A key technological breakthrough led by the University of Edinburgh suggests that a futuristic world where people can move objects without physical force but ?remotely? with laser pointers could be closer than we think. Chemists working on the nanoscale (80,000 times smaller than a hair’s breadth) have managed to move a tiny droplet of liquid across a surface – and even up a slope – by transporting it along a layer of light-sensitive molecules.
Their pioneering use of nanotechnology involved shifting a tiny droplet of a substance called diiodomethane, a thick, oily liquid, up a 12-degree slope against the force of gravity. This is claimed to be the small-scale equivalent of a conventional machine lifting an object twice the height of the world’s tallest building.
The Herald UK
Pat Robertson has called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the elected President of Venezuela. The founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, an ordained minister and leader of a Christian church, Robertson claims he spoke out of frustration.
In his apology, Robinson said he was misunderstood, ?misinterpreted.? So he wanted ?to clarify remarks made on the Monday…”
But even in his apology, Robertson repeated his call to assassinate Chavez:
?If you look back just a few years, there was a popular coup that overthrew him[Chavez]; and what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing; and as a result, within about 48 hours, that coup was broken, Chavez was back in power. But we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he?s going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent. I don?t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we?re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It?s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don?t think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger, and this is in our sphere of influence, so we can?t let this happen.?
Intervention Mag
While President George W. Bush travels around the country in a last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war, White House aides scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the dark mood of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him.
?I?m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch,? Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet again with Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq. ?She can go to hell as far as I?m concerned!?
Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them ?motherfucking traitors.? He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore ?bullshit protectors? over their ears during his speech to their annual convention that he told aides to ?tell those VFW assholes that I?ll never speak to them again is they can?t keep their members under control.?
Capital Hill Blue reports
In unrelated news, Bush’s approval ratings continue to drop.
New York architect Peter Eisenman has planned to fit the Arizona Cardinals new stadium (Glendale, Ariz.) with a retractable turf.
The retractable field is a gigantic rectangular planter 18 inches deep with dirt and grass, and mounted on rails. Even during football season, the field will be able to roll outside next to the parking lot during the week so it can soak up the warm Arizona sun while conferences and meetings take place indoors.
Only a handful of stadiums in Japan and Europe (like the Veltins Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, near Munich) have experimented with retractable fields. “We’ve got marching bands marching, and big gorillas tackling each other—we’ve got to make sure the floor doesn’t move beneath them,” says Larry Griffis, from Walter P. Moore, a leading stadium engineering firms.
Berlin-based designer Mareike Gast has created Refugee Radio, a radio for better communication in refugee camps, powered by the radiowaves, therefore energy-independent.
She designed two versions: a complete radio for emergencies and a diy-kit for long-term camps. These are basic radios, but they leave space for personal adaptation. The radio diy-kit would be handed out refugee camp. The packaging serves as a manual. The technology is extremely simple and cheap, each recipient is involved in the making of the radio and thereby creates a very personal device.
We Make Money Not Art
Lifestraw is a $2 water filtration device contained in a straw currently under development by Torben Vestergaard Frandsen, Rob Fleuren and Moshe Frommer. The straw is composed of two textile filters and iodine impregnated beads. There are several similar devices on the market like the Frontier™ Emergency Water Filter System , but none as efficient or with profoundly world changing potential as the Lifestraw.
Future Feeder
ITHACA, N.Y.—If Cornell University researchers and their colleagues have their way, cheetahs, lions, elephants, camels and other large wild animals may soon roam parts of North America.
“If we only have 10 minutes to present this idea, people think we’re nuts,” said Harry Greene, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell. “But if people hear the one-hour version, they realize they haven’t thought about this as much as we have. Right now, we are investing all of our megafauna hopes on one continent—Africa.”
Greene and a number of other highly eminent ecologists and conservationists have authored a paper, published in the latest issue of Nature (Vol. 436, No. 7053), advocating the establishment of vast ecological history parks with large mammals, mostly from Africa, that are close relatives or counterparts to extinct Pleistocene-period animals that once roamed the Great Plains.
Cornell
Orbital vehicle SpaceShipThree (SS3) will be developed by space tourism company Virgin Galactic and Mojave-based SpaceShipTwo (SS2)-developer Scaled Composites, if the planned SS2 suborbital service is successful, says Virgin Galactic president Will White?horn.
SpaceShipThree is planned for Scaled?s tier 2 manned space programme, while the nine-person SpaceShipTwo is part of the current tier 1b programme.
The suborbital three-crew SpaceShipOne (SS1), which won the $10 million Ansari X Prize last October, was developed within Scaled Composites? tier 1 programme.
?If the SpaceShipTwo service is successful we will develop SpaceShipThree, which is orbital,? says Whitehorn.
FlightInternational
The winning entry to the Cradle to Cradle C2C Home Competition is an incredible single family dwelling by Matthew Coates and Tim Meldrum that goes right to the core fundamentals of the Cradle to Cradle principles. Not only does the building run a photosynthetic and phototropic skin made with spinach protein, but it also produces more energy than a single family?s needs, allowing the excess to be distributed to neighbors. This radical shift, from centralized energy systems today, fosters community interdependence as neighbors benefit from the resources of others.
Cradle2Cradle
A material that is harder than diamond has been created in the lab, by packing together tiny “nanorods” of carbon.
The new material, known as aggregated carbon nanorods (ACNR), was created by compressing and heating super-strong carbon molecules called buckyballs or carbon-60. These molecules consist of 60 atoms that interlock in hexagonal or pentagonal shapes and resemble tiny soccer balls.
The super-tough ACNR was created by compressing carbon-60 to 200 times normal atmospheric pressure, while simultaneously heating it to 2226?C.
The researchers found their ACNR to be 0.3% denser than ordinary diamond and more resistant to pressure than any other known material.
NS
A parasitic worm that makes the grasshopper it invades jump into water and commit suicide does so by chemically influencing its brain, a study of the insects? proteins reveal.
The parasitic Nematomorph hairworm (Spinochordodes tellinii) develops inside land-dwelling grasshoppers and crickets until the time comes for the worm to transform into an aquatic adult. Somehow mature hairworms brainwash their hosts into behaving in way they never usually would ? causing them to seek out and plunge into water.
New Scientist
An experiment conducted by psychologist Richard Nisbett suggests that Chinese and American people analyse scenes differently. The Americans focused on the main object in the picture, while the Chinese took a more holistic approach, and examined more of the visual context.
Traditionally, Western societies are characterised as ‘individualistic’ and Eastern societies as ‘collectivist’, suggesting that in countries like China and Japan, the focus is on society as a whole, rather than each person’s individual characteristics.
Some have suggested that this reflects the different philosophical traditions of these cultures, with the West tending to approach problems by analytically breaking them down into component parts, and the East looking at problems in their wider context.
Nisbett’s experiment suggests that this tendency may influence mental function even on the unconscious level, as his effect was found when participants were simply asked to view pictures, while their eye movements were tracked with an infra-red camera.
Cloned wildcats have birthed eight kittens in a feat that researchers say demonstrates the potential of the technique for preserving endangered species.
According to the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species in the US, this is the first time that clones of a wild species have bred.
The kittens were born in two litters over the last month, reports BBC News, and all seem to be doing well:
Betterhumans
SCIENTISTS have created a ?miracle mouse? that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.
The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail.
The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.
The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.
Times.UK
Summary
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
Public Library of Science
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