#Exoplanet weather forecast calls for clouds University of Chicago rightoriginal Studyposted by Steve Koppes-Chicago on December 31 2013a team of scientists report they have characterized definitively the atmosphere of a super-Earth class
Extended outlook: more clouds. The scrutinized planet which is known as GJ1214B is classified as a super-Earth type planet
and Jacob Bean of the University of Chicago has detected clear evidence of clouds in the atmosphere of GJ 1214b from data collected with the Hubble space telescope.
Credit: NASA ESA and G. Bacon (STSCL) via U. Chicago) The researchers describe their work as an important milestone on the road to identifying potentially habitable Earthlike planets beyond our Solar system.
The results appear in the January 2 issue of the journal Nature. e really pushed the limits of
what is possible with Hubble to make this measurementsays Kreidberg a third-year graduate student and first author of the new paper. his advance lays the foundation for characterizing other Earths with similar techniques.?
and really nail down some property of a small planet orbiting a distant starexplains Bean an assistant professor and the project s principal investigator.
which monitors two thousand red dwarf stars for transiting planets. The planet was targeted next for follow-up observations to characterize its atmosphere.
The best explanation for the new data is that there are high-altitude clouds in the atmosphere of the planet
or zinc sulfide at the scorching temperatures of 450 degrees Fahrenheit found on GJ 1214b. ou would expect very different kinds of clouds to form than you would expect say on Earthkreidberg says.
University of Chicagoyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license e
#This gene helps some of us never forget a face Emory University rightoriginal Studyposted by Lisa Newbern-Emory on December 24 2013the oxytocin receptor a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding also plays a role in the ability to remember faces.
which social information processing is disruptedâ##like autism spectrum disorderâ ##and may lead to new strategies for improving social cognition in several psychiatric disorders.
According to study author Larry Young of the department of psychiatry at Emory University this is the first study to demonstrate that variation in the oxytocin receptor gene influences face recognition skills.
He and colleagues point out the implication that oxytocin plays an important role in promoting our ability to recognize one another yet about one-third of the population possesses only the genetic variant that negatively impacts that ability.
because these families are known to show a wide range of variability in facial recognition skills. Two-thirds of the families were from the United kingdom and the remainder from Finland.
which is disrupted in disorders such as autism. Additionally this study is remarkable for its evolutionary aspect.
This suggests an ancient conservation in genetic and neural architectures involved in social information processing that transcends the sensory modalities used from mouse to man.
Skuse credits Youngâ#previous research that found mice with a mutated oxytocin receptor failed to recognize mice they previously encountered. his led us to pursue more information about facial recognition and the implications for disorders in
and University of Tampere in Finland contributed to the study which was funded by grants from the US National institute of mental health and the Office of Research Infrastructure Programs as well as the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation and National Alliance for Autism Research.
Source: Emory Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license n
#To save energy, computers go for good enough Purdue University rightoriginal Studyposted by Emil Venere-Purdue on December 23 2013computers capable of pproximate computingcould potentially double efficiency
and reduce energy use. Researchers are developing computers that could perform calculations good enough for certain tasks that don t require perfect accuracy. he need for approximate computing is driven by two factors:
a fundamental shift in the nature of computing workloads and the need for new sources of efficiencysays Anand Raghunathan a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University. omputers were designed first to be precise calculators that solved
problems where they were expected to produce an exact numerical value. However the demand for computing today is driven by very different applications. obile
and embedded devices need to process richer media and are getting smarterâ##understanding us being more context-aware
and having more natural user interfaces. On the other hand there is an explosion in digital data searched interpreted and mined by data centers. growing number of applications are designed to tolerate oisyreal-world inputs
and use statistical or probabilistic types of computations. he nature of these computations is different from the traditional computations where you need a precise answersays Srimat Chakradhar department head for Computing systems Architecture at NEC Laboratories America
who collaborated with the Purdue team. ere you are looking for the best match since there is no golden answer
or you are trying to provide results that are of acceptable quality but you are not trying to be perfect. owever today s computers are designed to compute precise results even
when it is not necessary. Approximate computing could endow computers with a capability similar to the human brain s ability to scale the degree of accuracy needed for a given task.
Researchers presented their findings during the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture earlier this month at the University of California Davis. The inability to perform to the required level of accuracy is inherently inefficient
and saps energy. f I asked you to divide 500 by 21 and I asked you
whether the answer is greater than one you would say yes right awayraghunathan says. ou are doing division but not to the full accuracy.
but computer software and hardware are not like that. They often compute to the same level of accuracy all the time. urdue researchers have developed a range of hardware techniques to demonstrate approximate computing showing a potential for improvements in energy efficiency.
Recently the researchers have shown how to apply approximate computing to programmable processors which are ubiquitous in computers servers
and consumer electronics. n order to have a broad impact we need to be able to apply this technology to programmable processorssays Kaushik Roy professor of electrical
and computer engineering at Purdue. nd now we have shown how to design a programmable processor to perform approximate computing. he researchers achieved this milestone by altering the nstruction setwhich is the interface between software
and hardware. uality fieldsadded to the instruction set allow the software to tell the hardware the level of accuracy needed for a given task.
They have created a prototype programmable processor called Quora based on this approach. ou are able to program for quality
and that s the real hallmark of this worksays lead author doctoral student Swagath Venkataramani. he hardware can use the quality fields
and perform energy-efficient computing and what we have seen is that we can easily double energy efficiency. n other recent work led by former doctoral student Vinay K. Chippa the Purdue team fabricated an approximate cceleratorfor recognition
and data mining. e have an actual hardware platform a silicon chip that we ve had fabricated which is an approximate processor for recognition
and data miningraghunathan says. pproximate computing is far closer to reality than we thought even a few years ago. he National Science Foundation partially funded the project.
Source: Purdue Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license a
#DNA motor uses arms to walk across a nanotube Purdue University rightoriginal Studyposted by Emil Venere-Purdue on December 19 2013engineers made a motor out of DNA
and then used it to move nanoparticles of cadmium disulfide along the length of a nanotube.
The design was inspired by natural biological motors that have evolved to perform specific tasks critical to the function of cells says Jong Hyun Choi a Purdue University assistant professor of mechanical engineering.
Whereas biological motors are made of protein researchers are trying to create synthetic motors based on DNA the genetic materials in cells that consist of a sequence of four chemical bases:
adenine guanine cytosine and thymine. The walking mechanism of the synthetic motors is far slower than the mobility of natural motors.
However the natural motors cannot be controlled and they don t function outside their natural environment whereas DNA-based motors are more stable
and might be switched on and off Choi explains. e are in the very early stages of developing these kinds of synthetic molecular motorshe says.
New findings were detailed in a paper published this month in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The new motor has a core and two arms made of DNA one above and one below the core.
As it moves along a carbon-nanotube track it continuously harvests energy from strands of RNA molecules vital to a variety of roles in living cells
and viruses. ur motors extract chemical energy from RNA molecules decorated on the nanotubes and use that energy to fuel autonomous walking along the carbon nanotube trackchoi says.
The core is made of an enzyme that cleaves off part of a strand of RNA. After cleavage the upper DNA arm moves forward binding with the next strand of RNA
and then the rest of the DNA follows. The process repeats until reaching the end of the nanotube track.
The researchers combined two fluorescent imaging systems to document the motor s movement one in the visible spectrum and the other in the near-infrared range.
The nanoparticle is fluorescent in visible light and the nanotubes are fluorescent in the near-infrared.
The motor took about 20 hours to reach the end of the nanotube which was several microns long
but the process might be sped up by changing temperature and ph a measure of acidity.
The US Office of Naval Research supported the work. Source: Purdue Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license d
#Renewable cellulose crystals are as stiff as steel The same tiny cellulose crystals that give trees
and plants their strength and light weight could be used to create a new type of tough renewable material.
Calculations using precise models based on the atomic structure of cellulose show the crystals have a stiffness of 206 gigapascals
which is comparable to steel says Pablo D. Zavattieri a Purdue University assistant professor of civil engineering. his is a material that is showing really amazing propertieshe says. t is abundant renewable and produced as waste in the paper industry. indings
are detailed in the journal Cellulose. t is very difficult to measure the properties of these crystals experimentally
. or the first time we predicted their properties using quantum mechanics. he nanocrystals are about 3 nanometers wide by 500 nanometers longor about 1/1000th the width of a grain of sandmaking them too small to study with light microscopes
The findings represent a milestone in understanding the fundamental mechanical behavior of the cellulose nanocrystals. t is also the first step towards a multiscale modeling approach to understand
and predict the behavior of individual crystals the interaction between them and their interaction with other materialszavattieri says. his is important for the design of novel cellulose-based materials as other research groups are considering them for a huge variety of applications ranging from electronics
and medical devices to structural components for the automotive civil and aerospace industries. he cellulose nanocrystals represent a potential green alternative to carbon nanotubes for reinforcing materials such as polymers and concrete.
Cellulose biomaterials might be used to create biodegradable plastic bags textiles and wound dressings; flexible batteries made from electrically conductive paper;
new drug-delivery technologies; transparent flexible displays for electronic devices; special filters for water purification; new types of sensors;
and computer memory. Cellulose could come from a variety of biological sources including trees plants algae ocean-dwelling organisms called tunicates
and bacteria that create a protective web of cellulose. ith this in mind cellulose nanomaterials are inherently renewable sustainable biodegradable and carbon-neutral like the sources from
which they were extractedsays Robert J. Moon a researcher from the US Forest Service s Forest Products Laboratory
and study co-author. hey have the potential to be processed at industrial-scale quantities and at low cost compared to other materials. iomaterials manufacturing could be a natural extension of the paper
and biofuels industries using technology that is already well-established for cellulose-based materials. ome of the byproducts of the paper industry now go to making biofuels
so we could just add another process to use the leftover cellulose to make a composite materialmoon says. he cellulose crystals are more difficult to break down into sugars to make liquid fuel.
So let s make a product out of it building on the existing infrastructure of the pulp
and paper industry. heir surface can be modified chemically to achieve different surface properties . or example you might want to modify the surface
so that it binds strongly with a reinforcing polymer to make a new type of tough composite material
or you might want to change the chemical characteristics so that it behaves differently with its environmentmoon adds.
The Forest Products Laboratory through the US Department of agriculture the Purdue Research Foundation and the National Science Foundation funded the research h
000 LED bulbs by stomping one foot One day it may be possible to harvest the otherwise wasted energy of your footsteps
or of cars driving by to power your smartphone. That s the concept researchers at the Georgia Institute of technology are developing using
what s technically known as the triboelectric effect to create surprising amounts of electric power by rubbing or touching two different materials together.
Beyond generating power the technology could also provide a new type of self-powered sensor allowing detection of vibrations motion water leaks explosions
##or even rain falling. e are able to deliver small amounts of portable power for today s mobile
and sensor applicationssays Zhong Lin Wang a professor in the School of Materials science and engineering. his opens up a source of energy by harvesting power from activities of all kinds. n its simplest form the triboelectric generator
If an electrical load is connected then to two electrodes placed at the outer edges of the two surfaces a small current will flow to equalize the charges.
Generators producing DC current have also been built. he fact that an electric charge can be produced through triboelectrification is well knownwang explains. hat we have introduced is a gap separation technique that produces a voltage drop
which leads to a current flow in the external load allowing the charge to be used. his generator can convert random mechanical energy from our environment into electric energy. ince their first publication on the research Wang
and his research team have increased the power output density of their triboelectric generator by a factor of 100000â##reporting that a square meter of single-layer material can now produce as much as 300 watts.
The researchers have expanded the range of energy-gathering techniques from ower shirtscontaining pockets of the generating material to shoe inserts whistles foot pedals floor mats backpacks
They have learned to increase the power output by applying micron-scale patterns to the polymer sheets.
and even distilled waterâ##and a patterned polymer surface. Their latest paper published in the journal ACS Nano described harvesting energy from the touch pad of a laptop computer.
They are now using a wide range of materials including polymers fabrics and even papers.
The materials are inexpensive and can include such sources as recycled drink bottles. The generators can be made from nearly transparent polymers allowing their use in touch pads and screens.
Beyond its use as a power source Wang is also using the triboelectric effect for sensing without an external power source.
Because the generators produce current when they are perturbed they could be used to measure changes in flow rates sudden movement
Such sensors could be used for monitoring in traffic security environmental science health care and infrastructure applications. or the future Wang and his research team plan to continue studying the nanogenerators
and sensors to improve their output and sensitivity. The size of the material can be scaled up
and multiple layers can boost power output. verybody has seen this effect but we have been able to find practical applications for itsays Wang. t s very simple
and there is much more we can do with this. he US Department of energy National Science Foundation National Institute for Materials science in Japan Samsung
and Chinese Academy of Sciences supported the work m
#Car paint with graphene gets ice off radar domes Rice university rightoriginal Studyposted by Mike Williams-Rice on December 18 2013ribbons of ultrathin graphene combined with polyurethane paint meant for cars can keep ice off of sensitive military
radar domes report scientists. The Rice university lab of chemist James Tour in collaboration with Lockheed martin developed the compound to protect marine and airborne radars with a robust coating that is also transparent to radio frequencies.
Bulky radar domes (known as adomes like those seen on military ships keep ice and freezing rain from forming directly on antennas.
But the domes themselves must also be kept clear of ice that could damage them or make them unstable.
and metallic elements must be installed far from the source of radio signals to keep from interfering. t s very hard to deice these alumina domestour says. t takes a lot of power to heat them
because they re very poor conductors. nter graphene the single-atom-thick sheet of carbon that both conducts electricity and because it s so thin allows radio frequencies to pass unhindered.
when (Lockheed martin engineer) Vladimir Volman saw a presentation by Yu Zhu a postdoc in my lab at the timehe says. olman had calculated that one could pass a current through a graphene film less than 100 nanometers thick
Zhu was presenting his technique for spraying nanoribbons films and Volman recognized the potential. ristine graphene transmits electricity ballistically
and would not produce enough heat to melt ice or keep it from forming but graphene nanoribbons (GNRS) unzipped from multiwalled carbon nanotubes in a chemical process invented by the Tour group in 2009 do the job nicely he says.
When evenly dispersed on a solid object the ribbons overlap and electrons pass from one to the next with just enough resistance to produce heat as a byproduct.
and Zhu spray-coated a surface with soluble GNRS. hey said it works great but it comes off on our fingers
He found the solution in a Houston auto parts store. bought some polyurethane car paint
On a car it lasts for years. So when we combined the paint and GNRS and coated our samples it had all the properties we needed. ab samples up to two square feet were assembled using a flexible polymer substrate polyimide
which was spray-coated with polyurethane paint and allowed to dry The coated substrate was then put on a hotplate to soften the paint
and a thin GNR coat was airbrushed on. When dried the embedded ribbons became impossible to remove.
Tour says the researchers have tried also putting GNRS under the polyurethane paint with good results.
The 100-nanometer layer of GNRSÂ##thousands of times thinner than a human hairâ##was hooked to platinum electrodes.
Further experiments found them to be nearly invisible to radio frequencies. Tour says the availability of nanoribbons is no longer an issue
now that they re being produced in industrial quantities. ow we re going to the next levelhe says noting that GNR films made into transparent films might be useful for deicing car windshields a project the lab intends to pursue.
Volman suggests the material would make a compelling competitor to recently touted nanotube-based aerogels for deicing airplanes in the winter. e have the technology;
we have the materialhe says. t s very durable and can be sprayed on to heat any kind of surface. he Lockheed martin Corp. through the LANCER IV program the Air force Office of Scientific research
and the Office of Naval Research supported the research. Source: Rice Universit h
#3d printed loudspeaker plays Obama speech The first 3d printed consumer electronic is a loudspeaker that comes out of the printer ready to use.
It s an achievement that 3d printing evangelists feel will soon be the norm; rather than assembling consumer products from parts and components complete functioning products could be fabricated at once on demand. verything is 3d printedsays Apoorva Kiran as he launched a demo by connecting the newly printed mini speaker to amplifier wires.
For the demo the amplifier played a clip from President Barack Obama s State of the Union speech that mentioned 3d printing.
Kiran and Robert Maccurdy graduate students in mechanical engineering at Cornell University led the project. A loudspeaker is a relatively simple object Kiran adds:
It consists of plastic for the housing a conductive coil and a magnet. The challenge is coming up with a design
and the exact materials that can be fabricated co into a functional shape. Lipson says he hopes this simple demonstration is just the ip of the iceberg. 3d printing technology could be moving from printing passive parts toward printing active integrated systems he adds.
But it will be a while before consumers are printing electronics at home Lipson says. Most printers cannot efficiently handle multiple materials.
It s also difficult to find mutually compatible materialsâ##for example conductive copper and plastic coming out of the same printer require different temperatures
and curing times. In the case of the speaker Kiran used one of the lab s Fab@Homes a customizable research printer originally developed by Lipson
and former graduate student and lab member Evan Malone that allows scientists to tinker with different cartridges control software and other parameters.
For the conductor Kiran used a silver ink. For the magnet he employed the help of Samanvaya Srivastava graduate student in chemical
and biomolecular engineering to come up with a viscous blend of strontium ferrite. It s not the first time a consumer electronic device was printed in Lipson s lab. Back in 2009 Malone
and former lab member Matthew Alonso printed a working replica of the Vail Register the famous antique telegraph receiver
and recorder that Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail used to send the first Morse code telegraph in 1844.
After making a detailed digital model of the telegraph they printed it on a research fabber also developed by Malone that was a predecessor to the Fab@Home
. And it worked. As a demo the researchers received and printed the same message Morse
hat hath God wrought. reating a market for printed electronic devices Lipson says could be like introducing color printers after only black and white had existed. t opens up a whole new space that makes the old look primitive. ource:
#Big bang swirls hint at universe s birth Mcgill University University of Chicago rightoriginal Studyposted by Steve Koppes-Chicago on December 17 2013a subtle distortion in the oldest
Using the South pole Telescope scientists observed twisting patterns in the polarization of the cosmic microwave backgroundâ##light that last interacted with matter very early in the history of the universe less than 400000 years after the big bang. These patterns
For the study published in Physical Review Letters researchers used the first data from SPTPOL a polarization-sensitive camera installed on the telescope in January 2012. he detection of B-mode polarization by South pole Telescope
is a major milestone a technical achievement that indicates exciting physics to comesays John Carlstrom distinguished service professor in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
Light from the cosmic microwave background is polarized mainly due to the scattering of photons off of electrons in the early universe through the same process by
which light is polarized as it reflects off the surface of a lake or the hood of a car.
B modes can t be generated by simple scattering instead pointing to a more complex processâ##hence scientists interest in measuring them.
To tease out the B modes in their data the scientists used a previously measured map of the distribution of mass in the universe to determine where the gravitational lensing should occur.
The scientists are currently working with another year of data to further refine their measurement of B modes.
Similar more elusive B modes would provide dramatic evidence of inflation the theorized turbulent period in the moments after the big bang
Inflation is regarded a well theory among cosmologists because its predictions agree with observations but thus far there is not a definitive confirmation of the theory.
Measuring B modes generated by inflation is a possible way to alleviate lingering doubt. he detection of a primordial B-mode polarization signal in the microwave background would amount to finding the first tremors of the big bangsays
lead author Duncan Hanson a postdoctoral scientist at Mcgill University. B modes from inflation are caused by gravitational waves.
These ripples in space-time are generated by intense gravitational turmoil conditions that would have existed during inflation.
These waves stretching and squeezing the fabric of the universe would give rise to the telltale twisted polarization patterns of B modes.
University of Chicagoyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license s
when a massive star explodedsays Haley Gomez of Cardiff University s School of Physics and Astronomy. ot only is it very young in astronomical terms
Its development and operation was led by Professor Matt Griffin from the School of Physics and Astronomy.
The team led by Professor Mike Barlow from University college London did not set out to make the discovery
With hot gas still expanding at high speeds after the explosion a supernova remnant is a harsh hot and hostile environment
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