ScienceDaily Technology Headlines
for Monday, November 3, 2008
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Magnetic Portals Connect Sun And Earth (November 2, 2008) -- During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page. ... > full story
Cleaning Heavily Polluted Water At A Fraction Of The Cost (November 2, 2008) -- A European research project has succeeded in developing a water treatment system for industrial oil polluted water at a tenth of the cost of other commercially available tertiary treatments, leaving water so clean it can be pumped safely back out to sea without endangering flora or fauna. ... > full story
Minimizing Downtime By Decentralizing Control In Complex, Computerized Systems (November 2, 2008) -- When complex, computerized control systems encounter a malfunction in any part of the process they control, the whole operation often grinds to a halt while the problem is diagnosed and fixed. New software overcomes that problem by decentralization. ... > full story
Sea Urchin Yields Key Secret Of Biomineralization (November 1, 2008) -- The teeth and bones of mammals, the protective shells of mollusks, and the needle-sharp spines of sea urchins and other marine creatures are made-from-scratch wonders of nature. ... > full story
Quantum Computers? Internet Security Code Of The Future Cracked (November 1, 2008) -- Computer science experts have managed to crack the so-called McEliece encryption system. This system is a candidate for the security of Internet traffic in the age of the quantum computer -- the predicted super-powerful computer of the future. ... > full story
Optical Firewall Aims To Clear Internet Security Bottlenecks (November 1, 2008) -- Researchers are developing the world’s first optical firewall capable of analyzing data on fiber optic networks at speeds of 40 gigabits per second. The work promises to save the internet from the looming threat of network security bottlenecks. ... > full story
Hubble Back In Business: Pair Of Gravitationally Interacting Galaxies In Full View (November 1, 2008) -- The Hubble Space Telescope is back in business with a snapshot of the fascinating galaxy pair Arp 147. Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. ... > full story
Social Media And Presidential Election: Impact Of YouTube, MySpace (November 1, 2008) -- What is the impact of media on the political landscape in the US? Researchers are investigating the impact of hugely popular social media's impact on the upcoming presidential contest. ... > full story
More Hidden Territory On Mercury Revealed By MESSENGER Spacecraft (October 31, 2008) -- A NASA spacecraft gliding over the battered surface of Mercury for the second time this year has revealed more previously unseen real estate on the innermost planet. The probe also has produced several science firsts and is returning hundreds of new photos and measurements of the planet's surface, atmosphere and magnetic field. ... > full story
Sniffing Out A Better Chemical Sensor (October 31, 2008) -- Marrying a sensitive detector technology capable of distinguishing hundreds of different chemical compounds with a pattern-recognition module that mimics the way animals recognize odors, researchers have created a new approach for 'electronic noses' that is more adept than conventional methodologies at recognizing molecular features even for chemicals it has not been trained to detect. ... > full story
New Model Predicts A Glacier's Life (October 31, 2008) -- Researchers have developed a numerical model that can re-create the state of Switzerland's Rhône Glacier as it was in 1874 and predict its evolution until the year 2100. This is the longest period of time ever modeled in the life of a glacier, involving complex data analysis and mathematical techniques. The work will serve as a benchmark study for those interested in the state of glaciers and their relation to climate change. ... > full story
Over-use Of Organic Fertilizers In Agriculture Could Poison Soils, Study Finds (October 31, 2008) -- Excessive doses of organic residues in agricultural fields could be dangerous for plants, invertebrates and micro-organisms living in the soil. This is the finding of a new study that shows that the use of appropriate levels of fertilizers would prevent this toxic impact on the soil biota. ... > full story
By Imaging Live Cells, Researchers Show How Hepatitis C Replicates (October 31, 2008) -- The hepatitis C virus is a prolific replicator, able to produce up to a trillion particles per day in an infected person by hijacking liver cells in which to build up its viral replication machinery. Now new research -- in which scientists have for the first time used fluorescent proteins to image hepatitis C virus replication in live cells -- shows that the microscopic viral factories are a diverse mix of big, immobile structures and tiny replication complexes that zip zanily around inside the cell. ... > full story
Mathematician Cracks Mystery Beatles Chord (October 31, 2008) -- It's the most famous chord in rock 'n' roll, an instantly recognizable twang rolling through the open strings on George Harrison's 12-string guitar: the opening chord to the Beatles song "A Hard Day's Night." Now, a researcher has used a mathematical calculation known as Fourier transform to solve the Beatles' riddle. The process allowed him to decompose the sound into its original frequencies using computer software and parse out which notes were on the record. ... > full story
Clues To Planets' Birth Discovered In Meteorites (October 31, 2008) -- Meteorites that are among the oldest rocks ever found have provided new clues about the conditions that existed at the beginning of the solar system, solving a longstanding mystery and overturning some accepted ideas about the way planets form. ... > full story
Ultrafast Lasers Show Snapshot Of Electrons In Action (October 31, 2008) -- In the quest to slow down and ultimately understand chemistry at the level of atoms and electrons, scientists have found a new way to peer into a molecule that allows them to see how its electrons rearrange as the molecule changes shape. ... > full story
Astronauts To Vote From Space (October 31, 2008) -- In this day and age, people engage in their right to vote from all over the world. But this Nov. 4, few ballots will have traveled as far as those cast by two NASA astronauts. ... > full story
Engineering Technique Can Identify Disease-causing Genes (October 31, 2008) -- Scientists believe that complex diseases such as schizophrenia, major depression and cancer are not caused by one, but a multitude of dysfunctional genes. ... > full story
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Locksmiths (October 31, 2008) -- Computer scientists have built a software program that can perform key duplication without having the key. Instead, the computer scientists only need a photograph of the key. ... > full story
Researchers Find New Way Of Measuring 'Reality' Of Virtual Worlds (October 31, 2008) -- A research team has developed a new way of measuring how "real" online virtual worlds are -- an important advance for the emerging technology that can be used to foster development of new training and collaboration applications by companies around the world. ... > full story
Amateur Sports Can Lead to Unexpected Health Problems Later in Life (October 30, 2008) -- Taking up bowling or tennis is an excellent way to stay fit. But if you're not careful, you might find that these amateur sports can have unexpected long-term health risks. ... > full story
Searching For Primordial Antimatter (October 30, 2008) -- Scientists are on the hunt for evidence of antimatter -- matter's arch nemesis -- left over from the very early Universe. New results using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory suggest the search may have just become even more difficult. ... > full story
Artificial Pancreas Could Revolutionize Treatment Of Type 1 Diabetes (October 30, 2008) -- Researchers across the globe are testing a computerized, subcutaneous system that could one day transform the way Type 1 diabetics manage their disease. ... > full story
World's Smallest Hand-held Instrument For Detecting Health And Safety Threats (October 30, 2008) -- Researchers in Indiana are describing development of the world's smallest complete mass spectrometer (MS), a miniature version of a standard lab device -- some of which would dominate a living room -- to identify tiny amounts of chemicals in the environment. ... > full story
Gender Affects Perceptions Of Infidelity (October 30, 2008) -- A new study explored how men and women perceive online and offline sexual and emotional infidelity. When given the choice, men were more upset by sexual infidelity and women were more upset by emotional infidelity. ... > full story
Catching Earthquake Details With Ordinary Laptop Computers (October 30, 2008) -- Inside your laptop is a small accelerometer chip, there to protect the delicate moving parts of your hard disk from sudden jolts. It turns out that the same chip is a pretty good earthquake sensor, too -- especially if the signals from lots of them are compared, in order to filter out more mundane sources of laptop vibrations, such as typing. ... > full story
Real Robinson Crusoe: Evidence Of Alexander Selkirk’s Desert Island Campsite (October 30, 2008) -- An archaeological dig unearths evidence of the campsite of castaway Alexander Selkirk, the model for Robinson Crusoe. ... > full story
Why Some Marine Algae Are Shaped Like Crumpled Paper (October 30, 2008) -- What is the connection between crumpled paper and marine algae? Saddle-like shapes similar to those found in an Elizabethan "ruff" collar, say physicists in a new article. ... > full story
New Supercomputer Can Do 50 Trillion Operations Per Second (October 30, 2008) -- In less time than the blink of an eye, the Translational Genomics Research Institute's new supercomputer at Arizona State University can do operations equal to every dollar in the recent Wall Street bailout. That would be 700 billion computations in less than 1/60th of a second. ... > full story
Progress Toward New Storage Media: Reliable Nanopatterns On Chips (October 30, 2008) -- Scientists have produced reliable nanopatterns of a spin-transition compound on silicon oxide chips. This is a decisive step toward a new generation of molecular storage media. ... > full story
Computer Scientists Seek New Framework For Computation (October 30, 2008) -- There have been several revolutions during the 60 year history of electronic computation, such as high level programming languages and client/server separation, but one key challenge has yet to be fully resolved. This is to break down large complex processes into small more manageable components that can then be reused in different applications. ... > full story
Toward Non-invasive Disease Diagnosis With Wellness Cards (October 29, 2008) -- Scientists are reporting development of a device that could serve as the electronic "reader" for a coming generation of "wellness cards," specimen holders used to diagnose disease from a drop of a patient's saliva or blood. ... > full story
Reduce Computer Power Usage? Silicon Optical Fiber Made Practical (October 29, 2008) -- Scientists have, for the firsts time, been able to make a practical optical fiber with a silicon core. ... > full story
NASA's Phoenix Mission Faces Survival Challenges (October 29, 2008) -- In a race against time and the elements, engineers with NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission hope to extend the lander's survival by gradually shutting down some of its instruments and heaters, starting this week. ... > full story
Virtual Screening Leads To Real Progress In Drug Design (October 29, 2008) -- Around 150 thousand people per year get the parasitic disease African sleeping sickness, but the only medicines to treat it are either difficult to administer, expensive, or toxic. Now a team of scientists has put computers to work to find a solution. ... > full story
Monitoring Broken Bones Without Using Electronics: Wireless Bone Monitor (October 29, 2008) -- The novel sensor is intended one day to help doctors monitor broken bones as they grow back together. Depending on the values of the forces measured by the sensor, they can decide whether the healing process is progressing normally or whether there is a danger that the fracture or implants might be overloaded. Until now doctors have used expensive and complicated electronic devices which sent the measured data to the outside world as radio signals. ... > full story
How Toxic Environmental Chemical DBT Affects The Immune System (October 29, 2008) -- Scientists have issued a report on the mechanism of toxicity of a chemical compound called Dibutyltin (DBT). DBT is part of a class of high toxic and widely distributed chemical compounds called organotins, DBT is most commonly used as an anti-fouling agent in paint, for example in the fishing and shipbuilding industries. It is also used in the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic tubes and bottles. ... > full story
'Digital Dark Age' May Doom Some Data (October 29, 2008) -- What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer's hard drive? The framed photograph will inevitably fade and yellow over time, but the digital photo file may be unreadable to future computers -- an unintended consequence of our rapidly digitizing world that may ultimately lead to a "digital dark age." ... > full story
Flexible, Affordable Light Source Can Printed (October 29, 2008) -- Researchers working in the European ROLLED project have developed a flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) element that can be mass produced using roll-to-roll printing technology. The OLED elements can be used to add value to product packages. The new method is considerably cheaper than the traditional manufacturing method. ... > full story
The Great Cosmic Challenge (October 29, 2008) -- Today cosmologists are challenging the world to solve a compelling statistical problem, to bring us closer to understanding the nature of dark matter and energy which makes up 95 per cent of the ‘missing’ universe. ... > full story
New Mass Sensor To Weight Atoms With Unprecedented Resolution (October 29, 2008) -- Scientists have developed an ultrasensitive mass sensor, which can measure tiny amounts of mass with atomic precision, and with an unprecedented resolution to date. ... > full story
New 3-D Image Systems To Provide Reliable Face Biometrics (October 29, 2008) -- A novel 3-D face imaging system which will capture detailed images of people's faces as they pass through high security zones. ... > full story
NASA Orbiter Reveals Details Of A Wetter Mars (October 29, 2008) -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars. This discovery suggests that liquid water remained on the planet's surface a billion years later than scientists believed, and it played an important role in shaping the planet's surface and possibly hosting life. ... > full story
Laser Flashes Without Bounds (October 29, 2008) -- Researchers have developed a novel optical fiber that enables transmission of ultrashort light pulses with an unprecedented low degree of distortions. The researchers transmitted light pulses of 13 fs duration (1 fs = 1 millionth billionth of a second) over one meter distance, with the pulses only stretching to about double of the initial duration. "Currently, no other fiber-based technique is capable of such little distortion", says one of the researchers. ... > full story
Groups of Dangerous Drivers Identified (October 29, 2008) -- Young drivers, elderly drivers and motorcyclists are stigmatized by society, according to one professor. He's researching who the dangerous drivers really are. ... > full story
Nanoscale Coating Protects Products And The Economy (October 28, 2008) -- A professor's unique nanolaminate coatings adjust to protect products from a wide range of adverse conditions. Her work has applications in industries such as manufacturing, optical products and biomedical devices. ... > full story
Sensitive Ultrasound To Spot Early-stage Cancer (October 28, 2008) -- Researchers have developed highly sensitive ultrasound equipment that can detect tiny quantities of reflective microbubbles engineered to stick to specific tumor cells. The technique should pick up tumors early and improve patients' chances of survival. ... > full story
Robotic Technology Takes Inspiration From Service Dogs (October 28, 2008) -- Service dogs, invaluable companions providing assistance to physically impaired individuals, are an elite and desired breed. Their presence in a home can make everyday tasks that are difficult - if not impossible - achievable, enhancing the quality of life for the disabled. Yet with a cost averaging ,000 per dog -- not to mention the two years of training required to hone these skills -- the demand for these canines' exceeds their availability. ... > full story
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