Recently in Engineering and technology Category

New York Times: Rare-earth elements are not that uncommon in Earth's crust, but they're typically dispersed. Economically exploitable forms are rare, however. China currently mines and processes more than 90% of rare earths on the market, and it has placed restrictions on their export over the past several years. On 1 February, Malaysian regulators granted Lynas, an Australian company, an initial operating license for a rare-earth metals refinery expected to open this year. The refinery will process concentrated rare-earth ore from a Lynas mine deep in the Australian desert. Each year it will use thousands of tons of powerful sulfuric acid to separate the valuable minerals from dirt and radioactive contaminants. According to a statement by the Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board, within 10 months Lynas must submit a plan for permanently disposing of the more than 1000 tons of low-level radioactive waste that the refinery will produce each month.

Gizmodo: Although NASA canceled its Constellation program, key research from the project could be put to use on future spacecraft. While developing the Ares 1 rocket, engineers discovered that it had a crucial flaw: During the final stages of a launch, the burning down of the solid rocket caused the entire vehicle to oscillate so rapidly that the crew couldn't read the digital display. Rather than involving a costly fix, however, the problem proved to have a relatively simple solution. After an extensive period of trial and error, the engineers decided that, instead of trying to fix the shake, they would make the digital display strobe in time with the vibration. In his article, Gizmodo staff writer Brent Rose describes his trip to NASA's Ames Research Center, where he got the chance to climb into the "driver's seat."

Macworld: A California company called Lytro has developed a revolutionary new camera that allows users to focus an image after it’s been shot. Lytro uses a microlens array to capture four-dimensional light-field information. With software and processing, that information can be used to improve the image later. In a Q&A with Lytro’s executive chair Charles Chi, Tim Moynihan asks him about the light-field technology, best types of sensors, and licensing possibilities with camera and camera-phone manufacturers.

BBC: The latest X Prize, worth $10 million and funded by telecoms manufacturer Qualcomm, challenges inventors to develop a portable diagnostic tool similar to that used in the science fiction TV series Star Trek. Wireless and noninvasive, the handheld device, called a tricorder, was used by the show’s doctor to diagnose illness by simply scanning a patient’s body. X Prizes are monetary awards given to the first to achieve a specific goal. Although medical devices that detect chemical signs of illness already exist, the challenge will be to bring all the technologies needed together into one tricorder-sized piece of equipment, according to Jeremy Nicholson, head of the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College London. “I don't think there'll be many people getting that prize in the near future,” he said.

Sciencenewsline: A new detector can sense knives hidden in packages, impurities in chocolate, and explosive powder in pieces of mail—all without the use of ionizing radiation. Called SAMMI, short for standalone millimeter-wave imager, the device can see through many nontransparent, nonmetallic materials, according to its developers at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Wachtberg, Germany. “It can even detect and monitor the dehydration process in plants and how severely they have been stressed by drought," says Helmut Essen, head of the FHR's millimeter-wave radar and high-frequency sensors department. When SAMMI is running, a conveyor belt moves a sample between two antennae that transmit 78-GHZ electromagnetic waves. The varying degrees to which different areas of the sample absorb the signal reveal the sample's varying material composition. Currently in the development stage, SAMMI may one day be adapted, for example, to automatically inspect goods on industrial assembly lines.

Space.com: The first private commercial spaceport in the US, Spaceport America, is officially open in New Mexico and doing considerable business. A number of companies have already launched vehicles from the site, and according to Leonard David, writing for Space.com, the spaceport "is becoming a desirable location to experiment with new types of reusable booster systems." On 4 December Texas’s Armadillo Aerospace tested its STIG A reusable suborbital rocket technology. The company plans to provide manned suborbital spaceflight through a partnership with Virginia’s space tourism firm Space Adventures. Also, defense contractor Lockheed Martin has entered into an agreement with the governor-appointed New Mexico Spaceport Authority to conduct flight test operations of its reusable booster systems. And one of the spaceport’s anchor tenants is Virgin Galactic, which plans to operate suborbital spaceflights for the paying public, perhaps as early as next year.

Nature: Although self-sustaining dynamos occur readily in stars and planets, none has yet been achieved in the lab. That may change next year when a project at the University of Maryland, College Park, is scheduled to go on line. Housed in a cavernous warehouse at the university, the Three Meter Experiment consists of a 3-meter-diameter ribbed sphere, inside of which is a 1-meter sphere surrounded by thousands of kilograms of liquid sodium heated to about 105 °C. When the device is turned on, it will whirl around and churn the electrically conducting fluid, which researchers hope will generate a self-sustaining electromagnetic field similar to Earth’s. The project could shed light on how rotational forces in Earth's core deflect flows of electrically conducting liquid into a configuration that produces a magnetic field with north and south poles, writes Susan Young for Nature.

Daily Mail: Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK have created a graphene-based ink and used a modified Epson printer to produce thin-film circuits, writes Ted Thornhill for the Daily Mail. To create the ink, they dissolved microscopic flakes of graphite in N-methylpyrrolidone. Although printed electronics aren’t new, the Cambridge team replaced the metal nanoparticle inks with graphene, which is lighter, cheaper, more conductive, and more stable. The flexible electronics created from such ink-jet printing could be used in touch screens, photovoltaic devices, and electronic textiles. The group describes the technique in a paper submitted to the arXiv e-print server.

Science: For solar power to be a viable alternative energy option, companies need to be able to store some solar energy to use when the Sun is not shining. Spain’s Andasol complex, one of the world’s largest solar power stations, has been so successful in doing just that that it has been classified as a “predictable” source of energy, writes Edwin Cartlidge for Science. Andasol produces electricity in two stages: The Sun heats a synthetic oil, some of which is used to generate steam that turns a turbine and some of which is used to heat up molten salt that stores the energy for later use. Now some companies are working to improve on that design. Instead of using one material to absorb the Sun’s heat and a second material to store it, they use one material to do both. Such a direct storage method would eliminate one of the two heat exchangers and make the electricity production more efficient. Although the current global capacity of solar thermal power plants is minuscule at just over 1 gigawatt, more solar technology projects are currently in development or under construction in the US, Spain, North Africa, China, India, and elsewhere that could increase that capacity to about 15 gigawatts.

NVP3D: The oldest known mechanism to use clockwork gears, called the Antikythera after the place it was discovered, was found in an ancient Greek shipwreck more than a hundred years ago. The device, of which only 82 badly corroded fragments remain, not only predicted solar eclipses but also organized the calendar in the four-year cycles of the Olympiad, forerunner of the modern Olympic Games. The watchmaker Hublot has now miniaturized the Antikythera from the size of a shoebox to something that you can wear on your wrist. This version also tells the time.

A three-dimensional movie of the mechanism is available at http://nvp3d.com/site/reports/28/antikythera-mechanism.

New York Times: A private–public project to build a fossil-fuel power plant that generates electricity and hydrogen without emitting carbon dioxide is in jeopardy, writes Matthew Wald for the New York Times. Called FutureGen 2.0, the project entails retrofitting an old oil-fired power station with technology that captures CO₂. Ameren, the Midwestern power company that is donating the power station, has told its other FutureGen 2.0 partners that it can no longer participate in the project because of Ameren's unfavorable financial situation. The directors of FutureGen 2.0 will meet next week to decide what to do next. One possibility is for the other partners to buy the power station from Ameren, but they'll need to act fast. The US Department of Energy promised to cover 80% of the project's $1.25 billion pricetag, but only if the money is spent by the end of 2015.

New York Times: In addition to solar panels and wind turbines, China is setting its sights on becoming a force in yet another budding environment-related industry: desalinating seawater, writes Michael Wines for the New York Times. Its $4 billion Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a state-of-the-art, state-owned facility located southeast of Beijing. Although it’s a money-losing proposition—the desalted water costs twice as much to produce as it sells for—China hopes to use the plant to strengthen its expertise in desalination, learn how to trim production costs, and ease the chronic water shortage in nearby Tianjin. Despite extensive recycling and conservation programs, many parts of China are experiencing water shortages. And according to the Asia Water Project, a business information organization, by 2030 China’s demand for fresh water is expected to grow 63%—more than anywhere else in the world.

IEEE Spectrum: Engineers at Yale University have developed a nanomechanical resonator, a new type of mechanical memory device that uses lasers to record and read information. A tiny piece of silicon is bent up or down by the light propagating inside a photonic circuit, writes Neil Savage for IEEE Spectrum. Once the light is switched off, the piece remains in one of those states, which represents the 1s and 0s of digital coding. Because the two states are separated by a huge energy barrier, they stay put when the laser is turned off. To read the memory, the researchers use a lower-energy laser to avoid flipping the bits. Hong Tang and coworkers, whose results were published 23 October in Nature Nanotechnology, say the device could lead to better sensors and new techniques in optical telecommunications.

Idea Lab: Researchers at China’s Zhejiang University in Hangzhou have built a pair of robots that can play table tennis. “Wu” and “Kong” stand some 5 feet tall, weigh 121 pounds, and have humanlike features such as arms, legs, eyes, ears, and hair. The robots use images from eye-mounted cameras to calculate the ball’s position, speed, and angle. Although the robots’ moves are basic so far, the experiment tests their reaction times and abilities, such as visual processing, identification, and calculation. The researchers emphasize that the ultimate goal of the project is not for robots to play games but rather to demonstrate some of the possibilities of robotic technology.

New Scientist: Seven leading car manufacturers have agreed on an international standardized charging system for electric vehicles in Europe and the US. It will allow all electric vehicles manufactured by Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Porsche, and Volkswagen to share the same charging stations. The standardization is expected to simplify the building of an electric charging infrastructure and reduce manufacturing costs. In addition, drivers won’t have to deal with multiple charging adaptors like the ones cellphone users have had to deal with for years. And existing electric cars will also be able to charge at the new stations. The seven manufacturers have agreed to use a universal protocol, HomePlug Green Phy, which will allow electric vehicles to integrate with smart grids in the future.

New York Times: Although the US has no offshore wind generating capacity to date, plans are progressing. Several projects in the works were presented at the annual American Wind Energy Association’s Offshore Windpower Conference held 11–13 October in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the most promising proposals came from Deepwater Wind of Providence, Rhode Island, which is buying five turbines from Siemens of Germany to build a wind farm near Block Island. Fishermen’s Energy of Cape May, New Jersey, hopes to become the first operating offshore wind venture by breaking ground off Atlantic City before the end of the year. And the Atlantic Wind Connection plans to install an undersea transmission cable that would run from southern Virginia to northern New Jersey. According to US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who spoke at the conference, the US is one of the largest producers of land-based wind energy capacity, and offshore wind holds even greater promise; turbines in the Atlantic Ocean could produce more electricity than the nation’s entire onshore wind-generating capacity.

Nature: An international team of researchers has developed a brain implant that enables monkeys to examine virtual objects by means of a virtual arm controlled by their brain, writes Susan Young for Nature. Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University and coworkers inserted electrodes into the motor cortex and somatosensory cortex brain regions of two monkeys. The monkeys were trained to use only their brain to explore virtual objects on a computer screen by moving a computer cursor or a virtual image of an arm. The electrodes in the motor cortex recorded the monkeys’ intentions to move and relayed that information to the virtual world. As the virtual hand passed over objects on the screen, electrical signals were fed into the animal’s somatosensory cortex, which provided “tactile” feedback. The researchers hope that their technique could eventually help patients who are severely paralyzed to achieve full-body mobility through the use of robotic prosthetics.

New York Times: As a way to raise money, strapped governments have begun looking to retrieve treasure from sunken ships. The British government recently contracted with a Florida company called Odyssey Marine Exploration to retrieve an estimated 20 tons of silver from a vessel that was sunk off the coast of Ireland during World War I. The SS Mantola, owned by the British Indian Steam Navigation Company, was attacked by a German torpedo in 1917. At today’s prices the metal it carried would be worth about $18 million.

To locate sunken craft, Odyssey technicians comb the sea floor with side-scan sonar and magnetometers. Then they send down a tethered robot to capture real-time video images of any interesting anomalies. For the Mantola, they were able to identify the wreck by noting the ship’s dimensions, its layout, and a display of painted letters on the stern. Last month Odyssey discovered another wreck, of the British steamship SS Gairsoppa, off the coast of Ireland; its cargo is estimated to be worth more than $200 million. The salvage expedition for the Mantola and Gairsoppa is planned for spring 2012.

MSNBC: Suborbital balloons that would reside in Earth's stratosphere and a balloon probe that would travel to Saturn's moon Titan are among the devices being tested by NASA in conjunction with Near Space Corp, a company based in Oregon. The company has also tested prototypes for an airplane that would be carried to Mars via spacecraft, then unfold itself to fly through the Martian atmosphere. Although NASA ultimately decided not to go ahead with that project, they did select Near Space as one of the seven companies to receive a contract for suborbital flights. Currently, typical balloon-borne experiments float back to the ground via parachute, but the company is working on a new type of aircraft that could fly itself back to base once it separates from its balloon.

Ars Technica: The technological hurdles involved might be daunting, but Elon Musk, founder of the privately held SpaceX, intends to build a reusable version of the Falcon 9 rocket. After separating from the launch vehicle, the Falcon 9's first and second stages would return to Earth, arresting their descent with rockets. Individual rockets would then be heavier, more complicated, and more expensive. But if it turns out that SpaceX can reuse the hardware, the company's overall costs for space launch would be reduced.

Science: The US Department of Energy (DOE) is reshaping how it makes investments in developing better energy technologies in order to have a more coherent and productive transportation program. The new regime, which will be unveiled in the 2013 budget presented to Congress in February, will also have more resources devoted to electric car development. The reevaluation comes from DOE's first-ever Quadrennial Technology Review, which calls the current R&D spending allocation "a bit unbalanced," said DOE undersecretary for science Steven Koonin at a briefing held at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC.

Daily Mail: Three-dimensional printing has taken off in recent years, with the creation of such diverse objects as flutes and human tissue and organs. Now a Canadian company called KOR EcoLogic has designed and printed its first automobile. The Urbee is "built" from layer upon layer of an ultrathin composite material that is slowly fused into a solid. It has three wheels, two seats, and a hybrid gas/electric engine. The company claims the car is among the greenest ever made: It uses one-eighth the energy of a similar-sized vehicle and can get 200 miles to the gallon on the highway. It will be some time, however, before the Urbee can be mass produced and available to consumers.

MSNBC: The Tiangong 1, or "Heavenly Palace," is an eight-ton unmanned space lab that will function as a test bed for China's developing space technologies. The main task of the lab will be to experiment with rendezvous and docking between spacecraft; it's scheduled to rendezvous and dock with an unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft a few weeks after launch. China's space program has been compared, in its level of technological development, to that of NASA's Gemini program, which launched 10 manned flights between 1965 and 1966.

Tiangong 1 will launch from a site in the Gobi Desert around September 27–30.

New Scientist: Researchers in Aichi, Japan, are working on an alternative power source for electric cars. Rather than weighing down individual cars with a heavy battery, they propose electrifying the roadways. Although the idea is not new, the method is: Steel belts placed inside the tires and a metal plate in the road. Masahiro Hanazawa of Toyota Central R&D Labs and Takashi Ohira of Toyohashi University of Technology presented their work in May at the International Microwave Workshop Series on Innovative Wireless Power Transmission in Kyoto, Japan. A number of problems with the system have been raised, however, such as the high voltage that would be required to pass through the metal plates on the roadways, the large magnetic field that would be produced, and the expense of installing the necessary infrastructure.

Daily Mail: To mitigate climate change, scientists in the UK have proposed a method of geoengineering that uses a giant helium balloon and a large hose to mimic the cooling effect of an erupting volcano. The balloon would be tethered some 22 km above Earth by the hose, through which tons of chemical particles could be pumped into the stratosphere. Those droplets of sulfates and aerosol particles would reflect the Sun’s energy back into space and prevent it from heating Earth. Called Spice, for stratospheric particle injection for climate engineering, the project is backed by the Royal Society and a £1.6 million (about $2.6 million) government grant. However, critics point out that weather is very complex and any attempt to manipulate it could have unforeseen consequences.

Scidev.Net: A new award, worth $100 000, will be given to African innovators and inventors who design products that could further the continent's economic transformation, writes Aregu Balleh for SciDev.Net. The Innovation Prize for Africa—a joint initiative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the African Innovation Foundation—will be awarded for the first time in February 2012 to the best innovators in three areas: information and communication technology, green technologies, and health and food security. "The main objective of the initiative is to recognize ordinary Africans who have ideas that can be commercialized—ideas that can make a difference in the lives of people," said Aida Opoku-Mensah of UNECA.

New Scientist: The energy of ocean waves is beginning to be tapped as a source of sustainable energy. Wave power, distinct from the daily flux of tidal power and the steady gyre of ocean currents, is generated by wind passing over the sea surface. As more than 100 companies develop wave energy converters to harvest energy from the ocean, New Scientist takes a look at six of the most promising technologies currently being deployed: a power buoy, an attenuator, an oscillating wave surge converter, a rotational wave energy device, an oscillating wave column, and an overtopping-wave-energy device.

New York Times: China's near total monopoly on the rare-earth market, is forcing foreign manufacturers of high-tech materials to move their production to China. Those that don't must contend with uncertain supplies and higher prices. The restrictions are an attempt by the Chinese government to increase the number of high-tech companies in the country and to encourage technology transfer to local Chinese-owned corporations. "We saw the writing on the wall--we simply bought the equipment and ramped up in China to begin with," said Mike Pugh, director of worldwide operations for Intermatrix, who told the New York Times the company would have preferred to build its new factory near its California headquarters.

The move seems to be directed by Premier Wen Jiabao, a former geologist who studied rare earth minerals at graduate school. Denying international access to materials to favor local production may make China in breach of regulations established by the World Trade Organization, of which it is a member. The European Union is considering taking China to court once a related case is finally resolved.

Science: People may soon be able to recharge their cell phones and cameras as they walk. Two researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are developing a device that harvests the mechanical energy produced by walking and converts it to electrical energy. Engineers Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor modified an electrostatic capacitor by replacing one of a pair of solid electrodes with an electrically conductive liquid. The liquid electrode allows for a smaller gap between it and the solid electrode, and thus the pair achieves greater capacitance and voltage. If scaled up to the size that would fit a typical shoe, the device could harvest 2 watts of power, the researchers reported yesterday in Nature Communications. They have started a company, InStep NanoPower, to market their product. Although the device won’t eliminate batteries, it could lengthen the time between charges.

New York Times: General Electric has been working with lasers to develop a cheaper and easier method of producing enriched uranium for use in nuclear reactors, writes William Broad for the New York Times. It has long been thought that the extraordinary purity of laser light could be used to selectively excite uranium-235 and thus ease the identification and extraction of the precious isotope. However, until now, the approach has proved too expensive and difficult. After two years of testing, GE is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that could make reactor fuel by the ton. Critics fear, however, that rogue states and terrorists could use the technology to make bomb fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is weighing that issue and has promised to give GE a decision by next year.

ExtremeTech: Introduced at the recent DEF CON hacker convention in Las Vegas, Firefly is a digital camera designed to be fired into the air by a grenade launcher and then descend by parachute, taking photos as it goes down. Its developers originally marketed it to the military to provide intelligence to soldiers on the ground. Although the military has already developed throwable camera balls and grenade-style cameras, Firefly is being presented as a less expensive option because it is manufactured from off-the-shelf components and can be fired by a flare gun instead of a grenade launcher. It could also possibly be used in civilian markets, such as by police and search-and-rescue workers to cover heavily wooded or otherwise inaccessible areas.

NPR: In the second of a three-part series on China and its efforts to become a technological superpower, Louisa Lim centers on China’s rapid rise in the area of supercomputing. Last November China boasted the world’s fastest machine: the $60 million Tianhe-1A. Although the achievement was short-lived—within six months, Japan came up with one three times faster—China has built 61 out of the top 500 supercomputing sites in the world, making it second only to the US, which has 255. Despite the exponential growth in the number of supercomputers, however, China still faces several challenges, among them its reliance on foreign technology for its processors and a lack of software that can make use of its newfound computing power.

BBC: Scientists have achieved a huge engineering feat by building the world’s most powerful “split magnet,” made in two halves with holes in the middle for observing experiments. Operating at 25 tesla, which is equivalent to 500 000 times the strength of Earth’s magnetic field, the magnet is 43% stronger than its predecessor, built in 1991, and has 1500 times more space inside to carry out tests. "The split magnet is essentially like two magnets brought close together, but kept a few centimeters apart to provide open pathways to the sample,” said Gregory Boebinger, head of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. "The spectacular engineering achievement with the magnet is the ability to maintain the very high magnetic field without having the two halves slam together." Another of the researchers, Eric Palm, added, "Discoveries made here will enable researchers to improve their materials and use them to make improved products such as solar cells or semiconductors for the next generation of computers."

New Scientist: Researchers at Cornell University have developed an algorithm to help robots identify objects in homes and offices. In their system, Hema Koppula and Abhishek Anand used a low-cost Microsoft Kinect sensor, which perceives scenes in three dimensions with two cameras and an IR sensor. Their algorithm uses the data to determine the color and shape of individual objects. The researchers also included instructions to look for certain objects in certain locations; for example, computer monitors are normally found on top of a desk or table, rather than underneath. To find out how the algorithm would perform in a real-world setting, the researchers mounted a Kinect on a mobile robot and asked it to find a keyboard. The robot examined its surroundings, spotted a computer monitor, and moved in for a closer look, knowing that keyboards are often found nearby. The work could revolutionize computer vision, said Daniel Huber of Carnegie Mellon University.

New Scientist: Ships that harvest energy from the waves and store it in batteries could one day generate electricity from the world's oceans more cheaply than today's wave-power devices, writes Helen Knight for New Scientist. The ships would sail to a suitable location, drop anchor, and start generating electricity from wave energy. Once their batteries were fully charged, they would return to shore and feed the electricity into a grid. Unlike conventional wave-power devices, the ships would not need undersea cables to link to the electricity grid, which would cut a significant fraction of the overall cost.

New Scientist: Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have come up with a new design for the heat exchanger used in home computers, writes Melissae Fellet for New Scientist. Traditional heat exchangers, which haven't changed much in 40 years, consisted of a heat sink and a fan. Unfortunately, although the fan stirred up the air around the heat sink's metal fins, a layer of stagnant air clinging to the fins would insulate them like a blanket and reduce the overall cooling effect. Spinning the fan faster helped, but made the computer very noisy. In the new design, the fan is the heat sink. Bands of metal blades rotate above the heat source and are separated from it by a thin cushion of air. Centrifugal forces roil that air to facilitate heat transfer. They also compress the layer of stagnant air against the blades, reducing its insulating effect. The new design should not only reduce fan noise and use less energy but also speed up the machine.

Daily Mail: Like something out of a James Bond movie, the Terrafugia Transition flying car may be hitting US roadways as early as 2012. Cleared last year to fly by the Federal Aviation Administration, the “roadable aircraft” has now been declared officially road legal in the US. With the push of a button, drivers can convert the vehicle from a two-seater car to a plane in less than 30 seconds. It has a top speed of 65 mph on the road and 115 mph in the air. And with wings that fold up, the vehicle, which burns regular gas, can fit into a normal home garage. Although problems with suppliers have delayed its release date, Terrafugia says customers can reserve the Transition online with a $10 000 deposit.

Independent: A pair of lightweight glasses with built-in stereoscopic cameras similar to those used in computer games consoles could soon be helping people with visual impairment to see again, writes Steve Connor for the Independent. The materials and software used in the device are similar to those used in smart phones and computer games. Tiny stereo cameras in the glasses capture simplified images of a scene and send them to a series of small LEDs set into the surfaces of the lenses. As people with limited vision look through the lenses, they are able to distinguish between objects in their field of vision that would otherwise be unrecognizable, said Stephen Hicks of the University of Oxford. The research is one of 22 projects being highlighted at the summer exhibition of the UK's Royal Society.

Daily Mail: Earlier this month a robotic lander successfully flew up to 7 feet for 27 seconds during testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. The lander, about the size of a golf cart, is powered by a green propellant, hydrogen peroxide. The test proved the lander could execute commands autonomously, such as hover for an extended period, control its position and orientation, and land successfully. Such unmanned vehicles are being designed to perform science and exploration research on the surface of the Moon and other airless bodies, including near-Earth asteroids, where aero-braking and parachutes won't work.

BBC: Researchers have been working on a new technology to decontaminate water in developing countries. It involves coating grains of sand with an oxide of graphite, a widely available material commonly used as pencil lead. Sand has been used to purify water since ancient times. Although fine sand is more effective than coarse when cleaning water of pathogens, organic materials, and heavy metal ions, water drains much more slowly through fine sand than coarse. "Our product combines coarse sand with functional carbon material that could offer higher retention for those pollutants, and at the same time gives good throughput," explained Wei Gao of Rice University, one of the authors of a study published in Applied Materials and Interfaces. In addition, lead scientist Pulickel Ajayan, also at Rice, said the graphite oxide could be modified to make it more selective and sensitive to certain pollutants. Because the necessary materials are cheap and readily available and the graphite-coated sand grains can be synthesized using room-temperature processes, the researchers say the method would be very cost efficient.

New Scientist: "In an age of precision engineering and on-demand manufacturing, when we can manipulate atoms and print nanosized-circuits for pennies, why do most of us still struggle to find clothes that fit?" asks Duncan Graham-Rowe for New Scientist. Because the cost of custom-tailored, hand-made outfits is prohibitive for most people, a €23 million ($33 million) European research project has been set up to completely automate the process. Called Leadership for European Apparel Production From Research along Original Guidelines (Leapfrog), the project not only makes use of current technology (such as laser scanners that precisely measure body size) but also has come up with a few innovations of its own. One is an automated tailor’s dummy that can change size and shape via a hydraulic system of wires, pipes, pistons, and valves, and even produce an array of pins that push out through its flexible mesh skin to hold pieces of fabric in place. Creating a prototype robot-only production line capable of turning out a suit jacket is more ambitious than it might seem, however, said project coordinator Lutz Walter of the Belgium-based European Apparel and Textile Confederation. Although the Leapfrog group has tested its automated production line by creating a simple jacket, the prototype still lacks sleeves, pockets, buttons, and a lining. It will be some time before the first completely machine-made suit hits the stores.

Science: In a Q&A with Richard Stone of Science, the European Union's commissioner for research, innovation, and science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, recounts last week's official visit to China, her first. Some of the issues covered in the interview—such as intellectual property, nuclear power, and visas for Chinese researchers—pertain to US–China relations as well as to EU–China relations. Other issues, such as the challenge of reaching consensus in a 27-member federation, had a specifically EU flavor:

STONE: When China sets a goal, because of its top-down system of government, it can actually get things done. Are you jealous of China's ability to design and implement a science policy?

GEOGHEGAN-QUINN: I don't think we should be jealous of anyone. We have a standard of living that is widely envied. A collection of 27 individual member states brings a richness and diversity of culture. It's a testament to political innovation.

BBC: A revolutionary UK space plane design was recently evaluated by the European Space Agency. In their report, the agency’s experts concluded that “no technical or economic impediments have been identified” that would prevent the project from going forward. Skylon is a proposed hybrid reusable aircraft that would do the job of a big rocket but operate like an airliner, taking off and landing at a conventional runway, writes Jonathan Amos for the BBC. The aircraft would use a combined-cycle, air-breathing jet engine to reach orbit with only a single state. Whereas the price for launching a kilogram of payload into geostationary orbit is currently more than $15 000, Skylon could bring that down to less than $1000, claims its manufacturer, Reaction Engines Limited.

Guardian: A British atomic physicist has developed glasses whose lenses can be adjusted by the wearer. Joshua Silver’s adaptive lenses consist of two thin membranes separated by silicone gel; the wearer looks at an eye chart and pumps in fluid to adjust the curvature of the lens and, hence, its prescription, writes Robin McKie for the Guardian. Silver is working with the World Bank on a way to distribute some 200 million pairs of the glasses to children in developing countries; he believes that improving eyesight can improve their education and employment prospects. His two immediate goals are to lower the cost of producing the glasses and to make them more stylish, so young people will want to wear them. The idea of self-adjusting eyewear is not new. For example, physicist Stephen Kurtin has for the past several years been developing and marketing Superfocus, adjustable lenses designed for people who would otherwise need either several pairs of glasses for different activities, or bi- or trifocal lenses.

New York Times: A new LED is being developed for sale later this year that will be comparable to a 75-watt incandescent bulb in brightness, yet it will use less power and last longer. To date, LEDs have had limited appeal for consumers because of their limited brightness and high initial cost. According to Philips Lighting, its EnduraLED A21 will cost about $40, last 25 000 hours, produce 1100 lumens of light, and consume just 17 watts of electricity. Although 75-watt-equivalent LED lamps have been available in PAR sizes (for recessed ceiling fixtures), Philips says its EnduraLED is the first 75-watt equivalent in a standard “A” lamp shape, writes Eric Taub for the New York Times.

New York Times: In Nevada, two bills are being introduced in the legislature that would make it the first state where self-driving cars could be legally operated on public roads. Last year Google said it had test-driven robotic hybrid vehicles more than 140 000 miles on California roads, including Highway 1 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with more than 1000 miles driven entirely autonomously. The bills are expected to come to a vote before the legislature's session ends in June. One is an amendment to an electric-vehicle bill that would provide for the licensing and testing of autonomous vehicles; the other is an exemption from the ban on distracted driving that would allow drivers to send text messages while operating the vehicles. In Google's testing program, each vehicle is overseen by a driver and a second Google employee who monitors the equipment from the passenger seat. The project is being guided by Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University.

Space.com: Next August, if all goes to plan, NASA's car-sized rover Curiosity will touch down on the Martian surface and begin its mission: to determine whether Mars is or was ever hospitable to life. The person responsible for the mission's success is project manager Peter Theisinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. In a Q&A with Space.com's Mike Wall, Theisinger describes the technical challenges he and his colleagues had to contend with, notably ensuring that the rover lands safely and upright. Comparing Curiosity with its two famous predecessors, Theisinger answered,

Spirit and Opportunity were geology missions. They were looking for signs of water, and they found it. This is taking the next step forward: to look at more detailed chemistry and mineralogy, and to see if there were true habitability possibilities, and to search for organics as well.

BBC: The European Space Agency is planning a replacement for its Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs), and it would like NASA to be involved. Since 2008, the unmanned ATVs have been taking supplies to, and trash from, the International Space Station. The ATVs are expendable. After leaving the ISS, they follow a course that results in their burning up in Earth's atmosphere. Now that only three more ATVs remain in production, ESA has entered discussions with NASA to jointly develop a spaceship based on the ATV.

Nature: Since the 1960s, probes with heated tips have been used to bore through ice, but they have their problems and limitations: Dirt and sediment would often build up at the head of the probe and impede the transfer of heat, and most of the probes could only move downward through layers of ice. After two years of work, Bernd Dachwald, of Aachen University of Applied Sciences in Germany, and colleagues have developed IceMole, a new type of ice-melting probe that is capable of pulling itself through ice layers—not only downward but also horizontally and upward. A 6-cm screw at its head allows the probe to keep in contact with the ice it is trying to melt. The probe easily penetrates dirt and should also be able to function where the ice is in a near vacuum. A French team has already expressed interest in using the probe to search for micrometeorites in ice; it could prove useful for everything from sampling Antarctic subglacial lakes to searching for indications of subsurface water on icy outer moons such as Europa.

Science: The first stars, formed about 300 million years after the Big Bang, are thought to have been hundreds of times bigger than the Sun. According to a new study, they also whirled at incredible speeds of about 500 km/s—250 times faster than the Sun does. While it is unlikely that those stars could be detected directly, the velocity of their rotation probably led to their ending their lives with a gamma-ray burst (GRB), which produces a huge flash of high-energy radiation. GRBs can be detected from much farther away than individual stars. NASA is considering a small explorer mission; its Joint Astrophysics Nascent Universe Satellite could give astronomers the means to observe GRBs created by primordial stars in their final moments.

New York Times: New York Times energy and environment blogger Jim Witkin predicts over the next five years car-battery technology will see big breakthroughs, which will increase the range and reduce the costs of electric cars. Nothing can change the fact that any rechargeable battery will gradually lose its energy storage capacity after repeated charging and discharging. However, although the battery may no longer power a car, it can still have enough energy capacity for other purposes. Hence, multiple ventures are under way to explore second-life applications, such as using the batteries in the electric utility grid to help manage power flow. And because reuse may be the most viable option for the many batteries that will be required to run the electric cars of the future, new automobile financial and ownership models are being proposed. One possibility is the automaker's or finance company's retaining ownership of the battery and leasing it to the car's owner; then the owner would pay only for the portion of the battery used while it's in the car.

BBC: For 150 years, spark plugs have ignited the mixture of gasoline and air that fuels car engines. Now, as Jason Palmer of the BBC reports, lasers could supplant the venerable spark plug. Despite their longevity and simplicity, spark plugs are not without problems. They degrade over time in the harsh environment of an engine cylinder and they ignite only a small, single volume of gas–air mixture; less localized ignition would be more efficient. By contrast, lasers can be focused to ignite the gas–air mixture at several sites throughout the cylinder. But to have any chance of being incorporated into a commercial engine, laser spark plugs must be compact and robust. To meet that challenge, a team from Romania and Japan has developed ceramic lasers that can fit inside a cylinder. Energy is delivered to the lasers via fiber optic cable from lasers that are positioned outside the engine.

New Scientist: Data on a hard drive can now be hidden without the use of encryption, writes Paul Marks for New Scientist. Instead of using a cipher to scramble text, the technique exploits the way hard drives store file data in numerous small chunks, called clusters. Normally the operating system stores the clusters all over the disk, wherever there is free space between fragments of other files. Hassan Khan, at UCLA, and his colleagues have written software that ensures clusters of a file are positioned according to a code rather than being positioned at the whim of the disk drive controller chip. "An investigator can't tell the cluster fragmentation pattern is intentional—it looks like what you'd get after addition and deletion of files over time," said Khan. Such "steganography" avoids the problem experienced with encryption, which can be a "dead giveaway" that someone has something to hide, according to Khan.

BBC: For the first time, a US Navy vessel has disabled a nearby boat by firing a laser at its engines, setting them on fire. The test, which took place recently off the California coast, involved solid-state lasers, rather than the bulky chemical laser used in previous tests. The laser owes its potency to the ease with which individual solid-state lasers can be arrayed to produce a single weapon. Laser weapons that blind people are banned under Protocol IV of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Fresh from a visit to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Chronicle's Jeffrey Young reports on a growing appreciation among researchers that speed isn't everything when it comes to scientific simulation. Having flexible software architecture is also important, as is ensuring that data can flow quickly among the supercomputer's processors and memory stores. Blue Waters, NCSA's newest supercomputer, might not make it into the top 10 fastest computers, but it incorporates innovative interconnects that can store as well as transfer data. Among Blue Waters' new users is UIUC's Klaus Schulten, who plans to simulate the function of complex subcellular units known as organelles.

New Scientist: A company based in Australia has been working on a cochlear implant for the hearing impaired. Unlike a traditional hearing aid, which acoustically amplifies sound, the bionic device translates sound into electrical signals that are used to electrically stimulate the cochlea—a spiral-shaped part of the inner ear attached to the auditory nerve, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe for New Scientist. Because of its small size, the new device can be fully implanted in a patient's ear—unlike current devices, which require an external unit containing the power supply, processors, and microphone. The fully implantable system, would, however, require replacement every 10 years when its batteries run out.

Scientific American: A computer scientist at Columbia University has developed a build-it-yourself digital camera, which he hopes to mass produce and market as an educational kit for children. Shree Nayar, chair of the computer science department at Columbia, also worked with several graduate students to produce an educational website promoting the camera. On the website are instructions for building the Bigshot camera and the science and engineering concepts behind it.

Various: It's still too dangerous for humans to look inside three reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Instead, robots and remote cameras will give operators details of the conditions. Other remote tools, such as unmanned fire engines, will help douse the reactors, writes David Hambling for New Scientist. This may be the start of a long robotic engagement. "I would anticipate that we are going to see a phenomenal enterprise of remote work systems that are brought to bear over the weeks, months, and years of recovering Fukushima," says Carnegie Mellon University robotics researcher Red Whittaker to NPR's Geoff Brumfiel.

Space.com: Two low-Earth-orbiting demonstration satellites successfully tracked a ballistic missile launch through all phases of flight. Such "birth-to-death" tracking has never been done before from space, according to Doug Young, vice president of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, which built the satellites. Northrop has built three such satellites for the US Missile Defense Agency, which aims to spend $1.34 billion on the Precision Tracking Space System between 2012 and 2016.

Daily Mail: Scientists in Bristol, UK, have created the first-ever fully working bicycle by printing it from a computer. The bike is made of nylon, which is as strong as steel and aluminum but weighs 65% less. It was designed on a computer and sent to a printer, which placed layers of melted nylon powder on top of each other to build up the machine. Individual components such as gears, pedals, and wheels are usually made in different factories and assembled into a finished bike, but the Airbike is a single, complete part. The technology is likely to be used in industrial applications such as aerospace, the automobile industry, and engineering.

New Scientist: Like their counterparts in science fiction, the robots that make cars and other objects are rigid devices whose limbs are driven by stiff pistons and other mechanical actuators. Electroactive polymers (EAPs) can mimic the flexible, flexing action of human muscles, offering engineers a way to make robots more versatile and lifelike. Now, a team from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute's Biomimetics Lab in New Zealand has demonstrated that EAP-based muscles can not only produce lever-like contraction; they can also, when suitably configured, produce rotary motion. The advance makes possible new kinds of robots beyond the factory assembly worker or the humanoid companion.

BBC: Weeks after Wilhelm Röntgen published his discovery of x rays in 1895, the directors of a high school and a hospital in Maastricht, the Netherlands, built their own x-ray imager. Now, more than a century later, Gerrit Kemerink of Maastricht University Medical Center has tested the old device, comparing it with a modern x-ray imager. In a paper to be published in Radiology, Kemerink reports that the old device produces images that are blurrier than those produced by its modern counterpart. Nevertheless, the vintage images are of medically useful quality. They do, however, require the use of radiation doses that are unacceptably high by modern standards.

Nature: Although it's possible to use a ground-based laser to move space debris out of the way of satellites, the idea hasn't been put into practice out of fear that the lasers could also be used as antisatellite weapons. To alleviate that fear, James Mason of NASA's Ames Research Center has proposed using a ground-based laser whose power is high enough to nudge debris out of the way but low enough to avoid harming spacecraft. Nature's Jon Cartwright reports that Mason's idea appears feasible—except, perhaps, for moving massive pieces. Its harmlessness is in doubt, however. Nudging a satellite off course could also constitute a hostile act.

Chronicle of Higher Education: Apple's popular tablet computer, the iPad, is (relatively) cheap for a computing device, is easy to use, has a long battery life, and runs several applications that foster communication and teamwork. According to a report by the Chronicle's Ben Wieder, those plusses account for the iPad's growing use in college classrooms. However, a significant set of minuses is also hindering iPad adoption in other classrooms. The devices lack a conventional keyboard, which slows typing. What's more, annotating most online textbooks and some formats of lecture notes is difficult, if not impossible. Still, tablet computers are likely to become more common in classrooms. Wieder quotes Martin Ringle, the chief technology officer of Reed College in Portland, Oregon: "I don't think the institution is going to get to decide about the uptake of these devices." Colleges, and their professors, will have to adapt to their students' choice whether they like it or not. That hasn't happened yet, but as more content becomes available, he is confident it will.

New Scientist: The James Webb Space Telescope is suffering yet another setback—a team at the University of Arizona in Tucson found in December that about 2% of pixels in a detector destined for JWST’s Near Infrared Camera were transmitting signals although no light was hitting them. That's four times as many "hot pixels" as there were when the detector was analyzed in 2008. The researchers later found that the problem affects four of the camera’s five long-wavelength detector arrays. NASA allows no more than 5% of a detector's pixels to be hot by the end of the telescope's five-year space mission. At this rate, the detectors may exceed this limit before the telescope even leaves the ground.

Daily Mail: A group of designers based in Boston has put together a proposal for a floating city to be located on the Mississippi River near New Orleans. Inspired by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the structure can take the blast of a storm with little impact on the community inside. Covering 30 million square feet and 1200 feet high, the city would boast hotels, shops, schools, gardens, and moving walkways and is designed to house up to 40 000 residents. Designers say the structure could be used in any coastal urban area and is at the forefront of the new urban growth possibilities in a warmer, wetter, and stormier world.

BBC: Researchers in the UK and Singapore have demonstrated the highest-resolution optical microscope ever—imaging objects down to just 50 nanometers. Ordinarily, it's impossible to use visible light to resolve objects smaller than its wavelength (380–750 nm). However, you can beat this diffraction limit by detecting "evanescent" waves, whose intensity falls to zero within one wavelength of the emitter's surface. As reported in Nature Communications, the new technique uses tiny glass beads to gather evanescent light waves and refocus them, channeling them into a standard microscope. It is believed that the technique holds great promise for biological studies, for viewing cells, bacteria, and viruses.

NPR: NPR’s Robert Krulwich recently made a bet with Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine, who claimed that “there is no species of technology that’s gone globally extinct on this planet”—in other words, there is no tool, no invention ever manufactured by humans that isn’t still being made new today. Krulwich appealed to his readers to come up with suggestions to prove Kelly wrong, which he narrowed to what he thought were three definitely dead technologies: radium suppositories, a Roman corvus (a plank used to board enemy ships), and the memory device inside a 1950s jukebox. Kelly proves him wrong, in this entertaining NPR blog.

Science: In 2007 astronomer Chris Lintott, who works at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, and colleagues were drowning under a data deluge—1 million images of galaxies to characterize and only one graduate student to do it. So they set up a website, called Galaxy Zoo, to recruit volunteer citizen scientists to help. The project was so successful—it attracted about 375 000 people working from the comfort of their own homes—that it was expanded to other projects, including studies of the Moon and an analysis of old ship logs for climate data. In Eli Kintisch’s article for Science, Lintott offers some suggestions to scientists for successful partnerships with armchair researchers.

New York Times: During the recent turmoil in Egypt, in a span of minutes just after midnight on 28 January, a technologically advanced, densely wired country with more than 20 million people online was essentially severed from the global internet for a span of five days. Because the internet’s legendary robustness and ability to route around blockages are part of its basic design, even the world’s most renowned network and telecommunications engineers have been perplexed that the Mubarak government succeeded in pulling the maneuver off. The event also raised concerns among the worldwide technical community that with unrest coursing through the Middle East, other autocratic governments could follow suit. In the New York Times, James Glanz and John Markoff give an in-depth look at how Egypt disappeared from the internet.

New Scientist: The answer to that question could have legal implications. Currently, US police need a warrant to search a suspect’s personal home computer, which is protected by the Fourth Amendment. A recent ruling in January allowed police to search a suspect’s cell phone without a warrant—a decision that angered many because cell phones are now so advanced that access to the phone allows almost the same level of insight into one’s life as seizure of a home computer. If a cell phone, and all it contains, is now officially a computer, can this be used as a defense to prevent the authorities seizing it when they carry out a search? No one really knows until it is tested in court, writes Niall Firth for New Scientist, but it is an interesting development and shows how advances in technology can muddle even the clearest of legal matters.

New Scientist: Artificial intelligence hits prime time this week when a computer squares off against two human opponents on the popular quiz show Jeopardy! Watson, named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, is one of the most advanced supercomputers to date. In a first-of-its-kind competition, Watson will face two former Jeopardy! champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. In a related article, the New York Times’s John Markoff reflects on the subject of artificial intelligence and its history since the dawn of the modern computer era.

New York Times: Nokia remains the world's largest manufacturer of smartphones, yet it was caught off guard by Apple's slick, user-friendly iPhone and by Google's Android operating system, which last year supplanted Nokia's Symbian as the world's most widely used smartphone OS. Hewlett-Packard remains the world's largest manufacturer of personal computers, yet it was caught off guard by the introduction last year of Apple's iPad tablet computer. Now, as the New York Times's Steve Lohr reports, both Nokia and HP have pledged to become more innovative. Nokia could decide soon whether to abandon Symbian and adopt a new OS, possibly in partnership with another company. HP plans to introduce its own tablet computer, the TouchPad, later this year.

Travel and Leisure: Joshua Bernstein, writing for Travel and Leisure magazine, profiles some of the world’s most visionary cities. From Seoul’s planned Nam June Paik Media Bridge—with gardens, a library, museum, and stores—to Cleveland’s shopping-mall greenhouse, which grows vegetables for the weekly farmers’ market, some cities are taking unique approaches to redefine how they function. Because traffic is one of the biggest and most visible issues plaguing cities, Hangzhou, China, has implemented a novel bike-share program, and Curitiba, Brazil, has developed a rapid transit bus system that rivals a subway for speed and efficiency.

BBC: Clyde Space, Scotland's largest homegrown space company, has secured investment worth £1 million ($1.6 million) to expand production of its CubeSat line of miniaturized satellites and other products. Based in Glasgow, Clyde Space is an innovator not only in spacecraft design, but also in spacecraft commerce. Customers can buy the company's power subsystems, antennas, and microsatellites from its online shop.

New Scientist: James Urquhart, writing for New Scientist, describes a camera inspired by the operation of the human eye. The camera can zoom without the need for bulky lenses, making it more compact than conventional cameras. The device builds on a non-zooming eyeball camera developed in 2008 by John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Now he has given the technology a twist by building in a stretchable lens and a flexible photodetector whose shape alters as the magnification of the lens changes. The technology could be used in such devices as night-vision cameras and endoscopes.

New Scientist: A graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Daniel Mellinger, has been posting videos on YouTube of mini helicopters that he has outfitted with advanced software and sensing devices. Mellinger uses quadrotors—helicopters with four rotors, made by German manufacturer Ascending Technologies—and has fitted them with custom microcontrollers, open-source software, and grippers that allow them to hover and pick up and maneuver small payloads. The goal is to make the quadrotors autonomous, which may be a long way off, however, according to another grad student, Abe Bachrach, at MIT.

Silicon.com: A research team from the University of Surrey and Surrey Satellite Technology plan to send an Android smartphone into orbit on board a 4-kg nanosatellite later this year. Once in space, the phone will be bombarded by cosmic and solar radiation, and experience temperatures that veer between extreme heat and cold. If mobile phone technology is able to function in space, writes Nick Heath for Silicon.com, it would open the door to phone chipsets being used to control future satellite missions, providing a cheaper alternative to the customized spacecraft electronics that are used today.

New Scientist: Although three-dimensional printers have already succeeded in making plastic replicas of almost anything, from an insect’s wing to copies of their own parts, now a team from the MIT Media Lab has used one to re-create the intricate design of a flute, writes Sandrine Ceurstemont for New Scientist. Amit Zoran and colleagues made a digital model based on a metal flute, which was then sent to a 3D printer. The printer constructed the flute in four parts over 15 hours, using three different plastic composites. The goal was not to create a flute superior to the metal one, but rather to produce one that’s acoustically and ergonomically similar. When tested by a flautist, the plastic flute was given the thumbs up for sound.

New Scientist: An automatic driving system—where cars are linked together into a convoy, or “platoon,” and the lead driver has the control—has just been road-tested in Sweden, writes Duncan Graham-Rowe for New Scientist. To join a platoon, a car broadcasts its destination as it drives onto the freeway and a computer system tells the driver of any nearby platoons heading that way. Each car is fitted with a navigation and communication system, which measures the car's speed and direction, constantly adjusting them to keep the car within a set distance of the vehicle in front. Such a system would allow cars to travel more closely together, thus reducing road congestion, and would reduce fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

New York Times: To create the illusion of three dimensions, most currently available 3D television sets rely on careful synchronization. Images intended for the left and right eyes are displayed on the screen in rapid succession. Special glasses that the viewer wears are synchronized with the TV set and ensure that each eye sees the appropriate images. Toshiba has developed a method that dispenses with the glasses, which are somewhat bulky. The method relies instead on aiming the left and right images directly at the viewer's eyes. The innovation is noteworthy not only for its possible impact on the new market for 3D television, but also because the team that developed it was led by a woman, Rieko Fukushima. As the New York Times's Hiroko Tabuchi reports, Toshiba stands out in Japan for its efforts to recruit, retain, and promote its female employees.Twenty percent of Toshiba's R&D staff are women.

BBC: A telecommunications satellite that had been adrift and incommunicado since last April has abruptly recovered its ability to respond to commands. Launched in 2005, Intelsat's Galaxy-15 had been relaying TV signals to the Americas from a geostationary orbit above the Pacific Ocean. Maintaining such an orbit requires a spacecraft to periodically fire its thrusters in response to commands from the ground station. During its mysterious hiatus, Galaxy-15 had drifted from its orbital perch and was becoming a threat to other satellites before its equally mysterious reawakening. Because Galaxy-15 had lost only its ability to communicate but not its other functions, it acquired the nickname Zombie-sat.

Economist: An engineering physicist at the University of Perugia, Italy, seeks to improve freight transport by reviving an extinct technology—the pneumatic tube, in which cylindrical containers are propelled through a network of tubes by compressed air or by partial vacuum. Because air compressors are expensive and the energy they produce dissipates quickly, Franco Cotana developed a device that uses magnetic fields instead of air pressure. Those fields both levitate the capsules and propel them forward. The capsules are routed through the network by radio transponders. The concept of maglev travel is not new; the novelty of Cotana’s approach is that by scaling things down from passenger trains to small capsules, the expense is drastically reduced. The team has completed a feasibility study for a pipeline network in Perugia.

Physics Today: Multiple new gadgets are on display today through 9 January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. New Scientist highlights a thought-controlled iPad app by InteraXon, in which headphones equipped with a pair of sensors use electrical signals from the brain to control movement in the iPad game Zenbound. The Daily Mail discusses the many iPad clones that are being unveiled this week at the CES; among them, the Eee Pad Transformer, which initially looks like a laptop but can split in two to function as a tablet. Another Daily Mail article details a new voice-activated car stereo, the Parrot Asteroid, which not only plays what the user tells it to but also can download apps. And TechNewsDaily highlights a computerized telescope, Sky Prodigy, which automatically focuses on stars and other celestial bodies.

Daily Mail: Estonia is recruiting an army of computer experts to defend itself during a cyberwar, almost four years after the country was subjected to a wave of cyber attacks. In May 2007 computer hackers disabled the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, and banks, causing chaos in the small Baltic state. In the years since the attacks, Estonia has mobilized a Cyber Defense League made up of programmers, computer scientists, and software engineers. The league is a volunteer organization that in wartime would function under unified military command.

New York Times: Qualcomm, the San Diego–based maker of wireless telecommunications equipment, is set to buy Atheros, the San Jose–based chipmaker, for $3.1 billion. Atheros's expertise lies in developing computer chips for wireless networking and mobile phones. Qualcomm's acquisition of Atheros will strengthen Qualcomm's ability to compete in the growing market for smartphones and tablet computers whose low-power operating mode puts a premium on lean, efficient circuitry.

New York Times: China's main TV network, China Central Television, reported yesterday that China's scientists can now reprocess spent nuclear fuel. Although the CCTV report did not include technical details, nuclear reprocessing as practiced in the US and Europe entails chemically treating spent fuel rods to extract unused uranium, to isolate plutonium, and to render nuclear waste less harmful. When China applies nuclear processing on an industrial scale, the country will be able to use nuclear fuel more efficiently, reducing its dependence on coal-powered plants.

Guardian: Engineers from the UK’s largest defense company, BAE Systems, are using defense technology to help the British Olympic team. Among their successes is a device called Drake that they invented for the sailing team. Drake can model vast amounts of meteorological data by taking and processing readings of the key weather factors, including wind speed and direction and temperature and humidity changes, writes Alok Jha for the Guardian. For the bobsledding team, BAE recruited PhD students to devise a method of customizing each sled for individual athletes. The BAE engineers' next goal is to improve the racing wheelchair used by Paralympians—by using an Airbus wind tunnel to study the wheelchair’s construction and determine the best seating position for different types of races.

New Scientist: Researchers in Germany have designed a tiny camera, inspired by an arthropod eye, that maximizes image resolution. Andreas Brückner, of the Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Optics and Precision Engineering, and colleagues constructed an electronic cluster eye that can take 221 miniature images, each 39 pixels to a side, that are then stitched together into a single image of 700 by 550 pixels, writes New Scientist’s Kate McAlpine. The tiny device, which can provide clear, high-resolution images, could be used in cell phones, in medical devices, or on the gripper hands of robots as a secondary eye.

Daily Mail: Scientists in Japan are designing a robot to explore the Moon—by jumping as if on a pogo stick. Moving on the Moon can be hard work: Humans trying to walk struggle with the lesser gravity, and rovers running on wheels can get stuck in the sand. So lead researcher Atsuo Takanishi at Waseda University in Tokyo and colleagues have developed software simulations showing a robot that uses thrusters to lift it off the ground and land on both feet. They have yet to determine the exact height that works best—too high puts too much stress on the robot’s legs; too low makes it move too slow. Their work was presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics in Tianjin, China.

New York Times: Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has invested in the Yo, a small hybrid car that gets 67 miles to the gallon, has a top speed of 80 miles per hour, and a range of 680 miles. The car might not seem much of a hybrid at first glance. Its two generators run on gasoline and natural gas and power an electric motor that propels the car. Three factors account for the car's fuel-sipping performance. First, the car is light. Second, the generators use an efficient design based on the rotary vane pump. Third, thanks to batteries, the generators can run at a steady, efficient rate even when the car and its electric motor are stopping and starting. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times reports that the Yo is expected to go on sale in Russia in mid 2012 and cost about $14 500.

Science: Late last week NASA announced that it didn't know the whereabouts of NanoSail-D. The 4-kg "nanosatellite" (shown below) was designed to test the feasibility of propelling spacecraft with solar sails that unfurl in space. At this point, it's not known whether the sails failed to deploy, the spacecraft's communication equipment failed to operate, or both. NanoSail-D is one of three small probes that formed the payload of NASA's FASTSAT spacecraft.

New York Times: In his blog Pogue's Posts, New York Times technology reporter David Pogue uncovers the surprising history of Gorilla Glass, the environmentally friendly alkali-aluminosilicate thin-sheet glass used for the touchscreens of smartphones. Corning invented the material in the 1960s, but didn't find an application for it until Apple's Steve Jobs performed an impromptu test on a sample: He put it in his pocket and jostled it against his keys.

New Scientist: Rob Black, a graduate student at the University of Liverpool, is developing a modern, compact version of an old invention, a synopter, which renders two-dimensional images three-dimensional. Unlike the glasses used for viewing 3D movies or 3D television, the synopter doesn't require viewers to focus on the screen, which can cause headaches. Rather, through mirrors and lenses, the synopter delivers exactly the same field of view to both eyes. Doing so paradoxically evokes the brain's ability to extract depth clues from flat images.

Nature: Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York have demonstrated the optical analog of an airfoil—a “lightfoil” that generates lift when passing through laser light, writes Jon Cartwright for Nature. The principles are similar: Both require the pressure to be greater on one side than the other, which generates a force, or lift, in that direction. With the lightfoil, the pressure comes from light rather than air. The group, whose results were published yesterday in Nature Photonics, believes that lightfoils could one day be used to maneuver objects in the vacuum of outer space using only the Sun’s rays.

Telegraph: The sonic screwdriver used by British sci-fi character Doctor Who could become a real-life tool, capable of moving and manipulating objects using only ultrasonic sound waves. Bruce Drinkwater, an ultrasonics engineer at the University of Bristol, told Richard Gray of the Telegraph, “We have developed a device that allows us to use ultrasonic forces to move small objects like biological cells around to sort them or to assemble them.” Tiny crystals are made to vibrate by passing an electrical current through them, producing an ultrasonic shock wave in the air around them. This shock wave generates a force that can be used to push the cells. In future, by increasing the size of the shock wave, such a device could be used to undo screws, assemble electronics, or put together delicate components.

BBC: On 22 April, the US Air Force's robot spaceplane, the X-37B, was launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Yesterday the X-37B returned to Earth, gliding to a successful landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The reusable spaceplane is about a quarter of the size of the space shuttle. What, if anything, the X-37B carried in its cargo bay during the flight and what its ultimate purpose is remain classified.

Nature: Scientists all over the world are increasingly turning to manuscript-editing services, writes Karen Kaplan for the journal Nature. Some authors hope to refine a paper before submitting it to a journal; others aim to correct problems that emerged in peer review. Besides correcting for grammar, spelling, and punctuation, some services can restructure the methodology, incorporate new data, and reformat a manuscript before submission. And as more papers are being submitted to English-language journals from such areas as China, India, the Middle East, and South America, the need for editing services that serve non-English-speaking authors is growing as well.

Computer World: In a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on Monday, US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu observed that the US is at risk of losing its lead in technology, calling the current situation a “Sputnik moment.” Chu illustrated his concern by describing the decline of the US share of worldwide high-technology manufacturing, which peaked in 1998 at 25% and has declined steadily ever since to about 12–13%. China, in contrast, has seen its global share of the tech export market rise from 6% in 1995 to 20% in 2008. Nevertheless, Chu believes the US can turn this trend around with government policies and investment in such areas as carbon-free technology.

Daily Mail: Researchers at MIT are investigating the possibility of using a rare metal, ruthenium, that can absorb sunlight, store the energy, and release it as pure heat to create a “rechargeable heat battery.” When molecules of fulvalene diruthenium absorb sunlight, they change shape into a long-lived semistable state. When the molecules interact with a catalyst, they snap back into their original form, releasing heat. Such a system could be far more effective than conventional solar-thermal ones, which require insulation and gradually lose heat. The drawback is the metal’s rarity—ruthenium comes from the same family as platinum.

New Scientist: Microsoft is developing a way to create temporary bumps, ridges, and other textural features on a touchscreen, writes Paul Marks for New Scientist. The tactile touchscreen works by using a layer of shape-memory plastic to distort the surface of the screen when different wavelengths of ultraviolet light strike the screen's pixels from beneath. Large table-sized computing displays such as Microsoft's Surface are the target application, rather than phones or tablets. "Creating well-defined bumps on a touch surface is in many ways the holy grail of text entry on touch devices because it would enable touch typing at much faster speeds than on touchscreens today," says Patrick Baudisch, a display interaction expert at the University of Potsdam in Germany.

New York Times: A quantum computer, if anyone built one, could carry out certain calculations far faster than any existing supercomputer. Physicists have already created a quantum computer's basic building block, the qubit, from ions, atoms, quantum dots, and other tiny objects. They've also yoked qubits together to make logic gates. The biggest remaining challenge is to "scale up" from logic gates to a working computer. The New York Times's John Markoff reports that IBM Corp has decided to invest in a qubit technology, Josephson junctions, that appears to offer a clear path toward scaling up. Unlike trapped ions and some other qubit technologies, Josephson junctions can be made on chips like integrated circuits.

BBC: The newly created UK Space Agency has a modest budget of around $400 million. Surprisingly, the total size of Britain's space industry is far higher—$12 billion—and is growing at an annual rate of 15%, despite the recession. According to a report from Oxford Economics, firms in "downstream" industries, such as space-based communication, have the highest revenues, but "upstream" industries, such as spacecraft manufacturing, are also healthy.

NPR: By the end of next year, one out of every six airline passengers at US airports will be asked to go through a scanner that uses backscattered x rays to find concealed weapons. In absolute terms, the radiation dose delivered to each passenger in one scan is tiny: 0.02 microsieverts, about 1/1000th of the dose the same passenger would receive from cosmic rays during a transcontinental flight. But, as NPR's Richard Knox reported earlier this year, a group of biochemists and biophysicists from the University of California, San Francisco, has challenged the assumption that the scanners are safe, despite the low dose. The scientists question whether the prime safety criterion should be the overall dose, if, as they suspect, the dose is concentrated in the passenger's skin.

BBC: James Waldie and Dava Newman of MIT's aeronautics and astronautics department have developed a stretchy suit that applies pressure to an astronaut's body in a way that mimics Earth's gravity. The pair's Gravity Loading Countermeasure Skinsuit (GLCS) tackles an important problem that will become more severe if astronauts ever make the long journey to Mars: Without pressure, bones fail to regenerate, becoming thinner and more fragile. A key feature of the GLCS is the ability to apply graduated pressure that increases from the head to the feet, just as gravity does for people standing upright on Earth.

New York Times: Researchers at the University of Arizona report in Nature that they have succeeded in transmitting moving three-dimensional images from one place to another in almost real time. Their device can update images every 2 seconds. The technology uses holograms, two-dimensional images that reconstruct the light that would have bounced off a physical object, making it look 3D. The new technology could be used for such applications as holographic surgery and movies that literally surround the viewer.

New York Times: China has built the fastest-ever supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A. It has 1.4 times the horsepower of the current top computer, built by the US, as measured by the standard test used to gauge how well the systems handle mathematical calculations. Tianhe-1A's number-one spot is expected to become official on 1 November when Jack Dongarra, the University of Tennessee computer scientist who maintains the official supercomputer rankings, releases an updated list. For decades the US dominated the technology and built the largest, fastest machines—although Japan briefly took the title away in 2002 with a computer that had more horsepower than the top 20 American computers combined. The US quickly regained the leadership in 2004, and kept it, until now. Supercomputers are used to solve problems in areas critical to national interests, such as defense, energy, finance, and science.

Washington Post: This year's physics Nobel went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for discovering in 2004 how to make graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. The discovery excited physicists and engineers because of graphene's superb electrical and mechanical properties. Writing in the Washington Post, Brian Palmer examines when those properties will prove profitable. The main source of delay lies in finding a way to make the material cheaply and in large batches. Palmer concludes:

As chic as graphene is today, it's still really a material of the future. But there's so much money and excitement in graphene research, the future may be soon.

Science News: Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University have created millimeter-sized machines that operate without batteries or any other source of power. Engineer David Gracias and coworkers, who published their results in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, developed the tiny tools, which have five finger-like extensions that snap shut when exposed to a certain chemical or combination of chemicals. Their invention could have medical applications such as to biopsy tiny bits of tissue or to deliver small amounts of drugs to disease sites in the body.

Daily Mail: An international team of astronomers has captured images of a planet in much closer orbit around its parent star than any other extrasolar planet previously found. The team used new optics technology, called an apodizing phase plate, which is a small piece of glass with a complex pattern etched into its surface. It blocks out the starlight and makes visible planets whose signals were previously drowned out by the star’s glare. “Until now, we only were able to look at the outer planets in a solar system, in the range of Neptune's orbit and beyond. Now we can see planets on orbits much closer to their parent star,” says Philip Hinz, director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics at Steward Observatory. The team's results were published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Daily Mail: Volvo is developing an electric car whose rechargeable battery is to be integrated into the car’s body. The car’s doors, roof, and hood would be replaced by a composite blend of carbon fibers and polymer resin, which would store and charge more energy faster than conventional batteries and reduce the car's weight by as much as 15%. If successful, the technology could also be applied to other devices, such as mobile phones and laptops, to make them smaller, lighter, and more portable.

NPR: Recently, the New York Times online featured stunning images of atomic bomb explosions, some taken in the 1950s and 1960s by Harold Edgerton, a professor at MIT who developed the rapatronic camera specifically for that purpose. Capturing the explosions was exceptionally challenging, partly because of the extraordinary light intensity and the ultrashort duration. Edgerton, who specialized in stop-motion photography, earned the reputation of being “the man who made time stand still.” While his images reveal what the human eye cannot see, they also achieve a certain visual aesthetic.

Daily Mail: Alton Horsfall of Newcastle University in the UK and his collaborators are developing an iPhone-sized sensor that can withstand the near 1000 °C temperatures that prevail inside the dome of a near-active volcano. By measuring and transmitting information about certain volcanic gases, the sensor can help determine whether an eruption is imminent. The key to the sensor's survival is the use of components made from silicon carbide, a superhard semiconductor.

New York Times: In December 1942, John Pritchard and two other Coast Guard aviators were listed as missing after their plane lost radio contact—and presumably crashed—during a storm off the southeast coast of Greenland.

Now, 68 years later, the Coast Guard has commissioned a private recovery team to try to locate, excavate and repatriate the three men entombed in a J2F-4 Grumman Duck biplane (see left image) buried in a glacier there. The team set out last month with an arsenal of top-of-the-line technology: ground-penetrating radar, which can detect metallic objects close to the surface; advanced ice-melting equipment, which can pinpoint buried objects as it dissolves the ice around them; a camera that can take pictures from inside deep hollows of ice; and sensors to track the speed the glacier is moving before the plane, and bodies move out to sea.

Science: Mechanical engineers would like to build airplanes, cars, and other machines from a material that's as light and strong as titanium but much cheaper. Aluminum alloy 7075, which contains 5-6% zinc, 2-3% magnesium, and smaller amounts of certain other elements, is light, cheap, and strong, but it's still too weak for applications that require titanium's high tensile strength. Reporting in Nature Communications, Simon Ringer of the University of Sydney in Australia and his collaborators describe a method for boosting the strength of aluminum 7075 by a factor of three. The method relies on subjecting the metal to a pressure of 6 gigapascals, the result of which is to change the metal's nanostructure.

New Scientist: Ulf Peschel of the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg in Germany and his collaborators have succeeded in sending laser beams along the curved surfaces of glass spheres, oil-covered aluminum trumpets, and other three-dimensional objects. As New Scientist's Rachel Courtland reports, Peschel's experiment relies on balancing reflection and refraction, controlling the laser beam's incident angle, and on machining smooth, accurate surfaces. The ability to send light along curved surfaces could help physicists visualize how gravity distorts spacetime and the paths of photons traveling in free space.

Washington Post: The Florida-based Lighting Science Group designs and makes lightbulbs that use light-emitting devices. In a news feature, the Washington Post's Peter Whoriskey reports on pros and cons that the company's boss Fred Maxik must weigh as he decides where to manufacture his products: inside or outside the US. Although the US provides incentives to manufacturers in the form of federal grants and local tax breaks, the incentives that Mexico, China, and other countries provide are more generous and easier to obtain.

Daily Mail: A new laser machine that vaporizes lung tumors was introduced this year at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. The machine—which fires 70 kilowatts of energy per square centimeter, the equivalent power of 70 microwave ovens—is most often used on secondary tumors, because they are smaller and more numerous, and because primary tumors usually require more of the lung be removed. According to George Ladas, the hospital's leading thoracic surgeon, the new method means patients are under general anesthetic for about half the time of the old operating method, operating times and hospital stays are reduced, and patients recover faster.

Science: A group of physicists has succeeded in using a pipe of laser light to transport a tiny particle one meter and set it on a surface with a precision of less than the width of a human hair. Science’s Adrian Cho discusses the physics involved and the research of two different university groups, one at the University of Glasgow in the UK and the other at Australian National University. Such a technique could have multiple applications, such as to simulate the physics of interstellar space or sniff out airborne traces of contraband.

SPACE.com: NASA's All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) rover has been tramping around the Arizona desert in preparation for its eventual use on the Moon. ATHLETE is one of several pieces of NASA hardware being tested at the annual Research and Technology Studies demonstration, also known as Desert RATS, 31 August–15 September. Desert RATS provides researchers an opportunity to try out new equipment destined for future planetary exploration missions. ATHLETE has also been a hit on YouTube, where it demonstrates its flexibility in a music video in which it appears to dance.

New Scientist: : A team of optical engineers has found a way to circumvent attenuation in light signals that travel along optical fibers. David Richardson at the University of Southampton in the UK and his colleagues—whose results were published in Nature Photonics—have found a way to reverse the degradation process and re-create the original signal. In addition, whereas data have conventionally been sent as a series of on–off light pulses, the researchers propose to squeeze more data onto a stream of light by using the amplitude and phase of the optical carrier. The technique portends better web video, among other things.

New Scientist: Two Chinese satellites had a close rendezvous 600 km above Earth, and may even have touched, a first for any country besides the US, according to Brian Weeden, a technical consultant at the Secure World Foundation, which promotes the peaceful use of space. As New Scientist’s Rachel Courtland reports, the event could be a test of technology needed for any number of purposes, such as to build a space station, to clear out space junk, to inspect or fix satellites, or even to damage or interfere with satellites from other countries. Weeden, however, does not believe the technology is intended for military use.

Daily Mail: A free iPhone app has been replacing an essential piece of equipment for hundreds of doctors: the stethoscope. To use the app, which is called iStethoscope, one presses the iPhone’s built-in microphone against the bare chest for a few seconds, then gives the device a shake. Its motion sensors and camera capture the heart’s waveform, which is then displayed on the iPhone’s screen. Developed by Peter Bentley at University College London, the iStethoscope can capture a more accurate reading than a simple acoustic stethoscope.

New York Times: Certain materials change their resistance in response to a change in voltage. That simple switching behavior, which arises from the material itself, could form the basis of new, compact computer memory—provided the material is cheap, robust, and convenient to use. In the New York Times, John Markoff reports a recent development toward that goal. Jun Yao of Rice University and his collaborators have built a switch out of silicon dioxide, a bedrock material of current computers whose resistive switching was previously unsuspected. Markoff also reports that an independent team from Hewlett-Packard is set to announce an advance toward the same goal but with a different "memristor" technology.

China Hush: To combat its ever-increasing traffic woes, China may be adding a high-tech bus to its public transit system. The “straddling” bus, first exhibited at the 13th Beijing International High-Tech Expo in May, has 2 levels and is 15 feet tall. The upper story carries passengers, while the lower is essentially a tunnel that allows surface automobile traffic to pass through it. It is also environmentally friendly: It runs on a combination of electric and solar power. A prototype is scheduled to be put in use in Beijing’s Mentougou District in the near future.