ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Japanese spacecraft to search for clues of Earth's first life
• Saturn and its largest moon reflect their true colors
• 'Nano machine shop' shapes nanowires, ultrathin films
• NASA Curiosity rover begins eastbound trek on Martian surface
• Computer viruses could take a lesson from showy peacocks
• Walls of lunar crater may hold patchy ice
• Bonanza of black holes, hot DOGs: NASA's WISE survey uncovers millions of black holes
• New nanomaterial could help keep pilots and sensitive equipment safe from destructive lasers
• Synchronized lasers measure how light changes matter: Effects of light at atomic scale probed by mixing x-ray and optical light waves
• Smallest antenna can increase Wi-Fi speed 200 times
• Success in growth of regularly-ordered nanometer-scale crystalline thin film using 3-D porous material
• Driving an electron spin vortex 'skyrmion' with a microcurrent
• Activating and deactivating gold nanoparticle catalysts may lead to longer-lasting hydrogen fuel cells
• Photonics: Think thin, think vibrant
• Graphene-based materials kill bacteria two ways
• Cooler waters help diminish Isaac's punch
• Math ability requires crosstalk in the brain
• 'Anternet' discovered: Behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors protocols that control Internet traffic
• Las Cumbres Observatory spectrographs acquire target robotically
• Building blocks of life found around young star
• Shifty, but secure eyes: New biometric security system
• Lunar 'hit-and-run': New research eclipses existing theories on formation of the moon
• Avoiding jack-knifing on the roads

Japanese spacecraft to search for clues of Earth's first life Posted: 29 Aug 2012 04:52 PM PDT In a Physics World special report on Japan, Dennis Normile reports on how the Japanese space agency JAXA plans to land a spacecraft onto an asteroid in 2018 to search for clues of how life began on Earth.

Saturn and its largest moon reflect their true colors Posted: 29 Aug 2012 04:16 PM PDT Posing for portraits for NASA's Cassini spacecraft, Saturn and its largest moon, Titan, show spectacular colors in a quartet of images being released today. One image captures the changing hues of Saturn's northern and southern hemispheres as they pass from one season to the next.

'Nano machine shop' shapes nanowires, ultrathin films Posted: 29 Aug 2012 02:21 PM PDT A new "nano machine shop" that shapes nanowires and ultrathin films could represent a future manufacturing method for tiny structures with potentially revolutionary properties.

NASA Curiosity rover begins eastbound trek on Martian surface Posted: 29 Aug 2012 01:57 PM PDT NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has set off from its landing vicinity on a trek to a science destination about a quarter mile (400 meters) away, where it may begin using its drill.

Computer viruses could take a lesson from showy peacocks Posted: 29 Aug 2012 12:12 PM PDT Computer viruses are constantly replicating throughout computer networks and wreaking havoc. But what if they had to find mates in order to reproduce? Researchers have now created the digital equivalent of spring break to see how mate attraction played out through computer programs.

Walls of lunar crater may hold patchy ice Posted: 29 Aug 2012 12:11 PM PDT Scientists have estimated the maximum amount of ice likely to be found inside a permanently shadowed lunar crater located near the moon's south pole. As much as 5 to 10 percent of material, by weight, could be patchy ice, according to astronomers.

Bonanza of black holes, hot DOGs: NASA's WISE survey uncovers millions of black holes Posted: 29 Aug 2012 11:45 AM PDT NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies. Images from the telescope have revealed millions of dusty black hole candidates across the universe and about 1,000 even dustier objects thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever found. These powerful galaxies, which burn brightly with infrared light, are nicknamed hot DOGs.

New nanomaterial could help keep pilots and sensitive equipment safe from destructive lasers Posted: 29 Aug 2012 10:16 AM PDT Scientists have developed a new material using nanotechnology, which could help keep pilots and sensitive equipment safe from destructive lasers.

Synchronized lasers measure how light changes matter: Effects of light at atomic scale probed by mixing x-ray and optical light waves Posted: 29 Aug 2012 10:16 AM PDT How matter responds to light lies at the core of vision, photosynthesis, solar cells, and many other fields of scientific and practical import. But until now, it hasn't been possible to see just how light does it. Now, scientists have demonstrated for the first time that x-ray and optical wave mixing reveals both structure and evolving charge states on the atomic scale.

Smallest antenna can increase Wi-Fi speed 200 times Posted: 29 Aug 2012 08:22 AM PDT Researchers have developed the first compact high performance silicon-based cavity-backed slot (CBS) antenna that operates at 135 GHz.

Success in growth of regularly-ordered nanometer-scale crystalline thin film using 3-D porous material Posted: 29 Aug 2012 08:22 AM PDT Japanese scientists have succeeded in fabricating a crystalline thin film with a film thickness of nanometer order, in which molecules of a 3-dimensionally strong porous coordination polymer (PCP) are oriented in a designated direction, and demonstrated that this thin film has a reversible gas adsorption/desorption reaction function.

Driving an electron spin vortex 'skyrmion' with a microcurrent Posted: 29 Aug 2012 08:22 AM PDT Scientists have succeeded in forming a skyrmion crystal, in which electron spin is aligned in a vortex shape, in a microdevice using the helimagnet FeGe, and driving the skyrmion crystal with an ultra-low current density less than 1/100,000 that of the current necessary to drive magnetic domain walls in ferromagnets.

Activating and deactivating gold nanoparticle catalysts may lead to longer-lasting hydrogen fuel cells Posted: 29 Aug 2012 08:22 AM PDT The latest advance in imaging technology helps optimize catalysts for use in onboard fuel processing. A*STAR researchers have identified the subtle, atomic-scale structural transformations that can activate and de-activate gold nanoparticle catalysts, a finding that may lead to longer-lasting hydrogen fuel cells.

Photonics: Think thin, think vibrant Posted: 29 Aug 2012 08:22 AM PDT Flat panel displays and many digital devices require thin, efficient and low-cost light-emitters for applications. The pixels that make up the different colors on the display are typically wired to complex electronic circuits, but now researchers have developed a display technology that requires a much simpler architecture for operation.

Graphene-based materials kill bacteria two ways Posted: 29 Aug 2012 08:22 AM PDT Graphene-based materials kill bacteria through one of two possible mechanisms. Researchers have now compared the antibacterial activity of graphite, graphite oxide, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide using the model bacterium Escherichia coli.

Cooler waters help diminish Isaac's punch Posted: 29 Aug 2012 08:16 AM PDT Seven years after the powerful Category 3 Hurricane Katrina caused widespread devastation along the Gulf Coast, a Category 1 Hurricane Isaac, with maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour (70 knots), made landfall Aug. 28 in southeast Louisiana. And one of the reasons why Isaac is not Katrina is the path it took across the Gulf of Mexico and the temperature of the ocean below, which helps to fuel hurricanes.

Math ability requires crosstalk in the brain Posted: 29 Aug 2012 07:35 AM PDT Scientists have found that the strength of communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain predicts performance on basic arithmetic problems. The findings shed light on the neural basis of human math abilities and suggest a possible route to aiding those who suffer from dyscalculia-- an inability to understand and manipulate numbers.

'Anternet' discovered: Behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors protocols that control Internet traffic Posted: 29 Aug 2012 06:42 AM PDT An ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet.

Las Cumbres Observatory spectrographs acquire target robotically Posted: 29 Aug 2012 06:42 AM PDT Two identical FLOYDS spectrographs, installed in recent weeks at telescopes 6,000 miles apart, robotically acquired a supernovae target this week. Due to the level of precision required and the difficulty involved, few if any, other ground-based spectrographs have ever achieved this milestone.

Building blocks of life found around young star Posted: 29 Aug 2012 03:48 AM PDT A team of astronomers has spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star. This is the first time sugar been found in space around such a star, and the discovery shows that the building blocks of life are in the right place, at the right time, to be included in planets forming around the star.

Shifty, but secure eyes: New biometric security system Posted: 29 Aug 2012 03:48 AM PDT A biometric security system based on how a user moves their eyes is being developed by technologists in Finland. Researchers explain how a person's saccades, their tiny, but rapid, involuntary eye movements, can be measured using a video camera. The pattern of saccades is as unique as an iris or fingerprint scan but easier to record and so could provide an alternative secure biometric identification technology.

Lunar 'hit-and-run': New research eclipses existing theories on formation of the moon Posted: 29 Aug 2012 03:48 AM PDT A new study highlights a novel perspective on how the moon was formed. The moon is believed to have formed from a collision, 4.5 billion years ago, between Earth and an impactor the size of Mars, known as "Theia." Over the past decades scientists have simulated this process and reproduced many of the properties of the Earth-moon system; however, these simulations have also given rise to a problem known as the Lunar Paradox: the moon appears to be made up of material that would not be expected if the current collision theory is correct. A recent study proposes a new perspective on the theory in answer to the paradox.

Avoiding jack-knifing on the roads Posted: 29 Aug 2012 03:47 AM PDT Jack-knifing is a major cause of devastation in a road traffic accident involving articulated trucks. Researchers in Greece have now designed a device to prevent this often lethal action of such vehicles. In a new article, the team describes the modelling and testing of a sliding kingpin device that allows the so-called kingpin junction between the front "tractor" and the trailer to slide along the rear tractor axle and preclude the jack-knifing motion of the trailer relative to the tractor.

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