ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Planet-sized space weather explosions at Venus
• Vibration energy the secret to self-powered electronics
• Nanoscale pillars could radically improve conversion of heat to electricity
• Powerful artificial muscles made from fishing line and sewing thread
• Roots to shoots: Hormone transport in plants deciphered
• Dark matter search: New calibration confirms LUX dark matter results
• Sustainable manufacturing system to better consider the human component
• Rise of the compliant machines: Sociable humanoids could help advance human-robot interaction
• Closing the 'free will' loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell's theorem
• Meet your match: Using algorithms to spark collaboration between scientists
• Astronomers find solar storms behave like supernovae
• Remote Antarctic telescope reveals gas cloud where stars are born
• A new laser for a faster Internet
• Rocks around the clock: Asteroids pound tiny star
• Researching Facebook business: The business of 'unfriending'
• New technique for repair work using experts from another location
• Forest model predicts canopy competition: Airborne lasers help researchers understand tree growth
• Sustainable use of available energy wood resources in North-West Russia promises significant social, economic opportunities
• Using computers to speed up drug discovery
• Space eye with 34 telescopes will investigate one million stars
• Genetics linked to children viewing high amounts of violent media
• 256-slice CT scanner gives bird's eye view
• Improving knee replacements with iASSIST system

Planet-sized space weather explosions at Venus Posted: 20 Feb 2014 04:40 PM PST Researchers recently discovered that a common space weather phenomenon on the outskirts of Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere, has much larger repercussions for Venus. The giant explosions, called hot flow anomalies, can be so large at Venus that they're bigger than the entire planet and they can happen multiple times a day.

Vibration energy the secret to self-powered electronics Posted: 20 Feb 2014 04:33 PM PST Engineers have developed what could be a promising solution for charging smartphone batteries on the go -- without the need for an electrical cord. Incorporated directly into a cell phone housing, the team's nanogenerator could harvest and convert vibration energy from a surface, such as the passenger seat of a moving vehicle, into power for the phone.

Nanoscale pillars could radically improve conversion of heat to electricity Posted: 20 Feb 2014 01:13 PM PST Scientists have found a creative way to radically improve thermoelectric materials, a finding that could one day lead to the development of improved solar panels, more energy-efficient cooling equipment, and even the creation of new devices that could turn the vast amounts of heat wasted at power plants into more electricity.

Powerful artificial muscles made from fishing line and sewing thread Posted: 20 Feb 2014 11:17 AM PST Scientists have discovered that ordinary fishing line and sewing thread can be cheaply converted to powerful artificial muscles. The new muscles can lift a hundred times more weight and generate a hundred times higher mechanical power than the same length and weight of human muscle. Per weight, they can generate 7.1 horsepower per kilogram, about the same mechanical power as a jet engine.

Roots to shoots: Hormone transport in plants deciphered Posted: 20 Feb 2014 10:25 AM PST The protein essential for relocating cytokinins from roots to shoots has now been identified. The regulating hormone distribution mechanisms in plants have been identified before, but there was a poor understanding of how they worked. This new research could lead to sustainable bioenergy crops with increased growth and reduced needs for fertilizer.

Dark matter search: New calibration confirms LUX dark matter results Posted: 20 Feb 2014 10:24 AM PST A new calibration of the Large Underground Xenon dark matter detector brought a 10-fold increase in calibration accuracy, confirming findings announced last October from the instrument's first 90-day run. If low-mass 'WIMP' particles had passed through the detector, Large Underground Xenon would have found them. Dark matter is thought to account for about 80 percent of the mass of the universe. Though it has not yet been detected directly, its existence is a near certainty among physicists.

Sustainable manufacturing system to better consider the human component Posted: 20 Feb 2014 10:24 AM PST Engineers have developed a new approach toward 'sustainable manufacturing' that begins on the factory floor and tries to encompass the totality of manufacturing issues -- including economic, environmental, and social impacts. It may help meet demands for higher corporate social responsibility.

Rise of the compliant machines: Sociable humanoids could help advance human-robot interaction Posted: 20 Feb 2014 08:35 AM PST Are we on the brink of a robotics revolution? That's what numerous media outlets asked last December when Google acquired eight robotics companies that specialize in such innovations as manipulation, vision, and humanoid robots.

Closing the 'free will' loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell's theorem Posted: 20 Feb 2014 08:25 AM PST Astronomers propose an experiment that may close the last major loophole of Bell's inequality -- a 50-year-old theorem that, if violated by experiments, would mean that our universe is based not on the textbook laws of classical physics, but on the less-tangible probabilities of quantum mechanics. Such a quantum view would allow for seemingly counterintuitive phenomena such as entanglement, in which the measurement of one particle instantly affects another, even if those entangled particles are at opposite ends of the universe. Among other things, entanglement -- a quantum feature Albert Einstein skeptically referred to as "spooky action at a distance" -- seems to suggest that entangled particles can affect each other instantly, faster than the speed of light.

Meet your match: Using algorithms to spark collaboration between scientists Posted: 20 Feb 2014 08:25 AM PST Speed dating, in which potential lovers size each other up in brief 10 minute encounters before moving on to the next person, can be an awkward and time-wasting affair. Finding the perfect research partnership is often just as tough. Speed dating-style techniques are increasingly used at academics conferences, but can be equally frustrating -- with busy academics being pushed into too many pointless encounters. But now a group of scientists have constructed a system that could revolutionize conference speed dating -- by treating scientists like genes.

Astronomers find solar storms behave like supernovae Posted: 20 Feb 2014 07:29 AM PST Researchers have studied the behavior of the Sun's coronal mass ejections, explaining for the first time the details of how these huge eruptions behave as they fall back onto the Sun's surface. In the process, they have discovered that coronal mass ejections have a surprising twin in the depths of space: the tendrils of gas in the Crab Nebula, which lie 6500 light-years away and are millions of times larger.

Remote Antarctic telescope reveals gas cloud where stars are born Posted: 20 Feb 2014 06:50 AM PST Using a telescope installed at the driest place on earth -- Ridge A in Antarctica -- astronomers have identified a giant gas cloud in our galaxy which appears to be in an early stage of formation. Giant clouds of molecular gas are the birthplaces of stars. The newly discovered gas cloud is about 200 light years in extent and ten light years across, with a mass about 50,000 times that of our sun.

A new laser for a faster Internet Posted: 20 Feb 2014 06:50 AM PST A new laser holds the potential to increase by orders of magnitude the rate of data transmission in the optical-fiber network -- the backbone of the Internet. Light is capable of carrying vast amounts of information—approximately 10,000 times more bandwidth than microwaves, the earlier carrier of long-distance communications. But to utilize this potential, the laser light needs to be as spectrally pure -- as close to a single frequency -- as possible. The purer the tone, the more information it can carry, and for decades researchers have been trying to develop a laser that comes as close as possible to emitting just one frequency.

Rocks around the clock: Asteroids pound tiny star Posted: 20 Feb 2014 06:50 AM PST Scientists have found evidence that a tiny star called PSR J0738-4042 is being pounded by asteroids -- large lumps of rock from space. The environment around this star is especially harsh, full of radiation and violent winds of particles.

Researching Facebook business: The business of 'unfriending' Posted: 20 Feb 2014 06:49 AM PST Establishing and maintaining relationships online is becoming ever more important in the expanding global knowledge economy. But what happens to the relationship between business and consumer when a user 'unfriends'? Researchers have found that there are many online and offline reasons why a person might 'unfriend' another party. The team has examined these factors and offer insights into how virtual business relationships might be sustained and promoted.

New technique for repair work using experts from another location Posted: 20 Feb 2014 06:48 AM PST If problems occur at a company's complex plant, the local staff is often not able to solve them without external support. Frequently, experts must travel to the plant; this can be an expensive and time-consuming process. Computer scientists have now developed a platform to enable communication between specialists and the company. Thus, the experts can instruct the staff in what has caused the problem and how it can be fixed. At the same time, specialists can supervise the repair work and are able to intervene in case of emergency via live broadcasting.

Forest model predicts canopy competition: Airborne lasers help researchers understand tree growth Posted: 20 Feb 2014 05:33 AM PST Scientists use measurements from airborne lasers to gauge changes in the height of trees in the forest. Tree height tells them things like how much carbon is being stored. But what accounts for height changes over time -- vertical growth or overtopping by a taller tree? A new statistical model helps researchers figure out what's really happening on the ground.

Sustainable use of available energy wood resources in North-West Russia promises significant social, economic opportunities Posted: 20 Feb 2014 05:33 AM PST Nowadays, humanity faces many challenges; the most serious are poverty, the growing demand for resources and the deterioration of the environment. In order to satisfy the growing demand for wood, forestry in many countries has to be intensified. The forests of the Russian Federation are the world's largest reserve of wood for different purposes. Intensification of forestry in Russia will result in increasing availability of wood for material and energy uses.

Using computers to speed up drug discovery Posted: 20 Feb 2014 05:32 AM PST One of the major problems in today's society is the efficiency and cost of developing medicines to treat disease. The advancements in pharmaceutical science have been phenomenal, but the price of these advances remains prohibitively high for many pharmaceutical companies to venture into rare diseases. A large number of "neglected" diseases exist in which each disease has only a small number of patients in the world, yet the number is still significant. Researchers have now used a computational approach to identify proteins that will interact with potential drugs to speed up the process of drug discovery.

Space eye with 34 telescopes will investigate one million stars Posted: 20 Feb 2014 05:32 AM PST The exploration of planets around stars other than the Sun, known as extrasolar planets or 'exoplanets', is one of the most exciting topics of 21st century science. One of the key goals of this research is to discover and learn the properties of Earth-like worlds in the Sun's neighbourhood. The European Space Agency will do this in preparing a new space mission named PLATO.

Genetics linked to children viewing high amounts of violent media Posted: 19 Feb 2014 08:34 AM PST The lifelong debate of nature versus nurture continues -- this time in what your children watch. A recent study found that a specific variation of the serotonin-transporter gene was linked to children who engaged in increased viewing of violent television and playing of violent video games.

256-slice CT scanner gives bird's eye view Posted: 19 Feb 2014 04:51 AM PST With one heartbeat, within one second, cardiologists can get an entire 3-D image of the heart that allows them to look at arteries and heart anatomy with excellent detail and with less medical radiation. With that bird's eye imaging, cardiologists see the earliest signs of heart disease or existing heart disease not diagnosed with other testing modalities. Physicians can view the heart's anatomy, the pulmonary arteries and aorta and even the coronary arteries where atherosclerosis occurs.

Improving knee replacements with iASSIST system Posted: 18 Feb 2014 12:37 PM PST Each year, approximately 600,000 total knee replacement procedures are performed in the United States, a number that is expected to rise in the next decade as the population ages. For the first time in the United States, an iASSIST system is now in use. iASSIST is a computer navigation system with Bluetooth-like technology that improves surgical precision and accuracy in total knee replacements, decreasing the need for revision surgery.

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