Space-based solar power (SBSP) has once again begun to attract attention with projects emerging in the US, Russia, China, India and Japan, among others. All are driven by increasing energy demands, soaring oil and gas prices, a desire to find clean alternatives to fossil fuels and by a burgeoning commercial space industry that promises to lower the cost of entry into space and spur on a host of new industries,… read more
Other applications could include monitoring breathing, cardiac beat detection and analysis, body deformation measurements during exercise
One of their greatest challenges for firefighters is seeing through thick veils of smoke and walls of flame to find people in need of rescue. So a team of Italian researchers has developed a new imaging technique that uses infrared (IR) digital holography, described in a paper published today in the… read more
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin says the world should unite to establish a defense system against space objects that threaten Earth, under the umbrella of the United Nations, Space Daily reports.
The Russian leader said the threat from asteroids, meteorites, comets and other stray space objects should serve to “unite humanity in the face of a common enemy.”
Alexander Bagrov, a senior researcher at the Institute… read more
In setting the nation on a course to map the active human brain, President Obama may have picked a challenge even more daunting than ending the war in Afghanistan or finding common ground with his Republican opponents, The New York Times reports.
Many neuroscientists are skeptical that a multiyear, multibillion dollar effort to unlock the brain’s mysteries will succeed.“I believe the scientific paradigm… read more
If Dennis Tito has his way, two people will leave our planet in January 2018 and make a trip to Mars and back, with a quick flyby, SpaceRef reports.
The project is being spearheaded by a non-profit organization, the Inspiration Mars Foundation.
Tito’s mission will be facilitated by donors, not investors.
Tito and a group of coauthors from NASA and several aerospace companies… read more
A simple sensor circuit made of hard-to-handle but promising carbon nanotubes is a first step in making the materials practical for computing, MIT Technology Review reports.
Transistors made from these nanomaterials are faster and more energy efficient than silicon ones, and computer models predict that carbon nanotube processors could be ten times less power-hungry. But it’s proved difficult to turn individual transistors into complex working circuits.… read more
Death Star’s superlaser? No, a new, improved laser that acts as an artificial star, as a reference to monitor atmospheric turbulence for the Very Large Telescope in Chile, compensating for the atmosphere’s distortions and creating much sharper images, reports New Scientist.
The laser shoots 90 kilometers into the atmosphere, where it interacts with the 10-kilometer-thick layer of sodium atoms left around our planet by meteoroid… read more
A satellite with an Android Google Nexus One smartphone at its heart is now orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 785 kilometers.
Called STRaND-1, the UK’s first cubesat, the satellite’s incorporation of a phone is a bold attempt to test how well cheap, off-the-shelf consumer electronics handle the harsh temperature variations and microchip-blasting cosmic radiation of space, New Scientist reports.
The shoebox-sized satellite… read more
UCLA researchers have developed a groundbreaking technique that uses a DVD burner to fabricate miniature graphene-based supercapacitors — devices that can charge and discharge a hundred to a thousand times faster than standard batteries.
These micro-supercapacitors, made from a one-atom–thick layer of carbon, can be easily manufactured and readily integrated into small devices, such as next-generation pacemakers.
The new cost-effective fabrication method holds promise for the… read more
A revolutionary liquid-cooled computer server design that could slash the carbon footprint of the Internet is being tested at the University of Leeds.
Unlike most computers, which use air to cool their electronics, all of the components in the new server are completely immersed in liquid. The power-hungry fans of traditional computing are replaced by a silent liquid-cooling process that relies on the natural convection… read more
The body’s immune system exists to identify and destroy foreign objects, whether they are bacteria, viruses, flecks of dirt or splinters. Unfortunately, nanoparticles designed to deliver drugs, and implanted devices like pacemakers or artificial joints, are just as foreign and subject to the same response.
Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and Penn’s Institute for Translational Medicine and… read more
If a genome is the blueprint for life, then the chief architects are tiny slices of genetic material that orchestrate how we are assembled and function, Yale School of Medicine researchers report.
The study pinpoints the molecular regulators of epigenetics — the process by which unchanging genes along our DNA are switched on and off at precisely right time and place.… read more
Researchers from VU University Amsterdam and from France and Singapore have discovered how mechanical tension changes the structure of DNA.
Advanced physics techniques show that the DNA structure can be disrupted in three distinct ways when the DNA molecule is stretched.
Three different structures
DNA consists of two parallel strands that are connected to each other in a double helix structure. While pulling on the DNA… read more
You might expect a robot’s heartbeat to be a metallic ticking. But the pulsing in this video isn’t completely artificial: it’s powered by living material, New Scientist reports.
Created by Peter Walters from the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, and colleagues, the pump uses the gas released by live yeast to generate pressure and distend a membrane, turning it into an… read more
Researchers at Brown University have developed a robotic bat wing that is providing valuable new information about dynamics of flapping flight in real bats — the function of ligaments, the elasticity of skin, the structural support of musculature, skeletal flexibility, upstroke, and downstroke.
The strong, flapping flight of bats offers great possibilities for the design of small aircraft, among other applications.
The robot, which… read more