‘Safe in 30 seconds’ , as new test detects major ‘date rape drug’ in your glass itself

Chemists at the National University of Singapore have developed a unique test to detect one of the major ‘date rape drugs’ , Gamma Hydroxy Butyric acid (GHB) in any beverage. Date rape drugs , also called predator drugs are sedatives which cause loss of consciousness and possibly amnesia , used widely for recreational and criminal purposes.Earlier tests involved chromatographic separation and subsequent testing, which required some bit of geeky apparatus and minimum 10 minutes, both of which are obviously the last things you have sitting in a club with a spiked drink in your hand. In this test, the ‘sensor’ when added to the drink makes GHB change its color to orange.

The team , from 17 fluorescent compounds , finalized what they call ‘GHB Orange’ , after testing all of them with drinks laced with various concentrations of GHB. The efficiency of ‘GHB Orange’ was determined by mixing with samples of various beverages , alcoholic, non alcoholic, colorless and colored ,containing GHB , which were differentiated from non spiked drinks by adding the sensor.
For transparent or translucent drinks, the difference was easy to make out with the naked eye, but in case of colored drinks , additional light was required to detect the color change.

The team is hoping to develop a commercial kit based on this tech, which is one which all clubbers really should be looking out for , keeping your safety in mind…

 

Source : DailyMail

The Little Engines That Could

Stem cells can redevelop into multiple cell types in the body. They can also be used as a repair system inside the body for tissues and can replenish other cells already present. When stem cells divide, each cell that comes from the division can remain a stem cell or transform into another cell type with a new function—such as transforming into a red blood cell or brain cell. For a cell to be considered a stem cell it must contain two unique properties:
 1) it must be able to renew itself through cell division—even after long periods of inactivity;
 2) under certain conditions it must be able to transform into multiple cell types, such as bone marrow, tissues or organs.
Scientists have historically worked with two types of stem cells: embryonic and somatic (non-embryonic). Stem cells carry unique regenerative properties and have a high potential for curing disease. While the research is ongoing, researchers are much closer to using stem cell therapies to treat patients.

About the Author - Written by Dr. Joseph Purita, founder of The Institute of Regenerative and Molecular Orthopedics and a pioneer in the use of the laser in orthopedic surgery.

How Does a Breathalyzer Work?

The History of the Breathalyzer

How many drinks have you had tonight? This is a question police officers ask motorists every day as license checks are set up across the nation. In addition to catching someone driving illegally, they are also checking for the smell of alcohol. Suspicious behavior or unstable movement can lead to a night in jail and one might find themselves standing on the side of the road blowing into a breathalyzer. When alcohol is consumed, it passes from the stomach to the small intestines, where it is absorbed into the blood stream and goes through the whole body. Alcohol goes through the body so fast that it affects the central nervous system even when it is ingested in small amounts.

History

As far back as 1874, researchers have suspected breath could be used for alcohol testing. They realized that trace amounts of alcohol were excreted in breath. In 1827, W.D. McNalley, a Chicago chemist, invented a breathalyzer in which the breath changed colors when it moved through
chemicals in water. Housewives came up with a useful use of the breathalyzer: to test for alcohol on their husband's breath before they would let
me in the house.

Drunkometer

The drunkometer, invented by Rolla Harger in 1938, was the first roadside breather-tester that was intended for the police to use. The machine collected a sample of the driver's breath directly into a balloon in the machine and pumped through a solution of acidified potassium. If there was
alcohol in the breath, the solution changed colors. The bigger the color change, the more alcohol that was in the sample.
In 1954, A police captain in Indiana, who later became a professor at a university in Indiana, Dr. Robert Borkenstein, is credited as the first person to invent a device that can measure a driver's blood alcohol level based on a sample of their breath. It provided the police with a test that would give them immediate results as to a driver's alcohol concentration in their breath.

How Do They Work?

Since the air in the deepest part in the lungs give the most accurate results, the person issuing the test will tell the driver to blow as hard as they can into the breathalyzer for about two to four seconds. The breath sample bubbles into a vial with potassium chromate. If there is any ethanol present it will react with the potassium chromate and cause the solution to switch to a golden yellow color as a result. This mixture is then compared to another vial that has potassium chromate but not ethanol which will make it a bright orange color. The color difference in these vials will give an the person issuing the test an indication of the amount of ethanol in the person's breath. The device then gives a readout that states the degree of color change and the level of alcohol in their breath.
Breathalyzers are not the only method for determining levels of intoxication. Intoxilyzers, and Alcosensers are two other devises to measure someone's intoxication.

About the Author - Gordon Weber is a guest blogger.  His interest in how Breathalyzers work led him to thesandiegoduiattorneys.com website of Chris P Sohovich.

360 TB data storage legacy for the future generation

The picture doesn't make you any wiser about this thing here? Well that's because this a modeled section. The thing we are talking about here is a disk, built by researchers at University of Southampton. A glass disk to be precise. And like any of the CD's, DVD's to Blur Ray's you may have come across, this one here stores data as well. So what's so special about this?

Firstly, the storage space offered- a MASSIVE 360 TB (here, which is Tera Bytes FYI ) of storage space is what this disk offers. That's huge, to the point that you may not realize actually how huge it is. So let me help you a bit - 360 Tera Bytes, or 360,000,000,000,000 or 360 Trillion bytes of data, which is equal to space in 941,400 DVD's!!! In short, its real huge!!!Secondly, this storage is designed to last a lifetime, or to be precise, the lifetime, of the entire humanity. With a life of what is said to be 1 Million years, this disk is set to outlive the human race (which is incidentally facing quite a few survival issues lately). Thirdly, this storage is durable, to the extent that it is fine with anything below 1832 Fahrenheit.

So, massive memory space, monstrous life, superman-level durability.... and we have a perfect candidate for transferring our legacy to future generations (if any survive) or maybe some future , smarter species, or even more fantastically, maybe some extraterrestrial species, to find about the 'wonders  that human race was destined for, had not it been for a few blips here and there' . Frankly, i believe it to be a great idea , for the future species to know about the civilization currently existing, and laugh at our primitiveness, which is better than at least what species 1 million years from us left for us to know

Check what you take when you cough, say anaesthetists

The normal cough syrups or lozenges that you may take for that common cold induced cough may end you in a tight spot in a future surgery,thats what the Australian anaesthetists say. A group of anaesthetists , led by Dr Helen Crilly, have asked the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration to ban around 53 various cough medicines and lozenges , which contain opioid cough suppressant pholcodine, the prolonged use of whose has been researched to lead to allergic reaction during surgeries upon administration of muscle relaxants.

1 in 10000 people were found to show anaphylaxis normally during surgeries upon giving muscle relaxants, the number increasing to 1 in 6000 in case of patient exposed to pholcodine containing medications. Though fatalities are low, at 1-2% , but the anaphylaxis could cause brain damage in other cases.

There is quite some reason to believe that pholcodine is the culprit for the increased allergic response to the muscle relaxants. In US, where cough suppressants do not contain the opioid, the incidences of anaphylaxis are less. Also, it was found that the cases for anaphylaxis to muscle relaxants decreased in Norway after pholcodine containing cough medications were banned there.

Though there is scope for more work to be done to actually come up with a solid association between the two, the evidence up till now can be considered bewaring enough for patients to check on their dosages.

Two Of The Latest And Most Important Improvements In Commercial Building Technology

Source : Berkley Lab

Commercial building technology is an aspect of human innovation that is constantly changing at its margins. While certain fundamentals of design and architecturally sound construction remain the same throughout the decades and centuries, numerous new technologies processes and advancements in materials are constantly being added on a regular basis.
While there are obviously more existing technical innovations to building design and construction than could possibly be mentioned in anything less than a book, a few fundamental and truly important advancements bear describing in a bit of detail. Let's go over some of the most important building innovations of the last revolutionary decade of construction.

1. Intelligent Buildings
Undoubtedly one of the most important developments in the construction of modern commercial buildings is the increasing shift in the direction of a central computer management system or at the very least several distributed ones. These powerful computing technologies have advanced right along with the general trends in micro-processing and artificial intelligence that we find in our smart phones, PCs and all sorts of other machine administration systems.
By incorporating such systems in the mechanics of operating and maintaining a large building, architectural designers have been able to create work or living spaces in which things such as heating, cooling, air purification and a whole assorted list of systems such as lighting, security and mechanical function are all run by a computer program or series of them, some very intelligent and sophisticated.
Additionally, many intelligent building management systems have the interesting characteristic of being able to be run remotely, either from online control systems from a remote computer or even right through portable mobile devices such as smart phones or tablets in some smaller cases. In both cases, the common mechanism for accessing these building controls is a cloud computing platforms that allows secured access.
Intelligence in buildings has even advanced so far that it is even being seen in many more modern residential homes
 
Source : En3

Sustainable Green Design Features
Yet another major frontier of modern building innovation is the move towards more energy efficient green technologies that allow many modern commercial buildings to save on energy through more efficient use, or do this and also create their own energy through clever construction extras.
A good example of the first of these developments would be materials innovations that conserve coolness or heat at a much better rate than was previously possible, use electricity saving long lasting lighting or possibly synchronize their electricity use so that the high costs of powering up lighting, heating and cooling systems can be minimized. In some cases, the very design of a commercial construction creates spaces in which the heating, cooling and electrical needs of one area can be applied to another without extending power use.
With regards to the second major innovation, many modern buildings are actually being created with their own power systems right inside them. This can be something as small as intelligent elevator operating systems that actually produce a certain percentage of the electricity need to run the constant up and down movement of the lifts, or this energy producing technology can include far more complex systems that generate a large percentage of a commercial building's power use through solar arrays, geothermal systems (where geographically acceptable) and wind or water power. The underlying principle is one of meshing a building with the geological or climatological characteristics of its surrounding geography to extract clean, renewable energy in some way.
Moving beyond energy savings and power generation, a key fundamental characteristic of many newly built and highly eco-friendly buildings is access to more information than ever. By this we mean that the computer monitoring systems already mentioned earlier above are directed with energy efficiency and green friendliness in mind to give building inhabitants access to dozens or even hundreds of minute details about where electricity is being used, what purpose it serves there and if it can be shut off without affecting anyone's needs.
One good example of this sort of system is that which is now being built into many Federal Government buildings in the U.S by corporations such as IBM through a program run by the General Services Administration. With the IBM system, Federal building users can administer a vast plethora of different energy use metrics through a central visual control panel that itself offers computer monitoring derived recommendations and suggestions for more conservative energy use.
Underlying this particular push is that essential access to information and detailed analysis that has become possible with the meshing of building management and sophisticated computer technology. This important mix, when coupled with the latest in materials science, makes modern buildings into structures of enormous sophistication when compared to their predecessors.


About the Author: Jennifer D’Angelois a small business professional who specializes in digital marketing solutions. When she’s not writing, you can find Jen assisting real estate agents in suburban Chicago. Click here to see more of Jen’s work!

'Switch' to a younger mind even in old age

credits : Shutterstock

A basic answer one would get upon asking someone old enough about the difference in their mental faculties now and during childhood would be regarding the better grasping capacity they had. As it has been researched and recorded, the brain does get rigid and mind tends to have greater 'inertia' as it becomes mature, and that aint always a good thing. A young brain learns and absorbs information much faster, and is much more 'malleable' , even allowing it to recover from trauma faster. Found out in a research at Yale university, a single gene, the Nogo receptor gene I , is what is responsible for this effect that age has on the brain, which as it turns out, is due to slowdown of the synaptic connections and the inter transmission.

The research was done on mice (as usual) and it was found that the mice with suppressed Nogo receptor I genes retained the mental capacities and physiology of adolescent mice, as well as the ability to recover from an injury Nogo receptor is also found to be slow the loss of memory , so mice without this gene forgot bout stressful memories sooner. Though yeah other memories need to be tested as well to fully realize the side effects of suppressing this gene

“These are the molecules the brain needs for the transition from adolescence to adulthood,” said Dr. Stephen Strittmatter. Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology, Professor of Neurobiology and senior author of the paper. “It suggests we can turn back the clock in the adult brain and recover from trauma the way kids recover.”

The reseach has been puclished in the Neuron

Source: Yale via Gizmag

Graphene saves the day again?'clumps' out radioactive waste from solution

Removing radioactive waste from water, especially in cases of nuclear disasters such as that in Fukushima, has been a cause of concern for long now, due to the multifold harmful effects that it has. But the wonder molecule, Graphene, again promises to be the savior, as researched by scientists from Houston's Rice University and Lomonosov Moscow State University, which causes radionuclides (that is the ions) to clump , which can be filtered off, making the water clean.

Presently , betonite and activated carbon are used to clean contaminated water, but graphene flakes are much more effective, due to their larger surface area. In a test, the one atom thick flakes were added to uranium and plutonium containing water, along with calcium and sodium (which actually hamper the cleaning process). Graphene was still able to condense out the toxins, irrespective of pH of water.

(left vial containing graphene flakes in solution, right vial with
clumping having occurred)

“Where you have huge pools of radioactive material, like at Fukushima, you add graphene oxide and get back a solid material from what were just ions in a solution,” said Rice chemist James Tour, heading the reasearch, along with moscow's Stepan Kalmikov. “Then you can skim it off and burn it. Graphene oxide burns very rapidly and leaves a cake of radioactive material you can then reuse.”"Graphene oxide’s large surface area defines its capacity to adsorb toxins, Kalmykov said. “So the high retention properties are not surprising to us,” he said. “What is astonishing is the very fast kinetics of sorption, which is key."

This research could surely prove to be a boon for people of areas living near nuclear plants, and disaster struck areas as well,  with graphene providing a cheap, biodegradable  solution to the polluted water problem


Source: Rice University via Gizmag

Inexpensive cobalt catalyzes hydrogen production at room temperature

Hydrogen, one of the best bets for future fuels, has long faced the downside due to the high costs for its production, either by using platinum as catalyst, or from fossil fuels, which has always 'fueled' the research to find a cheaper way to get these tiny gaseous molecules. But now, University of Cambridge researchers have found a cheap volunteer for this - the humble cobalt!

It was found that Cobalt catalyzes production of hydrogen in pH neutral water at room temperature, in the presence of oxygen. Dr Erwin Reisner said , "Until now, no inexpensive molecular catalyst was known to evolve H₂ efficiently in water and under aerobic conditions. However, such conditions are essential for use in developing green hydrogen as a future energy source under industrially relevant conditions."

The research was funded by EPSRC, the Christian Doppler Research Association and the OMV Group. Their research was published today, 23 August, online in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
At the same time, researchers are working on solar water splitting technology, to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight, with some optimistic results.

Though there is a slight problem with Cobalt - its relative instability, which is a major hurdle in this process.
Though even if this is countered, don't expect to see hydrogen powered supercars soon, as there is yet to be found a credible storage technology for the gas, as a fuel. Though graphene and sodium borohydride- Nickel combination are some good options researched as of yet. So optimistic we are, for a more 'energetic' future.

Source : University of Cambridge

You weigh lighter now, as the kilogram gains weight (only a few micrograms though)

No , there is not going to be an increase in the weight due to some (much desired by critics) mistake of scientists' calculations. We are talking about the standard kilogram , the International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) kept at International Bureau of Weights and Measures. According to researchers at Newcastle University, the 39mm tall and diameter possessing platinum-iridium alloy cylinder, defined as 1 Kg, by measuring hydrocarbon build up on similar surface using a Theta probe XPS (X Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy) machine, is expected to have gained tens of micrograms since its being defined in 1875.

It isn't the change that matters , its the difference that is expected to be seen among the 40 replicas of IPK distributed around the world. The increase is different for them all,  thus creating discrepencies, though small, but could be important in case of international trade of wastes or items where each microgram holds value, as in radioactive substances.

This build up can be, as it has been observed, removed by giving the standard a 'suntan', that is exposing to UV and ozone. It has been suggested since long to redefine the kilogram, along with other standards, in reference to the Planck constant, a fundamental constant of quantum physics, which would add weight to the Kilogram too, and be much more accurate and standardized.

The best NASA images from 2012

August 31, 2012: A solar filament erupts out into space (Image: NASA/GSFC/SDO

2012 saw a number of significant milestones in star gazing and space exploration. NASA's Mars rover Curiosity touched down on the Red Planet in spectacular fashion, super-Earth's were discovered, the Moon pounded and Voyager 1 edged ever closer towards interstellar space and we saw more of the universe around us than ever before

As the calendar rolls over, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has put together an album of its top images for 2012. We’ve also picked our NASA favorites, highlighting some of the fascinating discoveries and incredible imagery captured in the skies above during the last twelve months.

March 26, 2012: Hubble Space Telescope captures the spiral galaxy NGC 2683, seen almost edge-on (Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA)

August 31, 2012: A region to the northwest of Mercury's crater Magritte – the shadowing helps define the "Mickey Mouse" resemblance, created by the accumulation of craters (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

High-resolution self-portrait by Curiosity Rover arm camera, used by NASA engineers to document the rover’s condition (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems)

April 18 - October 23, 2012: This new image of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite (Image: Suomi NPP - VIIRS)

You can watch more of these here
Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

"Most detailed look" at visual info processing in brain

Berkeley scientists have created the first map of how the brain organizes what we see (Image: Shutterstock)

How does our brain organize the visual information that our eyes capture? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, used computational models of brain imaging data to answer this question and arrived at what they call “continuous semantic space” – a notion which serves as the basis for the first interactive maps showing how the brain categorizes what we see.

The data on which the maps are based was collected while the subjects watched movie clips. Brain activity was recorded via functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), a type of MRI that measures brain activity bydetecting related changes in blood flow. In order to find the correlations in the data collected, the researchers used a type of analysis known as regularized linear regression. Based on the results of that analysis, they built a model showing how each of the 30,000 or so locations in the cortex responded to each one of the 1,700 categories of objects and actions seen in the movie clips. Finally, another analytical method called principal components analysis was used to find the "semantic space" common to the all the study subjects.

The maps show more than 1,700 visual categories and their relationships to one another, with color coding used to indicate categories that activate the same brain areas. In some cases, the relationships between categories made sense (for example, humans and animals), but in other categories, they were less obvious (such as hallways and buckets). The researchers also found that different people shared a similar semantic layout.

Traditionally, scientists have assumed that categories of objects or actions humans see (people, animals, movements etc.) are represented in a separate region of the visual cortex, the part of the cerebral cortex responsible for processing visual information. In this study, however, it was found that the process is much broader with categories represented in highly organized maps that overlap each other and cover up to 20 percent of the brain. This includes somatosensory (receptors for sensory modalities such as touch and pain) and frontal cortices, which determine a wide range of behavior types and functions.

The research could potentially be used to aid in medical diagnosis and to treat brain disorders, as well as being applied in the field of brain-machine interfaces – especially for facial and other image recognition systems, increasingly used in border control set-ups. It could also be used to make self-checkout systems more efficient in recognizing goods.

“Our methods open a door that will quickly lead to a more complete and detailed understanding of how the brain is organized," said Alexander Huth, a doctoral student in neuroscience at UC Berkeley and lead author of the study.

The team has produced an online brain viewer to display the findings.

The study was published in the December 19 edition of the journal Neuron.

Alexander Huth explains the method and results of his team's experiment in the video below.

Source: Berkeley , Gizmag

Harvard researchers fold proteins with D-Wave quantum computer

Back in 2007, the canadian firm D-Wave had claimed to have created a commercially viable quantum computer, much to the skepticism of many.. But now, in an article co-authored by D-Wave and Harvard in the latest issue of Nature's Scientific Reports , they are proving their claims all right."The D-Wave computer found the ground-state conformation of six-amino acid lattice protein models. This is the first time a quantum device has been used to tackle optimization problems related to the natural sciences," said Harvard professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik, the lead author of the paper.
Leaving the precise and complex details aside, they were basically looking for lowest energy configuration, and thus the most stable configuration of folded proteins, a normal state of biologically existing proteins.[The quantum computer correctly solved 13 times out of 10,000 for four-amino-acid and six-amino-acid sequences under the Miyazawa-Jernigan model of lattice protein folding.]
The authors are optimistically hoping "the approach employed here can be extended to treat other problems in biophysics and statistical mechanics such as molecular recognition, protein design, and sequence alignment." And Google has adopted the system to train image recognition software.

D wave has been working on 512 qubit computers since 2011, but for the experiment 128 qubit ones were used, which aint fast as even some of the high end desktops currently available, but what's interesting is that the 512 qubit one is 1000 times faster than 128 qubit, and the projected 2048 ones are another 1000 times faster than 512 ones, as stated in an interview with NextBigFuture!! So that IS some speed to await for all right!!
:D

"Virtual body technology" providing better virtual tour experience

Uptill now, "virtual travelling" was simply equivalent to staring at a screen with headphones on your ears. To make this a bit more of a realistic experience, Tokyo Metropolitan University Graduate School of System Design is developing what it calls “virtual body technology.” Unveiled at the Digital Contents Expo 2012 in Tokyo last October, the system claims to use all five senses to provide a virtual experience akin to inhabiting another person’s body.

The system is to provide preset stimuli to the passively navigating person, and that takes a tad more elaborative arrangement than a screen and headphones. Yes, more like those so called "4- D and 5- D" movie experiences. Ikei Laboratory’s system consists of a 3D monitor, headphones, a fan for breezes and odors, a chair that leans back and forth and vibrates, and foot pedals to provide a sensation of walking and running. How taste enters into the experience remains unclear.



And similar to the movie one, this is something that isnt at any rate going to appeal to most people seeking something better on hearing the word "Virtual Body", but it is being said to be designed mainly for the aged, so no complaints here i guess.

Here is little video of the system:

Source : Gizmag

Boeing replaces people with potatoes!!! ;)

Some of the potatoes used by Boeing to test WiFi

There doesn't seem to be anything you can’t do with potatoes. You can boil them, mash them, fry them, roast them and even make pens out of them. Boeing is taking this versatility a step further by using them to replace people. No, this isn't a strange genetic experiment. The plane maker’s engineers at the Boeing Test & Evaluation laboratories have discovered that sacks of potatoes work as a substitute for people, when testing the effect on WiFi of an airline cabin packed with passengers.

The program is called Synthetic Personnel Using Dielectric Substitution (SPUDS) and its purpose is to develop the most evenly spread and reliable WiFi coverage for an airliner.

Putting a WiFi network on an airliner isn't a matter of just plugging in a couple of routers. The cabin is a metal tube packed with wires and electronics that can interfere with WiFi signals, or the reverse. Worse, the human body can randomly distort signals. This distortion doesn't matter much for WiFi systems on the ground, but in a passenger cabin where hundreds of people are crammed together and moving around, it adds up to a major problem.

A graphic image showing WiFi hot spots on an airliner

The usual method of testing WiFi on a plane involves using human beings. That means asking a couple of hundred people to sit still inside a decommissioned airliner for two weeks. This is boring, expensive and makes an economy flight from New York to Hong Kong seem like paradise.

Boeing engineers discovered that potatoes have the same dielectric properties as people, so in developing the company’s new WiFi system they used 20,000 pounds (9,072 kg) of potato sacks piled in the seats. Not only did this save a lot of cramped legs, but the tests could be done in only ten hours.

The purpose of all this is to test how evenly a WiFi signal spreads in the cabin and how strong it is at any particular spot under various conditions using “proprietary measurement technology and analysis tools.” After the potatoes are tested, humans replace them for the much briefer final test, since people moving or switching on hundreds of mobile devices can also cause changes in signal strength that need to be accounted for.

Images released by Boeing shows that red potatoes were used. The company did not say whether russets or Yukon Golds produced different results.

Source: Boeing , Gizmag

Stanford University creates peel-and-stick solar cells

Traditionally, thin-film solar cells are made with rigid glass substrates, limiting their potential applications. Flexible versions do exist, although they require special production techniques and/or materials. Now, however, scientists from Stanford University have created thin, flexible solar cells that are made from standard materials – and they can applied to just about any surface, like a sticker.

To make the peel-and-stick cells, the researchers started by applying a 300-nanometer layer of nickel onto a rigid silicon/silicon dioxide wafer. Using standard fabrication techniques, thin-film solar cells were then deposited onto the nickel. A protective polymer was then applied over the cells, followed by a layer of thermal release tape being applied over it.

The resulting sandwich of material was then submerged in room-temperature water and one edge of the tape was peeled back, letting water seep in between the nickel layer and the wafer. Once the nickel completely separated from the wafer, the researchers were left with a bare wafer, and the tape with everything else still clinging to it.

The tape and its contents were then heated to 90ºC (194ºF) for several seconds, adhesive was applied to the non-tape side, and the whole thing was applied to a chosen surface. When the tape was subsequently peeled off, all that was left were the polymer-covered cells, adhered like a decal.

The cells have been successfully applied to a variety of both flat and curved surfaces – including glass, plastic and paper – without any loss of efficiency.

Not only does the new process allow for solar cells to applied to things like mobile devices, helmets, dashboards or windows, but the stickers are reportedly both lighter and less costly to make than equivalent-sized traditional photovoltaic panels. There’s also no waste involved, as the silicon/silicon dioxide wafers can be reused.

According to assistant professor of mechanical engineering Xiaolin Zheng, the process could likely also be used to create peel-and-stick thin-film electronics, such as printed circuits or LCDs.

“Obviously, a lot of new products – from 'smart' clothing to new aerospace systems – might be possible by combining both thin-film electronics and thin-film solar cells,” she said. “And for that matter, we may be just at the beginning of this technology. The peel-and-stick qualities we're researching probably aren't restricted to Ni/SiO2 [nickel/silicon dioxide]. It's likely many other material interfaces demonstrate similar qualities, and they may have certain advantages for specific applications. We have a lot left to investigate.”

A paper on the research was published this Thursday in the journalScientific Reports.

Source: Stanford University , Gizmag

Only 12 light years distant, two super-Earths orbit in Tau Ceti's habitable zone

Artist's conception of the five-planet Tau Ceti system (Photo: J. Pinfield/RoPACS/University of Hertfordshire)

Our stellar neighborhood is becoming crowded courtesy of some newly discovered real estate. Astronomers have uncovered evidence buried in the noise of apparently empty data showing that five super-Earths are orbiting the nearby Tau Ceti – a star chosen as one of the targets in the pioneering 1960 Project OZMA search for extraterrestrial life because of its strong similarity to the Sun. Better yet, the two outermost of Tau Ceti's planets appear to be in the star's habitable zone, making them the closest known potentially habitable exoplanets.

Astronomer Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hertfordshire and his colleagues analyzed more than 6000 prior spectroscopic observations of Tau Ceti. Delving deeply with powerful Bayesian analysis methods, they were looking for evidence that the star was being pulled from side to side by the gravitational influence of one or more orbiting planets.

They found it in spades. The best fit to the data suggests that Tau Ceti is orbited by five planets, all residing closer to Tau Ceti than Mars does to the Sun. The tally reads like this:

Planet.....Orbit Radius (AU).....Orbital Period (days)......Mass (Earths)
• TC b.................0.105........................14 days.........................2.0
• TC c.................0.195........................35 days.........................3.1
• TC d.................0.374.......................94 days........................3.6
• TC e.................0.552......................168 days........................4.3
• TC f..................1.35.........................642 days........................6.6

The planetary orbits are all very close to circular.

Comparison of the smaller Tau Ceti to the Sun. It is a bit smaller, cooler, and more stable than the Sun (Photo: R.J. Hall)

Tau Ceti is the twentieth closest star to our Sun, being a mere 11.9 light years distant. It closely resembles the Sun (unlike most stars) being a bright G-class star, with a mass of 0.78 solar masses, radius of 0.793 solar radii, and a luminosity of about half that of the Sun. It is older than the Sun by over a billion years, and is extremely stable, showing little variation or evidence of sunspots or flares.

Aside this small difference in size, the main distinction is that Tau Ceti is lacking in metals compared to the Sun, a factor probably leading to formation of less rocky planets than in our solar system. Because of this, Dr. Tuomi says: "It is impossible to tell the composition (of Tau Ceti e), but I do not consider this particular planet to be very likely to have a rocky surface. It might be a 'water world,' but at the moment it's anybody's guess."

Because Tau Ceti has only 55 percent of our Sun's brightness, the habitable zone lies closer than it does to our Sun. Despite this, the three innermost planets around Tau Ceti will be too hot to support life – Tau Ceti d's orbit is equivalent to an orbit around our Sun midway between Venus and Mercury.

The outer two planets are potentially habitable. Tau Ceti e falls clearly within the Core Habitability Zone, that being the region within which a planet like Earth will have liquid water. The Planetary Habitability Laboratory(U Puerto Rico, Arecibo) notes that both Tau Ceti e and f fall within the Extended Habitability Zone where larger planets with thicker atmospheres might retain sufficient heat for water to be liquid.

"They're pushing the envelope," says Gregory Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "Some or even many of these planets could go away. But I think that they've done absolutely the best job that you can do, given the data. You have to get tons and tons and tons of velocity measurements over many years, and then you really, really have to take extreme care—as this Tuomi et al. paper does—to get rid of all the systematic noise."

Source: University of Hertfordshire (PDF) via Space.com

GRAIL spacecraft hit lunar mountain

The impact point of the GRAIL spacecraft (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC/ASU)

NASA’s two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft have struck the Moon in a controlled impact. At 5:28:46 EST (222846 GMT) Ebb, the first spacecraft, struck a mountain near the lunar North Pole. The second, Flow, hit about 20 seconds later. Because the impact occurred during a new moon, no images were available of the impact, though NASA was able to determine the time of the event by monitoring the moment that telemetry ended. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California provided live television and online commentary.

The GRAIL spacecraft were launched in September 2011 and had completed their mission to map lunar gravitational anomalies as part of an effort to complete the most detailed gravity map of any body in the Solar System. On December 14, the spacecraft fired their engines to set them on their fatal trajectory. On December 15, the twin probes’ experiments were switched off. Earlier today, the spacecraft fired their engines for the last time to empty their fuel tanks so that engineers could determine how much was left.

Artist's concept of the GRAIL spacecraft (Image: NASA)

The purpose of the controlled impact was to ensure that the probes didn’t crash near any historic Russian or American landing sites on the Moon. Because of their low orbit, the GRAIL spacecrafts’ orbits would have soon decayed, bringing them down naturally.

This is not the first time such controlled impacts have been made on the Moon. The first unmanned spacecraft to reach the satellite in 1959, the USSR’s Luna 2, was sent on a collision course because the technique of going into orbit around the Moon hadn’t been perfected yet. Since then, other unmanned or abandoned manned spacecraft have been sent to hit the Moon either as part of a photo reconnaissance mission, to learn more about the surface, to cause shock waves for seismic studies or to reduce the amount of space debris in lunar orbit.

The impact site of the GRAIL spacecraft is latitude 75.62° N, longitude 26.63° E in the vicinity of Goldschmidt crater. When day returns to the site, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) will survey the area. After the impact, NASA announced approval for naming the impact site “Sally Ride” after the late U.S. astronaut.

The animation below shows the final seconds of the GRAIL spacecraft’s orbit.

Source: NASA , Gizmag

Solid when wet and liquid when dry – Cornell's new DNA hydrogel seems confused

DNA hydrogel letters collapse, flow, and reform into their original shape

Every now and again, Cornell University Professor Dan Luo gets a surprise. His research team has discovered a new variety of hydrogel – like Jello, except made with DNA instead of gelatin. When full of water, it is a soft, elastic solid. But when the water is removed, the hydrogel collapses, losing its shape. The resulting material pours like a liquid, and conforms to the shape of its container. The most interesting part, however, is that the liquid hydrogel remembers its shape. Add water and you get back the original Jello-like shape. Terminator T-1000, anyone?

DNA has a wide range of potential applications based solely on its properties as an unusual polymer. These include controlled delivery of pharmaceuticals, 3D tissue scaffolding and engineering, and a range of other biomedical applications. Among these DNA-based materials are self-assembling hydrogels, in which standard cross-linked DNA polymers form large, loose polymer networks that can adsorb huge amounts of water. As they do so, their mechanical properties change dramatically.

Micron-sized spheres of DNA polymer form the basis of the DNA hydrogels

The polymer networks that make up the DNA hydrogels form spontaneously under certain conditions, and in the process take the shape of micron-sized spheres which bond weakly to each other. It is this bonding that allows a hydrogel to be formed in a particular shape – if the tiny polymer spheres did not bond together in some manner, the "wet" (hydrated) form of the hydrogel would be a thick soup rather than, say, the letters DNA.

When most of the water surrounding the DNA hydrogel letters is removed, they collapse into a pool of what to all intents seems to be a fluid. The collapsed material flows, pours, fills molds of other shapes, and appears to have lost all trace of the original shape. Despite this, when water is reintroduced, some memory of the bonding between the spheres remains – enough to completely reproduce the original shape of the DNA letters.

This is a new behavior, and the ultimate mechanism that preserves shape information is not yet known, nor is the strength of the mechanism. For example, will stirring the collapsed hydrogels destroy the shape memory? Prof. Luo's group is still investigating such questions.

As a simple example of a potential application, one might imagine an injectable stent. Such a stent would be produced with the desired shape in the presence of large amounts of environmental water, then collapsed into a pseudo-liquid to be injected into the proper place in the body, whereupon it would reproduce the original shape. While it is too early to guess what other applications may appear, there are very few unusual mechanical properties which remain laboratory curiosities for long.

Source: Cornell Chronicle , Gizmag

Nano-sandwich material claimed to boost solar cell efficiency by 175 percent

The nanoscale metal mesh that makes up the top layer of the sandwich-like PlaCSH material

One of the main reasons that solar cells aren’t more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity is because much of that sunlight is reflected off the cell, or can’t be fully absorbed by it. A new sandwich-like material created by researchers at Princeton University, however, is claimed to dramatically address that problem – by minimizing reflection and increasing absorption, it reportedly boosts the efficiency of organic solar cells by 175 percent.

Developed by a team led by electrical engineer Prof. Stephen Chou, the material is known as a “plasmonic cavity with subwavelength hole array” or PlaCSH.

It consists of five very thin layers. On top is the “window layer” through which the sunlight first passes. It’s made from an extremely fine metal mesh, the diameter and spacing of its holes being measured in nanometers. Next is a layer of transparent plastic, followed by a layer of semiconductive material – although Chou used a plastic semiconductor, other materials could be used. This is followed by a layer of titanium oxide, with a layer of aluminum sitting at the bottom of the stack.

The combined thickness of all five layers is just 230 nanometers. This distance, along with the spacing and diameter of the holes in the mesh, is shorter than the wavelength of the sunlight itself. According to Chou, it is this property that allows only four percent of the light to be reflected, and up to 96 percent to be absorbed.

When it comes to converting direct sunlight into electricity, this translates into a 52 percent increase in efficiency over conventional organic solar cells. PlaCSH is also superior at capturing sunlight coming at steep angles, however. This ups its efficiency by an additional 81 percent, which when combined with other factors brings the total percentage of improvement to 175.

A comparison of sunlight reflected off a conventional organic solar cell and one using PlaCSH

PlaCSH could reportedly be cost-effectively manufactured in large sheets. Besides providing greater efficiency, the material could also replace the costly indium-tin-oxide (ITO) electrodes in conventional organic solar cells, bringing their price down. As PlaCSH is more flexible than ITO, it should also make the cells less fragile.

Although Chou’s research regarding the use of PlaCSH in inorganic solar cells is not yet complete, he believes that the material should also allow them to achieve much greater efficiency. Additionally, because it could supposedly reduce the thickness of the silicon semiconductor in such cells by a thousand-fold, it should make them cheaper and more flexible.

A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Optics Express.

Source: Princeton University , Gizmag