#Incredible Technology: How to Bring Extinct Animals Back to Life Editor's Note: In this weekly series Livescience explores how technology drives scientific exploration and discovery.
The passenger pigeon the dodo and the woolly mammoth are just a few of the species wiped off the Earth by changing environments and human activities.
but the experiment proved de-extinction was possible. 6 Extinct Animals That Could Be brought Back to Life We can use some of these techniques to actually help endangered species improve their long-term viability said ecologist Stanley Temple of the University
But South korean biomedical engineer Insung Hwang hopes to find just a cell nucleus and produce a clone from it like Dolly the sheep.
What's more the pigeons that raised them would be a different species with differing mothering techniques.
#Optical Technique Sorts Grapes for Wine Quality (ISNS) A team of German scientists has developed an automated process that sorts grapes into different levels of quality for winemaking.
The goal of developing the technique is to produce wines that will satisfy refined palates but cost less than current prices.
While it's not ready for full-scale use for this year's harvest the scientists plan to have the Grape Sort technology ready by the fall of 2014.
The process relies on optical technology that recognizes the colors of individual grapes. Different colors correspond to different amounts of sugar in the grapes a basic criterion for their wine-making characteristics.
The technology has proved itself in preliminary tests on some of Germany's favorite home-grown varietals:
Our experiments have proven that wine quality has improved obviously due to our sorting said Kai-Uwe Vieth of the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB) in Karlsruhe Germany who oversaw
Second the German technology goes beyond rival systems by distinguishing among different qualities of individual grapes.
In that process Vieth explained the technology works faster and more objectively than manually sorting each individual grape a traditional
The technology that the process uses to separate grapes of different wine-making characteristics remains secret.
Developing the technology involved significant teamwork. Fraunhofer IOSB developed the imaging technology image processing and software.
Two German companies Armbruster Kelterie-Technologie based in GÃ glingen-Frauenzimmern and Ingenierubã ro Waidelich of Tubingen worked on the mechanical tasks such as de-stemming the grapes and some of the electrical processes.
Fortunately the technology to do so is available and working right now. Fueling better farming is a practice known as precision agriculture
Those and other smarter farming methods including techniques used early in the growing cycle are reducing weather-related crop damage by as much as 25 percent in some areas ensuring that fewer crops are wasted
The development and use of those predictive analytics based techniques and technologies is limited not to mega-farms.
At IBM we developed a precision agriculture weather-modeling service using Deep Thunder our Big data analytics technology for local customized high-resolution and rapid weather predictions.
Coupling predictive analytics and modeling techniques with other sophisticated farming methods can prove to be quite beneficial
While FDM is used primarily for prototyping plastics the technology has been applied in culinary arts for years. Researchers at Cornell pioneered some of this work adapting an open source extrusion printer called the Fab@Home Lab to work with food in 2007.
Novelty food suppliers have become early adopters of similar technology. Various chocolate printers are on the market
Other 3d printing technologies have been investigated for use with food. In 2007 Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories introduced the Candyfab 4000 a DIY printer based on a modified selective laser sintering technique.
The method utilised a focused heat source moving over a bed of sugar to fuse large 3d sugar sculptures.
The Sugar Lab had adapted 3d Systems'Color Jet Printing (CJP) technology to print flavoured edible binders on a sugar bed to fabricate solid structures.
While no specific printed food exploration exists yet similar forms of community engagement have been developed in Australia through the Science and Technology Engagement Pathways framework (STEP.
and articulating community concerns about emerging technologies. Other entities like Riaus an Australian nonprofit has been active in stimulating community debate specifically about synthetic meat.
Whether the technology can truly move from the novelty sector will most likely depend on the ability to process a wider range of foods requiring influence from both the kitchen and from printer developers.
In 2012 she was The chair of the National Enabling Technologies Strategy Stakeholder Advisory Council. This article was published originally at The Conversation.
and that at some point in the future groundwater pumping rates are going to have to decrease study lead author David Steward a professor of civil engineering at Kansas State university said in a statement.
Steward and his colleagues anticipate future technologies will help farmers irrigate their land more efficiently.
That's happening because of increased irrigation technology crop genetics and management strategies. But in some areas of the country's plains the properties of the groundwater and soil largely dictate the irrigation techniques Scanlon said.
In parts of Texas and Kansas the groundwater is brinier which means if some farmers employ more efficient irrigation techniques they will also be pumping up salty deposits that are washed not adequately away by rainfall.
This is a very nice study but we really need to address droughts and socioeconomic issues and other approaches to figure out the problem beyond the technical Scanlon said.
Poachers are escalating the global war on wildlife through advanced technologies and techniques. In Asia they are hacking into the signals from tigers'satellite collars to find
To combat this sophisticated and expanding traffic in wildlife conservationists must themselves turn to new technologies
The technology also has tremendous potential for patrolling coastal fisheries. To move beyond law enforcement to crime prevention the evolution of UAV technology must first be guided by a few practical cost-saving priorities.
Increased battery life and flight duration greater payloads cheaper infrared sensors and affordable real-time transmission of imagery would all make a major difference.
With a modest influx of financial support conservationists could soon have the technologies we need to expand the reach of eco-guard patrols
The technology to build a lab like this exists today. For example the craft structure would consist of a tether a couple hundred meters (around 650 feet) in length with the lab on one end
For this to become a viable possibility NASA engineers would have to solve some daunting technological materials-science and physics issues.
Technology already exists for enclosed units containing plants with automated plant-watering systems. LED lights have an average lifetime of 15000 to 25000 hours amounting to nearly 10 years with seven hours of daily light exposure for plants.
Other technology could tackle the problem of simulating gravity. Every satellite must maintain altitude and rotation control which is managed by the satellite's attitude
and orbit control system part of its onboard systems bus. Engineers could configure this system to emulate Mars'gravity.
But new technology that prolongs the life of fresh fruit and vegetables can help minimise this huge amount of waste.
A key way to minimise the amount of food lost is through postharvest technology which can help make food last longer without losing nutrients.
We should make sure postharvest techniques are environmentally friendly and of course nontoxic to humans when applied to food.
This technology has so far been used to delay ripening in tomatoes and enhance their phenolic content as well as extending the life of dragon fruit for up to 28 days.
Once proper postharvest technologies are used efficiently food losses can be minimised and the problem of food insecurity alleviated.
We believe that developing postharvest management techniques using natural products is the way forward especially
#Forging Biodegradable Plastic From Methane and Plant Waste Molly Morse is chief executive officer of Mango Materials Inc. This article was prepared by the U s. National Science Foundation for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers
and the valuable polymer is separated via proprietary techniques from the bacteria. The PHA is rinsed then cleaned
This stands in contrast to the processes many biotech companies use that require high-purity genetically engineered cultures says Allison Pieja Director of Technology at Mango Materials.
Mango Materials has vetted this technology and achieved excellent yields at the laboratory scale. Field studies have shown that the methane-consuming cultures grow just as well on waste biogas
This technology was funded through the NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. This article was prepared by the U s. National Science Foundation for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers
and appeared in the February 2014 issue of Chemical engineering Progress. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues
If engineers worked to that standard they would soon be looking for another job. The reason for this difference is that for nature the failure of an individual is of no consequence.
In a recent paper published in the Journal of Mechanical engineering Science I consider several bioinspired concepts.
One is the work of the German engineering Claus Mattheck. His book Design in Nature:
Mattheck s lifelong love affair with trees has led to many important innovations in engineering design. One of these considers the junction where the branch of a tree meets the trunk.
The report predicted that this fascinating result will be used by bioengineers to improve engineering design. Well perhaps it will
#Nature can be a wonderful muse an excellent starting point in the development of a new engineering device
Policy and Technology. He contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Emerging detection and measurement technologies offer hope for greater accuracy in measuring and understanding methane leakage.
Engineers are also developing low-cost stationary detectors. The current oil and gas boom has been unleashed by a wave of technological innovation allowing for cost-effective directional drilling hydraulic fracturing and other emerging techniques like acidizing.
Governments need to keep pace with faster innovation on the regulatory side. The EPA should quickly embrace new monitoring technologies to improve the accuracy of government emissions monitoring
which will both aid in the enforcement of clean air rules and limit methane's contribution to climate change.
How Off-road Tech Aids Conservation Google earth and Google street view have made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to explore some of the world's most spectacular destinations right from their computer tablet or smartphone.
But the search-engine giant's mapping and imaging technology has uses beyond navigation and armchair travel.
and cloud technology to help monitor African forests said Lilian Pintea JGI's vice president of conservation science.
Although the long time between satellite images makes it difficult to actively search for threats to tigers he said Google technology has been helpful in illustrating the pace of deforestation in the region and its effects on tiger and elephant habitat.
and research is using Google technologies to help protect elephants from some of these dangers.
Several other organizations are also using Google technology for conservation purposes. For instance Defenders of Wildlife is utilizing Google maps API to help demonstrate the impacts of the BP Deepwater horizon oil spill
And the United nations'environmental voice the U n. Environment Programme is using Google technology to explore the Earth's changing landscape
#New Tech Sheds Light on the Future of Food#This article was published originally at The Conversation.
And we need to incorporate zero-waste and low-energy technologies into the task of food production.
It takes advantage of the vertical space of city buildings rather than turning over wide expanses of land to agriculture and uses advanced greenhouse technology:
But the single technology that will be key to making vertical farms possible is lighting. New LED light technology is the key that makes it possible to build vertically integrated farms.
This kind of artificial light has an extremely high photoelectric conversion efficiency consuming only one eighth the power of incandescent lamp half of the power of fluorescent lamp
and through technology are getting closer to solving. Chungui Lu receives funding from the UK Technology Strategy Board to work on developing LED lighting for horticultural crops.
Erik Murchie receives funding from the UK Technology Strategy Board to work on developing LED lighting for horticultural crops.
This article was published originally on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues
#Tomorrow's Wearable Tech Is Straight Out of'Star trek'A hearing aid that wirelessly streams audio from an MP3 PLAYER.
These are just a few of the devices forging the future of wearable tech. From personalized medicine to fashion wearable technology is making a splash in the tech world.
In honor of National Engineers Week (the third week in February) Live Science chatted with two engineers about some of the promises
and challenges of this evolving field. I think wearables is a technology for the next decade said Rob Shaddock chief technology officer of The swiss technology company TE Connectivity.
It's at the very beginning; there are some great things to come. The Best Fitness Trackers of 2014 Medical devices were one of the first applications of wearable tech.
Devices such as hearing aids have been around for decades. But what if hearing aids could stream audio directly from a music player?
That's where I see the future integrating technology with the rest of the world around a user said Kalyani Malleia a senior systems engineer at Starkey Hearing Technologies a hearing technology company based in Eden Prairie Minn.
Wearable tech has infiltrated the consumer health market too. Fitness trackers GPS watches and blood-pressure monitors are just a few of the devices that allow individuals to record
Communications technology will shift more toward wearable devices Shaddock predicts. Reminiscent of the VISOR worn by the character Geordi La Forge in Star trek:
For instance eye-and head-tracking technology is allowing people who are paralyzed and unable to speak use computers to communicate.
Of course some wearable-tech applications could be considered novelties. So-called smile bracelets allow friends to send each other vibrations or smiles remotely.
The applications of wearable technology are limited only by people's imaginations Shaddock said. With more and more devices measuring personal data
Indeed even as engineers develop the technologies others are working to crack them. Encrypting devices takes computing power
but the technology is there to solve the problem Shaddock said. Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitter and Google+.
But an innovative technology used to grow plants on specialized films could bring farms to the desert no soil required.
The technology is based on hydrogel film a superabsorbent polymer that can hold 1000 times its weight in water.
Professor Yuichi Mori of Waseda University in Japan where researchers are already experimenting with approximately 180 film farms invented the technology.
He is also the chairman of the advisory board of Agricel a Dubai-based venture that hopes to expand this technology across the United arab emirates. Water scarcity one of the main obstacles Dubai faces was one of the main reasons for launching Agricel in that region.
For countries like the UAE which imports 90 percent of its food this technology could be crucial for fighting food scarcity and conserving water.
We have the technology. We have the chemicals. We have the wherewithal within the treaty.
and technology transfer that Montreal can Do in Poznaã, the Group of 77 developing nations and China proposed a framework for the transfer
and financing of climate technologies that is based largely on the Montreal Protocol. The proposal sets up the same kind of governing board, with equal membership representing developed and developing nations,
which technologies to deploy. They also proposed that developing nations put an eye-popping 0. 5-1%of their gross national product into a climate fund to support these and other actions each year.
-and-trade system to pay for demonstration projects or readily deployable technologies, or even to provide direct support for energy efficiency projects.
and make the direct connections between the investments we are going to make and the installation of technology,
The technique relies on enzymes called zinc-finger nucleases, which bind to specific sites in a genome
'Now that technique has been expanded to include plants. In papers published online today By nature, two independent groups of researchers report that the technique can also be used to engineer herbicide-resistant corn and tobacco1,
2. It's a great achievement, says David Ow, a plant biologist at the US Department of agriculture Plant Gene expression Center in Albany, California.
that has developed a proprietary method for engineering zinc-finger nucleases2. The team has used zinc fingers to replace a gene called IPK1 with an herbicide-resistance gene.
a group of academic researchers united to develop open-access zinc-finger technology (see'The fate of fingers').
Dow Agrosciences may collaborate with another company to make its technology platform available to plant researchers,
But his laboratory has extensive experience with the technique Young says, and costs could be higher for other labs. The technique could also assuage a common concern about transgenic crops.
One argument that is often used in part correctly is that when we create transgenic plants,
The United states is following up on promises to facilitate a global fund to trigger innovation and technology development.
On 23 october the government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation issued a call for proposals for a Global Technology
potential areas include clean technology and information technology. Research Scientific espionage: A former Los alamos nuclear-weapons physicist says that he is under investigation for espionage.
It increased by 17%over the previous quarter to $4. 8 billion, according to a 20 october Moneytree Report by Pricewaterhousecoopers and the National Venture capital Association, based on data from Thomson Reuters. The clean-technology sector,
three of the top ten deals of the third quarter went to clean-tech companies in California:
but the techniques used could also have unintended far-reaching consequences. Socolow presented more than 175 experts from a range of disciplines with a list of their own nightmares,
Despite disagreement on when  or indeed whether the technologies should be used, says Long, participants generally agreed on the need to identify a responsible way forwards for geoengineering research.
and oceans to futuristic'solar-radiation management'techniques for example, creating haze in the stratosphere to act as a cheap layer of sunscreen.
Testing solar-radiation management techniques on a global scale is given particularly daunting that detecting changes in the climate system caused by geoengineering would be nearly as difficult as measuring global warming itself.
He says that there should be a way to conduct small-scale experiments that test this kind of technology without perturbing the global climate.
an engineer at Carnegie mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, proposed creating an assessment for field tests based on physical characteristics, such as experiment duration and the predicted reduction in warming.
Another cadre of researchers is pushing a more benign technology that involves seeding clouds with sea salt to increase their brightness.
The technique could be focused on regional problems such as disappearing Arctic sea ice say advocates, who suggest that a research programme could be presented to the intergovernmental Arctic Council for approval.
and industry officials say the government still is not giving advanced ethanol companies the kind of support they need to scale up their technologies
The technology is just not quite ready to scale up. Steve Long, a crop scientist and deputy director of the Energy Biosciences Institute in Urbana, Illinois, says companies are struggling to overcome a suite of financial,
But he says the technologies are progressing, citing oil giant BP's decision to purchase cellulosic ethanol technology from the Verenium Corporation,
based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and to push forward with a new demonstration plant in Florida. This isn't something where you need a miracle to get there,
so that the technology can eventually stand on its own legs without subsidy.
Seven days: 10 16 december 2010: Nature Newsresearch Policy Events People Business Trend watch Research Crop catalogue A global search to gather the wild relatives of essential food crops such as wheat,
identify 25'stagnant technologies'languishing in African health-care institutions, including several drug candidates and a dipstick test for schistosomiasis.
Events Private spaceflight success Spacex (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) has become the first private firm to launch a spacecraft into orbit and return it to Earth.
People Committee chairs Ralph Hall (Republican, Texas) was confirmed on 8 december as the new chairman of the US House Committee on Science and Technology.
where he developed the technique. He had moved to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond in 1994.
Cheap sequencing Research-services giant Life Technologies of Carlsbad, California, announced on 14 december that it is now selling benchtop DNA sequencers to labs for less than US$50,
which was bought by Life Technologies in August. Current sequencing technologies label nucleotides with dyes, but the new machine uses semiconducting chips to detect hydrogen ions released as nucleotides are added to a DNA strand.
Life Technologies also announced three out of seven $1-million prizes that it will award for solving key challenges in low-cost DNA sequencing.
See go. nature. com/mbhs6a for more. TB diagnosis The World health organization (WHO) said on 8 december that a test that can rapidly diagnose tuberculosis (TB) was a'major milestone'for disease control.
and technology budget compared with 2010. The basic-science funding body Science Foundation Ireland saw a 7%increase in its share.
because the long-term consequences of GM technology are still unclear. The law had been challenged first by the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
most will come in through a points-based visa system that could squeeze out young Phd scientists on typical academic salaries, according to the advocacy group Campaign for Science and Engineering.
a report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommends.
and engineering Phds 墉 up 4. 3%(since 2008) to 13,593 (see chart). Ethnic minorities earning Phds were up 6. 4%from 2008 and 34.3%from 2004, to 4, 719.
In some fields, science and engineering Phds were slightly less likely to have a postdoc
but on the techniques used for its genetic modification. With changing technologies, the department says that it lacks the authority to regulate newly created transgenic crops.
The grass, a GM variety of Poa pratensis, is still in the early stages of development by Scotts Miracle-Gro
'Scotts took advantage of both techniques to construct the herbicide-resistant Kentucky bluegrass that put the USDA's regulatory powers to the test.
The technique is established well for many crops, and particle bombardment is less predictable, often yielding multiple, fragmented insertions of the new gene.
But Agrobacterium isn't suitable for some new techniques. Many companies are developing'mini-chromosomes'that can function in a plant cell without needing to be integrated into the plant's genome.
this technology will be used well by many as a way to deliver large stacks of genes to plants,
says Roger Kemble, head of technology scouting for Syngenta. Other techniques under development insert foreign genes into designated sites in the genome,
unlike the near-random scattering generated by Agrobacterium. In 2009 researchers at Dow Agrosciences in Indianapolis, Indiana,
) Bayer is interested in harnessing other enzymes called'meganucleases'to do the same type of targeted engineering,
Regulators need to adapt to these new techniques, or run the risk of over -or under-regulating GM plants, says Roger Beachy, a plant biologist at Washington University in St louis, Missouri,
It really speaks to the importance of reviewing the regulatory process periodically to ensure that it is keeping up with the advances in technology.
using techniques that destroy forests and pollute local rivers  as well as depriving the government of an estimated US$305 million in taxes each year.
In March, Katy Ashe, a graduate student in environmental engineering at Stanford university in California, published the first study (K. Ashe PLOS ONE 7, e33305;
Variations of the mercury-amalgamation technique have been used in gold mining for centuries, and it is difficult to dislodge such deep-rooted practices among artisanal miners.
Two years ago, Peruvian engineer Carlos Villachica unveiled the ECO-100v, a US$4, 500 machine that uses water and jets of air to separate gold from sediments.
and the Association for Integral Research and development in Lima have developed other mercury-free technologies for extracting gold.
Science and technology have been responsible for over half of the growth of the U s. economy since WWII,
These teachers will meet the urgent need to train one million additional science, technology engineering and math (STEM) graduates over the next decade.
My plan for a stronger middle class will rebuild the American economy on the principles of free enterprise, hard work, and innovation.
we must never forget that the United states has moved forward in astonishing ways thanks to national investment in basic research and advanced technology.
and on technologies with widespread application and potential to serve as the foundation for private sector innovation and commercialization.
low-emissions technologies that will maintain American leadership in emerging industries. And I believe the federal government must significantly streamline the regulatory framework for the deployment of new energy technologies
including a new wave of investment in nuclear power. These steps will strengthen American industry, reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
and produce the economically-attractive technologies that developing nations must have access to if they are to achieve the reductions in their own emissions that will be necessary to address
Through the Recovery Act, my Administration committed over $100 billion to support groundbreaking innovation with investments in energy, basic research, education and training, advanced vehicle technology, health IT and health research
but on the deployment of these new technologies. We have invested highly in important research being done to improve the health
Meanwhile, the FDA s slow and opaque approval process is rated less than one-fourth as effective as its European counterpart by medical technology companies.
Increasingly, the global economy is driven by science, technology, engineering and math, but a recent comparison of 15-year-olds in 65 countries found that average science scores among U s. students ranked 23rd,
and what role should the federal government play to better prepare students of all ages for the science and technology-driven global economy?
Florida Virtual School and other digital education providers are using technology in new ways to personalize instruction to meet students needs.
which will require support for the expansion of successful charter schools and for greater technology use by schools.
I will facilitate private-sector-led development of new energy technologies. Throughout this agenda, I remain committed to implementing
A full white paper describing my plan for energy independence is available at Mittromney. com. Thanks to science and technology
Through a renewed focus on research and technology in both the private and public sectors, America can meet the growing challenge of maintaining
when science and technology affect every aspect of life and society, and so must be included in well-informed public policy decisions.
and Technology Policy to ensure that our policies reflect what science tells us without distortion or manipulation.
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