Invisibility One Step Closer?
Only a very small step mind you, as Japanese professor Yutaka Tamaru of Mie University unveils his newest creation, a transparent goldfish. Apparently the hapless creature was developed to make it easier for Japanese school students to study, so they wouldn’t have to cut them open, which has a certain irony considering some Japanese culinary practices… The skin and scales have no pigment so the heart, brain, eyes and other organs can clearly be seen. Since there’s no need for this animal to go under the knife it’s whole life cycle can be closely monitored and the good news for this specimen is that it is expected to live for around 20 years. Incidentally, this isn’t the first see-through animal developed in Japan and transparent frogs are apparently going to go on sale in the next few months.
Solar Nanotubes Make Light Work?
I have been reporting on developments in photovoltaic cells for as long as I can remember and there’s always some new technology or fabrication method that’s going to improve upon the woeful efficiency of today’s silicon based solar cells. I’m still waiting and outside the labs most commercial cells still only manage a fairly miserable 20 – 30 percent efficiency, which basically means that during their lifetime very few solar cells ever recover the enormous amount of energy put into their manufacture, let alone live long enough to generate ‘free’ electricity. I have no doubt that one day the problem will be licked and this might just be the development to do it. It’s a rolled up graphene layer nanotube and it’s the brainchild of a team of researchers at Cornell University. The first problem, though, is that it’s tiny, no larger than a DNA molecule, which means you’ll need an awful lot of them to do anything useful. The good news is that it’s very efficient and when exposed to light the tubular structure creates more electrons, and the cylindrical structure makes it easier for them to flow. I know, we’ve been here before so don’t hold your breath, but one day, it will happen, and maybe, just maybe this is where it started…
Infants Get Learning Lag from Watching TV
Infants who spend a lot of time in front of the TV may set themselves up for difficulties in learning later on in life, a new scientific research shows. It would appear that even babies under 1 or 2 years of age are capable of “zoning out” in front of the screen, and that this type of behavior may translate into less time spent with their parents, and, possibly, difficulties paying attention and learning when they grow a little older. The investigation was ordered and paid for by the LENA Foundation.
“We’ve known that television exposure during infancy is associated with language delays and attentional problems, but so far it has remained unclear why,” shared for LiveScience University of Washington School of Medicine professor of pediatrics Dimitri Christakis, who was also the lead researcher on the new study. Read more
These Are the Best-Selling PC Games of March
PC gaming hasn’t been going through the best times in recent years, and, at least according to some analysts, it will be dying out in a matter of months or possibly years, succumbing to the popularity of consoles, which are more user friendly to gamers and, in some cases, piracy free.
But the platform is still very stubborn and keeps on going, with the help of organizations such as the PC Gaming Alliance and with companies that are still devoted to their early roots on the old platform, like Blizzard, Electronic Arts or Bethesda. Read more
Google Asked to Reveal Blogger Identity
An Indian company, tired of the unceasing attacks of an anonymous blogger, decided to file a lawsuit against him, as Blog Wired, citing a Wall Street Journal article, reports. But Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects encounters a problem. The company cannot find out the identity of the blogger who made a habit out of denigrating it.
The cyber attacks over the company may have been conducted by a former employee or someone who was not satisfied with the services of the Indian firm. Since it doesn’t want to lose time trying to discover who the man is, the company claims that Google should provide it with this information because the man is a user of Google’s blog client, Blogger. “Toxic Writer”, as the blogger identifies himself, should be protected, according to privacy policies, against the disclosure of any of his personal information given to Google the moment he subscribed. Read more
Sleep Respiratory Disorder Linked to Memory Loss
Sleep apnea is a respiratory disorder manifested during sleep that involves episodes in which a person misses one or more breath at a time. The disorder is usually experienced in several episodes during the night and triggers fatigue and sleepiness during the day. Snoring and restless sleep are also symptoms associated with sleep apnea. According to a new study carried out at the University of California, five or more episodes per hour may have serious consequences on the brain tissue and can lead to problems related to memory recognition.
High-resolution images made through a magnetic resonance imaging process on about forty patients revealed that parts of the brain known as the mammillary bodies, that are located in the anterior end of the archer of the fornix and are responsible for processing memories, are about 20 percent smaller than those of people that don’t have sleep apnea. Read more
Prototype Cloning Machine Demonstrated
Here’s another item from the ‘it was bound to happen sooner or later ‘files. Researchers at the University of Bath have just demonstrated a prototype of a machine that can replicate itself. Sci-Fi fans will be all too aware of the dangers and what this means to future generations; the Rise of the Machine surely can’t be far behind,…
For the moment at least, there doesn’t seem to be too much to fear from the RepRap (Replicating Rapid–Prototyper). Basically it is a three dimensional printer that creates objects by building up layers of molten plastic. Read more
Why Drunk People Show No Fear
It is clear that alcohol consumption can turn a gentleman into a rude beast. For the first time, a new research study published in The Journal of Neuroscience explains why. Social drinkers intoxicated with alcohol have lowered sensitivity in brain nuclei controlling threat detection, while displaying higher activity in brain nuclei connected to reward.
“The key finding of this study is that after alcohol exposure, threat-detecting brain circuits can’t tell the difference between a threatening and non-threatening social stimulus. At one end of the spectrum, less anxiety might enable us to approach a new person at a party. But at the other end of the spectrum, we may fail to avoid an argument or a fight”, said Dr. Marina Wolf, at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. Read more
An Explanation of Happiness
We are all in the search of happiness, but the failure of finding it can cause us all kinds of frustrations and psychological issues. First of all, it is tricky to even define happiness: is it having what you want or wanting what you have? A new research published in the Psychological Science tested this. The results point that people can grow accustomed to their possessions, which in the end bring them less happiness. Nevertheless, people can keep wanting the things they have and it is precisely this category that experiences the highest level of happiness.
The team, made by Texas Tech University psychologist Jeff Larsen and Amie McKibban of Wichita State University, asked undergraduate subjects to fill in a questionnaire assessing if they possessed 52 different material items, like a car, a stereo or a bed. Read more
3D Camera with 12,616 Lenses
No, it’s not a get rich quick scheme by a company manufacturing lens cleaning tissues, but an idea for future camera technology from the brainy folk at Stanford University. A team led by Professor Abbas El Gamal are working on a camera with a multi-aperture image sensor. This is basically an image sensor with super-small pixels – several times smaller than the pixels on a regular camera. They are clustered together on the sensor chip in groups of 256 pixels, and each group has its own micro lens. It is like having a lot of cameras on a single chip; in effect the 3-megapixel chip the researchers are working on is equivalent to 12,616 separate cameras.
So far so good, but the really clever bit is that by selectively defocusing images captured by the cameras, the data can be processed to produce detailed 3D image maps of whatever it happens to be pointing at. Read more
