A Pill That Will Keep You Thin - And Fit!
A pill that delivers the health benefits of diet and exercise without any of the effort is one step closer to becoming a reality.
European scientists have found that mice fed a high-fat, high-calorie diet and prevented from exercising regularly can be protected from weight gain and metabolic disorders when given a drug that targets a gene linked to longevity. The treatment even increases the animals' running endurance.
The drug was developed last year by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, based in Cambridge, MA, and preliminary studies of the compound showed it to be effective in treating mice models of type 2 diabetes, a disease that results in an impaired ability to produce or process insulin, the risk of which increases with age.
Now scientists led by professor Johan Auwerx at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland, have shown that the compound involved, known as SRT1720, also blocks weight gain and obesity-related disorders and increases muscle stamina.
A Nuclear Power Station In Your Garden Shed
Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.
The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years.
Now Air New Zealand Tests Bio-Fuel
Air New Zealand, Boeing and Rolls-Royce are planning to run one of four engines in flight on a Boeing 747-400 on Jatropha-based bio-fuel in the next few weeks.
Rolls-Royce is currently testing the fuel at its facility in Derby, UK, with the first test flight scheduled to take place in Auckland in December.
The Jatropha oil was produced from seeds grown on environmentally sustainable farms in Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and India. The plant, which can grow in arid, non-arable areas, is roughly three meters high, and produces 30-40% of its mass in inedible lipid oil.
Jatropha oil fits the social, technical and environmental criteria pre-defined by the companies: it does not compete with existing food resources; it acts as a drop-in replacement for jet fuel; it is at least as good as product currently used; and it is cost competitive with currently used fuel.
Robots Making A Face At You
Robotics engineers at the University of Bristol, UK, have been grimacing a lot recently, thanks to their copycat robotic head, Jules, which can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of a human being.
Jules is an animatronic head produced by US roboticist David Hanson, who builds uniquely expressive, disembodied heads with flexible rubber skin that is moved by 34 servo motors.
Human face movements are picked up by a video camera and mapped onto the tiny electronic motors in Jules' skin.
The Bristol team developed its own software to transfer expressions recorded by the video camera into commands to make those servos produce similarly realistic facial movements.
Natural Rocks Could Soak Up Carbon
Chemical reactions that pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it in the form of solid rock inside geological formations could offset billions of tons of carbon-dioxide emissions each year, according to researchers at Columbia University, in New York.
The scientists say that research done on large rock formations in Oman suggests new ways to sequester carbon-dioxide emissions to help combat atmospheric warming.
Now - Stem Cells Can Make New Brain Tissue!
Following news of a human trachea grown from human stem cells, stem cells taken from human embryos have been used to form tissues of the cerebral cortex, the supreme control centre of the brain, according to researchers at the Japanese research institute, Riken.
The tissues self-organised into four distinct zones very similar to the structure seen in human foetuses, and conducted neuro-activity such as transmitting electrical signals, the institute said.
The team's previous studies showed stem cells differentiated into distinct cells but until now they had never organised into functioning tissues.
Liquid Mirrors On The Moon
A team of internationally renowned astronomers and opticians proposes to make 'unbelievably large' telescopes on the Moon using liquid mirrors.
A parabolic mirror on the moon could be created using a slowly rotating ionic solution (molten salts) with an ultrathin (<100 nanometers) silver coating, powered by solar collectors.
Astronomer Dr. Simon "Pete" Worden, director of NASA Ames Research Center, estimates that all the materials for an entire lunar telescope 20 meters across would be 'only a few tons, which could be boosted to the Moon in a single Ares 5 mission in the 2020s.'
Future telescopes might have mirrors as large as 100 meters in diameter, which could peer back in time to when the universe was only half a billion years old, when the first generation of stars and galaxies were forming.
Swarms Of Robots Will Colonise Mars!
Hundreds of micro-robots will work together to carry out repairs inside machinery, explore deep-sea environments, and even colonize Mars, according to predictions from the EU-funded I-SWARM
project.
Marc Szymanski, from the University of Karlsruhe, is part of a team that is developing centimetre-scale autonomous robots that co-operate like a colony of ants.
The project has already produced 100 micro-robots, and is close to a mass-producible model. The benefit of a robotic swarm is that the group can compensate for the failure of individual members. If I-SWARM succeeds in making the design mass-producible, a programmable robotic swarm could be cheaply applied in a wide variety of fields.
A Mobile 'Phone' Designed For The Elderly
At last, a mobile 'phone' has been specifically designed to cater to the specific needs of the most technologically disenfranchised segment of our society – the elderly.
The Clarity C900 can be amplified by an extra 20-decibels and it has oversized text for a group where hearing problems and failing eyesight are the norm.
Most significantly, the new phone/device incorporates an emergency response button. The device is also hearing aid compatible, has an extra strong vibrating ringer and a flashing orange LED to signal incoming calls for the hearing impaired - and a built in torch (flashlight).
Mobile 'Phones' Can Produce Real-Time Traffic Info
Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the Nokia Research Center in San Francisco are soon to release pilot software that turns cellular devices into mobile traffic probes providing real-time information on traffic flow and travel times.
As vehicles pass through the system's virtual trip lines - geographic markers defined by GPS coordinates - the phones will send anonymous speed and location readings to servers. The data will be integrated into traffic models that produce an estimate of traffic flow, then relayed back to the mobile phones and posted online at www.traffic.berkeley.edu.
Roll this out, Nokia - and fast!
Making Computers More Like Humans
IBM has announced it will lead a US government-funded collaboration to make electronic circuits that mimic brains.
Part of a field called 'cognitive computing', the research will bring together neurobiologists, computer and materials scientists and psychologists.
As a first step in its research the project has been granted $4.9m from US defence agency Darpa.
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