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Science & Technology
archives: September-October 2004
- 29 October 2004
"Robots are learning lessons on 'robotiquette' - how to behave socially - so they can mix better with humans. By playing games, like pass-the-parcel, a University of Hertfordshire team is finding out how future robot companions should react in social situations. The study's findings will eventually help humans develop a code of social behaviour in human-robot interaction. The work is part of the European Cogniron robotics project, and was on show at London's Science Museum. The research also focuses on human perception of robots, including how they should look, and how a robot can learn new skills by imitating a human demonstrator." Learn more at the BBC.com.
- 28 October 2004
"A decade ago Rod Sprules was designing a heated suit for search-and-rescue technicians. He was flipping through a reference book to look up the energy content of propane when he came across an interesting tidbit about coffee. It said coffee grounds release more heat than wood when they're burned...Today the Java-Log, the first fire log made from coffee grounds, has become a hit with the green crowd. It burns brighter and hotter than sawdust logs while producing 85 percent less carbon monoxide than traditional firewood. 'The environmentalist in me wanted to demonstrate that you can make something environmentally friendly and still perform better,' Sprules said." These strange logs lie at the heart of a business model that suggests that products can be both environmentally friendly and commercially viable. Learn more in the National Geographic.
- 27 October 2004
"A California biotechnology company has started taking orders for a hypoallergenic cat for pet lovers prone to allergies. The genetically engineered feline, which is expected to be available from 2007, is the first in a planned series of lifestyle pets, Los Angeles-based Allerca said in a press release. Allerca hopes to attract customers among the millions of people worldwide who suffer from cat allergies...Cat allergies are caused by a potent protein secreted by the cat's skin and salivary glands. The allergen is so small it can remain airborne for months. Using 'gene silencing' technology, Allerca is able to suppress the production of the protein." Learn more about these new genetically modified pets, at CNN.com.
- 26 October 2004
"An array of rat brain cells has successfully flown a virtual F-22 fighter jet. The cells could one day become a more sophisticated replacement for the computers that control uncrewed aerial vehicles or, in the nearer future, form a test-bed for drugs against brain diseases such as epilepsy...'This is novel work,' says Mandayam Srinivasan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who used electrodes implanted in a monkey’s brain to move a robotic arm. He says that in future living systems could be combined with traditional computers to solve problems more efficiently. 'There are certainly things that biological systems can accomplish that we haven't been able to do with electronics,' he says. For example animals have no problem recognising different textures or telling the difference between two different pieces of furniture, whereas computers find this very difficult." Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 25 October 2004
"Ray Kopp enjoyed tooling around in a hydrogen- powered Honda prototype vehicle so much that, for a moment, he pictured driving one home.
Then Mr. Kopp, an economist at Resources for the Future, remembered the car's price tag - $1.5 million - and his hopes were dashed. Therein lies the core of America's energy problem. Short of radically altering America's driving habits, the United States cannot achieve energy independence without spending billions of dollars on new initiatives. And no political consensus exists to spend those sums despite decades of promises to cut oil imports. But new plans are emerging that might sway lawmakers...The 'New Apollo Project' is a plan backed by labor and environmental groups. Modeled after America's decade-long push to put a man on the moon, it would invest $300 billion over 10 years in dozens of energy projects from hybrid cars to factories to high-speed rail." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.
- 22 October 2004
"Humanity's reliance on fossil fuels, the spread of cities, the destruction of natural habitats for farmland and over-exploitation of the oceans are destroying Earth's ability to sustain life, the environmental group WWF warned in a new report Thursday. The biggest consumers of nonrenewable natural resources are the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Kuwait, Australia and Sweden, who leave the biggest 'ecological footprint,' the World Wildlife Fund said in its regular Living Planet Report. Humans currently consume 20 percent more natural resources than the Earth can produce, the report said." A report put out by one of the world's largest environmental advocacy group, warns that humans are consuming natural resources at a vastly unsustainable rate. Learn more at CNN.com.
- 21 October 2004
"In a lab in Indianapolis , a student takes a tablet of a common antihistamine. About 40 minutes later, researchers detect the drug in his system simply by directing a spray of alcohol and water onto his finger and instantly analyzing the mixture with a common lab instrument. This is not a scene from CSI or ER but rather a real-life demonstration of a new technique developed by Purdue University analytical chemist R. Graham Cooks and his colleagues. The advance expands the utility of a common laboratory method called mass spectrometry, and it could soon enable doctors and forensic specialists to immediately reveal what substances are present on surfaces such as wood, cloth, and even skin, eliminating the need to send samples off the lab and wait for the results." A new tool could help doctors and crime scene investigators do lab-work in the field. Learn more in the Technology Review.
- 20 October 2004
"Most people probably wouldn't associate the leafy green tobacco plant with saving lives. But to Dr. Blessed Okole, the maligned cash crop is a potential gold mine of affordable medicine and vaccines for the overlooked diseases afflicting the developing world. In the laboratories of the Council for Science and Industrial Research, or CSIR, South African researchers are honing techniques for turning genetically engineered tobacco and other crops into factories for producing drugs for HIV and tuberculosis. With a bit of genetic engineering, Okole says, plants' cellular machinery can be tweaked to produce antibodies on a large scale and far more cheaply than conventional drug-manufacturing methods allow. This practice, called 'pharming,' could dramatically boost the availability of drugs in the developing world, Okole says." Learn more about these controversial "pharms" that are cropping up in countries like South Africa, in Wired News.
- 19 October 2004
"Scientists in the UK are applying for a licence to create children with three genetic parents. The aim is to prevent the children from inheriting genetic diseases caused by mutations in DNA housed by their mitochondria - components of cells which produce energy. The application from Doug Turnbull and Mary Herbert at the University of Newcastle will be decided upon by the UK's regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, over the next few weeks. The procedure would involve fertilising a woman's egg by in-vitro fertilisation outside the body and transplanting the fertilised nucleus to an egg from another woman which has had its nucleus removed. Any child born following implantation would have cells containing a nucleus with genes from both parents, and mitochondria from a woman other than their mother." Learn more about this procedure that would allow scientists to create children with three genetic parents, in the New Scientist.
- 18 October 2004
"Focused beams of plasma could rocket astronauts to Mars and back in just 90 days, say space researchers developing the concept for NASA. The idea could mean faster space travel around the solar system. Firing a magnetised plasma beam of charged particles - or ions - at a spacecraft equipped with a magnetic sail could propel the craft forward at record speeds, according to Robert Winglee of the University of Washington in Seattle, US. Harnessing the magnetic force of repulsion between the sail and the beam would give the spacecraft its immense thrust. A conventional spaceship propelled by burning fuel would take two years to complete a round trip to Mars, says Winglee. In contrast, he adds, this magnetised beam could propel ships at tens of thousands of miles per hour." Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 15 October 2004
"Going by the numbers, humanity seems to be losing the war on cancer. According to the most recent data from the World Health Organisation, 10m people around the planet were diagnosed with the disease in 2000, and 6m died from it. And these numbers are growing. With an ageing population, the spread of western-style diets, and increasing tobacco consumption, cancer is on the rise around the globe. In America, for example, projections suggest that 40% of those alive today will be diagnosed with some form of cancer at some point in their lives. By 2010, that number will have climbed to 50%. Luckily, these numbers do not tell the whole story. In fact, scientists are optimistic about the future of cancer treatment. Very optimistic." Although there may never be a "magic bullet" that will cure cancer, a variety of new treatments is allowing doctors to get better at helping patients manage and survive cancer. Learn more in the Economist.
- 14 October 2004
"For decades, many makers of everything from televisions to cameras and from telephones to stereo equipment embraced the ideal of thinner, sleeker, smaller. These days, stores are stocked with an abundance of featherweight laptops, palm-sized digital cameras and camcorders and toddler-sized cellphones and digital organizers, along with portable radios, computer mice and digital music players that are sometimes even smaller than the price tags attached to them. And as digital components, including display screens, microprocessors and memory chips shrink with advances in battery design and power, product designers can achieve drastic reductions in the size of commonplace electronic devices. But many device makers and experts on the interplay between people and machines warn that rushing to make things smaller simply because they can be does not necessarily ensure that devices remain useful or even fun." Learn more in the New York Times.
- 13 October 2004
"The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved an implantable computer chip that can pass a patient's medical details to doctors, speeding care. VeriChips, radio frequency microchips the size of a grain of rice, have already been used to identify wayward pets and livestock. And nearly 200 people working in Mexico's attorney general's office have been implanted with chips to access secure areas containing sensitive documents. Del ray Beach, Fla.-based Applied Digital Solutions in July asked the FDA for approval to use the implantable chip for medical uses in the United States. The agency had 60 days to reply to the 'de novo' application." Learn more about these computer chips that the FDA approved for use in humans in Yahoo News.
- 12 October 2004
"A 9-year-old girl in northern Thailand made an innocent mistake late in September, a show of industriousness that should have impressed her family but killed her instead. Eleven of her family's 13 chickens had fallen sick and died of avian influenza, so the girl's mother and grandmother killed the last two as a precaution, Thai health officials said. Not realizing that the healthy-looking birds could still be infectious, the girl plucked the chickens and prepared them for cooking. She died at a Thai provincial hospital on Oct. 3. A spate of recent deaths, including the first possible case of human-to-human transmission, has stirred fears of a broader outbreak among people and raised the possibility of a human pandemic." An in-depth report in today's New York Times discusses the threat posed by bird flu and why it could be so difficult to stop a pandemic.
- 11 October 2004
"Fifty mini-satellites are to be sent into space to celebrate the launch of the first ever satellite, Sputnik 1. The 'nanosats', each weighing 1kg, will blast into orbit on board an Ariane rocket in 2007, said Arianespace. Each satellite will represent a nation, and will do small-scale research experiments during two years in orbit. The former Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 was the size of a basketball and became the first human-made object to leave Earth's atmosphere on 4 October, 1957. Compared with Sputnik which weighed 83kg, nanosatellites weigh under 10kg and can be sent up in clusters in low-Earth orbit, which is less than 2,000km above the planet's surface." Learn more about these tiny satellites, and how they could bring space exploration within reach of less-developed countries in the BBC.com.
- 8 October 2004
"Universal access to all human knowledge could be had for around $260m, a conference about the web's future has been told. The idea of access for all was put forward by visionary Brewster Kahle, who suggested starting by digitally scanning all 26 million books in the US Library of Congress. His idea was just one of many presented at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco that aims to give a glimpse of what the net will become. Experts at the event said the next generation of the web will come out of the creative and programming communities starting to tinker with the vast pool of data the net has become." Learn what some experts are predicting about the future of the internet at the BBC.com.
- 7 October 2004
"Deadly genes from the human influenza virus which caused the 1918 pandemic have been resurrected by scientists in an attempt to understand what made the strain so virulent. The 'Spanish flu' - which may have killed as many as 50 million people in the great pandemic - owed its deadliness largely to one of its surface proteins, say the researchers. They have tested reconstructed viruses equipped with the protein and warn that it might one day return. If it does, anyone born after 1918 will have virtually no immunity. Previous experiments elsewhere found that equipping viruses that already caused flu symptoms in mice with the 1918 H resulted in a flu hybrid which made mice sick, even though the H from a human virus should not have been able to do this." Learn more about this disturbing study in the New Scientist.
- 6 October 2004
"A portable mini lab that can test for human and animal diseases could save lives and time, say its makers. Developed by the Ministry of Defence's research arm, the system was originally designed to search for biological warfare agents on the battlefield. But the UK researchers behind the mini lab say it has much wider and more practical uses. These include while-you-wait testing at GP surgeries, food contamination spotting and animal disease detection. The system uses an amplification process known as polymerase chain reaction, which heats and cools samples using an enzyme to generate billions of copies of segments of DNA, enabling them to be analysed." Learn more about this revolutionary "mini lab" at the BBC.com.
- 5 October 2004
"A capsule designed to crawl though a patient's stomach, enabling doctors to view and even treat an internal ailment remotely, has been developed by an international research team. Researchers from the Sant'Anna Valdera Centre in Pontedera, Italy and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul, Korea, have developed a prototype crawling system. Current endoscopies require a patient to swallow a capsule equipped with a camera that transmits images back outside the body. The capsule is passed through the patient's gastrointestinal tract by the motion of their digestive system. But the team led by Paolo Dario at Polo Sant'Anna Valdera believes endoscopies could be improved using surgical capsules with a multitude of legs, allowing them to crawl slowly to a particular part of a patient's intestines." Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 4 October 2004
"We are a successful breed. Our advance from our hominid origins has brought us near-dominance of the world, and a rapidly accelerating understanding of it. Scientists now say we are in a new stage of the Earth's history, the Anthropocene Epoch, when we ourselves have become the globe's principal force. But several eminent scientists are concerned that we have become too successful - that the unprecedented human pressure on the Earth's ecosystems threatens our future as a species. We confront problems more intractable than any previous generation, some of them at the moment apparently insoluble." Scientists believe that we have entered an era that is characterized by our mastery of natural forces--which, ironically, could be the undoing of the human species. Learn more in the BBC.com.
- 1 October 2004
"The climate may have varied much more wildly in the past than reconstructions from tree-rings and ice-cores suggest, say climate scientists who have studied 1000 years of simulated data. The findings by Hans von Storch from the GKSS Research Institute in Geesthacht, Germany and colleagues are provoking a heated dispute. While some scientists warn that their results imply climate changes in the future could be more dramatic than predicted, others argue that their methods are flawed. Current climate reconstructions rely on relating temperature records – stretching back only one century – to indicators of climate such as tree-ring growth. But now the new study suggests that this method may in fact be smoothing out century-long swings in the climate." In a controversial new study, a group of scientists argues that dramatic climate change may be more normal than previously realized. Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 30 September 2004
"In 2156, the fastest time in the Olympic 100-metre final will be run by a woman, according to a new analysis of changes in sprint times. The winning times of both sexes have been improving steadily over the last century, but women have been eating into their times at a faster rate. If the trend continues, the women’s 100-metre sprint in 2156 will be won in 8.079 seconds, compared to 8.098 seconds for the men’s race. The precise result comes from extrapolating the times of male and female Olympic gold winners from 1900 for men, and from 1928 for women - the first year females were allowed to run in the event." Some scientists believe that women sprinters are on track to soon out-run their male counterparts. Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 29 September 2004
"On a spring day two years ago, in a downtown Columbus auditorium, the Ohio State Board of Education took up the question of how to teach the theory of evolution in public schools. A panel of four experts - two who believe in evolution, two who question it - debated whether an antievolution theory known as intelligent design should be allowed into the classroom...At its heart, intelligent design is a revival of an argument made by British philosopher William Paley in 1802. In Natural Theology, the Anglican archdeacon suggested that the complexity of biological structures defied any explanation but a designer: God." More than 140 years after Charles Darwin wrote on natural selection, an alternative philosophy that challenges the theory of evolution is coming back into vogue--and back into American classrooms. Learn more in Wired News.
- 28 September 2004
"On a steep, narrow street above Chinatown works Jonathon Keats, a tweed-suited, bow-tied 32-year-old who, with assistance from a phalanx of scientists, is genetically engineering God in his apartment. Advisers to Keats' organization, the International Association for Divine Taxonomy, include biochemists, biophysicists, ecologists, geneticists and zoologists from the University of California at Berkeley, the Smithsonian and other institutions of scientific repute. The mission: to determine where on the phylogenetic map -- the scientific tree of life -- to put God. Keats, as you may suspect, is not a scientist. He's a conceptual artist. But legitimate scientists, such as Smithsonian zoologist Mark Moffett and Berkeley geneticist Tom Cline, happily lend Keats credibility by helping him design experiments and interpret the results." Learn more about this intriguing project at Wired News.
- 27 September 2004
"Toivo Lahti grows papaya on the Big Island of Hawaii. Over the last few years, he watched other growers start planting trees that were genetically engineered to resist a devastating virus. But Mr. Lahti stuck to conventional varieties for his organic orchard, and thought it would remain free of biotechnology, which he opposes. Then, last spring, some of Mr. Lahti's fruit tested positive for genetically modified seeds. 'I was really surprised,' Mr. Lahti said. 'I didn't really know what was happening'...From papayas in Hawaii, to corn in Mexico and canola in Canada, the spread of pollen or seeds from genetically engineered plants is evolving from an abstract scientific worry into a significant practical problem." In the wake of recent studies that show how far genetically engineered pollen can travel, farmers and scientists are beginning to worry that it will soon be impossible to keep genetically altered plants from co-mingling with other species. Learn more in today's New York Times.
- 24 September 2004
"On his laptop computer, biology professor Leonard Guarente plays a video clip of 29-month-old mice hobbling around a cedar-chip-filled cage. They’re scruffy, fat, slow moving, and over the hill by rodent standards. Then he plays a clip of another group of 29-month-old mice. They’re svelte, frisky, and scrambling around like adolescents. What’s their secret? These mice have eaten about two-thirds as many calories as their portly peers. Not only does the meager diet seem to keep them light in the limbs, but they tend to live 30 percent longer than their well-fed friends and are less likely to contract age-related diseases, such as diabetes and cancer." A connection between reduced calories and longevity is not new, but the real question is whether a single gene is involved. This is the focus at MIT's Technology Review.
- 23 September 2004
"Earlier this month, Philadelphia became the latest municipality to throw its hat in the Wi-Fi ring and enjoy an image bounce that would be the envy of any presidential candidate. Civic interest in Wi-Fi makes municipalities look sexy and modern. Less certain, however, are their chances for success as providers of emerging communications technology. Offering wireless broadband is a new course for cities and towns, say observers, and one that may not be quite as easy to navigate as the idea's popularity implies. Indeed, the City of Brotherly Love was not announcing a successful trial, or even a timeline for wider deployment—but merely the formation of an executive committee to study wireless networking options." Wi-fi is hot, but there are serious expenses involved. But who pays for them and how? Learn more at MIT's Technology Review.
- 22 September 2004
"After one of Dr. Kenneth Offit's patients died from a genetic form of breast cancer, Offit felt obliged to warn the woman's college-age daughter that she, too, might be at risk. He could not find the young woman. But he located her elderly grandmother, who also had had breast cancer. The old woman did not even want to discuss the issue. Normally, under medical ethics, doctors are obligated to keep a patient's health information confidential — even after the patient dies. This duty is central to the doctor-patient relationship. But Offit's dilemma illustrates how advances in genetic testing are placing strains on the principle of doctor-patient confidentiality. Doctors are grappling with whether to tell a patient's relatives when the patient has an inherited disease or mutation that could afflict other members of the family." New types of highly accurate genetic tests are facing doctors with difficult ethical dilemmas. Learn more in USA Today.
- 21 September 2004
"A 77-acre property may have fertile soil, a stocked creek and wooded glen, but an increasingly important question is, 'How much wind does it get?' The rise in demand for clean electricity has created a parallel need for accurate data describing a location's wind-energy potential. Supercomputers running complex algorithms are now providing unprecedented detail about wind patterns in small areas in a matter of weeks. During the past five years, the amount of wind energy produced in the United States has increased at an average rate of 28 percent, according to Kathy Belyeu, a spokeswoman for the American Wind Energy Association. Belyeu said commercial wind turbines will produce 16.7 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2004, or enough power for 1.6 million U.S. households." It's hard to imagine, but one of the fastest growing alternative energy industries revolves around simply "finding" wind. Learn more in Wired News.
- 20 September 2004
"TAGCTAAGTCGGATT … the readout tells the story of your genetic makeup, and it will soon tell you what genes you carry, what mutations there are and whether you should be worried. Right now, you’re worried. You entered the office of your family doctor just an hour ago and, as you wait for the scan to complete, you wonder if the genetic test was a good idea. There are some things, perhaps, you would rather not know. Right now, this is not a dilemma you’re likely to face, but one day a tiny blood sample taken by your doctor could test for hundreds of diseases and indicate your propensity for problems like heart disease. It might even be one day soon. Last week an Australian research team announced that it will develop a $30,000 device that can test for thousands of genes at once." Learn more about these new genetic tests in Wired News.
- 17 September 2004
"As Hurricane Ivan and its powerful winds churned through the Gulf of Mexico, scientists told Congress on Wednesday that global warming could produce stronger and more destructive hurricanes in the future. Global warming will increase the temperature of ocean water that fuels hurricanes, leading to stronger winds, heavier rains and larger storm surges, the researchers told the Senate Commerce Committee. However, the increase in ocean temperatures is unlikely to boost the average number of Atlantic hurricanes that form each year, they said. 'Warmer water temperatures will promote more intense tropical storms, but not necessarily make the frequency of those storms greater,' said Dan Cayan, a research meteorologist at the University of California in San Diego." Learn more at Yahoo News.
- 15 September 2004
"Amateur hurricane-busters have come up with any number of crackpot ideas to spare Florida from ferocious storms. Among them: blowing hurricanes away with giant fans or blowing them up with nuclear warheads. Even the federal government got into the act, with three decades of ill-fated research called 'Project Stormfury' before shelving the idea of weather modification in the 1980s. But dozens of ideas — part hope, part fantasy — continue to crop up among weather wonks, Internet bloggers and others who think they have come up with a way to spare coastal residents the misery of hurricanes. Suggestions have included coating the surface of the water with olive oil; towing an iceberg down to Florida to cool down the water temperature; or building large fans on the coast to blow away approaching storms." Learn more in USA Today.
- 14 September 2004
"At the National Hurricane Center, a gray bunker bristling with satellite dishes on the outskirts of Miami, meteorologists scanned readings last weekend gleaned by aircraft plunging into the eye of Hurricane Ivan and they squinted at satellite images while preparing a fresh forecast for the track of the dangerous storm. After assessing the data and the output of half a dozen supercomputer storm simulations, Stacy R. Stewart sat in front of a map of the Atlantic and Caribbean with an eraser and colored pencils, drawing the storm track newly estimated for the next five days. The map was filled with erasures of older storm projections that had at one point been the best bet but now were off by hundreds of miles... This is the state of hurricane science in the new century: a mix of growing skill and persistent uncertainty, of intuition and algorithms, satellites and erasers." Learn more in the New York Times.
- 13 September 2004
"It's been seven months since the Pentagon pulled the plug on LifeLog, its controversial project to archive almost everything about a person. But now, the Defense Department seems ready to revive large portions of the program under a new name. Using a series of sensors embedded in a GI's gear, the Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology, or ASSIST, project aims to collect what a soldier sees, says and does in a combat zone -- and then to weave those events into digital memories, so commanders can have a better sense of how the fight unfolded. That's similar to what planners at Darpa, the Pentagon's research arm, had in mind for LifeLog, its ambitious electronic diary effort. However, ASSIST's aspirations are more modest, its battlefield focus is clearer, and its privacy concerns are more manageable, military analysts and computer scientists say." The U.S. government is reviving a controversial technology that would record people's actions and experiences. Learn more in Wired News.
- 10 September 2004
"The internet must be changed to help it cope with what the future holds for it, according to chip maker Intel. The US company's chief technology officer, Pat Gelsinger, says new uses and millions more users could stretch the net to breaking point. In a keynote speech at an Intel conference, he said building a new network on top of the old would end many of the problems plaguing the net. The overlay would avoid virus attacks and cope with traffic surges, he said. The basic technologies underlying the internet were developed more than 30 years ago and, said Mr Gelsinger, were never meant to cope with the number of users and amount of data traffic seen on the net today." Intel's head of technology is promoting a new vision of the internet. Learn more at BBC.com.
- 9 September 2004
"It may eat flies and stink to high heaven, but if this robot works, it will be an important step towards making robots fully autonomous. To survive without human help, a robot needs to be able to generate its own energy. So Chris Melhuish and his team of robotics experts at the University of the West of England in Bristol are developing a robot that catches flies and digests them in a special reactor cell that generates electricity. Called EcoBot II, the robot is part of a drive to make 'release and forget' robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry out remote industrial or military monitoring of, say, temperature or toxic gas concentrations. Sensors on the robot feed a data logger that periodically radios the results back to a base station." A carnivorous robot could soon become the world's first completely autonomous machine. Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 8 September 2004
"Two of the seven million dollar challenges that have baffled for more than a century may be close to being solved. Mathematicians could be on the verge of solving two separate million dollar problems. If they are right - still a big if - and somebody really has cracked the so-called Riemann hypothesis, financial disaster might follow. Suddenly all cryptic codes could be breakable. No internet transaction would be safe. On the other hand, if somebody has already sorted out the so-called Poincaré conjecture, then scientists will understand something profound about the nature of spacetime, experts told the British Association science festival in Exeter yesterday." Scientists and mathematicians may have solved two of their fields most difficult questions--and the answers could carry profound implications. Learn more in the Guardian.
- 7 September 2004
"A nuclear reactor that can meet the energy needs of developing countries without the risk that they will use the by-products to make weapons is being developed by the US Department of Energy. The aim is to create a sealed reactor that can be delivered to a site, left to generate power for up to 30 years, and retrieved when its fuel is spent. The developers claim that no one would be able to remove the fissile material from the reactor because its core would be inside a tamper-proof cask protected by a thicket of alarms. Known as the small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor (SSTAR), the machine will generate power without needing refueling or maintenance." Scientists in the U.S. are working to develop a safe, portable nuclear reactor that can be delivered to other countries. Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 6 September 2004
"While the West frets about how to keep its sushi cool, hot tubs warm, and Hummers humming without poisoning the planet, the cold-eyed bureaucrats running the People's Republic of China have launched a nuclear binge right out of That '70s Show. Late last year, China announced plans to build 30 new reactors - enough to generate twice the capacity of the gargantuan Three Gorges Dam - by 2020. And even that won't be enough. The Future of Nuclear Power, a 2003 study by a blue-ribbon commission headed by former CIA director John Deutch, concludes that by 2050 the PRC could require the equivalent of 200 full-scale nuke plants." Learn more about the revolutionary nuclear plants being built in China, in Wired.
- 3 September 2004
"Rather than transmitting radio messages, extraterrestrial civilisations would find it far more efficient to send us a 'message in a bottle' - some kind of physical message inscribed on matter. And it could be waiting for us in our own backyard. That is the conclusion of a new analysis of interstellar communications by Christopher Rose of Rutgers University in New Jersey and Gregory Wright, a physicist with Antiope Associates also in New Jersey. Assuming the aliens do not care how long it takes for their message to arrive, beaming a radio signal that can be detected 10,000 light years away, for instance, would take a million billion times as much energy as just shooting out matter in which data is embedded. 'If energy is what you care about, it's tremendously more efficient to toss a rock,' Rose says." Scientists believe that we may need to take a new approach to looking for extraterrestrial life. Learn more in the New Scientist.
- 2 September 2004
"Monk parakeets, which seem to have first escaped or been released in the 1960's, now number from 150,000 to half a million in Florida, depending on who is counting, said Winifred Perkins, environmental relations manager for Florida Power and Light. She keeps track because the birds love the infrastructure of the power grid. Some of those poles will support nests of 1,000 pounds or more, and cause power failures and fires, Ms. Perkins said, as well as present a hazard for workers. In wildlife management there is no tougher public relations problem than a cute pest, which is partly why scientists and wildlife managers are showing increasing interest in a new, nonlethal means of animal control: contraception. The monks have joined a variety of other species, some cuter than others, but all with passionate defenders, as a target for enforced infertility." Learn more in the New York Times.
- 1 September 2004
"We already have amphibious cars that can take us over land and sea and jet packs that allow us to take off like a spaceman. Now some of the world’s leading engineers are trying to advance the technology of travel further by developing cars that can fly. The new vehicles are seen as becoming necessary, with motorways growing more clogged, and commuters prepared to travel further. California-based company Moller International has built a prototype of its Skycar. The streamlined vehicle - think sports car meets the hovercraft Luke Skywalker drove in Star Wars - is designed to make vertical take-offs, fly around 700 miles and drive short distances." Although it sounds like science fiction, major engineering companies like Boeing are working to develop commercially viable flying cars. Learn more in the Scotsman.com.
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