Genetically Modifying Silk Worms For Super Silk

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 04, @05:11AM 

from the does-whatever-a-spider-can dept.

New submitter davidshenba sends this quote from the BBC:"U.S. researchers have created silkworms that are genetically modified to spin much stronger silk (abstract). In weight-for-weight terms, spider silk is stronger than steel. ... Researchers have been trying to reproduce such silk for decades. But it is unfeasible to 'farm' spiders for the commercial production of their silk because the arachnids don't produce enough of it — coupled with their proclivity for eating each other. Silk worms, however, are easy to farm and produce vast amounts of silk — but the material is fragile. Researchers have tried for years to get the best of both worlds — super-strong silk in industrial quantities — by transplanting genes from spiders into worms. But the resulting genetically modified worms have not produced enough spider silk until now. GM worms produced by a team led by Professor Don Jarvis of Wyoming University seem to be producing a composite of worm and spider silk in large amounts — which the researchers say is just as tough as spider silk."

Instead of a Wheel Chair, How About an Exoskeleton?

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 03, @12:19PM 

from the yes-please dept.

New submitter the_newsbeagle writes"This year, Ekso Bionics will roll out its most sophisticated exoskeleton ever. The company's robotic walking suit, called the Ekso, allows paraplegics to get back on their feet and walk on their own. The first commercial model will be sold to rehab hospitals for on-site physical therapy, but the company plans to have a model ready for at-home physical therapy by the end of 2012. In a few years, they plan to sell an Ekso that a paraplegic person can wear to the post office, to work, etc."

Good anonymous quote

"Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever."

• Fictional attribution in the movie The Emperor's Club (2002), given by Kevin Kline (as William Hundert);^[2] also attributed to Diogenes, without sources;^[3] no published occurrences of this statement prior to the movie have been located in any of the Aristophanes Plays or Fragments.

Physical Activity, School Performance May Be Linked

ScienceDaily (Jan. 2, 2012) — A systematic review of previous studies suggests that there may be a positive relationship between physical activity and the academic performance of children, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of theJAMA/Archives journals.

The Car of Tomorrow Recognizes Your Butt

• 
  
• 27
  inShare

• By Chuck Squatriglia 
• Email Author 
• December 22, 2011 |  
• 2:00 pm |  
• Categories: Autopia WTF? Dept.

Engineers from the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology in Tokyo have developed a novel biometric automotive anti-theft system that uses the unique shape of your butt to identify you.

The driver’s seat is fitted with 360 sensors that measure pressure according to a scale of zero to 256. Each reading is plotted to create a 3-D image — essentially a topographic map of your ass — used as a personal identifier. Anytime someone gets behind the wheel, the system analyzes the shape of their behind. If it isn’t your rear end in the seat, the car isn’t going anywhere.

The engineers behind the gadget say it was able to identify six different testers with 98 percent accuracy. We can’t read the report (.pdf) because it’s in Japanese, so we don’t know how the system might react to, say, having a wallet in your pocket or packing on a few pounds during the holidays.

Business newspaper Nikkei says the researchers hope to commercialize “a highly reliable anti-theft system” through a collaboration with automakers within two or three years.

Image: Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology

Alzheimer's: Diet Patterns May Keep Brain from Shrinking

ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2011) — People with diets high in several vitamins or in omega 3 fatty acids are less likely to have the brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer's disease than people whose diets are not high in those nutrients, according to a new study published in the December 28, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Does 'Supersizing' Supershrink Your Brain?

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 30, @10:15AM 

from the food-for-thought dept.

Rambo Tribble writes"As reported by the BBC, the journal Neurology is set to release the findings of a study in Oregon on diet and brain shrinkage in Alzheimer's victims. The upshot is: a diet rich in vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids is beneficial; trans fat and fast food are detrimental."

British training 'Xbox generation' soldiers with tweaked games

By Daniel Cooper  posted Dec 29th 2011 2:51PM

Austerity means the military can't afford the big-budget training exercises to battle-harden new recruits, so it's relying more on computer simulations. Sadly, Virtual Battlespace 2 can't compete with the Hollywood-style excitement of Modern Warfare. That's why it's buying in game engines from the studios (VB2 was based on tech licensed from the makers of Operation Flashpoint) and cutting out the unrealistic physics -- such as rifle bullets flying three miles and vehicles that don't obey gravity. It's hoped the project will keep the attention of death-match hardened trainees and encourage them to play it in their own time: the team were told that two soldiers learned enough skills to stay alive during combat thanks to marathon sessions in the game. If you've just unwrapped an FPS for the holidays, you can now tell disapproving family members that it's educational.

Paint-On Solar Cells Developed

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2011) — Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light -- electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside.

US Chamber of Commerce Infiltrated By Chinese Hackers

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Wednesday December 21, @08:56AM 

from the security-through-insecurity dept.

SpzToid writes"The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that a group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of the United States Chamber of Commerce. The intrusion was quietly shut down in May 2010, while FBI investigations continue. 'A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Geng Shuang, said cyberattacks are prohibited by Chinese law and China itself is a victim of attacks. ... Still, the Chamber continues to see suspicious activity, they say. A thermostat at a town house the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill at one point was communicating with an Internet address in China, they say, and, in March, a printer used by Chamber executives spontaneously started printing pages with Chinese characters.'"According the article, the group "gained access to everything stored on its systems" and may have "had access to the network for more than a year before the breach was uncovered."

The Hobbit Trailer posted!

Superannuated Scientists Still Productive

Posted by timothy on Tuesday December 20, @10:53AM 

from the anonymous-ice-floe-pictures-help dept.

An anonymous reader writes"Modern corporations seem to have devalued older scientists. They are all to happy to have their veteran employees, scientists included, take an early retirement so that they can be replaced by younger people who expect fewer benefits and will work for lower pay. Thomas Kuhn, philosopher of science and author of the influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, believed that revolution in science was forged only by younger scientists. Some older studies of small academic groups seemed to show that scientific productivity peaks at middle age and declines thereafter. A newer study of 13,680 university professors found that scientific productivity still increases up to age 50, and it then stabilizes from age fifty to retirement for the more industrious researchers. When 'high impact' publications are considered, researchers older than 55 still hold their own. A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the majority of Nobel Laureates in Chemistry from 1901 to 1960 did their prize-winning work by age 40. After 1960, chemistry laureates were more likely to have done their prize-winning work after age 40."

20 most popular Christmas songs graphed by decade of release

New State of Metal Theorized To Be In the Earth's Lower Mantle

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday December 21, @06:38AM 

from the does-it-burn-as-well-as-dead-dinosaurs dept.

slew writes"This article talks about a study accepted to Physical Review Letters which theorizes that iron oxide goes through an insulator/metal phase change with high temperature and pressure. Originally it was thought to be a crystalline structure change, but now apparently it is theorized to be a new type of metallic state. This discovery might offer new insight on how the earth's magnetic field operates."

NASA finds smallest ever black hole by its 'heartbeat' (video)

By Daniel Cooper  posted Dec 19th 2011 3:07PM

NASA's found the smallest black hole it's ever seen, thanks to the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) -- weighing three times less than our own sun, it's near the bottom weight limit for the super-heavy phenomena. It was discovered by its unique "heartbeat", an X-Ray emission that takes place when gas sucked from a nearby star is swirled around the event horizon until friction causes it to super-heat. The disc then repeats the process every 40 seconds and when examined, looks just like the readout on anECG machine. After the break we've got a video that talks you through it all and we won't mind if you start booming "Space... the final frontier..." halfway through -- we did too.

Is Jupiter Dissolving Its Rocky Core?

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 19, @02:06PM 

from the told-you-not-to-drink-all-that-soda-pop dept.

sciencehabit writes"Jupiter is the victim of its own success. Sophisticated new calculations indicate that our solar system's largest planet, which weighs more than twice as much as all of the others put together, has destroyed part of its central core. The culprit is the very hydrogen and helium that made Jupiter a gas giant, when the core's gravity attracted these elements as the planet formed. The finding suggests that the most massive extrasolar planetshave no cores at all."

NASA Considers Sending Telescope To the Outer Solar System

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Tuesday December 20, @05:01AM 

from the research-base-on-ganymede dept.

Nancy_A writes"A mission that astronomers and cosmologists have only dreamed about — until now. A team at JPL and Caltech has been looking into the possibility of hitching an optical telescope to a survey spacecraft on a mission to the outer solar system. Light pollution in our inner solar system, from both the nearby glow of the Sun and the hazy zodiacal glow from dust ground up in the asteroid belt, has long stymied cosmologists looking for a clearer take on the early Universe."

Middle-Age Blood Pressure Changes Affect Lifetime Heart Disease, Stroke Risk

ScienceDaily (Dec. 19, 2011) — An increase or decrease in your blood pressure during middle age can significantly impact your lifetime risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to research in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Trends in hit songs

The study found some interesting trends, such as:

• Before the eighties, the danceability of a song was not very relevant to its hit potential. From then on, danceable songs were more likely to become a hit. Also the average danceability of all songs on the charts suddenly increased in the late seventies.
• In the eighties slower musical styles (tempo 70-89 beats per minute), such as ballads, were more likely to become a hit.
• The prediction accuracy of the researchers' hit potential equation varies over time. It was particularly difficult to predict hits around 1980. The equation performed best in the first half of the nineties and from the year 2000. This suggests that the late seventies and early eighties were particularly creative and innovative periods of pop music.
• Up until the early nineties, hits were typically harmonically simpler than other songs of the era. On the other hand, from the nineties onward hits more commonly have simpler, binary, rhythms such as 4/4 time.
• On average all songs on the chart are becoming louder. Additionally, the hits are relatively louder than the songs that dangle at the bottom of the charts, reflected by a strong weight for the loudness feature.

Can Science Predict a Hit Song?

ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2011) — Most people remember listening to the official UK top 40 singles chart and watching the countdown on Top of the Pops, but can science work out which songs are more likely to 'make it' in the chart?

Scientists create first solar cell with over 100 percent quantum efficiency

By James Trew  posted Dec 19th 2011 6:01AM

Researchers over at the National Renewable Energy Lab have reportedly made the first solar cell with an external quantum efficiency over 100 percent. Quantum efficiency relates to the number of electrons-per-second flowing in a solar cell circuit, divided by the number of photons from the energy entering. The NREL team recorded an efficiency topping out at 114 percent, by creating the first working multiple exciton generation (MEG) cell. Using MEG, a single high energy photon can produce more than one electron-hole pair per absorbed photon. The extra efficiency comes from quantum dots 'harvesting' energy that would otherwise be lost as heat. The cell itself uses anti-reflection coating on a transparent conductor, layered with zinc oxide, lead selenide, and gold. NREL scientist Arthur J. Nozik predicted as far back as 2001 that MEG would do the job, but it's taken until now for the concept to leap over from theory. The hope is, of course, that this will lead to more competitively priced solar power, fueling thetransport of the future.

Neat Christmas vid of Handal's Hallelujah chorus

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=LyviyF-N23A

Heart Drug May Be Effective for Managing Certain Cancers, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2011) — Researchers at Queen's University have identified a new mechanism that could potentially explain why the body's immune system sometimes fails to eliminate cancer. The new findings shed light on the possible cause of immune resistance in cancer cells, and indicate that nitroglycerin, a relatively safe and low-cost drug used for more than a century to treat angina, may be effective for managing certain cancers.

Cheap electronic skin edges us closer to cyberpunk future

By Peter Cohen  posted Dec 15th 2011 6:13AM

Researchers working for the Department of Energy's Berkeley Lab have figured out how to create relatively inexpensive "electronic skin" comprising carbon nanotubes enriched with semiconductors. Their process involves an enriched single walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) solution embedded in a honeycomb pattern of hexagonal holes to make it more flexible and stretchable - it's so limber, they wrapped it around a baseball, as you can see in the photo above. Combined with inkjet printing of electrical contacts, the technology paves the way for making flexible, wearable computers and a host of other cool things that William Gibson and other cyberpunk authors thought of back in the 1980s: smart bandages, flexible solar cells and electronic skin that can sense touch. Bring on the Zeiss eye implants and neural interface jacks!