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Canned nukes and Zero-squared housing
Sep. 19th, 2007 04:13 pmnews@nature |
 Canned nuclear waste cooks its container - Ian Farnan of Cambridge University, UK, and his co-workers have found that the radiation emitted from such waste could transform one candidate storage material into less durable glass after just 1,400 years — much more quickly than thought |
Science Blog |
| Nasal surgery makes for good-looking transexuals - Nasal surgery appears to effectively create feminine facial profiles in patients undergoing male-to-female gender reassignment, according to a report in the September/October issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. |
Reuters: Science |
| British scientists develop non-stick chewing gum - British scientists have developed a non-stick chewing gum that can be easily removed from pavements, shoes and clothes. In two street trials, leading commercial gums remained stuck to the pavement three out or four times, while Clean Gum came away naturally within 24 hours in all cases. |
IEEE Spectrum Online |
 The Zero-Zero Hero - It may be a first: an office building with a net electricity use of zero or less, that burns no fossil fuels for heating and produces no greenhouse gas, and that makes the people working there at least as comfortable as those in conventionally heated and cooled buildings. The building, in San Jose, Calif., opens in October, and if all goes according to plan, it will raise the bar for designers of energy-efficient buildings worldwide. Though other so-called z-squared buildings exist, they are highway rest stops, nature centers, and event locations, not office structures with computers and printers and cubicles full employees. |
Physics Org |
 Digital 'Smiley Face' Turns 25 - Carnegie Mellon professor Scott E. Fahlman is shown in his home office on Monday, Sept. 17, 2007, in Pittsburgh. Twenty-five years ago, three keystrokes -- a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis -- were first used as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message by Fahlman, the university said. Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982. |
Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories |
 Environmentally Friendly Fridges - Researchers at the Risoe National Laboratory, in Roskilde, Denmark, are now one step closer to building a magnetic-cooling system that promises energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, and completely silent fridges. |
New Scientist Tech - Technology |
 Ear-sensor could help athletes go for gold - Conventional equipment used to monitor an athlete's performance includes multiple sensors that attach to different parts of the body. The new device is much less obtrusive and is also completely wireless, meaning measurements can be made during normal activity on the sports field. Designed by Guang-Zhong Yang and a team at Imperial College, London, UK, the device is inspired by the workings of the inner ear, which helps the brain track a person's motion by measuring shockwaves transmitted through their skeleton. |
| BBC News | Technology | World Edition |
 Imaging tools to aid surveillance - Currently, both people and computers are poor at recognising a person's face, especially if it is unfamiliar. But a University of Glasgow researcher says merging multiple images of an individual to create their "average" face makes the task much easier. |
 Online worlds to be AI incubators - Online worlds such as Second Life will soon become training grounds for artificial intelligences. Researchers at US firm Novamente have created software that learns by controlling avatars in virtual worlds. Initially the AIs will be embodied in pets that will get smarter by interacting with the avatars controlled by their human owners. Novamente said it eventually aimed to create more sophisticated avatars such as talking parrots and even babies. |
| National Geographic News |
 Cosmic Dust Could Form Inorganic Life, Study Suggests - According to a team of Russian scientists, lifelike behavior could occur in certain configurations of plasma—a state of matter composed of electrically charged atoms. Using computer simulations, a team led by Vadim Tsytovich, of Russia's General Physics Institute in Moscow, found that under certain conditions dust and plasma can organize into stable, helix-shaped structures resembling DNA. |
