MedWorm.com provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest items from the 'Physics Today News Picks' source. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:25:01 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5664556&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Ffire-breaks-out-at-russian-nuc.html Reuters: Early Sunday a fire broke out at the Alikhanov Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, a nuclear research center in Moscow that houses a nonoperational 60-year-old atomic reactor. Although institute officials maintain that there was no risk of a radiation leak, Greenpeace Russia officials expressed concern. The fire, which broke out in a basement area of the facility, consisted primarily of smoke that came from an area housing power cables. The smoke was visible above the institute, and an acrid smell filled the air. About 30 emergency vehicles responded. Russian news agencies issued conflicting reports, including whether fire brigades were initially denied access and when exactly the fire was extinguished. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5664556 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5664556 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5664555&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fphysicist-abandons-lawsuit-aga.html Ottawa Citizen: After a quarter century of courtroom battles, Chander Grover, a physicist and former manager of the National Research Council of Canada, has agreed to abandon his last remaining lawsuit against the NRC. Born in India, Grover first complained of unfair discrimination at the NRC in 1987. In 1992 he won a landmark human rights case against the council, whose managers were shown to have "thwarted his advancement, humiliated him, unfairly fired him, then tried to intimidate witnesses from testifying on his behalf," writes Andrew Duffy for the Ottawa Citizen. Grover then proceeded to file four more human rights complaints against the NRC and was dismissed in July 2007 for "medical incapacity." Last year Grover underwent cancer treatments. "It's impossible at my age to continue an... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5664555 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5664555 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5664554&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fchinese-airlines-wont-particip.html BBC: A plan to levy charges on flights in EU airspace based on carbon emissions has been criticized by the US, Canada, and China—and China has barred its airlines from participating. The plan was implemented at the beginning of the year. The EU has estimated that airline passengers will be charged €2–12 more per flight as a result of the plan. China claims that the plan would cost Chinese airlines €95 million a year if they took part. Although the EU could forbid Chinese airlines from flying in EU airspace, doing so could damage its relationship with China. Ultimately, the issue may have to be resolved by the World Trade Organization or another international body. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5664554 Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5664554 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657053&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fmars-too-dry-to-sustain-life.html Telegraph: Researchers at Imperial College London have determined that life could not exist on the surface of Mars because of a super drought that lasted hundreds of millions of years, writes Nick Collins for the Telegraph. Experts spent three years studying individual soil particles collected in 2008 by NASA's Phoenix spacecraft. Despite a warmer and wetter period in Mars's distant past, the 5000 years or so that it lasted was simply too brief for life to have established itself on the surface. "Future NASA and ESA [European Space Agency] missions that are planned for Mars will have to dig deeper to search for evidence of life, which may still be taking refuge underground," said Tom Pike, lead author of a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657053 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657053 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657052&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fesos-very-large-telescope-beco.html BBC: Yesterday an international team of astronomers and engineers succeeded in linking all four of the large telescopes that make up the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, located on Cerro Paranal in Chile's Atacama Desert. Each of the four has been up and running since at least 2000. However, when linked together via interferometry, they form the biggest ground-based optical telescope on Earth, which offers very high spatial resolution and zooming capabilities. "From now on we'll be able to observe things we were not able to observe before," said Frederic Gonte, head of instrumentation. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657052 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657052 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657051&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fmalaysian-rare-earth-plant-per.html New York Times: Rare-earth elements are not that uncommon in Earth's crust, but they're typically dispersed. Economically exploitable forms are rare, however. China currently mines and processes more than 90% of rare earths on the market, and it has placed restrictions on their export over the past several years. On 1 February, Malaysian regulators granted Lynas, an Australian company, an initial operating license for a rare-earth metals refinery expected to open this year. The refinery will process concentrated rare-earth ore from a Lynas mine deep in the Australian desert. Each year it will use thousands of tons of powerful sulfuric acid to separate the valuable minerals from dirt and radioactive contaminants. According to a statement by the Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board, withi... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657051 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657051 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657050&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fresearchers-feel-pressure-to-m.html Nature: Twenty percent of academics from a variety of fields say they have been asked to pad their papers with superfluous references in order to get published, according to a survey conducted by Eric Fong and Allen Whilhite of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Published in Science, the survey results also suggest that journal editors strategically target junior faculty with requests for extra citations as a condition of publication. It has been known for many years that some editors encourage extra references in order to boost their journals' impact factor, but the survey's figures were higher than expected. While 86% of the respondents said that coercion was inappropriate, and 81% thought it damaged a journal's prestige, 57% said they would add superfluous citations to a paper bef... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657050 Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657050 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657057&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fresearchers-boycott-elsevier.html Chronicle of Higher Education: The latest development in the controversy concerning open access to scholarly research is the boycott of Elsevier, the world's largest scientific journal publisher. By Tuesday evening about 2400 scientists had signed an online pledge not to publish or do any editorial work for the company's journals, writes Josh Fischman for the Chronicle of Higher Education. It began with an irate blog post on 21 January by Timothy Gowers, a mathematician at the University of Cambridge. The boycotters claim that Elsevier charges too much for journal content, that its bundling of subscriptions forces libraries to pay for journals they don't want in order to get the ones they do, and that the company is a strong supporter of the Research Works Act. Representatives of Else... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657057 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657057 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657056&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fbrazil-opens-new-center-for-th.html Science: The ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR), which will open on 6 February, is a new regional center for theoretical physics located in São Paulo, Brazil. It is a joint project of the State University of São Paulo, the São Paulo Research Foundation, and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. According to its website, the ICTP-SAIFR's goals are to conduct theoretical physics research at the highest international standards, provide an international center for schools and workshops, and support research in those South American countries where theoretical physics research is not yet well developed. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657056 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657056 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657055&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fjapan-to-consolidate-research-.html Nature: The Japanese government is preparing to merge five of its science organizations: the RIKEN network of basic research laboratories, the National Institute for Materials Science, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention, and the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The change is intended to increase efficiency while reducing costs. The agencies involved would pool research and administrative resources, and a supervisory body that covers all five agencies will probably be established. Few details are known about the timing or potential cost savings, and some researchers have expressed concern that the end result would be deep funding cuts and increased bureaucracy. (Source: Physics Today News Pi... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657055 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657055 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657054&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fmega-volcanoes-could-be-predic.html BBC: Earth's largest volcanoes may signal impending eruptions earlier than previously thought, according to a new study in Nature. Tim Druitt of Blaise Pascal University in France and colleagues analyzed crystals in pumice rock from the Greek island of Santorini, site of the Minoan eruption in the late 1600s BC, and found that magma built up under the surface over a period of a few decades before the event. Given the 18 000–year period between the caldera's Bronze Age eruption and the previous one, that's a surprisingly short amount of time for the magma reservoir to recharge. Long-term monitoring of dormant but potentially active caldera systems could pick up on seismic indications of magma buildup, which could make the difference for any preparation efforts needed to stem los... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657054 Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657054 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657059&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fnasa-finds-simple-solution-for.html Gizmodo: Although NASA canceled its Constellation program, key research from the project could be put to use on future spacecraft. While developing the Ares 1 rocket, engineers discovered that it had a crucial flaw: During the final stages of a launch, the burning down of the solid rocket caused the entire vehicle to oscillate so rapidly that the crew couldn't read the digital display. Rather than involving a costly fix, however, the problem proved to have a relatively simple solution. After an extensive period of trial and error, the engineers decided that, instead of trying to fix the shake, they would make the digital display strobe in time with the vibration. In his article, Gizmodo staff writer Brent Rose describes his trip to NASA's Ames Research Center, where he got the chance to cl... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657059 Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657059 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657058&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F02%2Fcomputers-may-one-day-be-able-.html Daily Mail: Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have been developing a computer program that can decode brain activity and put it into words, writes Tamara Cohen for the Daily Mail. To monitor information from the temporal lobe, where sounds are processed, the scientists inserted electrodes into the brains of 15 patients whose skulls had been cut open for an epilepsy treatment. As the patients listened to a person speaking, the computer analyzed how the brain processed the words they heard. It was able to translate the spoken words into patterns of electrical activity and then translate them back into the original sounds, or something very similar. Brian Pasley, coauthor of a paper published in PLoS Biology, said that with more work, brain recordings could allow scie... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657058 Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657058 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657060&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnew-cell-therapy-technique-may.html BBC: Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have succeeded in converting mouse skin cells into "neural precursor" cells, which can develop into three types of brain cell. The group's findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may be important for certain medical therapies, such as bone marrow transplants. Until now such transplants have relied on stem cells, which can divide and differentiate into many different specialized cell types. Stem-cell research has been hampered by ethical concerns, however, because one source of the cells has been human embryos. More work will have to be done to re-create the experiment using human skin cells. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657060 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657060 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5644167&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Flittle-ice-age-may-have-been-t.html Daily Mail: A study by the University of Colorado has found that four massive tropical volcanic eruptions between AD 1275 and 1300 may be responsible for the "Little Ice Age" that cooled Earth for hundreds of years, writes Rob Waugh for the Daily Mail. Gifford Miller and colleagues, whose paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters, used computer climate modeling to simulate the effects on Arctic sea ice of the heightened volcanic activity some 800 years ago. The eruptions emitted high levels of sulfur into the atmosphere. The sulfur reflected the Sun's rays back into space, which cooled the atmosphere and allowed Arctic sea ice to expand. The expansion and melting of the sea ice continued to cycle long after the volcanoes' effects had dissipated, leading to unusually colder temper... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5644167 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5644167 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5644166&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnew-cell-therapy-technique-may.html BBC: Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have succeeded in converting mouse skin cells into "neural precursor" cells, which can develop into three types of brain cell. The group's findings, which have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may be important for certain medical therapies, such as bone marrow transplants. Until now such transplants have relied on stem cells, which can divide and differentiate into many different specialized cell types. Stem-cell research has been hampered by ethical concerns, however, because one source of the cells has been human embryos. More work will have to be done to re-create the experiment using human skin cells. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5644166 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5644166 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5657061&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Finconstant-as-the-northern-sta.html Science: A new analysis of observations made over the last 160 years suggests that Polaris, also called the North Star, is losing nearly the equivalent of Earth's mass, or just under one millionth of its own mass, every year. Hilding Neilson of the University of Bonn in Germany and colleagues studied the variation in Polaris's pulse—the approximately four-day cycle over which the star grows dimmer and brighter—and found that it's slowing by about 4.5 seconds every year. In 1844, however, it was about 12 minutes slower than it is now. If Polaris is an older star that's burning helium nuclei in its core, then its pulse is decreasing at a faster rate than it should, according to the standard model of stellar evolution. Loss of mass is the only thing that can account for the discre... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5657061 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5657061 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5644169&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fartists-synthetic-shield-explo.html New Scientist: Jalila Essaïdi, a "bioartist" in the Netherlands, recently worked with an international team to blend spider silk with human skin to try to produce a bulletproof material. The project, called 2.6g 329m/s, involved a Utah State University team, which genetically engineered goats to produce spider-silk proteins in their milk. Researchers in South Korea and Germany spun the proteins and wove them into a fabric, which was then wedged between bioengineered skin cells by a biochemist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. In making the material, Essaïdi, who uses biology and life sciences as an artistic medium, says she wanted "to explore the social, political, ethical and cultural issues surrounding safety in a world with access to new biotechnologies." According to t... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5644169 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5644169 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5644168&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fquantum-physics-may-lead-to-se.html Gizmag: With the rising popularity of "cloud computing"—the sharing of resources, software, and information over the internet—security is a growing concern. To preserve privacy while users interact with remote computing centers, researchers in Austria have combined quantum computing with quantum cryptography in a process called blind quantum computation. According to Stefanie Barz and colleagues, whose paper was published online in Science on 20 January, users prepare qubits in a state known only to themselves. They send the qubits to a quantum computer, which entangles and then manipulates them to execute a particular computation, whose results are sent back to the users. The users' input, output, and algorithms are never disclosed to the company doing the computations, and no... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5644168 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5644168 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635839&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fpowerful-x-ray-laser-creates-s.html Science Daily: Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC accelerator laboratory used rapid-fire laser pulses to flash-heat a tiny piece of aluminum foil to about 2 million °C. The experiments used SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source, which is a billion times brighter than any other x-ray source, to both create and probe the sample. "Making extremely hot, dense matter is important scientifically if we are ultimately to understand the conditions that exist inside stars and at the center of giant planets within our own solar system and beyond, " said Sam Vinko, a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University and lead author of the group’s paper published in Nature. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635839 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635839 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635838&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fchair-of-innovative-camera-com.html Macworld: A California company called Lytro has developed a revolutionary new camera that allows users to focus an image after it’s been shot. Lytro uses a microlens array to capture four-dimensional light-field information. With software and processing, that information can be used to improve the image later. In a Q&A with Lytro’s executive chair Charles Chi, Tim Moynihan asks him about the light-field technology, best types of sensors, and licensing possibilities with camera and camera-phone manufacturers. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635838 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635838 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635837&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fiss-evacuation-plan-not-suffic.html Florida Today: NASA isn't adequately prepared to evacuate the International Space Station (ISS) in an emergency, says a new report from the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP). The report recommends that the agency improve its emergency drills and consider alternative "lifeboat" options for ISS. There is a greater than 30% chance that a crew might have to abandon ISS between now and 2020, the planned end of ISS operations, as a result of the failure of critical systems or a deadly space debris strike, says ASAP. The panel also found NASA lacks an adequate plan to safely send the station to a remote spot in the Pacific Ocean at the end of its useful life. ASAP was created by Congress after the loss of three astronauts in the 1967 Apollo 1 launch pad fire. The group is made up of aerospac... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635837 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635837 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635836&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnrc-report-calls-for-new-nano-.html Science: Nanotechnology research requires more oversight regarding human and environmental safety, says a new report from the US National Research Council (NRC). Although the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) studies the safety of nanomaterials, the NRC has found gaps in its guidelines. For example, little research has been done on the effects of human ingestion of nanoparticles or on the safety of complex nanomaterials made up of mixtures of different elements. Potentially the most disruptive recommendation in the report is to change who oversees nanotechnology risk research. NNI currently consists of 25 different federal agencies that work with the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office to coordinate their research efforts to avoid duplication. But neither the NNI nor the C... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635836 Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635836 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635842&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Findias-top-space-scientist-acc.html Financial Times: Madhavan Nair, former head of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has been banned from government employment because of allegations that he was involved in the underpriced leasing of space spectrum to the private sector, write James Fontanella-Khan and James Lamont for the Financial Times. Nair, who supervised 25 space missions during his tenure from 2003 to 2009, earned international recognition for his efforts to put India's space program on a par with those of China and Japan. Since 2009, when he retired from ISRO, he has served as president of the Paris-based International Academy of Astronautics. Regarding the allegations, Nair claimed he was not given any opportunity to defend himself, and one space expert suggested that they were politically motivated. No... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635842 Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635842 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635841&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fresearchers-hide-3d-object-wit.html Daily Mail: Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have succeeded in cloaking a three-dimensional object. According to their results published today in the New Journal of Physics, the group used plasmonic metamaterials to hide an 18-cm cylindrical tube illuminated by microwave radiation. Plasmonic metamaterials scatter light rays differently from the way more common materials do. "When the scattered fields from the cloak and the object interfere, they cancel each other out and the overall effect is transparency and invisibility at all angles of observation," said Andrea Alù, one of the study’s coauthors. One of the next challenges will be to demonstrate cloaking in visible light. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635841 Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635841 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635840&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fflooding-predicted-to-be-the-u.html Nature: According to a study released yesterday by the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, severe flooding will be the most urgent problem the country could face as a result of climate change. The study examines 100 potential consequences of climate change for the UK in a number of different climate scenarios, drawing on climate projection models made in 2009. Flooding currently costs the UK around £1.3 billion (US$2.04 billion) per year; the study predicts that by the 2080s, it could cause £2.1 billion to £12 billion worth of damages each year. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635840 Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635840 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635845&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fchinas-scientific-progress-ham.html Nature: Although China is second only to the US in number of scientific papers produced, the quality of its research needs to improve, writes Peng Gong of Tsinghua University in China and the University of California, Berkeley. In his Nature opinion piece, Gong maintains that the problem is due in part to Chinese culture, which has been heavily influenced by the philosophies of Confucius and Zhuangzi, who encouraged isolation and self-sufficiency. Consequently, Chinese academics and institutions tend not to collaborate, which leads to repetition and redundancy as investigators purchase similar pieces of equipment and do similar types of data processing. And because everyone wants to lead, no one steps up to fill supporting roles. Gong recommends several steps to resolve those problems. The... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635845 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635845 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635844&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fus-climate-scientists-gain-leg.html New York Times: As climate scientists increasingly find themselves under attack and facing litigation for their stance on human-induced global warming, a nonprofit group and monetary fund have been set up to help them fight their legal battles. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) offers aid and advice to government whistleblowers and scientists working on environmental issues. Recently it became affiliated with the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, which was set up last fall to raise money to defend climate scientists involved in litigation and to provide lawyers representing scientists with information about past cases and strategies. In his New York Times Q&A, Andrew Revkin interviews Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER, about the alliance of the two organization... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635844 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635844 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635843&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fno-plutonium-reactor-at-sellaf.html Guardian: General Electric (GE) Hitachi's plan to build a sodium-cooled, plutonium-burning fast reactor at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site has been rejected by the UK government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). Known as PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module), the new design was intended to convert the 82-ton plutonium stockpile at the site into power. The NDA concluded that PRISM's technology is neither mature nor commercially proven. There are also security risks inherent in the proposal, because it would require converting the existing plutonium stockpile from an oxide form to a metal form, which is easier to make into bombs. In addition, the conversion would create a substantial quantity of plutonium-contaminated salt as a byproduct, which would also need to be... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635843 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635843 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5635846&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fmagnetic-soap-could-help-compl.html BBC: In the future oil spills and waste water could be cleaned up by combining the properties of magnetism and soap. Julian Eastoe of the University of Bristol and colleagues added iron atoms to soap molecules and found that the atoms clumped together into nanoparticles that responded to a magnetic field. The soap and any materials it picks up, can then be removed from water by applying a magnetic field. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5635846 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5635846 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5625125&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fsolar-sails-harness-both-wind-.html BBC: An Australian company, SolarSailor, has been developing high-tech sails that will use both the Sun and the wind to reduce ships' dependence on fossil fuels. The giant sails are covered with solar panels, and the electricity generated is stored in a battery. The technology, which combines an electric motor and a combustion engine, is similar to that used in hybrid cars. Currently in use on several passenger ferries operating near Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Sydney, the solar-sail technology could be mounted on all types of vessels, including tankers, cruise liners, and private yachts. SolarSailor's founder, Robert Dane, estimates that the giant sails could cut a ship's annual fossil-fuel usage by almost 50%. Although the company has been operating for more than a decade and has yet to tur... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5625125 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5625125 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5625124&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fsolar-storm-peaks-today.html Washington Post: A solar storm on Sunday was expected to send streams of radiation toward Earth today, which could affect satellite communications and GPS signals, as well as the electrical grid. The storm, the biggest since 2003, began with a burst of x rays shooting out of a sunspot; that event was followed by a coronal mass ejection that pushed a cloud of plasma and charged particles toward Earth. Although space weather experts were not anticipating any catastrophic effects, they alerted several groups, including satellite operators, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. In addition to any inconveniences the storm may cause, North America could see some vivid auroras at lower latitudes. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5625124 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5625124 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5625123&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Ffaster-faster-fourier-transfor.html Tech and Computer: A new and faster Fourier transform algorithm has been developed by Dina Katabi of MIT and colleagues. The Fourier transform is a method for representing an irregular signal as a combination of pure frequencies. It's used in a wide variety of applications, including nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, image and audio file compression, and the solving of differential equations. The fast Fourier transform (FFT) technique, which was developed in the 1960s, made it practical to calculate Fourier transforms on the fly; it takes a digital signal containing a certain number of samples and expresses it as the weighted sum of an equivalent number of frequencies. Some of the frequencies count more toward the sum than others, and many of the frequencies may have such low weights tha... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5625123 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5625123 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5625127&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fcrowdsourcing-earthquake-activ.html Ars Technica: New technologies are enabling crowdsourcing in a number of scientific disciplines—most recently, seismology. After the 23 August 2011 earthquake on the US East Coast, a video rendering of the seismic waves’ travel was created by plotting the posted Twitter messages that contained the word “earthquake.” Richard Allen, a seismologist at the University of California, Berkeley, has published a paper in Science that discusses the possibilities and the limitations of such crowdsourcing of earthquake information. Besides Twitter, the US Geological Survey seeks the public’s input via its Did You Feel It? website, UC Berkeley has developed an iShake app that makes use of cell phones’ internal accelerometers, and Caltech offers to place seismometers ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5625127 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5625127 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5625126&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnanoparticles-developed-to-boo.html BBC: Researchers at Duke University have been working to develop synthetic nanoparticles that can boost the human body's immune system. They have engineered tiny capsules that mimic mast cells—which respond to fight infections near the skin—by releasing a body chemical called tumor necrosis factor, which battles certain types of bacteria and viruses. The nanoparticles, when injected into mice simultaneously with a vaccine, have been shown to improve the infected animals’ survival rate. Soman Abraham and colleagues said different immune system chemicals could be added to the nanoparticles, depending on which vaccine will be used. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5625126 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5625126 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617398&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Famateur-astronomers-discover-n.html Telegraph: Two British amateur astronomers, Chris Holmes and Lee Threapleton, may have discovered a new planet. Inspired by Brian Cox’s Stargazing Live TV series, they studied time-lapse images of stars posted online at Planethunters.org. The site, which is part of the Zooniverse citizen science project, encourages users to identify extrasolar planets from data recorded by the Kepler space telescope. Holmes and Threapleton looked for anomalies in light patterns and found that a planet appeared to be orbiting a sun called SPH10066540, which lies 600–3000 light-years away. Thought to be gaseous and about the size of Neptune, the new planet will be named Threapleton Holmes B, provided the discovery is authenticated. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617398 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617398 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617397&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fus-education-advocates-prepare.html New Scientist: After decades of fighting over the teaching of evolution in classrooms, US science education advocates are bracing themselves for the next battle—concerning the teaching of human-caused climate change. Over the past few years, several states, including Texas, Louisiana, and South Dakota, have introduced legislation that requires teachers to include the views of climate change skeptics. "Climate change education is kind of where evolution education was 30 years ago," says Steven Newton, programs and policy director for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California. Whereas creationism is a religious belief, however, climate change denial is mainly political and therefore may be harder to fight in court. (Source: ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617397 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617397 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617401&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fshale-gas-could-shut-out-alter.html National Geographic: Over the past five years, shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing has increased; the gas now accounts for a quarter of all natural gas generated in the US. If production continues to expand, natural gas prices will stay low over the next several decades and natural gas will take over more of the US electricity market. That is partially advantageous for the US, but an economic study by MIT's Henry Jacoby and colleagues indicates that there are potential downsides. Although shale gas will almost certainly push coal out of the energy market—a good thing since coal produces about twice the emissions of natural gas—it's likely that it will slow the development of renewable energy technologies and of carbon capture and storage by about 20 years. (Source... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617401 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617401 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617400&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fcrowd-funding-provides-new-sou.html Nature: As traditional funding sources, such as universities and research funding agencies, face budget cuts, some scientists are turning to “crowd funding,” raising money for research directly from the public. A number of websites, such as Kickstarter and FundaGeek, have already launched. The basic procedure is that researchers submit their project idea and its estimated cost. If accepted, the proposal is placed online and donors have a set amount of time to make a donation. Some sites provide services free of charge, while others take a cut of the money raised. Although questions have come up concerning the lack of a formal review process and the fact that some projects will be more popular than others and will therefore attract more funding, many scientists have said they we... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617400 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617400 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5617399&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fdiamonds-travel-on-fizz.html Science: New lab tests demonstrate how diamonds embedded in molten material deep beneath Earth’s surface can survive volcanic eruptions. A study conducted by Kelly Russell of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, shows that molten rock that is rich in carbonate—such as kimberlite, which often contains diamonds—releases its carbon dioxide when it comes into contact with silica-rich minerals. The dense magma, now made buoyant, surges upward from Earth's upper mantle, bumping into overlying rocks that contain more silica, which accelerates the carbon dioxide release. The chemical reaction that drives the release is largely self-sustaining, with the necessary heat being supplied by the crystallization of other minerals such as olivine. The frothing kimberli... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5617399 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5617399 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5604406&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fflu-and-weather-may-be-connect.html BBC: Global climate shifts and flu pandemics may be linked, say researchers. Weather can influence the migratory patterns of wild birds; thus different species are brought together that don’t normally mix. The birds then share viruses, which can morph into different strains to which the human population has not been previously exposed. In a paper published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University and Marc Lipsitch of Harvard University note that the four most recent human influenza pandemics—in 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009—were preceded by a climate pattern called La Niña. However, the researchers emphasize, most La Niñas have not preceded a pandemic. Rather, climate patterns could be one of several factors th... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5604406 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5604406 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5604405&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnew-material-adds-chrome-like-.html New York Times: The chrome look is making a comeback for automobiles, writes Tudor Van Hampton for the New York Times. However, rather than actual chrome, which is expensive and heavy, manufacturers are using materials that mimic chrome. One such material has been produced by Hamlin Jennings, a cement scientist at MIT who has developed a process to coat aluminum with a thin layer of glass. The glass chemically fuses to the metal, producing the look of polished chrome and protecting the surface from scratches and oxidation. The process will probably be used mainly in luxury vehicles for trim around windows and headlights. For most purposes, a good-quality shiny plastic is just as effective and much less expensive. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5604405 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5604405 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5604407&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fplan-to-shift-noaa-to-interior.html Science: Although the Obama administration has proposed to move the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from the US Department of Commerce to the Department of the Interior, it looks unlikely that the move will be approved by Congress, writes David Malakoff for Science. The proposal, part of President Obama’s plan to reorganize and streamline the federal government, is drawing mixed reactions from former staff, members of Congress, and outside organizations. Some supporters say it would allow several agencies with weather, geographical, and geological responsibilities to work together under one agency. Among those voicing objections, however, are environmental groups that worry this may not be a good time to shake things up. According to Frances Beinecke, president of the... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5604407 Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5604407 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593763&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fglobal-warming-could-cause-col.html Science: Although it may seem counterintuitive, warmer-than-average summers may trigger more severe winter cooling and excessive snowfall, writes Sid Perkins for Science. The relationship showed itself in a new study published in Environmental Research Letters by Judah Cohen and colleagues at the consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts. Warming in the Arctic in recent decades, along with other factors, has caused widespread melting of sea ice. More open water has led to more evaporation and increased cloudiness over the Arctic Ocean. That, in turn, can trigger increased snow coverage in Siberia as early as October. The Arctic Oscillation then steers the frigid air from Siberia southward to midlatitude regions throughout the winter. Researchers hop... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593763 Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593763 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593762&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Frussian-mars-probe-will-probab.html National Geographic: Phobos-Grunt, the failed Russian Mars probe that has been stuck in low Earth orbit for more than two months, is expected to re-enter the atmosphere around Sunday. The Russian space agency Roscosmos expects about 20–30 satellite fragments to reach the ground; the rest should burn up when the craft re-enters the atmosphere. The craft is already visible as a rapidly moving starlike object in the night sky; as it descends into the denser layers of the atmosphere, it will form a long plasma tail and resemble a brightly glowing comet. When it breaks up, it will leave a debris trail that should be visible for up to two minutes. The pieces that fall to Earth should pose very little risk to people, and Roscosmos expects the 11 tons of fuel carried by the satellite to be c... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593762 Fri, 13 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593762 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593765&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fx-prize-seeks-star-trek-style-.html BBC: The latest X Prize, worth $10 million and funded by telecoms manufacturer Qualcomm, challenges inventors to develop a portable diagnostic tool similar to that used in the science fiction TV series Star Trek. Wireless and noninvasive, the handheld device, called a tricorder, was used by the show’s doctor to diagnose illness by simply scanning a patient’s body. X Prizes are monetary awards given to the first to achieve a specific goal. Although medical devices that detect chemical signs of illness already exist, the challenge will be to bring all the technologies needed together into one tricorder-sized piece of equipment, according to Jeremy Nicholson, head of the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College London. “I don't think there'll be many people getti... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593765 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593765 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593764&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fmedical-physicists-advise-pati.html Inside Science: The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) has stated that the benefits of diagnostic radiation procedures far outweigh the risks. Specifically, the association said that the risks from medical imaging at effective doses below 50 millisieverts for a single procedure, or 100 mSv for multiple procedures over a short period of time, are so low as to be undetectable. A full-body CT scan results in 12 mSv; a mammogram, 0.13 mSv. The risks from those procedures, according to AAPM, are too low to have been determined reliably and may be "nonexistent." Media stories uncovering improper use of machines that use much higher levels of radiation to treat cancer and journal articles cautioning physicians to minimize diagnostic CT scans in children have raised unfounded fe... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593764 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593764 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593768&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fastronomers-create-largest-eve.html Science: Representing five years of work in imaging 10 million galaxies at distances of about 6 billion light-years, the new dark-matter map is 100 times larger than the largest one to date, writes Govert Schilling for Science. Although dark matter, which represents 98% of the mass of the universe, cannot be seen directly, it exerts a gravitational pull on normal matter, including light. By measuring that pull on starlight, astronomers were able to map its distribution. The new map shows that dark matter is concentrated in huge clumps and filaments, with large empty regions in between. Astrophysicist Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and colleagues presented their results at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Scientists ho... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593768 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593768 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593767&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnew-york-times-the-russian.html New York Times: The Russian spacecraft Phobos-Grunt, launched this past November, wound up stranded in low-Earth orbit shortly after launch instead of heading for Mars's larger moon Phobos as planned. It's expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere this Saturday. In an interview with the newspaper Izvestia, Vladimir Popovkin, chief of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), said that the craft may have failed as a result of sabotage, via an antisatellite weapon or interference with the craft while it was on the ground. He did not state who he thought the saboteur might be; his remarks have been taken as most probably referring to the US. Roscosmos spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov has refused to elaborate on Popovkin's comments, which contrasted sharply with the cooperative spirit of recent Ru... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593767 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593767 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593766&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fbbc-the-stratospheric-observat.html BBC: The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, is a 15-ton telescope mounted in the back of a converted Boeing 747. The telescope can see in both the visible and IR spectra. The first of SOFIA's images of the Orion nebula were released in late December, and James De Buizer of the Universities Space Research Association and colleagues examined the data, focusing on the region around the Becklin-Neugebauer object, one of the brightest IR objects in the sky. The object itself was thought to be the main source of the nebula's IR emission, but the new images show that something else they were previously unaware of—perhaps a small protocluster of stars—is shining very brightly in the IR there. SOFIA is a user facility; scientists can propose experiments and get ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593766 Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593766 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593772&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fcomplex-pasta-shapes-inspire-m.html New York Times: An essential part of an authentic Italian meal, pasta comes in a variety of shapes that are both decorative and utilitarian: The shape of the pasta complements the sauce it is paired with. Recently, the various complex shapes that pasta can take have inspired people to ponder the mathematics involved, writes Kenneth Chang for the New York Times. Sander Huisman, a physics graduate student at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, used Mathematica software to come up with code that would describe such pasta shapes as gemelli and stelline. He was inspired to blog his results as “Pasta visualization” and “Pasta visualization - Part II,” and he even considered doing a mathematical pasta of the month. Architect George Legendre, who was similarly insp... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593772 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593772 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593771&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fcanadian-province-cuts-univers.html Toronto Star: The Ontario government has cut Can$42 million in university research grants from its budget in order to meet “current fiscal challenges.” The money would have been used to support research in such areas as clean technologies and the bio-economy. In addition, soon after winning the 6 October election, Premier Dalton McGuinty downsized his cabinet and folded the ministry of research and innovation into the ministry of economic development. “We are in an era now of prioritization and rationalization,” said Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid. Ironically, McGuinty has also launched a 30% tuition rebate, totaling Can$423 million, for community college and undergraduate university students. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593771 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593771 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593770&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fthe-mystery-of-rhinocerous-fee.html BBC: Rhinos are one of the biggest living land mammals, yet little is known about the physics and mechanics of their relatively small feet. Unlike elephants, which have five forward-pointing toes and one "false toe" that points toward the heel, rhinos have three rigid toes and a more evenly spread pad across the sole of the foot. John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College and colleagues are working with rhinos who have been trained to walk on a high-tech track that measures the amount of force the rhinos put on individual regions of their feet. Thus far, Hutchinson and his team have found that rhinos generate the highest pressures on the inside part of the foot—again in contrast with elephants, which generate the highest pressures on the outside. The study should help with the d... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593770 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593770 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5593769&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fplastic-carbon-dioxide-sink.html Science: A new kind of plastic that can remove large amounts of CO2 from the air has been produced by a research team led by George Olah of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Olah and his team needed a CO2 absorber for iron-based batteries they were working on; they tried using polyethylenimine (PEI), an inexpensive CO2 absorbing polymer. PEI grabs CO2 only on its surface, so to increase its surface area, Olah dissolved the polymer in a methanol solvent and spread it atop a batch of fumed silica, an industrially produced porous solid made from microscopic droplets of glass fused together. When the solvent evaporated, it left solid PEI with a high surface area. When the team tested the new material's ability to absorb CO2, they found that in humid air each gram of the mat... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5593769 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5593769 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5577057&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fglobal-warming-could-delay-nex.html BBC: According to research published in Nature Geoscience, human carbon emissions could insulate Earth against the next ice age, writes Richard Black for the BBC. Ice ages result because of subtle variations in Earth’s orbit, although exactly how those variations cause global temperature change is not known. The next ice age should begin within about 1500 years, say Luke Skinner of Cambridge University and colleagues, but it will likely be deferred because of the abnormally high level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, currently around 390 parts per million; that would have to drop to below about 240 ppm before glaciation could begin. And other research groups have shown that even if emissions were cut instantly, CO2 concentrations would remain elevated for at least 1000 years. Despite t... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5577057 Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5577057 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5577056&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Firan-to-open-second-uranium-en.html New York Times: Iran has announced that it is about to start production at its second major uranium enrichment site, writes David Sanger for the New York Times. Iran maintains that it is not seeking to produce weapons but to find an alternative energy source to oil. Whether or not that is true, the plant’s opening does not significantly affect estimates of how long it could take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon. The country has already produced enough fuel to manufacture about four weapons, but only if the fuel goes through further enrichment, which would take at least six months to a year, say nuclear experts. “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us,” said U... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5577056 Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5577056 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5577055&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fstephen-hawking-unable-to-atte.html BBC: Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking was too ill to attend the 8 January symposium at Cambridge University that was held in honor of his 70th birthday. However, he was able to address the audience via a recorded speech. Unable to speak because he suffers from motor neurone disease, Hawking uses twitches of his cheek muscles to choose letters or words on his computer that can be voiced using a speech synthesizer. He is able to select about one word per minute, making the task of writing speeches arduous. Currently the director of research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, Hawking also founded the university's Center for Theoretical Cosmology and is a visiting professor at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. S... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5577055 Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5577055 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5577054&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnature-the-amount-of-water.html Nature: The amount of water entering the Yangtze River near its source on the Tibetan plateau has fallen by 15% over the past four decades, despite a 15% increase in glacial melt and increased rainfall over the same period. At the same time, 10% of the the permafrost on the Tibetan plateau has degraded over the past 10 years, and alpine wetland has decreased by 37%. Wang Genxu of the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment in Chengdu and colleagues investigated whether these changes affected the amount of water runoff from permafrost into Yangtze tributaries. They found runoff increased if the thawing layer was less than 60 cm deep, but decreased if the thaw went deeper. They suspect that when more permafrost thaws, the thicker-than-usual thawed layer soaks up water that would otherw... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5577054 Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5577054 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569419&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fa-hole-in-time.html Ars Technica: An event at a specific point in time can now be hidden from observation. Alexander Gaeta of Cornell University and colleagues created a "time lens" that shifts light entering it to bluer, faster wavelengths and then shifts the light to redder wavelengths that travel more slowly. The result is a gap in the beam of light as the blue light races ahead of the slower red light. The light is then sent through a dispersive medium with the opposite effect, so that the wavelength shifts are reversed. Any events that took place during the gap never happened, as far as the beam of light is concerned. When the device was off, a separate laser pulse that interacted with the light created a clear signal; when the device was on, that signal dropped to background levels. Although the apparen... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569419 Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569419 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569418&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnew-york-bars-serve-up-offbeat.html New York Times: A number of science-based events have been popping up throughout New York City—some serious, others not, writes Jennifer Schuessler for the New York Times. Offered at such eclectic venues as bars, art galleries, and funeral parlors, the talks feature both credentialed scientists and rank amateurs. All include entertainment along with edification. At the Bell House, a music and events venue, the Secret Science Club holds its monthly meetings, which have included such noted scientists as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium. Other series, such as Nerd Nite at the Galapagos Art Space, celebrate the expertise of amateurs, who rely on tongue-in-cheek PowerPoint slides, faux data, and lots of audience participation. Moonlighter Presents, on... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569418 Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569418 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569417&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnanoscale-silicon-wires-resist.html Nature: New research indicates that not everything on a quantum level exhibits quantum behavior. Wires just a few nanometers wide have now been shown to conduct electricity in the same way as the larger components of existing devices. Michelle Simmons, a physicist and director of the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and her colleagues made atomic-scale wires of phosphorous-doped silicon in which the phosphorous provided the extra electrons needed to generate a current, writes Edwin Cartlidge for Nature. Although the width of the wires varied from 1.5 to 11 nm, the resistivity did not differ substantially, thus obeying Ohm’s law of classical electronics. David Ferry, an electrical engineer at Arizona... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569417 Fri, 06 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569417 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569423&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Ftwo-new-neutrino-telescopes-se.html BBC: Two new neutrino-hunting telescopes are being designed for underwater locations, writes Katia Moskvitch for the BBC. To screen out other particles that bombard Earth from above, such telescopes need to be in as deep and dark a place as possible, such as inside mountains, underground, and even in solid ice. The Baikal-GVD (Gigaton Volume Detector) will replace the existing NT-200, a small octopus-like device floating more than 1 km below the surface of Russia’s Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake. Much more massive will be the KM3NeT (kilometer-cubed neutrino telescope), which will sit at depths of 3–5 km at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The telescope will consist of hundreds of vertical strings, each supporting dozens of sensors. Because each string is almos... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569423 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569423 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569422&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fhigh-prestige-research-trumps-.html Nature: Although it has long been assumed that the US favors applied over basic science, the opposite turns out to be true, writes Daniel Sarewitz for Nature. Over the past 15 years, agencies that serve public goals rather than advance science—the US Geological Survey, for example—have experienced minimal budgetary growth. Yet, over the same period, government funding for research doubled, with most of that money going to the National Institutes of Health and NSF. Sarewitz claims the funding allocation may be because advocacy for research funding comes mostly from the high-prestige frontiers of science and the institutions associated with such research. Nevertheless, addressing social problems, such as preventing and preparing for natural disasters, is just as important. To ens... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569422 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569422 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569421&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fscience-the-national-science-f.html Science: Last week NSF announced that it does not expect to fund the building of either the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) or the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) until 2020 at the earliest. The two university consortia in charge of the giant ground-based telescope projects have raised tens of millions of dollars in the hope that NSF would be able to come up with the balance, and both the TMT and the GMT were scheduled to start operations before 2020. The hope was not unfounded. In its most recent decadal survey, the National Academy of Sciences recommended that NSF should pick and fund one project, a recommendation that Congress later mandated but didn't explicitly fund. To stay on schedule, both teams will need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in private funding or else find internat... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569421 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569421 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569420&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fplan-for-privately-funded-scie.html BBC: A new type of graduate school for science and technology was announced on 4 January by the UK's universities minister David Willetts. The advanced research center would rely on international partnerships and corporate sponsorship and receive no additional government funding. The move is part of an overall push to encourage business and industry investment in research; Willetts has proposed to increase nongovernment funding for universities in general by 10%. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569420 Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569420 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569425&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Ftwo-us-companies-develop-solar.html New York Times: Two companies in California are working on trapping energy from the Sun when it’s shining for use later when it is not. Solar thermal power uses the Sun’s heat to boil water and generate electricity. The technologies being developed by SolarReserve and BrightSource will rely on molten salt to store the Sun’s energy because salt can store far more heat than water can, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. The stored power will be used primarily to complement solar panels, which produce electricity directly from sunlight. SolarReserve’s Nevada plant is scheduled to start up next year, and BrightSource’s three California plants should begin operating in 2016 and 2017. Together, the four plants could power tens of thousands of households. Unf... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569425 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569425 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569424&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fplane-built-to-soar-over-satur.html Daily Mail: A plutonium-powered pilotless aircraft, Aviatr, has been designed to fly around Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. It would take three-dimensional photos of the moon’s surface, which is hidden from Earth’s view by Titan’s cloudy atmosphere, and even try to land on it. Although a rival balloon project has also been proposed, Aviatr’s designers maintain that the plane would do the best job because its altitude could be controlled more precisely and its plutonium-powered generator could keep Aviatr on the day side of Titan to make the most of its photographing time. With a projected cost of $715 million, Aviatr did not make NASA’s last round of funding. However, Jason Barnes, a scientist at the University of Idaho and one of the craft’s designe... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569424 Wed, 04 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569424 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569429&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fmodified-silkworms-produce-hyb.html Discover: Researchers have genetically modified silkworms to produce a hybrid silk that’s partly from silkworm and partly from spider. Spider silk is extraordinarily strong and tough and can stretch several times its original length. Farming spiders has not proven as practical as farming silkworms, however, because spiders are territorial and cannibalistic. So Donald Jarvis and Randy Lewis of the University of Wyoming and Malcolm Fraser of the University of Notre Dame inserted spider silk genes into the silk-making glands of silkworms. Although the new silk is only 2–5% spider silk, it is stronger, more elastic, and twice as tough as normal silkworm fiber. Spider silk could have many uses, such as in sutures, artificial ligaments, and body armor. (Source: Physics Today News Pic... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569429 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569429 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569428&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fuk-bestows-knighthoods-on-nobe.html BBC: Two physicists, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, have received knighthoods in the UK. The pair won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their pioneering research on graphene. Knighthoods are a means of rewarding individuals’ personal achievements and service to the UK. This year, recipients from technology and science sectors make up 3% of the list. Other scientists honored with knighthoods include Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 for his work on the ribosome, and Robert Watson, chief scientific adviser to the UK’s Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569428 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569428 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569427&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Fnsf-picks-lockheed-for-huge-an.html Science: Lockheed Martin has won a contract to support NSF research stations in Antarctica. The new agreement runs for 4.5 years and may be extended for an additional 8.5 years. Lockheed Martin will be responsible for providing all nonscientific needs for the three Antarctic stations—from sustenance, shelter, and medical services to electricity, communications, and transportation. Providing adequate computing power, remote access, and data management will be among Lockheed's biggest challenges. Neither NSF nor Lockheed would discuss the terms of the contract. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569427 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569427 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5569426&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2012%2F01%2Ftaking-the-pulse-of-a-shrinkin.html Nature: The Exploradores Glacier in southern Chile is disappearing, slowly. Part of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field, the glacier is remote enough that it would be too costly to install and maintain satellite or radio transmission stations to report changes. To try to understand how weather conditions affect the rate at which Exploradores melts and how the water released flows through and out of the bottom of the glacier, Takane Matsumoto, a glaciologist at the Center for Ecosystem Research in Patagonia, makes regular journeys to the glacier to gather data on temperature, precipitation, humidity, and wind speed. About 100 glaciers in Chile are being monitored, and of those, almost 90% are in retreat, according to Chile’s Center for Scientific Studies in Valdivia. Glaciologist Neil... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5569426 Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0100 5569426 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5556909&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fwhy-tornadoes-take-the-weekend.html National Geographic: An analysis of summertime storm activity in the eastern US from 1995 to 2009 revealed that the occurrence of tornadoes and hailstorms peaked in the middle of the week, when human-made summertime air pollution also peaked. Pollution can help breed storms because moisture gathers around specks of pollutants, which leads to more cloud droplets, which get lofted to higher, colder air, where they’re more likely to produce hail. The process by which pollution can increase the number of tornadoes is more complex. The large icy hail particles seeded by pollutants have less surface area than an equal mass of smaller particles of condensed water or ice, and they evaporate more slowly and are less likely to suck heat from the air. It then becomes easier for warm air to help... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5556909 Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5556909 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5556908&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fchina-unveils-ambitious-space-.html New York Times: The Chinese government has announced a five-year space-exploration plan that calls for launching a space laboratory and collecting samples from the Moon, all by 2016, along with a powerful manned spaceship and space freighters. The plan includes a major expansion of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, which on Tuesday began providing navigation, positioning, and timing data on China and surrounding areas. China intends to expand Beidou from its current 10 satellites to 35 satellites in orbit by 2020. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5556908 Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5556908 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5556911&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fvoyager-1-races-toward-interst.html NPR: Traveling at 636 miles per minute, Voyager 1 is headed toward interstellar space . Right now, the craft is in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the Sun forms around itself. The solar wind in that area is nil, but the 100-fold greater intensity of high-energy electrons in elsewhere in the galaxy indicates an approaching boundary. Voyager 1 is expected to cross that boundary sometime in the next three years. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5556911 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5556911 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5556910&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fcriminal-charges-brought-after.html Nature: On 29 December 2008, chemistry research assistant Sheharbano Sangji suffered third-degree burns when the t-butyl lithium she was drawing from a bottle via a syringe burst into flames. She wasn’t wearing a lab coat, and her clothes caught fire. She died in the hospital 18 days later. In the wake of Sangji’s death, UCLA tightened its safety policies; but despite calls to improve academia’s safety standards across the US, there’s little evidence that bench scientists or laboratory heads outside of UCLA have changed their behavior. The Los Angeles district attorney has now charged UCLA and organic chemist Patrick Harran with three counts each of “willful violation of an occupational health and safety standard causing the death of an employee.” Harr... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5556910 Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5556910 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5550097&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Frussias-failing-science-progra.html BBC: Yet another Soyuz rocket launch has failed. After liftoff from Russia’s Plesetsk spaceport on Friday, 23 December, the Soyuz-2 vehicle was unable to put a communications satellite into orbit. It is one of several failed attempts this year, including Phobus-Grunt in November and the Progress cargo spacecraft, which was to take supplies to astronauts aboard the International Space Station, in August. Russia’s problems could severely impact the US, which depends on Russian rockets to carry astronauts to the International Space Station, writes Will Englund for the Washington Post. In his overview article, Englund notes how Russia has tripled its science spending over the past 10 years, “but innovation is losing out to exhaustion, corruption and cronyism.” Twenty ye... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5550097 Wed, 28 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5550097 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5550096&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fgrail-probes-to-help-scientist.html SF Gate: A pair of spacecraft known as Grail-A and Grail-B are set to enter orbit around the Moon over the New Year’s weekend. They launched from the Florida coast in September and are independently traveling to their destination. Over the next two months they will fly in formation around the Moon until they’re approximately 56 kilometers above the lunar surface and about 200 kilometers apart. At that point, regional changes in the Moon’s gravity field will cause them to accelerate or slow down, which will change the distance between them; the changes in distance will allow mapping of the gravity field. With that information, it will be possible to deduce features at or below the Moon’s surface and may help explain why the far side of the Moon is more rugged than th... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5550096 Wed, 28 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5550096 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5550099&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fspain-cuts-science-ministry-in.html Nature: Spain’s Ministry of Science has been cut by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a member of the People’s Party. Rajoy had pledged to reduce the number of government ministries from 15 to 12. Responsibility for science and research will now be the purview of Luis de Guindos, the minister of economy and competition. The Ministry of Science was created in 2000, under a People’s Party government, but fell under a joint ministry with education from 2004 to 2008, then again became a dedicated ministry from 2008 to 2011. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5550099 Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5550099 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5550098&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fcareers-going-global.html New Scientist: “While globetrotting is not a prerequisite to winning the coveted [Nobel] prize, having a CV that looks like a much-stamped passport is increasingly seen as the signature of an ambitious and motivated young scientist,” writes Jessica Griggs for New Scientist. According to a report published by the Royal Society in London, over the past 15 years, more than 35% of articles published in international journals involved international collaborations. A UK government report found that more than 63% of British researchers worked outside the country and those who went abroad for at least two years and returned were 66% more productive in terms of the number of papers published. In this Q&A, Griggs, the careers editor at New Scientist, tackles such basic questions as why g... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5550098 Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5550098 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5542429&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnrc-approves-radical-nuclear-r.html New York Times: Yesterday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) unanimously approved a radical new reactor design, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. To diminish the probability of an accident, the Westinghouse AP1000 relies more on gravity and natural heat convection and less on pumps, valves, and human operators than other models. In addition, even if there is a total loss of electric power, the AP1000 should shut down safely, and a combination of automatic systems and design features would keep the reactor safe for three days without human intervention. In an attempt to streamline construction and cut costs, the NRC waived the usual 30-day waiting period before its approval becomes official. It also plans to issue a combined construction and operating license, and it preappro... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5542429 Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5542429 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5542428&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnanoantennas-could-lead-to-opt.html ScienceDaily: Researchers at Purdue University have designed V-shaped gold and silicon nanoantennas that can cause broadband light to bend in unusual ways, including with negative angles of refraction. Extending earlier work by a group at Harvard University, the Purdue team showed that an array of the nanoantennas at a material interface can change the phase and propagation direction of light over a broad range in the near-IR. The arrays, much thinner than the light’s wavelengths, produced dramatic deviations from the conventional laws governing how light refracts as it passes from one material to the next. Says team member Vladimir Shalaev, "Not only the bending effect, refraction, but also the reflection of light can be dramatically modified by the antenna arrays on the interface, ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5542428 Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5542428 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5534086&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Flhc-observes-new-particle.html BBC: Researchers at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have observed a new particle, the first since the facility’s initial proton–proton collision in 2009. Called χb(3P), it is composed of a bottom quark and a bottom antiquark that are bound together. Although χ particles have been seen in previous experiments, the χb(3P) is in a more excited state. "It's . . . interesting for what it tells us about the force that holds the quark and the antiquark together—the strong nuclear force. And that's the same force that holds, for instance, the atomic nucleus together with its protons and the neutrons,” said Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC. Over the past two years, the LHC has collided some quadrillion subatomic partic... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5534086 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5534086 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5534085&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fmillimeter-wave-imager-safer-m.html Sciencenewsline: A new detector can sense knives hidden in packages, impurities in chocolate, and explosive powder in pieces of mail—all without the use of ionizing radiation. Called SAMMI, short for standalone millimeter-wave imager, the device can see through many nontransparent, nonmetallic materials, according to its developers at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Wachtberg, Germany. “It can even detect and monitor the dehydration process in plants and how severely they have been stressed by drought," says Helmut Essen, head of the FHR's millimeter-wave radar and high-frequency sensors department. When SAMMI is running, a conveyor belt moves a sample between two antennae that transmit 78-GHZ electromagnetic waves. The varying de... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5534085 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5534085 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5534088&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fa-new-study-examines-math-gend.html Science: Two researchers have conducted a new study in which they debunk several commonly held myths about gender and math performance. Among the myths they address is the speculation put forth by Lawrence Summers when he was president of Harvard University that males may have greater variability in intellectual mathematical abilities than females. Janet Mertz of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Jonathan Kane of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater analyzed internationally standardized math test scores from 86 countries. They concluded that cultural factors are most likely causing the discrepancy in gender performance, and that increasing the number of female role models benefits everybody. "Scientific and mathematical progress relies on the best people doing their bes... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5534088 Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5534088 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5534087&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fwindsor-castle-gets-hydroelect.html Daily Mail: The UK's Windsor Castle is going green: Yesterday two 40-ton turbines were lifted into the River Thames. Once installed, they are expected to churn out 300 kW of energy every hour—enough to provide about half the estate’s electricity needs. Resembling giant steel screws, the turbines are based on a 2000-year-old design by Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes. The project could help further the UK's goal of obtaining 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. As part of the installation a new fish pass is being installed, which will facilitate the migration of 12 species around the turbines and through that stretch of the river. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5534087 Wed, 21 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5534087 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5534090&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnih-director-retracts-congratu.html Science: The director of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, was forced to retract an email he sent his staff over the weekend, writes Jocelyn Kaiser. In the email he announced that President Obama had signed a 2012 spending bill, which, among other things, would establish a new center Collins has been promoting—the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS). In reality, what the president signed was a continuing resolution; Obama is not expected to sign the spending bill until later this week. Many felt Collins's premature email was indicative of the entire project, which Collins is said to have rushed through without adequate discussion. The creation of NCATS will mean the dismantling of another NIH center, the National Center for Research Resour... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5534090 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5534090 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5534089&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Firon-oxide-in-earths-interior-.html BBC: At the extreme pressures and temperatures of Earth’s interior, iron oxide changes from insulator to conductor while still retaining its structure, according to a team at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.The researchers subjected the material to conditions found at the boundary between Earth’s two innermost layers and found that at a pressure of 690 000 atmospheres and a temperature of 1650 °C, the iron oxide metallizes without any change in structure. Moreover, their simulations show that its electrons behave differently from those of other metals. Because much of Earth’s mantle is composed of iron oxide and magnesium, the metallization of the iron oxide means it could electrically link the core and the mantle, which would affect the way the magnetic... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5534089 Tue, 20 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5534089 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5520832&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fspaceport-america-attracts-reu.html Space.com: The US’s first private commercial spaceport, Spaceport America in New Mexico, is officially open and doing considerable business. A number of companies have already launched vehicles from the site, and according to Leonard David writing for Space.com, it “is becoming a desirable location to experiment with new types of reusable booster systems.” On 4 December Texas’s Armadillo Aerospace tested its STIG A reusable suborbital rocket technology. The company’s test program is geared toward providing manned suborbital spaceflight through a partnership with Virginia’s space tourism firm Space Adventures Ltd. Also, Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defense contractors, has entered into an agreement with the governor-appointed New Mexi... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5520832 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5520832 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5520831&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fquantum-dot-technology-could-m.html Science: Researchers at the US’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have created a new type of solar cell that captures some of the excess energy in sunlight normally lost as heat, writes Robert Service for Science. When high-energy photons from the Sun hit a semiconducting material in a solar cell, they excite the semiconductor’s electrons from a static position so they can conduct. But the photons carry more energy than is needed, and the rest gets lost as heat. Several years ago, it was found that the high-energy photons can excite more than one electron if the semiconductor consists of nanometer-sized particles called quantum dots. The NREL group used the process, known as multiple exciton generation (MEG), in their quantum dot solar cell to achieve a 5% overall ef... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5520831 Mon, 19 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5520831 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512907&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fepa-set-to-impose-stricter-lim.html Los Angeles Times: The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to approve more stringent limits on power-plant emissions, writes Neela Banerjee for the Los Angeles Times. Companies will have three years to clean up their emissions of mercury and about 70 other toxic substances, with the possibility of appealing for an additional year. First proposed in March, the new rule is expected to be approved today and formally announced on Monday. However, utility companies claim the emissions limits are too strict and the timetable too tight; their opposition could delay approval and implementation. "In the history of the Clean Air Act, there has never been a greater intervention into the power sector than with this regulation," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinati... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512907 Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512907 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512906&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Frecently-launched-curiosity-sp.html Talking Points Memo: The Mars rover Curiosity, which launched 26 November aboard NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, has switched on one of its instruments in flight. During Curiosity’s eight-month trip, its radiation assessment detector (RAD) will monitor high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the Sun, distant supernovas, and other sources. The rover also will monitor radiation on the surface of Mars after its August 2012 landing. One of 10 precision instruments on board, “RAD is serving as a proxy for an astronaut inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars,” according to a NASA news release from RAD’s principal investigator Don Hassler, from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “The instrument is deep inside the spacecraft, the way a... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512906 Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512906 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512905&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnew-statistical-method-discove.html Nature: Simultaneous dependencies within large data sets can be effectively invisible to statistical analysis. David Reshef of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Massachusetts, Yakir Reshef at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and their colleagues have devised a method called the maximal information coefficient (MIC) to find superimposed correlations between variables and measure how tight each relationship is. The MIC is calculated by plotting data on a graph and looking for all the ways of dividing up the graph into blocks or grids that capture the largest possible number of data points. The team applied their method to data concerning global health, gene expression, major-league baseball, and human gut microbiota to identify both known and novel dependencies. ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512905 Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512905 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512904&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fjapan-set-to-declare-control-o.html New York Times: The Japanese government announced that it has regained control of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant's reactors in what is called a "cold shutdown." The announcement has been met with some skepticism, partly due to the fact that a cold shutdown is normally used to describe healthy reactors, to indicate that they are safe enough that their containment vessels can be opened up and their fuel rods taken out. In this situation, however, a cold shutdown means that the reactors' temperatures can now be kept safely below the boiling point of water and that their melted cores are no longer at risk of resuming an atomic chain reaction that could allow them to heat up uncontrollably. Even that is in some dispute, as the restart of fission can't be absolutely ruled out until the reac... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512904 Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512904 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512910&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnewly-discovered-arctic-methan.html Daily Mail: At least 100 plumes of methane bubbles, some more than 1 km in diameter, have been discovered to be rising to the surface of the sea over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, a shallow, methane-rich area that stretches some 1500 km into the Arctic Ocean. As Earth warms and sea levels rise, the permafrost beneath the shelf melts, releasing the powerful greenhouse gas. In deep water, methane release is not a problem because the gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide before it reaches the surface. But because the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is so shallow, the methane doesn’t have time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. Scientists are concerned that such continuous and powerful release of methane could have a huge effect on climate change. (Source: Physics To... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512910 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512910 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512909&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fuk-committee-quells-fears-that.html BBC: Claims that high energy bills are the result of investment in low-carbon technologies are unfounded, says the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC). Instead, it found that increases in bills over the past few years have been mostly due to higher wholesale gas costs. Although the combined gas and electric bill for a typical UK household is expected to rise from £1060 ($1600) in 2010 to £1250 ($2000) by 2020, further energy efficiency measures, such as better insulation, could limit that increase to only about £150 ($100). And, says CCC chief executive David Kennedy, the costs of investing in green energy were “significantly” outweighed by the benefits—among them, a reduced reliance on imported fossil fuels. The investigation of rising fuel prices was prompte... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512909 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512909 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512908&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fscience-a-new-object-has.html Science: A new object has been spotted near Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and it may be on its way to being devoured. Stefan Gillessen and Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and their colleagues observed the center of our galaxy at IR wavelengths using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile. The instrument picked up a small gas cloud that appeared to be getting closer and closer to Sagittarius A* over a period of nine years. Because the astronomers detected the object at a wavelength of 3.76 microns but not at 2.16 microns, they believe it's a cloud of gas, rather than a star, which would be brighter at the shorter wavelength. The object has doubled its speed from 1200 km... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512908 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512908 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512913&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fmits-light-tracking-camera.html BBC: A new imaging technique called femto-photography captures images at about one trillion frames per second and is even capable of visualizing the movement of light. Ramesh Raskar of MIT and colleagues adapted a streak tube, which is used to take data readings from light pulses, and used a laser pulse as their light source. Streak tubes scan one horizontal line at a time, and hundreds of scans must be taken to create a single frame. Consequently, the technique can capture only those events that can be precisely re-created multiple times. About one hour's worth of shots are needed to create a video representing less than a second of real time. The team anticipates that the new technique could be used in scientific imaging of ultrafast processes. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512913 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512913 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512912&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Funiversities-mine-student-data.html Chronicle of Higher Education: When Eric Mazur saw in 1991 that his Harvard physics class couldn’t apply his lecture on Newton’s laws to real-life problems, he realized that many traditional teaching methods are ineffective. Thus he began gathering information on his students to improve his pedagogical techniques. Such data mining is now beginning to be used by administrators at the university and college level to improve the admissions process, the teaching of courses, and student advising. By gathering statistics on prospective and current students, officials say, they can better determine which schools would be a good fit and even predict a student’s success or failure in a given class. Students are also starting to use the new data-based tools to choose courses and ma... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512912 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512912 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512911&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fsuper-earths-give-theorists-a-.html Nature: Out of the 2326 exoplanets identified so far by NASA's Kepler space telescope, between one-third and one-half of them are in the emerging and perhaps most numerous "super-Earth" category. Bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, they contradict conventional models of planet formation. Early planet-formation models used our own solar system as an example and were based on the idea of core accretion. Dust in a star's protoplanetary disk aggregates into small cores of rock and ice. Whereas the inner part of the disk doesn't contain enough material for the cores to grow much larger than Earth, cores farther out can form planets 10 times as massive as Earth. Those outer planets attract large volumes of gas to become Jupiter-like gas giants. After the detection of Jupiter-sized exopla... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512911 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512911 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512915&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fmicroscopic-steam-engine-built.html BBC: Clemens Bechinger of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Stuttgart and his colleagues have built a tiny steam engine based on the Stirling engine invented in 1816. Bechinger and his team wanted to know if the engine's basic operating principle would work at the microscale. To adapt the engine to that size, they replaced the original design's cylinder of gas with a micron-sized particle of melamine submerged in a tiny chamber of water. A focused IR laser beam took the place of pistons and acted as optical tweezers to hold the melamine in place. A second laser was used to heat the water, which cooled back to room temperature as soon as the laser was turned off. The micro-engine was as efficient, but not as stable, in its energy production as a full-size... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512915 Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512915 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5512914&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fwitness-questions-experts-anal.html Science: Seven scientists and technicians are on trial in Italy for allegedly failing to properly assess seismic risks before the April 2009 earthquake that devastated the central Italian town of L'Aquila. One of the witnesses called this week is Christian Del Pinto, an Italian geophysicist who attended a meeting held by those experts the week before the deadly quake. He testified to having doubts about the scientific basis of some of the statements made during that meeting. Although the prosecution isn't contending that the experts should have been able to predict the location or severity of a quake, it does argue that the experts’ risk evaluation was "generic and ineffective." Del Pinto took issue with the experts' assertion that there is little chance of a sudden increase in the m... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5512914 Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5512914 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5501505&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fcanada-to-withdraw-from-kyoto-.html BBC: Canada announced that it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Peter Kent, the country's minister of the environment, said that meeting Canada's obligations under Kyoto would cost $13.6 billion. He added that greenhouse emissions would continue to rise globally regardless of Canada's actions because the US and China aren't covered by the agreement. He described the agreement just reached in Durban, South Africa, in more positive terms, saying it represents "the way forward" for international cooperation on climate change. The Durban agreement states that talks on a new and legally binding agreement covering all countries will begin in 2012 and end by 2015. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5501505 Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5501505 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5501504&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fsolar-storms-are-sandblasting-.html National Geographic: The ions that make up the solar wind can collide with the Moon's surface, essentially sandblasting it in a process called sputtering. During coronal mass ejections (CMEs), the Sun throws off intense bursts of plasma at up to a million miles per hour in a cloud that's several times the size of Earth. Normal solar wind consists mostly of lightweight protons from hydrogen atoms that have been stripped of their electrons, but CMEs contain a much higher percentage of heavier ions such as helium, oxygen, and iron. The heavier atoms collide with the Moon with much greater momentum than protons do, and they can dislodge more material from its surface. William Farrell, leader of the Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Cent... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5501504 Tue, 13 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5501504 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5492892&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fresearchers-build-spherical-dy.html Nature: Although self-sustaining dynamos occur readily in stars and planets, none has yet been achieved in the lab. That may change next year when a project at the University of Maryland, College Park, is scheduled to go on line. Housed in a cavernous warehouse at the university, the Three Meter Experiment consists of a 3-meter-diameter ribbed sphere, inside of which is a 1-meter sphere surrounded by thousands of kilograms of liquid sodium heated to about 105 °C. When the device is turned on, it will whirl around and churn the electrically conducting fluid, which researchers hope will generate a self-sustaining electromagnetic field similar to Earth’s. The project could shed light on how rotational forces in Earth's core deflect flows of electrically conducting liquid into a configu... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5492892 Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5492892 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5492891&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Farpa-es-head-nominated-as-doe-.html Science: Arun Majumdar, founding director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), may soon become undersecretary for the US Department of Energy (DOE). Although Majumdar has been acting undersecretary since March, the Obama administration did not officially nominate him until November. The confirmation process is expected to take several months, althoughhe appears to have strong bipartisan support after his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday. In the meantime, there is speculation about whether Majumdar will also retain his position at ARPA-E or whether someone else will be nominated to head that agency. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5492891 Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5492891 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5492890&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fgiant-stars-bare-their-whirlin.html Science: Cool giant stars spin slowly on their surfaces, but what about their cores? Paul Beck of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and colleagues have reported that the cores of three yellow giant stars, each 20% to 50% more massive than our Sun, spin at least ten times faster than their surfaces. Beck's team studied data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which monitors the variations in starlight that occur when planets pass in front of their star. Oscillations within a star—called asteroseismological vibrations—can also cause starlight to vary, and they provide information about stars' internal structure. The discovery implies that our Sun's core will also spin faster than its surface when it becomes a giant; this may affect how it sheds its outer atmosphere and tran... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5492890 Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5492890 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5492895&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Ffederal-agency-in-pacific-nort.html New York Times: Created by Congress in 1937, the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) operates all the federally owned hydroelectric plants in the Pacific Northwest. During strong storms earlier this year, the BPA faced a glut of power from its plants and from wind turbines that are connected to its grid. Sending water around the dams and into spillways would have reduced the plants' power output, but it would also have exposed salmon to harmful levels of dissolved nitrogen. The BPA chose instead to turn off the wind turbines, whose operators lost money and federal tax credits as a result. According to a ruling issued on Tuesday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the BPA's decision was wrong. The BPA, said the the commission, should have kept the turbines running and instead pai... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5492895 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5492895 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5492894&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fcern-to-announce-tentative-hig.html BBC: Next Tuesday, representatives of the two principal detectors at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS and CMS, will announce the results so far of their search for the Higgs boson. Rumors are flying ahead of the announcement. According to the BBC's Susan Watts, who interviewed CERN theorist John Ellis, the Higgs has shown up in both detectors at an energy between 120 and 125 GeV. What is not clear yet is the statistical significance. The evident joy that Watts witnessed at CERN, combined with the equally evident caution, suggests a significance that is encouraging but not conclusive. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5492894 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5492894 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5492893&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Flightning-sprites-elves-caught.html National Geographic: Huge, quick, and brighter than the planet Venus as seen from Earth, sprites, elves, blue jets, and crawlers are bursts of electrical energy associated with large thunderstorms. Along with lightning and the auroras, the phenomena are luminous plasmas characterized by intermediate concentrations of free electrons (see Physics Today, November 2001, page 41). Hans Stenbaek-Nielsen, of the University of Alaska, and colleagues have now created the first stereoscopic images of the sprites and other bursts by filming them at 10 000 frames per second from two different angles and combining the images. Sprites and related phenomena occur in the mesosphere and may create electrical conduits between the thunderstorms they accompany and the ionosphere, a part of the Earth's upper a... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5492893 Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5492893 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483776&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fevidence-of-shrinking-alpine-g.html BBC: Another potential casualty of global warming may be Alpine glaciers. According to research presented this week at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco, glaciers in the French Alps have lost a quarter of their area over the past 40 years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, ice fields in the Mont Blanc range and surrounding mountains covered some 375 km2. By the late 2000s, that area had shrunk to 275 km2. Marie Gardent of the University of Savoie in France and colleagues used map archives, satellite imagery, and aerial photographs to conduct their study. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483776 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483776 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483775&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fus-and-south-korea-renew-talks.html New York Times: In a 1974 treaty with the US, South Korea agreed not to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel. Those technologies can be used to make nuclear weapons, but they can also be used to create fuel for nuclear power plants. South Korea is asking that that agreement be revised, because it needs to reprocess the spent fuel that's accumulating from nuclear reactors. The country also wants to meet 60% of its electricity needs with nuclear power by 2030 and sees reprocessing and enrichment as a way of securing fuel supplies for its expanding nuclear industry. Although the US supports a revised agreement, preventing the spread of uranium enrichment has been a major emphasis of US policy since 2004, and the US has required countries interested in civilian nuclear cooperation to... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483775 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483775 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483774&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fus-climate-stance-preventing-n.html Bloomberg Businessweek: Delegates at the United Nations climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, have expressed frustration with what has become a hallmark of the annual negotiations: the continued standoff between the US and China. The US position is that no new global climate deal is possible before 2020, and it will not begin talks until China, India, and other large emerging economies agree to be equally bound by any legal agreement. In the meantime, US negotiators say, countries should focus on the voluntary emissions-cutting agreement reached in 2010. China maintains that due to its rapid economic growth, it can't be bound by the same emissions standards as advanced industrialized nations, although the country is willing to enter a legally binding agreement at the end of th... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483774 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483774 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483773&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fshark-sized-cambrian-predator-.html Nature: Anomalocaris was a shark-sized, soft-bodied predator that inhabited the oceans in the Cambrian period. Possessing two front claw-like limbs, it looked like a shrimp, but with fins instead of legs. New fossil evidence has revealed another resemblance to shrimps and other arthropods: Anomalocaris had compound eyes. What's more, each of the two eyes of Anomalocaris contained at least 16 000 individual hexagonal lenses. Although modern dragonflies have 28 000 lenses per eye, ants and files have far fewer and likely cannot see as clearly as Anomalocaris could. The lens-containing fossils were discovered in a shale formation in Emu Bay, South Australia, by John Paterson of the University of New England in Australia and his colleagues. Until the team's discovery, compound ey... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483773 Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483773 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483780&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fastronomers-discover-two-of-th.html Nature: Astronomers have discovered the two most massive black holes known in the universe to date, writes Ron Cowen for Nature. Using instruments on the Keck II and Gemini North telescopes on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, Chung-Pei Ma (University of California, Berkeley) and colleagues found that a cluster galaxy called NGC 3842 houses a black hole with a mass equivalent to 9.7 billion Suns and that another galaxy, NGC 4889, has a black hole with an estimated mass of at least 20 billion Suns. The previous record holder has a mass of 6.7 billion Suns. The galaxies are about 300 million light-years from Earth—relatively close by cosmic standards. Because supermassive black holes formed early in the universe, the team’s findings, published this week in Nature, suggest that ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483780 Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483780 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483779&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fthree-quarters-of-climate-chan.html Nature: At least 74% of the temperature rise over the past 60 years is almost certainly due to human activity, according to a pair of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. Reto Knutti and Markus Huber report in Nature Geoscience that greenhouse gases contributed 0.6–1.1 °C to the warming observed since the middle of the 20th century, with the most statistically likely contribution being about 0.85 °C. About half of that was offset by the cooling effect of aerosols, which influence the climate by scattering light. Changes in solar radiation accounted for about 0.07 °C of the rise in temperature. One method for assessing global warming, known as optimal fingerprinting, compares observed patterns of surface air temperature ov... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483779 Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483779 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483778&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnasa-spacecraft-detects-very-e.html Washington Post: The search for Earth-like planets circling other stars is escalating, with NASA’s $600 million Kepler mission having found 2326 candidate planets, of which 207 are similar in size to Earth. Ten of those, which includes the latest find—Kepler-22b—orbit their stars in the so-called habitable zone, a balmy band of space where water can be liquid. With a surface temperature of about 22 °C, Kepler-22b, located some 600 light-years from Earth, looks to be the best candidate so far. It orbits a star very similar to our own Sun and its year is almost the same length as Earth’s, said Natalie Batahla, a Kepler scientist. Whether Kepler-22b has a surface and an atmosphere is yet to be determined, however; more observations need to be made with other, gro... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483778 Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483778 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483777&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fsilicon-rival-mos2-promises-sm.html BBC: The first computer chip made of molybdenum disulfide has been tested by Andras Kis of the Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures in Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues. Known as molybdenite, MoS2 is a naturally occurring mineral that's less reactive than silicon and can therefore be used in thinner layers to make smaller, more flexible, more energy-efficient chips. Unlike graphene, another material that can be used in flexible semiconductors, MoS2 can amplify electronic signals at room temperature, whereas graphene has to be cooled to 70 kelvin to do so. Kis and his colleagues say that despite MoS2's potential, it could be 20 years before it's ready for commercial use. They plan to explore the possibility of making it more conductive in the meantime. (Source: Physics Tod... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483777 Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483777 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483784&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fmacroscopic-quantum-tunneling-.html Science: Quantum tunneling is a phenomenon in which a particle tunnels through a barrier that it could not, according to the laws of classical mechanics, surmount. It has already been demonstrated in semiconductors in which electrons tunnel through nonconducting layers of material. Mika Sillanpää of Aalto University in Finland and colleagues think that much larger objects can be made to behave similarly. They designed an experiment in which a micrometer-wide membrane made of graphene is suspended over a metal plate. With electrical voltage applied, the membrane would have two stable positions: bowed slightly in the middle, or bent enough to be in contact with the metal plate underneath. The combined electrical and mechanical forces on the membrane would create an energy barrier b... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483784 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483784 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483783&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnew-map-of-antarctica-presente.html BBC: New imagery of Antarctica is being presented at today’s American Geophysical Union fall meeting. Called BEDMAP 2, the project incorporates more than 27 million data points collected from decades of surveys conducted by plane, satellite, ship, and dogsled. More than 99% of the continent’s rock base lies beneath an icy cover, but with the relatively recent addition of airborne radar, scientists can now map the troughs, valleys, and mountains that make up Antarctica’s subglacial surface. As they review and sift through the data, they have been seeing significant changes at the continent’s margins. Increasing volumes of ice melt are raising global sea levels. The new information is crucial in the quest to understand how Antarctica is responding to global warming, r... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483783 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483783 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483782&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fdutch-company-develops-biolumi.html Daily Mail: Philips, a Dutch electronics company, is developing a bio-light that provides illumination using the same method as fireflies and glow worms, writes Gareth Finighan for the Daily Mail. The lamp consists of a series of glass chambers that contain bioluminescent bacteria, which glow green when fed methane gas pumped into the unit through a household-waste digester. Although most people would not necessarily want to introduce bacterial cultures into their homes, such a lighting method could have outside applications, such as illuminating walkways. The company is also working on an alternative method that uses fluorescent proteins that emit different frequencies of light. “Energy-saving light bulbs will only take us so far. We need to push ourselves to rethink domestic applia... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483782 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483782 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5483781&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fvoyager-probes-detect-milky-wa.html National Geographic: The two Voyager spacecraft, first launched more than 30 years ago, have detected a type of UV radiation coming from the Milky Way that until now was rendered effectively invisible by the Sun's radiation. Known as Lyman-alpha, the radiation arises when hydrogen's lone electron hops down from the n = 2 quantum level to the n = 1 level. Regions rich in Lyman-alpha emission have been observed in other galaxies and associated with their stellar nurseries. Most of the emission that the Voyager probes have detected in our own galaxy also appears to emanate from star-forming regions. The new data may ultimately aid in the detection of the first appearance of stars in the universe. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5483781 Mon, 05 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5483781 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5473901&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fancient-heavy-stars-contain-cl.html Space.com: Scientists have been puzzled by the discovery of a number of ancient stars that contain unusually high levels of heavy elements such as gold, platinum, and uranium, because the heaviest elements are usually found at those levels only in much later generations of stars. Helium, hydrogen, and lithium were the first elements to form in the early universe. Heavier elements, up to iron in the periodic table, formed later inside stars. And the heaviest elements formed in supernovae. After a few hundred million years, all the known chemical elements existed, but the oldest stars that are still around today should contain only a fraction of the amount of heavy elements seen in the Sun and younger stars. Using data from the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT), astronomers from the Niels Bohr ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5473901 Sat, 03 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5473901 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5473902&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fnames-proposed-for-two-new-che.html BBC: Names have been submitted for two chemical elements that were recently added to the periodic table. Both elements are the product of collaborative work between scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. More than a decade ago, the scientists created element 114 by smashing calcium ions into the element plutonium, and element 116 by smashing calcium into curium. The proposed names for the new elements are, respectively, flerovium, in honor of physicist Georgy Flerov, and livermorium. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which accredited the two elements in June, is allowing five months for the public to comment on the names before officially endorsing them. (Source: Physics Today N... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5473902 Fri, 02 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5473902 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465593&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F12%2Fmajor-solar-project-launches-w.html NPR: SolarCity has begun a major project to install solar electricity systems on the roofs of houses on US military bases. Unlike solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy in August after having received $528 million in federal loan guarantees, SolarCity is doing the installation without government help. The total project, which will cost around $1 billion and include 120 000 homes, will be the largest residential deployment of solar in the country to date, writes Elizabeth Shogren for NPR. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which is providing up to $350 million, is working with SolarCity to secure the necessary financing. Although solar still only provides a small portion of US electricity, the solar installation industry has doubled in each of the past two years. "T... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465593 Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465593 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465597&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fuks-research-standing-jeopardi.html Guardian: Hundreds of scientific experiments are being dropped by British universities because of budget shortfalls at ISIS, one of the UK's major research facilities, writes Ian Sample for the Guardian. Built in the early 1980s at a cost of some $625 million, ISIS is a pulsed neutron and muon source used to probe the structure and microscopic processes of condensed matter. But it currently operates at only two-thirds capacity because the UK government has balked at paying the approximately $4.5 million in electrical and other miscellaneous annual costs to keep it running. As a result, ISIS receives twice as many applications as it can accommodate, and many scientists have given up applying. "The damage to the research base in UK universities across a number of disciplines is out of all pr... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465597 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465597 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465596&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fphysicist-uses-laser-to-genera.html National Post: Random number sequences are usually generated by computational algorithms, which only give the appearance of randomness, but a new technique uses a laser light pulse to create truly random numbers. Ben Sussman of Canada’s National Research Council and coworkers have found that when they shine a pulse of laser light at a diamond, the light changes as it passes through because it interacts with quantum vacuum fluctuations. What happens to the light is unknown and, fundamentally, unknowable. The measurements of the pulses of light that emerge from the diamond are therefore random in a way that nothing in our ordinary surroundings is, writes Tom Spears for Canada’s National Post. “A truly random number generator will provide impenetrable encryption for communic... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465596 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465596 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465595&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fworms-in-space.html BBC: A colony of Caenorhabditis elegans survived for six months aboard the International Space Station, produced 12 generations of offspring, and have now returned to Earth. The millimeter-long worms were the subjects of a study, by Nathaniel Szewczyk of the University of Nottingham and colleagues, on physiologic changes caused by low-Earth-orbit conditions. An automated chamber allowed for remote observation and kept the worms alive and healthy in a liquid environment without human intervention. Automated experimental systems like this one could be used in unmanned expeditions to study the effects of interplanetary travel on physiology, with the eventual goal of finding out whether human colonization of other planets is possible. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465595 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465595 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465594&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Foutcry-over-eu-budget-plan.html Nature: The European Commission has proposed that funding for ITER, the international effort to build a fusion test reactor, and for the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Earth-observation project be separated from the next general budget for 2014–20. The two projects would be supported via new intergovernmental organizations funded by European Union member states, with each member state required to contribute according to its gross national income. The commission argued that the arrangement would reduce the main EU budget's exposure to the large cost overruns common with large science projects. While ITER has experienced major overruns—going from a projected €5 billion budget in 2006 to €15 billion, GMES has stayed within its budget. The proposal ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465594 Wed, 30 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465594 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465600&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fradiologist-uses-ct-scans-to-r.html BBC: A radiologist at the University of Minnesota is using computed tomography (CT) to replicate antique musical instruments. Steven Sirr first got the idea to take a CT scan of a violin in 1988. Such scans, he discovered, can reveal characteristics of the wood, worm holes and cracks, and previous repairs, all of which help create an instrument’s unique sound. Teaming up with a couple of violin makers, Sirr used more than 1000 CT images to reproduce a 1704 Stradivarius violin borrowed from the US Library of Congress. Over the years, the team has scanned hundreds of instruments, including guitars, mandolins, and other violins. "The copies are amazingly similar to originals in their sound quality," said Sirr, who hopes that the process will allow more music students to have access to h... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465600 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465600 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465599&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fastronomers-make-progress-in-u.html Space.com: Researchers studying the black hole Cygnus X-1, which is part of a binary-star system, have reported the most detailed look yet at one of the strongest x-ray sources seen from Earth. Using data collected by the Very Large Baseline Array and other instruments, the team has calculated the distance to Cygnus X-1, the mass of the black hole, and its extreme spin. Fifteen times as massive as the Sun, the black hole spins quickly yet progresses slowly through the galaxy. From such information, the team is beginning to piece together information about the black hole’s state today and draw conclusions about its origins, writes Nola Taylor Redd for Space.com. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465599 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465599 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5465598&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fthe-science-behind-swirling-wi.html Science: Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have been studying the hydrodynamics of wine swirling, done by connoisseurs to release red wine’s bouquet through mixing and oxygenation. They found that three factors determine whether the wine arcs smoothly or starts to splash: the ratio of the level of wine to the diameter of the glass, the ratio of the diameter of the glass to the width of the circular shaking, and the ratio of the centrifugal and gravitational forces acting on the wine. Their findings, which they presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society's division of fluid dynamics in Baltimore, Maryland, could prove useful not only to wine tasters but also to lab technicians who swirl bacterial cultures to distribute ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5465598 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5465598 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5454414&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fclimate-change-meeting-opens-i.html New York Times: Delegates from 194 nations gathered today in Durban, South Africa, for the opening of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Topics to be discussed include the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests, the goal of reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, the need to rapidly develop and deploy clean energy technology, and, most important, the future of the Kyoto Protocol, writes John Broder for the New York Times. But political problems threaten to derail the talks, according to Rajendra K. Pachauri, director of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some of those problems can be blamed on the US, which has not shown ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5454414 Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5454414 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5454413&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fgraphene-electronics-produced-.html Daily Mail: Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK have created a graphene-based ink and used a modified Epson printer to produce thin-film circuits, writes Ted Thornhill for the Daily Mail. To create the ink, they dissolved microscopic flakes of graphite in N-methylpyrrolidone. Although printed electronics aren’t new, the Cambridge team replaced the metal nanoparticle inks with graphene, which is lighter, cheaper, more conductive, and more stable. The flexible electronics created from such ink-jet printing could be used in touch screens, photovoltaic devices, and electronic textiles. The group describes the technique in a paper submitted to the arXiv e-print server. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5454413 Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5454413 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5447911&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fmore-stolen-climate-science-em.html New York Times: Another batch of stolen emails from climate scientists was posted yesterday by the hacker or group of hackers responsible for Climategate two years ago. Involving the same scientists and many of the same issues, some of them also carried a similar tone: “catty remarks by the scientists, often about papers written by others in the field,” write Justin Gillis and Leslie Kaufman for the New York Times. The release of the emails, which is intended to cast doubt on the integrity of leading climate scientists and of climate research in general, comes less than a week before the United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, which starts on 28 November. “It smacks of desperation,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA. (Source: Physics Today... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5447911 Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5447911 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5447910&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fwith-new-bionic-contact-lens-t.html BBC: A group of researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle is developing a contact lens that can project images in front of the eye through the use of an embedded pixel array. Such a device has been challenging to create because it not only requires a suitable power source and mechanical and electrical integration of its micrometer-scale components but it also must be biocompatible. In addition, the human eye usually can focus only on objects at least a few centimeters away, whereas a contact lens rests on the eye’s surface. Nevertheless, the researchers have built a single-pixel prototype device, which they have successfully tested on rabbits. In humans, such lenses could have many uses, such as to relay information from navigation systems, enhance video gaming, or alert... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5447910 Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5447910 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437618&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fcongress-kills-request-for-nat.html Washington Post: Congress has refused a request by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to establish a National Climate Service, even though no new funding was required, writes Brian Vastag for the Washington Post. According to the NOAA website, the climate service would have provided “a single, reliable and authoritative source for climate data, information and decision-support services to help individuals, businesses, communities and governments make smart choices in anticipation of a climate changed future.” Demand for climate information has been growing. Between 2009 and 2010, the amount of climate data retrieved from NOAA websites shot up 86%, and climate-related phone calls and emails jumped from 26 000 to 30 000. But several House Republican... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437618 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437618 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437617&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fresearch-funding-imperiled-by-.html Chronicle of Higher Education: The so-called supercommittee of 12 congressional Democrats and 12 congressional Republicans admitted yesterday that it had failed to carry out its charge: to reach agreement on a series of deficit-reducing measures. The failure triggers automatic spending cuts, which include a $3.54 billion reduction in the budget of the Department of Education. If the automatic spending cuts go through as scheduled in 2013, student-aid programs will lose $134 million, which will affect some 1.3 million students. The Chronicle's Kelly Field reports that the cuts to Education are especially severe because they come on top of cuts imposed in 2011 on career and technical education and college preparatory programs. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437617 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437617 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437616&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fworlds-lightest-material-devel.html Talking Points Memo: Researchers at HRL Laboratories, Caltech, and the University of California, Irvine have created the world’s lightest material—ultralight metallic microlattice. The researchers poured a liquid material into the microlattice pattern and hardened it by exposing it to UV light, writes Carl Franzen for Talking Points Memo. Electroless nickel—an alloy of nickel and phosphorous—was then poured onto the pattern very precisely, forming a 100-nanometer-thin uniform coating. The resulting material is 99.99% air and has a density of only 0.9 mg/cc. Much lighter than Styrofoam, it floats to the ground like a feather when dropped, according to William Carter of HRL, one of the authors of a recent Science paper on the subject. However, it is the structure itse... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437616 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437616 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437615&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Feuropean-union-names-its-first.html Nature: Anne Glover, a molecular and cell biologist who is currently serving as Scotland's chief scientific adviser, will become the European Union's first chief scientific adviser. Although the identity of the nominee has been announced, key aspects of her job remain undefined, writes Nature's Natasha Gilbert. In particular, it's not clear how much real influence Glover will have over science policy or which EU office she will belong to. The position of chief scientific adviser was created two years ago. Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the EU research commissioner, blamed the delay in filling the position on the financial crisis. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437615 Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437615 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437622&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fadvances-in-solar-energy.html Science: For solar power to be a viable alternative energy option, companies need to be able to store some solar energy to use when the Sun is not shining. Spain’s Andasol complex, one of the world’s largest solar power stations, has been so successful in doing just that that it has been classified as a “predictable” source of energy, writes Edwin Cartlidge for Science. Andasol produces electricity in two stages: The Sun heats a synthetic oil, some of which is used to generate steam that turns a turbine and some of which is used to heat up molten salt that stores the energy for later use. Now some companies are working to improve on that design. Instead of using one material to absorb the Sun’s heat and a second material to store it, they use one material to d... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437622 Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437622 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437621&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Ffaster-than-light-neutrino-exp.html Nature: After the controversy caused by September’s superluminal neutrino announcement, the OPERA collaboration has now conducted a second experiment that replicates the findings of the first. Some scientists had expressed concern about the length of the proton pulses that CERN used to generate the neutrino pulses that it sent to Gran Sasso National Laboratory in the earlier experiment. They thought the pulses were so long that the OPERA researchers could not know whether individual neutrinos received at Gran Sasso corresponded to protons early or late in the proton pulse, creating uncertainty around their travel time, writes Eugenie Samuel Reich for Nature. Hence, the OPERA team members were asked to shorten the proton pulses in their second run. They generated 3-nanosecond-long pul... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437621 Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437621 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437620&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fus-tests-hypersonic-flying-mis.html Daily Mail: On Friday the US Army tested its new hypersonic flying missile, which can strike any target anywhere in the world in just 30 minutes, writes Lee Moran for the Daily Mail. Launched from Hawaii, the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) hit its target in the Marshall Islands some 2500 miles away. The AHW is made of a carbon composite that can withstand temperatures up to 2000 °C, which it will experience in flight. Turbojets provide the thrust for cruising, and scramjets can propel it up to 13 000 mph, or Mach 22. The missile’s test flight coincides with the US Air Force’s announcement of its eight 15-ton Big Blu bombs, which are capable of smashing open underground concrete bunkers and tunnels. News of the super bombs and testing of the supersonic missile came the same ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437620 Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437620 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5437619&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fclimate-change-will-bring-more.html Nature: Extreme weather, such as the 2010 Russian heat wave or the drought in the horn of Africa, will become more frequent and severe as the planet warms, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in a report released Friday, writes Quirin Schiermeier for Nature. The frequency and magnitude of warm temperature extremes will increase, and those of cold extremes will decrease. But how climate change will affect rainfall, flood risk, and storminess remains to be seen. The report, which lists a variety of adaptation strategies such as early-warning systems and improved building codes, is also meant to inform the United Nations’ upcoming climate talks in South Africa. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5437619 Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5437619 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5428572&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Frebuilding-the-2000-year-old-a.html NVP3D: The oldest known mechanism to use clockwork gears, called the Antikythera after the place it was discovered, was found in an ancient Greek shipwreck more than a hundred years ago. The device, of which only 82 badly corroded fragments remain, not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games. The watchmaker Hublot has now miniaturized the Antikythera from the size of a shoebox to something that you can wear on your wrist. This version also tells the time. A three-dimensional movie of the mechanism is available at http://nvp3d.com/site/reports/28/antikythera-mechanism. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5428572 Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5428572 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5428571&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fimproving-the-large-hadron-col.html CERN: Although the Large Hadron Collider has only been operating for a few months, CERN is preparing to significantly upgrade the infrastructure around 2020. After the upgrade, the LHC's luminosity will be increased to 5–10 times its current design value. “With the LHC colliding hundreds of millions of particles each second, some of the processes we’re interested in will happen just a few times a day,” said CERN research director Sergio Bertolucci. “With processes so rare, extra luminosity makes a big difference to our ability to make precision measurements and discover new things.” Upgrading the LHC will require new superconducting technologies in a wide range of fields, including high-field magnets, radiofrequency cavities, and electrical transfer lin... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5428571 Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5428571 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5428570&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fpossible-lakes-on-europa-could.html Washington Post: Not only does Jupiter’s smallest moon, Europa, have a massive global ocean beneath its icy surface, but it could also have huge lakes, according to new research. One of the geological mysteries of the solar system, writes Brian Vastag for the Washington Post, has been the number of icebergs strewn across the surface of Europa. Now researchers have found that they are probably the tips of subsurface lakes that well up and warm the surface. That is good news for scientists hoping to find signs of life on Europa because it means that there could be channels through the ice for life forms to travel between the surface and the ocean. If such subsurface lakes exist on Europa, they would hold more water than all five Great Lakes, said Britney Schmidt from the University of ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5428570 Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5428570 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5428569&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fuk-geoengineering-project-put-.html Guardian: A test of a UK geoengineering project has been postponed pending further discussion of its implications. The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project, which was conceived in March 2010, would inject particles into Earth’s atmosphere to try to cool the planet and mitigate climate change. In mid-September 2011, SPICE announced the UK’s first field trial. However, the trial was postponed later that month by the project’s scientific advisers, who say further public discussion is needed. Among the objections to the plan is the charge that such a project would “deflect political and scientific action away from reducing greenhouse-gas emissions,” write Phil Macnaghten, chair of the advisory panel, and Richard Owen, architect ... Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5428569 Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5428569 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5418332&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fitalys-new-research-minister.html Science: Francesco Profumo has been named Italy’s new Minister for Education, Universities, and Research, writes Marta Paterlini for Science. Profumo, who is provost of the Polytechnic University of Turin, was also recently named president of the country’s National Research Council (CNR). "He has a deep knowledge of university, research, and industry. I am sure he has the right skills to try, at least, to reform a system that is craving a fair evaluation and recruitment based on merit," said Adriano De Maio, president of the European Centre for Nanomedicine in Milan. A press release stated that Profumo is "honored" by the new assignment, which he will "embrace with humility and a spirit of service." (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5418332 Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5418332 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5418331&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fchinese-space-capsule-returns-.html BBC: China’s Shenzhou 8 spacecraft returned to Earth today, after a 17-day mission in which it performed the nation’s first docking maneuvers with China’s mini space lab, Tiangong 1. Beijing sees the dockings as the next phase in its step-by-step approach to acquiring the skills of human spaceflight operations, writes Jonathan Amos for the BBC. China aims to launch a manned mission in 2012. By 2020 it hopes to start building a 60-ton space station, considerably smaller than the 400-ton International Space Station but a remarkable achievement for a single country nevertheless. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5418331 Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5418331 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=5418330&cid=s_37771_75_f&fid=37771&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.physicstoday.org%2Fnewspicks%2F2011%2F11%2Fantarcticas-buried-mountain-ra.html National Geographic: The Gamburtsev Mountains may have been created 250 million years ago during the breakup of Gondwana, a supercontinent that included most of the landmasses in today's Southern Hemisphere, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. Fausto Ferraccioli, of the British Antarctic Survey, and colleagues, used radar to take gravitational and magnetic readings of the mountain range and found that an older, ancestral root rock lies beneath the Gamburtsevs. When Gondwana broke apart, a giant rift formed and heat from Earth's interior warmed the root, which expanded and floated higher in the mantle, causing the mountains to uplift again. Millions of years later, the Antarctic ice sheet form and encased the entire range. (Source: Physics Today News Picks) Physics Today News Picks news http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=5418330 Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0100 5418330