October 17, 2006, 10:07 PM CT

Ecosystem Of Vanishing Lake

In the salt flats near a slowly vanishing lake, a team of scientists have found never-before-seen bacterium that could clean up some of humanity's pollution.

In three scientific papers currently being written, Brent Peyton, a Montana State University chemical engineering professor, his students, and collaborators are describing the unique qualities of Halomonas campisalis, a bacterium Peyton discovered in 1995 near Soap Lake, Wash.

At the time of discovery, Peyton worked for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash., one of nine U.S. Department of Energy labs. The laboratory wanted to develop a therapy to remove nitrate contaminants from alkaline and saline radioactive wastewater. Such a therapy could also be used to clean-up wastewater from fertilizer and explosive manufacturing plants, which is 10 to 15-times saltier than the ocean and laden with polluting nitrates.

Peyton hoped the salty ecosystem of Soap Lake might be home to a bacterium that could live in such high-salt waters and also find nitrates appetizing.

Soap Lake is one of only 11 known meromictic lakes in the United States. The water in meromictic lakes separates into layers of differing mineral concentrations. The upper layer of Soap Lake is a little less than half the saltiness of the ocean, but more than 100-times saltier than river water. The bottom layer is more than twice as salty as the ocean and more than 700-times saltier than river water. These two layers are thought to have remained unmixed in any significant way for the past 2,000 to 10,000 years. The conditions of Soap Lake are considered so extraordinary the National Science Foundation designated it a "microbial observatory".........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 17, 2006, 9:34 PM CT

DNA computing targets West Nile Virus

Researchers say that they have developed a DNA-based computer that could lead to faster, more accurate tests for diagnosing West Nile Virus and bird flu. Representing the first "medium-scale integrated molecular circuit," it is the most powerful computing device of its type to date, they say.

The new technology could be used in the future, perhaps in 5 to 10 years, to develop instruments that can simultaneously diagnose and treat cancer, diabetes or other diseases, according to a team of scientists at Columbia University Medical Center in New York and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Their study is scheduled to appear in the recent issue of the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters, a monthly peer-reviewed journal.

"This is a big step in DNA computing," says Joanne Macdonald, Ph.D., a virologist at Columbia University's Department of Medicine. Macdonald led the research team that developed MAYA-II (Molecular Array of YES and AND logic gates) ¯ a "computer" whose circuits consist of DNA instead of silicon. She likens the significance of the advance to the development of the earliest silicon chips. "The study shows that large-scale DNA computers are possible".

"These DNA computers won't compete with silicon computing in terms of speed, but their advantage is that they can be used in fluids, such as a sample of blood or in the body, and make decisions at the level of a single cell," says the researcher, whose work is funded by the National Science Foundation. Her main collaborators in this study were Milan Stojanovic, of Columbia University, and Darko Stefanovic, of the University of New Mexico.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 15, 2006, 9:04 PM CT

Mustek PD77 to Float Twin Screen DVD Player

Does your 7? LCD display proving too small to engage the entire family on a long journey? Mustek PD77 with its twin 7? TFT LCD displays is out there with a solution to your problem.

Attuned with CD, DVD formats along with MP3, DivX, XviD and AVI, the PD77 offers a resolution of 480 x 234 pixels and 16:9 widescreen images. Sound system is quite effective that presents good sound even in a traffic noise. You can own the couple 7? TFT LCD displays for just £179. Not a bad deal.........

Posted by: Gina      Permalink         Source

October 15, 2006, 8:52 PM CT

Mimicing Lotus Leaves For Self-cleaning PV Arrays

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology are mimicking one of Nature's best non-stick surfaces to help create more reliable electric transmission systems, photovoltaic arrays that retain their efficiency, MEMS structures unaffected by water and improved biocompatible surfaces able to prevent cells from adhering to implanted medical devices.

Based on a collaboration of materials researchers and chemical engineers, the research aims to duplicate the self-cleaning surfaces of the lotus plant, which grows in waterways of Asia. Despite growing in muddy conditions, the leaves and flowers remain clean because their surfaces are composed of micron- and nano-scale structures that - along with a waxy coating - prevent dirt and water from adhering. Despite their unusual surface properties, the rough surfaces allow photosynthesis to continue in the leaves.

"When rain hits the leaves of the lotus plant, it simply beads up," noted C.P. Wong, a Regents Professor in Georgia Tech's School of Materials Science and Engineering. "When the leaves are also tilted at a small angle, the beads of water run off instantaneously. While the water is rolling off, it carries away any dirt on the surface".

The self-cleaning action of the lotus plant has intrigued scientists for decades, and recent studies done by scientists in several different groups have demonstrated the reasons behind the plant's unique abilities.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 15, 2006, 8:08 PM CT

Bistable Nanoswitch

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) have been under intense study by researchers all over the world for more than a decade and are being thought of as ideal building blocks for nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS). A type of one-dimensional structure with high-aspect ratio, carbon nanotubes have emerged as a promising material because of their a number of impressive mechanical, electrical and chemical properties.

Now researchers from Northwestern University have demonstrated a novel carbon nanotube-based nanoelectromechanical switch exhibiting bistability based on current tunneling. The device could help advance technological developments in memory chips and electronic sensing devices.

The research is published online by the scientific journal Small.

"We believe the unique characteristics of this nano device will likely lead to a number of high-impact applications in the field of nanoelectronics and nanosensors," said Horacio Espinosa, professor of mechanical engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. Espinosa and Changhong Ke, a former graduate student of Espinosa's, co-authored the paper.

Since the invention of the integrated circuit (IC), the semiconductor industry has boomed following the famous Moore's law. However, as the characteristic dimension achievable by various photolithography techniques approaches its physical limits, researchers are searching for new materials and new device concepts to be able to continue the large-scale integration trend.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 9:33 PM CT

Microsoft Zune

Now here's something that will give the Apple iPods a run for their money. and they may actually have a chance in hell of succeeding.

Microsoft has just unveiled the Zune brand media player. Microsoft claims that the Zune experience centers around connection - connection to your library, connection to friends, connection to community and connection to other devices.

With a suggested retail price of approximately $249.99, Zune will be available this holiday season in the United States in black, brown or white. Zune comes in a 30GB digital media player that features wireless technology, a built-in FM tuner and a 3-inch screen that allows users to play music, pictures and video.

The biggest hook for this device is its Zune-to-Zune sharing feature. Just by coming in close proximity to your Zune wearing friends, you will be able to wirelessly share full-length sample tracks of select songs, homemade recordings, playlists or pictures with one another. They can listen to them 3 times, or 3 days, whichever comes first. If they wish, they can flag the songs right on your device and easily purchase it from the Zune Marketplace. Initially though, Microsoft will only sell music, but no video.

As per CNN.Com Technology page, Microsoft announced that it will sell a subscription pass for $14.99 a month, allowing the user to listen to any songs in the Zune Martketplace. However, after the pass expires, the user will not be able to access those songs.........

Posted by: Tom      Permalink         Source

October 9, 2006, 8:41 PM CT

Keeping Oil, Gas Control Systems Safe

For the past 12 months, Sandia National Laboratories has served as the lead national lab in Project LOGIIC (Linking the Oil and Gas Industry to Improve Cyber Security). The project was created to keep U.S. oil and gas control systems safe and secure, and to help minimize the chance that a cyber attack could severely damage or cripple AmericaTMs oil and gas infrastructure.

Such an attack by viruses, worms or other forms of cyber-terrorism on oil and gas industry process control networks and related systems could destabilize energy industry supply capabilities and negatively impact the national economy.

LOGIIC, funded by the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, brought together 14 organizations to identify ways to reduce cyber vulnerabilities in process control and SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. The goal of the project was to identify new types of security sensors for process control networks.

Sandia worked with project partners to create a simulation test bed and apply this environment to counter potential threats to the oil and gas industry using hypothetical attack scenarios. Sandia scientists created two real-time models of control systems used for refinery and pipeline operations.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 5, 2006, 10:20 PM CT

New Technique To Boost Protein Analysis

Imagine you had to break a secret code, but you could see only part of the message. That's the kind of frustration scientists face when trying to identify proteins and characterize how those proteins are modified in cells by biological processes.

But now, Cornell scientists have extended a powerful technique to increase by fourfold the size of a protein that can be analyzed, to those containing more than 2,000 amino acids, up from about 500.

Called a "top-down" approach, the technique uses a mass spectrometer, which measures the masses of ions or charged particles. Scientists break up the protein into pieces and weigh both the masses of the whole protein and of the individual pieces. By matching the weight of the whole protein and its pieces with those of known protein sequences in a database, they can identify the protein. Any differences in mass with known proteins can help scientists also find where and how proteins have been modified in cells.

For example, if a section of a protein has an increased weight of 16, scientists can tell that the protein has been oxidized within that section, which means that an oxygen atom (with an atomic weight of 16) was added.

"When you isolate a protein from a mixture, your first problem is to know which one it is," said Fred McLafferty, Cornell's Peter J.W. Debye Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and senior author of the paper reported in the Oct. 6 issue of the journal Science. "Mass spectrometry characterizes a protein by measuring the masses produced from it".........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 5, 2006, 10:05 PM CT

Experiment Yields Bubbly Surprise

University of Chicago physicists have discovered a new class of behavior in air bubbles rising from an underwater nozzle. In this surprising behavior, the bubbles tear apart in sharp jerks instead of pinching off at a point, the research team will report in the Oct. 6 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The research is helping scientists understand the mathematical explosions they encounter in the equations that govern the physics of fluids. "These are the equations of our lives," said Wendy Zhang, Assistant Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago. They govern everything from the bubbles of carbonated beverages to the venting of gas from deep oceanic fissures. They even apply to such large-scale processes such as exploding stars.

"One of the things that's nice about this field of research is that it's around you all the time," said Sidney Nagel, the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago. "It's on your tabletop and you've seen it who knows how many times. But by studying this so incredibly carefully, you get insights about things that happen on the celestial scale".

Chicago graduate student Nathan Keim and his co-authors-Zhang, Nagel, and Peder Moller, now a Ph.D. student at Ecole Normale Suprieure-documented their discovery using high-speed digital photography. Keim's experiment built on previous work that Zhang, Nagel and others published in Science in 2003. Until then, scientists believed that all fluids broke apart in much the same way. They believed that the cross-section of the pinching neck of any drop or bubble would become circular until it broke, regardless of its initial conditions.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

October 3, 2006, 10:14 PM CT

Ultrafast Photochemical Reactions

MIT scientists have made a fundamental advance in understanding how different environments affect chemical reactions by devising a novel way to observe ultrafast photochemical reactions--reactions induced by a pulse of laser light--in crystals.

The new MIT experiments show that the reaction dynamics, including whether the product molecules remain or recombine to reform the original compound, depend with exquisite sensitivity on the local "cage" environment formed by neighboring molecules in the crystal. Cage effects of this sort play crucial roles in a number of natural and industrial chemical processes.

The method they have developed allows them to observe other light-induced changes in solids, including those used to burn CDs and DVDs. For some materials, these transitions may be reversible, allowing information to be both written and erased.

"This is a very active area of research for both fundamental and practical reasons," said Keith Nelson, MIT professor of chemistry and leader of the team. "What we're able to see, in a simple and direct way, is how different local environments around the reacting species lead to extremely different dynamics and different outcomes".

The work was reported in the Aug. 31 online issue of Science. Nelson's co-author on the paper is Peter Poulin, a former graduate student in his lab.........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source