Time for a green industrial revolution   An article in the New Scientists by Sir Nicholas Stern argues that as the world faces up to the worst global financial crisis since the 1930s, the economic case for tackling the global climate crisis is more compelling than ever. Since the Stern Report was published in 2006, the scientific evidence has become increasingly grim and now shows that greenhouse gases must be stabilised at less than 500 ppm to keep down the risks of potentially catastrophic impacts. On the positive side, the pace of technology innovation since 2006 has been faster than predicted and the global economic downturn now provides an opportunity to invest in green technology while costs are lower. The article calls for various policies and measures needed to remove barriers and to provide incentives for technological development. The world needs to come out of the recession in a way that builds 21st century economic growth based on solving global warming and climate change. [D][E][K][P][R][T][X]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126926.600-comment-time-for-a-green-industrial-revolution.html

Prospect of global starvation   Though global warming is making growing seasons longer, the higher temperatures and episodes of extreme heat could cause crop failure and starvation on a global scale, according to new study. The researchers used the outputs from 23 climate models to predict how temperatures will change by 2040-60 and by 2080-2100. Their results show that by 2100 there is greater than a 90 percent chance that summer-averaged temperatures in most of the tropics and subtropics will be higher than the hottest heat waves of the past century. Temperate areas, which historically experience larger variations in temperature, will also suffer frequent episodes of extreme heat. Combining these forecasts with historical records of the effects of past heat waves suggests that in the 2040-60 period it should still be possible to prevent catastrophic starvation and mass migrations by redistributing food from areas of surplus. But, by 2080-2100, the stress on crops and livestock will be global and it will be extremely difficult to cope with food deficits unless major adaptation investments are made soon. [D][X]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16384 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=croplands-may-wither-as-global-warming-worsens http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uow-how010409.php

Cyberspace security and role of cyber vigilantes   The threat from cybercrime and cyberwarfare is rising rapidly according to experts. Online theft is estimated to cost $1 trillion a year, cybercrime is being executed by very large and very well-organised criminal gangs, the number of attacks is rising sharply and too many people do not know how to protect themselves. The internet itself is vulnerable and is now so critical to society that attacks could threaten whole economies. The problems in countering these threats are daunting. Cyberspace is new and poorly understood as a system. The internet is a global network that does not obey traditional boundaries, and traditional ways of policing do not work. There is no equivalent of the World Health Organisation that can deal with global cyber-infection. Centralising control would be a big threat to the innovation, evolution and growth of the web, and the amount of control required to exclude all risk would be quite impracticable and totalitarian. Open policing by civil-minded groups, similar to the open source software movement, might provide some answer. [D][I][K][X]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/davos/7862549.stm

Sustainable defence   The UK Ministry of Defence has confirmed the importance for defence of sustainable development with the launch of three new strategic documents: the 2008 MOD Sustainable Development Report and Action Plan, a new Sustainable Development Strategy and a new Climate Change Strategy. [D][E][T]
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/DefencePolicyAndBusiness/ModAnnouncesSustainableDevelopmentPerformanceReportAndStrategy.htm http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/FD9DAF98-43C5-4453-A6CF-5D03C8A5963E/0/SusDevStrategy.pdf http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/D8407A1C-CA68-4AD4-8E17-9F71B151AF6A/0/SusDevReport2008.pdf http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/73ED201B-CC03-41B4-8936-6BED49469D6E/0/ClimateChangeStrategy2009.pdf

Superior armour   The UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) has developed a new steel armour that has twice the ballistic performance of conventional armour and half the weight. The concept, which involves putting holes in the armour to create edges that deflect projectiles, is not itself new, but DSTL in collaboration with the steelmaker Corus has developed a new manufacturing process that allows the armour to be produced quickly and effectively. [D][M][W]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7811567.stm

Ballooning to the edge of space   NASA and NSF have successfully flown a super-pressure balloon that may enable a new era of high-altitude scientific research. The balloon flown was a prototype, but when fully developed it will be able to carry a one-ton instrument to an altitude of 110,000 feet. [A][R]
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/superpressure_balloon.html

Mapping the atmosphere   The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has been measured over the past 50 years at an increasing number of locations around the world. Together with inventories of fossil fuel use, this has given good data about how much carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere. But little is known about how the carbon dioxide then travels within the atmosphere. Moreover, what information there is conflicts with what models predict. To provide better data, a three year project is now mapping the levels of greenhouse gases and particles throughout the atmosphere, from pole to pole and from the surface to the atmosphere's upper reaches. The airborne measurements cover nearly 100 greenhouse gases in very fine detail at almost every altitude. This will establish a baseline against which efforts worldwide to curb emissions can be judged. The measurements will also help in understanding why methane levels are rising and how gases and particles affect temperatures by altering clouds and the amount of solar heat reaching the Earth's surface. The effect of particles is currently a big uncertainty in climate modelling. [A][E][P][R][X]
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/hippo.jsp http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=jetting-their-way-to-a-better-understanding-of-global-warming http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/uom-smt021109.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/nsfc-rca011609.php

Bone deterioration in zero gravity is alarming   A study evaluating 13 astronauts who spent four to six months on the International Space Station has found that, on average, their hipbone strength decreased by 14 percent. Three astronauts experienced losses of 20 percent to 30 percent, rates comparable to those seen in older women with osteoporosis. This rate of bone deterioration is alarming and greater than was suggested by the less powerful methods of measurements that were used previously. [A][H]
http://www.physorg.com/news152196803.html http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Station_Astronauts_Lose_Alarming_Amounts_Of_Hipbone_Strength_999.html

What the Ares V rocket could mean for astronomy   A NASA paper describes some of the ways that the Ares V rocket could revolutionise space-based astronomy. Ares will deliver NASA's next manned lunar lander to the Moon as well as all the cargo needed for a lunar base. It can lift almost 180 tonnes into low Earth orbit, which means, for example, that it could launch an 8-metre diameter monolithic telescope or a 16-metre diameter optical of far-IR telescope in segments. An 8-metre telescope would have 3 times the resolving power of Hubble and could see objects 11 times fainter. A proposed 16-metre segmented optical/ultraviolet telescope called ATLAST would be nearly 2000 times more sensitive than Hubble and would provide images about seven times sharper than either Hubble or the James Webb telescope. [A][P][R]
http://www.physorg.com/news151166571.html

Potential consequences of severe space weather   At present the Sun is exceptionally quiet. But a new NASA-funded study details what might happen to the modern, high-tech society in the event of a 'super solar flare' followed by an extreme geomagnetic storm, such as a repeat of the so-called Carrington Event, the strongest recorded geomagnetic storm, which occurred in 1859. The study estimates that the total economic impact in the first year alone could reach $2 trillion. Though radio and GPS transmissions could recover quickly, other problems such as damage to the electricity grid could take a long time to repair. The study points particularly to the need to make electricity and information systems more resilient to severe space weather. [A][D][E][I][P][X]
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/21jan_severespaceweather.htm

Methane on Mars   The methane discovered in the atmosphere of Mars could be evidence of life or could be of geological origin. Now NASA and university scientists using data from ground based telescopes have spotted a significant belch of methane that appears to have emerged from localized regions on Mars in summer 2003. The plumes were seen over areas that show evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water. One method to test whether living organisms are producing this methane is by measuring isotope ratios. Life prefers lighter isotopes both of carbon and hydrogen. This test will need to wait for a future space mission such as NASA's Mars Science Laboratory. [A][R]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/nsfc-dom011509.php http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=methane-on-mars-is-something

Mapping the Milky Way   Because we cannot view the Milky Way from a distance, it has been hard to tell quite how big and massive it is, and even how many arms it has. Scientists are now using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope to map the stars in the Milky Way more precisely. This is revealing that our galaxy is rotating about 20 percent faster than thought, is 50 percent more massive, and also probably has four spiral arms of gas and dust that are forming stars. [A][R]
http://www.physorg.com/news150384799.html http://www.physorg.com/news150365610.html

Cyclogyro AUV   The concept for a horizontal-axis rotorcraft was first proposed in the 1930s. Called a cyclogyro it uses rotating horizontal wings, whose angle of attack is varied over the cycle so that they generate both lift and thrust at appropriate times. Designing such variable wings has proven difficult, and the few prototypes that were built were unsuccessful at flying. Recently, however, scientists in Japan and the US have developed a cyclogyro flying robot with a new kind of variable wing mechanism based on a pantograph. This not only changes the angles of attack but also expands and contracts each wing according to its position. By creating larger lift forces and smaller anti-lift forces, this design could provide greater flying efficiency, as well as high manoeuvrability. Simulations, together with experiments with the rotorcraft tethered for stability, showed that it could generate enough lift to fly and carry a significant payload. [U][A][P]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13368 http://www.physorg.com/news151855869.html

Improving robot navigation   A newly developed mathematical model that figures out the best strategy to win the popular board game CLUE can also improve robots sensing and navigation, according to research at Duke University. A moving robot needs not only to take in new information but also use this to guide its next move. Known as the "treasure hunt" problem, this task has been the subject of much AI research. In tests, the new algorithm substantially outperforms other methods because of its strategy of selecting movements and optimizing its ability to incorporate new information, while minimizing the distance travelled. [U][C][R]
http://news.duke.edu/2009/01/clue.html

Distinguishing robots from humans   New Scientist has published a short review of progress in giving robots human-like abilities. It describes some new variations on the famous Turing test to determine how close robots are to being indistinguishable from humans. With improvements in models of the muscles and tendons of the real human body and of human movement, humanoid robots can now look and move very like humans. Adding tricks, such as giving them the ability to fidget subconsciously like humans, can make them uncannily real. The conventional Turing tests asks people whether what they are interacting with is a robot or a human. But some experts think that analysing from brain imaging how people think when they interact with robots and real humans would be a better test since it could pick up subconscious reactions. [U][B][K][T][V]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16461

Robot micromotor   Researchers in Australia have built an electric motor just 250 microns wide that could be used to power tiny robots narrow enough to be injected into the human bloodstream. The robots could then be used to perform remotely controlled surgery in cases where blood vessels are too narrow or too labyrinthine to navigate using a catheter. The motors work by converting the vibrations of a piezoelectric material into rotary motion that can then be used to drive whip-like structures called flagella. [U][H][P]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37400 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7837967.stm

Electric vehicles   California-based Better Place and Denmark utility operator DONG Energy are jointly building a charging network in Denmark so that Danish motorists can switch to electric cars. The network will also provide a way to exploit night-time electricity output from wind turbines as the electric vehicles will mainly be charged during the night when other electricity use is low. [P][E]
http://www.physorg.com/news152294236.html

Blended energy for vehicle propulsion   The best way to improve vehicle performance and reduce cost might be to use a combination of fuel cells, ultracapacitors and two or more types of batteries that complement each other's deficiencies. To handle this blended energy, a US company has developed an energy management system that can quickly switch between two or more energy sources, even when their voltages are different. Advanced lead-acid batteries are cheaper, but they are also heavier and deteriorate more quickly if subjected to regular depletion and recharging. Lithium-ion batteries are generally more robust and lighter but are far more expensive. In combination, the lithium-ion battery can be used to relieve stress on the lead-acid battery and extend its life, and vice versa. Similarly, combining lead-acid technology with supercapacitors has resulted in a fourfold increase in the life of the lead-acid batteries. [P][E][M]
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22015/

Electric propulsion for spacecraft and satellites   Plasma engines are crucially important for making deep space missions possible. The much higher exhaust velocity achieved means that an order of magnitude less fuel mass is needed compared with chemical rocket engines. This allows direct missions to distant targets without needing lengthy detours to get gravity assists from planets. It also enables spacecraft to slow down to enter orbit round their target rather than just having to do a quick fly-by. Three kinds of engine are mature enough to be used on long-distance missions: ion engines, which are most commonly used so far; Hall thrusters, used on SMART-1, which achieve higher thrust density and hence faster acceleration than ion engines; and magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, which achieve still higher plasma density and whose thrust can be more easily varied to optimise a spacecraft's trajectory. [P][A][T]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-efficient-future-of-deep-space

Ethanol-powered fuel cells may be feasible   US researchers have developed a new catalyst that could make ethanol-powered fuel cells feasible. Ethanol is a particularly favourable fuel as it is easy to produce, transport and handle, and has a high energy density. But until now, scientists have been unable to find a catalyst capable of breaking the bonds between ethanol's carbon atoms. The new catalyst, which uses platinum and rhodium atoms on carbon-supported tin dioxide nanoparticles, is capable of breaking carbon bonds at room temperature and efficiently oxidizing ethanol into carbon dioxide as the main reaction product. The researchers say that the work opens new possibilities not only for electrocatalysts and fuel cells but also for other catalytic processes. [P][M]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/dnl-ncp012609.php

Generating hydrogen from water using bacterial enzymes   Some organisms use enzymes called hydrogenases to convert hydrogen ions to hydrogen gas. Scientists are interested in using the same enzymes as a cheap alternative to platinum catalysts for producing hydrogen from water and sunlight. The problem has been that hydrogenases are very easily crippled by oxygen even at parts per million levels and are also degraded by the hydrogen they produce. Now, researchers have discovered that one particular bacterial hydrogenase, which is produced by a sulphate-reducing bacterium, is much more resistant to both gases. It also binds strongly to titanium dioxide nanoparticles. These can simultaneously bind dye molecules that absorb sunlight to produce excited electrons that transfer to the enzyme and drive the hydrogen generation. [P][E]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16409

Second generation biofuel and sequestration   US and Belgian scientists have identified microbes that can improve plant growth on marginal land. Analysis of genes and metabolically important gene products from these microbes identified many possible mechanisms that could help the microbes thrive within a plant environment and potentially affect the growth and development of their plant host. The findings may help enable land that is not suitable for food crops to be used to produce biofuel crops and trees for carbon sequestration. [P][E][G]
http://www.physorg.com/news152191745.html

Wireless electricity   An article in Physics World describes new technology for wirelessly powering electronics in the home or workplace. It discusses what is needed to transfer power efficiently: a low MHz transmitting frequency, a very high Q resonant receiver, and using the magnetic field rather than electric field to transfer energy so as to avoid any health hazards. It is not clear yet whether the technology can be made efficient, compact and cheap enough to be worthwhile compared with just plugging electronics into the mains. But if moving objects such as electric vehicles and robots can be powered wirelessly that could offer a lot of benefit. [P][E][T][U]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/37532

Burning nuclear waste   Physicists at the University of Texas say they have designed a hybrid fusion-fission reactor that can economically eliminate 99 percent of the transuranic waste produced by nuclear power plants, greatly reducing the problem of nuclear waste disposal. The centrepiece of the proposed reactor is a high power Compact Fusion Neutron Source (CFNS). The process for destroying the waste would first involve destroying three-quarters of it using standard, relatively inexpensive light water reactors (LWRs). This step produces energy, but it does not eliminate the highly radiotoxic, transuranic, long-lived waste. The latter is then destroyed in the CFNS-based fusion-fission hybrid in which the CFNS neutrons break up the transuranic elements into lighter short-lived isotopes. The researchers say that the crucial invention that has made the CFNS possible is the so-called Super X Divertor, which handles the enormous heat and particle fluxes enabling the CFNS to safely produce large amounts of neutrons without destroying the system. [P][E][M]
http://www.physorg.com/news152284917.html

Thermal photovoltaic prototype   Thermal photovoltaics (TPVs) convert the light that radiates from a hot surface into electricity. As well as utilising waste heat, TPVs should be able to generate electricity from sunlight far more efficiently than conventional solar panels. The sunlight is concentrated on a material to heat it up, and the light it emits is then converted into electricity by a solar cell. The trick is that the material is selected to emit at wavelengths that the solar cell can convert very efficiently. In theory this could give 85 percent efficiency, though 50 percent is probably the practical limit. To couple the light efficiently into the solar cell, the cell needs to be less than a wavelength from the heated material with a vacuum in between. Technically this is very difficult, but a prototype TPV system has now been developed that is large enough to be practical. [P][M][O]
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21981/

Carbon nanotube cable   Carbon nanotubes could be used to make extremely strong lightweight cables and these might even make it possible sometime in the future to build a space elevator that could lift material into space much more cheaply. The elevator cable would need to extend 35,000 km from the Earth's surface to a station in geostationary orbit and then about twice this distance into space to a weighted structure for stability. As an early step, scientists at Cambridge University have found a way to combine multiple separate nanotubes together to form long strands. Currently they can produce 1 gm of entangled nanotube material per day, which can stretch to a length of 29 km. [M][A][N]
http://www.physorg.com/news151938445.html

Doubling the life of concrete   The service life of concrete can be extended, and probably doubled, by using a nano-additive, according to engineers at NIST. The additive works by slowing down the diffusion of chloride and sulphate ions from road salt, sea water and soils into the concrete. These infiltrating ions cause internal structural damage that leads to cracks and weakens the concrete. The researchers found that the effectiveness of the additive depended critically on using additive molecules less than 100 nm in size rather than larger molecules, such as cellulose. The ions could easily go round larger molecules but were stopped by a large number of much smaller molecules. [M][N][W]
http://www.physorg.com/news152380871.html

Blast resistant concrete   Engineers at the University of Liverpool have tested a new form of concrete designed to reduce the impact of bomb blasts in public areas. The fibre-reinforced concrete was found to absorb a thousand times more energy than plain concrete and could therefore be used for bomb-proof litter bins and protection barriers. Although not yet used in the UK, the concrete has been utilised in Australia in the design of slender footbridges and in the roofs of government buildings to strengthen them against mortar attack. [M][D]
http://www.physorg.com/news151840460.html

Broadband invisibility cloak   A new kind of “invisibility cloak” that conceals an object lying on a flat, reflective surface has been built by researchers at Duke University. It is an improvement over earlier microwave cloaks as it operates over a wide, rather than a narrow, range of frequencies. It was tested using microwaves between 13 and 17 GHz, but its bandwidth might extend down below 1 GHz. It exploits a design proposed by researchers at Imperial College who calculated that a broadband and low-loss cloak could be made from a metamaterial that had only an electrical response to microwaves rather than both a magnetic and electrical response, as previous cloaks have had. [M][I][O][R]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37364 http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21971/ http://www.physorg.com/news151251853.html http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/0115sp_cloak.shtml

Superconductivity in iron-based superconductors may be due to antiferromagnetic fluctuations   Inelastic neutron scattering experiments by researchers in the US and UK suggest that superconductivity in the recently discovered family of iron-based superconductors arises from a different mechanism than in either conventional low temperature superconductors, described by BCS theory, or in the cuprate high temperature superconductors (HTS). In BCS superconductors, the energy gap between the superconducting and normal electronic states is symmetric. In HTS, the gap varies with the direction the electrons are moving, and in some directions the gap may be zero. When the energy gaps of the iron-based superconductors were measured in 2008, they appeared to be symmetric, but BCS theory could not explain why they are superconductors at relatively high temperatures. The inelastic neutron scattering measurements have now provided evidence that although the size of the gap is symmetric, the sign of the gap is opposite for different electronic states. The results suggest the superconductivity could be produced by antiferromagnetic fluctuations rather than lattice vibrations, as in the BCS case. [M][C][F][P]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37246 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/dnl-asp011209.php

Tissue engineering using viral scaffolds   Genetically engineered viruses can be used to make tissue scaffolds that are able to support the growth and organisation of synthetic nerve tissue, research at UC Berkeley has shown. While other tissue-engineering materials must be synthesized and shaped in the lab, genetically engineered viruses have the advantage of being self-replicating and self-assembling. They can be designed to express cell-friendly proteins on their surfaces and, with a little coaxing, be made into complex tissuelike structures. The researchers, in what were preliminary experiments, used a bacteriophage that infects bacteria but cannot invade animal cells. [M][B][G][H][N]
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21991/

More efficient water purifier   The biggest challenge in making desalination and water purification more viable is to reduce the energy cost. Researchers at Yale have developed a novel purifier that uses only a tenth of the energy required by conventional systems. Like conventional approaches, it uses reverse osmosis. But, rather than using pressure or heat to force the water through the purifying membrane, it instead uses an osmotic pressure gradient. This exploits the fact that water naturally flows from a dilute region to one that's more concentrated when the two solutions are separated by a semipermeable material. To produce the osmotic pressure, a "draw solution" is added on one side of the membrane to extract clean water. This draw solution is designed to have a high osmotic pressure and to be easy to remove efficiently and entirely through subsequent heating. The researchers say that the technology should, when scaled up, halve the overall financial cost of water purification. [M][D][E][H]
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/21934/

Variability of the North Atlantic Oscillation may increase with global warming   Using a 218-year-long temperature record from a Bermuda coral, researchers have created the first marine-based reconstruction showing the long-term behaviour of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The NAO is a wide-ranging pressure seesaw that drives winter climate over much of North America, Europe and North Africa. The researchers found that the variability of the NAO decade-to-decade has been larger and swinging more wildly during the late twentieth century than in the early 1800s. This confirms variability previously reported in past terrestrial reconstructions and suggests that the variability is linked to the mean temperature of the Northern Hemisphere. If so, further global warming may cause the NAO to swing more violently, creating more intense storms and more severe droughts. [E][D][X]
http://www.physorg.com/news151068670.html

Carbon emissions from food production   According to a 2006 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), current production levels of meat contribute between 14 and 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of "CO2-equivalent" greenhouse gases the world produces every year. The growth in meat eating, particularly of beef, in developing countries is a big contributor to the rise in emissions. A review article in Scientific American looks at some of the options. [E][T]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-greenhouse-hamburger

Climate change is irreversible without geoengineering   A new study led by NOAA shows how changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped. The study has examined the consequences of allowing atmospheric carbon dioxide to build up to several different peak levels beyond present-day concentrations of 385 parts per million and then completely halting the emissions after the peak. Although carbon dioxide levels will then slowly reduce again, this is offset by the continuing rise in ocean temperature. Sea levels will continue to rise and many coastal regions and island features will ultimately become submerged. This suggests that, in addition to needing to halt carbon emissions, the world will probably also have to use geoengineering in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. [E][A][D][P][T][X]
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/New_Study_Shows_Climate_Change_Irreversible_999.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7852628.stm

Potential of geoengineering for reducing global warming   The first comprehensive assessment of the climate cooling potential of different geoengineering schemes has been carried out by researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA). They conclude that the only approaches powerful enough to have a large effect in the relatively short term are those that involve placing physical barriers between the Earth's surface and the Sun, such as orbiting space mirrors, stratospheric mists of sulphur, or using seawater to make reflective clouds. However these schemes are risky; stratospheric sulphur might wipe out the ozone layer, for example. A less risky but slower option would be to plant new forests to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to use the wood from these forests along with agricultural waste to make charcoal, which could be added back to the soil as 'bio-char' and would improve soil fertility. Scrubbing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and burying it underground might also make a substantial contribution. However, other ideas such as increasing the reflectivity of deserts or of fields of crops, or fertilising the oceans, do not look at all promising. [E][A][D][P][T][X]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16495 http://www.physorg.com/news152342140.html http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=30400 http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37571

Increasing albedo to reduce global warming   Farmers might be able to make a small but significant contribution to reducing global warming by selecting crop varieties that reflect solar energy back into space, according to researchers at Bristol University. They calculate that switching crops in North America and Europe could reduce global temperatures by about 0.1 degrees C. The effect might be increased by genetically engineering plants with a leaf surface that selectively absorbs wavelengths involved in photosynthesis and reflects the rest. [E][G][X]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7831939.stm http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16428 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uob-ctp011209.php

Capturing carbon by fertilising ocean algae   The feasibility of using ocean fertilisation to sequester carbon to the ocean bottom has been tested through a study of an annual algal bloom in the Southern Ocean that is fertilised naturally by iron from the volcanic rocks of the neighbouring Crozet Islands. The researchers found that samples taken directly beneath the bloom were two-to-three times richer in carbon compared to samples from a nearby ocean region that was rich in nutrients but not in iron. Whilst showing there is an effect, the results is 15 to 50 times lower than some geo-engineering proposals were hoping for. [E][P][X]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7856144.stm http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16498 http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=55147&ct=162

Burying carbon in the deep ocean   Worldwide crop residues contain around 600 million tonnes of carbon. This could be used to produce biofuel. But an alternative would be to bail it up and drop it into the deep ocean. If all of it was sunk in this way, the rate of annual build up of carbon in the atmosphere could be cut by 14 percent according to researchers at UC Irvine. They argue that at depths of more than 1500 metres there is little mixing with surface waters. The high-pressure, low-oxygen conditions in the deep ocean would preserve carbon on the seafloor for thousands of years. However, it is uncertain what impact crop residues might have on ocean floor ecosystems. [E][P][X]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16514 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uow-soe012809.php

Climate change is increasing tree death   A US study suggests that climate change is leading to significantly higher tree mortality in temperate forests. The data came from 76 long term plots in unmanaged old forests across western North America. The forest stands monitored were all more than 200 years old to minimise any transient effects. The results showed that in most of the plots the tree mortality is increasing rapidly, with the rate of death doubling every 17 to 29 years. The annual fractional change in mortality rate is broadly the same for all regions, all forest altitudes, all tree diameters, all tree genera and all average intervals between forest fires. The researchers say this and other evidence suggests climate warming is to blame rather than air pollution, such as ozone, or forest fragmentation. Climate warming could be increasing mortality rates through greater drought stress on trees and/or by increasing insects and pathogens attacking the trees. [E][X]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=out-on-a-limb-global-warm http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoca-nsl012109.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uow-tdr011509.php http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/0122sp_trees.shtml

Ozone has a bad effect on trees and crops   The concentration of ozone at ground level is now between 20 and 45 parts per billion in Europe and the US and is expected to increase to between 42 and 84 parts per billion by 2100. This makes ozone a serious factor in global warming and food production. Ozone is the third strongest greenhouse gas and is the air pollutant considered to be the most damaging to plants. Previous research has shown that these ozone levels reduce crop yields by 10 to 20 percent. Now, the first statistical summary of experimental data on how ozone affects trees, which includes data from 263 peer-reviewed scientific publications, has found that the rate of tree growth, measured in biomass, has reduced by 7 percent since the late 1800s and is set to fall by a further 10 percent by 2100 if ozone levels increase as forecast. This will seriously reduce carbon uptake by forests. The effect of ozone is worse for broad leafed trees than for conifers, and root growth is suppressed more than growth above ground. The smaller root size will make trees more vulnerable to storms and to drought. [E][D][P]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/w-sop120908.php http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603183309.htm

Airborne monitoring of tropical forests   A study suggests that airborne laser measurements may be the best way to quickly examine rugged ecosystems covered with dense vegetation that make them difficult to study on the ground or with satellites. The scientists compared airborne measurements of changes in tropical forests with data derived from study plots on the ground. The airborne system used a combination of lasers capable of measuring elevation to within six inches, GPS and advanced imaging spectrometers that can identify plant species from aircraft. [R][A][E][X]
http://www.physorg.com/news152011959.html

Spotting illegal logging   In the 1990s, Malaysia lost more than 13 percent of its forests, with much of the deforestation on the island of Borneo, which it shares with Indonesia and Brunei. To fight the illegal loggers, Malaysia is now using satellite imaging to establish a national forest inventory of the country's total area of forest cover. As well as making it possible to check whether logging in a particular area is legal or not, the system can also be used to prevent air pollution by detecting forest fires and illegal land clearing. [R][D][E]
http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Malaysia_uses_satellite_to_fight_illegal_logging_report_999.html

New giant radio telescope   Construction has begun on a massive new radio telescope in China. Known as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), it will have a collecting area more than twice as big as the 305 metre diameter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which has been the world’s largest since it opened in 1964. Unlike Arecibo, FAST is designed to be flexible: a system of motors attached to its 4600 panels will allow astronomers to change its shape from a sphere to a paraboloid, making it easier to move the position of the telescope’s focus. This will allow the south-pointing telescope to cover a broad swathe of the sky up to 40 degrees from its zenith. When it is completed in 2014, FAST will allow astronomers to detect objects like weak, fast-period pulsars that are too faint to be measured accurately by smaller instruments. It should be possible for the first time to detect pulsars in other galaxies. [R][A]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37483

Studying geoneutrinos   The Earth puts out somewhere between 30 and 44 teraWatts of power - two to three twice as much as worldwide human power consumption (15 TW in 2005). This heat flux, which drives plate tectonics, comes mainly from radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium. These elements are most abundant in the crust, but the key to understanding Earth’s dynamics is knowing the amount of these elements in the mantle, which stretches 2,900 km down to the molten outer core. The radioactive decay produces antineutrinos, which like neutrinos from the Sun, can pass right through the Earth. These so-called geoneutrinos were first observed in a neutrino detector in Japan in 2005. Now many new experiments are poised to provide more data. However, most geoneutrinos originate from radioactivity within the crust. So to observe geoneutrinos coming from the mantle requires a detector situated where the crust is very thin - at the bottom of the ocean. [R][E][P][T]
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/39600/title/For_a_big_view_of_inner_Earth%2C_catch_a_few_%E2%80%A6_Geoneutrinos http://www.answers.com/topic/earth-heat-flow-in

Mysterious cosmic radio background   A balloon-borne experiment that flew for four hours at an altitude of 37 km above Texas in July 2006 mapped radio signals from a doughnut-shaped region that covered some 7 percent of the sky. The experiment was intended to look for slight deviations in the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background. However, after subtracting known radio sources in the Milky Way and other galaxies, researchers have found an unexplained radio static that seems to pervade the sky and is six times louder than all known astronomical sources combined at that radio frequency. Its origin is a mystery but it could come from the universe's first generation of stars. These were hundreds of times more massive than the Sun and as their cores collapsed into black holes, they may have emitted jets of charged particles that produced radio emission. Another possibility is that the mysterious radio signal could be created in distant galaxies, whose supermassive black holes whip charged particles up to high speeds, generating radio emission. This cosmic radio background will complicate efforts to detect the very first stars. [R][A][F]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16378 http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39783/title/Tuned_in_to_new_noise_from_the_cosmos http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoc--adn010709.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/nsfc-nbm010709.php

Some moths may jam bats' echo location   A group of some 11,000 species of moth, called tiger moths, appear to use acoustic jamming to avoid being captured by bats. Whereas most moth species silently flee when they hear that sonar pings of an incoming bat, tiger moths generally click back instead. Researchers experimenting with a moth called Bertholdia trigona found that it emits a barrage of high frequency sounds as the bat approaches. When researchers disabled the moth’s noisemaking organs, bats caught the moths in midair with ease. It is not clear whether the moth's noise barrage actually jams the echo location or just startles or discomforts the bat long enough for it to miss its target. [R]
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39807/title/Superloud_moth_jams_bat_sonar

Nano-MRI   IBM researchers have developed an MRI scanner with resolution 100 million times better than current MRI. This is good enough to image individual viral particles, and the researchers say that with further refinements, the technique could eventually be used to generate 3-D images of individual molecules. The new scanner exploits an emerging technology called magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM). This circumvents the limitations of normal MRI by using a physical, rather than electrical, detector to detect the tiny magnetic forces generated by rotating nuclei. The sample sits on a tiny cantilever. Laser interferometry tracks the motion of the cantilever, which vibrates slightly as magnetic spins in the hydrogen atoms of the sample interact with a nearby nanoscopic magnetic tip. The tip is scanned in three dimensions and the cantilever vibrations are analyzed to create a 3D image. [R][J][N][O][S]
http://www.physorg.com/news151073713.html http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/21950/

Mapping nanoscale strain fields   Strain plays an important role in many semiconductor devices. Researchers in Spain and Germany have demonstrated a method using infrared near-field microscopy to non-invasively map the strain fields in semiconductors with nanoscale resolution. [R][J][N][O][S]
http://www.physorg.com/news150998994.html

Nanowire universal diagnostic chip   Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed a detector chip that they say is an important step towards the goal of making a universal handheld diagnosis system that can look for signs of hundreds of medical conditions in a single liquid sample and give an instant read out. They created their chip by coating a series of nanowires with DNA sequences that match those from disease-causing bacteria or viruses. If DNA from one of those pathogens is present in a sample, it binds to the nanowire with the matching sequence. The resulting change in the wire's conductivity can be detected by fixing each nanowire to a transistor on a conventional microchip that provides the readout. The chip has a line of pill-shaped depressions called "microwells" in the centre, each flanked by an electrode on either side. The electrodes create an electric field gradient that can be used to attract the right nanowire and coordinate its movement so that it snaps into place in the microwell. [S][G][H][J][N]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16434 http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37375 http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21974/

DNA sensor   People can be tested for hereditary conditions such as cystic fibrosis by taking a DNA sample and comparing it with the known genetic code related to that condition. If single DNA strands from each source are mixed, the speed and efficiency with which they join to form a double-stranded helix is a measure of how closely they match. Detecting the double-stranded DNA has involved labelling the strands using fluorescent dyes, enzymes or radiolabels. Now, Spanish researchers have developed a better method that uses quantum dots as labels. It is more sensitive and also does not require chemically dissolving samples before testing. This lends itself to making a lab-on-a-chip sensor. [S][D][G][H]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37388

Quantum dot source for optical coherence tomography   Superluminescent Light Emitting Diodes (SLEDs) combine the best features of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) and semiconductor laser diodes: the broadband spectrum and low temporal coherence of LEDs plus the high output powers and high spatial coherence of laser diodes. This gives them numerous applications including fibre optic sensors, fibre optic gyros and machine vision. A major new application for SLEDs is in optical coherence tomography (OCT). OCT is an emerging technology that allows extremely high-quality, micron-resolution, 3D imaging from within optical scattering media such as biological tissue. Researchers at Sheffield University have now developed SLEDs based on self-assembled quantum dot structures that have a very flat broadband spectrum suitable for OCT. [O][H][J][R][S][W]
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/37459

Nanoscale optical trap   Optical tweezers and optical traps are very important in biophysics, making it possible to manipulate particles in the micron-size regime without damaging them. The development of the single beam optical trap was an important advance in optical tweezers because it is relatively simple and because a single microscope can be used to trap and view the particle simultaneously. The challenge now is to extend optical traps to handle nanoscale particles such a small pieces of DNA. Researchers at Cornell have shown that using a slot waveguide that focuses light to nanoscale dimensions they can trap and transport particles as small as 75 nm in diameter. They say that the trap may allow researchers to boost the accuracy of biological sensors and create a new range of lab-on-a-chip diagnostic tools. [O][J][N][S]
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/37363

3-D liquid crystal device   Research at Cambridge University has combined liquid crystals with vertically grown carbon nanotubes to create a reconfigurable 3-D liquid crystal device structure. Using this structure, it is possible to create an array of micro lenses which can have a focal length that varies with the applied voltage. This has many potential uses in 3D holographic displays and in adaptive optical systems such as the wavefront sensors, digital video cameras, optical diffusers and emerging head-up display devices. [O][N][R][S][V]
http://www.physorg.com/news151250341.html

Electron quantum holography enables sub-atomic size writing   With a new technique dubbed electron quantum holography, physicists at Stanford University have set a new world record for the smallest writing, with features of letters as small as 0.3 nanometres. They first used a scanning tunnelling microscope to drag single carbon monoxide molecules into a desired pattern on a copper chip to produce a "molecular hologram". In a traditional hologram, laser light is shone onto a 2-dimensional image and a ghostly 3D object appears. In the new holography, the 2-dimensional molecular holograms are illuminated instead by the conduction electrons moving in the surface of the copper whose waves interact with the molecules on the surface. The resulting "electronic object" can be read with the scanning tunnelling microscope. Several images can be stored in the same hologram, each created at a different electron wavelength. [O][N]
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2009/january28/small-012809.html http://www.physorg.com/news152385929.html

Cheap GaN LED lighting   Gallium nitride (GaN) LEDs have many advantages over compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and incandescent light bulbs. They switch on instantly and have an average life of 100,000 hours, which is 10 times as long as fluorescent lamps. They are also more environmentally friendly than CFLs, which contain small levels of mercury, and they are three times more efficient. The snag has been that suitable GaN single crystal layers must be grown at a temperature of 1000 degrees C. If the GaN layer is grown on silicon, differential shrinkage during cooling shatters the GaN layer. Although GaN layers can be grown successfully on sapphire, this is too expensive. Now, research at Cambridge University has shown that the shrinkage problem can be prevented by incorporating a layer of aluminium gallium nitride between the GaN and the silicon. This should open the way to produce suitably cheap GaN LED lighting within a few years. [O][J]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16496 http://www.physorg.com/news152430535.html

High-Q plasmonic cavity   Just as light energy is carried by photons, so also the energy in the oscillations of electrons in a metal (plasma waves) is carried in quantized packets called plasmons. When photons hit the interface between an insulator and a metal, they excite electron oscillations that combine photons and plasmons and are called surface plasmon polaritons (SPP). These SPPs have much smaller wavelengths than photons and can be used in nanoscale optics. A big objective has been to produce plasmonic lasers. The problem is how to make a high Q plasmonic laser cavity. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley and Caltech may now have succeeded. They have developed a plasmonic microcavity that works like a whispering gallery and has a Q more than ten times higher than achieved previously. [O][C][I][J][N][S]
http://www.physorg.com/news152012068.html

More efficient LED lighting   LED are efficient light emitters at low brightness, but their efficiency reduces as they are driven harder. This efficiency droop is a weakness for using LEDs for lighting. Now researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new type of LED with significantly less droop. This gives exhibits an 18 percent increase in light output and a 22 percent increase in wall-plug efficiency. [O][J]
http://www.physorg.com/news151003742.html

Squeezing light to the limit   Squeezing light is a way to enhance precision measurements by reducing one component of quantum noise at the expense of increasing the other. For example phase-squeezed light can improve interferometric measurements and conversely amplitude-squeezed light can improve the readout of very weak spectroscopic signals. One can also squeeze one component of polarisation at the expense of the orthogonal components. However, in this case one cannot squeeze indefinitely because there is a limit in how big the uncertainty can become in the orthogonal polarisation. Researchers at the University of Toronto have now for the first time demonstrated this limit experimentally. [O][C][R][S]
http://www.physorg.com/news150121818.html

Photon entanglement filter   A team in the UK and Japan has demonstrated an entanglement filter that lets through a pair of photons only if they inhabit the same quantum state, without the measuring what that state is. The filter can be used for the creation as well as the purification of entanglement. This will be important in realising quantum relays and repeaters for long-distance quantum communication. [O][C][I]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uob-qtm012109.php

Quantum information networks   How far quantum information can be transmitted is limited by the lifetime of quantum memory. To transmit quantum information across 1,000 km, for example, takes a minimum of 5 milliseconds. US and Italian scientists have now demonstrated that they can store quantum information for 7 milliseconds using rubidium atoms held in a dipole optical trap. This is long enough to allow transmission of data from one quantum repeater to another on an optical network. [I][C][O]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/giot-nrf120508.php

UK digital future   The UK government's interim report on the UK's digital future sets out ambitious targets for making broadband ubiquitous across the UK, reforming radio spectrum, and sorting out public broadcasting. The strategy is seen as workable, though needing to be fleshed out in much greater detail. [I][K][T]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/29_01_09digital_britain_interimreport.pdf http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7858183.stm

Introducing DNSSEC   The updating of the internet domain name system (DNS) to DNSSEC to make it more secure may be under way. As a start, the DNSSEC protocol that verifies DNS messages with digital signatures is being implemented across all .org domain names. The US government has also committed to turning on DNSSEC for .gov as well. The newly formed DNSSEC Industry Coalition is pushing for wider adoption. [I]
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/21922/

Vulnerability of Wi-Fi networks   Wi-Fi access points could be used by hi-tech criminals to spread viruses and worms, US researchers have warned. They found that security holes and the popularity of Wi-Fi devices in cities make these ideal for spreading malware. Using modelling, they showed how a worm could gradually infect all access points in urban areas. The majority of vulnerable access points would be hit in the first 24 hours of an outbreak. [I]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7853114.stm

Growth of Internet   The global number of Internet users has surpassed one billion with China accounting for the largest population of Web surfers. [I][K][T]
http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Number_of_Internet_users_tops_one_billion_comScore_999.html

Global crowd sourcing via mobile phones   Crowd sourcing - tapping into human expertise to tackle problems that computers struggle with - is proving very successful. Amazon, for example, uses a system called the Mechanical Turk to off-load all manner of simple tasks to people around the world, who will work on tasks for very little payment. Now a new project called "txteagle" plans to use mobile phones to do crowd sourcing on a global scale, exploiting the widespread availability of mobile phones in the developing world. Example tasks are language translation and transcribing audio recordings into text. Nokia is a partner in the project and would like to be able to offer phones for everyone's mother tongue. As the capabilities of cell phones evolve, more complex tasks will become possible. [K][I][V]
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/21983/?a=f

Progress and problems with eDemocracy   The use of ICT to increase and enhance citizens’ engagement in democratic processes has had mixed success. Even if citizens have access to the technology and skills needed to participate in eDemocracy, most do not make use of this. Proponents of eDemocracy say well-designed initiatives can be used to re-engage and interest disenfranchised groups. However there is a risk that even if citizens engage in an initiative, they may be disillusioned if the outcome does not match their expectations. More rigorous evaluation is needed for eDemocracy initiatives to work well. In some cases, identification of participants is necessary to understand the significance of results, but this may raise privacy issues. [K][D][E][X]
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn321.pdf

Progress towards a more research intensive and integrated European Research Area.   In 2000, the Lisbon Strategy called for the EU to invest much more in R&D and to increase excellence and efficiency by joining forces in a European Research Area (ERA), opening up to world knowledge and stimulating international cooperation and spill-over. A new EU report presents the first overview of how the ERA has evolved since 2000. Public-funded R&D has grown, but business R&D remains relatively low. With R&D increasing rapidly in Asia, the EU's share of global R&D expenditure fell by 7.6 percent from 2000 to 2005, and its share of patent applications fell by 14.2 percent. Fragmentation, duplication and lack of specialisation and critical mass remain problems in public R&D. However, various initiatives are improving transnational knowledge flows, increasing exploitation of world knowledge and patents, creating integrated research infrastructure, reforming and linking universities to transnational networks, and reducing fragmentation. The EU Council has adopted a Vision for the ERA that by 2020 there should be free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technology across the EU - named the “Fifth Freedom”. [K][T]
http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/key-figures-report2008-2009_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/2020_era_vision_en.html http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=30383

Purpose and aims for the European Research Area   The EU has published an expert group report on the rationale for needing a European Research Area. It discusses how issue of fragmentation and critical mass apply in different disciplines. It argues for the importance of a research-friendly ecology - a system approach that raises the quality of research and improves connectivity and communications between those who support, perform and use research, thereby helping research make a greater contribution to wider goals. The report examines the roles of various actors and how the governance of research can be improved. It makes three main recommendations: driving the ERA through linking research to grand challenges facing Europe, such as climate change; building the research-friendly ecology; creating closer linkage between European research and European policy. [K][T]
http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/eg7-era-rationales-final-report_en.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/era-greenpaper_en.pdf

Investment in science and innovation   Gordon Brown has set targets to increase the number of pupils in secondary school in England taking science subjects. He has emphasised the economic importance of protecting the investment in science and says he wants to ring-fence science during the recession. The UK government has also launched a campaign to reduce public perception of science as "elitist". Bill Gates, speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum, argued that it could take as much as four years for economies to return to positive growth and that this would be driven by innovations in science and technology. [K]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7915233.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7854121.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/business/davos/7860708.stm

Learning to think scientifically   A study of college freshmen in the US and China found that Chinese students were very much stronger on scientific facts and understanding than their American counterparts, reflecting the much greater emphasis on science teaching in the Chinese educational system. But both groups were similarly lacking in their ability to do scientific reasoning and in designing how to test scientific hypotheses. The researchers say the results point to the need for more emphasis on inquiry-based learning, where students work in groups, question teachers and design their own investigations. [K]
http://www.physorg.com/news152461628.html

Loss of critical thinking and analysis   The increasing use of visual media in education and leisure is enhancing and sustaining visual intelligence, and improving multitasking and eye-hand dexterity. However, other important skills are being lost, particularly because of the decline in reading for pleasure, which is important for developing imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as for vocabulary. This is the finding from research at UCLA that has analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet and video games. [K][B][V]
http://www.physorg.com/news152360207.html

Entanglement sudden death   The decay of quantum entanglement due to environmental noise can follow the familiar half-life decay law, but it can also occur suddenly. This phenomenon, called entanglement sudden death (ESD), was first demonstrated experimentally in 2007 and is unique to quantum entanglement. ESD should not affect quantum computation provided this is performed at high speed and with highly entangled states. But ESD will be a constraint on implementing quantum memory. Some entangled states may be more robust than others, but this will depend on the nature of the noise. External control signals can be used to push the system towards non-ESD (i.e. half-life) decay and away from ESD. However, except in relatively simple quantum systems, little is understood about ESD and how entanglement evolves. [C][O][I]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=quantum-entanglement-sudden-death

Teleportation between distant atoms   In teleportation, quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred via quantum entanglement. This is key to quantum communication and computing. Teleportation has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third atom. None of these cases, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances. Now a US team has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance. The two separate atoms were in unconnected enclosures a metre apart. They were entangled though interference and detecting photons emitted from each atom and guided through optical fibres. This scheme is suitable for scalable quantum computation and a large-scale 'quantum repeater' that can network quantum memories over vast distances. [C][I][O]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uom-qtb011509.php http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=quantum-teleportation-with-ions http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37450 http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22013/

Comparative genomics   With nearly a thousand genomes now sequenced fully or partially, there is increasing interest in comparing genomes in order to construct evolutionary trees, trace disease susceptibility in populations, and even track down people's ancestry. To date, the most common techniques have relied on comparing a dozen or so highly conserved genes in organisms that have all these genes in common. Now, researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a computational technique that can easily compare whole genomes and compare even distantly related organisms or organisms with genomes of vastly different sizes and diversity. The method exploits feature frequency profiling, a text comparison method that is used to detect plagiarism. [C][G][K]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoc--nct012809.php

Rapid prototyping of nanostructures   Researchers in Finland have developed a facility that can prototype silicon nanostructures in a few hours. It uses focused ion beam milling to provide a very accurate and flexible masking layer just 30 nm thick and then uses cryogenic deep reactive ion etching to quickly cut deep structures. As well as speed and cheapness, this introduction of a separate etching step gives better control over the side-wall quality compared with direct milling. [W][J][N][O][S]
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/37573

Fabricating nanoscale organic electronics   Flexible organic electronics requires processing and patterning of electroactive materials from solvents. Printing and ink-jetting are good techniques for micron-scale devices, but something else is needed to make organic nanodevices. Swedish researchers have now demonstrated a technique exploiting a large elastomer nanotemplate that should be able to produce structures smaller than 100 nm regularly patterned over large areas. [W][J][N][S]
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/37452

Engineering useful microbial ecosystems   By introducing new genes into microbes or by altering genes that direct bacterial communication and quorum sensing, scientists are engineering microbial communities to carry out tasks such as environmental cleanup, biocomputing, combating pathological organisms and eliminating biofilms. Several different microbes might be used to achieve specific objectives. For example, a microbe that releases toxins in low oxygen environments in order to kill tumours might be partnered with other microbes that can protect normal parts of the body that also have low oxygen levels. Simple microbial communities with several species might be used as a simplified ecosystem to simulate the behaviour, evolution and stability of other larger ecosystems. [X][B][C][E][G][H][N][T][W]
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/39602/title/Team_spirit

How locusts metamorphose into swarms   When locusts swarm they undergo a remarkable transformation from being calm solitary insects with strong mutual aversion into highly gregarious frantic mass-migrating armies that devastate everything in their path. They change physically, becoming stronger, darker and much more mobile. Researchers have found that this metamorphosis is driven by the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is released as a result of forced crowding. This can be triggered by stimulation of the hind legs as locusts crawl over and jostle each other or by the combined sight and smell of other locusts. After enough of this "crowding," the locusts stop trying to avoid each other and begin coming together in a swarm. The researchers showed that serotonin-inhibiting agents could allow locusts to remain calm and solitary despite the physical stimulation of crowding. The findings raise the possibility that instead of controlling locust invasions with pesticides that kill other insects, it might be possible instead to selectively inhibit them from swarming. [X][B][D][E]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/aaft-sbl012309.php http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=when-grasshoppers-go-bibl http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/0129sp_locust.shtml

Systems biology   The European Science Foundation has published a science policy document that provides an overview of the emerging field of systems biology and its medical applications. Most diseases involve a large number and variety of components interacting through complex networks. Systems biology provides a particularly promising avenue to tackle such complex systems through an interdisciplinary approach that combines experimental work with mathematical modelling. In the medical sciences, systems biology has the potential to make important contributions to facilitating early diagnosis, understanding symptoms and progression of diseases, refining treatments, identifying new drugs and therapies, testing novel medical devices and developing personalised medicine. [X][G][H][R][S][T]
http://www.esf.org/index.php?eID=tx_nawsecuredl&u=0&file=fileadmin/be_user/research_areas/emrc/science_policy_briefings/sysbiomed/SPB35_SysBioMed.pdf&t=1240442029&hash=c3ae1477da3b59d05a9f36544dea0f88

Systems nano-medicine   An article in Scientific American brings together five major research themes: systems biology, microfluidics, nano-sensors, personalised computational medicine, and nanotherapy. Systems biology is revealing the body as a complex network of molecular interactions that can be measured and modelled to identify causes of disease such as cancer. Microfluidics and nanosensors are opening the way to make diagnostic measurements from minuscule amounts of blood or even single cells, and to measure large numbers of biological molecules rapidly, precisely and eventually very cheaply. This combination of cost and performance opens the way to study and treat disease by understanding the dynamic system of molecular interactions. Systems-level measurements can be integrated into computational models, which, in turn, can reveal early indicators of a problem in individual patients. Finally, new nanotechnology-based therapies can target the precise problem, avoiding serious side effects. [X][B][C][G][H][K][N][R][S][T]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=nanomedicine-targets-cancer

Intelligent transport systems   The UK Parliamentary Office on Science and Technology has published a briefing note on intelligent transport systems (ITS). It outlines current and future applications of ITS in road transport and also the technical, behavioural and economic factors that limit their deployment. Topics covered include new technologies for improving road safety, reducing congestion, providing en route information, managing road networks and integrating systems. [X][E][I][K][R][T][U]
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn322.pdf

Social decision networks   Computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have investigated how social networks affect the political, social and economic struggle between individual viewpoints and self-interest and the need to build a consensus and reach a collective decision. Some of the findings are surprising. They show that in some cases the structure of the social network and the nature of individuals in the network result in minority viewpoints triumphing over majority viewpoints. Surprisingly also, individuals with extreme behaviours, or a greater awareness of the incentives of others, who might seem a divisive influence can in fact have the opposite effect and improve the formation of a consensus. A key message is that stubbornness or extremism are effective in shaping collective decisions. [X][D][I][K]
http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=1529

Volcanic systems   Melt-transport networks deep underneath the seafloor enable magma to rise from deep in the mantle to form new ocean floor and to produce massive undersea eruptions. The melt is able to forge its upward path not by cracking the rock but by dissolving some of it. The resulting melt transport networks bear many similarities to river networks forming and reforming. [X][E][T]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-origin-of-the-ocean-floor

Visualising oil reserves and flow in real time   A problem in pinpointing how to extract more oil from underground reserves is to be able to fuse and visualise a complex combination of data in real time. Researchers at MIT have used the digital image compression technique of JPEG to create realistic-looking, comprehensive maps of underground oil reservoirs using measurements from scattered oil wells. The method provides concise descriptions of reservoir rock properties. It uses oil flow rates and pressure data from wells to create a realistic image of the subsurface reservoir. It is able to extract more information from limited seismic measurements to provide better descriptions of subsurface pathways and of the oil moving through them. The method has been tested in the laboratory and is now being trialled in the field. [V][E][K][P][R][X]
http://www.physorg.com/news151162106.html

Data visualisation   Researchers at UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore have developed software that they say makes analysis and visualization of huge data sets possible without needing a supercomputer. The algorithm slices up data into more manageable chunks, then stitches it back together on the fly, so that the data can be manipulated in three dimensions. This can all be done on a computer with the power and capacity of a high-end laptop. It offers a practical way to get structural information, for example about materials, proteins and fluids, and it allows users to interactively visualize, rotate, apply different transfer functions, and highlight different aspects of the data. [V][C][K]
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21976/ http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoc--nte010709.php

Mobile phone usability   According to a recent survey, mobile phones are becoming so complex that users are finding them very difficult to set up and are giving up on using advanced function. [V][I][K]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7833944.stm

Tactile display   German researchers have developed a display that is tactile, making it suitable for use by blind people. It consists of an array of hydrogel pixels that reversibly switch from bumps to being flat when heated by a laser. The laser is scanned across the display, which can show two tactile images a second. The technology might also be used as a tactile interfaces in robotic surgery equipment to let human surgeons feel what is at a robot's fingertips. [V][U]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16419

Interfacing to stretching cells   The cells of the heart can be stretched by as much as 100 percent with every beat. To study these cells dynamically, researchers at Purdue and Stanford have developed stretchable electrode arrays. These should help in developing tissue-engineered grafts to repair heart attack damage and could provide a bio-friendly electrical interfaces in implantable devices. Already the arrays are being used to study how the mechanical stress inflicted during traumatic brain injury changes neurons' electrical activity over the long term. [V][B][G][H][M]
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22031/

Getting lost in a book   A new brain-imaging study of people reading stories suggests they create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life. [V][B][K]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/wuis-rbv012809.php

Risk-taking brain   The brains of people who seek novel and risky experiences or take big risks may be less able to regulate dopamine, according to a small research study from Vanderbilt University. The researchers say this may drive "thrill-seekers" to act impulsively or dangerously. [B]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7802751.stm

Folding of the brain   Over the course of evolution, the cerebral cortex, which is involved with high-level processing of perceptions, thoughts, emotions and actions, expanded considerably in large-brained mammals, much more so than the skull. To fit into the skull the cortex became folded. New research indicates that before birth the pliable cortex is pulled into its folded shape mechanically by the tension in the networks of nerve fibres that link different regions of the cortex. In the folding, areas of the cortex that need to communicate strongly tend to get pulled closer together. Abnormalities in the folding are associated with conditions such as autism, dyslexia and schizophrenia. [B][T]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=sculpting-the-brain

Where old memories go to   Brain imaging studies on subjects answering questions about news events that occurred over the past 30 years have shown that the hippocampus, which is involved in creating new memories, is also quite strongly involved in recalling memories that are up to about 12 years old. But for older memories the recall instead involves activity in the frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices with little involvement of the hippocampus. The findings support the idea that these cortical regions are the ultimate repositories for long-term memory and they may explain why people who lose short term memory because of diseases or trauma that damage the hippocampus can nevertheless recall older memories. [B][K]
http://www.physorg.com/news152298955.html http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Imaging_Study_Illustrates_How_Memories_Change_In_The_Brain_Over_Time_999.html

Are memories time stamped?   How the brain keeps track on what happened and when is still largely a mystery. A computational model developed by scientists at the Salk Institute suggests that newborn brain cells, which are generated by the thousands each day, add a time-related code that is unique to memories formed around the same time. This makes it easier to later recall otherwise unconnected memories from a particular period. If this is correct, it could explain why it is that adult brains continually spawn new brain cells in the dentate gyrus, the entryway to the hippocampus. Current thinking holds that when we bring up a certain memory, it passes back to the dentate gyrus, which pulls all related bits of information from their offsite storage. [B][K]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/si-nbc012209.php

Individual neurons may hold short term memory   A study of mouse brain cells has revealed that individual cells can keep information stored for as long as a minute. The researchers found that a particular chemical receptor in the cell, when switched on, causes the cell to start an internal signal system that holds the "memory" in place. The finding supports recent ideas that short term memory may involve storage in individual cells rather than in neural circuits, as previous thought. Understanding the mechanism of short term memory may be very important for treating memory loss in neurodegenerative diseases. [B][H]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7846531.stm http://www.physorg.com/news152114323.html

Withstanding high altitude   A study of blood oxygen levels and altitude-related effects in climbers on Mount Everest shows that some people are especially tolerant of low oxygen levels. Researchers collected blood samples from climbers’ groin arteries at the Everest base camp, Camp 2, Camp 3 and at 8,400 metres altitude, just after they had descended from the summit. The 8,400 metre samples had the lowest blood oxygen levels ever recorded in a nonhibernating mammal. The findings showed that even when well-adapted to high altitude, people differ considerably in their ability to withstand low oxygen levels. This may depend on how much oxygen a person’s haemoglobin can carry and the efficiency of their mitochondria - the energy factories inside cells - in using oxygen. Previous research on the physiology of Tibetans and other highlanders suggest that a major gene is involved in how much oxygen haemoglobin transports. The results from the study may not only help in understanding and preventing altitude sickness but may also help lead to better treatments for patients with illnesses that cause low blood oxygen levels, such cystic fibrosis, emphysema, septic shock and 'blue baby' syndrome. [B][G][H]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/ucl-mml010609.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/l-heh011609.php http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39763/title/Record_low_for_human_blood_oxygen_levels_

Cause of neurodegenerative diseases   Molecules, vesicles and organelles within a cell are constantly carried around via a network of crisscrossing microtubules that act like the tracks of an elaborate railroad system. In neurons, which for the most part do not regenerate or divide as do other cells in the body, this interior transportation network has to work efficiently over a lifetime. New research on a very rare brain disorder called Perry syndrome suggests that breakdowns along this network may be a common mechanism underlying many neurodegenerative diseases. [B][H]
http://www.physorg.com/news150904281.html

Reducing stroke damage   A grid of small arteries at the surface of the brain redirects flow and widens at critical points to restore blood supply to tissue starved of nutrients and oxygen following a stroke, according to research at UCSD. This finding makes it more hopeful that drugs can be delivered through the blood stream to damaged tissue following a stroke to reduce the on-going damage that builds up for days after the actual stroke. It may also help in stroke therapy that involves cooling the brain to reduce damage. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have developed a cooling helmet which works by passing cold air across the scalp, exploiting the dense network of blood vessels there. [B][H]
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/01-09Mesh.asp http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7815105.stm

Importance of white matter   As people age, memory and the ability to carry out tasks often decline. Research to understand this has focused on deterioration in the brain's grey matter. But a study by MIT neuroscientists has found that memory and cognitive impairments are more associated with loss of brain "white matter," which forms connections within and between brain regions. [B][H]
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/aging-brain-0107.html

Rise of autism   Autism is rising rapidly in the US and particularly in California. More than 3,000 new cases were reported in California in 2006, compared with 205 in 1990. In 1990, 6.2 of every 10,000 children born in the state were diagnosed with autism by the age of five. In 2001, this had risen to 42.5 in every 10,000. Part of this increase is due to better diagnosis identifying milder cases, but the rest is unexplained. Vaccines were once suspected, but no correlation has been found. Some genetic factors have now been identified. But it seems likely that the main cause is something or things that pregnant women or infants are exposed to - metals, pesticides, infections or drugs - probably in combination with genetic and/or epigenetic predisposition. The drug softenon is known to cause autism, other drugs are suspect, and dozens of chemicals in the environment are neurodevelopmental toxins that alter how the brain grows. [B][E][G][H]
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=autism-rise-driven-by-environment http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoc--ssc010709.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/idso-vaa013009.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/miot-mmg020409.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/cwru-cwr020609.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/nofs-aas121708.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/aaon-edm112508.php

Stem cell therapy for multiple sclerosis   Stem cell transplants may be able to control and even to reverse multiple sclerosis symptoms if done early enough, according to the results of a small study by researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago. The study involved 21 adults with relapsing-remitting MS. Following the stem cell therapy, none of them deteriorated over three years and seventeen of them improved by at least one point on a scale of neurological disability. The idea in using stem cells to treat MS is to reset the patient's immune system so that it no longer attacks the nerve cells. Stem cells are harvested from the patient and frozen while drugs are given to remove the lymphocytes causing the neurological damage. The stem cells are then transplanted back to replenish the immune system. [H][B]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7858559.stm http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16509 http://www.physorg.com/news152526331.html

Some cancer cells can cheat apoptosis   In normal cells, the cell-suicide process called apoptosis is irreversible: once it is triggered the cell self-destructs. However, research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong shows that cancer cells, at least in some cases, have the capacity to recover even from advanced stages of the apoptosis process. This gives these cancer cells a powerful ability to withstand chemotherapy that works by triggering apoptosis preferentially in cancer cells that are dividing rapidly. Understanding how cancer cells manage to cheat apoptosis may therefore help to make chemotherapy more effective. [H][G]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7807730.stm

Using a patient's own stem cells   Enabling patients to produce stem cells themselves rather than injecting them with stem cells from donors, embryos or stem cell banks, would avoid the complications of tissue rejection and any ethical objections to using stem cells originating from embryos. In experiments on mice, researchers at Imperial College have shown that drugs can stimulate the production and release from the bone marrow of two types of stem cells that can repair tissue: mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and epithelial progenitor cells (EPCs). MSCs promote regeneration of bone and tissue. They also reduce inflammation and could be used to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. EPCs stimulate the growth and repair of blood vessels, and could prove useful in restoring blood flow to the heart or brain following heart attacks or strokes. [H]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16383 http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=30330

Possible obesity therapy   Researchers at UC Berkeley have discovered a new enzyme, AdPLA, within fat cells that is a key regulator of fat metabolism and body weight. This makes it a promising target for treating obesity. Mice that had the AdPLA enzyme disabled remained lean despite eating a high-fat diet. The lack of AdPLA did not change their number of fat cells, but simply kept the cells from accumulating excess fat. The researchers also found that levels of AdPLA were higher in obese mice and that mice deficient in AdPLA expended more energy than normal mice and burned more fat directly within fat cells. They did find one potential problem, namely that inhibiting the expression of AdPLA led to higher insulin resistance. [H][G]
http://www.physorg.com/news150905309.html

Implantable immunotherapy   Immunotherapy normally involves removing immune cells from a patient, training them in the lab - for example, to kill tumour cells - and then replacing the trained cells into the patient. It may now be possible instead to train the cells without removing them by using an implantable polymer. The polymer, which is bio-degradable and has a history of safe use in humans, releases a cytokine chemical that attracts immune system dendritic cells. These take up temporary residence inside the polymer's spongelike holes. The polymer activates the dendritic cells by displaying cancer-specific antigens and fragments of DNA that mimic bacteria. This convinces the cells that they are in the midst of an infection and generates a strong immune response against the cancer. In tests using mice with a deadly melanoma that would have killed them all, the approach achieved a survival rate of 90 percent. The approach could also be used to re-educate the immune system to treat diseases such as arthritis and diabetes, and, potentially, to train other kinds of cells, including stem cells used to repair damage to the body. [H][G][M]
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22027/ http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/hu-imi012209.php

Combating osteoarthritis   Scientists in the US, Italy and Japan have identified that the critical first stage of osteoarthritis is loss of a critical DNA binding protein HMGB2. This protein is uniquely expressed on the smooth surface layer of cartilage in joints, where it supports the survival of chondrocytes, the cells that produce and maintain cartilage. With ageing, the HMBG2 protein is lost and there is an accompanying reduction or total elimination of chondrocytes in the superficial zone. Once the cartilage of the superficial zone starts to deteriorate, osteoarthritis sets in, triggering an irreversible process that eventually leads to the loss of underlying layers of cartilage until bone begins to grind painfully against bone. If small molecules can be found to prevent the loss of HMGB2 or to stimulate the production of HMGB2, it may be possible to prevent or even reverse osteoarthritis. The researchers also say that the findings should help in developing stem cell therapy for repairing cartilage. [H]
http://www.physorg.com/news150991956.html

Old theory of cancer might point to new therapies   Healthy cells generate energy by the oxidative breakdown of a simple acid within the mitochondria. Cancer cells, in contrast, generate energy through the non-oxidative breakdown of glucose. Called glycolysis, this non-oxidative breakdown is the biochemical hallmark of most, if not all, types of cancer. This difference led Otto Warburg nearly a century ago to propose a theory that cancer is a type of mitochondrial disease. Warburg received the Nobel Prize in 1931, but his theory later fell out of favour as attention shifted to genomic mutations as the cause of cancer. Now, US researchers have found new evidence that supports Warburg's theory. They examined mitochondrial lipids in a diverse group of mouse brain tumours and found major abnormalities in a specific complex lipid known as cardiolipin. These were present in all types of tumours and were closely associated with significant reductions in energy-generating activities. The researchers suggest that new cancer therapies might be able to exploit the bioenergetic defects of tumour cells without harming normal body cells. [H][G]
http://www.physorg.com/news150954448.html

New antibiotic   US scientists have developed a new synthetic antibiotic that targets and kills some drug-resistant bacteria. It works by inserting itself into the cell membrane of the bacteria and increasing the local curvature. This causes a hole to form that kills the cell. The antibiotic uses compounds called phenylene ethylnylenes that mimic the body’s own antimicrobial proteins. Gram-negative bacteria are vulnerable to the antibiotic because their membranes are rich in a particular lipid called phosphoethanolamine (PE), whereas human cells are not. PE is so important to the bacterial membrane that it should be very hard for the bacteria to develop immunity to the antibiotic. [H][G]
http://www.physorg.com/news151779945.html

Why Ebola is deadly   Researchers have found that one reason that Ebola is such a powerful and deadly virus is that it can disable a cellular protein called tetherin that normally prevents new viruses made in one infected cell from being able to go off and infect other cells. By blocking the spread of viruses from cell to cell, tetherin gives the rest of the immune system more time to respond to the infection. By disabling tetherin, Ebola is able to replicate very rapidly with devastating results. Previous research has shown that HIV also disables tetherin. It is possible that tetherin can act against all enveloped viruses - a huge variety of viruses including influenza that have a surrounding envelope of fat that helps them enter host cells. So understanding how to prevent tetherin being disabled might provide a way to treat many important diseases. [H][D][G]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uops-psi012709.php

New drug may prevent COPD   Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, creates a huge burden of suffering, healthcare costs and lost productivity. It is projected to be the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020 as cigarette smoking increases in developing countries. There is currently no effective treatment. Now, however, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have discovered in experiments on mice that a new anti-cancer drug may be able to prevent emphysema and perhaps other forms of COPD. The drug works by activating a master gene called Nrf2 that turns on numerous antioxidant and pollutant-detoxifying genes to protect the lungs from cigarette smoke and environmental pollutants. The drug can be taken easily by mouth and the hope is that it may provide a way to protect smokers and ex-smokers from developing COPD. [H][G]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/jhub-ncb121908.php http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39522/title/Experimental_drug_fends_off_emphysema_in_mice

How vitamin D deficiency may promote MS   People in Northern Europe are more likely to develop multiple sclerosis (MS) if they live in areas receiving less sunshine. This correlation has suggested that MS may be linked to vitamin D deficiency. Now researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of British Columbia have found evidence that a direct interaction between vitamin D and a common variant in a gene DRB1 alters the risk of developing MS. Vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy and during the early years of life may increase the risk of the offspring developing MS later in life. It was previously known that people who inherit one copy of the DRB1 variant are three times more likely to develop MS and that people who inherit two copies are ten times more likely. The researchers found vitamin D activates proteins in the body that bind to a particular DNA sequence lying next to the DRB1 gene. They also showed that environment changes to the same gene region can increase the risk of developing MS even further and can be passed on through epigenetic inheritance. [G][B][H]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/plos-gss020209.php

LOCKing and unLOCKing of genes   Researchers have found that as stem cells mature into adult cells, genes do not switch off individually. Instead, large stretches of DNA containing many genes appear to switch off together. These sections have been given the name LOCKs (Large Organized Chromatin K9 modifications). From comparing embryonic stem cells, differentiating cells and mature adult cells, it seems that LOCKs appear gradually during development, refining the function of cells as they differentiate into particular cell types. The researchers found significantly fewer LOCKs in cancer cells. They speculate that the metastatic behaviour of cancer cells may arise from unLOCKing. [G][H]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/jhmi-lds011209.php

Genetic and epigenetic inheritance   A comprehensive epigenetic analysis of 100 sets of identical and fraternal twins has found that epigenetic factors are more similar in the identical twins. This adds evidence to the view that epigenetic factors as well as genetic inheritance may account for some inherited traits and diseases. One finding, however, is puzzling. Identical twins can split at any time up to the twelfth day of the embryo development. It is the late-splitting embryos that look truly identical. This is because they share more of the early embryo development as well as having identical DNA. Early-splitting identical twins, in contrast, can sometimes look no more alike physically than fraternal twins. It might therefore be suppose that, as with physical appearance, the late-splitting identical twins would have more similar epigenetic patterns than early-splitting twins. However, the converse turned out to be the case. [G][H][X]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/cfaa-rtg011409.php http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40060/title/Epigenetics_reveals_unexpected%2C_and_some_identical%2C_results

Researchers find where DNA methylation sites are located   Epigenetic signals modify gene activity without altering the genetic information itself. They help guide stem cells as they develop into other types of cells. Epigenetic errors near certain critical genes can lead to cancer and other diseases. Methylation is one of the most important epigenetic signals. It involves a methyl group attaching to a cytosine base and it was thought to occur at so-called CpG islands, which are short stretches of DNA rich in the paired bases cytosine and guanine and located near the start sites of genes. It was thought that attaching one or more methyl groups to a CpG islands stopped the associated gene from being transcribed. However, researchers have found that very few CpG island actually have methyl groups attached to them. Now researchers at Johns Hopkins, after an epic tour of DNA methylation sites across the human genome in normal and cancer cells, have found that the vast majority of the sites occur in regions near the CpG islands, which they have named "shores.". [G][H]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/jhmi-gss011209.php

Ageing may be a deliberate process   Researchers at Stanford have found that two previously identified pathways associated with ageing in mice are connected. This finding suggests that ageing is not just due to wear and tear but is a deliberate genetic process. If so, then inhibiting this process might lengthen lifespan. Indeed people who live to a very old age may just have a less efficient version of this ageing process, the researchers suggest. One of the two pathways involves a protein called NF-kB. This binds to and regulates the expression of genes associated with ageing, inflammation, immunity and metabolism. The second pathway involves SIRT6, a protein known to promote longevity by protecting telomeres. The researchers have shown that SIRT6 also controls the expression of NF-kB. When SIRT6 is low, NF-kB becomes hyperactive and turns up activity of ageing-linked genes and the speed of ageing. The researchers are now working to understand how NF-kB knows when and to what extent during an organism's lifetime to initiate the degenerative process and what role SIRT6 may play in this. [G][H]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/sumc-sru010509.php http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39788/title/Sirtuin_shown_to_control_gene_activity_

Dissecting genetic interactions to predict disease risk   Genetic studies have uncovered hundreds of DNA variations (single nuclear polymorphisms or SNPs) linked to common diseases, such as cancer or diabetes. There is a lot of talk of being able to predict an individual's disease risks from an analysis of his or her genome. The snag is that for most common diseases the variations so far identified typically account for only 1 to 3 percent of the overall genetic risk. This is because many different genetic variants combine to affect an individual's risk. To explore how to unravel these interactions, US researchers have probed the genomes of two strains of yeast, one with a 99 percent efficiency of sexual reproduction (sporulation) and one with just 7 percent efficiency. They found that although there were 85,000 SNP variants between the two yeasts, just four of these SNPs accounted for nearly 90 percent of the genetic contribution to sporulation efficiency. This simplicity is encouraging. But dissecting a complex genetic trait in humans will be far more difficult because of the huge number of SNPs in the human genome. [G][H][X]
http://mednews.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/13311.html

Engineering drought-resistant crops   An international team of researchers has sequenced the entire genome of sorghum, a drought-tolerant grass related to sugar cane and maize. This has revealed gene duplications that are not present in other cereals and that may contribute to sorghum's ability to withstand drought. Some 60 million tonnes of sorghum are produced annually worldwide - mainly in northeast Africa and dry areas of the US and India, as a staple food for humans and livestock. Sorghum is also grown as a source of biofuel, notably in China. Grain sorghum has more protein and less fat than maize, while sharing similar nutritional content. Sweet sorghum is similar to sugar cane, but its resistance to heat and water stress makes it more promising as a biofuel crop to grow on marginal land. [G][E]
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=30405 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/dgi-spc012709.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/hzm--goa013009.php

Self-replicating RNA and the origin of life   A prominent theory about the origins of life, called the RNA World model, postulates that because RNA can function as both a gene and an enzyme, it might have originated before DNA and proteins and may be the true ancestral molecule of life. The key question has been whether RNA could replicate and evolve by itself. Now scientists at Scripps Institute have provided the answer by synthesizing for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components. They found that the replication proceeds indefinitely and that the RNA can also successfully evolve. They generated a variety of enzyme pairs with similar capabilities and mixed together 12 different cross-replicating pairs and all of their constituent subunits. They found that when "mutations" occurred, the resulting recombinant enzymes were also capable of sustained replication and that the fittest replicators grew in number to dominate the mixture. [G][F]
http://www.physorg.com/news150739469.html

Nano-engineering DNA   DNA molecules have a remarkable ability to self-assemble and this is the basis of the emerging field of structural DNA nanotechnology. Previously, DNA elements have been induced to self-assemble into nanostructural platforms or "tiles," which can then snap together through base pairing to form larger arrays. Now, researchers at Arizona State University have shown how to make single-stranded DNA form into nanotubules, rings and spirals. These various DNA nanostructures are stimulating ideas about a new generation of ultra-tiny electronic and biomedical devices. [N][G][J]
http://www.physorg.com/news150048949.html

Carbon nanotube electrodes   Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can carry and store large amounts of charge, in part because of their very large surface area. This makes them promising as electrodes for higher-capacity batteries and supercapacitors. Conventional methods for making CNTs into films leave significant gaps between individual nanotubes or require binding materials to hold them together, both of which reduce the performance. Now, researchers at MIT have now made pure, dense, thin films of carbon nanotubes consisting of about 70 percent nanotubes. The remaining 30 percent is pores that could hold lithium or liquid electrolytes. [N][M][P]
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/21938/

Molecules in a cage   If a particle is confined in a space comparable to its de Broglie wavelength, its translational motion becomes quantised. The de Broglie wavelength is inversely proportional to the particle's momentum, but even particles as massive as molecules can become quantised if tightly trapped in a nanocage. Researchers at Nottingham University have now observed this quantisation for molecular hydrogen trapped in a carbon buckyball cage and cooled to 2.5 degrees K. They used a beam of neutrons to probe the energy levels, showing that the linear motion of the molecule was quantised. The neutrons lost or gained energy by interacting with the trapped hydrogen molecules and a plot of the neutron energy spectrum showed peaks in the range between 10 and 20 milli-electron-volts corresponding to transitions between the quantised energy levels. This gave a wavelength of the trapped hydrogen consistent with previous estimates of the diameter of the cage interior (1.56 Ångstroms). As well as being an elegant demonstration of the wave-like nature of massive particles, the observation may be of practical relevance for developing nanoporous materials for hydrogen storage. [N][F][M][P]
http://focus.aps.org/story/v23/st1

Negative Casimir effect observed   Quantum fluctuations in a vacuum cause two surfaces to attract one another, a phenomenon known as the Casimir effect. This attraction is important for separations of tens to hundreds of nanometres and is a source of friction and sticking in nanomachines. Now US researchers have shown experimentally that the effect can be reversed if the vacuum is replaced by a liquid dielectric material. This is because the Casimir force between two materials is proportional to the product of their permittivities. By making the permittivity of the liquid lower than that of one surface but higher than that of the other, the liquid is attracted to the first surface more than the two surfaces are attracted to each other. This allows the liquid to come between the two surfaces so that they are pushed apart rather than being pulled together. It might be possible to tune the Casimir force so that it is attractive over large separations but repulsive over shorter distances to provide quantum levitation and ultra-low friction. [N][J]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37241 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/hu-rme010509.php

Controlling nanowire growth   Nanowires, also known as 'quantum wires,' have many interesting properties that are not seen in bulk materials. This is because electrons in nanowires are confined laterally and thus occupy quantised energy levels that are different from the energy bands in bulk materials. Many different types of nanowires exist, including metallic, semiconducting, insulating and molecular (such as DNA). Semiconductor nanowires are promising for nanoelectronics, but the snag has been that they generally develop irregularities and faults as they grow. Now, researchers at Lund University have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate defect-free nanowires in indium arsenide (InAs) and that it is also possible to alternate between different crystal structures along the length of an InAs single nanowire and thereby create a superlattice. Electron microscopy images show that the arrangement of atoms in the nanowire crystal exactly matches theoretical simulations. This could open the way to various applications, including for light sources and solar cells. [N][J][M][O]
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=&RCN=30298

Carbon nanotube electronics   Carbon nanotubes are good candidates for making transistors in low-cost, printable electronics. But when carbon nanotubes are grown, some are semiconducting and others are metallic, and they are difficult to separate from each other. Two methods have recently been reported for overcoming this problem|: researchers at Duke University have found how to grow single-walled carbon nanotubes that are exclusively semiconducting, and researchers at Cornell and DuPont have invented a method of preparing carbon nanotubes for suspension in a semiconducting "ink" so that all the metallic nanotubes are dissolved and only the semiconducting ones remain. The ink can be printed into thin flexible electronics as transistors and photovoltaic materials. [N][J]
http://www.physorg.com/news151762245.html http://www.physorg.com/news150650570.html

Carbon nanohoop   Scientists at UC Berkeley have succeeded in making a compound called cycloparaphenylene that was predicted theoretically more than 70 years ago and has eluded numerous attempts to synthesise it. The compound is a hoop-shaped chain of benzene rings and happens to be the shortest segment of a carbon nanotube. It should now be possible to use this to grow much longer carbon nanotubes in a controlled way, with each nanotube identical to the next. To synthesize the elusive cycloparaphenylene, the team developed a relatively simple, low-temperature way to bend a string of benzene rings into a hoop. [N][J]
http://www.physorg.com/news150395925.html

Incorporating carbon nanotubes into circuits   To incorporate carbon nanotubes into electronic circuits, a way is needed to precisely control the length of each nanotube and locate its two ends in the required positions. Researchers at the University of Nebraska have developed a laser-assisted chemical vapour deposition process that achieves this. The laser illumination interacts with a prefabricated electrode pattern and produces optical near-field effects that cause localised heating at the electrode tips. This heating determines the locations where the carbon nanotubes start to grow. The nanotubes can be made to grow in a self-aligned manner to form a bridge between two opposite electrodes by applying a bias voltage between the electrodes that creates an electric field, which guides the nanotube growth. [N][J]
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/37258

Carbon nanotube memories   Researchers in Finland have made carbon nanotube memories with an operating speed of just 100 ns. The devices may be particularly suitable for portable electronics, such as mobile phones, laptops, PDAs and USB memory drives, where extremely low operation voltages and small leakage currents are needed. The researchers say that the device fabrication can easily be made compatible with conventional silicon electronics manufacture, but the precise electrical properties of nanotubes and their positioning on a chip need to be better controlled. [N][C][J]
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/37434 http://www.physorg.com/news152202897.html

Phononic memory   Computer simulations by researchers in China and Singapore predict that it should be possible to develop thermal circuits that exploit phonons rather than electric charge. This could enable computers to use waste heat to perform useful computations and to store information. Normally heat is dissipated and the greater the temperature difference the faster is the heat flow. But certain special materials can be designed so that a greater temperature difference causes heat to flow more slowly. This means that digital data can be stored as a stable temperature difference. [J][M][N]
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39403/title/Hot_new_memory

Multiferroic electronics   Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley and UC Berkeley have discovered that in bismuth ferrite, which is an insulator, the walls between domains with different electrical polarization conduct electricity at room temperature. The domain walls are only 1 to 2 nanometres thick and can be moved. So this may provide a way to make atomic-scale electronics. Bismuth ferrite is an example of a class of material called multiferroics. These are materials that simultaneously exhibit two or more ferroic properties – ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity, ferroelasticity and ferrotoroidicity. Bismuth ferrite is both ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic, but other combinations of properties occur in other multiferroic materials. This gives multiferroic materials a wide range of potential applications as actuators, switches, magnetic field sensors or new types of electronic and spintronic memory and computing devices. [J][M][N][O][S]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/dbnl-dwt012809.php

Graphene, graphane and all-carbon electronics   The remarkable properties of graphene, which result from its being truly 2-dimensional, have great potential for future electronics. Researchers at Manchester University, who discovered graphene in 2004, have now shown that graphene can be modified chemically to form an insulator material called graphane by exposing it to ionised hydrogen gas for two hours. In the atom-thick sheets of graphene, the carbon atoms are arranged hexagonally so that three of the four outer electrons in each atom are involved in bonding and the fourth is free to conduct. In graphane, the hydrogen atoms bond to the fourth electrons so they are no longer free. This hydrogenation is reversible, but is stable at room temperature. So, with the combination of graphene and graphane, it might be possible to build electronic circuits entirely in carbon. Using graphene as a scaffold it may be possible to grow various atom-thick 2-D crystal structures with designed properties by attaching other atoms and molecules. Graphane could also be an excellent material for hydrogen-storage on vehicles. [J][M][N][P]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16506 http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37600

All-carbon electronics   Irradiating graphene with low-energy electron beams, even for a short time, transforms its hexagonal crystal lattice into a nano-crystalline form and then into an amorphous material as the irradiation dose increases. This converts the graphene into an insulator and may provide a way to produce all-carbon transistor devices using metal, semiconducting and insulating graphene. [J][N][W]
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/37351

Tuning the properties of graphene   Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have shown that they can make graphene semiconducting or metallic by the way they pretreat the substrate on which the graphene layer is grown. [J][N]
http://www.physorg.com/news151760486.html

Scaling up graphene devices   Graphene is a wonder material. It is extremely strong, has a fantastic electron mobility for making ultra fast electronics and has good potential for spintronics. Its properties also change dramatically when it touches other materials, making it promising for chemical sensors. But to exploit graphene in practical applications, a way is needed to either mass produce arrays of small graphene elements or to produce graphene in larger sized sheets whilst maintaining the same high quality achieved in small samples. One way to do this may be to grow graphene by breaking down carbon-containing molecules on a hot surface. Researchers at the University of Seoul have shown they can use this method to produce graphene films of up to 12 layers on extremely thin sheets of nickel. By dissolving away the nickel, the researchers were left with graphene films they could stick to a flexible polymer. The researchers found the graphene films were so robust that they maintained their striking electronic properties even when bent and twisted. [J][M][N]
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21964/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7827148.stm

Does time exist?   A big problem in developing a quantum theory of gravity is that general relativity and quantum mechanics have incompatible views of time. In general relativity, time is just part of four-dimensional space-time. But in quantum mechanics it is absolute: the clock by which any wave function evolves records not just the time in one particular frame of reference but an absolute time pervading the universe. Evidence suggests that it is quantum mechanics that is wrong. One solution may be to do quantum physics without invoking time. Normally in quantum mechanics the probabilities of the possible outcomes from a sequence of measurements depend on the order in which the measurements are performed, since making one measurement disturbs the quantum state and affects the next. But, according to researchers in France, if the measuring device is also included within the boundary of the system, a sequence of multiple quantum events can be compressed into a single event described without reference to time. Evolution in time is transformed into correlations between things that can be observed in space. So, like temperature, time might simply be a statistical effect. [F][A][C][I][O][X]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026831.500-what-makes-the-universe-tick.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726391.500-is-time-an-illusion.html

Tests of relativity may have missed big violations   One approach to unifying quantum mechanics and relativity, known as the Standard Model Extension, could involve a background of quantum fields that would introduce preferred directions in space-time. This would violate Lorentz symmetry, a fundamental tenet of relativity. Increasingly sensitive experiments have so far failed to detect any evidence of violations. However new research suggests that violation occurs when new fields are distorted by gravity and this can only be detected in experiments involving gravity. Previous tests of Lorentz symmetry have not involved gravity and instead have examined other aspects of relativity such as the constancy of the speed of light and time dilation. The researchers estimate the effects could be large and that certain existing and future experiments could observe them. [F][A][R]
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/37295 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/iu-ipo010509.php

Most extreme gamma ray burst may demonstrate quantum foam   In its first four months of operation, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has captured high-energy emissions from three gamma-ray bursts, the first time such high energy photons have been detected. In all three cases, the high energy photons arrived well after Fermi’s other instrument, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, had recorded the low-energy components of the same bursts. One burst, GRB 080916C, was the most energetic burst ever observed and originated 12.2 billion light years away. Its highest energy photons (13 GeV) arrived 16.5 seconds later than the lowest energy emissions. This may indicate that they were generated by a different process from the lower energy emissions. But another possibility is that this delay is evidence for the existence of quantum foaminess that is predicted to occur at tiny dimensions of the order of the Planck length. Quantum foam, if it exists, should cause high energy photons to travel slightly slower and arrive slightly later than lower-energy photons. The effect would be tiny, but over a journey of 12.2 billion light-years, it might be detectable. [F][A][R]
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/dnal-meg021809.php http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/nsfc-nft021909.php http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39228/title/New_window_on_the_high-energy_universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_foam

New evidence suggests that supermassive black holes led the growth of galaxies   A big question about the early Universe is which came first - galaxies or supermassive black holes - or whether they developed together. Earlier studies of galaxies and their central black holes in the nearby Universe revealed an intriguing linkage between the masses of the black holes and of the central "bulges" of stars and gas in the galaxies. The ratio of the black hole and the bulge mass is nearly the same for a wide range of galactic sizes and ages. This suggests that their growth is somehow linked. Very recently, however, astronomers have been able to measure black-hole and bulge masses in several galaxies seen as they were in the first billion years after the Big Bang. The black holes in these young galaxies are much more massive compared to the bulges. This suggests that the supermassive black holes led the development of the galaxies around them. [F][A][R]
http://www.physorg.com/news150486022.html

How massive stars can form   It has long been a puzzle how massive stars, up to 120 times the mass of the Sun, can form without blowing away the clouds of gas and dust that feed their growth. In such giants, the outward-flowing radiation pressure far exceeds the gravitational force pulling material inwards. By building a detailed three-dimensional supercomputer simulation, researchers have now resolved the puzzle. They have found that instabilities develop as the dusty gas collapses onto the growing core of a massive star. These instabilities result in channels that allow radiation to escape through some channels into interstellar space while gas continues falling inward through other channels. [F][A][C]
http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=2673

Foresight report on sustainable energy management and the built environment   The UK government has published the report of its Foresight study on sustainable energy management and the built environment. Half of all UK carbon emissions come from energy used in buildings. So it is vital to plan how the built environment should evolve to help manage the transition to low-carbon energy. As background evidence, the project commissioned 60 state of science reviews from experts looking out to 2050. These cover energy distribution and storage, renewable energy, energy demand management, energy efficient buildings, decentralised systems, innovative construction and built form, and regulatory, economic, business and lifestyle issues. One big problem is the long time it takes to change infrastructure, systems, regulatory frameworks, business models and behaviours. Another is the complex interconnectedness and multifaceted nature of the challenges. The existing infrastructure was built without consideration for modern terrorism or climate change. It is essential to encourage new ideas and to cleverly implement and exploit different approaches across all system scales. [T][D][E][I][M][K][P][W][X]
http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Energy/EnergyFinal/final_project_report.pdf http://www.foresight.gov.uk/Energy/EnergyFinal/Introduction%20SEMBE.pdf http://www.foresight.gov.uk/OurWork/ActiveProjects/SustainableEnergy/sembeoutputs.asp

UK MOD Defence Technology Plan   The UK MOD has unveiled a new defence technology plan. This sets out a cost-balanced list of current R&D priorities derived from the Defence Technology Strategy that MOD published in 2006. The plan covers systems, enabling technologies and capability visions. [T][D]
http://www.science.mod.uk/Strategy/dtplan/default.aspx