Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Science

Submission + - SPAM: New adhesive device could let humans walk on walls

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Could humans one day walk on walls, like Spider-Man? A palm-sized device invented at Cornell that uses water surface tension as an adhesive bond just might make it possible. The device consists of a flat plate patterned with holes, each on the order of microns (one-millionth of a meter). A bottom plate holds a liquid reservoir, and in the middle is another porous layer. An electric field applied by a common 9-volt battery pumps water through the device and causes droplets to squeeze through the top layer. The surface tension of the exposed droplets makes the device grip another surface – much the way two wet glass slides stick together. To turn the adhesion off, the electric field is simply reversed, and the water is pulled back through the pores, breaking the tiny "bridges" created between the device and the other surface by the individual droplets."
Link to Original Source
Science

Submission + - SPAM: Slime design mimics Tokyo's rail system

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "What could human engineers possibly learn from the lowly slime mold? Reliable, cost-efficient network construction, apparently: a recent experiment suggests that Physarum polycephalum, a gelatinous fungus-like mold, might actually lead the way to improved technological systems, such as more robust computer and mobile communication networks. This revelation comes after a team of Japanese and British researchers observed that the slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo's rail system. Scientists placed oat flakes on a wet surface in locations that corresponded to the cities surrounding Tokyo, and allowed the Physarum polycephalum mold to grow outwards from the center. They watched the slime mold self-organize, spread out, and form a network that was comparable in efficiency, reliability, and cost to the real-world infrastructure of Tokyo's train network."
Link to Original Source
Science

Submission + - SPAM: Golden ratio discovered in a quantum world

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Scientist have for the first time observed a nanoscale symmetry hidden in solid state matter. By artificially introducing more quantum uncertainty the researchers observed that the chain of atoms of cobalt niobate acts like a nanoscale guitar string. The first two notes show a perfect relationship with each other. Their frequencies (pitch) are in the ratio of 1.618, which is the golden ratio famous from art and architecture. The observed resonant states in cobalt niobate are a dramatic laboratory illustration of the way in which mathematical theories developed for particle physics may find application in nanoscale science and ultimately in future technology."
Link to Original Source
Intel

Submission + - Intel launches Wi-Di (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: Intel has launched a new display technology called Wi-Di at CES. Intel Wireless Display (Wi-Di for short) uses Wi-Fi to wirelessly transmit video from PCs running Intel's latest generation of Core processors to HD television sets. Televisions will require a special adapter made by companies such as Netgear — which will cost around $100 — to receive the wireless video signals. Intel also revealed its optical interconnect technology, Light Peak, will be in PCs "in about a year".
Space

Submission + - SPAM: Astronomers detect earliest galaxies 1

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Astronomers, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, have broken the distance limit for galaxies by uncovering a primordial population of compact and ultra-blue galaxies that have never been seen before. They are from 13 billion years ago, just 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang. These newly found objects are crucial to understanding the evolutionary link between the birth of the first stars, the formation of the first galaxies, and the sequence of evolutionary events that resulted in the assembly of our Milky Way and the other "mature" elliptical and majestic spiral galaxies in today's universe."
Link to Original Source
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Baldness gene discovered: 1 in 7 men at risk 2

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Researchers conducted a genome-wide association study of 1,125 caucasian men who had been assessed for male pattern baldness. They found two previously unknown genetic variants on chromosome 20 that substantially increased the risk of male pattern baldness. They then confirmed these findings in an additional 1,650 caucasian men. "If you have both the risk variants we discovered on chromosome 20 and the unrelated known variant on the X chromosome, your risk of becoming bald increases sevenfold. What's startling is that one in seven men have both of those risk variants. That's 14 per cent of the total population!""
Link to Original Source
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Virtual telescope zooms in on Milky Way black hole

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "An international team, led by astronomers at the MIT Haystack Observatory, has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The astronomers linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a virtual telescope more than 2,800 miles across that is capable of seeing details more than 1,000 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope. The cosmic target of the observations was the source known as Sagittarius A* ("A-star"), long thought to mark the position of a black hole whose mass is 4 million times that of the sun. Though Sagittarius A* was discovered three decades ago, the new observations for the first time have an angular resolution, or ability to observe small details, that is matched to the size of the black hole "event horizon" — the region inside of which nothing, including light, can ever escape."
Link to Original Source
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Einstein's theory passes strict, new test

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Taking advantage of a unique cosmic configuration, astronomers have measured an effect predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity in the extremely strong gravity of a pair of superdense neutron stars. Essentially, the famed physicist's 93-year-old theory passed yet another test. Scientists at McGill University used the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to do a four-year study of a double-star system unlike any other known in the Universe. The system is a pair of neutron stars, both of which are seen as pulsars that emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves."
Link to Original Source
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Synthetic molecules emulate enzyme behavior

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Ohio State University chemists have created a synthetic catalyst that can fold its molecular structure into a specific shape for a specific job, similar to natural catalysts. In tests, the chemists caused the catalysts to twist one way or the other, either to form one chemical product or its mirror image. They confirmed the shape of the molecules at each step using techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Being able to quickly produce a catalyst of a particular shape would be a boon for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries."
Link to Original Source
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: First images of solar system's invisible frontier

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "NASA's sun-focused STEREO spacecraft unexpectedly detected particles from the edge of the solar system last year, allowing scientists to map for the first time the energized particles in the region where the hot solar wind slams into the cold interstellar medium. Mapping the region by means of neutral, or uncharged, atoms instead of light "heralds a new kind of astronomy using neutral atoms," said Robert Lin, UC Berkeley professor of physics and lead for the suprathermal electron sensor aboard STEREO. "You can't get a global picture of this region, one of the last unexplored regions of the heliosphere, any other way because it is too tenuous to be seen by normal optical telescopes.""
Link to Original Source
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: A trio of super-Earths

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "A group of astronomers have now discovered a system of three super-Earths around a rather normal star, which is slightly less massive than our Sun, and is located 42 light-years away towards the southern Doradus and Pictor constellations. "We have made very precise measurements of the velocity of the star HD 40307 over the last five years, which clearly reveal the presence of three planets". The planets, having 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth, orbit the star with periods of 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively. "The perturbations induced by the planets are really tiny — the mass of the smallest planets is one hundred thousand times smaller than that of the star — and only the high sensitivity of HARPS made it possible to detect them" says co-author François Bouchy, from the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, France. Clearly these planets are only the tip of the iceberg."
Link to Original Source
NASA

Submission + - SPAM: Earliest genetic material came from the stars

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Scientists have confirmed for the first time that an important component of early genetic material which has been found in meteorite fragments is extraterrestrial in origin, in a paper published on 15 June 2008. The finding suggests that parts of the raw materials to make the first molecules of DNA and RNA may have come from the stars. The materials they have found include the molecules uracil and xanthine, which are precursors to the molecules that make up DNA and RNA, and are known as nucleobases. The team discovered the molecules in rock fragments of the Murchison meteorite, which crashed in Australia in 1969."
Link to Original Source
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Bacteria is found alive in 120000 years old ice

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Scientists have discovered a new ultra-small species of bacteria that has survived for more than 120,000 years within the ice of a Greenland glacier at a depth of nearly two miles. The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen, and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system. This new species is among the ubiquitous, yet mysterious, ultra-small bacteria, which are so tiny that the cells are able to pass through microbiological filters. The ultra-small size of the new species could be one explanation for why it was able to survive for so long in the Greenland glacier. Called Chryseobacterium greenlandensis, the species is related genetically to certain bacteria found in fish, marine mud, and the roots of some plants. The organism is one of only about 10 scientifically described new species originating from polar ice and glaciers."
Link to Original Source
Mars

Submission + - SPAM: Mars' water too salty to support life

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "A new analysis of the Martian rock that gave hints of water on the Red Planet now suggests the water was more likely a thick brine, far too salty to support life as we know it. "Liquid water is required by all species on Earth and we've assumed that water is the very least that would be necessary for life on Mars," says Nicholas J. Tosca, a postdoctoral researcher in Harvard's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. "However, to really assess Mars' habitability we need to consider the properties of its water. Not all of Earth's waters are able to support life, and the limits of terrestrial life are sharply defined by water's temperature, acidity, and salinity.""
Link to Original Source

Slashdot Top Deals

16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling

Close