BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Ocean monster shows hidden depths.
For a while during its design, Asahiko Taira told me, the ship became known as “Godzilla-maru”, so unusual and top-heavy were its projected lines.
“We started planning the Chikyu about 15 years ago, and there were some people who thought we were too ambitious,” he recalled.
“But now we can see that the ship is doing what it is designed to do and is opening up new possibilities.”
As director-general of the Center for Deep Earth Exploration (CDex), an arm of Japan’s Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (Jamstec), Dr Taira played a key role in steering the Chikyu from vague concept to steel reality.
The idea was simple. Scientists wanted to drill down into the Earth’s crust – and even through the crust – to get samples from the key zones 6 or 7km down where earthquakes and lots of other interesting geological processes begin; but that was impossible with existing ships.
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Periodic table gets a new element.
The ubiquitous periodic table will soon have a new addition – the “super-heavy” element 112.
Girl Who Does Not Age, Brooke Greenberg Baffles Doctors – ABC News.
At about 16 pounds and 30 inches, 16-year-old Brooke Greenberg has not aged significantly, physically or apparently cognitively, since she was a toddler.
Decided to share a beta of the upcoming new version of tpic uploader.
If you are using the older 1.x version, do this:
* Run 1.x, disable context-menu, then uninstal it. Now you can proceed to install 2.0 beta.
Warning: context-menu for 2.0 beta works only in 32-bit windows.
New stuff:
– Imageshack direct link fixed; new capture modes: clipboard paste, select active window with hotkey, select window from Aero live thumbs preview (Vista or W7 only); support to upload multiple files in a row; new options to optimize upload speed/auto image resizing; option to store captures.
[download#106#format=2]
TechConnect Magazine – PhotoFast to release 2TB 3.5-inch solid state drives.
Japan-based PhotoFast has now announced a new solid state drive family, the G-Monster 3.5 RAID5 WorkStation Edition. According to its maker, the new line-up includes 3.5-inch drives with capacities of 64, 128, 256, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB that feature a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, a RAID controller, 256MB of cache memory and provide a top read/write speed of 270 MB/s.
DailyTech – Scientists: Earth Could be on Collision Course with Neighboring Planets in Distant Future.
Research being conducted by French scientists indicates eventual destabilization of Mercury could cause a major impact between Earth and Mars. The research was carried out by two French scientists who reportedly used “arcane mathematical” models to help predict the next five billion years of the galaxy.
Running a computer simulation of 2,501 different scenarios of various planets in the Earth’s solar system, Mercury’s orbit was disrupted, causing a domino effect that led to Earth, Venus and Mars also suffering from solar system disruption. The 2,501 scenarios were over the next five billion years, noting that the solar system is 99 percent likely to continue to operate the exact same way as today without a hiccup.
DailyTech – NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming.
A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth’s climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.
Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles. At the cycle’s peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat. According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, “Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene.”
Thomas Woods, solar scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder concludes, “The fluctuations in the solar cycle impacts Earth’s global temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius, slightly hotter during solar maximum and cooler during solar minimum. The sun is currently at its minimum, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012.”
DailyTech – Researchers Restore Vision to Legally Blind With Stem Cells.
Scientists and the University of New South Wales in Australia cultured corneal stem cells on extended wear contact lenses. They then cleaned the corneas of three patients — two of whom were legally blind and one with limited vision (they could read the biggest row of the vision chart) — and had the patient start wearing the lens.
Amazingly, within 10 to 14 days the stem cells had reentered the cornea and began to recolonize it. UNSW’s Dr Nick Di Girolamo describes, “The procedure is totally simple and cheap. Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive.”
The two legally blind patients can now read the top row of a vision chart, while the vision impaired patient can read enough of the chart to get their driver’s license.
DailyTech – Researchers Develop Simple Light-powered Nanomotor.
The nanomotor is not the first motor to be driven by particles of light; it is however, the first nanomotor built entirely from a single molecule of DNA. The simplicity of using a single DNA molecule reportedly makes the nanomotor easier to manufacture and develop. The researchers hope that one day the nanomotor may be used in areas ranging from medicine to manufacturing.
Huaizhi Kang, the first author of the paper reporting the findings said, “It is easy to assemble, has fewer parts and theoretically should be more efficient.”
The nanomotor is exceptionally small. In its collapsed form, the nanomotor is only two to five nanometers. When in its uncollapsed form, the nanomotor is 10 to 12 nanometers long. The tiny nanomotor is able to convert considerably more of the energy in sunlight to power than traditional solar cells report the scientists.
DailyTech – Swedish Citizens Vote Pirates into European Parliament.
Late last week, Europe held election for the European Parliament, the legislative branch of the European Union. The Pirate Party apparently appealed to Swedish voters, as it scored 7.1 percent of the vote, enough to snag a nice bounty — a seat in the Parliament.
Christian Engstrom, the party’s top candidate, cheered the news, stating, “This is fantastic! This shows that there are a lot of people who think that personal integrity is important and that it matters that we deal with the Internet and the new information society in the right way.”
DailyTech – University of Texas Creates 2 Atom Thick Lead Superconducting Sheet.
Researchers at the University of Texas have created super-thin sheets of lead — merely 2 atoms thick — that are capable of superconducting. The material is the thinnest superconductor created to date.
Charge moves across the new material, as in other superconductors, via Cooper pairs, a pair of electrons dancing across the surface. Typically this movement can occur in three dimensions. The new material is novel in that it confines the movement to two directions, making it easier to control and providing more applications.
Dr. Ken Shih who led the research describes, “To be able to control this material-to shape it into new geometries-and explore what happens is very exciting. My hope is that this superconductive surface will enable one to build devices and study new properties of superconductivity.”
DailyTech – Nokia Prototype Generates Power from Ambient Radiation.
Future Nokia devices may charge batteries without needing an AC outlet
Markku Rouvala, a researcher from the Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge, U.K., and a group of researchers are working towards a development that could lead to phones that are able to top off their batteries by harvesting power from ambient RF signals.
The type of radiation that the researchers are trying to harvest for the power comes from Wi-Fi transmitters, cell phones, TV antennas and other sources. Rouvala says that the prototype device that has been developed could harvest as much as 50 milliwatts of power. That amount of power would be sufficient to charge a phone that is switched off.
The current prototype is capable of harvesting only three to five milliwatts. Two passive circuits are required in the prototype device.
BBCNews: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8068560.stm
.. fast fibre-based FTTH 1Gbps (gigabits per second) (fibre-to-the-home) network at one of the lowest price-per-megabits anywhere.
Tokyo resident Nobuyuki is an enthusiastic user of Japan’s so-called Hikari 1GBps service, but it has made him spoilt:
“Funny thing is, you get used to it, it’s normal,” he said.
“It’s when you go abroad you see the difference and then you realise how fast and convenient Japanese infrastructure is; and how cheap too.”
“I think it’s worth having a 1GBPs network for a couple of thousand yen more than Japan’s more common 100 Mbps ADSL service, even if it’s only for displaying web pages 0.1 seconds faster.”
.. the Japanese government subsidises the real cost of FTTH by up to 33%.
.. Japan is still the world leader when it comes to connecting homes to a fibre-optic network
.. High-speed wireless Wimax is also now undergoing trials.
.. Now, with 4G mobile transmissions on the way, the government sees a convergence of super data services imminent.
The next step towards ever breakneck speeds is commercialisation of 10 GBPs fibre optic deliver.
Telecoms firm Oki Japan has successfully tested a 160 GBPs long-distance, high-speed optical connection that delivers the equivalent of “four full movies” worth of data every second.
Oki expects it to be commercialized late next year maintaining Japan’s bragging rights for some time to come. Just don’t ask them what they will do with it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8079767.stm
Incredible peaks and valleys, buried beneath ice for 14 million years, have revealed evidence of how the East Antarctic ice sheet first formed.
Scientists used radar to map an area of the Gamburtsev mountains – believed to be the point of origin of the ice.
The region would have been cold enough for the first glacier to form.
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