soil again.

The second drive attempt took place a couple of days later, with revised tilt limits. The machine budged by only an inch, or about 1.2 centimeters, forward and 7 millimeters to the left. The movement also sank the rover into Troy by about 4 millimeters. The second command that w... (read more)

Last Day on the ISS for the Atlantis Crew

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:25:00 GMT

Throughout today, the 12 astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), featuring both members of the orbital outpost and the docked space shuttle Atlantis, will conduct the last maintenance work on the facility. This is the last day the two crews will spend together, as Atlantis is scheduled to undock tomorrow and head back home. After having successfully completed three spacewalks, the astronauts can finally have a moment to themselves before parting ways, Space reports.

After the shuttle departs, there will be only five permanent crew members left on the ISS. NASA astronaut Nicole Stott will hitch a ride with her colleagues back to Earth, marking the last scheduled time when an ISS astronaut is brought back home on the shuttles. From now on, the aging spacecrafts will only be used as workhorses, delivering and replacing the massive parts that make up the station or delivering new modules. One such example is Node 3, which was recently handed over to the American space agency and is scheduled to fly to the station in February 2010.

During the current flight, the shuttle delivered more than 15 tons of supplies to the station, which have mostly been unloaded. However, some of them are still on the spacecraft and astronauts will work throughout today to secure them on the station. The crews will part ... (read more)

New Alien-Searching Code Created

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:06:00 GMT

Over the years, numerous initiatives that sought to find alien civilizations have appeared around the world. These groups benefit from powerful telescopes and transmitters and constantly broadcast messages that contain our location into deep-space. But for a while, some voices have been arguing that the codes sent into the vastness are too complex for alien civilizations to decipher and that they should be made simpler. This is exactly what a team of researchers did. They argue that any potential alien with a bit of mathematical training and knowledge of astronomy can crack it, Wired reports.

The new code was designed by geoscientist Michael Busch, from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and colleague Rachel Reddick, a physicist based at the Stanford University. The duo published the new study in the Friday online issue of the scientific journal arXiv. In the entry, the two wrote that very little attention has been paid in the past to “ensuring that a transmitted message will be understandable to an alien listener.” They argue that neither the 1974 Arecibo message, nor the 1993/2003 Cosmic Calls were properly tested for sense before they were beamed away.

This is one of the main reasons why the team decided to take the task of developing a brand new code all by itself. The algorithms themselve... (read more)

Children Are Not Deceived by Optical Illusions

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:35:00 GMT

A new scientific study seems to suggest that children are far better at detecting the tricks behind optical illusions than the elderly. This ability may be partially owed to the different way in which the two age groups size up the target objects, and relate their sizes to everything around them. This may also mean, scientists say, that the brain's ability to make out the context of visual scenes develops over time. As soon as it is set-up, the cortex becomes unable to focus on parts of scenes, and thus looses its ability to make out the deceiving parts of optical illusions, Wired reports.

The new study was conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, which was led by expert psychologist Martin Doherty. Details of the new work appear online, in the November 12 issue of the respected scientific journal Developmental Science. In the research, the group concludes that even 10-year-olds do not have adults' ability to attune their brains to the visual context. This means, the study leader adds, that this context can be easily manipulated if it's targeted at adults, eliciting whatever reaction the manipulator wants.

When subjected to a task more commonly known as the Ebbinghaus illusion, the brains of 7-year-olds showed no signs of altered size perception, the experts add. &ldqu... (read more)

New Model to Explain How We Produce Sounds

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:54:00 GMT

Scientists have known for a long time what the basic process involved in vocalization is. Regardless if we speak, sing or shout, the sounds are produced in the same way. Airflow pushed out of the lungs passes between the vocal chords, which are nothing more than muscular filaments. When this happens, the structures vibrate within the airflow and produce sounds, which can then be modeled in various way. Each individual has their own voice, but medical conditions may affect the vocalization ability. A new computer model is currently being devised to understand this process. And to usher in a new set of treatments against these conditions,e! Science News reports.

“Voice disorders affect 30 percent of the general population and up to 60 percent of educators. The objective of our work is to develop a detailed understanding of the phonation process, which will enable the development of computational models,” explains Michael Plesniak, who is a professor at the famous George Washington University. The expert conducts his work alongside his doctoral student Byron Erath, also at the university. The two have been working on these issues for several years and have already teamed up with speech pathologists, so as to get the most detailed answers possible. At the time, Plesniak was still working at the Purdue University.... (read more)

New Self-Assembly Process Produces Amazing 3D Structures

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:38:00 GMT

Scientists at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) announce that they recently managed to complete a new method of fabricating self-assembling nanostructures. The technology, they say, combines two different approaches, namely photolithography – the same process used in producing integrated circuits for computer processors – and a capillary interaction-driven self-folding process. This resulted in what can be described as an ultra-high-tech set of origami, three-dimensional, single-crystalline silicon structures that have amazing properties. The new formations, which are only a few microns thick, are capable of performances that their thicker cousins simply cannot fathom.

“This is a completely different approach to making three-dimensional structures. We are opening a new window into what can be done in self-assembly processes,” says the UIUC G. L. Clark Professor of Chemistry Ralph G. Nuzzo. The new formations, he adds, can be bent to a degree that thicker materials cannot even approach. This alone makes the new structures very suitable for use inside future bendable and twisting electronics. This field of research is at this point garnering a lot of attention, but most research groups are either investigating carbon nanotubes – which still have a long way to ... (read more)

Graphene-Like, Honeycomb Polymers Created

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:08:00 GMT

Graphene is one of the most recently-discovered materials in the scientific community, at the tender age of 5 years old. In spite of only being discovered in 2004, it is already considered to be one of the possible replacements for silicon, the chemical that at this point provides the basis for the world of electronics generally, and computer chips especially. A large number of the amazing properties that graphene has are owed to its hexagonal, honeycomb-like structure. Now, experts at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA) managed to replicate the structure inside a polymer, in an achievement they hope will see the creation of a new material.

The synthesis and characterization of two-dimensional graphene-like polymers is a goal that main research groups around the world are chasing at this point, precisely because the resulting materials could impart some of the electronic properties that graphene has. The carbon compound is extremely resistant to tear and damage, and also allows for electricity to flow through it unimpeded. To get an idea of how just popular this field of research is today, consider the fact that Dutch physicist Andre Geim was awarded the Korber European Science Award in 2009, for pioneering research into two-dimensional carbon crystals.

The Swiss team ... (read more)

Information Field Theory to Clear Astronomical 'Blind Spots'

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:37:00 GMT

In spite of their massive observation capacities, today's telescopes are still limited in the amount of data they can observe. There are structures obscured or partially out of sight and analyzing them is just as important to our knowledge of the Universe as looking at the way the Sun works. But the process can be extremely complex and so German researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics have developed a new method for future studies. They created a basically designed series of rules for reconstituting incomplete and noisy image data, called information field theory.

This theory of spatial perception also establishes the precise conditions under which this series of concepts should be applied. According to its creators, the new system is heavily based on mathematical formulas that particle physicists use in their quantum physics-related calculations. Details of the innovation appear in the November 9 issue of the respected scientific journal Physical Review D, the team says. In the paper, the group reports that the system may also be used in areas as different as medicine and geology, where experts also need to look in places were existing measurement and analysis methods simply don't cut it.

“We add the missing data on the basis of the existing measuring points around the e... (read more)

Butterfly Wing Iridescence Makes for Color E-Readers

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:24:00 GMT

Scientists have been trying to create a color e-reader for a long time, but the extreme demands that such a goal imposes of existing technology has meant that progress was slow. It was only recently that a group of experts managed to create a prototype of an electronic reader with a color display, but they admit to having turned to nature for inspiration. The team says that the iridescence displayed by butterflies' wing is what gave them the idea to pursue this goal, and to reverse-engineer it into advanced electronics, LiveScience reports.

The new device is called Mirasol and is designed and engineered by Qualcomm MEMS Technologies. The innovative thing about the new device is that it does not transmit light in the way usual LCD do. Instead, they reflect light in specific manners, which make the person viewing the device believe the screen is actually displaying colors. The downside is that the device thus only becomes readable in the sunlight. On the plus side, this offers unprecedented long battery life and energy savings, the company reports. It also says that it doesn't plan to stop at readers.

At this point, consumers constantly demand that ever single electronic device they use, no matter how small, have a color display, and so the company has a lot of fields to cover with the Mirasol ... (read more)

Billionaire Keeps His Spacecraft Design Under Wraps

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:36:00 GMT

Billionaire Jeff Bezos, of Amazon.com fame, is currently involved in constructing a new spacecraft, which is designed to be capable of routinely flying numerous astronauts to suborbital flights, at very low prices. The Bezos Blue Origin business plan is currently undergoing testings at a private launch site in Texas, which is also funded by the billionaire. From what was made transparent, the design is that of capsule with vertical landing and take-off capabilities. This design differs from others set up for suborbital flights, Space reports.

It rather resembles NASA's designs for the prototype aircraft which it wishes to send back on the Moon. Bezos' team apparently drew from that influence. However, there is no way of telling precisely what specifications we're dealing with here, as the entrepreneur is keeping the designs under wraps. All that was revealed is that this is an Origin-class suborbital craft, which would be capable of routine suborbital flights. The approach varies significantly from that taken by The Spaceship Company, which operates SpaceShipTwo, also a private suborbital spacecraft.

Blue Origin recently announced that it has selected three new scientific payloads to fly on the spacecraft, which has been dubbed New Shepard. One of them is Purdue University's Three-Dimensional Critica... (read more)

Drifting Icebergs Puzzle New Zealand

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:20:00 GMT

People living on an island of New Zealand were puzzled to discover one morning a large number of icebergs floating off their coasts. The ice blocks, more than a hundred of them, came all the way from Antarctica, according to a group of researchers, and it may be that they were set adrift more than 9 years ago. During this time, they've made their way towards New Zealand. A single cluster of the formations was seen sporting a hundred ice bergs, but experts say that more clusters such as this may be on the way, LiveScience reports.

“The larger icebergs seen from Macquarie Island are tabular in shape, which indicates they have calved relatively recently, probably from one of the massive icebergs which originally calved from the Ross Ice Shelf nearly 9 years ago,” explained, in a statement earlier this month, Neal Young. The expert is a glaciologist at the Australian Antarctic Division. He explains that most likely the large number of small ice block come from larger pieces that disintegrated some time ago, after breaking off from the original Antarctic ice shelf.

The ices again raise the problem of global warming in the most direct manner possible. Due to warming waters at the South Pole, a large number of ice sheets are dwindling in size fast, shedding huge blocks of frozen water into the ocean. They drif... (read more)

Astronauts Successfully Complete Third Spacewalk

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:00:00 GMT

Two astronauts from the crew of space shuttle Atlantis managed to successfully complete all of the tasks allotted to them in the third spacewalk of the STS-129 assembly mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The third and last extra-vehicular activity (EVA) of the Atlantis flight took place yesterday, but began with a small delay. Mission specialist Robert Satcher, Jr. found a small glitch on spacesuit, and so he and colleague Randy Bresnik, alongside other astronauts aboard the ISS, worked on fixing the issue for a short while, before the first two finally stepped outside of the facility.

The problem was minor. The valve on the spacesuit's drinking bag, which allows its wearer to drink water during the spacewalk, showed signs of malfunction, so the crew took their time in changing it. After that, Bresnik and Satcher were good to go and they proceeded towards completing the main two objectives of yesterday's EVA – installing a new scientific experiment on the outer hull of the station and replacing an oxygen tank. The two spacewalkers stepped outside at about 8:24 am EST (1324 GMT), roughly an hour later than originally scheduled, Space reports.

In spite of the delay, the two astronauts were able to make up for most of the lost time and finished their activities just shortly after the i... (read more)

NEO Mission Gains Increasing Support

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:42:00 GMT

For a long time, policymakers have dreamed about going to the Moon, or Mars, but also to near-Earth Objects, a class of celestial bodies including asteroids and meteorites, that are large enough to handle a spacecraft landing on them. Over recent months, this plan has been getting increased support from the American space agency, as well as from private companies involved in spaceflight research. In addition to the scientific results such a mission would return in itself, the flight would also test the limits of our hardware and prepare Mission Controls and astronauts for long-duration lunar and Martian flights.

It has recently become very obvious that the main hurdles facing a long-term flight to the Red Planet are not necessarily related to the available launch equipment or the structural integrity of a lander itself. Rather, this is the easy part. It's a lot harder, experts close to the issue say, to make astronauts get along for more than 2 and a half years, and also to minimize the effects of isolation on them. Additionally, preventing the emergence of diseases and protecting the crew from the effects of cosmic radiation are also high on the list of priorities, Space reports.

According to some briefing charts obtained from the aerospace company Lockheed Martin, the new project has been dubbed “Plymouth R... (read more)

Atlantis Crew Performs Third Mission Spacewalk

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:01:02 GMT

After Saturday's glorious extra-vehicular activity (EVA), which saw a large number of tasks, and then some, being fulfilled in a very short time frame, Atlantis astronauts took to space again today. Robert Satcher, Jr and Randy Bresnik, the NASA astronaut who just got a new baby girl on Sunday, are currently outside the station, in order to perform the third and final spacewalk of the STS-129 mission. The activity is scheduled to last for about 6 and a half hours, although, if things go the way they did Saturday, we could see it ending a lot faster than anticipated, Space reports.

Both of the two astronauts that have stepped out on a spacewalk today are on their second such activity, but hopes are high that they will managed to troubleshoot all of the issues that may present themselves during their exit. The main goal of the Atlantis flight is to deliver spare parts for the ISS, which will be stored on the outpost's outer full, in especially-designed compartments. Additionally, more maintenance work will also be conducted, so that the Atlantis crew leaves the station in the best possible shape, when it leaves. Spacewalkers will also prepare specific compartments for the February 2010 addition of Node 3, dubbed Tranquility, the latest European-built space module to be delivered to the facility.

A high-press... (read more)

East Africa Reveals New Chameleon Species

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:01:02 GMT

A British researcher was just minding his own businesses in the jungle, surveying monkeys, when he accidentally disturbed a snake that was eating its meal. Upon inspecting the catch, the expert discovered a chameleon unlike any other species he knew. He therefore went ahead and compared the specimen to two others his colleagues had found in the same area, and published the results of these comparisons in the latest issue of the respected African Journal of Herpetology. He argues that the animal is an entirely new species of chameleon, now known as Kinyongia magomberae (the Magombera chameleon), AlphaGalileo reports.

In charge of the new investigation was University of York expert Dr Andrew Marshall, an expert in the institution's Environment Department. Marshall is only a coauthor of the new journal entry, which was written together with colleagues from the Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, in Italy, the South African National Biodiversity Institute, the Anglia Ruskin University, and the University of Stellenbosch. The findings were made in the Magombera Forest, in Tanzania.

“Discovering a new species is a rare event so to be involved in the identification and naming of this animal is very exciting. Chameleon species tend to be focused in small areas and, unfortunately, the habitat this one depends o... (read more)

Carbon Dioxide Recycler Now a Reality

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:11:02 GMT

Experts from the US Department of Energy (DOE) Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) announce the development of a device that is able to convert carbon dioxide and water into the building blocks of fuel, through nothing more than the action of sunlight. With this achievement, it may be possible in the near future to turn the dejections of power plants and automobiles back into gasoline, petrol and diesel, without the need for additional amounts of these to be produced, and pollute the world even further, Technology Review informs.

With a lot of work, the “Sunshine to Petrol” system may become up to twice as effective as photosynthesis, which would be a monumental achievement. At this point, the process that allows plants to live off the Sun and water has a few billion years of head-start, so catching up would be proof of human ingenuity and intelligence. SNL experts have been developing the technology for a while now, but, until only recently, they've only done so on small batches, inside the confines of the lab. With the new device, they are entering a new era of practical applications, which could see innovations spur in many fields of research.

“This is a first-of-its-kind prototype we're evaluating,” the inventor of the new scientific instrument, SNL researcher Rich Diver, explains. &ld... (read more)

Titan May Be 'Life-Friendly' After All

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:01:01 GMT

Saturn's moon Titan has captured for a long time the imagination of scientists, who currently even envision a nuclear-powered mission for the satellite, including several components. All the interest stems from the fact that observations of the celestial body, performed by the Cassini spacecraft, have revealed peculiar structures on its surface, as well as strange lakes of hydrocarbon, which appear to be functioning in very much the same way our water lakes do here, on Earth, NewScientist reports.

In a recent set of studies, it was demonstrated that the lakes on Titan featured abundant concentrations of the chemical acetylene, which astrobiologists believe could serve as a primitive food source for basic organisms. The idea that life forms able to resist in the moon's harsh environment may exist is not so far-fetched. Other forms of life may adapt to different chemicals than the ones we rely on, such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. It may not be out of the question that Titan's hydrocarbon lakes, or Enceladus' underground ocean, may support their own forms of life, even if only primitive.

Bacteria retrieved from deep within Antarctica's ice crusts have proven that the small organisms can easily adapt to living at ultra-cold temperatures for thousands of years, in areas where food sources are non-existent, or ext... (read more)

Producing Nanotube Transistor Arrays Made Easy

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:01:02 GMT

In spite of the massive amount of work that has been placed into making carbon nanotubes a standard material for our civilization, creating flexible arrays using the nanostructures has proven to be extremely difficult until now. The structures have the ability to innovate, among other things, the display control circuit technology. The arrays that feature carbon nanotube are more flexible than silicon, and also more efficient at doing their jobs. For the first time ever, scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) have demonstrated large arrays of fully functional nanotubes.

According to Technology Review, the team used simple and easy methods of producing the arrays, which were derived from batches of CNT that were impure. Scientists explain that today each pixel on the LCD screen of a computer is controlled by a number of transistors, which are generally made out of silicon, and fashioned into arrays. The latter need to be constructed inside vacuum chambers, at high temperatures, which makes the end-product very simple. However, replacing these arrays with CNT ones presents other challenges.

“Many people use one nanotube to make a very small, high-performance transistor,” USC Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Chongwu Zhou, who is also a researcher on the new proj... (read more)

Safest Earthquake-Proof Building in the World Opened

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:01:02 GMT

Just recently, the city of Istanbul saw the opening and commissioning of the world's largest and safest earthquake-proof building in the world. The structure covers an impressive area, but it's completely isolated from the ground below. It does not rest on the soil, but rather on a few hundred bearings, which behave as actuators in case of an emergency. Because the entire structure acts like a single block, it suffers the same damages throughout, which means that it won't be torn apart when a tremor strikes.

The building is the new international terminal at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport, which has just been opened for business. It covers more than two million square feet, and rests comfortably atop 300 isolators, which are in fact very large bearings. During an earthquake, these bearings move in any direction inside special enclosures, which means that, as the ground moves, so does the building, but in the opposite direction. This approach, the building's designer, architects and construction teams say, should ensure that everything remains intact even if a large tremor hits, Wired reports.

“What an isolation system does is that it enables the building to move through large displacements in unison, and in doing that, you absorb earthquake energy,” the engineer who designed t... (read more)

New Evidence That Mars Once Had an Ocean

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:11:00 GMT

Scientists at the Northern Illinois University (NIU) have recently announced that they managed to develop a new computer-generated map of the Red Planet, which adds more proof to the theory that claims a liquid ocean of water once existed on Mars. The team collaborated with colleagues from the Lunar and Planetary Institute, in Houston, in compiling the new body of pieces of evidence, which shows features twice as large as those discovered in previous investigations of those particular areas.

The innovative computer model would seem to suggest that the valley networks are at least 2.3 times longer than previous planet-wide maps of the structures let scientists believe. According to the same model, the regions of Mars that were cut by these valleys the deepest actually formed somewhat of a circle around a region that stretched between the equator and the mid-southern latitudes. All of this data is in tune with the idea that, at one point in our neighbor's distant history, its surface was covered by a large ocean that covered a big area. The potential ocean was located in the Northern Hemisphere.

“All the evidence gathered by analyzing the valley network on the new map points to a particular climate scenario on early Mars. It would have included rainfall and the existence of an... (read more)

Kids Always Ask 'Why' for a Reason

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:55:00 GMT

A new scientific study has recently revealed that the real reason children ask 'why' all the time is because they want to get to the truth, and not to step on their parents' nerves. The research has also demonstrated that the small ones appear to react better to some answers than to others, which is really puzzling. This basically means that the children in the investigation, aged two to five, were a lot more active in their knowledge-gathering processes than experts had previously anticipated, LiveScience reports.

“Even from really early on when they start asking these how and why questions, they are asking them in order to get explanations. Kids are playing more of an active role in learning about the world around them than we may have expected,” University of Michigan expert Brandy Frazier, who has also been the lead researcher of the study, explains. As soon as the kids in the study started being given answers, they continued to probe further and further into different subjects, demonstrating that they were in fact interested in the truth about the matters, and would stop at nothing to get it.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some parents get mad, or lose their patience when their young one starts asking them questions. They feel the answers could be inappropriate for the child's age, so they ... (read more)

NASA Innovations Come to the General Public

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:36:00 GMT

NASA has always been, to some extent, one of the US agencies that has shared the fruits of its labor. The complex technologies its engineers have developed over the years, to tackle various aspects related to space exploration, have, in many cases, made their way into the general market. Taking into account the difficulty of the problems that NASA had to tackle, it stands to reason that its experts used some pretty extreme science to crack them. The new “Spinoff” report, published by the space agency this month, details how its innovations touched the life of millions, Space reports.

One of the most common examples of space technology coming into play on the free market is the ultraviolet (UV) radiation-resistant swimsuit, which benefits many people around the world, and prevents them from getting sunburned, or developing skin cancer from prolonged exposure to intense light. Third-generation (3G) cellular networks are also among the everyday innovations that stemmed from NASA research. At this point, the technology is being employed in mobile phones around the world, and helps people stay in touch with each other easier than ever.

Oil pipes, helicopter infrared shields and extreme weather clothing also share one NASA-driven innovation together. All of these items contain a less brittle type of... (read more)

Node 3 Officially Delivered to NASA

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:25:00 GMT

On November 20, representatives from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) finally signed the Transfer of Ownership document, which solidifies the delivery to the American space agency of Node 3, the next European module to fly to the International Space Station (ISS). The ceremony, which was held at the Space Station Processing Facility, at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Cape Canaveral, Florida, was attended by a large number of officials from both space agencies, as well as the media, and representatives of the company that constructed the module.

Among those in attendance were ESA Directorate of Human Spaceflight International Space Station Program Manager Bernardo Patti, the NASA ISS Program Manager, Michael Suffredini, KSC Director Robert Cabana, ISS Deputy for Operations William Dowdell, and Secondino Brondolo. The last official is the head of the space infrastructure department at Thales Alenia Space, the company that constructed Node 3. Selected media organizations also attended the ceremony, AlphaGalileo reports.

“Node 3 and Cupola are Europe's final major hardware contributions to the ISS. Once attached to the ISS in February next year, more than one-third of the pressurized ISS elements will have been built in Europe. The ISS is now almost complete and since we were able to add our Europea... (read more)

Kids Watch Twice as Much TV as First Thought

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:02:00 GMT

Studying precisely how much time children spend in front of the TV set is very difficult, especially in societies where parents don't get to spend as much time with their juniors as both of the parties would want to. This type of settings offers the perfect conditions for excesses to occur, and watching TV is one of them. This was proven recently, when the first survey on how much TV children had watched in daycare settings in the past 20 years was conducted. The researchers found that the little ones in fact watched much more shows and cartoons than any existing statistics had predicted.

“It's alarming to find that so many children in the United States are watching essentially twice as much television as we previously thought. Research continues to link excessive preschool screen time with language delay, obesity, attentional problems and even aggression depending upon content. At the same time, studies show that high quality preschool can be beneficial to children's development,” the lead researcher of the new study, Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, explains, quoted by PhysOrg.

“Unfortunately, for many children, the potential benefits of preschool may be displaced by passive TV viewing. I suspect many parents are unaware of the frequency and extent of TV viewing in day care settings. H... (read more)

Exposure to Tobacco May Increase Risk of ADHD

Softpedia News (Tudor Vieru) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:42:00 GMT

Scientists at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have determined in a new investigation that children who are prenatally exposed to high levels of lead or tobacco smoke run a much higher risk than others of developing ADHD. The attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a condition that many children today are suffering from, even though its causes and triggers are not precisely known at this point. The investigation also seems to point out that more than 35 percent of existing ADHD cases in children aged eight to 15 may be cured if these two factors disappear, PhysOrg reports.

Some official numbers show that, if this were to happen, then the number of children suffering from ADHD could be reduced by as much as 800,000. Full details of the research appear in the November 23 issue of the scientific journal Pediatrics. “Tobacco and lead exposure each have their own important adverse effect. But if children are exposed to both lead and prenatal tobacco, the combined effect is synergistic,” CCHMC Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics physician Tanya Froehlich, MD, explains. She has also been the lead author of the new journal entry.

“Although we tend to focus on ADHD treatment rather than prevention, our study suggests that reducing exposures to environmental ... (read more)