MIDEASTA

Despite the impact of mankind, the size of trees, and the sheer numbers of bugs, multicellular terrestrial life only makes up a small portion of the planet’s biomass. The majority of life on Earth lives at the bottom of the ocean, much of it beneath the ocean floor.

Thanks to those extreme depths, science knows virtually nothing about the majority of the planet’s lifeforms. But a series of deep sea drilling expeditions over the course of the next year looks to finally shine a light on our planet’s richest, and most mysterious, habitats.

In 2010, the JOIDES Resolution, a deep sea drilling vessel operated by the international research consortium Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, will make three trips to various ocean ridges in search of never before discovered forms of life. The JOIDES Resolution will collect microbe-rich samples from deep below the surface, and flush dyed liquid through undersea aquifers to reveal how the deep ocean flows.

The voyages will also set up six undersea observatories to monitor microbiological content throughout the ocean. The observatories will be linked to surface laboratories, and cross referenced against the data obtained from the drilling.

Between the drilling and the observatories, on researcher told McClatchy newspapers that he expects a “fire hose of data.”

These expeditions also have important implications in the search for extraterrestrial life. The conditions beneath the ocean floor closely resemble similar locations on Mars and Jupiter’s moons. If humans are going to find alien life, it will most likely come in a form similar to the ones the JOIDES Resolution expedition hopes to retrieve.

And by gaining a better understanding of Earth’s deep-dwelling microbes, scientists hope to be better prepared in the search for subterranean organisms on other worlds.

[Yahoo! News]

Between the yelling of sergeants, the rumble of jet engines, and the deafening pop of gunfire, a soldier’s sense of hearing rapidly deteriorates in the heat of battle. Luckily, the Dutch company Microflown has designed a special microphone that can do a soldier’s listening for him. By measuring the mechanical movement of individual air particles, as opposed to sound waves as a whole, the device can not only pinpoint the origin of sniper fire or approaching aircraft, but detail their make and model, as well.

Rather than using vibrations to detect sound, the mic uses platinum strips only 600 atoms wide. Two pairs of strips are arranged in different directions. Air molecules passing between the strips cool the strips at different speeds depending on the direction of flow, and a computer then interprets that cooling as an exact x, y, and z source for the sound.

The device can also determine the pitch and character of the noise to distinguish between distant explosions, human screams, and chopper blades. Plus, since each mic is only the size of a match head, each soldier can carry one individually, giving them personal autonomy, or turning a squad into one giant listening post.

So far, the armies of the Netherlands, Germany, India, Poland, New Zealand and Australia have agreed to test the device out.

[Dvice]

Toxoplasmosis, a common food- and pet-borne illness linked to hallucinations, personality alteration, and, since it’s often carried by house pets, the stereotype of the crazy cat lady, infects around 15 percent of the US population. Luckily, a new technique that traps the parasite with gold nanoparticles, and then zaps them with lasers, should help ease the $7.7 billion the disease costs America every year.

The treatment, developed at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, uses gold nanoparticles that attach to toxoplasmid-hunting antibodies. The gold carrying-antibodies then spread through the circulatory system, affixing themselves to parasites in the blood.

Once the gold particles are well distributed and widely attached to the parasite, the laser heats up the gold, incinerating the parasites. According to the researchers, the laser could be tuned to the so-called “tissue window”, a wavelength of light to which the human body appears transparent. That way, the laser can pass harmlessly through the skin, burning up the parasites along the way.

The researchers don’t want to just stop at toxoplasmosis, either. If this technique works on one parasite, than malaria, another blood-infecting parasite, should also be susceptible to the same laser annihilation.

[Cosmos Magazine]

How fast is too fast? According to the laws of physics, the speed of light is a good boundary, as going beyond it opens you up to all sorts of paradoxes and space-time phenomena that are usually the stuff of sci-fi. But a couple of researchers in Austria have come up with a way to compute information faster than the speed of light.

The idea is not quite as crazy as it might sound, though you may wish to limber up your mind before delving deeper. It’s based on the same principle as that of quantum entanglement — the notion that two particles on opposite sides of the universe can be linked through their quantum states such that one cannot be adequately described without the other. That is, an action on one particle instantaneously influences its counterpart, even if they are separated by light years.

This quantum non-local phenomenon cannot transmit information faster than the speed of light, but according to Volkmar Putz and Karl Svozil at the Vienna University of Technology there’s no reason we can’t process information at superluminal speeds as long as doing so doesn’t create any time travel paradoxes.

All we need to do is create a medium conducive to the kind of pair formation and recombination described by entanglement. Such a material would have a refractive index of less than one. Then you simply build an optical computer around all of this controlled quantum mayhem, and presto: a computer that processes faster than the speed of light (in theory, anyhow).

We can’t move information faster than the speed of light, but it’s nice to know we could potentially process data at that speed. And supposedly a hypercomputer of this nature could digest and compute functions that are otherwise non-computable. But even so, the bright minds over at Technology Review can’t figure out exactly what to do with such a hypercomputer, and frankly neither can we. But if it can keep more than ten tabs in Firefox open simultaneously without crashing, we’ll take a dozen.

[Technology Review]

No longer simply content to rule the world of computers, the Google juggernaut has teamed up with Dish Network to bring its targeted ads and search power to the world of television. The project, currently in the testing phase at some very lucky Google employees’ houses, brings customized TV schedules, advertising packages, and web video via YouTube out of the computer and into the living room via an Android-powered set-top box.

Powered by the same Android OS that runs Google’s smartphones and a host of forthcoming tablet devices, the box enables users to search for TV shows and web clips with a keyboard instead of a remote. And, since this is Google we’re talking about, one can only imagine that an algorithm will eventually analyze those searches to help direct personalized advertising via their TV ad service.

Google started testing the boxes a year ago, and both Dish Network and Google have kept mum on the project the whole time. However, with both Microsoft and Apple lustily eyeing the TV market, and with many television companies trying to integrate more web features into their cable offerings, the revelation that Google has been working on technology that bridges the gap between television and the Internet should surprise no one.

Thus far, Google and Dish Network have continued their silence on the project, and no one knows when the service will become commercially available. However, Google’s TV ad service has already been active for some time, and the Android OS has proved versatile across a range of platforms. If Google can combine its search engine power and Android architecture with the program selection of Dish Network, the Google box might become the odds-on favorite to win the coming battle over television/Internet integration.

[the Wall Street Journal, via Fast Company]

They don’t exactly look like the saviors of our energy economy, but that’s exactly what some researchers think they could be. Gribbles — tiny crustacean pests with a knack for digesting wood — have long been considered a marine parasite for the destruction they cause to wooden hulls and piers. But the enzymes gribbles use in to break wood fibers down into sugars could make them the next biofuels breakthrough.

Essentially, gribbles are blessed with a digestive process unparalleled (to our knowledge) by other wood-consuming insects and animals. Their digestive enzymes can break down woody cellulose and even lignin — the normally indigestible part of woody plants — creating sugars that are more or less ideal for fermenting into alcohol-based fuels.

A biofuel factory based on the gribble’s digestive biology could yield energy-dense sugars for biofuel production in an efficient manner. But of course there’s a give-and-take in the equation that involves feeding woody plant materials — like trees — into the process as fuel. But by pushing forward with more efficient means to convert woody cellulose into fuels — and perhaps by engineering woodier trees — we reduce the amount of organic matter we need to feed in to get the combustible stuff out.

The gribble — thorn in the side of harbormasters, plague of the age of sail — might just be good for something after all.

[Times Online]

Light is essential to vision, at least the kind we perform with our naked eyes. This is why we can see through a glass lens but not through a brick wall (though we’re working on that). But what about materials that let some light pass while scattering it in seemingly chaotic ways? Our naked eyes can’t reassemble that light into coherent images, but using some clever math, a team of researchers has devised a way to focus light through opaque materials to “see” objects on the other side — provided they have enough data about the material.

The team developed a numerical transmission matrix based on the way light passes through a layer of opaque zinc oxide, a common ingredient in white paints. The matrix captured the various ways the light changed upon passing through (and by various, we mean various; the matrix included over 65,000 numbers detailing the way the material scattered the light), creating a model for how light should pass through zinc oxide every time.

Using that transmission matrix, they were able to manipulate the beam on the transmission side such that it came out the other side focused. They then flipped the experiment on its head, measuring the light emerging from the opaque material and using the matrix to assemble an image of an object behind it.

Theoretically, such a transmission matrix could be developed for any opaque material, but while seeing through paper and white paint may not seem so terribly tantalizing, the experiment really shows the potential for opaque materials in optical devices. At the nano-scale it become increasingly difficult to construct transparent lenses. With a good enough transmission matrix, researchers could better peer through opaque biological materials like cell walls and other membranes that currently obscure our view of what’s happening on the other side.

Beneath the French-Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider will help scientists seek answers to some of the most profound questions about the universe. Beyond this lofty goal, though, particle accelerators can be used for decidedly more down-to-Earth projects — like fighting cancer, cleaning up industrial waste and even shrink-wrapping your Thanksgiving turkey. More than 17,000 particle accelerators are in operation around the world, used for radial tires, computer chips and 3-D images of molecules, among other tasks.

The LHC, which was restarted this week, will run at half its maximum energy for the next year and a half, as scientists monitor electrical systems that have already forced delays. At 3.5 trillion electron volts, a half-power LHC will still be three times as powerful as the world’s previous atom-smashing king, Fermilab’s Tevatron.

As the LHC searches for the elusive Higgs boson, which is thought to endow all other particles in the universe with mass, we decided to takes a look at some other, perhaps more humble uses for particle accelerators, the “cathedrals of science.” Launch the gallery below:

Additional reporting by Molly Webster

DIY tool build projects are one of my favorite topics. Recently, I Heart Robotics posted documentation of a DIY cleanroom build to further particle sensitive schemes like hacking a Hokuyo Laser Rangefinder. The essential elements are a sealed box, some workspace, and a supply of filtered air for positive pressure inside the box.

As a few of the comments on the post and on Make suggest, a particle counter, though spendy, would be key to gauging success and pinpointing issues with the cleanroom. Without some quantification, it is impossible to meaningfully measure the performance of the clean room. This shouldn’t take anything away from the clean room build, but hopefully it will inspire a DIY particle counter solution from our readers. Anyone?

Years ago, I built a DIY paint booth for a car I was restoring with the same key elements: plastic drop cloths and box fans with HEPA furnace filters taped on. The neighbors were less than amused by the whole affair, as I recall.

[I Heart Robotics via Make]

Fluid buildup or bleeding in the heads of preemies can damage the developing brain or even prove fatal, but draining the cerebrospinal fluids through needles has not noticeably improved the health of such babies. Now a clinical study offers hope through a new technique that “washes” the baby brain with fresh fluid.

The study found that 27 out of 38 babies died or were severely disabled under the standard treatment, compared with 21 out of 39 babies that underwent the washout treatment. Washout survivors also had a lower rate of cognitive disability, and scored better on a mental development index.

“This is the first time that any treatment anywhere in the world has been shown to benefit these very vulnerable babies,” said Ian Pople, a pediatric neurosurgeon at the North Bristol NHS Trust in the UK. He worked with Andrew Whitelaw, a neonatologist at North Bristol NHS Trust, to develop the new treatment.

The Drainage, Irrigation and Fibrinolytic Therapy (DRIFT) method, or ventricular lavage treatment, involves putting two tubes in the preemie brain. One tube continuously drains out the fluid putting pressure on the brain, and the other fluid lets clear fluid flow in. That overall effect slowly decompresses the brain, until the procedure is done. The tubes come out after the three-day washout procedure.

The randomized study published in the journal Pediatrics was funded by the Cerebra and the James and Grace Anderson Trust. This washout treatment probably won’t lead to old brains floating happily in their own survival tanks, but we’re glad to see a possibly effective treatment finally emerging for the young ones. And besides, the older brains might just require a squirt of stem cells in the future.

[via PhysOrg]