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Top Stories in Science
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August 2006 Issue |
| [D] Defence and security |  |
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Practical H5N1 vaccine A bird flu vaccine for humans that requires only a very low dose of active ingredient has proved effective in clinical tests and could be in mass production in 2007, according to GlaxoSmithKline. This breakthrough overcomes one of the main problems with previous H5N1 vaccines, which required a prohibitively large dose. The new vaccine is on a fast track for approval with the relevant licensing authorities in the US and Europe. Although it will give only partial protection against an actual H5N1 pandemic virus this should be enough to greatly reduce the scale and lethality of a pandemic. [D][H]
Lower pandemic risk Researchers at the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) have engineered flu viruses that contained genes for the external “coat” proteins of H5N1 bird flu and the internal proteins of H3N2, the most common variety of human flu in circulation. Tests in ferrets showed that the combined strain was greatly weakened - much less pathogenic than H5N1 and much less infective than H3N2. Though CDC has yet to explore other possible reassortments, the results are reassuring that a simple exchange of genes will not be sufficient to turn H5N1 into a global pandemic. The virus that caused the great 1918 pandemic probably evolved by the mutation of a bird flu strain rather than by recombination with a human virus. [D][G][H]
In-flight rearming The US Air Force's research lab in New York is developing a system that will allow fighter planes to be rearmed, as well as refuelled, in mid-flight. [D][A]
Mini-satellite guardians Mini-satellites that could navigate autonomously and inspect other satellites in orbit are being developed by the US Air Force. The developers say the technology could one day be used to check the space shuttle or its successor for damage, while other experts say it could be used to disable “enemy” satellites in orbit. [D][A][U]
Computer games and violence US researchers have found that playing violent video games, even for just 20 minutes, can cause people to become physiologically numb to real violence. Participants in the experiments who were randomly assigned to play a violent video game had relatively lower heart rates and galvanic skin responses while subsequently watching footage of people being beaten, stabbed and shot than did those randomly assigned to play non-violent video games. [D][B][C][K]
Crisis management A European collaboration has demonstrated a prototype decision support system to assist crisis management and rapid response. The system offers voice communication with the user, wireless networking and laptop displays of support information in the form of text, html and even Flash graphics. Information requests from the user are managed by a remote hub server linked by IP protocol with distributed knowledge databases, which can be situated at locations around the world. The knowledge base itself is a multi-layer software system that offers both fast searching and case-based reasoning to find the solution. [D][I][K][V] |
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| [A] Aeronautics and space | |
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Quiet supersonic aircraft US companies are planning to develop a quiet supersonic business jet targeted at very wealthy individuals and companies. Wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamics simulations suggest the 40 foot long aircraft should produce a sonic boom with sound pressure levels 20 decibels quieter than that of Concorde. [A][P]
Ornithopter A professor and a team of students at the University of Toronto have achieved the first sustained flight by a piloted ornithopter – an airplane with flapping wings that are mechanically operated. [A][P]
Battery-powered aircraft An airplane powered by just 160 AA batteries has been flown by Japanese scientists – the first time dry-cell batteries have powered a crewed flight. After a push start, the propeller-powered plane flew for 59 seconds at an altitude of 5.2 metres and travelled a total distance of 391 metres through the air. [A][P]
International Space Station NASA is ready to resume regular space shuttle flights to complete construction of the International Space Station after three years of trying to eliminate safety flaws that led to the 2003 Columbia disaster. NASA estimates it will take 16 more shuttle flights to finish constructing the ISS, which is nearly half way through assembly. [A]
Space tourism Tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) now have the option of adding a 90-minute spacewalk to their trips for an extra $15 million. They already pay $20 million to launch and land aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket and stay aboard the ISS. So far, three civilian men have paid their way to the ISS, but their 10-day pleasure cruises were confined to the pressurised hulls of the Soyuz and the station. [A]
Inflatable spacecraft A US company, Bigelow Aerospace, has launched a demonstrator inflatable spacecraft called Genesis I. The craft is 4.5 metres long with a diameter of 2.4 metres, and is a one-third scale model of a module that can be assembled to make an inflatable space hotel. Genesis I is made of several layers of vectran, a strong artificial fibre, and has foam shielding to protect it against micrometeorite impacts. Future versions will use water blankets for radiation shielding. The company licensed the technology from NASA. [A][M]
Future spacesuits Advances in smart materials could give future spacesuits the ability to self-repair holes, generate electricity and kill germs. The technology may be ready for use by 2018, when NASA hopes to return to the Moon. [A][M][P][V]
Lunar spacesuits The rigidity of the spacesuits used on the Apollo missions was thought to be a disadvantage, and NASA engineers have been looking at ways to make them more flexible in order to make it easier for astronauts to walk on the Moon. However, new research suggests that although walking is more efficient on Earth, running is more efficient in the lower gravity of the Moon. The rigidity of the Apollo suits means that they act as springs that assist running. Inadvertently the Apollo suits may have been very fit for purpose. [A][M][P][V]
Plasma shield A bubble of plasma could shield astronauts from radiation during long journeys through space, according to researchers at the University of Washington. If the idea proves viable, it means heavy metal protective panels could be replaced by a plasma shield of just a few grams. [A][M][P]
Electromagnetic ejection into space A study investigating how electromagnetic fields in the Earth's atmosphere can affect GPS satellites and disrupt their use for aircraft navigation has led to evidence that life on planets such as Earth or Mars could have been seeded by electrically charged microbes from space. Calculations of the effect of electric fields at various levels in the atmosphere show that electrically charged bacteria could easily be ejected from the Earth's gravitational field by the same kind of electromagnetic fields that generate auroras. [A][G][P] |
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| [U] Unmanned vehicles and robotics | |
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Printed-part UAV An uncrewed aircraft made from "printed" parts rather than traditional machine-tooled components has been developed by Lockheed Martin. The Polecat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a 28-metre flying wing, weighing four tonnes. It was designed to test cheaper manufacturing technologies and also to be a test bed for autonomous guidance technology. The flexibility lent by 3D printing enabled it to be designed and built in only 18 months, according to Lockheed Martin. [U][A][D][M][W]
Ballbot A new type of mobile robot has been developed at Carnegie-Mellon University that balances on a urethane-coated metal sphere instead of legs or wheels. It uses internal sensors and actuators to make it dynamically stable. It is self-contained, battery-operated, weighs 95 pounds and is the approximate height and width of a person. Because of its long, thin shape and ability to manoeuvre in tight spaces, it has the potential to function better than current robots can in environments with people, according to the researchers. [U][P]
Mini Mars probes Researchers at MIT have proposed a new way to explore Mars, using a swarm of probes, each the size of a baseball, spreading out across the planet in every direction. They believe that thousands of these probes, powered by fuel cells, could cover a vast area beyond the reach of today's rovers, including exploring remote and rocky terrain that large rovers cannot navigate. Artificial muscles inside the probes could make them hop an average of six times per hour, with a maximum rate of 60 hops per hour. The devices would travel about 1.5 metres per hop, and also bounce or roll. The researchers estimate that in 30 days, a swarm of probes could cover 50 square miles. [U][A][D][P][R]
Autonomous under-ice exploration An autonomous underwater vehicle has been used to explore the underside of an Antarctic ice shelf. The AUV used sonar to navigate by features on the sea floor. [U][E][R] |
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| [P] Propulsion and energy | |
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Ion beam engine NASA is testing an ion engine 2.5 times more powerful than the NSTAR engine that NASA used on its Deep Space 1 mission. The new engine, called NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT), could propel a spacecraft all the way to Saturn's moon Titan. [P][A]
Electric cars Tesla motors, a California venture financed by the founders of PayPal and Google, has unveiled an electric-powered sports car. According to Tesla, the vehicle accelerates from nought to 100 km/hour in just four seconds and it can travel 400km on an overnight charge from an ordinary 240 volt socket. The firm also plans to offer optional solar-photoelectric systems, to be set up as a car port at home, that will be able to power the car for 80km a day from solar power alone. [P][E]
Zero emission power The European Commission has published a vision document for the Zero Emission Fossil Fuel Power Plants (ZEP). The document looks at the issues around ensuring security of energy supply, protecting the environment, industrial competitiveness, and research and technology demonstration. It outlines ZEP options, including ways to improve power plant efficiency and ways to capture, transport and safely dispose of the carbon dioxide, particularly through sequestration in North Sea oil wells, saline aquifers and non-mineable coal seams. [P][E][T]
Carbon dioxide sequestration. Deep-sea sediments could provide an almost limitless reservoir for sequestering carbon dioxide, according to US researchers. The low temperature and high pressure at ocean depths of 3,000 metres turn carbon dioxide into a liquid denser than the surrounding water. This means that it cannot escape back to the surface. They argue that this is much safer than sequestering into gas field from which the carbon dioxide might subsequently leak. [P][E]
Global warming partnership Twenty-two of the world's largest cities, including Los Angeles, London, New York and Seoul, have joined forces in an initiative to pool expertise and purchasing power in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The initiative, launched by the Clinton Foundation, covers items such as energy-efficient traffic lights, street lighting, the use of biofuels for city transport, traffic congestion schemes, and technical assistance to become more energy efficient. [P][D][E][K][W][X]
Combined power-water-refrigeration Military forces operating in Iraq and elsewhere require electric power, water and refrigeration. To reduce the cost and logistics burden, US researchers have developed a small combined system that ties a novel gas turbine power plant to a heat-operated refrigeration system. The refrigeration makes the gas turbine more efficient, while also producing cool air and potable water. The turbine can run on conventional fossil fuels and on biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen. [P][D]
Combined power-heat-refrigeration Some large installations – sports centres, hotels and industry - already use combined power-heat-refrigeration systems that generate electricity, provide refrigeration for air conditioning and exploit the waste heat for heating and hot water. Such combined systems provide significant energy and environmental advantages. A European consortium is now seeking to adapt the technology for use in individual homes. [P][E][W]
DIY biodiesel A growing number of enthusiasts in America are setting up mini-refineries in their homes to produce biodiesel from waste cooking oil. The technology is cost effective provided they treat their own time as free. [P]
Bioenergy and genomics The US Department of Energy has published a roadmap for research on bioenergy. The roadmap involved sequencing the genomes of the bioenergy crop plants switchgrass and cassava and other important agricultural commodities such as cotton. Also on the list are microbes geared to break down plant material to render biofuel, and oyster mushroom that break down lignin, the second most abundant biopolymer on earth. The research programme is also tackling bioremediation and plant pests such as Heterobasidion annosum, which is the most economically devastating forest pathogen in the northern hemisphere. [P][G][T]
Deep sea wind farms Siting off-shore wind farms further from the coast can reduce problems over the effects on fishing, marine traffic and aesthetics. But this involves erecting the turbines in much deeper water. To test the feasibility of doing this, an international consortium has used a radically new construction technique to erect a pair of turbines 25 kilometres off the Scottish coast in a water depth of 50 metres. As well as the issues of cost and durability, there are potential risks that underwater noise from piling could disturb marine mammals and fish, that noise from the turbines could be transmitted into the water column and could disturb marine mammals, that the turbines could affect movements and feeding of birds, that electromagnetic fields around the electric cable could affect some species of fish, and that the structures could still interfere with commercial fishing operations and with shipping. [P][E][M][R]
Speeding up radioactive decay A group of physicists in Germany claims to have discovered a way of speeding up radioactive decay and say that this could render nuclear waste harmless on timescales of just a few tens of years. They propose that if a radioactive material is embedded in a metal and if the metal is cooled to a few degrees kelvin, the free electrons in the metal interact with the radioactive nuclei so as to shorten the half-life for alpha-decay and lengthen it for beta-decay. The group has investigated this hypothesis on a number of radioactive nuclei and observed a longer half-life for the beta decay of beryllium-7 and shorter half-lives for positron decay in sodium-22 and alpha-decay in polonium-210. They are now investigating the alpha-decay of radium-226, a hazardous component of spent nuclear fuel with a half-life of 1600 years. They estimate that this half-life could be reduced to as little as a year and at the very least to 100 years. However, other physicists think the basic idea is flawed. [P][E][M] |
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| [M] Materials, structures and surfaces | |
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High temperature superconductivity It is generally believed that high temperature superconductivity (HTS) arises from electron-electron interactions or effects connected with magnetic atoms in HTS materials. However, physicists in the US and Japan have found evidence that the electron-phonon interaction plays a key role in high-temperature superconductivity just as it does in low-temperature superconductors. The researchers measured the energy states in the high-temperature superconductor bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide (BSCCO) superconductor on an atomic scale. The results indicated that the electron-pairing mechanism varies on these tiny scales and that there is some sort of interplay between the paired up electrons and the crystal lattice. [M]
Graphene composite Scientists at Northwestern University have invented a new type of material consisting of graphene sheets embedded in a polymer matrix. They believe that the new composite material, which is light but stiff and tough, could be used to make fuselages for aircraft, as well as in electronics and potentially in paints and coatings. [M][A][J][N]
Fibrin US researchers have used an atomic force microscope (AFM) to test the mechanical properties of individual fibres of fibrin, one of the main constituents of blood clots. The results reveal that fibrin is the most extensible of all naturally occurring fibres. Some of the fibres were able to stretch to more than six times their normal length before they broke. Very surprisingly, networks of fibrin were less extendible than the fibres. The findings could have implications for research into wound healing, strokes and heart attacks, and for breaking up blood clots using ultrasound. [M][H][N]
Magnetic material for radar Researchers at Northeastern University have developed a magnetic thin film ceramic with a spontaneous magnetic moment that is sufficiently large to eliminate the need for magnets in the circulators used in Simultaneous Transmit And Receive (STAR) radars. The material will enable these radars to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper without compromising on performance. [M][D][R]
How metals deform Using a unique X-ray probe, US researchers have gathered the first direct experimental evidence to test the Mughrabi model of how metals deform. The model was proposed in the 1980s, but the difficulty of precisely measuring stress at the micron level in individual cells in a dislocation structure has meant that until now it has relied on indirect evidence. The researchers found that the model is useful for predicting the stresses and strains in deformed metal on average, but that there are large variations in stresses that, until now, had gone undetected. [M][R][S]
Synthetic Gecko superadhesive Scientists at BAE Systems have developed an adhesive plastic based on the sticking power of the gecko's foot. The plastic called Synthetic Gecko is covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs that provide grip. Future applications could include an adhesive to repair aircraft, skin grafts or even a Spiderman-style suit. The material, which exploits very short range van de Waals forces, does not feel sticky; it is only when it is pressed hard against a surface that it adheres. [M][N]
Hydrophobic attraction When smooth hydrophobic surfaces approach each other underwater, they snap into contact. How this happens has been a mystery because van de Waals and electrostatic forces are too short-range to explain the attraction. Researchers at Sandia have now found that the cause is cavitation. Using an interfacial force microscope and two superhydrophobic surfaces to magnify the effect, they observed that as the surfaces approach each other, the hydrophobic force on the water between them turns it into a vapour. Because this vapour has less internal pressure, the external water pressure forces the two surfaces together. [M][N] |
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| [E] Environment, transport and marine | |
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Albedo enhancement In desperation, as a last resort if the world fails to control global warming by limiting carbon emissions, it might be possible to save the planet by injecting large amounts of sulphur into the atmosphere, according to Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen. His proposal is based on the 0.5 degree C cooling produced by sulphur injected into the atmosphere by the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991. Crutzen suggests that the sulphur could be carried into the stratosphere on balloons and released using artillery guns to form sulphur dioxide. This would then remain in the atmosphere for around two years, reflecting the sun's radiation back into space. [E][D][X]
Aerosols and climate change From an extensive survey of sky conditions at 17 locations representing different types of air pollution and weather patterns (including Washington, Rome, Beijing, and Mexico City), researchers at the Weizmann Institute and NASA have clarified how man-made aerosols affect climate change. Aerosols can exert a cooling effect by nucleating more, smaller-sized, water droplets. These are lifted higher into the atmosphere, creating larger and taller clouds that persist longer, reflecting more sunlight back into space. The small droplet size also suppresses rainfall. Conversely, aerosols containing black carbon can have a warming effect by absorbing part of the sun's radiation, heating the surrounding atmosphere. This reduces the temperature differential with the ground and the associated air flow needed to form clouds and rain. The net impact of air pollution world wide could be as much as 5 percent increase in cloud cover. In polluted areas, the aerosol effects can substantially change regional temperatures and reduce rainfall. [E]
Clouds and downpours Cumulus clouds produce sudden downpours of rain because they are formed when the air in the atmosphere is rising. These convection currents lead to small-scale turbulent motion that encourages microscopic water droplets to coalesce and form raindrops. Researchers have now developed a simple analytical theory of the movement of particles in random flows that explains how this happens. The theory predicts the formation of "fold caustics", in which different sized droplets at the same position in space can end up moving at different velocities. When the Stokes number exceeds a threshold value, the collision rate suddenly increases and this can create a downpour in minutes. [E][A][M]
Methane-producing bacteria Methane-producing microbes called archaea are probably the major source of methane emanating from rice fields, contributing up to a quarter of global emissions of this potent greenhouse gas. German scientists have now sequenced the genetic code of the bacteria. The hope is that this might lead to a way of reducing the methane emission. [E][G]
Flood tolerant rice More than $1 billion of rice is lost each year because of flooding. Modern rice varieties cannot tolerate total emersion and drown within a few days. Researchers, exploiting the sequencing of the rice genome in 2003, have found a gene in an old rice variety that enables the rice to survive total emersion for two weeks. [E][G]
Marine biodiversity Researchers from the Netherlands, Spain and the US have found over 20,000 different kinds of bacteria in just one litre of seawater. The study is part of the Census of Marine Life, a programme that brings together 1,700 researchers in 70 countries in efforts to assess and explain the diversity, distribution and abundance of life in the oceans. Microbes make up the vast majority of marine biomass and are the primary engines of Earth's biosphere. The new findings could mean that there are as many as 10 million different kinds of bacteria in the ocean, hundred of times more than previously thought. [E][G]
Marine conservation A draft report on regulating deep sea fishing, ordered by the UN General Assembly in 2004, has found that fishing for newly discovered resources in the high seas is often unregulated to the point where it causes serious harm to vulnerable deep sea habitats. The report identifies bottom trawling as a particular concern because of its tendency to over-fish both targeted and non-targeted species, and the damage it causes to vulnerable ecosystems that provide critical habitats for marine life. The report says that there is an urgent need for some interim steps such as a moratorium on bottom trawling until formal conservation and management systems can be set up. [E][D]
Freak waves Swedish researchers have shown how ordinary waves can turn into the 'monster' or 'rogue' waves large enough to sink ships or disturb oil platforms. The freak waves are the result of special non-linear interactions between ordinary waves and the wind. This enables a wave to borrow energy from neighbouring waves. The computer simulations have revealed that the waves can then grow extremely quickly. [E][C][M][P] |
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| [R] Remote sensing and sensor systems | |
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Ice sheet loss Satellite gravity measurements of the loss of mass over Greenland and surrounding regions between April 2002 to November 2005 suggest that the Greenland Ice Sheet could be melting three times faster than indicated by previous measurements and that the rate of ice loss is accelerating, particularly in southeastern Greenland. The gravity data comes from the twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. To measure ice loss, the changes in mass caused by ocean tides and differences in atmospheric pressure have to be subtracted out and this introduces significant uncertainty. [R][E]
Enhanced weather radar Weather radars detect the water droplets in clouds and rain, but it would be very useful to also measure the water vapour in the air before it has condensed. Researchers at NCAR have found a way to do this by using the reflections from buildings and other objects on the ground. Since the distance from any given radar to each of these reflective surfaces is known precisely, the time it takes a radar signal to get there and back is a measure of how much water vapour the air contains. By using four radars pointing in different directions through the same air-mass, the water vapour distribution can be mapped with a resolution of 4 km, enabling incipient storms to be detected hours before they burst. [R][A][E]
Titan lakes New radar images strongly suggest that Saturn's giant moon Titan contains lakes of liquid hydrocarbons. This is the first time that researchers have found compelling evidence for bodies of liquid on the surface of any object beyond Earth. [R][A]
Planets and plutons An international team under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has concluded two years of work defining the difference between “planets” and the smaller “solar system bodies” such as comets and asteroids. If the definition is approved by the meeting of the IAU General Assembly in Prague, the Solar System will include 12 planets, with more to come: eight classical planets that dominate the system, three small planets (Pluto, Charon and 2003 UB313) in a new and growing category of “plutons”, and Ceres, located between Mars and Jupiter and previously classed as an asteroid. [R][A]
Magnetic reconnection In 2001, the four satellites of ESA's Cluster Mission happened to surround a region within which the Earth’s magnetic field was spontaneously reconfiguring itself. Using the data collected at that time, scientists have now been able to analyse the three-dimensional structure and size of a so-called 'null point' in which the magnetic reconnection was taking place. Magnetic reconnection occurs when two or more regions of plasma, each with its own magnetic fields, are pushed together so that the magnetic fields break and reconnect to form a more stable configuration. This is thought to be a fundamental process throughout the Universe that drives many powerful phenomena, from the jets of radiation seen escaping from distant black holes to the powerful solar flares in our own Solar system. Magnetic reconfiguration is also responsible for the instability problems that plague Tokamak fusion reactors. [R][A][I][P]
Extremely Large Telescope European astronomers are planning to build an optical telescope that is four times as big as any in existence. With a diameter of 60 metres, it could allow scientists to study the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, looking for spectral signatures of life such those from methane gas and chlorophyll. The proposed Extremely Large Telescope would also enable astronomers to see the earliest galaxies forming in the Universe and also discover where the first stars formed. [R][A][O]
Smell-based navigation Experiments in Italy suggest that homing pigeons depend critically on their sense of smell to find their way home rather than on the Earth's magnetic field, as has previously been proposed. The experiments tested magnetic sensing and smell side by side and showed that inhibiting the pigeons' sense of smell drastically impeded their homing ability whereas inhibiting their magnetic sensing had very little effect. It is not clear, however, how the pigeons use their sense of smell to navigate. [R][E][S]
Target tumour tracking New software, which develops a model of a patient’s respiration, can track moving lung tumours in real time so that a robot system can deliver focused X-ray beams with an accuracy of better than a millimetre whilst the patient is breathing. This allows radiologists to hit the tumour with ten times the radiation dosage of conventional treatments, without damaging surrounding tissues. [R][C][H]
Biomimetic signal analysis Humans have 200 million light receptors in their eyes, 10 to 20 million smell receptors in the nose, but only a mere 8,000 sound receptors in the ears. Yet the auditory system is the fastest of the five senses. Researchers at Rockefeller University believe they may have resolved how the brain accomplishes this remarkable speed and precision in sound analysis. The biomimetic algorithm they have developed also turns out to be far more nuanced at transforming sound into a visual representation than current methods, and it may prove to be a breakthrough in signal analysis. The algorithm can be used for any kind of data in which a series of time points are juxtaposed with discrete frequencies that are important to pick up. Radar, sonar, seismic surveys, speech recognition and medical tests such as EEGs all depend on this kind of time-frequency analysis. [R][B][H][I][S] |
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| [S] Sensor devices | |
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Analysing frescoes Physicists in Italy have developed a portable microwave-based sensor to help art restorers preserve the frescoes in Italian churches and chapels. These frescos are vulnerable to damage by moisture and salt in the walls, and by measuring the microwave absorption in the wall the sensor can reveal how moisture and salt is present. Previously this could only be done by drilling holes through the painting to obtain a sample of the plaster. [S][M][R]
Detecting eye disease A surgeon at Cheltenham General Hospital in the UK has invented a camera that can measure the oxygen levels at the back of the retina. By providing an easy non-invasive way to monitor the circulation in the eye, the invention can help prevent people with glaucoma or diabetes losing their sight. More than 171 million people worldwide have diabetes and glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness in the world. [S][H]
Infrared screening for Alzheimer's US scientists report they have developed an easy and inexpensive eye test that uses so-called quasi-elastic infrared light scattering to check for deposits of amyloid plaque in the eye. This can reveal Alzheimer's disease at an early stage allowing treatment before cognitive symptoms appear. UK research also suggests that PET scans using a radioactive marker that binds to the amyloid can reveal the presence and extent of any amyloid deposits in the brain. [S][B][H][O]
Ultrasound and the foetal brain The medical use of ultrasound to monitor foetal development is highly beneficial, but at study in mice suggests that overuse might lead to abnormal brain development. Researchers at Yale observed that a small but significant number of neurons in the mouse embryonic brain did not migrate to their proper positions in the cerebral cortex following prolonged and frequent exposure to ultrasound. [S][B][H]
BEC magnetometer Physicists at the University of Heidelberg have used a one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as a sensitive magnetometer. The sensor's combination of nanotesla field sensitivity and micron spatial resolution is better than that of any other device and could reveal new solid state and surface physics phenomena. [S][F][M]
Multiple x-ray CT scanner Traditional CT scanners use a single x-ray source that takes approximately 1,000 images from multiple angles by mechanically rotating either the x-ray source or the object being scanned. Scientists at the University of North Carolina have shown that this can be achieved much faster and without rotation by using multiple nanotube x-ray sources that are turned on simultaneously to capture images from multiple views at the same time. This could make scanners smaller, faster and less expensive to operate, boosting their use for security and medical applications. [S][D][H][N]
Nanoparticle paint-on infrared sensors Using simple wet chemistry, researchers at the University of Toronto have developed paint-on nanoparticle photodetectors that are very cheap to produce and exquisitely sensitive to near infrared radiation. The researchers say that they are about ten times more sensitive than the sensors currently used in military night-vision equipment and biomedical imaging. They believe the technology could have great potential for communications, imaging and monitoring. [S][J][N][O][R]
Scanning mass spectrometry The emerging science of systems biology requires instruments that can precisely measure interactions between cells, including cell signalling and protein expression, and responses to external stimuli from the organ scale down to tissue and single cell level. To meet this need, researchers at Georgia Tech have created a nanoscale probe that gently pulls biomolecules at precise points on the cell or tissue surface, ionizes them, produces “dry” ions suitable for analysis, and transports these to a mass spectrometer. The probe can be readily integrated with an atomic force microscope or other scanning probes, and can not only image biochemical activity but also monitor the changes in the cell or tissue topology during the imaging. [S][G][H][N][X]
Blood screening Scientists in the UK and US have developed a blood test able to give early warning of breast cancer. The blood tests involve multiphoton-detection, which increases sensitivity to cancerous or precancerous cells 200 to 1,000-fold. This could allow routine detection of breast cancer at a really early stage. [S][H][O] |
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| [O] Optoelectronics, optics and lasers | |
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More precise atomic clocks Improving the precision of atomic clocks is important for satellite navigation, network synchronisation and deep space missions. NIST report that an experimental optical clock based on a single mercury atom is now at least five times more precise than the US national standard clock NIST-F1, which is based on a "fountain" of cold caesium atoms. A prototype mercury optical clock was originally demonstrated at NIST in 2000. Over the last five years its absolute frequency has been measured repeatedly with respect to NIST-F1. It may also be possible to improve the precision of caesium atomic clocks operating at room temperature by an order of magnitude as a result of new research that has determined more accurately how to correct for the energy shift in the caesium levels due to thermal radiation. [O][I][R]
Squeezed light and gravitational waves Laser beams suffer from quantum noise. This was thought to be a fundamental limitation in laser-based instruments, but in 2003 researchers showed that it is possible to reduce the uncertainty in one of the variables describing the laser beam at the expense of increasing the fluctuations in another variable. This so-called squeezing of the fluctuations has since been used to reduce quantum noise in a number of optoelectronic applications. Usually the approach is applied at megahertz frequencies, but researchers at Max Planck have now made it work at all the detection frequencies pertinent for increasing the sensitivity of laser-based gravitational wave detectors. This includes frequencies below a hundred hertz, the expected frequency range of gravitational waves arriving from some distant coalescing black holes. [O][F][R][S]
Applications of slow light Research teams in Switzerland and the US are slowing light pulses in optical fibres by up to several nanoseconds by using stimulated Brillouin scattering, which involves using sound waves to change the refractive index in a material. They say the method is sufficiently compact, rugged, and efficient to be used in practical applications. These may include optical switching, quantum communications, network synchronization, radar and computer memory. An early application could be for resynchronising pulse trains that have been distorted by travelling over long distances through optical fibres. [O][C][I][R][T]
Optical refrigerators If a material is illuminated with photons whose energy is slightly less than that needed to excite its atoms to a higher energy level, the material can make up the difference by using the energy from its thermal vibrations. If the atoms then re-emit the energy as photons, the net result is to extract energy from the material and hence to cool it. In the past, this anti-Stokes emission has been used to laser-cooled materials containing ytterbium and thulium. Now researchers in Spain have demonstrated the effect in materials doped with erbium. The advantage of using erbium is that it is excited by light of 1.5 microns wavelength used in fibre-optic communications, and it requires relatively little laser power. It might be used for low-temperature, high-efficiency optical refrigerators that could cool infrared detectors and computer circuits. [O][J][M][P][S]
Autonomous microlenses Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed an autonomous microlens that can adapt its focal length from minus infinity to plus infinity without external control. The lens uses hydrogels that respond to physical, chemical or biological stimuli. The researchers believe these liquid microlenses could advance lab-on-a-chip technologies, optical imaging, medical diagnostics and bio-optical microfluidic systems. They can be made into an array of lenses like the compound eye of insects. [O][M][S]
Superbright LED In conventional LEDs most of the emitted light is trapped in the semiconductor and reabsorbed, and only about 2 percent escapes perpendicular to the surface. Research in Taiwan has shown that just roughening the front and back surfaces can triple the light output, and researchers at NIST have achieved 41 percent light extraction over a 130 nm bandwidth by etching circular Bragg gratings into a resonant cavity LED structure. Superbright LEDs could have applications in displays and for optical coherence tomography and other medical imaging. [O][H][N][R]
Lossless tunnelling A thin film of silver that is normally highly opaque can transmit light with remarkable efficiency when sandwiched between two transparent layers, according to research at the University of Exeter. The effect is similar to quantum tunnelling through a barrier, except that 100 percent transmission is possible if the light waves reflecting back and forth between the sandwich layers completely cancel. The researchers believe that it should also be possible to demonstrate the equivalent effect with particles, for example by layering doped semiconductors to create a barrier through which a current could tunnel with no loss. [O][J][S]
Atom mirror Physicists have previously developed lenses and prisms to manipulate beams of atoms and molecules as though they were beams of light. Now, Swiss researchers report on their design and testing of an atomic mirror that can reflect an atom or molecule straight back. Before reflection, the atom must be excited into a long lived high energy Rydberg state, which gives it a large magnetic moment. The mirror could lead to better experiments on the wave nature of atoms, and might also be useful in containing antihydrogen - which is often produced in a Rydberg state. [O][F][M]
All-optical transistor Physicists at the Queen's University in Belfast have developed a prototype all-optical amplifier that is small and low power. The key to the device is a thin layer of gold pierced by an array of holes 200 nm in diameter and coated in a layer of polymer. The researchers shine two beams of light on the structure: a signal beam and a control beam. When the beams strike the patterned film they produce plasmons, and varying the intensity and the colour of the control beam causes the plasmons to interact in ways that enhance or decrease the transmission of the signal beam through the film. The film therefore acts as an all-optical transistor. It could potentially serve as a building block in optical circuits and optical versions of microelectronic devices. [O][C][I][J][N] |
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| [I] IT, communications, networking and secure systems | |
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Metropolitan wireless WiFi, WiMAX and 3G/HSDPA are competing for the rapidly expanding market of metropolitan wireless services. In the London Borough of Islington, the “Technology Mile” of free WiFi access has been so successful since its launch in June 2005 that it has already been more than doubled in length. WiMAX, with the backing of Intel, is being deployed in the US, Mexico, Germany and Australia. UK Internet service provider Pipex is launching its first WiMAX pilots in Stratford-upon-Avon and plans to begin rolling WiMAX out to six other cities, including Manchester and London. Mobile operators T-Mobile and Vodafone have already upgraded their existing 3G networks to HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access). [I][T]
RFID A preliminary study at Stanford suggests that a handheld wand scanning device that detects surgical sponges tagged with radiofrequency identification chips could help operating room personnel detect sponges that have been inadvertently left inside patients after procedures. [I][H]
RF data chip A radio chip the size of a grain of rice that holds up to half a megabyte of video has been developed at Hewlett Packard's research labs in the UK. The chip, called a Memory Spot, is a CMOS memory device with a built-in antenna. It is small enough to be attached to a postcard or a photograph. It could be used to add security to identity cards and passports, to prevent counterfeiting, and to append video, audio or hundreds of pages of text to all sorts of everyday objects. In hospitals, for example, the chips could allow doctors to add detailed medical records to a patient’s plastic wristband. [I][D][H][J][K][V]
Data communication and games hardware The performance of gaming consoles is driving the leading edge of data bus design. To achieve its immersive experience, Sony's PlayStation 3 depends on data flowing to and from its microprocessor and memory at up to 25.6 GB/s, and the bus connecting the microprocessor to the graphics chip will move data at 35 GB/s, or about five to 10 times the performance of today’s best PC-bus technology. [I][C][K][T][V]
Radiation belt remediation A proposed US system to protect satellites from solar storms or high-altitude nuclear detonations could cause side-effects that might lead to radio communication blackouts, according to scientists from New Zealand, UK and Finland. They calculate that the "radiation belt remediation" (RBR) system could alter the upper atmosphere sufficiently to seriously disrupt high frequency (HF) radio wave transmissions and GPS navigation around the world. [I][D][R]
Security for global services Global networks and internet services depend on adequate security guarantees for agent-based transactions. Specific domains have to be able to limit access to selected agents only. These agents also need to protect themselves and their data from attacks while traversing potentially hostile environments, or whilst executing remotely outside the control of their originating locations. These challenges have been addressed by a collaborative European project called MYTHS, which has sought to develop 'type'-based theories of security for mobile and distributed systems. One important output is a new programming language called CDuce. This is an innovative XML-oriented functional language which is type-safe, efficient and offers new methods of working with XML documents. [I][C][K]
Javascript vulnerabilities When a person browses the web, their computer is normally protected from attack by a firewall that filters out suspect messages. But researchers in the US have warned that certain JavaScript code embedded in web pages can be used to bypass the firewall. The malicious JavaScript could even in theory be embedded in a third party web site, for example in a message board posting. [I]
Network security At present end users are largely responsible for their own network security. However, this approach makes it difficult to prevent denial of service attacks using the computers of end users who do not maintain adequate local security. A European project has developed a distributed detection and reaction system that is located in the network and managed by the network operator, so that the network security no long depends on all end-users to organise and manage the security of their own terminals. [I]
Authenticated mobile transactions A European collaboration is developing biometric authentication software that would allow legally binding transactions over mobile devices for e-commerce, signing contracts or securing the exchange of data in e-healthcare and e-government systems. A digitally signed and authenticated voice recording during a telephone conversation could give the speaker's words legal value. [I][K] |
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| [K] Knowledge, information and technology management | |
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Knowledge maintenance A European project called CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic, Scientific knowledge Preservation) is developing a Europe-wide digital preservation infrastructure based on existing and emerging standards. It addresses the issue of how digitally encoded information can still be understood and used in the future when the software, systems and everyday knowledge will have changed. [K]
Automated text mining Text mining allows a computer to extract useful information from unstructured text. Until recently, text mining required a great deal of preparation before documents could be analyzed in a meaningful way. A new text-mining technique called "topic modelling" avoids this by looking for patterns of words that tend to occur together in documents and then automatically categorizing those words into topics with little or no human help. Scientists at UC Irvine have demonstrated the power of this technology by completing in hours a complex topic analysis of 330,000 stories published primarily by the New York Times. [K]
Knowledge-based computer assisted detection To help computers provide faster "second opinions" on mammogram images, medical physicists at Duke University are employing a Google-like approach that retrieves useful information from an existing mammogram database within three seconds. Rather than comparing the mammogram image to every image of breast cancer in a computer database, the new approach compares the mammogram in question to selected images that are most highly ranked for their information content. A pilot study showed the approach is gives less false positives than using feature extraction alone. It also helps a radiologist check the diagnosis by showing the similar mammograms in the database on which it has based its advice. [K][H][R]
The expert mind Skill at chess can be measured, broken into components, subjected to laboratory experiments and readily observed in its natural environment, the tournament hall. For these reasons, chess has served as the greatest single test bed for theories of thinking and expertise, and has been called the "Drosophila of cognitive science." The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that in chess, and probably in most fields, experts are made, not born. What matters most is "effortful study," which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one's competence, plus the motivation to make this effort. This suggests that in early education and in whole-life learning it is important to maintain constant challenge and opportunity to improve, together with enough reward to motivate further effort. [K][B][T]
Web analytics The application of web analytics and personalisation technology is growing rapidly, particularly in retail. Big companies often now have a multi-channel marketing director tasked with bringing online and offline sales and marketing campaigns together, and exploiting online analytics. Some advanced sites are also making analytics available to customers - showing, for example, which new products, information or news items are attracting the most interest and where. [K]
Innovation leadership A study at Penn State has developed a competency model of innovation leaders. The study found that innovation leaders must take risks and think creatively, but not necessarily be the generator of new ideas but rather understand what creative employees value and encourage new ideas from their employees. They must collaboratively interact and support high levels of teamwork, providing opportunities to share innovations, empowering employees to adopt useful innovations and diffuse them through the organization's social system. They must be dedicated to projects that require innovations, establish a trust culture, display initiative, and set challenging project goals linked to the needs of the customer, department and enterprise. [K][W][X]
Communicating science The American Association for the Advancement of Science has conducted a survey on science reporting and communication. Responses were received from 614 reporters and 445 public information officers (PIOs), mostly living in the US and Europe. The questions covered the challenges in science reporting, what topics are of most interest to readers and to news editors, problems that affect public trust, what researchers and PIOs can do to improve science communication, and how PIOs and reporters work with each other. [K] |
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| [C] Computing, supercomputing, modelling and simulation | |
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Predicting crystal structure The computer prediction of crystal structures is difficult even for simple solids, not least because of the complexity of sorting among the myriad ways that given atoms can compose a basic repeatable unit cell. Now, scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have developed an evolutionary algorithm that is able to explore the possible atomic arrangements step-by-step, continually optimising to avoid configurations that are less likely to succeed. This makes the algorithm very efficient, allowing crystal structure to be predicted under a range of extreme pressures and temperatures on the basis of the chemical composition alone. [C][M][X]
Progress in weather forecasting The precision and accuracy of weather forecasting is advancing rapidly thanks to progress in supercomputers, satellites and the scientific understanding of how weather evolves, together with models that can simulate this. As the weather forecasting centres round the world work more closely as a network, it will be possible to combine many ensembles of simulations. And, better understanding of what locations in the world have the most critical impact on the weather means that the best use can be made of sensing capabilities and data collection. [C][E][I][K][R][T][X]
Computational photography The transition from analogue to digital photography is now largely complete. The next stage is computational photography, which extends digital photography by providing the capability to record much more information and by offering the possibility of processing this information afterwards. Computational photography will enable features such as 3D recording, digital refocusing, synthetic re-illumination, improved motion compensation and noise reduction. [C][O][R][T][V] |
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| [W] Whole life engineering, manufacture and testing | |
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Biomimetic design Scale free design pervades biological networks, and according to computer simulations at the University of Chicago it gives biological systems an evolutionary edge by allowing them to evolve to perform new functions more rapidly. The simulations showed that ecological populations organized in scale-free networks evolved rapidly and smoothly, while randomly organized networks evolved slowly and in spurts following a succession of rare and beneficial random events. The researchers observe that social and economic networks also display a scale-free architecture, and they suggest that in electronic circuits and systems using a scale-free architecture rather than a random network design would be likely to produce better results. Scale-free architecture might also make it faster to train artificial neural networks. [W][E][G][X] |
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| [X] Systems, complexity and risk | |
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Progress in systems biology The goal of systems biology is to combine molecular information of various types in models that describe and predict function at the cellular, tissue, organ, and even whole-organism levels. So far, systems biology approaches have served as research tools, but the field is moving toward clinical applications, including personalized medicine. [X][B][C][G][H][I][K][N][S][T]
Sustainable development Scientific American has published three articles by the director of the UN Millennium Project on sustainable development. The first article addresses the new geopolitics and how preventing wars and other strife will increasingly depend on facing the ecological consequences of economic activities. The second discusses the risk that small changes in climate can cause wars, topple governments and crush economies already strained by poverty, corruption and ethnic conflict. The third covers the importance of timely assistance in sustaining parts of the world hovering between democracy and disarray. [X][D][E][H][I][K][P][R][T]
Solo-living and sustainable systems One-person households are the biggest consumers of land, energy and household appliances in England and Wales, with men between the ages of 35 and 45 being the worst offenders, according to research at University College London. The report concludes that to reduce the risk of a consumption and housing crisis, environmentally-friendly lifestyle choices must be provided for this emerging affluent group, such as collective housing, relocation schemes and ecological homes. [X][E][K][M][P] |
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| [V] Virtuality and human-machine interface | |
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Virtual world Software that automatically stitches together hundreds of photographs to create a virtual world that can be explored using a computer is to be released by Microsoft. Called Photosynth, the software takes individual images and performs careful analyses to find matching sections. It then "stitches" overlapping pictures together to create a three-dimensional landscape composed of many different snaps. [V][C][K][R]
Virtual world walking A pair of motorised roller skates that cancel out a person's steps could let users naturally explore virtual reality landscapes in confined spaces. The "Powered Shoes" have been developed at the University of Tsukuba in central Japan. Walking through a virtual world could give a much better appreciation of distance. [V]
Neural interface chip Researchers in the US have made a startling breakthrough in the treatment of paralysis. The researchers succeeded in attaching a sensor directly to the brain of a quadriplegic man, who was then able to control objects around him, using only the power of his thoughts. [V][B][H] |
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| [B] Brain research and human science | |
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Origin of language Researchers have found that Rhesus macaques, when listening to other monkeys’ calls, activate brain areas equivalent to the ones used for language in humans. This suggests that the most recent ancestor of human and non-human primates, that lived 25-30 million years ago, already had the neural substrate that later led to the appearance of language in humans. [B][K]
Energy-limited brain In humans, the optic nerve transmits data from the eye at a rate of around 8.8 Mbits/second, according to research at the University of Pennsylvania. Each neuron is actually capable of firing close to once a millisecond, but its average firing rate is only four times a second. The researchers believe that the speed is limited by power consumption and energy efficiency. As it is, the human brain requires 20 percent of the body's metabolism to keep it running, and the researchers found that where the neuron firing rate was higher the data transmitted per pulse suffered. [B]
Watching neurons work in vivo Research at the MIT Picopower Institute has demonstrated the ability to watch the molecular activity of individual neurons in the brain of live animals and monitor how the activity in those neurons alters in response to changes in the environment on a daily basis over a period of a week. The team developed a state-of-the-art imaging system in which transparent cranial windows were implanted over the primary visual cortex, allowing the researchers to monitor over time the expression of proteins in the brains of live mice. The technique exploits two-photon microscopy, which allows imaging of living tissue up to 1 mm deep, enough for the researchers to see proteins expressed within individual neurons. In this way they were able to observe how the visual cortex is trained by visual experience. [B][H][S]
Memory and neural rewiring Swiss researchers have shown in experiments on rats that the brain continually forms new connections following new experiences. Normally the rewiring process occurred at a slow pace, but they found the rate increased markedly when the brain sample was excited with glutamate. This suggests that with a strong new experience, the brain accelerates its reconfiguration process, allowing new connections to be made, tested, and strengthened, and weaker ones removed so that the brain can quickly adapt to the new situation. The findings may help explain recent findings by UK and German researchers that the brain is much better at learning new information if this contains some elements that are completely novel. [B][K]
Long neural wiring UK and German researchers have shown that the brain has a surprisingly large number of long distance connections. Previously, it had been thought that, since creating and maintaining neural connections carries a significant metabolic cost, a nervous system should have mainly very short nerve fibre connections. It now seems that this may be outweighed by the fact that with long distance connections a signal does not have to pass through as many intermediate nodes that could cause transmission delays or introduce interfering signals, with the risk of the information being completely or partially lost. Long distance connections could also be enabling neighbouring as well as distant regions to receive the signal at the same time, thereby facilitating synchronous information processing. [B][C]
Male and female brains Female is the default brain setting. Until the eighth week of gestation every human foetal brain looks female. The brain, like the rest of the human body, becomes male as a result of surges of testosterone - one during gestation and one shortly after birth. New scanning techniques have enabled researchers to examine the brain's interior whilst it is working and to identify the differences in the ways that male and female brains operate. The results show that the differences are less than one might suppose, but may explain why there are relatively fewer women in mathematics, physical sciences and engineering. [B][K][T]
Instinctive behaviour Innate behaviours are inborn and do not require learning or prior experience. Examples include courtship and sexual behaviours, escape and defensive manoeuvres, and aggression. Using the common fruit fly as a model organism, researchers have found that a command hormone, called ecdysis-triggering hormone or ETH, activates discrete groups of brain peptide neurons in a stepwise manner, making the fruit fly perform a well-defined sequence of behaviours. The researchers propose that similar mechanisms could account for innate behaviours in other animals and even humans. The work raises the ethical issue that by understanding how innate behaviour is wired in the brain, it becomes possible to manipulate behaviour, to change its order, delay it or even eliminate it. [B][D][X]
Sleep deprivation During Non-REM sleep, which occupies 80 percent of sleeping time, the firing pattern of the brain's nerve cells sets up slow electrical waves that start at different points in the cerebral cortex and travel across it. These travelling waves occur hundreds of times a night, and most commonly at a frequency of 1 cycle per second, which has been shown to depress the activity of synapses. The function of non-REM sleep may be to scale back synaptic activity, eliminating weak memories, to provide enough capacity to handle memory formation for another day. MRI studies on sleep deprivation have found that as the brain areas normally involved in memory become exhausted, other brain areas are recruited to compensate. After 60 hours without sleep, however, these other areas are also exhausted, and the brain then requires more than the two nights of lost sleep in order to fully recover. [B][D]
Sleep and memory Sleep aids memory. Whether tested in animals or humans, studies have shown that sense memories, such as learning a certain sequence of dance steps, take root more solidly when accompanied by adequate rest. Now new research shows that declarative memories such as a sequence of facts also benefit from slumber. In particular, sleep appears to make the memories more resilient against being corrupted by later competing memories. [B]
Reversing memory loss Ampakines, a drug made to enhance memory, appears to trigger a natural mechanism in the brain that fully reverses age-related memory loss, even after the drug itself has left the body, according to researchers at UC Irvine. Ampakines appear to do this by boosting the production of a naturally occurring protein in the brain that is necessary for long-term memory formation. [B][G][H]
Treating Alzheimer's disease Australian scientists have developed a once-a-day pill that they hope could potentially cure Alzheimer's disease. Tests in mice have shown the drug, PBT2, prevents build up of the amyloid protein linked to the disease. Protein levels dropped by 60 percent within 24 hours of a single dose, and memory performance improved within five days. [B][H]
Fast-acting antidepressant A preliminary US study has found that treatment-resistant depression can be improved in as little as two hours with a single intravenous dose of ketamine. This is a huge improvement on current antidepressants, which routinely take eight weeks or more to exert their effect in treatment-resistant patients and four to six weeks in more responsive patients. The reason that current antidepressants work so slowly is believed to be that they act on targets close to the beginning of a series of biochemical reactions that regulate mood. Their effect therefore takes a long time to trickle down. [B][H]
Psilocybin Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that a plant alkaloid called psilocybin, which is the active agent in "sacred mushrooms", can induce mystical or spiritual experiences descriptively identical to the spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries. They also found that psilocybin can have long term therapeutic benefit. Two months after receiving the psilocybin, 79 percent of subjects reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction compared with those given a placebo at the same test session. A majority said their mood, attitudes and behaviours had changed for the better. The hope is that psilocybin may prove very valuable in combating drug dependence and depression, and possibly in changing behaviour. [B][H] |
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| [H] Healthcare and medicine | |
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Cancer stealth Some cancers are able to hide themselves from the immune system by attracting a cloak of regulatory T-cells that suppress action by other immune cells. This may explain the failure of many experimental anti-cancer vaccines. Researchers have shown that, in the case of pancreatic cancer cells, blocking the signal that the cancer cells use to attract the T-reg cells appears to be effective in removing the cloak. [H]
Preventing angiogenesis The transparency of the cornea, and hence vision in the eye, depends on keeping blood vessels from developing in the cornea, as they would in almost every other tissue in the body. Researchers have found that this is accomplished by the production in the cornea of large amounts of the protein VEGFR-3 (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-3), which halts angiogenesis by acting as a "sink" to bind or neutralise the growth factors sent by the body to stimulate the growth of blood vessels. The hope is that drugs designed to manipulate the levels of VEGFR-3 could heal corneas that have undergone severe trauma and might also help to prevent unwanted angiogenesis elsewhere in the body, particularly in tumours. [H]
Obesity vaccine A vaccine that trains the immune system to attack a hormone thought to control appetite has shown promise in preventing weight gain in a small pilot study. Mature male rats immunized with specific types of the active vaccine ate normally yet gained less weight and had less body fat, indicating that the vaccine directly affects the body's metabolism and energy use. There was also no systemic inflammatory response. These results may be especially important to stop what is commonly known as "yo-yo dieting," the cycle of repeated loss and regain of weight experienced by many dieters. [H]
The rise in asthma and obesity Research in Australia have found that the protein aP2 (adipocyte/macrophage fatty acid–binding protein) potentially links diet, obesity and asthmas. AP2 has previously been linked to type 2 diabetes and to atherosclerosis. The researchers have now discovered that aP2 also plays an essential role in allergic airway diseases such as asthma. This suggests that blocking aP2 function could be a way to treat asthma and other inflammatory lung diseases. The discovery also adds to the growing evidence of a connection between the pathways that regulate inflammation and those that govern metabolism. [H][G]
Metabolic syndrome Researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital have identified how a molecular switch regulates fat and cholesterol production. This may help advance treatments for metabolic syndrome, the constellation of diseases that includes high cholesterol, obesity, type II diabetes, and high blood pressure. [H]
Biological ageing and manual work People from lower socio-economic groups are more likely to die earlier than people in non-manual jobs from heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Unhealthy habits such as lack of exercise, excess weight, smoking and poor diet account for around a third of these deaths. Now, a study on white blood cells from 1552 female twins suggests that cells from women with more menial jobs age faster, even after taking these factors into account. On average, their cells were seven years "older" than those from women of the same chronological age with non-manual jobs. [H][X]
Switching off chronic pain Current medications for chronic pain are either largely ineffective or have serious side effects. Researchers from Columbia University Medical Center have now discovered that an enzyme in nerve cells called protein kinase G (PKG) acts as a switch for chronic pain. PKG is turned on by inflammation or nerve damage but gets stuck in the on-position even when the inflammation or damage has healed. The hope is that this discovery will lead to a new class of drugs that can block chronic pain by turning PKG off. [H][B][G]
Accelerated healing An international team of scientists has identified two genes, called PI(3)Kgamma and PTEN, that control electrotaxis - the movement of cells in response to an electric current - that is involved in wound healing. They also showed that by applying an electrical field to a wound they could change the movement of cells and speed up the healing process. This may be particularly valuable for treating burn patients, diabetics and people with non-healing ulcers. [H][G]
Bioelectrics A new research field of bioelectrics is emerging to study the effect of electric fields on living tissue and particularly the potential of very short gigawatt electric pulses in killing tumours, inserting new genes and stimulating the immune system. Nanosecond pulses allow electric fields to be applied to the tiny organelles inside a cell, such as the cell's nucleus and DNA, without affecting the cell's outer membrane, and seem to be able to preferentially affect cancer cells. In experiments on mice, 300 ns long pulses of 40 kV/cm, from a Blumlein pulse generator, successfully eliminated malignant melanoma, possibly by initiating apoptosis in the cancer cells, without causing permanent injury to the normal tissue. [H][G][P][T]
Dengue fever The recent discovery that the Dengue fever virus can change the shape of its RNA from a long strand into a circle has now led to the discovery that this is an essential step in its replication. Drugs that prevent the circle forming might provide a way to treat Dengue fever, which infects 50 million people annually, and to treat similar diseases, including West Nile virus and encephalitis. [H][G] |
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| [G] Genomics, biotechnology and bioinformatics | |
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Gender and gene expression UCLA researchers have found that thousands of genes behave differently in the same organs of males and females. They scrutinized more than 23,000 genes and found that, although each gene functioned the same in both sexes, there were striking and measurable differences in more than half of the genes' expression patterns between males and females. Finding such a high epigenetic gender gap is a surprise and helps to explain why the same disease often strikes males and females differently, and why the genders may respond differently to the same drug. [G][H]
Epigenetics The emerging field of epigenetics and epigenetic drugs encompasses all of the layers of genetic control in cells that do not entail changes in DNA sequences. The control operates through chromatin - the DNA plus the accompanying proteins (and RNA) that package several feet of DNA into a cell nucleus only microns in diameter. Chromatin acts as a kind of chemical computer. Instead of electronic signals, chromatin's inputs are an ever-changing wash of enzymes, proteins, RNA, nutrients, toxins, and a growing roster of small and large chemical modifications, many very subtle, that activate or suppress the individual genes by exposing or hiding them. [G][X][T]
Body's coordinate system Until now it has been a mystery as to how adult skin, which consists of basically the same components all over the body, knows to grow hair in some areas like the scalp, while manufacturing sweat glands, calluses and fingerprint whorls in others. Some skin cells adjust their behaviour based on interactions with nearby cells. However, scientists at Stanford have found that most cells infer their location using a coordinate system. They analyzed the gene-expression profiles of adult fibroblasts from more than 40 areas of the body and found about 400 genes whose expression patterns varied with the cells' original location. Cells from the upper body had shared expression patterns that were markedly different from those of cells in the lower body. Similar patterns existed among cells originating close to or far from the centre of the body, and among those from the outer or the inner layer of the skin. [G]
Nucleosome positioning code In the cell nucleus, DNA is compressed around the protein scaffolding into tiny spheres called nucleosomes. The bead-like nucleosomes are strung along the entire chromosome, which is itself folded and packaged to fit into the nucleus. Researchers have now cracked the genetic code that sets the rules for where each nucleosome will be positioned along the DNA strand. The precise location of the nucleosomes plays a key role in the cell's function, since access to DNA wrapped in a nucleosome is blocked for many proteins, including those responsible for some of life's most basic processes. Among these barred proteins are factors that initiate DNA replication, transcription and DNA repair. Thus, the positioning of nucleosomes defines the segments in which these processes can and cannot take place. Discovering the nucleosome positioning code should help in understanding the mechanisms underlying many diseases. [G][H]
Evolution of DNA replication The ability of a cell to replicate its DNA in a timely and faithful manner is fundamental to life. But, despite decades of study, the structural and molecular basis for initiating DNA replication, and the degree to which these mechanisms have been conserved by evolution, have been ill defined and hotly debated. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley and UC Berkeley have now shown that all three basic domains of life - Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya - exploit the same core molecular machinery for initiating DNA replication. This shows that the process of reproduction developed very early in the history of life, before the progenitor of archaea, bacteria and eukarya split apart, and that it has been conserved by the eons of evolution since then. [G][F]
Gene evolution and therapy Many of the genes in humans and animals are descendants of ancient genes that have duplicated, mutated and changed their function. US researchers have reverse engineered two modern genes to recreate their 530 million year old ancestral gene. The findings not only help in understanding how genes have evolved but also raise the possibility of a new type of gene therapy in which a portion of a related gene could be inserted into a disease-causing mutant gene to restore its normal function. [G][H]
Genes and cell ageing Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have found a group of genes that are consistently less active in older animals across a variety of species. The activity of these genes proved to be a consistent indicator of how far a cell had progressed toward its eventual demise. The researchers believe that the findings suggest that a cell has molecular mechanisms that keep up repairs until a predetermined time after which the mechanisms switch off and decay sets in. [G][H][X]
Cognitive longevity A US study has identified genes related to the maintenance of good cognitive ability into old age. The study involved 100 people age 90 and older who had well preserved cognition as measured by clinical and psychometric assessments. [G][B][K]
Stem cell therapy Researchers at UCLA have transformed adult stem cells taken from human adipose – or fat tissue – into smooth muscle cells, which help the normal function of a multitude of organs like the intestine, bladder and arteries. The study may help lead to the use of fat stem cells for smooth muscle tissue engineering and repair. [G][H]
Proteomics In a step toward personalised medicine, US researchers have developed a new technique to identify previously unknown genetic mutations that can trigger cancerous growth. By analyzing the proteins - rather than the genes - inside acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) cells, the researchers have dramatically reduced the time it takes to zero in on molecular abnormalities that might be vulnerable to specific drug treatments. [G][H]
Using GM bacteria against disease Wolbachia bacteria are parasites that infect as many as 80 percent of the world's insects. They manipulate reproduction in their hosts in order to improve their own transmission. Many researchers have been investigating the possibility of using genetically modified Wolbachia to control insect-borne diseases such as malaria. But, studying Wolbachia is difficult because it lives inside the cells of its host insect and cannot effectively be studied on its own. The changes it makes to the reproduction of its host are also so subtle that they can be difficult to trace. Now, using the fruit fly Drosophila simulans, researchers at the University of Bath and the University of Chicago have succeeded in identifying two of the insect genes that Wolbachia exploits to manipulate reproduction. [G][H] |
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| [N] Nanotechnology and molecular technology | |
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Nanomechanics of DNA Biologists have long believed that as a molecule of DNA is stretched, its double helix starts to unwind. However, research at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley has shown that as DNA is stretched it initially overwinds and only when it is stretched harder does it start unwinding. In addition to advancing the understanding of DNA/protein interactions, the finding may also have implications for the use of DNA in nanostructures and nanomotors. [N][G] Imaging processes inside cells Johns Hopkins scientists have created a protein biosensor that indicates if an enzyme located nearby is turned on or off. The sensor is made from a protein, originally isolated from jellyfish, that glows blue when the enzyme protein kinase A is turned off and green when physically close to PKA that is turned on. If PKA is turned on at the wrong time or at the wrong place within cells, it can lead to abnormalities that ultimately can lead to heart disease. The sensor makes it possible to see multiple, real-time chemical reactions involving PKA inside living cells, to see where and when PKA is active in the cell, and how this is affected by potential drugs. The researchers say the se | ||