ScienceDaily Technology Headlines -- for Thursday, November 10, 2011

ScienceDaily Technology Headlines

for Thursday, November 10, 2011

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Physicists chip away at mystery of antimatter imbalance (November 10, 2011) -- Why there is stuff in the universe is one of the long-standing mysteries of cosmology. A team of researchers has just concluded a 10-year-long study of the fate of neutrons in an attempt to resolve the question, the most sensitive such measurement ever made. The universe, they concede, has managed to keep its secret for the time being, but they've succeeded in significantly narrowing the number of possible answers. ... > full story

Clear vision despite a heavy head: Model explains the choice of simple movements (November 10, 2011) -- The brain likes stereotypes -- at least for movements. Simple actions are most often performed in the same manner. A mathematical model explains why this is the case and could be used to generate more natural robot movements and to adapt prosthetic movements. ... > full story

Researchers develop eButton, an easier way to monitor food intake, exercise, and lifestyle (November 10, 2011) -- People attempting to lose weight won't need to track their daily food intake anymore, thanks to a wearable, picture-taking device. eButton -- a device worn on the chest (like a pin) that contains a miniature camera, accelerometer, GPS, and other sensors -- captures data and information of health activities, eliminating the need for daily self-reporting. ... > full story

For new microscope images, less is more (November 9, 2011) -- When people email photos, they sometimes compress the images, removing redundant information and thus reducing the file size. Compression is generally thought of as something to do to data after it has been collected, but mathematicians have recently figured out a way to use similar principles to drastically reduce the amount of data that needs to be gathered in the first place. Now scientists have utilized this new theory, called compression sensing, to build a microscope that can make images of molecular vibrations with higher resolution and in less time than conventional methods. The microscope provides chemists with a powerful new experimental tool. ... > full story

Computer trained to evaluate breast cancer (November 9, 2011) -- Computer scientists and pathologists are training computers to analyze breast cancer microscopic images. The computer analysis were more accurate than those conducted by humans. ... > full story

Can metals remember their shape at nanoscale, too? (November 9, 2011) -- Physicists have now visualized changes in shape memory materials down to the nanometric scale. ... > full story

Ancient lunar dynamo may explain magnetized moon rocks (November 9, 2011) -- The presence of magnetized rocks on the surface of the moon, which has no global magnetic field, has been a mystery since the days of the Apollo program. Now a team of scientists has proposed a novel mechanism that could have generated a magnetic field on the moon early in its history. ... > full story

Is that a robot in your suitcase? (November 9, 2011) -- A flying robot as small as a dinner plate that can zoom to hard-to-reach places and a fleet of eco-friendly robotic farm-hands are just two of the exciting projects a robotics team in Australia is working on. ... > full story

'Noise' tunes logic circuit made from virus genes (November 9, 2011) -- In the world of engineering, “noise” – random fluctuations from environmental sources such as heat – is generally a bad thing. In electronic circuits, it is unavoidable, and as circuits get smaller and smaller, noise has a greater and more detrimental effect on a circuit’s performance. Now some scientists are saying: if you can’t beat it, use it. ... > full story

New hybrid detector monitors alpha, beta, and gamma radiation simultaneously (November 9, 2011) -- By combining three layers of detection into one new device, a team of researchers from Japan has proposed a new way to monitor radiation levels at power plant accident sites. The device would be more economical that using different devices to measure different types of radiation, and could limit the exposure times of clean-up workers by taking three measurements simultaneously. ... > full story

NASA develops super-black material that absorbs light across multiple wavelength bands (November 9, 2011) -- NASA engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it -- a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology. ... > full story

Video game playing tied to creativity, research shows (November 9, 2011) -- Both boys and girls who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether the games are violent or nonviolent, according to new research. ... > full story

Drinking water from plastic pipes: Is it harmful? (November 9, 2011) -- Pipe-in-pipe systems are now commonly used to distribute water in many homes. The inner pipe for drinking water is made of a plastic called cross-linked polyethylene. Are these pipes harmful to health and do they affect the taste and odor of drinking water? ... > full story

Researchers create extra-long electrical arcs using less energy (November 9, 2011) -- Photos taken by the researchers show plasma arcs up to 60 meters long casting an eerie blue glow over buildings and trees at the High Voltage Laboratory at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. ... > full story

New reports urges more detailed utility metering to improve building efficiency (November 9, 2011) -- A new interagency report recommends systematic consideration of new metering technologies, called submetering, that can yield up-to-date, finely grained snapshots of energy and water usage in commercial and residential buildings to guide efficiency improvements and capture the advantages of a modernized electric power grid. ... > full story

NASA releases radar movie of asteroid 2005 YU55 (November 9, 2011) -- Scientists working with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have generated a short movie clip of asteroid 2005 YU55. The images were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Nov. 7, 2011, between 11:24 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. PST (2:24 p.m. and 4:35 p.m. EST). They are the highest-resolution images ever generated by radar of a near-Earth object. ... > full story

Incredible shrinking material: Engineers reveal how scandium trifluoride contracts with heat (November 8, 2011) -- They shrink when you heat 'em. Most materials expand when heated, but a few contract. Now engineers have figured out how one of these curious materials, scandium trifluoride, does the trick -- a finding, they say, that will lead to a deeper understanding of all kinds of materials. ... > full story

European biofuels are as carbon intensive as petrol, new study suggests (November 8, 2011) -- New research into greenhouse gas emissions from oil palm plantations provides robust measures now being used to inform international policies on greenhouse gas emissions. ... > full story

Secrets of tunneling through energy barriers: How massless electrons tunnel through energy barriers in a carbon sheet called graphene (November 8, 2011) -- Electrons moving in graphene behave in an unusual way, as demonstrated by 2010 Nobel Prize laureates for physics Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who performed transport experiments on this one-carbon-atom-thick material. A review article explores the theoretical and experimental results to date of electrons tunneling through energy barriers in graphene. ... > full story

Nanotubes in environment 'rob' green algae of space and light (November 8, 2011) -- Nanoparticles such as carbon nanotubes, which are found in an ever-increasing number of products, are ending up more and more frequently in our surroundings. If and how they affect aquatic ecosystems are questions which are still unanswered. An new study shows that while carbon nanotubes do not have toxic effects on green algae they do inhibit its growth by depriving the plant of light and space. ... > full story

Critical step to opening elusive class of compounds to drug discovery (November 8, 2011) -- Taxanes are a family of compounds that includes one of the most important cancer drugs ever discovered, Taxol, among other cancer treatments. But the difficulty producing these complex molecules in the lab has hampered or blocked exploration of the family for further drug leads. Scientists have now successfully achieved a major step toward the goal of synthetically producing Taxol and other complex taxanes on a quest to harness chemical reactions that could enable research on previously unavailable potential drugs. ... > full story

NASA captures new images of large asteroid passing Earth (November 8, 2011) -- NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. has captured new radar images of Asteroid 2005 YU55 passing close to Earth. The asteroid safely will safely fly past our planet slightly closer than the moon's orbit on Nov. 8. The last time a space rock this large came as close to Earth was in 1976, although astronomers did not know about the flyby at the time. The next known approach of an asteroid this size will be in 2028. ... > full story

Simulating real-world surfaces for automotive design (November 8, 2011) -- Today, cars are designed on computers, and to assist with this, designers want processes which generate realistic surfaces such as seat covers. Researchers have now developed high-resolution scanners which copy objects and fabric samples in a few minutes, converting them into virtual models. The light effects are startlingly realistic. ... > full story

NASA Proposes Orion Spacecraft Test Flight In 2014; Agency Moves to Implement Deep Space Exploration Plan (November 8, 2011) -- NASA plans to add an unmanned flight test of the Orion spacecraft in early 2014 to its contract with Lockheed Martin Space Systems for the multi-purpose crew vehicle's design, development, test and evaluation. This test supports the new Space Launch System that will take astronauts farther into space than ever before. ... > full story

Millisecond pulsar in spin mode: Gamma radiation of rapidly rotating neutron star casts doubt on origin models (November 7, 2011) -- Astronomers have tracked down the first gamma-ray pulsar in a globular cluster of stars. It is around 27,000 light years away and thus also holds the distance record in this class of objects. Moreover, its high luminosity indicates that J1823-3021A is the youngest millisecond pulsar found to date, and that its magnetic field is much stronger than theoretically predicted. This therefore suggests the existence of a new population of such extreme objects. ... > full story

2-D electron liquid solidifies in a magnetic field (November 7, 2011) -- Physicists have developed a theory that describes, in a unified manner, the coexistence of liquid and pinned solid phases of electrons in two dimensions under the influence of a magnetic field. ... > full story

Why oxygen becomes the undoing of proteins (November 7, 2011) -- Scientists have published a new study explaining why enzymes used for the production of hydrogen are so sensitive to oxygen. They used spectroscopic methods to investigate the time course of the processes that lead to the inactivation of the enzyme's iron center. ... > full story

Hospital tests reveal the secrets of an Egyptian mummy (November 7, 2011) -- An ancient Egyptian mummy has had quite an afterlife, traveling more than 6,000 miles, spending six decades in private hands, and finally, in 1989, finding a home at the World Heritage Museum (now the Spurlock Museum) at the University of Illinois. The mummy's travels did not end there, however. It has made two trips to a local hospital -- once in 1990 and again this year -- for some not-so-routine medical exams. ... > full story

Not one, not two, not three, but four clones: First quantum cloning machine to produce four copies (November 7, 2011) -- Scientists in China have produced a theory for a quantum cloning machine able to produce several copies of the state of a particle at atomic or sub-atomic scale, or quantum state. The advance could have implications for quantum information processing methods used, for example, in message encryption systems. ... > full story

Volunteers end simulated mission to Mars (November 7, 2011) -- The record-breaking simulated mission to Mars has ended with smiling faces after 17 months. Mars500's six brave volunteers stepped out of their 'spacecraft' Nov. 4, 2011 to be welcomed by the waiting scientists -- happy that the venture had worked even better than expected. Mars500, the first full-length, high-fidelity simulation of a human mission to our neighbouring planet, started 520 days earlier, on 3 June 2010, at the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow. ... > full story

Engineers solve energy puzzle: How energy levels align in a critical group of advanced materials (November 7, 2011) -- Materials science and engineering researchers have demonstrated for the first time the key mechanism behind how energy levels align in a critical group of advanced materials. This discovery is a significant breakthrough in the development of sustainable technologies such as dye-sensitized solar cells and organic light-emitting diodes. ... > full story

Carbon-based organic 'carriers' in interstellar dust clouds? Newly discovered diffuse interstellar bands (November 6, 2011) -- The discovery of 13 diffuse interstellar bands with the longest wavelengths to date could someday solve a 90-year-old mystery. Astronomers have now discovered new bands using data collected by the Gemini North telescope of stars in the center of the Milky Way. The new findings support recent ideas about the presence of large, possibly carbon-based organic molecules -— “carriers” —- hidden in interstellar dust clouds. ... > full story

World record in 3-D imaging of porous rocks: Stack of 35 million megapixel-photos (November 6, 2011) -- Physicists have established a world record in the field of three-dimensional imaging of porous materials. The scientists have generated the largest and most precise three-dimensional image of the pore structure of sandstone. The image was generated within a project of the Simulation Technology Cluster of Excellence, and contains more than 35 trillion (a number with thirteen digits) voxels. ... > full story

Cyber war might never happen (November 6, 2011) -- Cyber war, long considered by many experts within the defense establishment to be a significant threat, if not an ongoing one, may never take place according to one expert. He argues that cyber warfare has never taken place, nor is it currently doing so and it is unlikely to take place in the future. ... > full story

Voyager 2 to switch to backup thruster set (November 6, 2011) -- NASA's Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft Nov. 4 to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft. Confirmation was received today that the spacecraft accepted the commands. The change will allow the 34-year-old spacecraft to reduce the amount of power it requires to operate and use previously unused thrusters as it continues its journey toward interstellar space, beyond our solar system. ... > full story

Hubble directly observes the disk around a black hole (November 5, 2011) -- Scientists have observed a quasar accretion disk -- a glowing disk of matter that is slowly being sucked into its galaxy's central black hole. Their study makes use of a novel technique that uses gravitational lensing to give an immense boost to the power of the telescope. The precision of the method has allowed astronomers to directly measure the disk's size and temperature across different parts of the disk. ... > full story

City lights could reveal E.T. civilization (November 4, 2011) -- In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. Astronomers suggest a new technique for finding aliens: Look for their city lights. ... > full story

New ways to image and therapeutically target melanoma using nanomedicine? (November 4, 2011) -- Because the incidence of malignant melanoma is rising faster than any other cancer in the US, medical researchers are working overtime to develop new technologies to aid in both malignant melanoma diagnosis and therapy. A tool of great promise comes from the world of nanomedicine. ... > full story

New International Space Station camera reveals the cosmic shore (November 4, 2011) -- Part of human fascination with space is the chance to look back at our own planet from afar. The unique vantage from the International Space Station affords a vista both breathtaking and scientifically illuminating. ... > full story

Hybrid power plants can help industry go green: Affordable solar option for power plants (November 4, 2011) -- Researchers have developed a technology that combines the conventional fuel used in today's power plants with the lower pressures and temperatures of steam produced by solar power. His new "hybrid" power plant is a potentially cost-effective and realistic way to integrate solar technology into existing power plants. ... > full story

Interactive play with blocks found to facilitate development of spatial vocabulary (November 4, 2011) -- Parents and researchers have long speculated that play with construction toys might offer a rich environment that would support later learning in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Researchers have found that when playing with blocks under interactive conditions, children hear the kind of language that helps them think about space, such as "over," "around" and "through." ... > full story

Solar energy: Solar concentrator increases collection with less loss (November 4, 2011) -- Converting sunlight into electricity is not economically attractive because of the high cost of solar cells, but a recent, purely optical approach to improving luminescent solar concentrators may ease the problem, according to researchers. ... > full story

Observations of gamma-ray burst reveal surprising ingredients of early galaxies (November 4, 2011) -- Astronomers have used the brief but brilliant light of a distant gamma-ray burst as a probe to study the make-up of very distant galaxies. Surprisingly the new observations revealed two galaxies in the young Universe that are richer in the heavier chemical elements than the Sun. The two galaxies may be in the process of merging. Such events in the early Universe will drive the formation of many new stars and may be the trigger for gamma-ray bursts. ... > full story

New process for manufacturing nanocellulose: Using nanocellulose to create novel composite materials (November 4, 2011) -- For some time now nanocellulose has been at the focus of a good deal of industrial and scientific interest as a novel biomaterial. Potential applications range from the creation of new kinds of commercially useful materials and uses in medical technology all the way to the food and pharmaceutical industries. Swiss researchers have now developed a manufacturing process for nanocellulose powder, the raw material for creating polymer composites which can be used, for example, in lightweight structures for the car industry or as membrane and filter material for biomedicinal applications. ... > full story

Experts recommend the inclusion of rainwater-collection systems in cities (November 4, 2011) -- Plain, sloping roofs can collect up to 50 percent more rainwater than flat roofs with gravel. This water is also of higher quality. These are the conclusions of a study conducted by researchers in Spain that suggests the incorporation of systems to collect rainwater in urban planning. The water collected can be used to water streets and gardens, wash floors or vehicles and fill cisterns. ... > full story

Scientists study 'galaxy zoo' using Google Maps and thousands of volunteers (November 3, 2011) -- The reddest galaxies with the largest central bulb show the largest bars -- gigantic central columns of stars and dark matter -- according to a scientific study that used Google Maps to observe the sky. A group of volunteers of more than 200,000 participants of the galaxy classification project Galaxy Zoo contributed to this research. ... > full story

Thousand-color sensor reveals contaminants in earth and sea: Technology spots environmental hazards (November 3, 2011) -- A researcher has developed a special camera that can detect more than 1,000 colors -- and can diagnose contaminants and other environmental hazards in real time. ... > full story

Astrobiologists discover 'sweet spots' for the formation of complex organic molecules in the galaxy (November 3, 2011) -- Scientists have compiled years of research to help locate areas in outer space that have extreme potential for complex organic molecule formation. The scientists searched for methanol, a key ingredient in the synthesis of organic molecules that could lead to life. Their results have implications for determining the origins of molecules that spark life in the cosmos. ... > full story