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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #270 on Sept 28, 2008, 7:01pm »
Scientists Go Green With Gold, Distribute Environmentally Friendly Nanoparticles

ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2008) — Gold nanoparticles are everywhere. They are used in cancer treatments, automobile sensors, cell phones, blood sugar monitors and hydrogen gas production. However, until recently, scientists couldn't create the nanoparticles without producing synthetic chemicals that had negative impacts on the environment.

A new method, created by a University of Missouri research team, not only eliminates any negative environmental impact, but also has resulted in national and international recognition for the lead scientist. The research was published recently in the journal Small.

"I have always believed that nature is smarter and stronger than humankind," said Kattesh Katti, professor of radiology and physics in MU's School of Medicine and College of Arts and Science, senior research scientist at the MU Research Reactor, and director of the MU Cancer Nanotechnology Platform. "This new procedure to create nanoparticles is wonderfully simple, yet it will help create very complex components. There is so much to learn from energy generation, chemical and photochemical reactions of plants."

Katti, who was recently recognized by rt Image magazine as one of the 25 most influential people in radiology, and his research team have formed Greennano Company, a company that is in the beginning stages of producing environmentally friendly gold nanoparticles. The company will focus on the development, commercialization and worldwide supply of gold nanoparticles for medical and technological applications. Katti believes that because of this new process to produce the nanoparticles, researchers are developing other ways to use them.

The MU research team, which was led by Katti, Raghuraman Kannan and Kavita Katti, found that by submersing gold salts in water and then adding soybeans, gold nanoparticles were generated. The water pulls a phytochemical out of the soybean that is effective in reducing the gold to nanoparticles. A second phytochemical from the soybean, also pulled out by the water, interacts with the nanoparticles to stabilize them and keep them from fusing with the particles nearby. This process creates nanoparticles that are uniform in size in a 100-percent green process. No toxic waste is generated.

"I'm very proud to be one among the list of '25 Most Influential Scientists' in the world, especially in the company of all time greats and former awardees including: Elias Zerhouni, director of National Institutes of Health (2003); Henry N. Wagner Jr., recognized as the Father of Nuclear Medicine (2004); Henry D. Royal, Peter S. Conti, past presidents of the Society of Nuclear Medicine; and Barry B. Goldberg, pioneer of ultrasound (2007)," Katti said. "This recognition is a tremendous honor and brings a large amount of prestige to our research group, the Departments of Radiology and Physics, the MU Research Reactor Center and the overall research and education enterprise of our University."

"They all had one thing in common; they possessed the integrity, drive and passion deserving of the title 'Most Influential,'" said Heather B. Koitzsch, publisher of rt Image. "In this year's list, you'll read about people who are changing the face of medicine, associations that are advocating for better patient care, and researchers whose efforts are uncovering new diagnostic techniques. Whether through speaking, campaigning, researching, creating or leading, someone who is "Most Influential" is committed to making things happen in radiology."

Katti's research has been funded by the National Cancer Institute in the National Institutes of Health.

Journal reference:

1. Shukla et al. Soybeans as a Phytochemical Reservoir for the Production and Stabilization of Biocompatible Gold Nanoparticles. Small, 2008; 4 (9): 1425 DOI: 10.1002/smll.200800525

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080926194615.htm
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #271 on Sept 29, 2008, 1:44pm »
Big Honkin' EV Hauls 345 Tons
By Keith Barry September 26, 2008 | 6:03:47 AM

[image]

Caterpillar's come out with a new line of electric-drive mining trucks called the AC Series, and some diesels that belch less pollution than the other ginormous vehicles the company builds. Depending upon your perspective, this is either the most half-hearted greenwashing attempt since Emirates ditched paper products but kept onboard showers, or the most amazing engineering feat since the Manhattan Project.

Caterpillar rolled out its new behemoths this week during the 2008 MINEXpo show in Las Vegas, and company president Stu Levenick crowed, "New technologies have allowed us to make trucks more reliable, easier to maintain and more friendly to the operator and to the environment," though we don't see how chopping off mountaintops is friendly to the environment.

Though Cat's new 795F AC is more mind-boggling than vegan pork rinds, it's still a flippin' huge truck that can haul 345 tons of earth out of a thousand-foot-deep pit using diesel-electric drive. It's even bigger than the 793D shown above (Cat hasn't released pics of the 795F, which is expected to go into production in 2010). The tires cost more than most cars on the road, and the thing has a flight of stairs to reach the cab. We still love it, even though there's no denying that a lot of these trucks will be put to use in ways that make the Sierra Club cringe. We can almost hear the sales pitch: "Ah, grasshopper! You must save the earth to destroy the earth."

Though some overly optimistic A123 fans predicted the AC-series would run on batteries or catenary wires, it relies on a diesel generator to support the electric drivetrain. Such a setup is nothing new, as Caterpillar developed AC-drive for mining trucks back in the 1960s, and Komatsu and others have been using it for years. But Cat's trucks are the biggest that can use either powertrain. The company says the leviathan EVs will appeal to an important niche market. "Cat will produce mining trucks for every application -- uphill, downhill, flat or extreme conditions -- and now with electric as well as mechanical drive," says Chris Curfman, president of Cat Global Mining and vice president of Caterpillar Inc.

Their impact on the environment, for better or worse, isn't the prime motivator for building these earth-moving beasts. The companies that use them are concerned with another kind of green, and that's operating costs. The electric drivetrains are cheaper to run because they produce gobs of torque at low speeds without straining mechanical transmissions, and they don't rely on mechanical brakes to slow their descent into the mine. What's more, electric drive trucks are easier to control, thereby increasing operator safety and reducing the risk of accidents. Plus, saving a little bit of diesel never hurt anyone. After all, the standard 795 has an 1,800 gallon fuel tank.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/09/electric-drive.html
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #272 on Sept 29, 2008, 1:48pm »
German Supertuner RUF Building an Electric Porsche
By Chuck Squatriglia September 25, 2008 | 3:35:00 PM

[image]

The speedmeisters at German tuning haus RUF are hard at work developing an electric version of the Porsche Cayman that could go head-to-head with the Tesla Roadster, and we could see it as early as next month.

The car will feature a 150-kilowatt motor (about 201 horsepower) producing 479 ft-pounds of torque, and its lithium-ion battery will have a range of 155 to 186 miles, according to Auto Motor und Sport magazine. RUF claims the car will have a top speed of 125 mph. Although the RUF EV would offer less 48 fewer ponies than the Tesla, it would have significantly more torque.

No word on what the electric Cayman will look like, but it's a safe bet RUF will base it on the 3400 K (pictured). That super-Cayman produces 400 horsepower and 324 ft-pounds of torque and does 0 to 62 mph in 4.4 seconds. With more torque on tap, the electric version might shave a few ticks off that time and could even beat the Tesla's 0-to-60 sprint of 4.0 seconds.

Auto Motor und Sport says the car will be unveiled next month.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/09/german-tuner-ru.html
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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #273 on Sept 30, 2008, 3:23am »
A new page in the history of startups

o Victor Keegan
o The Guardian,
o Thursday September 25 2008

[image]
The Sony Reader ebook. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty

The problem facing physical newspapers is how people will be reading them in five years time, if indeed at all. A steady decline in the "paper" versions has been offset by a huge switch to the web. Some 18 months ago, I reviewed a US version of Sony's e-reader (recently launched in the UK). Although its size was limiting for reading newspapers, I was so bowled over by how pleasant it was to read books that I entered a balancing comment saying it probably wouldn't work on a beach. The next morning an email came from Australia saying "it works fine on Bondi, mate". Since then a string of similar devices - Amazon's Kindle, iLiad and Cybook Gen 3 - have emerged, all offering a good reading experience for books.

When I noticed that the first of the next generation of reading devices, manufactured by Plastic Logic, had been very well received at a demo in the US, I hopped on to a train to the Cambridge Science Park to see an updated version of something that has been in development for years, after being spun out of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. The big breakthrough is that instead of using glass and silicon, it uses plastic - which is cheaper, lighter, more scaleable and can bend. You can drop it without fear of it breaking. The prototype had a screen size of 210mm x 160mm, somewhat smaller than the space occupied by the type on a typical page of the Guardian's G2 section. They claim it is nearly three times the size of a Kindle, yet about the same weight.

There are no buttons, apart from a home key, and only a tiny USB port (to sideload documents from a computer) on the side. It was easy to turn pages and navigate by pressing the screen. It was frustrating not to have web access, but assuming that gets sorted as early production devices roll out this month, then it will be possible to download an entire newspaper and read it in a way that almost mimics normal reading experience. The battery life is several weeks. Like other devices employing e-ink, it only uses power when the pages are turned. This gives a slight flash of black that you get used to, but which might be irritating to some. It will be in the shops next year priced "competitively" with other e-book readers.

The target market is mobile professionals wanting to load all the documents and spreadsheets they carry around in briefcases on to one device. It is not competing with devices such as the BlackBerry - though it can do email synchronisation and can store anything that would normally be output to a printer. Newspapers around the world have been showing a strong interest, particularly in France.

The problem is that since it is not a substitute for a phone or a computer, you have to carry an extra device around. People may not be prepared to do that for a newspaper, though PlasticLogic claims it is not an extra device but a substitute, since you don't have to carry the paper versions around. It offers the prospect of being able to charge for a newspaper or fund it by advertisements that could be targeted to a reader's personal tastes. I could see myself using one if I were already carrying a briefcase around. But, sadly, the market newspapers are losing to the net - web-savvy youngsters used to free news delivered in chunks - are unlikely to buy another device to read the whole paper. Older people might. Smaller devices using the same e-ink are likely later.

The company, backed by more than $200m (£108m) of venture capital, is the latest success from the Cambridge Science Park and marks the first major British entry into the e-book market. Unlike UK dotcom startups of a decade ago, this venture will start life as a fully fledged international company with its HQ in the US, manufacturing facilities in Germany (Dresden) and a research base in Cambridge. We are at last learning the rudiments of international success.

vic.keegan@guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/25/internet.efinance
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #274 on Sept 30, 2008, 3:44am »
Yanko Design: Wow that's amazing! What's it for?

The hugely successful online magazine Yanko Design is a showcase for beautiful, thought-provoking designs that you won't ever see in the shops

o Jack Schofield
o guardian.co.uk,
o Monday September 29 2008 13:05 BST

[image]
Form over function: Philippe Starck's arresting but useless lemon squeezer

If Takashi Yamada had asked me, I'd have told him he had little chance of achieving fame and, perhaps, fortune by starting a blog devoted to cutting-edge design. Luckily, he didn't ask me. After five years, his blog has a huge following and is in 63rd place in Technorati's Top 100 list. It also has a chief executive officer and half a dozen staff, having become, it claims, "the world's most popular and influential online design magazine".

The secret of Yanko Design's success is that it deals in concepts rather than products. It shows designs you can't see in the shops. Indeed, I suspect the majority will never go into production because they are of little practical use. But they often look stunning, and they make you think.

Yanko Design uses the rubric "Form beyond function", but "form over function" is too often the result.

The apotheosis of this sort of design was Philippe Starck's lemon squeezer, Juicy Salif. It's a tall three-legged thing that looks like a visitor from outer space. I've met someone who owns one. He says it looks great in the kitchen – it's a design classic and a conversation piece – but it's more or less useless as a lemon squeezer. You can get a better lemon squeezer in any cut-price crockery store. But designing something that just worked wouldn't have helped Starck become rich and famous.

Yanko Design reports on designs from all sorts of fields such as architecture, cars, bathroom and other furniture, jewellery and tableware. It features lots of electronic products including watches and mobile phones. Each item is usually represented by at least one photo plus a brief text on a tasteful black background, then by readers' comments.

Under each entry, the site also suggests up to five more items on the basis that if you liked this one, you'll like them, too. It usually gets you browsing, and something is bound to catch your eye.

[image]

One random example is the Puzzle Table by Hsien Chang, which "was inspired by sliding puzzles". It's a worktable with storage baskets under the table top, which are exposed by moving sections of top. That's fine as long as you don't put things on top of the table, which rather defeats the purpose of having a table. At least it reminds you that sliding drawers do have a point.

[image]

Another example is the rhyme&reason clothing by Mary Huang: "The dress is a combination of woven cotton jersey and hand-crocheted flowers and about two dozen bright white LEDs are embedded in each. Dimmer not included." So your clothes double as lights ...

[image]

If you miss the good old days of coin operated phone booths, you might like Jethro Macey’s Coin Lamp. Powered by its greed for loose change, the light forces our awareness of power consumption through personal expense and discourages our appetite for kilowatt hours. That being said, I can easily see this lamp becoming a permanent fixture down at the local Laundromat.

"Form beyond function" provides a playful counterpoint to the orthodoxy of the 20th century, where "form follows function" and "ornament is a crime" were the slogans underpinning the Bauhaus-style modernist approach to design. But judging by the number of readers of Yanko Design who say they want to buy some of this stuff, you can go a bit too far the other way.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/sep/29/yanko.design.form.function
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #275 on Sept 30, 2008, 3:48am »

Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman

Web-based programs like Google's Gmail will force people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost more and more over time, according to the free software campaigner

* Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
* guardian.co.uk,
* Monday September 29 2008 14:11 BST

The concept of using web-based programs like Google's Gmail is "worse than stupidity", according to a leading advocate of free software.

Cloud computing – where IT power is delivered over the internet as you need it, rather than drawn from a desktop computer – has gained currency in recent years. Large internet and technology companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon are pushing forward their plans to deliver information and software over the net.

But Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and creator of the computer operating system GNU, said that cloud computing was simply a trap aimed at forcing more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that would cost them more and more over time.

"It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign," he told The Guardian.

"Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true."

The 55-year-old New Yorker said that computer users should be keen to keep their information in their own hands, rather than hand it over to a third party.

His comments echo those made last week by Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who criticised the rash of cloud computing announcements as "fashion-driven" and "complete gibberish".

"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do," he said. "The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"

The growing number of people storing information on internet-accessible servers rather than on their own machines, has become a core part of the rise of Web 2.0 applications. Millions of people now upload personal data such as emails, photographs and, increasingly, their work, to sites owned by companies such as Google.

Computer manufacturer Dell recently even tried to trademark the term "cloud computing", although its application was refused.

But there has been growing concern that mainstream adoption of cloud computing could present a mixture of privacy and ownership issues, with users potentially being locked out of their own files.

Stallman, who is a staunch privacy advocate, advised users to stay local and stick with their own computers.

"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," he said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/200....ichard.stallman
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #276 on Sept 30, 2008, 5:10am »

Why 2 to the power of 43,112,609 - 1 = $100,000 for prime number hunters

* James Randerson, science correspondent
* The Guardian,
* Monday September 29 2008

Computer scientists are hoping to claim a $100,000 prize after discovering the largest known prime number. At 12,978,189 digits long, it would take the best part of two and a half months to write out by hand.

Prime numbers, which can only be divided by one and themselves, have long fascinated mathematicians as the building blocks of other numbers. They are now central to techniques used to encrypt data such as credit card details as they are sent around the internet.

The new prime was discovered by Edson Smith of the University of California Los Angeles mathematics department. He installed software on to the department's computers from the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps), which uses downtime on volunteers' PCs to hunt for ever larger prime numbers. Around 100,000 computers add up to what has been called a "grassroots supercomputer" that performs 29 trillion calculations a second.

The find should net the project a $100,000 prize from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group dedicated to protecting internet freedoms.

"The EFF awards are about cooperation," John Gilmore, EFF co-founder and project leader for the awards, is quoted as saying on the organisation's website. "Prime numbers are important in mathematics and encryption, but the real message is that many other problems can be solved by similar methods." The organisation still has a $150,000 prize on offer for the discovery of a 100m-digit prime and $250,000 up for grabs for a 1bn-digit prime.

The newly discovered number is an example of a specific type of prime number called a Mersenne prime, named after the 17th century French scholar Marin Mersenne.

Mersenne primes are numbers that are one less than a power of 2 and also prime numbers. The prime number 7, for example, is one less than 2 to the power of 3 (or 2³ - 1). The numbers 3, 31 and 127 are all Mersenne primes and there are 46 in total. The new mega-prime can be expressed as 2 to the power of 43,112,609 - 1.

Gimps discovered the new prime on August 23, while a second, smaller Mersenne prime with more than 11m digits was discovered by the project on September 6 by Hans-Michael Elvenich in Langenfeld near Cologne.

Had Elvenich's prime been discovered first, it would have qualified instead for the $100,000 prize, offered for the first Mersenne prime with more than 10m digits. Both primes have subsequently been verified using different computers running different software, to rule out the possibility that a bug was responsible for the result.

"Our research project will soon offer the chance to achieve the next challenge, the $150,000 award for an immensely more difficult 100m-digit prime," said Gimps founder George Woltman. "All you need to participate is our free software download, and a lot of patience."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/29/maths
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #277 on Sept 30, 2008, 8:03am »

Einstein fridge design can help global cooling

Scientists relaunch a 1930 invention that uses no electricity and would reduce greenhouse gases

* Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
* The Observer,
* Sunday September 21 2008

An early invention by Albert Einstein has been rebuilt by scientists at Oxford University who are trying to develop an environmentally friendly refrigerator that runs without electricity.

Modern fridges are notoriously damaging to the environment. They work by compressing and expanding man-made greenhouse gases called freons - far more damaging that carbon dioxide - and are being manufactured in increasing numbers. Sales of fridges around the world are rising as demand increases in developing countries.

Now Malcolm McCulloch, an electrical engineer at Oxford who works on green technologies, is leading a three-year project to develop more robust appliances that can be used in places without electricity.

[image]

His team has completed a prototype of a type of fridge patented in 1930 by Einstein and his colleague, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard. It had no moving parts and used only pressurised gases to keep things cold. The design was partly used in the first domestic refrigerators, but the technology was abandoned when more efficient compressors became popular in the 1950s. That meant a switch to using freons.

Einstein and Szilard's idea avoids the need for freons. It uses ammonia, butane and water and takes advantage of the fact that liquids boil at lower temperatures when the air pressure around them is lower. 'If you go to the top of Mount Everest, water boils at a much lower temperature than it does when you're at sea level and that's because the pressure is much lower up there,' said McCulloch.

At one side is the evaporator, a flask that contains butane. 'If you introduce a new vapour above the butane, the liquid boiling temperature decreases and, as it boils off, it takes energy from the surroundings to do so,' says McCulloch. 'That's what makes it cold.'

Pressurised gas fridges based around Einstein's design were replaced by freon-compressor fridges partly because Einstein and Szilard's design was not very efficient. But McCulloch thinks that by tweaking the design and replacing the types of gases used it will be possible to quadruple the efficiency. He also wants to take the idea further. The only energy input needed into the fridge is to heat a pump, and McCulloch has been working on powering this with solar energy.

'No moving parts is a real benefit because it can carry on going without maintenance. This could have real applications in rural areas,' he said.

McCulloch's is not the only technology to improve the environmental credentials of fridges. Engineers working at a Cambridge-based start-up company, Camfridge, are using magnetic fields to cool things. 'Our fridge works, from a conceptual point of view, in a similar way [to gas compressor fridges] but instead of using a gas we use a magnetic field and a special metal alloy,' said managing director Neil Wilson.

'When the magnetic field is next to the alloy, it's like compressing the gas, and when the magnetic field leaves, it's like expanding the gas.' He added: 'This effect can be seen in rubber bands - when you stretch the band it gets hot, and when you let the band contract it gets cold.'

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said creating greener fridges was hugely important. 'If you look at developing countries, if they're aspiring to the lifestyles that we lead, they're going to require more cooling - whether that's air conditioning, food cooling or freezing. Putting in place the technologies that are both low greenhouse-gas refrigerants and low energy use is critical.'

McCulloch's fridge is still in its early stages. 'It's very much a prototype; this is nowhere near commercialised,' he said. 'Give us another month and we'll have it working.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/s....e.climatechange
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860

"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #278 on Oct 1, 2008, 9:51pm »
Rotten smell raises Apple toxin fears

[image]
Toxic ... Apple's Mac Pro.

Asher Moses
October 2, 2008 - 11:40AM

Apple is investigating damning claims, published in a leading French newspaper, that its computers emit a toxic odor containing chemicals including the cancer-causing benzene.

Liberation cited an anonymous researcher from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who had his Mac Pro desktop tested for the toxins after he detected a strong odour emanating from the machine.

Apple has not denied the accusations. Its spokesman, Bill Evans, told Macworld the company had not found any evidence to support the claim but Apple would continue to investigate.

Posts on Apple's own discussion boards suggest the Mac maker knew about potentially toxic odors being linked to its computers as early as December last year.

While benzene was not mentioned in the posts, many users complained of experiencing headaches, nausea and dizziness. The smell has been variously described as "new car smell", "musty", "rotting carpet" and even cannabis.

"My entire room smells bad and I have had to resort to a few air fresheners just to be able to work on it," one report read.

Another user on Apple's discussion board linked the toxic odor to the death of their bird: "I recently have had a bird die 'mysteriously' which was caged near my MacPro which has had the terrible smell for months. The vet said it was likely he inhaled something toxic!!!"

In Liberation's article, written in French, the researcher said his eyes, nose and throat became irritated after 10 days of using the computer.

"The computer emitted fumes which, after a week of use, caused a pronounced irritation of the cornea and respiratory passages," he said.

Apple changed the researcher's power supply before replacing the entire computer but the strange smell remained.

He then contacted Greenpeace, which sent the computer to the Analytica lab for analysis. Seven "volatile organic contaminants" were identified, including styrene, benzene and its derivatives.

Benzene, a known carcinogen, damages bone marrow and can cause a decrease in red blood cells, leading to leukemia and other blood cancers.

It can be found in tobacco smoke, plastics, styrene and products such as glues, paints and detergents. But the chemical's presence in consumer products such as computers has dropped sharply as its severe health consequences have come to light.

Although officially Apple says it has found no evidence of the toxins, its customer support staff have allegedly told some callers that the company was aware of the problem, which concerned Mac Pro computers built before this year.

Liberation, which has a daily circulation of about 130,000 copies, reported Apple France as saying its engineers were working on the problem.

Apple's public relations team is notorious for refusing to acknowledge reported faults in its products.

But some users on the company's discussion boards have come up with their own solution. Some reports say the smell - apparently caused by a protective resin coating on some of the circuit boards - disappears after an initial "burn-in" period.

Others have fixed the problem by removing small plastic strips from the side door of the computer case.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/laptops/artic....2651229837.html
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #279 on Oct 2, 2008, 1:41pm »
'Artificial Nose' Progress: Engineers Mass-produce Smell Receptors

[image]
MIT biological engineers have found a way to mass-produce smell receptors in the laboratory, an advance that paves the way for "artificial noses" to be created and used in a variety of settings. (Credit: iStockphoto/Ron Hohenhaus)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2008) — MIT biological engineers have found a way to mass-produce smell receptors in the laboratory, an advance that paves the way for "artificial noses" to be created and used in a variety of settings.

The work could also allow scientists to unlock the mystery of how the sense of smell can recognize a seemingly infinite range of odors.

"Smell is perhaps one of the oldest and most primitive senses, but nobody really understands how it works. It still remains a tantalizing enigma," said Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering and senior author of a paper on the work appearing recently online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Artificial noses could one day replace drug- and explosive-sniffing dogs, and could have numerous medical applications, according to Zhang and his colleagues. DARPA recently approved funding for the team's MIT (microfluidic-integrated transduction) RealNose project.

Until now, efforts to understand the molecular basis of smell have been stymied by the difficulty in working with the proteins that detect odors, known as olfactory receptors.

"The main barrier to studying smell is that we haven't been able to make enough receptors and purify them to homogeneity. Now, it's finally available as a raw material for people to utilize, and should enable many new studies into smell research," said Brian Cook, who just defended his MIT PhD thesis based on this work.

Smell is one of the most complex and least-understood senses. Humans have a vast olfactory system that includes close to 400 functional genes, more than are dedicated to any other function. Animals such as dogs and mice have around 1,000 functional olfactory receptor genes.

That variety of receptors allows humans and animals to discern tens of thousands of distinct odors. Each odor activates multiple receptors and this pattern of activation creates a signature that the brain can recognize as a particular scent.

The olfactory receptors that bind to odor molecules are membrane proteins, which span the cell surface. Since cell membranes are composed of a bilayer of fatty lipid molecules, the receptor proteins are highly hydrophobic (water-fearing).

When such proteins are removed from the cell and placed in water-based solutions, they clump up and lose their structure, said Liselotte Kaiser, lead author of the PNAS paper. That makes it very difficult to isolate the proteins in quantities large enough to study them in detail.

Kaiser and others spent several years developing a method to isolate and purify the proteins by performing each step in a hydrophobic detergent solution, which allows the proteins to maintain their structure and function.

The technique reported this week in PNAS involves a cell-free synthesis using commercially available wheat germ extract to produce a particular receptor, then isolating the protein through several purification steps. The method can rapidly produce large amounts of protein — enough to start structural and functional studies.

The team has also demonstrated a similar method that uses engineered mammalian cells to produce the receptors. That method, reported in PLoS One in August, takes more time and labor than the cell-free approach, but could have advantages in that the receptor is processed more naturally.

In future work, the team plans to work with researchers worldwide, including MIT's Media Lab and Department of Biology, to develop a portable microfluidic device that can identify an array of different odors. Such a device could be used in medicine for the early diagnosis of certain diseases that produce distinctive odors, such as diabetes and lung, bladder and skin cancers, Zhang said. There are also a wide range of industrial applications for such a smell-based biosensing device, he said.

Other authors of the PNAS paper are Johanna Graveland-Bikker, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, visiting graduate students Dirk Steuerwald and Melanie Vanberghem, and Kara Herlihy of GE Healthcare Biacore.

The research was funded by the ROHM Corporation (Japan), the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Sweden), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Joyce and Roger Kiley '60, MS '61 provided pure odorants.

http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2008/09/080929212958.htm
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #280 on Oct 2, 2008, 8:52pm »
Strippers, armadillos inspire Ig Nobel winners

By MARK PRATT – 2 hours ago

BOSTON (AP) — Deborah Anderson had heard the urban legends about the contraceptive effectiveness of Coca-Cola products for years. So she and her colleagues decided to put the soft drink to the test. In the lab, that is.

For discovering that, yes indeed, Coke was a spermicide, Anderson and her team are among this year's winners of the Ig Nobel prize, the annual award given by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine to oddball but often surprisingly practical scientific achievements.

The ceremony at Harvard University, in which actual Nobel laureates bestow the awards, also honored a British psychologist who found foods that sound better taste better; a group of researchers who discovered exotic dancers make more money when they are at peak fertility; and a pair of Brazilian archaeologists who determined armadillos can change the course of history.

Anderson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Boston University's School of Medicine, and her colleagues found that not only was Coca-Cola a spermicide, but that Diet Coke for some reason worked best. Their study appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985.

"We're thrilled to win an Ig Nobel, because the study was somewhat of a parody in the first place," Anderson said, adding she does not recommend using Coke for birth control purposes.

A group of Taiwanese doctors were honored for a similar study that found Coca-Cola and other soft drinks were not effective contraceptives. Anderson said the studies used different methodology.

A Coca-Cola spokeswoman refused comment on the Ig Nobel awards.

Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely won an Ig Nobel for his study that found more expensive fake medicines work better than cheaper fake medicines.

"When you expect something to happen, your brain makes it happen," Ariely said.

Ariely spent three years in a hospital after suffering third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body. He noticed some burn patients who woke in the night in extreme pain often went right back to sleep after being given a shot. A nurse confided to him the injections were often just saline solution.

He says his work has implications for the way drugs are marketed. People often think generic medicine is inferior. But gussy it up a bit, change the name, make it appear more expensive, and maybe it will work better, he said.

Charles Spence's award-winning work also has to do with the way the mind functions. Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University in England, found that potato chips — "crisps" to the British — that sound crunchier taste better.

His findings have already been put to work at the world-famous Fat Duck Restaurant in England, where diners who purchase one seafood dish also get an iPod that plays ocean sounds as they eat.

Geoffrey Miller's work could affect the earning potential of exotic dancers everywhere.

Miller, an associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, and his colleagues knew of prior studies that found women are more attractive to men when at peak fertility. So they took the work one step further — by studying earnings of exotic dancers.

In the 18 subjects Miller studied, average earnings were $250 for a five-hour shift. That jumped to $350 to $400 per five-hour shift when the women were their most fertile, he said.

"I have heard, anecdotally, that some lap dancers have scheduled shifts based on this research," he said.

Armadillos helped win an Ig Nobel for Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo, a professor of archaeology at the Universidade De Sao Paulo in Brazil, and a colleague earned.

Pesky armadillos, they found, can move artifacts in archaeological dig sites up, down and even laterally by several meters as they dig. Armadillos are burrowing mammals and prolific diggers. Their abodes can range from emergency burrows 20 inches deep, to more permanent homes reaching 20 feet deep, with networks of tunnels and multiple entrances, according to the Humane Society of the United States' Web site.

Araujo was thrilled to win. "There is no Nobel Prize for archaeology, so an Ig Nobel is a good thing," he said in an e-mail.

On the Net:

* Ig Nobels: http://www.improbable.com

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jqVklss7QPJlmY3rUTfxVGqYM_LgD93ILOD80
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #281 on Oct 4, 2008, 9:55am »
Successful Re-entry Marks Bright Future For Europe's Space Station Automated Transfer Vehicle

[image]
Backdropped by a blanket of clouds, ESA's Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (lower left) appears to be very small as it continues its relative separation from the International Space Station. The ATV undocked from the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module at 23:29 CEST on 5 September 2008 and was placed in a parking orbit for three weeks, scheduled to be deorbited on 29 September when lighting conditions are correct for an ESA imagery experiment of reentry. (Credit: NASA)

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2008) — Europe’s first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Jules Verne successfully completed its six-month ISS logistics mission September 29 with its controlled destructive re-entry over a completely uninhabited area of the South Pacific.

Following a final deorbit burn at 14:58 CEST which slowed its velocity by 70 m/s, the ATV entered the upper atmosphere at an altitude of 120 km at 15:31 CEST. It broke up at an altitude of 75 km with the remaining fragments falling into the Pacific some 12 minutes later.

The ATV has proved what a key ISS logistics vehicle it is. Following its 9 March launch on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, the ATV delivered 6 tonnes of cargo to the International Space Station, to which it remained docked for five months. This included ISS reboost and refuelling propellants, water, oxygen and 1.3 tonnes of dry cargo including food, clothing, spares and other items. During its mission, the ATV displayed the full range of its capabilities, including automatic rendezvous & docking, four ISS reboosts to a higher orbital altitude to offset atmospheric drag, ISS attitude control, performing a collision-avoidance manoeuvre when fragments of an old satellite came within the Station’s vicinity, and on its final journey offloading 2½ tonnes of waste.

“This mission is a fantastic accomplishment which caps a great year of human spaceflight for the European Space Agency”, said Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA’s Director of Human Spaceflight. “Together with the Columbus laboratory, the ATV has really shown how far European capabilities have developed in building, launching and controlling space infrastructure. Europe has now taken a further step towards its capability of being able to transport and return cargo and astronauts to and from space and helping to define the global picture for human spaceflight from the ISS to future exploration activities.”

Following its undocking on 5 September, the ATV had spent 23 days carrying out “rephasing” manoeuvres to bring it to the correct position behind and underneath the ISS. This predefined position allowed the re-entry to be viewed and recorded from the Station itself, as well as from two specially-equipped observation planes located in the vicinity of the ATV’s flight path in the skies above the South Pacific. This observation campaign will serve to determine whether the vehicle’s break-up matched the computer modelling.

“Credit has to go to everyone involved in such a flawless mission.” said John Ellwood, ESA’s ATV Project Manager. “Not only to the ESA and industrial teams that brought the project to fruition, but also to the teams at the ATV Control Centre and around the world who have done a superb job while the spacecraft has been in orbit. This is truly a wonderful spacecraft, and vital to the continued service of the ISS following Shuttle retirement in 2010. I look forward to the launch of the next ATV, which is currently under production at EADS Astrium in Bremen, Germany.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080930105840.htm
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #282 on Oct 4, 2008, 9:56am »
Researchers And Students To Develop Small CubeSat Satellites

ScienceDaily (Oct. 1, 2008) — A satellite about the size of a loaf of bread will be designed and built at the University of Michigan and deployed to study space weather, thanks to a new grant from the National Science Foundation.

Undergraduate and graduate students will be heavily involved in this Radio Aurora Explorer (RAX) project, led by the University of Michigan and SRI International, a California-based independent research and technology development organization.

This CubeSat, as it's called, will be the first free-flying spacecraft built in part by U-M students. Members of the Student Space Systems Fabrication Laboratory (S3FL) will play an important role. S3FL is an organization that gives students practical space systems design and fabrication experience.

"I'm extremely excited about the student involvement. They will be an integral part of the team," said James Cutler, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and a principal investigator on the project.

CubeSats, developed about five years ago, are approximately four-inch cube-shaped devices that launch from inside a P-Pod, a special rocket attachment that was developed by California Polytechnic State University and Stanford University. There is a growing interest in CubeSats as they offer relatively inexpensive and simpler access to space. The RAX satellite will essentially be made of three CubeSats.

The RAX will measure the energy flow in the ionosphere, the highest part of Earth's atmosphere where solar radiation turns regular atoms into charged particles. Disturbances in the ionosphere can affect earth-to-space communications such as GPS signals, digital satellite television and voice and data transmission systems including Iridium and Globalstar.

"This project will help us better understand space weather processes, how the Earth and Sun interact, and how this weather produces noise in space communication signals—noise that translates to lower quality telecommunications capabilities and error in GPS signals," Cutler said.

The RAX satellite will act as a receiver that will pick up signals from a ground radar transmitter. These radar pulses will reflect off disturbances, or space weather phenomena, in the ionosphere.

RAX is scheduled for launch in December 2009. This will be a milestone for Kiko Dontchev, program manager in M-Cubed, the S3FL team that will be working with Cutler.

Dontchev, a master's student in space engineering, has been involved in S3FL since he was a freshman at U-M. Last year, he started the M-Cubed project with other students because they wanted to see the launch of a satellite they worked on. M-Cubed is designing a CubeSat that can take high resolution photos of earth, but it doesn't have a launch date yet.

"It's pretty incredible that we'll build and design a spacecraft that will actually fly," Dontchev said. "This project ensures that Michigan will have a profound footprint in the CubeSat community."

http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2008/10/081001181316.htm
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #283 on Oct 4, 2008, 9:57am »
New Robotic Repair System Will Fix Ailing Satellites

ScienceDaily (Oct. 2, 2008) — Researchers at Queen’s University are developing a new robotic system to service more than 8,000 satellites now orbiting the Earth, beyond the flight range of ground-based repair operations. Currently, when the high-flying celestial objects malfunction – or simply run out of fuel – they become “space junk” cluttering the cosmos.

“These are mechanical systems, which means that eventually they will fail,” notes Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Michael Greenspan, who leads the Queen’s project. But because they are many thousands of kilometres away, the satellites are beyond the reach of an expensive, manned spaced flight, while Earth-based telerobotic repair isn’t possible in real time.

Dr. Greenspan’s solution to this problem is the development of tracking software that will enable an Autonomous Space Servicing Vehicle (ASSV) to grasp the ailing satellite from its orbit and draw it into the repair vehicle’s bay. Once there, remote control from the ground station can be used for the repair, he explains. “The repair itself doesn’t have to be done in real time, since everything is in a fixed position and a human can interact with it telerobotically to do whatever is required.”

The Queen’s team is now working to develop the ASSV with the aerospace company MDA (McDonald-Detweiller Associates) Space Missions, which earlier built the Canadarm and has been responsible for all Canadian systems in the International Space Station.

Computer vision is the main technical challenge of grasping the satellites, Dr. Greenspan continues. Since these objects circle the globe in “geosynchronous” orbit, their speed is synchronized with the Earth’s rotation. The robotic system must recognize the satellite first, then determine its motion and match that motion before grabbing it.

Due to the harsh illumination conditions in space, conventional video cameras are of limited use. The preferred sensor is a form of light-based radar called LIDAR, which provides a set of 3D points that accurately measure the surface geometry of the satellite.

The Queen’s team, which includes Electrical and Computer Engineering graduate students Limin Shang, Babak Taati and Michael Belshaw, has developed software that allows such a system to identify a satellite, determine its position and finally track it in real time, using this specialized range data. They have recently received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to continue looking at fundamental aspects of this new technology.

Another potential, terrestrial application of their findings is in the area of “flexible” manufacturing, says Dr. Greenspan. Using vision systems and algorithms, objects can be recognized and tracked as they go down a conveyor belt or assembly line. ”Once you can do that, automated manufacturing systems can interface much more flexibly with the objects,” he notes. “The result will be a much easier and more cost effective manufacturing process.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081002172253.htm
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Re: New Millenium Technology IV
« Reply #284 on Oct 4, 2008, 10:01am »
Scientists Design A Chip To Measure The Wind On Mars

[image]
Illustration of the Mars Science Laboratory. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2008) — A team of researchers at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) has designed the first chip manufactured completely in Spain that will be used to measure the wind on Mars. This chip is the key piece of the anemometer on a weather monitoring station run by Spanish scientists for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, whose launch is planned for fall 2009.

The MSL rover, a robotised vehicle, will determine whether Mars is or has been able to support any kind of life. Among the instruments it contains are the Rover Environment Monitoring Station (REMS), which will measure air and ground temperature, atmospheric pressure, ultraviolet radiation and humidity, in addition to the speed and direction of the wind measured by the chip designed by the Spanish engineers. The details on this scientific contribution were recently published in the journal Planetary and Space Science.

Luis Castañer, coordinator of the Micro and Nano Technologies Research Group at the UPC which developed the piece, tells SINC that this chip “is more efficient in terms of energy than those previously developed, and silicon technology is being used for the first time for this application in space”.

Each silicon chip is 1.5 millimetres thick and includes three temperature-sensitive platinum components: One measures the temperature of the chip, the second heats it to some 25ºC above ambient temperature and the third controls the characteristics of the wind sensor. The chip also carries the names of its creators.

Hot wire anemometry was the principle used by the engineers to measure the wind. Castañer, a founding member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Engineering (RAI), notes that wind had traditionally been measured by a technique in which a wire was heated and then the air cooled it, varying its temperature. This made it possible to establish a relationship with the speed of the air flow. “In the case of the chip, the hot point is not a wire, but instead a piece of silicon heated by a fine film that covers it and acts as the resistance to heat”, he says.

The Micro and Nano Technologies Research Group (MNT) has patented a system that makes it possible to calculate the magnitude of the wind and its direction on a plane using four chips on a plate on that same plane, while at the same time taking the ambient temperature as a reference. The temperature is measured by a fifth chip, identical to the other four.

Wind speed can be measured in 2D with this methodology, but the speed in 3D can be deduced by using as many plates as necessary. The REMS weather monitoring station uses 6 wind sensors, with 5 silicon chips each, located on the ends of two booms and separated by an angle of 120°.

The chips were manufactured at the MNT group’s Laboratorio de la Sala Blanca, which counts on collaboration from the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, the joint centre of the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), EADS Astrium Crisa (the company in charge of the industrial assembly of the station) and the Centro Nacional de Microelectrónica in Barcelona. Some tests were carried out in the wind tunnel at the University of Aarhus (Denmark).

The first principal researcher of the REMS project was Professor Luis Vázquez from the Complutense University of Madrid. This year, aeronautic engineer Javier Gómez Elvira from CAB, the centre responsible for the Martian weather monitoring station, as well as its principal contractor, took over.

The station has already incorporated the MSL rover, and is currently verifying its instruments under the supervision of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California (USA) so as to have everything ready in the fall of 2009 when its launch is planned.

The MSL will carry out four types of research. First, it will study the biological potential of the environment, taking inventory of the chemical elements required for life and detecting the presence of organic compounds. It will also classify the geology and geo-chemical makeup of the region, analysing the composition of the planet’s surface and interpreting the processes that have formed and modified its rocks. The rover’s instruments will also be used to investigate surface radiation and some atmospheric processes- such as those that involve water- that may be relevant in determining if living beings could have existed on the red planet in the past.

Journal reference:

1. Dominguez et al. A hot film anemometer for the Martian atmosphere. Planetary and Space Science, 2008; 56 (8): 1169 DOI: 10.1016/j.pss.2008.02.013

http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2008/10/081003123242.htm
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."

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"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."

John F. Kennedy
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