New Computer Model Could Explain how Simple Molecules Took First Step Toward Life

Two Brookhaven researchers developed theoretical model to explain the origins of self-replicating molecules

(July 28, 2015)  Nearly four billion years ago, the earliest precursors of life on Earth emerged. First small, simple molecules, or monomers, banded together to form larger, more complex molecules, or polymers. Then those polymers developed a mechanism that allowed them to self-replicate and pass their structure on to future generations.

We wouldn't be here today if molecules had not made that fateful transition to self-replication. Yet despite the fact that biochemists have spent decades searching for the specific chemical process that can explain how simple molecules could make this leap, we still don't really understand how it happened.

Now Sergei Maslov, a computational biologist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, and Alexei Tkachenko, a scientist at Brookhaven's Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), have taken a different, more conceptual approach.  They've developed a model that explains how monomers could very rapidly make the jump to more complex polymers. And what their model points to could have intriguing implications for CFN's work in engineering artificial self-assembly at the nanoscale. Their work is published in the July 28, 2015 issue of The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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“CARBON SINK” detected underneath world's deserts

(July 28, 2015)   The world’s deserts may be storing some of the climate-changing carbon dioxide emitted by human activities, a new study suggests. Massive aquifers underneath deserts could hold more carbon than all the plants on land, according to the new research.

Humans add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. About 40 percent of this carbon stays in the atmosphere and roughly 30 percent enters the ocean, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Scientists thought the remaining carbon was taken up by plants on land, but measurements show plants don’t absorb all of the leftover carbon. Scientists have been searching for a place on land where the additional carbon is being stored—the so-called “missing carbon sink.”

The new study suggests some of this carbon may be disappearing underneath the world’s deserts – a process exacerbated by irrigation. Scientists examining the flow of water through a Chinese desert found that carbon from the atmosphere is being absorbed by crops, released into the soil and transported underground in groundwater—a process that picked up when farming entered the region 2,000 years ago.

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Will Teen Girls Close the Gender Gap?

(July 28, 2015) Researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education find that not only many teen boys but many teen girls and some parents appear to have biases against teen girls as leaders.

Making Caring Common (MCC), a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, today released new research that suggests that many teen boys and teen girls — and some of their parents — have biases against teen girls as leaders. These biases could be powerful barriers to leadership for a generation of teen girls with historically high levels of education who are key to closing our nation’s gender gap in leadership. The report also suggests that much can be done to prevent and reduce gender biases in children.

Titled Leaning Out: Teen Girls and Leadership Biases, the research report assesses the explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) biases of teen girls, teen boys, and parents with regard to gender and leadership. Findings suggest that many teen boys and teen girls have biases against female leaders in powerful professions such as politics, that many teen girls have biases against other teen girls as leaders, and that many teens perceive their peers as biased against female leaders. Further, the research suggests that some mothers have implicit biases against teen girls as leaders.

“Our study points to insidious bias against girls as leaders that comes from many sources” said Richard Weissbourd, senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and co-director of Making Caring Common. “Bias can be a powerful — and invisible — barrier to teen girls’ leadership. Yet parents and teachers can do a great deal to stem these biases and help children manage them.”

Making Caring Common conducted the research during the 2014–15 school year, including a survey of almost 20,000 students from a diverse range of 59 middle and high schools, smaller follow-up surveys, and a series of focus groups. More information about the research methodology can be found in the full report at www.makingcaringcommon.org.

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Where memory is encoded and retrieved

New findings in a long-standing debate

Researchers study the function of the hippocampus at a cellular level

(July 28, 2015)  Are the same regions and even the same cells of the brain area called hippocampus involved in encoding and retrieving memories or are different areas of this structure engaged? This question has kept neuroscientists busy for a long time. Researchers at the Mercator Research Group "Structure of Memory" at RUB have now found out that the same brain cells exhibit activity in both processes. They have published their results in the journal "Hippocampus".

Hippocampus: the key to memory

In the course of their project, Dr Nozomu Nakamura and Prof Dr Magdalena Sauvage from the work group "Functional Architecture of Memory" (FAM) focused on the brain region hippocampus. This seahorse-like structure plays a crucial role in the formation of long-term memories and later in retrieving of memory contents. This has been demonstrated in patients with amnesia or in elderly people in which cases damage to this structure correlates to severe memory deficits.

Encoding and retrieving memories

For their studies with rats, researchers adapted a standardised word-based memory test for humans, using however scents instead of words. The researchers hid small treats in sand-filled cups. In addition, each cup also contained a different scent, such as thyme or coriander which could be smelled by the rats when searching for the treats. Each training unit consisted of three phases. During the learning phase, researchers presented several scents to the animals. A pause followed, and subsequently a recognition phase. In the latter, the animals were presented the scents from the learning phase as well as other smells. The animals demonstrated that they recognised a scent from the learning phase by running to the back wall of their cage, where they were rewarded with food for the correct response. If, on the other hand, they recognised that a scent had not been presented during the learning phase, they demonstrated it by digging in the sand with their front paws.

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Plant Light Sensors Came From Ancient Algae

Plants’ ability to sense red light key to life on land

(July 28, 2015)  The light-sensing molecules that tell plants whether to germinate, when to flower and which direction to grow were inherited millions of years ago from ancient algae, finds a new study from Duke University.

The findings are some of the strongest evidence yet refuting the prevailing idea that the ancestors of early plants got the red light sensors that helped them move from water to land by engulfing light-sensing bacteria, the researchers say.

The results appear online in Nature Communications.

“Much like we see the world through our eyes, plants ‘see’ the world through light-sensitive proteins in their leaves called photoreceptors,” said Duke postdoctoral researcher Fay-Wei Li.

Photoreceptors monitor changes in the direction, intensity, duration and wavelength of light shining on a plant, and send signals that tell plants when to sprout, when to blossom, and how to bend or stretch to avoid being shaded by their neighbors.

“Light is what gives plants the energy they need to survive,” Li said. “But light is constantly changing with the time of day and the seasons and the surrounding vegetation. Photoreceptors help plants determine if it’s summer or winter, or if they’re under the canopy or out in the open.”

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Superfast Fluorescence Sets New Speed Record

Plasmonic device has speed and efficiency to serve optical computers

(July 28, 2015)  Researchers have developed an ultrafast light-emitting device that can flip on and off 90 billion times a second and could form the basis of optical computing.

At its most basic level, your smart phone’s battery is powering billions of transistors using electrons to flip on and off billions of times per second. But if microchips could use photons instead of electrons to process and transmit data, computers could operate even faster. 

But first engineers must build a light source that can be turned on and off that rapidly. While lasers can fit this requirement, they are too energy-hungry and unwieldy to integrate into computer chips.

Duke University researchers are now one step closer to such a light source. In a new study, a team from the Pratt School of Engineering pushed semiconductor quantum dots to emit light at more than 90 gigahertz. This so-called plasmonic device could one day be used in optical computing chips or for optical communication between traditional electronic microchips.

The study was published online on July 27 in Nature Communications.

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New material opens possibilities for super-long-acting pills

A pH-responsive polymer gel could create swallowable devices, including capsules for ultra-long drug delivery.

(July 28, 2015)  Medical devices designed to reside in the stomach have a variety of applications, including prolonged drug delivery, electronic monitoring, and weight-loss intervention. However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration. As such, they are usually designed to remain in the stomach for a limited time.

Now, researchers at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern and could allow for the development of long-acting devices that reside in the stomach, including orally delivered capsules that can release drugs over a number of days, weeks, or potentially months following a single administration.

This polymer is pH-responsive: It is stable in the acidic stomach environment but dissolves in the small intestine’s near-neutral pH, allowing for safe passage through the remainder of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The material is also elastic, allowing for the compression and folding of devices into easily ingestible capsules — meaning this polymer can be used to create safe devices designed for extremely prolonged residence in the stomach.

“One of the issues with any device in the GI tract is that there’s the potential for an obstruction, which is a medical emergency potentially requiring surgical intervention,” says Koch Institute research affiliate Giovanni Traverso, also a gastroenterologist at MGH and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. “A material like this represents a real advance because it is both safe and stable in the stomach environment.”

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Oil droplets turn cells into tiny lasers

Injecting single cells with spheres of fluorescent dye could open new research and treatment avenues using light.

(July 28, 2015)  Scientists have turned individual cells into miniature lasers by injecting them with droplets of oil or fat mixed with a fluorescent dye that can be activated by short pulses of light.

The finding, reported on 27 July in Nature Photonics1, could help to broaden how light is used for both medical diagnosis and treatment.

The system was devised by Seok Hyun Yun and Matjaž Humar, both optical physicists at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and uses droplets of fat or oil within a cell to reflect and amplify light, generating a laser.

Yun had previously reported a method for generating laser light by engineering cells to express a fluorescent jellyfish protein, then placing a single such cell between a pair of external mirrors2. His latest work goes a step further, producing a cell with a self-contained laser.

Conventional luminescent probes, which include fluorescent dyes and proteins, have relatively broad emission spectra — around 30-100 nanometres. This limits the number of probes that can be used simultaneously, because it is often difficult to distinguish these sources of luminescence from the broad background emissions of naturally occurring molecules in tissue.

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Smaller, faster, cheaper

(July 28, 2015)  Transmitting large amounts of data, such as those needed to keep the internet running, requires high-performance modulators that turn electric signals into light signals. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed a modulator that is a hundred times smaller than conventional models.

In February 1880 in his laboratory in Washington the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell developed a device which he himself called his greatest achievement, greater even than the telephone: the “photophone”. Bell’s idea to transmit spoken words over large distances using light was the forerunner of a technology without which the modern internet would be unthinkable. Today, huge amounts of data are sent incredibly fast through fibre-optic cables as light pulses. For that purpose they first have to be converted from electrical signals, which are used by computers and telephones, into optical signals. In Bell’s days it was a simple, very thin mirror that turned sound waves into modulated light. Today’s electro-optic modulators are more complicated, but they do have one thing in common with their distant ancestor: at several centimeters they are still rather large, especially when compared with electronic devices that can be as small as a few micrometers.

In a seminal paper in the scientific journal “Nature Photonics”, Juerg Leuthold, professor of photonics and communications at ETH Zurich, and his colleagues now present a novel modulator that is a hundred times smaller and that can, therefore, be easily integrated into electronic circuits. Moreover, the new modulator is considerably cheaper and faster than common models, and it uses far less energy.

The plasmon-trick

For this sleight of hand the researchers led by Leuthold and his doctoral student Christian Haffner, who contributed to the development of the modulator, use a technical trick. In order to build the smallest possible modulator they first need to focus a light beam whose intensity they want to modulate into a very small volume. The laws of optics, however, dictate that such a volume cannot be smaller than the wavelength of the light itself. Modern telecommunications use laser light with a wavelength of one and a half micrometers, which accordingly is the lower limit for the size of a modulator.

In order to beat that limit and to make the device even smaller, the light is first turned into so-called surface-plasmon-polaritons. Plasmon-polaritons are a combination of electromagnetic fields and electrons that propagate along a surface of a metal strip. At the end of the strip they are converted back to light once again. The advantage of this detour is that plasmon-polaritons can be confined in a much smaller space than the light they originated from.

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NATURE: Compact Optical Data Transmission

(July 28, 2015)  Component for Energy-efficient Optical Communication between Silicon Chips Presented in “Nature Photonics.“ / Micrometer-size Component fast Converts Electrical Signals into Optical Signals

Compact optical transmission possibilities are of great interest in faster and more energy-efficient data exchange between electronic chips. One component serving this application is the Mach-Zehnder modulator (MZM) which is able to convert electronic signals into optical signals. Scientists of the KIT and the ETH in Zurich developed a plasmonic MZM of only 12.5 micrometers length which converts digital electrical signals into optical signals at a rate of up to 108 gigabit per second, and presented this device in the “Nature Photonics” scientific journal. (DOI 10.1038/nphoton.2015.127).

“Optical technologies offer an enormous potential especially in transmitting data between computer chips,” explains Manfred Kohl of the KIT. The EU project he directs, NAVOLCHI, Nano Scale Disruptive Silicon-Plasmonic Platform for Chip-to-Chip Interconnection, developed the plasmonic modulator (an electric-to-optical converter) which is the basis of the current MZM. “Compact optical transmitter and receiver units could exceed the speed limits of present-day electronic systems and help get rid of the bottlenecks in data centers.”

The current publication presents an MZM only 12.5 micrometers long, which is roughly one tenth the thickness of a hair. It consists of two arms, each of which contains one electro-optical modulator. Each modulator is made up of a metal-insulator-metal waveguide with a gap approximately 80 nanometers wide and filled with an electro-optical polymer, and sidewalls made of gold which, at the same time, act as electrodes. The electrodes carry a voltage which is modulated in line with the digital data. The electro-optical polymer changes its index of refraction as a function of the voltage. The waveguide and the coupler made of silicon route the two parts of a split light beam to the gaps or from the gaps.

In the respective gap, the light beams of the waveguides initiate electromagnetic surface waves, the so-called surface plasmons. The voltage applied to the polymer modulates the surface waves. Modulation is different in both gaps but coherent, as the same voltage is applied with different polarities. After passing through the gaps, the surface waves initially enter the output optical waveguides as modulated light beams and are then superimposed. The result is a light beam in whose intensity (amplitude), the digital information was encoded.

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Researchers predict material with record-setting melting point

 Handling the heat

Compounds made from hafnium and carbon have some of the highest known melting points.

Using computer simulations, Brown University engineers predict that a material

made with hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon will have a higher melting point than

any known material. Image: Van de Walle lab/Brown University

(July 27, 2015)  Using advanced computers and a computational technique to simulate physical processes at the atomic level, researchers at Brown University have predicted that a material made from hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon would have the highest known melting point, about two-thirds the temperature at the surface of the sun.

Using powerful computer simulations, researchers from Brown University have identified a material with a higher melting point than any known substance.

The computations, described in the journal Physical Review B (Rapid Communications), showed that a material made with just the right amounts of hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon would have a melting point of more than 4,400 kelvins (7,460 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s about two-thirds the temperature at the surface of the sun, and 200 kelvins higher than the highest melting point ever recorded experimentally.

The experimental record-holder is a substance made from the elements hafnium, tantalum, and carbon (Hf-Ta-C). But these new calculations suggest that an optimal composition of hafnium, nitrogen, and carbon — HfN0.38C0.51 — is a promising candidate to set a new mark. The next step, which the researchers are undertaking now, is to synthesize material and corroborate the findings in the lab.

“The advantage of starting with the computational approach is we can try lots of different combinations very cheaply and find ones that might be worth experimenting with in the lab,” said Axel van de Walle, associate professor of engineering and co-author of the study with postdoctoral researcher Qijun Hong. “Otherwise we’d just be shooting in the dark. Now we know we have something that’s worth a try.”

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'MOOD' - Sunglass for music

(July 27, 2015)  MOOD, was designed with the goal of making the experience of music listening totally complete. It can assign optional vision to the feeling by the psychedelic music.

It had achieved with 6 pieces of special lenses, wich can rotate around their center point. The lens pattern based on optical effects, such as Moiré-effect, and from one kind of lens pattern, there are six pieces. Rotated relative to each other, the vision is changing for the wearer. However, the individual patterns may be varied with others, so the number of variations – depending on the number of lenses – can be vast. The patterns on the lenses are transparent, and by the RGB color-code, they red, green and blue. Because every color filter the incoming lights differently, and the patterns can overlap each other, or leave blank fields, the new vision is completely random and twisted. It also can be used with clear lenses, for the everyday life.

The shape is designed at the aim of simplicity and the distinctness, that the wearer belongs to a kind of subculture.The imaginative ideal situation is during a travel, when people listen to music, just looking out the window and  watching the ever-changing sight, in a perfect harmony with the music.

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It don’t mean a thing if the brain ain’t got that swing

(July 27, 2015)  Like Duke Ellington’s 1931 jazz standard, the human brain improvises while its rhythm section keeps up a steady beat. But when it comes to taking on intellectually challenging tasks, groups of neurons tune in to one another for a fraction of a second and harmonize, then go back to improvising, according to new research led by UC Berkeley.

These findings, reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, could pave the way for more targeted treatments for people with brain disorders marked by fast, slow or chaotic brain waves, also known as neural oscillations.

Tracking the changing rhythms of the healthy human brain at work advances our understanding of such disorders as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and even autism, which are characterized in part by offbeat brain rhythms. In jazz lingo, for example, bands of neurons in certain mental illnesses may be malfunctioning because they’re tuning in to blue notes, or playing double time or half time.

“The human brain has 86 billion or so neurons all trying to talk to each other in this incredibly messy, noisy and electrochemical soup,” said study lead author Bradley Voytek. “Our results help explain the mechanism for how brain networks quickly come together and break apart as needed.”

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Half Half

(July 27, 2015)  Half Half collection is not only to experiment different potentials of stone and metal, which have shared history of human being’s making things, but also to find timeless design approach out by making contrast between pureness of metal and stone. The project is to reinterpret the material as a table and a stool, by using shape of circle and square. The point is to have a strong contrast between metal and stone. I decided to use a geometrical structure like crossing a heavy material over the bent stainless steel. And then it’s able to function a hundred percent as a stool and a table with a good contrast between a light material and heavy one. It can be recognized easily by people because of using the basic shapes like circle and square. That is intentional aim to make a definite function through a simple shape. And the design shows the possibility of the materiality with various stones. It gives people inspiration by refection of pattern and color of the stones on face of metal. Finally, Half Half becomes the functional sculpture to stimulate people’s curiosity and imagination.

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Should androids have the right to have children?

ROBOT MUMMY: Hellstrand believes in a future with greater diversity regarding identity,

particularly with regard to technological possibilities and social relations.

Photo: Linda Bucklin/iStock

(July 27, 2015)  In contemporary science fiction, we often see robots passing themselves off as humans. According to a UiS researcher, the genre problematises what it takes to be accepted as a human being and provides a useful contribution to the debate about who should have the right to reproduce.

Science fiction culture has prospered and gone from being for nerds only in the 1970s and 1980s to becoming part of popular culture in the last two decades. This particularly applies to the TV series genre, which has become mainstream with Battlestar Galactica (2004), Heroes (2006) and Fringe (2009).

"The genre has evolved from depicting technology as a threat, to dealing with more intimate relations between humans and machines", says Ingvil Hellstrand. In her doctoral thesis, she points out that science fiction today is often about humanoid androids that are trying to become "one of us".

According to Hellstrand, this is not incidental.

"Contemporary science fiction reflects current changes in a destabilised world, relating both to boundaries between Us and Them and the boundary regarding what it means to be human. This theme is closely connected to the revolution in medical technology in which we find ourselves", Hellstrand explains.

She debated this at the University of Stavanger earlier this year with her thesis "Passing as human. Posthuman worldings at stake in contemporary science fiction".

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Apple Watch Eloquent

The process behind reconceptualising the Apple Watch was to not only improve various components but to also offer watch consumers the option to download custom and exclusively branded dials, that will make the newly improved watch all the more appealing and personal.

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Quantum networks: Back and forth are not equal distances!

(July 27, 2015)  Quantum technology based on light (photons) has great potential for radically new information technology based on photonic circuits. Up to now, the photons in quantum photonic circuits have behaved in the same way whether they moved forward or backward in a photonic channel. This has limited the ability to control the photons and thus build complex circuits for photonic quantum computers. Now researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have discovered a new type of photonic channels, where back and forth are not equal distances! Such a system has been a missing component for building quantum photonic circuits on a large scale. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature Nanotechnology.

“The smallest component of light is a photon and photons are very well suited for carrying information. A quantum circuit based on photons could contain far more information than is possible with current computer technology and the information could not be intercepted en route. So we are working to shape the future quantum technology based on photonics,” explains Peter Lodahl, Professor and head of the research group Quantum Photonics at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

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Smart Hydrogel Coating Creates “Stick-slip” Control of Capillary Action

(July 27, 2015)  Coating the inside of glass microtubes with a polymer hydrogel material dramatically alters the way capillary forces draw water into the tiny structures, researchers have found. The discovery could provide a new way to control microfluidic systems, including popular lab-on-a-chip devices.

Capillary action draws water and other liquids into confined spaces such as tubes, straws, wicks and paper towels, and the flow rate can be predicted using a simple hydrodynamic analysis. But a chance observation by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology will cause a recalculation of those predictions for conditions in which hydrogel films line the tubes carrying water-based liquids.

“Rather than moving according to conventional expectations, water-based liquids slip to a new location in the tube, get stuck, then slip again – and the process repeats over and over again,” explained Andrei Fedorov, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. “Instead of filling the tube with a rate of liquid penetration that slows with time, the water propagates at a nearly constant speed into the hydrogel-coated capillary. This was very different from what we had expected.”

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Neural efficiency hypothesis confirmed

(July 27, 2015)  One of the big questions intelligence researchers grapple with is just how differences in intelligence are reflected in the human brain. Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in studying further details relating to suspected functional differences in the brains of intelligent people.

The brains of more intelligent people are capable of solving tasks more efficiently, which is why these people have superior cognitive faculties, or as Elsbeth Stern, Professor for Research on Learning and Instruction at ETH Zurich, puts it: “when a more and a less intelligent person are given the same task, the more intelligent person requires less cortical activation to solve the task.” Scientists refer to this as the neural efficiency hypothesis, although it ceased being a hypothesis quite some time ago and is now accepted by experts as an undisputed fact, with ample evidence to support it.

While working on her doctoral thesis in Stern's work group, Daniela Nussbaumer also found evidence of this effect for the first time in a group of people possessing above-average intelligence for tasks involving what is referred to as working memory. “We measured the electrical activity in the brains of university students, enabling us to identify differences in brain activity between people with slightly above-average and considerably above-average IQs,” explained Nussbaumer. Past studies conducted to identify the effect of neural efficiency have generally used groups of people that exhibit extreme variations in intelligence.

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Increased Protein Turnover Contributes to the Development of Pulmonary Fibrosis

(July 27, 2015) Scientists of the Comprehensive Pneumology Center (CPC) at the Helmholtz Zentrum München have identified a new mechanism which contributes to the development of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). They showed that the pathological changes of lung tissue are accompanied by an increase in protein turnover by the central protein degradation machinery of the cell – the proteasome. Their study has now been published in the ‘American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine’.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a very aggressive form of pulmonary fibrosis and has a particularly poor prognosis. This fatal disease, for which so far no causal therapies exist, is characterized by a massive deposition of connective and scar tissue in the lung, which leads to a progressive loss of lung function and ultimately death. Connective tissue is mainly produced by myofibroblasts. The research group led by PD Dr. Silke Meiners of the Institute of Lung Biology and the CPC showed now for the first time that the activation of these myofibroblasts depends on increased protein turnover by the 26S proteasome*.

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Bielefeld Students Develop Rapid Tests to Test Drinking Water Quality

(July 27, 2015)  In Boston, the iGEM team will compete with this research project against universities from around the world

What am I actually drinking here? Is my drinking water contaminated with heavy metals? Or can I test if my drink has been laced with knock-out drugs? Ten students from Bielefeld University are working on developing test strips that would allow anyone to quickly test the quality of their drinking water or drink. With this research project, the student team will compete at this year’s iGEM competition in Boston, USA. iGEM stands for “international genetically engineered machine” and is the most important student competition in synthetic biology. From 24-28 September in Boston, the team will present their findings and compete against other research projects by teams from universities around the world.

Contaminated drinking water can be a problem not only in developing countries, but also in our own backyard. Knowing what is in the water, and whether it is safe to drink, can be crucial for survival in some cases. A test strip that is as simple to read as a barcode, for example with a Smartphone app, could be a solution to the problem. “Such a testing system could prove beneficial in crisis zones, for instance places that have experienced flooding or an earthquake. Emergency responders should be able to test whether the drinking water in the area is dangerous for the people using an easy, quick, accurate, and cheap method, which will then enable them to take additional measures as necessary,” explains iGEM member Luzia Buchholz.

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THRIVE sets its sights on waste heat: Waste not, want not

(July 27, 2015)  As part of the National Research Program “Energy Turnaround” NRP 70 the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is supporting the interdisciplinary research project “THRIVE”. With IBM Research – Zurich and the Hochschule für Technik Rapperswil as leading houses, scientists from Empa, ETH Zurich, HEIG-VD and PSI will be teaming up with industrial partners until 2017 to develop a heat pump that is powered by waste heat.

Compared to today’s compression heat pumps, this technology only requires very little electricity and can also use waste heat efficiently to air-condition buildings. The project is part of the SNSF initiative to support the Swiss government’s “Energy Strategy 2050” and is open to further industrial partners interested in collaborating.

According to a study commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE), heat production accounts for around half of Switzerland’s entire energy consumption, such as for heating or numerous technical procedures, including drying, forging or melting. Today, the energy demand is primarily covered by fossil energy sources and the waste heat produced in the process is usually released unused into the surroundings. Almost 40% of the total electricity consumption still goes on heating and cooling. The Energy Strategy 2050 plans to phase out nuclear power, which provides 40% of Switzerland’s electricity today, and to drastically reduce CO2 emissions – a goal that urgently requires the more efficient use of the available energy resources and a sustainable reduction in the electricity consumption.

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Magnetic temperature meter revealed

Researchers in Kiel develop a new method of thermographic imaging

(July 27, 2015)  Those who wish to renovate their houses and make them more energy-efficient often use the well-known yellow to blue thermal images to visually identify weak spots applying infra-red measurements. Thermographic imaging is also used in industry for materials testing. Depending on the material, however, the method can result in large measurement errors. Scientists at Kiel University have now developed a technology that visually identifies the slightest temperature differences with high spatial resolution, whatever the material. This new principle competes with other procedures as well, as reported by researchers in the current edition of the scientific journal, Advanced Materials.

In their research, the scientists in Kiel make use of the magnetic properties of a certain material. In experiments, a thin, transparent layer of a garnet compound (garnet is a mineral from the silicates category) is placed on the object to be investigated - in this case, an integrated circuit of a microchip. If the temperature anywhere on the circuit changes even by the slightest amount, the layer of material reacts by changing its magnetic properties. The warmer it becomes, the smaller the magnetisation.

This magnetisation, being different depending on the temperature, can be made visible with a so-called polarisation microscope: polarised light is light that is forced into a certain direction of oscillation (similar to some sunglasses). When it reaches the surface of the thin layer, it is reflected differently, depending on the materials’ magnetisation. A digital, light-sensitive camera captures the reflected light. The magneto-optical images show the temperature distribution in the circuit and the tiny magnetic domains of the material; these are separate areas that have the same polarisation.

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Edible Monsters

(July 25, 2015) 

“Feeding the planet, Energy for life”, from dietary habits around the world to food shortage, from the responsible use of resources to how to build a sustainable future and much more…

The monsters are coming!

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New reef fish found off Curaçao

(July 25, 2015)  Discoveries keep bubbling up from the Caribbean Sea as Carole Baldwin and Ross Robertson of the Smithsonian Institution’s Deep Reef Observation Project name a fourth new tropical fish, the yellow-spotted sand goby, Coryphopterus curasub.

The fish takes its name, published in the journal ZooKeys on July 17, from Substation Curaçao’s Curasub, a submersible that caters to tourists, adventurers and researchers. Since their first expedition in 2011, Smithsonian marine scientists have collected more than 100 fishes, about a third of which are new to science. Their findings underscore how little is known about the incredible biological diversity of the Caribbean’s deep reefs.

“Every new place we go along the coast of Curaçao we find something we have not seen and collected before,” said Robertson, a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

The new fish, found 70 to 80 meters —around 230 to 260 feet—below the surface, is the deepest-dwelling addition to its genus, which now includes 12 species in the western Atlantic and one in the eastern Pacific, The discovery of a goby at this depth raises questions about how it differs from its shallower brethren. In addition to differences in its mitochondrial DNA, its pattern of spots and some physical features of its fins also distinguish C. curasub from other gobies.

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Marine Plankton Brighten Clouds over Southern Ocean

(July 25, 2015)  New research using NASA satellite data and ocean biology models suggests tiny organisms in vast stretches of the Southern Ocean play a significant role in generating brighter clouds overhead. Brighter clouds reflect more sunlight back into space affecting the amount of solar energy that reaches Earth’s surface, which in turn has implications for global climate. The results were published July 17 in the journal Science Advances.

The study shows that plankton, the tiny drifting organisms in the sea, produce airborne gases and organic matter to seed cloud droplets, which lead to brighter clouds that reflect more sunlight.

"The clouds over the Southern Ocean reflect significantly more sunlight in the summertime than they would without these huge plankton blooms," said co-lead author Daniel McCoy, a University of Washington doctoral student in atmospheric sciences. "In the summer, we get about double the concentration of cloud droplets as we would if it were a biologically dead ocean."

Although remote, the oceans in the study area between 35 and 55 degrees south is an important region for Earth's climate. Results of the study show that averaged over a year, the increased brightness reflects about 4 watts of solar energy per square meter.

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HELIX: Wearable Cuff with Stereo Bluetooth Headphones

(July 25, 2015)  The Helizx is the first wearable with headphones on your wrist. In a sleek form, Helix ensures that fashion and tech are always at hand

About this project

Fashion and functionality are the principles on which the Helix was created. Helix solves the problem of dealing with tangled and easy to lose headphones. What do you do with your headphones when they aren’t plugged in? Instead of keeping them in your pocket or purse, access them in a fashion-forward cuff for easy convenience. It can take minutes to unravel earbuds. With Helix, you’ll plug in your headphones in just seconds.

Helix was designed for people who are always on and always in style. We want to create something unique for music-lovers, tech users, and smartphone mavens. We want to deliver an incredible sound experience in a wearable that’s on the cutting edge of modern fashion trends. Our goal is to make carrying headphones convenient and fashionable. The discreet, miniature compartment inside Helix accomplishes just that.

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Mamma Nessie Colander Spoon Recreate the Mysterious Scene In Your Soup

(July 25, 2015)
This is a pretty cute and practical colander spoon designed by OTOTO, a Tel Aviv based design studio. The colander spoon measure 29x12x11cm and as shown in the images, it's designed based on Loch Ness monster, but apparently the spoon looks more cutr with its bright color and slim figure

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SUNPLACE Solar Cooking Table & Set

(July 25, 2015)
Sunplace is for cooking and sharing, using the most basic,self-sufficient, clean and inexhaustible energysource: the sun

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The Maxun One solar bike

(July 25, 2015) The first two-whealsolar bike that drives entirely by solar energy 

The solar panels alone deliver the energy for a speed of 15mph /25km/h

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Langhorne Stool

(July 25, 2015) Langhorne Stool was designed with great focus on functionality, comfort and materials. Those were central of every design decision during the process of crafting tihis stool. Each stool is made of American Walnut from hardwood forests in PA using the method developed by Robert Erickson for handcarving seats in the early 70's.

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Bomb-proof lining contains explosion in luggage hold of aircraft

*  Fly-Bag lining successfully contained blasts in series of controlled explosions

*  Using this technology, tests show plane’s luggage hold may be able to contain force of an explosion if a device hidden in a passenger’s luggage detonates

(July 25, 2015)  A bomb-proof lining developed by an international team of scientists, including academics from the University of Sheffield, has successfully contained blasts in a series of controlled explosions in the luggage hold of a Boeing 747 and an Airbus 321.

The Fly-Bag, which lines an aircraft’s luggage hold with multiple layers of novel fabrics and composites, was tested under increasing explosive charges on disused planes at Cotswolds Airport, near Cirencester, this week.

Using this technology, the tests have demonstrated that a plane’s luggage hold may be able to contain the force of an explosion should a device concealed within a passenger’s luggage be detonated during a flight. This would mitigate damage to the plane and help keep passengers safe.

After the tests, explosives were placed in the aircraft without the lining to show the damage that could be caused.

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Brain structure reveals ability to regulate emotions

(July 24, 2015)  People diagnosed with a personality disorder may find it difficult to function in society due to difficulties in regulating emotions – but also healthy individuals differ in how often they become irritated, angry or sad. Scientists from Karolinska Institutet have published a study in the medical journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, where they show that the affected brain areas in people with a clinical diagnosis are also affected in healthy individuals.

We all vary in how often we become happy, sad or angry, and also in how strongly these emotions are expressed. This variability is a part of our personality and can be seen as a positive aspect that increases diversity in society. However, there are people that find it so difficult to regulate their emotions that it has a serious impact on their work, family and social life. These individuals may be given an emotional instability diagnosis such as borderline personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.

Previous studies have shown that people diagnosed with emotional instability disorders exhibit a decrease in the volume of certain brain areas. The scientists wanted to know if these areas are also associated with the variability in the ability to regulate emotions that can be seen in healthy individuals. In the current study, 87 healthy subjects were given a clinical questionnaire and asked to rate to what degree they have problems with regulating emotions in their everyday lives. The brains of the subjects were then scanned with MRI. The scientists found that an area in the lower frontal lobe, the so-called orbitofrontal cortex, exhibited smaller volumes in the healthy individuals that reported that they have problems with regulating emotions. The greater the problems, the smaller the volume detected. The same area is known to have a smaller volume in patients with borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. Similar findings were also seen in other areas of the brain that are known for being important in emotional regulation.

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Wind energy provides 8% of Europe’s electricity

(July 24, 2015)  EU’s grid connected cumulative capacity in 2014 reached 129 GW, meeting 8% of European electricity demand, equivalent to the combined annual consumption of Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Ireland. According to a JRC report, the impressive growth of the industry will allow at least 12% electricity share by 2020, a significant contribution to the goal of the European energy and climate package of 20% share of energy from renewable sources.

The 2014 JRC wind status report presents the technology, market and economics of the wind energy sector with a focus on the EU. Wind power is the renewable energy which has seen the widest and most successful deployment over the last two decades, increasing the global cumulative capacity from 3 GW to 370 GW. Last year represented an annual record with 52.8 GW of wind turbines capacity installed worldwide, a 48% increase compared to 2013 and 17% over the 2012 record of 45.2GW.

With 23.2 GW of new installations and a market share of 44%, China is well ahead of EU’s member states which together installed 13.05 GW. The EU however still leads in cumulative capacity and its 129 GW onshore and offshore wind installations, allowed six countries – Denmark, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Romania and Germany – to generate between 10 and 40 % of their electricity from wind.

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