Microbes turn electricity directly to methane

(PhysOrg.com) -- A tiny microbe can take electricity and directly convert carbon dioxide and water to methane, producing a portable energy source with a potentially neutral carbon footprint, according to a team of Penn State engineers.

"We were studying making hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells and we kept getting all this methane," said Bruce E. Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, Penn State. "We may now understand why."

Methanogenic microorganisms do produce methane in marshes and dumps, but scientists thought that the organisms turned hydrogen or organic materials, such as acetate, into methane. However, the researchers found, while trying to produce hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells, that their cells produced much more methane than expected.

"All the methane generation going on in nature that we have assumed is going through hydrogen may not be," said Logan. "We actually find very little hydrogen in the gas phase in nature. Perhaps where we assumed hydrogen is being made, it is not."

Microbial electrolysis cells do require an electrical voltage to be added to the voltage that is produced by bacteria using organic materials to produce current that evolves into hydrogen. The researchers found that the Archaea, using about the same electrical input, could use the current to convert carbon dioxide and water to methane without any organic material, bacteria or hydrogen usually found in microbial electrolysis cells. They report their findings in this week's issue of Environmental Science and Technology.

"We have a microbe that is self perpetuating that can accept electrons directly, and use them to create methane," said Logan.

http://www.physorg.com/news157651388.html

DNA-Based Assembly Line for Precision Nano-Cluster Construction

March 29, 2009

UPTON, NY — Building on the idea of using DNA to link up nanoparticles — particles measuring mere billionths of a meter — scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have designed a molecular assembly line for predictable, high-precision nano-construction. Such reliable, reproducible nanofabrication is essential for exploiting the unique properties of nanoparticles in applications such as biological sensors and devices for converting sunlight to electricity. The work will be published online March 29, 2009, by Nature Materials.

http://www.bnl.gov/cfn/news/PRdisplay.asp?prID=921

A genetic technique successfully treats Duchenne muscular dystrophy in dogs

An international team of researchers has successfully treated dogs with the canine form of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rapidly progressing and ultimately fatal muscle disease that afflicts one out of every 3,600 boys. The researchers used a novel technique called exon skipping to restore partial function to the gene involved in Duchenne. The study, published in Annals of Neurology, gives hope that a similar approach could work in humans.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22327/page1/

Solar Refrigerator: A Counterintuitive Prototype

The fridge was developed by mechanic engineering students Frederik Knop, Nicolás Ripoll, and Olivier Bernade, the last one a French exchange student.

The prototype is based on adsorption, which Wikipedia explains in the following way:

Absorptive refrigeration uses a source of heat to provide the energy needed to drive the cooling process.[...] The classic gas absorption refrigerator sends liquid ammonia into a hydrogen gas. The liquid ammonia evaporates in the presence of hydrogen gas, providing the cooling. The now-gaseous ammonia is sent into a container holding water, which absorbs the ammonia. The water-ammonia solution is then directed past a heater, which boils ammonia gas out of the water-ammonia solution. The ammonia gas is then condensed into a liquid. The liquid ammonia is then sent back through the hydrogen gas, completing the cycle.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/new-solar-refrigerator-prototype-from-chile.php

Massive young star explodes 'before its time'

A massive young star seems to have exploded before its time, new Hubble Space Telescope images reveal. The star, the heftiest to have been linked to a supernova explosion, could challenge models of when stellar furnaces end their lives.

Stars heavier than about eight times the mass of the Sun end their lives in dramatic explosions when the nuclear furnaces at their cores run out of fuel and collapse into neutron stars or black holes.

The Hubble observations suggest the erstwhile star was a luminous blue variable, a massive star at least 50 times as heavy as the Sun that jettisons most of itself material into space in a series of outbursts. Eta Carinae, wedged between gigantic hourglass-shaped clouds of material that it sloughed off, is a classic example of this kind of star.

That classification was surprising, since luminous blue variables were not expected to explode. Stellar models predict that the stars should evolve further – into other stellar types, shedding all of the hydrogen on their surfaces and most of their mass, before running out of fuel and going supernova.

But "our star when it exploded still had some of its hydrogen envelope. It seems to have exploded before its time," says team member Douglas Leonard of San Diego State University in California.

One possibility, Leonard says, is that the star was actually close to death at its core, and for some reason did not lose all the hydrogen on its surface, appearing 'healthy'.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16823-massive-young-star-explodes-before-its-time.html

Desktop Factory 125ci 3D Printer

Until now, 3D printers have been large, expensive machines confined to the shops and design departments of major corporations and elite design firms. With the introduction of the Desktop Factory 3D printer, priced disruptively lower than the nearest competitive offering, Desktop Factory becomes the leader in high performance low-cost 3D printing technologies.

http://www.desktopfactory.com/

U.S. engineers find way to build a better battery

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. engineers have found a way to make lithium batteries that are smaller, lighter, longer lasting and capable of recharging in seconds.

The researchers believe the quick-charging batteries could open up new applications, including better batteries for electric cars.

And because they use older materials in a new way, the batteries could be available for sale in two to three years, a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Current rechargeable lithium batteries can store large amounts of energy, making them long-running. But they are stingy about releasing their power, making them discharge energy slowly and require hours to recharge.

Scientists traditionally have blamed slow-moving lithium ions -- which carry charge across the battery -- for this sluggishness.

However, about five years ago, Gerbrand Ceder and a team at MIT discovered that lithium ions in traditional lithium iron phosphate battery material actually move quite quickly.

"It turned out there were other limitations," Ceder said in a telephone interview.

Ceder and colleagues discovered that lithium ions travel through tunnels accessed from the surface of the material. If a lithium ion at the surface is directly in front of a tunnel entrance, it can quickly deliver a charge. But if the ion is not at the entrance, it cannot easily move there, making it less efficient at delivering a charge.

Ceder and colleagues remedied this by revamping the battery recipe. "We changed the composition of the base material and we changed the way it is made -- the heat treatment," Ceder said.

This created many smooth tunnels in the material that allow the ions to slip in and out easily. "The trick was knowing what to change," he said.

Using their new processing technique, the team made a small battery that could be fully charged in 10 to 20 seconds.

Ceder thinks the material could lead to smaller, lighter batteries because less material is needed for the same result.

And because they simply tinkered with a material already commonly used for batteries, it could be easily adapted for commercial use.

"If manufacturers decide they want to go down this road, they could do this in a few years," Ceder said.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090311/tc_nm/us_batteries_3

The iPhone Becomes a Web Server

When those Apple advertisements tout "there's an app for just about anything," they aren't kidding. The latest example? A new iPhone application which just debuted in Japan's App Store transforms the handheld into a full-blown web server. Called "ServersMan@iPhone", the application allows your iPhone to appear just like any other web server on the internet.

The new application was developed by a Japanese operation called FreeBit, a Tokyo-based venture company known for providing its network platform to many VNO/ISPs (virtual network operator/Internet service providers).

Once the app is installed, PCs on the internet can access the iPhone to upload or download files through a browser or they can use the webDAV protocol. If the PC and the iPhone are on the same network, the PC can connect directly. If they are on separate networks, then FreeBit's VPN software will engage the connection.

Nanotubes That See Everything

Carbon nanotubes that respond to visible light might mean better solar cells and artificial retinas

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories, in Livermore, CA, have created the first carbon-nanotube devices that can detect the entire visible spectrum of light. Their work might one day find a range of applications, including in solar cells that absorb more light, tiny cameras that work in very low light, and better artificial retinas.

Other researchers have demonstrated nanotubes that can detect light of specific wavelengths, including ultraviolet light, but never the entire visible spectrum of light. "This is a significant milestone," says George Grüner, a professor of physics and head of the Nano-Biophysics Group at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the Sandia work.

The light sensor inside a digital camera--known as a charge-coupled device--converts light into an electrical signal because as photons bombard silicon, they create electron holes in the material. In contrast, carbon-nanotube light sensors work in a similar way to biological eyes. The nanotubes are decorated with three kinds of chromophores--molecules that change shape in response to a particular wavelength of light. This change in shape results in a change in the chromophores' orientations with respect to the nanotube that, in turn, changes the electrical conductivity of the nanotube in a way that can be measured to deduce the color and intensity of the light. The Sandia researchers used three different types of chromophores, which respond to either red, green, or blue bands of the visible-light spectrum.

The work is still at an early stage, but nanotube light sensors could have advantages over today's light-sensing chips. Most important, says Sandia researcher Xinjian Zhou, the devices are intrinsically high resolution and small. Their resolution is the same as the diameter of each nanotube--about one nanometer. And because an array of the nanotubes could be very small, light could be focused into a very small area, meaning that future devices would be very sensitive to low light levels. Also, nanotube light sensors could be printed on flexible polymer backings. This could make them cheaper to manufacture and also less irritating to biological tissue--an important consideration for retinal implants.

The iPhone Becomes a Web Server

When those Apple advertisements tout "there's an app for just about anything," they aren't kidding. The latest example? A new iPhone application which just debuted in Japan's App Store transforms the handheld into a full-blown web server. Called "ServersMan@iPhone", the application allows your iPhone to appear just like any other web server on the internet.

The new application was developed by a Japanese operation called FreeBit, a Tokyo-based venture company known for providing its network platform to many VNO/ISPs (virtual network operator/Internet service providers).

Once the app is installed, PCs on the internet can access the iPhone to upload or download files through a browser or they can use the webDAV protocol. If the PC and the iPhone are on the same network, the PC can connect directly. If they are on separate networks, then FreeBit's VPN software will engage the connection.

Find may revolutionize computers

Scientists at Edmonton's National Institute for Nanotechnology have
made a significant breakthrough that could help pave the way for new
generations of smaller, more energy-efficient computers.

The
team, led by Robert Wolkow, has invented the world's smallest quantum
dots, atom-sized devices capable of controlling electrons, using a
fraction of the power of current computer technology.

"Roughly
speaking, we predict there could be a 1,000-time reduction in power
consumption with electronic computers built in this new way," said
Wolkow, a physicist at the University of Alberta.

"And they could
be something like 1,000 times smaller in size. So it's reaching the
very limit as far as anyone could imagine of how small things could
get."

The team's work is published in the latest edition of Physical Review Letters, considered the world's premier physics journal.

Current
computers use transistors, which are essentially valves for flowing
streams of electrons around a circuit. In recent years, engineers have
found ways to make these devices smaller, but pushing electrons through
narrow spaces raises the danger of the machines overheating and failing.

"So the problem is no longer how do we make it smaller, it's how do we consume less power," Wolkow said.

Energy in relation

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/type-iii-kardashev-civilization.html

Klingon Keyboard: for serious Trekkies only

Are you one of the biggest nerds in the world? If so, you probably know the fake Klingon language from Star Trek.
And maybe you want to write things in this fake tongue. But here you
are stuck with a stupid English keyboard. What to do? Buy a keyboard
with Klingon symbols on it, that's what!

Not only does this keyboard let you type in a made-up language, but
it also connects with a PS/2 cable, something no current computers use.
So to recap: if you're a super nerd with an old computer and you want
to type in Klingon, you can buy this warrior's accessory here.
For the other 99.99999999% of the world, we'll stick to regular
keyboards. And for the precious few of us who might need their Klingon
fix now and then, stick to online Klingon translators.

http://dvice.com/archives/2009/01/klingon_keyboar.php

NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.

Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used software called
Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space
images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million
miles from Earth.

"This is the first step in creating a
totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary
Internet," said Adrian Hooke, team lead and manager of space-networking
architecture, technology and standards at NASA Headquarters in
Washington.

NASA and Vint Cerf, a vice president at Google
Inc., in Mountain View, Calif., partnered 10 years ago to develop this
software protocol. The DTN sends information using a method that
differs from the normal Internet's Transmission-Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, communication suite, which Cerf
co-designed.

The Interplanetary Internet must be robust to
withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space. Glitches can
happen when a spacecraft moves behind a planet, or when solar storms
and long communication delays occur. The delay in sending or receiving
data from Mars takes between three-and-a-half to 20 minutes at the
speed of light.

Unlike TCP/IP on Earth, the DTN does not
assume a continuous end-to-end connection. In its design, if a
destination path cannot be found, the data packets are not discarded.
Instead, each network node keeps the information as long as necessary
until it can communicate safely with another node. This
store-and-forward method, similar to basketball players safely passing
the ball to the player nearest the basket means information does not
get lost when no immediate path to the destination exists. Eventually,
the information is delivered to the end user.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_space_internet.html

Water Vapor Confirmed on Alien Planet

The unequivocal signature of water vapor has been found on a
planet beyond our solar system.

Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope,
astronomers detected
the steamy signature of water vapor in the light coming from a large
exoplanet circling around a star about 63 light-years from Earth.
Though it's not the first sign of water vapor around this planet, it's
the strongest evidence yet.

The planet, HD 189733b, is what's called a "Hot Jupiter" — a boiling,
gigantic gas planet more akin to our own Jupiter or Saturn than to a
terrestrial planet like Earth. It's not a good candidate itself for alien
life, but the successful detection of water vapor here, in the
location and quantities that theorists predicted, bodes well for further
studies of more promising locales for extraterrestrial life.

"It means we're starting to understand these objects a
little bit better than we did when we first started," astrophysicist Adam
Burrows of Princeton University told Wired.com. "It’s a trial run for the
much more detailed investigations that will be possible in the years to come as
we take this stepping stone from giant planets to terrestrial planets."

Though water vapor is thought to be fairly common on planets — even
our own Jupiter has it — the discovery of its presence on another world
is significant and points the way toward future discoveries, scientists
say. Yesterday scientists announced that the Hubble Space Telescope
had found carbon dioxide, which under the right circumstances could be
connected to life, on the same planet. The presence of methane has also
been detected.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/embargoed---wat.html

Proposed Laser ignition Fusion/Fission Hybrid Commercial Power by 2030

LIFE, an acronym for Laser Inertial Fusion-Fission Energy, is an advanced energy concept under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

Conceptual design for a LIFE engine and power plant based on National
Ignition Facility (NIF)-like fusion targets and a NIF-like laser
operating at an energy of 1.4 megajoules (MJ) at a wavelength of 350
nanometers (ultraviolet), with a 2.5-meter-radius target chamber and
with the final optics at a distance of 25 meters from the target. The
National Ignition Campaign will begin during 2009, and ignition and
fusion energy yields of 10 to 15 megajoules (MJ) are anticipated during
fiscal years 2010 or 2011. Fusion yields of 20 to 35 MJ are expected
soon thereafter. Ultimately fusion yields of 100 MJ are expected on
NIF. The LIFE system is designed to operate with fusion energy gains of
about 25 to 30 and fusion yields of about 35 to 50 MJ to provide about
500 megawatts (MW) of fusion power – about 80 percent of which comes in
the form of 14.1 million electron-volt (MeV) neutrons with the rest of
the energy in X-rays and ions. This is an approach which would be as
good as and in some ways superior to liquid flouride thorium reactors.
Improvements in lasers and cost reduction with laser components would
meet the requirements of this project if current trends continue. A
success with aneutronic nuclear fusion such as might occur with Bussard
Inertial electrostatic fusion, dense plasma focus fusion would likely
be superior to this. It would be worthwhile to fund several of these
vastly superior approaches to nuclear fission and fusion for a billion
or few billion each in order to get many multiple trillions of payoff
with a homerun energy success. Even partial success with one of these
approaches could deal with all of the current nuclear waste (unburned
fuel) which would cost tens of billions to store in a place like Yucca
Mountain.

A Computer Program That Taught Itself to Draw the Mona Lisa

These images represent four steps in one computer program's progress
towards recreating the Mona Lisa using only 50 semi-transparent
polygons. Swedish programmer Roger Alsing did this simple weekend
project with genetic programming that resulted in a program that could
generate, on its own, a pretty awesome likeness of the famous painting.
So how did he do it?

He wrote a program that would randomly place shapes on a black
background, and decide whether the abstract pattern looked more or less
like the famous painting. After almost a million tries, the program's
output had evolved to the point where Alsing had the image on the far
right.

http://io9.com/5106124/a-computer-program-that-taught-itself-to-draw-the-mona-lisa

No Neanderthal Ancestors for Modern Humans

If ancient homo sapiens got it on with their Neanderthal
cousins, there were no children to show for it. Researchers studying
Neanderthal DNA have sequenced half of the Neanderthal genome, and
shoot down the theory that European humans interbred with the
now-extinct species. And the team says the genome has other things to
teach us about Neanderthal life, including their sexual proclivities.

The
research team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthology
presented their findings last week at a human evolution conference. The
researchers have compared the Neanderthal genome to that of modern
humans of European and African descent. Because Neanderthals and modern
humans coexisted in Europe, researchers have theorized that European
genomes would have more similarities with the Neanderthal genome than
would African genomes. However, European and African genomes have a
similar number of differences from the Neanderthal genome, suggesting
that modern humans in Europe outbred rather than assimilated the
Neanderthals.

http://io9.com/5105912/no-neanderthal-ancestors-for-modern-humans

Einstein's E=MC2 Finally Proven Right 103 Years Later

PARIS (AFP) - It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's
celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a
heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists.

A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre
for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest
supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass
of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

According to the conventional model of particle physics, protons and
neutrons comprise smaller particles known as quarks, which in turn are
bound by gluons.

The odd thing is this: the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of
quarks is only five percent. Where, therefore, is the missing 95
percent?

The answer, according to the study published in the US journal Science on Thursday, comes from the energy from the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons.

In other words, energy and mass are equivalent, as Einstein proposed in his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905.

The e=mc2 formula shows that mass can be converted into energy, and energy can be converted into mass.

By showing how much energy would be released if a certain amount of
mass were to be converted into energy, the equation has been used many
times, most famously as the inspirational basis for building atomic
weapons.

But resolving e=mc2 at the scale of sub-atomic particles -- in equations called quantum chromodynamics -- has been fiendishly difficult.

"Until now, this has been a hypothesis," France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) said proudly in a press release.

"It has now been corroborated for the first time."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081120/sc_afp/sciencephysicseinstein_081120235605??

Nearby Solar System Looks Like Our Own at Time Life Formed

A nearby solar system bears a striking similarity to our own solar system, raising the possibility it could harbor Earth-like planets.

Epsilon Eridani, located about 10.5 light-years from our sun, is surrounded by two asteroid belts that are shaped by planets, astronomers at SETI Institute and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced today.

But it's the possibility that currently undetected smaller planets could lie within the innermost asteroid belt that make the solar system intriguing to astrobiologists.

"This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth," said SETI's Dana Backman, lead author of a paper on the 850-million-year-old star that will appear next year in The Astrophysical Journal, in a release.

Back then, the Kuiper Belt of space objects beyond Neptune was much larger. Over time, many of those objects fell into the inner solar system during a period about four billion years ago known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. The barrage of large asteroids pockmarked the rocky planets and possibly created our moon when a large object collided with Earth, expelling a huge amount of material into space.

Epsilon Eridani's evolution could provide insight into how universal these processes are. That's important because our solar system contains a planet — Earth — just far enough from the sun not to be fried but close enough to capture enough energy to support life as we know it. Similar systems
could end up with planets orbiting in the same biological sweet spot.

"Epsilon Eridani looks a lot like the young solar system, so it's conceivable that it will evolve similarly," said astronomer Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a co-author of the paper.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/nearby-solar-sy.html