Robot To Be Controlled By Human Brain Cells

Artist's impression of the surge of electrical activity from certain brain cells that causes an epileptic seizure (Image: DAVID MACK / SPL)

From New Scientist:

A robot controlled by human brain cells could soon be trundling around a British lab, New Scientist has learned.

Kevin Warwick and Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, have already used rat brain cells to control a simple wheeled robotMovie Camera.

Some 300,000 rat neurons grown in a nutrient broth and producing spikes of electrical activity were connected to the output of the robot's distance sensors. The neurons proved capable of steering the robot around a small enclosure (see videoMovie Camera).

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Panel Urges NASA to Reset Priorities

Astronaut Nicole Stott works on the International Space Station last week. Reuters

From The Wall Street Journal:

A blue-ribbon panel is recommending that NASA shelve its goal of rapidly returning to the moon and instead focus on nurturing a robust commercial space industry that can handle short-term objectives of the nation's space program, such as ferrying cargo and crew to the international space station.

The panel, called the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, headed by former Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman Norman Augustine, was convened by the Obama administration earlier this year to provide an independent assessment of the priorities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It presented its findings to the White House Tuesday.

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Steve Jobs Is Back On The Job

China Plans World's Largest Solar Power Plant

First Solar: Here the company installs a 2 megawatt solar plant in California. Up next, one that's one thousand times the wattage, in China. First Solar

From Popular Science:

First Solar just signed an agreement with China to build the biggest solar power plant yet, according to a statement released today by the company. The 2-gigawatt plant in the Mongolian desert will generate enough electricity to power three million homes.

That's a heck of a lot of cadmium telluride, the semiconductor they use for their thin film cells.

The largest solar plant currently in operation is a mere 60-megawatt plant in Spain, according to pvresources.com.

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Buzz Aldrin to NASA: U.S. Space Policy Is on the Wrong Track

Platon photographed Buzz Aldrin for PM in Los Angeles, May 2009. “It’s mankind’s destiny to walk on another planet,” Aldrin says. “We can achieve it, but we’ve got to have the right plan.” (Photograph by Platon)

From Popular Mechanics:

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin has a problem with NASA’s current manned space plan: Namely, the five-year gap between the shuttle’s scheduled retirement next year and the debut of the Ares I rocket and the Orion spacecraft, which will take us no further than the moon—a place we’ve already been. Aldrin thinks NASA can do better. His plan is to scrap Ares I, stretch out the remaining six shuttle flights and fast-track the Orion to fly on a Delta IV or Atlas V. Then, set our sites on colonizing Mars. Here, Buzz challenges NASA to take on his bolder mission.

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After Repairs, New Space Images From Hubble

The Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 peered into one of the more crowded places in the universe in this view of a small region inside the globular cluster Omega Centauri, which has nearly 10 million stars. NASA, ESA, and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team

From New York Times:

The cosmic postcards are back.

Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled new pictures and observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. With the exception of a picture last month of the bruise on Jupiter caused by a comet, they were the first data obtained with the telescope since a crew spent 13 days in orbit last May replacing, refurbishing and rebuilding its vital components.

“This is truly Hubble’s new beginning,” Edward Weiler, the associate administrator for science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said at a news conference in Washington.

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How Air Pollution Can Damage The Heart

Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME

From Time Magazine:

Sitting in traffic can certainly be infuriating enough to raise your blood pressure. But new research shows that traffic can raise your blood pressure and put your heart at risk in a more direct way — by exposing you to the pollution in exhaust fumes.

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ADHD Sufferers Have Lower Brain Chemicals

From The Telegraph:

People with attention deficit disorder have lower levels of a chemicals in the brain needed to experience the sensations of reward and motivation, research has shown.

Attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder has been dismissed by some as a label used by parents to excuse badly behaved children but this research provides the first definitive evidence that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain of sufferers.

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Darpa Seeks To Tap Water’s Power Potential

From The Danger Room:

The quest for limitless energy has preoccupied military researchers for years, and Darpa, the Pentagon’s far-out science arm, has often led the way. Now the agency is looking for yet another method to harness cheap and environmentally friendly energy that would be as simple as turning on the tap.

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'NanoPen' May Write New Chapter In Nanotechnology Manufacturing

These highly-magnified images are composed of tiny nanoparticles produced by a "NanoPen."

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2009) — Researchers in California are reporting development of a so-called "NanoPen" that could provide a quick, convenient way of laying down patterns of nanoparticles — from wires to circuits — for making futuristic electronic devices, medical diagnostic tests, and other much-anticipated nanotech applications. A report on the device, which helps solve a long-standing challenge in nanotechnology, appeared in ACS' Nano Letters.

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Houseplants Make Air Healthier

Houseplants were placed into experimental chambers in a greenhouse equipped with a charcoal filtration air supply system to measure ozone depletion rates. Credit: Dennis Decoteau.

From Live Science:

Houseplants can neutralize harmful ozone, making indoor air cleaner, according to a new study.

Ozone, which is the main component of smog, forms when high-energy light, such as the ultraviolet light from the sun, breaks oxygen bonds, ultimately resulting in O3, three atoms of oxygen joining together. When formed higher up in the atmosphere, the ozone layer protects us from harmful UV rays. Ground-level ozone is not so pleasant.

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Ancient 'Smell Of Death' Revealed

Dying stinks, even for woodlice

From The BBC:

When animals die, their corpses exude a particular "stench of death" which repels their living relatives, scientists have discovered.

Corpses of animals as distantly related as insects and crustaceans all produce the same stench, caused by a blend of simple fatty acids.

The smell helps living animals avoid others that have succumbed to disease or places where predators lurk.

This 'death recognition system' likely evolved over 400 million years ago.

The discovery was made by a team of researchers based at McMaster University, near Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and is published in the journal Evolutionary Biology.

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The Real Sea Monsters: On the Hunt for Rogue Waves

BIG, BAD WAVE: A monster rogue wave approaches a merchant ship in the Bay of Biscay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean bordered by the coasts of northwestern Spain and southwestern France. NOAA'S NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE COLLECTION

From Scientific American:

Scientists hope a better understanding of when, where and how mammoth oceanic waves form can someday help ships steer clear of danger.

A near-vertical wall of water in what had been an otherwise placid sea shocked all on board the ocean liner Teutonic—including the crew—on that Sunday in February, more than a century ago.

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Big Artistic Performance To Be Set In Space

From Space.com:

The first ever widely acknowledged artistic performance from space will be broadcast from the International Space Station on Oct. 9.

Orchestrated by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, who is set to launch to the station as a space tourist Sept. 30, the event will feature artists performing from 14 cities around the world, as well as Laliberte broadcasting from space.

Laliberte described the event, called "Moving Stars and Earth for Water," as a "poetic social mission" to communicate the importance water has for the planet and its people.

Scientists have warned that water shortages rank with energy and food issues around the globe as top governmental issues now and in the future.

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A Skull That Rewrites The History Of Man

One of the skulls discovered in Georgia, which are believed to date back 1.8 million years

From The Independent:

It has long been agreed that Africa was the sole cradle of human evolution. Then these bones were found in Georgia...

The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not the sole cradle of humankind. Scientists have found a handful of ancient human skulls at an archaeological site two hours from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, that suggest a Eurasian chapter in the long evolutionary story of man.

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Humans Aren’t Going to Mars — or Anywhere Else — Without More Money

From Wired Science:

American human space exploration is impossible with NASA’s current budget.

The committee tasked with examining NASA’s role in human space flight delivered that finding today while offering a mix of relatively exciting options if the agency can secure an extra $3 billion per year.

The report, posted to the Office of Science and Technology Policy website, does not chart any new territory, but it’s unusually clear about the scale and nature of NASA’s problems. The committee said what needed to be said in the interest of a reality-based space program.

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Quietest Room In The World Opens Its Doors

Dr David Carberry prepares an experiment in the new Bristol University building which is the 'quietest' in the world Photo: SWNS

From The Telegraph:

The world's 'quietest' room opened its doors for the study of nanotechnology in Bristol.

The ''ultra-low vibration suite'', which cost £11million, allows scientists to manipulate atoms and molecules without the interference of environmental vibrations interrupting their work.

There is virtually no air movement inside the cutting edge laboratory, which is anchored to the rock foundation in the basement of the Nanoscience and Quantum Information Centre in Bristol.

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Cargo Spaceship Meets The Catcher In The Sky

Artist's impression of HTV approaching ISS (Image:JAXA)

From The New Scientist:

If the first launch of Japan's new heavy-lifting rocket passes without incident this month, the residents of the International Space Station will soon be taking delivery of food, water, some spanking new laptops, a robot arm and a couple of Earth-observing experiments. Business as usual, you might think, except that the way this particular cargo gets to its destination is subtly different to its predecessors.

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"Quantum Quest" Brings Cassini to the Big Screen (Starring William Shatner as Every Star in the Universe)

From Popular Science:

Harry Kloor may be the world’s most well-rounded nerd. He is the only person to have earned doctorates in physics and chemistry simultaneously, and he has penned episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. And when NASA asked him for help in improving its image with young people, he drew on both of those experiences. The best way to get kids enthused about outer space, Kloor figured, was to hide their medicine in a bucket of popcorn. Next February, Quantum Quest, a star-studded CGI space adventure that pairs animated protons with real footage from NASA spacecraft, hits theaters. “Many of NASA’s scientists were inspired by Star Trek and Star Wars,” he says. “I want to inspire that kind of passion.” We caught up with Kloor to find out why kids will go nuts for quarks.

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That Late-Night Snack: Worse Than You Think

Eating at irregular times -- the equivalent of the middle of the night for humans, when the body wants to sleep -- influences weight gain, a new study has found. (Credit: iStockphoto/Curt Pickens)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2009) — Eat less, exercise more. Now there is new evidence to support adding another "must" to the weight-loss mantra: eat at the right time of day.

A Northwestern University study has found that eating at irregular times -- the equivalent of the middle of the night for humans, when the body wants to sleep -- influences weight gain. The regulation of energy by the body's circadian rhythms may play a significant role. The study is the first causal evidence linking meal timing and increased weight gain.

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