Innovation Briefs
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08.20.08 Ship emissions: sizing up a big problem
Those who go down to the sea in ships – or go to see them in port – may soon be able to breathe easier. Scientists have made the first measurements of ship emissions involving particles less than a millionth of a meter in size. They say it’s an important step in establishing and monitoring […] Continue... |
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08.17.08 Take your profile with you online
A common complaint about the Internet is that the typical user has to maintain multiple personal profiles on multiple sites, ranging from Facebook to Last FM. Enter mEgo, a personalized portable profile that travels online with you across social networks. The mEgo.com body-shaped widget, which resembles a high-tech baseball card on your screen, stores all […] Continue... |
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08.15.08 Researchers enlist elephant seals to gather undersea data
How do you study some of the ocean’s most inaccessible regions? Hitch your instruments to elephant seals. |
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08.13.08 Humans relish food spiced with … fungicide?
Chilies have fascinated plant scientists, anthropologists, and ecologists for years. One nagging question: What purpose does a chili’s heat serve, other than to bring tears to the eyes and beads of perspiration to the foreheads of Thai-food lovers everywhere. |
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08.08.08 Better way to recycle computers
When you send an old computer off for recycling, it’s more than likely the castoff will end up in China, which recycles some 70 percent of the world’s old cellphones and computers. But their circuit boards contain a range of valuable (and toxic) metals. And the techniques currently used to recycle them – mostly in […] Continue... |
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08.07.08 Buildings designed by termites
Some of the world’s best sustainable designers are termites. That’s the gist of recent talk by Zimbabwean-born architect Mick Pearce. He foresees a “biological age” of future construction projects that’s now within reach. |
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08.07.08 World’s tiniest snake
It pays to turn over rocks. That simple act has yielded the first detailed descriptions of two new species of tiny snakes, including the world’s smallest. |
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07.30.08 Cassini scans lunar lakes
The hunt for massive liquid oceans on Titan may have come up dry. But not so with efforts to explore the moon’s large lakes. |
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07.28.08 Managing Mangroves
If you’re thinking of planting mangroves as part of a coastal restoration project, pay close attention to the species you pick and where you plant them. |
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07.27.08 Fish “talk” much like primates
Researchers are giving the phrase “primeval grunt” new meaning. In the process, they say, they’re showing that the roots of vocalization – from frog croaks and bird chirps to presidential campaign speeches – may date back hundreds of millions of years to early fish. |
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07.16.08 Lingro: Foreign-word widget
When Artur Janc attempted to read “Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal” with his rudimentary Spanish in 2005, he grew so frustrated at constantly referring to a dictionary that he decided to perform some wizardry of his own. |
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07.10.08 Ancient Indian basin beat the cold
Scientists in the US and India appear to have kicked back the age of a prominent feature in India – the Vindhyan Basin – by half a billion years. In the process, they may have removed one of the stumbling blocks to the so-called “snowball Earth” theory. The theory posits that Earth’s surface was covered […] Continue... |
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07.09.08 Water on the moon?
The moon’s interior may harbor water at concentrations higher than found on Earth. That’s the implication of measurements scientists have made on beads of volcanic glass in rocks that astronauts brought back during the Apollo moon missions. |
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07.04.08 Narragansett’s ecosystem shake-up
Move over Rhode Island reds; here come Rhode Island blue crabs. The ocean state’s Narragansett Bay appears to be well on its way to becoming a second Chesapeake Bay biologically. And scientists point the blame at global warming. |
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07.03.08 Violin’s secrets come out of the woodwork
Scientists are leaving no string untuned in their attempt to unravel the secrets of the Stradivarius. They’ve analyzed varnishes, types and densities of wood, the shapes and thicknesses of the plates that make up these highly prized, centuries-old violins. Now a research team from Leiden University in the Netherlands and Borman Violins in Fayetteville, […] Continue... |
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07.02.08 Hurricane drones
A new breed of storm chasers is ready for launch. US researchers have begun sending unmanned aerial drones into the hearts of hurricanes. While smaller and less sophisticated than the pilotless craft that fly over war zones, these remote-controlled planes can rough it in the 70-mile-per-hour winds of a Caribbean cyclone and send back […] Continue... |
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06.26.08 Weeding out the hype
In the quest to shift to biofuels, one approach that has gained a following involves growing perennial grasses on abandoned or degraded crop and pasture land. In principle, the grasses grown there can be turned into fuel without jacking up food prices or degrading the environment. |
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06.25.08 Mars’s big splat
If Teddy Roosevelt had been able to visit Mars, he might have declared it a bully candidate for a national park. It boasts the highest known volcano in the solar system and the largest canyon. Now, three teams of scientists say Mars also has the largest impact basin in the solar system, encompassing some 42 […] Continue... |
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06.20.08 Hot and heavy ‘super Earths’
Planet hunters are having a field day. This week, astronomers announced the discovery of three so-called “super Earths” orbiting a star some 42 light years away. Super Earths are planets with masses less than Neptune’s but greater than Earth’s. |
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06.19.08 New automobile tech is a stretch
BMW’s new concept car, named GINA, is entirely sheathed in lycra that is stretched, skinlike, over its metal frame. The car resembles the Batmobile clad in spandex. The vehicle’s big utility: It can alter its shape. A movable skeleton underneath the skin allows hidden headlights to open like eyelids. You won’t see a fleet of […] Continue... |
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06.18.08 Life from meteors?
Some of the major building blocks for complex biological molecules may have arrived from the solar system or beyond, according to a new study. The evidence shows up in shards from the Murchison meteorite, which landed Down Under in 1969. |
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06.13.08 Ancient, icy animal burrows
The Allan Hills of Antarctica’s Victoria Land are not only famous for a Martian meteorite that made a splash in 1996 – bearing what some interpreted as evidence of microbial life from the red planet. The area also is noted for terrestrial fossils dating back millions of years. Scientists say they have uncovered 245-million-year-old fossilized […] Continue... |
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06.12.08 Human error sparks mud volcano
A two-year-old mud volcano altering the landscape of eastern Java is not the result of nature, but of a human mishap, according to a study by geophysicists. The volcano, which oozes muck instead of lava and has sent 30,000 people packing, resulted from an underground blow-out from a natural-gas drill rig, according to the report. […] Continue... |
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06.11.08 Powerhouse clubs
Club hopping is about to get greener in Rotterdam. In September, Club Watt, a dance club in this Dutch city, will open its doors sporting what it calls the first energy-generating dance floor. When dancers start grooving, the kinetic energy from their movements changes colored LED lights in the floor, allowing clubbers to see their […] Continue... |
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06.06.08 Manly birds dress boldly
The saga of barn-swallow research is a bit like a soap opera; you think you’ve seen the episode before, but if you look closely, there’s an intriguing twist to the tale. |
At a glance
US to convert coal for jets
The Air Force wants to build a coal-to-liquids plant in Montana. The process, used by the Germans in World War II, would utilize America's vast resources of coal rather than foreign oil.
More at a glance...