click here

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Track change at heart of Spain train crash inquiry


Why did Francisco José Garzón, a train driver with 30 years' experience, hit a bend at 190 kilometres per hour when the speed limit was 80 km/h? Did he ignore the automated warnings? Or did his train's alert system fail at a critical time?
An inquiry is under way into the derailing of the packed train, which killed 79 people in Santiago de Compostela, north-west Spain on 24 July. Garzón hasadmitted to "confusion" over the train's speed and, though freed on bail, is facing the prospect of 79 charges of negligent homicide.
One focus of the investigation will be the fact that the crash took place at a point where one safety system hands over to another – from one that controls the train's speed to one that does not. On high-speed sections, the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) intervenes wirelessly to ensure a train slows down if alerts are ignored.
Crucially, ERTMS cuts in if its alerts are ignored. It does so using GSM-R - a robust railway version of the GSM standard used by cellphones to communicate with the cell towers.
"ERTMS has all sorts of measures that prevent trains going over speed and will eventually be fitted over the whole route from Santiago to Madrid," says Roger Kemp, a safety-critical systems engineer specialising in railway technology at Lancaster University, UK. "But it is not a finished project."
This means that, 4 kilometres from Santiago de Compostela, on a slower, bendier section of track that snakes through the town, ERTMS has not yet been fitted. Instead, an older Spanish-developed system called ASFA advises the driver of the necessary safe speeds. But ASFA can only intervene if the driver does not respond.
"The driver only has to acknowledge that they have seen the speed advisory by pushing a button - otherwise the system will apply the brakes - but you don't have to comply with that speed under ASFA," says Kemp.
Spanish TV station Antena 3 says that Garzón told some witnesses immediately after the crash that he was not able to slow down to the necessary 80 km/h before the sharp curve - but it is not known why.
To find out, investigators are now retrieving data from the train's electronic systems - a process that must be performed carefully to prevent critical data in the damaged systems being overwritten. This could take two weeks.
"There is a lot of data that can be downloaded from various traction control computers on a train - and that should tell the investigators if the train was doing what it should have done," says Kemp.
While ERTMS works well in general, it does have vulnerabilities which researchers are attempting to address. Researchers led by Gianmarco Baldini at the European Commission's Institute for the Protection and the Security of the Citizen in Varese, Italy, have developed a system that can detect radio jamming and interference of the GSM-R signal and, within 1 second, inform train drivers and track controllers (International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, doi.org/dpfmht).

Sensor knows when you're lying through your teeth


A sensor embedded in a tooth could one day tell doctors when people have defied medical advice to give up smoking or eat less. Built into a tiny circuit board that fits in a tooth cavity, the sensor includes an accelerometer that sends data on mouth motion to a smartphone.
Machine learning software is taught to recognise each telltale jaw motion pattern, then works out how much of the time the patient is chewing, drinking, speaking, coughing or smoking.
The inventors – Hao-hua Chu and colleagues at National Taiwan University in Taipei – want to use the mouth as a window on a variety of health issues. The device can be fitted into dentures or a dental brace, and the team plan tominiaturise the device to fit in a cavity or crown.
The researchers say the sensor shows great promise: in tests on eight people with a prototype implant installed in their dentures, the system recognised oral activities correctly 94 per cent of the time.
The prototype was attached to a power source by an external wire, so the team still needs a way to include a microbattery.
Once they manage this, the researchers want to add a Bluetooth radio to the device. But as that is a microwave energy source – albeit a very low power one – Chu says medical experts are advising the team on how to ensure the implant would be safe.
If miniaturised and made wireless, the device has potential, says Trevor Johnson, vice-chair of research at the Faculty of General Dental Practice in the UK. "This could have a number of uses in dentistry, for example as a research tool, for monitoring patients who clench or grind their teeth, and for assessing the impact of various dental interventions," he says.

Photons May Emit Faster-Than-Light Particles, Physicists Suggest


abstract image represents string theory
Physicists have found that particles of light, or photons, may live for at least 1 quintillion years, and if they can die, photons may give off very light particles that could travel faster than light. 
Credit: Robert Spriggs | Shutterstock





The particles that make up light, photons, may live for at least 1 quintillion (1 billion multiplied by 1 billion) years, new research suggests.
If photons can die, they could give off particles that travel faster than light.
Many particles in nature decay over time. For instance, radioactive atoms are unstable, eventually breaking down into smaller particles and giving off energy as they do so.


Scientists generally assume photons do not break down, since they are thought to lack any mass with which to decay. However, while all measurements of photons currently suggest they have no mass, they might instead potentially have masses too small for current instruments to measure. [10 Implications of Faster-Than-Light Travel]
"How much do we actually know about photons?" asked particle physicist Julian Heeck at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics at Heidelberg, Germany. "They led to several revolutions in science, but their properties are still a puzzle."
The current upper limit for the mass of the photon is less than two-billionths of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a kilogram. This would make it about less than a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of the mass of a proton.
Based on the Standard Model of particle physics, which governs the realm of the very tiny, Heeck calculated that photons in the visible spectrum would live for at least 1 quintillion years.
The extraordinarily long lifetime Heeck calculated is an average. "There is the possibility that some photons — very few, though — have decayed," he said. (The universe is currently about 13.7 billion years old.) Scientific projects such as the Planck mission, aimed at measuring the afterglow of the Big Bang, could potentially detect signs of such decay, Heeck noted.

a full-sky map from Planck showing matter between Earth and the edge of the observable universe.
Scientific projects such as the Planck mission, aimed at measuring the afterglow of the Big Bang, could potentially detect signs of the decay of photons. Here, a full-sky map from Planck showing matter between Earth and the edge of the observable universe. (Lighter regions have more mass and darker have less.)
Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech





























If photons do break down, the results of such decay must be even lighter particles, ones that would travel even faster than photons. Assuming photons have mass, "there is only one particle we know from the Standard Model of particle physics that might be even lighter — the lightest of the three neutrinos," Heeck said.
Neutrinos are ghostly particles that only very rarely interact with normal matter. Countless neutrinos rush through everyone on Earth every day with no effect.
"It might well be that the neutrino is lighter than the photon," Heeck said. In principle, each photon might decay into two of the lightest neutrinos.
"The lightest neutrino, being lighter than light, would then actually travel faster than photons," Heeck said.
The idea of neutrinos that move faster than photons would seem to violate the notion, based on Einstein's theory of relativity, that nothing can travel faster than light. However, this assumption is based on the idea of the photon not having any mass. Einstein's theory of relativity "just states that no particle can travel faster than a massless particle," Heeck said.
Intriguingly, the speed that photons travel at means their extraordinary life spans will pass by quickly from their perspective. Einstein's theory of relativity suggests when particles travel extraordinarily quickly, the fabric of space and time warps around them, meaning they experience time as passing more slowly than objects moving relatively slowly. This means that if photons live for 1 quintillion years, from their perspective, they will only live about three years.
Heeck detailed his findings online July 11 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Original article onLiveScience.





Even in Death, Scientists Make New Discoveries


It had been four long years since I'd last seen the little nightshade that haunted my dreams. Spurred on by local botanists in Australia's Northern Territory, I had first seen the plant in Litchfield National Park in 2009. I could tell upon encountering it that this was a species yet to be described by science -- so I took some leaf samples for DNA analysis with the expectation that I would someday soon be naming a new species.
But by the time that I returned to relocate this mysterious plant in 2013, it still didn't have a formal scientific name. As it turned out, the only way around the delay would be through timely collaborations with other botanists -- including a former mentor who had been dead for almost two years.
This particular new species was relatively easy to find... but not so easy to catch in flower. To name a new species you need to be able to describe what it looks like. And species descriptions for plants nearly always include details related to their flowers. In 2009 I had spent days tromping through the bush with two colleagues and a student... and not a flower was found. Without blooms there would be no name.
Returning to Litchfield National Park in May of 2013, I again found that the plant was not in flower -- but there was promise. In a recently burned swathe of eucalyptus woodland near a rock formation called "The Lost City," dozens of stems had formed flower buds. It was only a matter of time.
For four days I camped nearby with my Bucknell colleague Beth Capaldi Evans and senior biology major Gemma Dugan so that we could check on the plants each day. For four days we delayed our return to Darwin and the airport from which we would soon head back home. And for four days the buds didn't open. In an impressive feat of botanical chastity, not a bloom would budge. We left The Lost City with our heads held low.
The collective actions of the region's botanists would save us, however -- for when we visited the NT Herbarium on the way back in from the field, I found that quite a few new specimens of this plant had been collected in the last few years. And several of these dried, pressed specimens had flowers on them!
My spirit renewed, I dove into the folders of specimens. I examined small parts with my hand lens; I measured organs with my little metric ruler; I took notes as if in a fever of taxonomic proportions. This species was finally going to be uncovered... and I was going to be the one to do it. I was lightheaded with geekish joy.
But someone had beaten me to the punch.
There, nestled into one of the folders, was a full page of hand-written notes attached to a specimen I hadn't seen before. I immediately recognized the handwriting as that of David Symon, the greatest nightshade expert in Australia's history. As a Ph.D. student working on a small group of these species in the early 2000s, I had often received penned letters from David in which he shared ideas and encouraged my work. In 2004, when David was 84 years of age, we spent about two weeks together collecting in the Outback, with me thrilled to be apprenticed to the master.
David had discovered and named many of the species I was studying, so I was keen to learn whatever I could around the campfire each night. On one memorable evening I shared with him that my most favorite of the names he designated was Solanum oedipus, which I assumed was a nod to the reproductive biology of the species (where small "son" flowers can pollinate the single large "mother" flower in a given cluster) -- only to have him remind me, somewhat scoldingly, that oedipus means "swollen foot" and was obviously a description of the base of the floral stems. I apparently needed to get my mind out of the gutter -- no easy task for a plant reproductive biologist.
Later, I would head west with other botanists, intent on collecting rare nightshades on the Kimberley Plateau, while David headed first back to Darwin and then on to his home city of Adelaide.
What I know now is that David also made a stop at the NT Herbarium before he went home. Once there, he came across an unusual specimen collected near the Fitzmaurice River in 1994. Recognizing that this was likely something novel, David commenced with describing it as a new form. He likely stopped short of publishing the new species for the same reason I have until now: under the heading "female flowers" he wrote, "Not seen."
He then filed his notes with the specimen, where I would find them a decade later -- two years after his death in 2011.
Science is a cumulative endeavor. Everything we do is built upon and inspired by the men and women who came before us, leaving behind sets of hypotheses for us to test and ideas for us to challenge and revise or accept and carry forward. Sometimes they leave behind complete bodies of work that can only be admired for their comprehensiveness, and sometimes they leave threads of things we can only hope to sew into something more whole.
Today I am doing some sewing. I'm stitching David's outstanding notes to my own observations, some of them derived from the flowering specimens collected by other Australian colleagues. I'm also adding new threads based on my DNA work and images generated with a scanning electron microscope, thus weaving a modern textile that wasn't even possible when David first started working in the field.
In a few months David and I will publish our new species together. We'll name it after one of the botanists who collected the flowering material that allowed us to proceed.
Until then, however, I will continue to relish our unexpected collaboration. I may even delay the publication a little bit longer.

Circulatory System Keeps Sunny Windows Cool

Big windows in the home are great. They provide a good view and let in lots of light. But they can also let in lots of heat from the sun and then trap it inside, turning your home into a greenhouse. In the summer, that can translate into higher energy bills from overuse of the air conditioner.
Materials scientists think they have a simple solution: add a water-based circulatory system to the windows to cool them down. If the technology can be mass-produced, such windows would reduce the amount of energy needed to keep a home cool. The research team, led by Donald Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Institute, and Benjamin Hatton, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Toronto, reported their results in the July 29 online edition of Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.
Tasty Tech Eye Candy of the Week
The circulatory system isn’t in the glass itself. Instead, the scientists used silicone rubber. They poured liquid silicone into a mold with a tiny waffle pattern of channels, and then when it solidified, peeled it off. They then stretched a thin sheet of transparent silicone rubber over a four-inch-square sheet of glass. After exposing the glass to a bright light to simulate the sun and letting it warm up to about 100 degrees — they pumped water through the channels in the silicone. The temperature of the glass dropped by 12 to 14 degrees.
In a real system, the silicone would be stretched over window glass, and even though it takes energy to pump the water, it isn’t as much as it would take to cool a room with an air conditioner. To get an idea, a fish tank pump that moves 500 gallons per hour uses the energy of a 40-Watt light bulb. A one-room air conditioner uses 20 times that amount.
After the water exits the window pane it could be air-cooled to “room” temperature, perhaps piped under the floor before being recirculated.
This kind of cooling could do more than just keep air conditioning bills down — it could also boost the efficiency of solar cells. Conventional solar cells lose efficiency if they get too hot, and existing cooling systems rely on bulky equipment. A lightweight, transparent cheap coating would solve that problem.
DNews: Crazy Solar Power Plants
Silicone rubber is a good choice because along with being inexpensive, easy to cut and stretch, it also stays transparent when the water pumps though the channels. In fact, it’s actually harder to see when the water is flowing, as the channels are faintly visible when they are empty. And because manufacturing the channeled rubber required no exotic or expensive techniques, the process could be scaled up for a reasonable cost.

Source : news.discovery.com

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Capturing Black Hole Spin Could Further Understanding of Galaxy Growth

July 29, 2013Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Astronomers have found a new way of measuring the spin in supermassive black holes, which could lead to better understanding about how they drive the growth of galaxies. The scientists at Durham University in the UK publish their work in a paper in the Oxford University Press journal
The team of astronomers observed a black hole -- with a mass 10 million times that of our Sun -- at the centre of a spiral galaxy 500 million light years from Earth while it was feeding on the surrounding disc of material that fuels its growth and powers its activity.
By viewing optical, ultra-violet and soft x-rays generated by heat as the black hole fed, they were able to measure how far the disc was from the black hole.
This distance depends on black hole spin as a fast spinning black hole pulls the disc in closer to itself, the researchers said. Using the distance between the black hole and the disc, the scientists were able to estimate the spin of the black hole.
The scientists said that understanding spin could lead to greater understanding of galaxy growth over billions of years.
Black holes lie at the centres of almost all galaxies, and can spit out incredibly hot particles at high energies that prevent intergalactic gases from cooling and forming new stars in the outer galaxy. Scientists don't yet understand why the jets are ejected into space, but the Durham experts believe that their power could be linked to the spin of the black hole. This spin is difficult to measure as it only affects the behaviour of material really close to the black hole.
Lead researcher Professor Chris Done, in the Department of Physics, at Durham University, said: "We know the black hole in the centre of each galaxy is linked to the galaxy as a whole, which is strange because black holes are tiny in relation to the size of a galaxy. This would be like something the size of a large boulder (10m), influencing something the size of Earth.
"Understanding this connection between stars in a galaxy and the growth of a black hole, and vice-versa, is the key to understanding how galaxies form throughout cosmic time.
"If a black hole is spinning it drags space and time with it and that drags the accretion disc, containing the black hole's food, closer towards it. This makes the black hole spin faster, a bit like an ice skater doing a pirouette.
"By being able to measure the distance between the black hole and the accretion disc, we believe we can more effectively measure the spin of black holes.
"Because of this, we hope to be able to understand more about the link between black holes and their galaxies."
The Durham scientists were able to measure the spin of the black hole using soft x-ray, optical and ultra-violet images captured by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite.

Source : www.sciencedaily.com

Monday, July 29, 2013

Next Step, Superwoman: Amputee Fit With Bionic Ankles

Lynn Budde might feel a step closer to Superwoman. Last week the 50-year-old Kentucky resident, who lost her limbs, nose, and upper lip to Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) in 2009, was the first female bi-lateral amputee to be fit with bionic ankles.
Running on a lithium polymer battery that needs to be recharged daily, the ankles are adjustable via an Android smartphone app. In Budde’s case, these new ankles allow her to walk out of her house, which sits on a 45-degree incline, and around the block with her husband.
Photo: iWalk

“Two years ago, I never thought I would walk again,” says Budde.  “Today, I have two new ankles that as soon as I put them on, I felt like I had my legs back. I want to make sure all those suffering from limb loss know that there are options out there that will help you regain normalcy in your life.”
The revolutionary BiOM ankles, which use robotics to replicate muscles and tendons, normalize metabolic efficiency and walking for lower-limb amputees. That means users can walk with a natural gait and at the same speed as a person with intact biological limbs. Additionally, by using robotic muscle power to toe-off, the BiOM absorbs impact and reduces unnatural forces on the body, reducing back, joint, and limb aches.
The system works well. Its inventor, Dr. Hugh Herr, the world-renowned MIT-based innovator and founder of prosthetic company iWalk, has had plenty of opportunity to test it. Herr lost his own legs in a mountain climbing accident at age 17 and wears BiOMs on both his legs for climbing. In addition to the bionic ankles, Herr developed a computer-controlled knee that was named one of Time magazine’s Top Ten Inventions in 2004. He holds (or co-holds) more than a dozen patents related to assistive devices.
Photo: iWalk

“What we plan to do and will do is systematically build body parts from the ground up, literally,” Herr said in a recent CNN interview. “So we’re starting with ankles. Then the next act of iWalk is knees. And after that will be hips. And we’ll just rebuild the human from the ground up.”

Source : news.discovery.com

Gestural Interfaces: What the Future Holds for Man-Machine Interaction

While laptop and desktop computers are still controlled by keyboards and mice, anyone who is even partially conscious of advances in modern technology knows that the days of physical typing and clicking are numbered. With the steady advance of smartphones and tablets into our lives, the touchscreen has become ubiquitous and expected. But swiping’s place in the sun may not last, thanks to the arrival of gestural interfaces that capture user movement and translate it into computer commands.
The idea of gesture recognition has been around for a while, but in the past few years it has become a fixture in many households. First there was the Nintendo Wii, the gaming system whose controller can be pointed and waved to dictate what happens on screen. But the real future of gestural interfaces lies in the user’s movement unaided by controls. For that, there’s Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect.

The Frontrunner

The key to translating movement into a form a computer can recognize is measuring depth- a game that only lets a player move in two dimensions would not only be lame, it wouldn’t work. The Kinect uses multiple cameras and a technique called structured light. An infrared pattern is projected outwards and distortions in the pattern reflect user movements. Players can jump, spin, punch and dance, and their onscreen avatars follow suit.
Going by sales figures, the technology is catching on quickly. The Kinect holds the Guinness World Record for fastest selling consumer electronics device ever; eight million units were sold in two months. The gaming system is the forefront of gestural interface technology, but the future won’t be limited to boxing and bowling games.

Emerging Competition

Because the Kinect enables 3D motion capture for an affordable price, it has been thoroughly hacked, with a wide variety of new and unexpected uses. KinectShop lets users try on clothes virtually, taking online shopping to a new level. Kitchen robots use Kinect technology to make sandwiches and popcorn (albeit rather slowly). Rather than fighting the trend, Microsoft is embracing it, offering a software development kit for students, teachers and even professional researchers.
But the Kinect and upcoming competitors like Asus’ WAVI Xtion (a few months away from production) represent only one branch of gestural interface technology, a market that Markets and Markets predicts will reach $3658.8 million by 2015. Smartphones using motion sensing technology are being developed to knock touchscreens out for good.

The Future

MIT Media Lab professors Ramesh Raskar, Henry Holtzman and Hiroshi Ishii are working on a screen with optical sensors to detect the placement and movement of the finger, no smudging or swiping required. Basically, it would work like a “giant lensless camera,” according to GizMag.
Of course, gestural interfaces could move far beyond the consumer market and be put to uses as diverse as personal robots and sign language recognition. Judging by the success of the Kinect, which has introduced the technology to the public, sometime in the future we’ll have forgotten all about keyboards.

Source : news.discovery.com

Mind over Matter: Secrets of Human Aura. Mind-Matter Interaction Princeton Research

A Russian scientist is trying to convince people they can change the world simply by using their own energy. He claims that thinking in a certain way can have a positive or negative effect on the surrounding environment. “We are developing the idea that our consciousness is part of the material world and that with our consciousness we can directly influence our world,” said Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, professor of physics at St. Petersburg State Technical University.
To bridge our understanding of the unseen world of energy, scientific experiments are being carried out using a technique called bioelectrophotography. The assumption is that we are constantly emitting energy. Bioelectrophotography aims to capture these energy fields seen as a light around the body — or what some people would call your aura.

The video below is a very brief synopsis of thePrinceton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory of Princeton University, whose research into mind-matter interaction forms the foundation of Psyleron Technology. Watch interviews with key PEAR lab staff, as they explain their experiments, including random event generators, their findings, and finally some of their implications. The PEAR Proposition is an 8-hour DVD set detailing the PEAR laboratory and its discoveries.

“Every word you utter to another human being has an effect, but you don’t know it. If people begin to understand that change comes about as a result of a million tiny acts that seem totally insignificant, well then, they wouldn’t hesitate to take those tiny acts.” -Howard Zinn

Source: Social Consciousness

Tea Health Benefits: 8 Ways It Could Benefit Our Bodies

A cup of tea anyone?
It could do wonders for your health.
Research has shown that the ancient elixir — first drank thousands of years ago — could do more than warm our bodies. The antioxidant polyphenols in tea, called catechins, have been linked with anti-cancer activity, and certain teas — like green tea — are also known to have heart benefits, according to the Mayo Clinic.
A lot of research has focused on green tea in particular, Health.com reported, because it contains an exceptionally high number of catechins.
However, it’s important to note that much more research is needed before it can be said that drinking tea can cure you of any disease. “There are pearls of real promise here, but they have yet to be strung,” Dr. David Katz, a HuffPost blogger and director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, told Health.com. “We don’t have clinical trials in human patients showing that adding tea to one’s routine changes health outcomes for the better.”
But there is some evidence of the potential ways tea can improve health. And not only have scientists been honing in on how it affects our bodies when we drink it, they have also been finding it may have uses in medicines to fight certain diseases, like cancer.
Source: Huffington Post

Earth-Sized Planet Found Just Outside Solar System

WASHINGTON – European astronomers say that just outside our solar system they’ve found a planet that’s the closest you can get to Earth in location and size.
It is the type of planet they’ve been searching for across the Milky Way galaxy and they found it circling a star right next door – 25 trillion miles (40 trillion kilometres) away. But the Earth-like planet is so hot its surface may be like molten lava. Life cannot survive the 2,200 degree heat of the planet, so close to its star that it circles it every few days.The astronomers who found it say it’s likely there are other planets circling the same star, a little farther away where it may be cool enough for water and life. And those planets might fit the not-too-hot, not-too-cold description sometimes call the Goldilocks Zone.That means that in the star system Alpha Centauri B, a just-right planet could be closer than astronomers had once imagined.It’s so close that from some southern places on Earth, you can see Alpha Centauri B in the night sky without a telescope. But it’s still so far that a trip there using current technology would take tens of thousands of years.But the wow factor of finding such a planet so close has some astronomers already talking about how to speed up a 25 trillion-mile (40 trillion-kilometre) rocket trip there. Scientists have already started pressuring NASA and the European Space Agency to come up with missions to send something out that way to get a look at least. The research was released online Tuesday in the journal Nature. There has been a European-U.S. competition to find the nearest and most Earthlike exoplanets – planets outside our solar system. So far scientists have found 842 of them, but think they number in the billions.
While the newly discovered planet circles Alpha Centauri B, it’s part of a system of three stars: Alpha Centauri A, B and the slightly more distant Proxima Centauri. Systems with two or more stars are more common than single stars like our sun, astronomers say.
This planet has the smallest mass – a measurement of weight that doesn’t include gravity – that has been found outside our solar system so far. With a mass of about 1.1 times the size of Earth, it is strikingly similar in size.
Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory, who heads the European planet-hunting team, said this means “there’s a very good prospect of detecting a planet in the habitable zone that is very close to us.
And one of the European team’s main competitors, Geoff Marcy of the University of California Berkeley, gushed even more about the scientific significance.
“This is an historic discovery,” he wrote in an email. “There could well be an Earth-size planet in that Goldilocks sweet spot, not too cold and not too hot, making Alpha Centauri a compelling target to search for intelligent life.
Harvard planet-hunter David Charbonneau and others used the same word to describe the discovery: “Wow.”
Charbonneau said when it comes to looking for interesting exoplanets “the single most important consideration is the distance from us to the star” and this one is as close as you can get. He said astronomers usually impress the public by talking about how far away things are, but this is not, at least in cosmic terms.
Alpha Centauri was the first place the private Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence program looked in its decade-long hunt for radio signals that signify alien intelligent life. Nothing was found, but that doesn’t mean nothing is there, said SETI Institute astronomer Seth Shostak.
The European team spent four years using the European Southern Observatory in Chile to look for planets at Alpha Centauri B and its sister stars Alpha Centauri A and Proxima Centauri. They used a technique that finds other worlds by looking for subtle changes in a star’s speed as it races through the galaxy.
Part of the problem is that the star is so close and so bright – though not as bright as the sun – that it made it harder to look for planets, said study lead author Xavier Dumusque of the Geneva Observatory.
One astronomer who wasn’t part of the research team, wondered in a companion article in Nature if the team had enough evidence to back such an extraordinary claim. But other astronomers said they had no doubt and Udry said the team calculated that there was only a 1-in-1,000 chance that they were wrong about the planet and that something else was causing the signal they saw.
Finding such a planet close by required a significant stroke of good luck, said University of California Santa Cruz astronomer Greg Laughlin.
Dumusque described what it might be like on this odd and still unnamed hot planet. Its closest star is so near that it would always hang huge in the sky. And whichever side of the planet faced the star would be broiling hot, with the other side icy cold.
Because of the mass of the planet, it’s likely a rocky surface like Earth, Dumusque said. But the rocks would be “more like lava, like a lava planet.”
“If there are any inhabitants there, they’re made of asbestos,” joked Shostak.
Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
Source: Sympatico News

Physicists Find Evidence That The Universe Is A 'Giant Brain'

The idea of the universe as a ‘giant brain’ has been proposed by scientists – and science fiction writers – for decades.
But now physicists say there may be some evidence that it’s actually true. In a sense.
According to a study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, the universe may be growing in the same way as a giant brain – with the electrical firing between brain cells ‘mirrored’ by the shape of expanding galaxies.
The results of a computer simulation suggest that “natural growth dynamics” – the way that systems evolve – are the same for different kinds of networks – whether its the internet, the human brain or the universe as a whole.
A co-author of the study, Dmitri Krioukov from the University of California San Diego, said that while such systems appear very different, they have evolved in very similar ways.
The result, they argue, is that the universe really does grow like a brain.
The study raises profound questions about how the universe works, Krioukov said.
“For a physicist it’s an immediate signal that there is some missing understanding of how nature works,” he told Space.com.
The team’s simulation modelled the very early life of the universe, shortly after the big bang, by looking at how quantum units of space-time smaller than subatomic particles ‘networked’ with each other as the universe grew.
They found that the simulation mirrored that of other networks. Some links between similar nodes resulted in limited growth, while others acted as junctions for many different connections.
For instance, some connections are limited and similar – like a person who likes sports visiting many other sports websites – and some are major and connect to many other parts of the network, like Google and Yahoo.
No, it doesn’t quite mean that the universe is ‘thinking’ – but as has been previously pointed out online, it might just mean there’s more similarity between the very small and the very large than first appearances suggest.

Source: Huffington Post

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Human Touch: Sensor Lets Robots 'Feel'


A new sensor could give robots the ability to "feel" the environment, and one day be used to enhance prosthetic limbs.Credit: Digital hand photo via Shutterstock

Robots do not look human just yet, but soon they may get the "human touch." Researchers say they have developed a flexible sensor able to detect temperature, pressure and humidity simultaneously, and more accurately than currently existing devices.
In addition to improving robotics, the sensor could one day be embedded into the "electronic skin" of prosthetics, to help amputees sense environmental changes.
The sensor is "a huge step towards imitating the sensing features of the human skin," said study author Hossam Haick, a professor of chemical engineering and nanotechnology at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. The device is about 10 times closer to how real human skin senses the environment, compared with other designs.


To make the device, the researchers integrated gold nanoparticles covered with organic connector molecules, called ligands, into the surface of a plastic commonly used to make water bottles. The system has a flowerlike arrangement, with a layer of gold in the center, and the ligands forming the "petals."
When the plastic is bent or pressed upon, the nanoparticles inside shift, and the distances between them change. This shift affects how quickly electrons can pass between the particles, altering the electrical characteristics of the sensor. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]
In other words, a change in pressure affects how well the compound conducts electricity. "By measuring the electrical resistance, we can know how much pressure was applied on the sensor," Haick said.
Temperature and humidity also affect the distance between the nanoparticles in a similar way, he added. "By using a combination of software and hardware operations, it is possible to isolate the values for humidity, temperature and touch — making the sensor 3-in-1."
The researchers also found that by altering the thickness and material of the plastic surface, they could control the sensitivity of the sensor.
Changing the properties of the plastic "allows measuring a large range of loads, ranging from tens of milligrams to tens of grams," Haick said.
This means that in addition to being used in prosthetics and giving ahumanlike "sense of touch" to robots, the sensor could be used in an early warning system to detect abnormal temperatures and tiny cracks in airplanes, bridges and other structures. Another possible application could be to monitor people's health.
Of course, to function as a real artificial skin, the signals received by a tactile prosthetic limb would have to be transmitted to the brain. To do so, the sensor would have to be connected to the human nervous system, and the technology for such a connection does not exist.
"Until complete implementation of this vision, an intermediate development would be the integration of e-skin with a computer system," Haick said.
The study is detailed in the June issue of the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Source : www.livescience.com


Global Price Tag for Arctic Thawing: $60 Trillion

When brought to the surface, methane gas will escape from the hydrate and can be burnt off as seen in this picture.  
Credit: Department of Energy


The beautiful, stark scenery of the Arctic may be priceless, but the warming of the region could come at a great cost to the world.
The Arctic's rapid warming could cost the global economy more than $60 trillion if melting permafrost releases huge quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, a new study finds. The cost nearly mirrors the $70 trillion size of the world economy in 2012.
Permanently frozen ground, called permafrost, beneath the Arctic's East Siberian Sea could belch out 50 billion tons of methane at any time, researchers said in an analysis published today (July 24) in the journal Nature. More than a trillion tons of methane is thought to be trapped in the Arctic Ocean's icy marine

sediments in the form of what are called methane hydrates, some of it in shallow water.


As the Arctic sea ice cover shrinks and the Arctic Ocean warms, the frozen sediments may thaw and release the stored methane, said study co-author Peter Wadhams, an oceanographer at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. Plumes of methane gas have already been rising each summer in the East Siberian Sea, Wadhams said.
"That's an economic time bomb that's not been realized at this stage," said lead study author Gail Whiteman of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Because methane traps atmospheric heat 25 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide, a sudden Arctic methane release would have a catastrophic effect on the global climate, the study authors said. [What are Greenhouse Gases?]
Adding 50 billion tons of methane to the atmosphere would hasten this century's predicted 3.6-degree Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) global temperature rise by 15 to 35 years, the researchers said. (Climate negotiators hope to limit planetary heating by that 2-degree C target, though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses a range that goes up to 4 degrees C (7.2 degrees F).)
The global costs of climate change would come from sea level rise, extreme weather events, crop damage and resulting poorer health, the researchers said. Most of the financial damage is predicted to hit hardest in developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America.
"Roughly 80 percent of the extra impacts will occur in developing countries. Developing countries are more vulnerable to climate change," said study co-author Chris Hope, an economist at the University of Cambridge.
The economic impact of the methane release was the same whether all of the gas was released in one giant burp or dribbled out across 30 years, the study found. "In nearly every case, the mean extra impact is close to $60 trillion," Hope said.

Source : www.livescience.com



Strange Particles Shape-Shift From One Flavor to Another


Exotic particles called neutrinos have been caught in the act of shape-shifting, switching from one flavor to another, in a discovery that could help solve the mystery of antimatter.
Neutrinos come in three flavors — electron, muon and tau — and have been known to change, or oscillate, between certain flavors. Now, for the first time, scientists can definitively say they've discovered muon neutrinos changing into electron neutrinos.
The discovery was made at the T2K neutrino experiment in Japan, where scientists sent a beam of muon neutrinos from the J-PARC laboratory in Tokai Village on the eastern coast of Japan, streaming 183 miles (295 km) away to the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector in the mountains of Japan's northwest.


The researchers detected an average of 22.5 electron neutrinos in the beam that reached the Super-Kamiokande detector, suggesting a certain portion of the the muon neutrinos had oscillated into electron neutrinos; if no oscillation had occurred, the researchers should have detected just 6.4 electron neutrinos.[Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles In Nature]
In 2011, T2K scientists announced they'd seenindications that this shape-shifting was taking place, but they couldn't say with certainty that the effect wasn't one of chance. The experiment has now collected enough data for the researchers to say the probability of this effect being produced by random statistical fluctuations is less than one in a trillion. The results were announced Friday (July 19) at the European Physical Society meeting in Stockholm.
The discovery opens an intriguing avenue for studying antimatter, the strange cousin of matter that's mysteriously missing in the universe. Scientists think the Big Bang produced about as much matter as antimatter, but most of this antimatter was destroyed in collisions with matter, leaving a slight excess of matter to make up the universe we see today.
The best shot at explaining why matter won out in this cosmic struggle is to find instances where a matter particle behaves differently than its antimatter counterpart. Many physicists suspect that neutrino oscillations might be just the type of occasion to see this difference.
Now that the researchers have observed this oscillation pattern in neutrinos, they can recreate the experiment with a beam of anti-muon neutrinos, and find out whether they change more or less often into anti-electron neutrinos.
"Our findings now open the possibility to study this process for neutrinos and their antimatter partners, the anti-neutrinos," physicist Alfons Weber of the U.K.'s Science and Technology Facilities Council and the University of Oxford, said in a statement. "A difference in the rate of electron or anti-electron neutrino being produced may lead us to understand why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. The neutrino may be the very reason we are here."
This next phase of the project will likely take at least a decade, the researchers said.
"We have seen a new way for neutrinos to change, and now we have to find out if neutrinos and anti-neutrinos do it the same way," T2K team member Dave Wark of the Science and Technology Facilities Council said in a statement. "If they don't, it may be a clue to help solve the mystery of where the matter in the universe came from in the first place. Surely answering that is worth a couple of decades of work!"

Source : livescience.com