ScienceDaily Technology Headlines
for Tuesday, September 2, 2008
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Train Safety: Season Of Mists And Leaves On The Line (September 2, 2008) -- The season of mists, mellow fruitfulness, and leaves on the line is almost upon us. But, scientists have discovered that rather than blaming the train companies, passengers suffering annual delays should look to the weather forecast. According to research published in the International Journal of Surface Science and Engineering, it is a dry period followed by drizzly or misty weather that leads to the worst conditions for leaves on the line. ... > full story
Environmental Friendly Technology Can Remove Ink Stains In Paper Recycling (September 1, 2008) -- The greatest challenge in paper recycling is removal of polymeric ink and coating; and the most difficult paper is mixed office wastepaper. Traditional de-inking processes involve large quantities of chemicals which are expensive and unfriendly to the environment. A better alternative would be a technology that involves biological intervention. ... > full story
Secret Of Plasma Heating Revealed (September 1, 2008) -- The secret of electron heating in low temperature plasmas has been discovered. Scientists found the answer to a question which has been puzzling scientists for decades -- why electrons in such plasmas are so hot. ... > full story
New Field Of Research Could Help Police In Crime Scene Forensics (September 1, 2008) -- A team of investigators have found a way to identify possible suspects at crime scenes using only a small amount of DNA, even if it is mixed with hundreds of other genetic fingerprints. ... > full story
Bone That Blends Into Tendons Created By Engineers (August 31, 2008) -- Engineers have used skin cells to create artificial bones that mimic the ability of natural bone to blend into other tissues such as tendons or ligaments. The artificial bones provide for better integration with the body and handle weight more successfully. ... > full story
Life Under The Laser: Unique Technology Illuminates Microscopic Activity In Body's Chemical Messenger System (August 31, 2008) -- Researchers have developed a unique technology that will allow scientists to look at microscopic activity within the body's chemical messenger system for the very first time, live as it happens. ... > full story
NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Ascends To Level Ground (August 31, 2008) -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has climbed out of the large crater that it had been examining from the inside since last September. ... > full story
No More Big Stink: Scent Lures Mosquitoes, But Humans Can't Smell It (August 31, 2008) -- Mosquito traps that reek like latrines may be no more. Chemical ecologists have discovered a low-cost, easy-to-prepare attractant that lures blood-fed mosquitoes without making humans hold their noses. ... > full story
Antarctic Research Helps Shed Light On Climate Change On Mars (August 30, 2008) -- Eroded gullies on the flanks of Martian craters may have been formed by snowmelt as recently as a few hundred thousand years ago and in sites once occupied by glaciers. Similar conditions can be found in Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys. Rather than being a dead planet, the new data are consistent with dynamic climate changes on Mars. ... > full story
Tiny 3-D Ultrasound Probe Guides Catheter Procedures (August 30, 2008) -- An ultrasound probe small enough to ride along at the tip of a catheter can provide physicians with clearer real-time images of soft tissue without the risks associated with conventional X-ray catheter guidance. ... > full story
Scientists Discover Why Flies Are So Hard To Swat (August 29, 2008) -- Over the past two decades, Michael Dickinson has been interviewed by reporters hundreds of times about his research on the biomechanics of insect flight. One question from the press has always dogged him: Why are flies so hard to swat? "Now I can finally answer," says Dickinson, the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology. ... > full story
New Approach To Detect Early Progression Of Brain Tumors Identified (August 29, 2008) -- New research suggests a certain type of MRI scanning can detect when a patient is failing brain tumor treatment before symptoms appear. The results of the study pave the way for a proactive treatment approach. ... > full story
Katrina And Rita Provide Glimpse Of What Could Happen To Offshore Drilling If Gustav Hits Gulf (August 29, 2008) -- Shortly after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the US, engineers studied damage done to offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. If tropical storm Gustav strengthens into a Category 3 hurricane, as forecasters are predicting, the damage could be extensive. ... > full story
Atomic Bomb Effect Results In Adult-onset Thyroid Cancer Identified (August 29, 2008) -- Radiation from the atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, likely rearranged chromosomes in some survivors who later developed papillary thyroid cancer as adults, according to Japanese researchers. ... > full story
Rosetta Spacecraft On Its Way To Meet Asteroid Steins (August 29, 2008) -- ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft will make a historic encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on 5 September 2008. The spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid in the course of its first incursion into the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, while on its way to comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. ... > full story
Saving Lives Through Smarter Hurricane Evacuations (August 29, 2008) -- Hundreds of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars could potentially be saved if emergency managers could make better and more timely critical decisions when faced with an approaching hurricane. Now, an MIT graduate student has developed a computer model that could help do just that. ... > full story
Origin Of High Energy Emission From Crab Nebula Identified (August 29, 2008) -- Another piece of the jigsaw in understanding how neutron stars work has been put in place following the discovery by scientists of the origin of the high energy emission from rotation-powered pulsars. ... > full story
Quantum 'Traffic Jam' Revealed: Findings May Help Get Current Flowing At Higher Temperatures (August 29, 2008) -- Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators have uncovered the first experimental evidence for why the transition temperature of high-temperature superconductors cannot simply be elevated by increasing the electrons' binding energy. The research demonstrates how, as electron-pair binding energy increases, the electrons' tendency to get caught in a quantum mechanical "traffic jam" overwhelms the interactions needed for the material to act as a superconductor -- a freely flowing fluid of electron pairs. ... > full story
Robots Learn To Predict Where Their Leader Is Going, And Follow Along (August 29, 2008) -- Researchers have come up with a control system that allows a robot to pick up on cues that the leader is about to turn, predict where it is going and follow it. ... > full story
Explosives Go 'Green' ... And Get More Precise (August 29, 2008) -- Certain explosives may soon get a little greener and a little more precise. Researchers have added unique green solvents (ionic liquids) to an explosive called TATB (1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene) and improved the crystal quality and chemical purity of the material. ... > full story
Ultra-energy Efficient Dryer Under Development (August 29, 2008) -- A total drying solution for the manufacturing industry which will make significant energy savings is currently under development. ... > full story
Researchers Provide Solution To World’s Worst Mass Poisoning Case (August 29, 2008) -- A solution to the world's worst case of ongoing mass poisoning, linked to rising cancer rates in Southern Asia, has been developed by researchers from Queen's University Belfast. They have created new low-cost technology to provide arsenic-free water to millions of people in South Asia currently exposed to high levels of the poison in groundwater. ... > full story
Model Helps Computers Sort Data More Like Humans (August 28, 2008) -- Humans have a natural tendency to find order in sets of information, a skill that has proven difficult to replicate in computers. Faced with a large set of data, computers don't know where to begin -- unless they're programmed to look for a specific structure, such as a hierarchy, linear order, or a set of clusters. Now, in an advance that may impact the field of artificial intelligence, a new model developed at MIT can help computers recognize patterns the same way that humans do. ... > full story
Ceramic Material Revs Up Microwaving (August 28, 2008) -- Quicker microwave meals that use less energy may soon be possible with new ceramic microwave dishes and, according to the material scientists responsible, this same material could help with organic waste remediation. ... > full story
Cluster Watches Earth's Leaky Atmosphere (August 28, 2008) -- Oxygen is constantly leaking out of Earth's atmosphere and into space. Now, ESA's formation-flying quartet of satellites, Cluster, has discovered the physical mechanism that is driving the escape. It turns out that the Earth's own magnetic field is accelerating the oxygen away. ... > full story
Proteins Have Controlled Motions, Researcher Shows (August 28, 2008) -- Iowa State University researcher Robert Jernigan believes that his research shows proteins have controlled motions. Most biochemists traditionally believe proteins have many random, uncontrolled movements. ... > full story
Wind-powered 'Ventomobile' Places First in Race (August 28, 2008) -- The solely wind-driven Ventomobile constructed by a team of students in aerospace engineering came in first at the Aeolus Race in the Dutch town of Den Helder last Friday. Racing the extremely stylish and lightweight three-wheeler, the vehicles of five European universities and research centres had difficulties to catch up. ... > full story
New LIDAR System Sees The Sky In 3D (August 28, 2008) -- A new LIDAR measurement system -- unique in the world -- will provide continuous data on atmospheric humidity for Western Switzerland's weather forecasting headquarters. ... > full story
Minimum Mass For Galaxies Discovered: Breakthrough Sheds Light On Mysterious Dark Matter (August 28, 2008) -- By analyzing light from small, faint galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, UC Irvine scientists believe they have discovered the minimum mass for galaxies in the universe -- 10 million times the mass of the sun. ... > full story
Fingerprint Breakthrough Hope In US Double Murder Probe (August 28, 2008) -- A double murder investigation that has remained unsolved for almost a decade could be provided new impetus following a forensic breakthrough. ... > full story
Sweet Potato Out-Yields Corn In Ethanol Production Study (August 28, 2008) -- In experiments, sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama yielded two to three times as much carbohydrate for fuel ethanol production as field corn grown in those states, scientists report. The same was true of tropical cassava in Alabama. ... > full story
Protein Misprediction Uncovered By New Technique (August 28, 2008) -- A new bioinformatics tool is capable of identifying and correcting abnormal, incomplete and mispredicted protein annotations in public databases. The MisPred tool currently uses five principles to identify suspect proteins that are likely to be abnormal or mispredicted. ... > full story
Wireless Sensors Learn From Life (August 27, 2008) -- European and Indian researchers are applying principles learned from living organisms to design self-organising networks of wireless sensors suitable for a wide range of environmental monitoring purposes. ... > full story
Clash Of Clusters Provides New Dark Matter Clue (August 27, 2008) -- New Hubble and Chandra observations of the cluster known as MACSJ0025.4-1222 indicate that a titanic collision has separated dark from ordinary matter. This provides independent confirmation of a similar effect detected previously in a target dubbed the Bullet Cluster, showing that the Bullet Cluster is not an anomalous case. ... > full story
Fingerprint Analysis Technique Could Be Used To Identify Bombmakers (August 27, 2008) -- University of Leicester experts have held discussions with military personnel in Afghanistan following the discovery of new technology to identify fingerprints on metal. ... > full story
NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Climbing Out Of Victoria Crater (August 27, 2008) -- NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the Red Planet's surrounding plains nearly a year after descending into a large Martian crater to examine exposed ancient rock layers. ... > full story
Bones Get Mended With High Tech Glass-of-milk (August 27, 2008) -- Scientists at the new Nuclear-Magnetic Resonance unit at the University of Warwick have discovered how a high-tech glass of milk is helping bones mend. ... > full story
Cancer Breath? New Tool Aims To Detect Cancer Early In Exhaled Air (August 27, 2008) -- Early cancer detection can significantly improve survival rates. Current diagnostic tests often fail to detect cancer in the earliest stages and at the same time expose a patient to the harmful effects of radiation. Scientists will be using mid-infrared lasers to create a sensor to detect biomarker gases exhaled in the breath of a person with cancer. ... > full story
Catalyst For Water Oxidation Adopted From Plants: A Means For Energy-efficient Production Of Hydrogen? (August 27, 2008) -- A team of Australian and American researchers has developed a catalyst that effectively catalyzes the photooxidation of water. The core of the catalyst is a manganese-containing complex modeled after those found in photosynthetic organisms. ... > full story
How Do Galaxies Grow? Massive Galaxies Caught In The Act Of Merging (August 26, 2008) -- Astronomers have caught multiple massive galaxies in the act of merging about 4 billion years ago. This discovery, made possible by combining the power of the best ground- and space-based telescopes, uniquely supports the favoured theory of how galaxies form. ... > full story
Large Hadron Collider: Final Synchronization Test A Success (August 26, 2008) -- CERN has announced the success of the second and final test of the Large Hadron Collider's beam synchronization systems. The test will allow the LHC operations team to inject the first beam into the LHC. ... > full story
How Much Risk Can You Handle? Making Better Investment Decisions (August 26, 2008) -- Many Americans make investment decisions with their retirement funds. But they don't always make informed judgments. A new study introduces a new tool that investors can use to choose investments based on their financial goals and risk attitudes. ... > full story
Fertilizer Technology Used Worldwide, But Few New Products Since 1970s (August 26, 2008) -- Most fertilizers used worldwide today were developed from 1950 to 1970 by the Tennessee Valley Authority based in Muscle Shoals. A million investment in fertilizer research returned billion to US agriculture. Public funding for fertilizer development has dropped dramatically since the TVA fertilizer program closed in the 1990s. Research is needed to develop a new generation of energy-efficient fertilizers to help alleviate the food crisis. ... > full story
New Space Telescope Reveals Entire Gamma-ray Sky (August 26, 2008) -- NASA's Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope has revealed its first all-sky map in gamma rays. The onboard Large Area Telescope's all-sky image -- which shows the glowing gas of the Milky Way, blinking pulsars and a flaring galaxy billions of light-years away -- was created using only 95 hours of "first light" observations, compared with past missions which took years to produce a similar image. ... > full story
Hydrogen-Producing Bacteria Provide Clean Energy (August 26, 2008) -- A new "green" technology developed cooperatively by scientists with the Agricultural Research Service and North Carolina State University could lead to production of hydrogen from nitrogen-fixing bacteria. ... > full story
New Alcohol-Based Hand Sanitizer May Minimize Viral Transmission, Including Norovirus (August 26, 2008) -- A newly developed ethanol-based hand sanitizer may significantly impact public health by minimizing the transmission of multiple viruses, including norovirus, from food handlers and care providers. ... > full story
Low-cost System System Thwarts Internet Eavesdropping (August 26, 2008) -- The growth of shared Wi-Fi and other wireless computer networks has increased the risk of eavesdropping on Internet communications, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science and College of Engineering have devised a low-cost system that can thwart these "Man-in-the-Middle" attacks. ... > full story
Why Wind Turbines Can Mean Death For Bats (August 26, 2008) -- Power-generating wind turbines have long been recognized as a potentially life-threatening hazard for birds. But at most wind facilities, bats actually die in much greater numbers. Now, researchers think they know why. ... > full story
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