A New Step Forward For Robots

Jerry Pratt (l.) with research associates push M2V2 to test its balance at the Institute for Human Cognition in Pensacola, Fla. (Carmen K. Sisson/Special to The Christian Science Monitor)

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Engineers decode human balance to build walking robots.

For the past 30 years, scientists and technicians have grappled with making robots walk on two legs. Humans do it effortlessly, but the simple act has a lot of hidden complexity. And until recently, computers were very bad at it.

Now, several teams across the country are refining the first generation of robots that are close to walking like people. That includes the ability to recover from stumbles, resist shoves, and navigate rough terrain.

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Nanoparticle Protects Oil In Foods From Oxidation, Spoilage

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 9, 2009) — Using a nanoparticle from corn, a Purdue University scientist has found a way to lengthen the shelf life of many food products and sustain their health benefits.

Yuan Yao, an assistant professor of food science, has successfully modified the phytoglycogen nanoparticle, a starchlike substance that makes up nearly 30 percent of the dry mass of some sweet corn. The modification allows the nanoparticle to attach to oils and emulsify them while also acting as a barrier to oxidation, which causes food to become rancid. His findings were published in the early online version of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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Mysterious Radiation May Strike Airline Passengers

There's a small chance that passengers aboard an airplane flying through a storm may be exposed to high levels of radiation, new research suggests. Credit: Stockxpert

From Live Science:

Airline passengers flying through storms might have more to worry about than a little turbulence. A new study suggests that if jets pass near lightning discharges or related phenomena known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, passengers and crew members could be exposed to harmful levels of radiation, a dose equal to that of 400 chest X-rays.

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Discovery On HIV Testing Could Save A Million Lives

From The Independent:

Scientists have made a major advance in understanding the treatment of HIV which could see life-saving drugs extended to more than one million extra people at no additional cost. Researchers have discovered that routine laboratory testing of blood for signs of side-effects – long regarded as essential for HIV treatment – is unnecessary and a waste of time and money.

By abandoning routine laboratory testing, which is costly and requires sophisticated equipment only available in hospitals, the money saved could be used to buy and distribute extra anti-retroviral drugs.

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Googlefest Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: 3 New Ways Google Will Take Over Your Life

From Discover Magazine:

Google is hitting the ‘nets hard this week. The Mountain View, Ca. behemoth has unleashed a fresh batch of fancy tricks for their avid followers, further extending the Googleplex’s empire beyond search and into other facets of life. Not only did Google open Wave to 1 million people and launch its Chrome browser for Mac users, but they’re dropping other potential game changers as well.

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Rumours That First Dark Matter Particle Found

From New Scientist:

The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found.

If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe's mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That's why any news of a sighting is seized upon.

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Nuclear Fusion Is The Future

James Hansen Photo: PA

From The Telegraph:

The Copenhagen Summit: Could a new nuclear fusion process allow us to escape the whole carbon trap?

'It's time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here." With that warning to the US Congress in June 1988, the Nasa climatologist James Hansen focused the minds of politicians on a danger that, until then, many of them had treated with scepticism.

A few days later came the first international conference to discuss man's impact on the Earth's climate, in Toronto, to which I had been packed off by The Daily Telegraph's then editor. I watched as scientists tried to persuade government representatives, legal experts, economists and industrialists that the time had come to take the threat seriously.

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Paper Battery Could Power Gadgets Of The Future

The light-weight battery is created by painting nanotube ink onto paper

From the Daily Mail:

Ordinary paper could one day be used as ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries, according to scientists from Stanford University.

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of silver and carbon nanomaterials makes an efficient storage device that is 10 times as powerful as lithium-ion batteries used to power laptops.

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Mysterious Light Display Leaves Norwegians And Astronomers Puzzled

From Popular Science:

A Russian missile test or a meteor remain the top guesses for a strange spiraling light phenomenon.

A bizarre spiraling light show over Norway has raised speculations ranging from a Russian rocket test to an odd meteoric display. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute remains unsure of the phenomenon's origins, but astronomers have said that it does not appear connected to the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights.

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‘Testosterone’s Aggressive Impact Is A Myth. It Makes You Friendlier’

From Times Online:

It is popularly known as the selfish hormone, which courses through male veins to promote egotistical and antisocial behaviour. Yet research has suggested that testosterone’s bad reputation is largely undeserved.

Far from always increasing aggression and greed, the male hormone can actually encourage decency and fair play, scientists have discovered.

The common belief that it makes people quarrelsome, however, can cause it to have that effect. When people think they have been given supplements of the hormone they tend to act more aggressively, even though it does nothing biological to promote such behaviour.

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'Small Wind' Market To Double By 2013, Study Says

Cascade Engineering has the rights to sell this Swift turbine, which is already installed in dozens of locations in the U.K., some attached to roofs on homes. Like other wind turbines, the Swift has blades that turn and power a generator. But rather than the typical three blades, the Swift has five and a ring that goes around them. That "outer diffuser" ring cuts the noise level to 35 decibels and reduces vibration, according to the company. Photo by Cascade Engineering. Caption by Martin LaMonica

From Green Tech/CNET News:

Individuals and commercial businesses around the world are increasingly drawn to small wind turbines to supplement energy consumption, according to a report released Wednesday by Pike Research.

The niche industry of small wind turbines, which saw $165 million in revenue in 2008 and $203 million in 2009, will grow to $412 million by 2013, according to Pike's "Small Wind Power" report.

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The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

Darwin Airport - by Dominic Perrin via Panoramio

From Watts Up With That?:

People keep saying “Yes, the Climategate scientists behaved badly. But that doesn’t mean the data is bad. That doesn’t mean the earth is not warming.”

Let me start with the second objection first. The earth has generally been warming since the Little Ice Age, around 1650. There is general agreement that the earth has warmed since then. See e.g. Akasofu . Climategate doesn’t affect that.

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Life On Mars Theory Boosted By New Methane Study

This image shows concentrations of Methane discovered on Mars. (Credit: NASA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Dec. 8, 2009) — Scientists have ruled out the possibility that methane is delivered to Mars by meteorites, raising fresh hopes that the gas might be generated by life on the red planet, in research published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

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Colossal Flood Created The Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar photographed by NASA. Part of Spain can be seen above and Africa, below, in the photo.

From Live Science:

The Mediterranean Sea as we know it today formed about 5.3 million years ago when Atlantic Ocean waters breached the strait of Gibraltar, sending a massive flood into the basin.

Geologists have long known that the Mediterranean became isolated from the world's oceans around 5.6 million years ago, evaporating almost completely in the hundreds of thousands of years that followed.

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TV Chosen Over Longer Life: Poll

What would you refuse to give up even if it added five healthy years to your life? According to many Canadians, you can put television on that list — and don’t try to take away booze or red meat, either. Photograph by: File, Reuters

From The Montreal Gazette:

What would you refuse to give up even if it added five healthy years to your life? According to many Canadians, you can put television on that list — and don’t try to take away booze or red meat, either.

Some 55 per cent of the respondents to a poll for RBC Insurance said they would not give up indulgences such as watching television, red meat (45 per cent) and alcohol (34 per cent), even if it would add five healthy years to their lives.

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Doctors Query Ability Of Tamiflu To Stop Severe Illness

Tamiflu tablets may shorten bouts of illness by a day or two, reviewers say.
Photograph: Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

From The Guardian:

Review published in British Medical Journal accuses flu drug manufacturer Roche of withholding evidence from trials.

Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu, has made it impossible for scientists to assess how well the anti-flu drug stockpiled around the globe works by withholding the evidence the company has gained from trials, doctors alleged today .

A major review of what data there is in the public domain has found no evidence Tamiflu can prevent healthy people with flu from suffering complications such as pneumonia.

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A Hot Piece of Hardware: NASA’s New Orbiter Will Map the Entire Sky in Infrared

From Discover Magazine:

Stars and other astronomical phenomena radiate across the electromagnetic spectrum, on both sides of the puny band of visible light that the human eye can pick up. NASA’s newest toy, set for a Friday launch into space, will map the infrared portion of that radiation—and do it across the entire sky.

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Five Ways To Revolutionise Computer Memory

Digital memory is getting smaller and smaller (Image: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the idea that you might store your entire music collection on a single hand-held device would have been greeted with disbelief. Ditto backing up all your essential computer files using a memory stick key ring, or storing thousands of high-resolution holiday snaps in one pocket-sized camera.

What a difference a decade makes. The impossible has become possible thanks to the lightning rise of a memory technology with the snazzy name of "flash".

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Sobering News: Coffee Increases Drunkenness

From The Telegraph:

Drinking coffee does not sober you up – and may actually further impair your judgement, new research suggests.

The combination of alcohol and caffeine produces a potentially lethal mix that just makes it harder to realise you are actually drunk in the first place.

And the study published in Behavioural Neuroscience suggests popular caffeinated energy drinks could also raise risks from intoxication rather than lessen them.

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Google Launches Real-Time Search With Instant Twitter And Facebook Updates

Google real-time: The screen continually updates with new information, without the need to refresh. Users also have the option to pause the scrolling action

From The Daily Mail:

Google has launched 'real-time' search to give users up-to-the-second information.

The search engine will update its information at the same rate as it receives it, which means postings on sites such as Twitter and Facebook will appear immediately at the bottom of the page.

The new data - from more than a billion pages on the web - will scroll past in real-time, without any need to refresh the page. Users can also stop the page from continually scrolling by clicking on the 'stop updating' phrase.

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