Monday, May 21, 2012

Phys.Org Newsletter Week 20

Dear Reader ,

Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 20:

Every black hole contains a new universe: A physicist presents a solution to present-day cosmic mysteries
Our universe may exist inside a black hole. This may sound strange, but it could actually be the best explanation of how the universe began, and what we observe today. It's a theory that has been explored over the past few decades by a small group of physicists including myself. 

Engineer thinks we could build a real starship enterprise in 20 years
In Star Trek lore, the first Starship Enterprise will be built by the year 2245. But today, an engineer has proposed — and outlined in meticulous detail – building a full-sized, ion-powered version of the Enterprise complete with 1G of gravity on board, and says it could be done with current technology, within 20 years. “We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship known as the USS Enterprise – so let’s do it,” writes the curator of the Build The Enterprise website, who goes by the name of BTE Dan.

Sugar makes you stupid: Study shows high-fructose diet sabotages learning, memory
Attention, college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid.

Brain oscillations reveal that our senses do not experience the world continuously
(Medical Xpress) -- It has long been suspected that humans do not experience the world continuously, but rather in rapid snapshots.

New silicon memory chip developed
(Phys.org) -- The first purely silicon oxide-based 'Resistive RAM' memory chip that can operate in ambient conditions – opening up the possibility of new super-fast memory - has been developed by researchers at UCL.

New finding may hold key to Gaia hypothesis of Earth as living organism
(Phys.org) -- Is Earth really a sort of giant living organism as the Gaia hypothesis predicts? A new discovery made at the University of Maryland may provide a key to answering this question. This key of sulfur could allow scientists to unlock heretofore hidden interactions between ocean organisms, atmosphere, and land -- interactions that might provide evidence supporting this famous theory.

Computing experts unveil superefficient 'inexact' chip
Researchers have unveiled an "inexact" computer chip that challenges the industry's dogmatic 50-year pursuit of accuracy. The design improves power and resource efficiency by allowing for occasional errors. Prototypes unveiled this week at the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers in Cagliari, Italy, are at least 15 times more efficient than today's technology.

Beyond the high-speed hard drive: Topological insulators open a path to room-temperature spintronics
(Phys.org) -- Strange new materials experimentally identified just a few years ago are now driving research in condensed-matter physics around the world. First theorized and then discovered by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and their colleagues in other institutions, these “strong 3-D topological insulators” – TIs for short – are seemingly mundane semiconductors with startling properties. For starters, picture a good insulator on the inside that’s a good conductor on its surface – something like a copper-coated bowling ball.

300,000 times the strength of the Earth's magnetic field: BLADE's new 14 Tesla magnet
The first researchers to use the new high-field superconducting magnet at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron facility, are searching for “hidden magnetic states”. If found, they will provide important confirmation of a theoretical model which could have important applications in magnetic data storage. Diamond’s BLADE beamline is providing them with the tools for the search.

When you eat matters: Study offers drug-free intervention to prevent obesity, diabetes
It turns out that when we eat may be as important as what we eat. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have found that regular eating times and extending the daily fasting period may override the adverse health effects of a high-fat diet and prevent obesity, diabetes and liver disease in mice.

The most profitable asteroid is...
With the recent announcement of the asteroid mining company, Planetary Resources, some of the most-asked questions about this enticing but complex endeavor include, what asteroids do we mine? Which are the easiest asteroids to get to? Could it really be profitable?

T-ray madness: Scientists score wireless data record
(Phys.org) -- Wednesday headlines trumpeted how "Japanese researchers smash Wi-Fi records" and "Scientists show off the future of Wi-Fi." The excitement is for good reason. A team of scientists have broken the record for wireless data transmission. They showed that they were capable of transmitting data at 3Gb/at frequencies up to 542GHz. They have done so in uncharted territory, so to speak, the terahertz band, a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is currently unregulated. They reported success in making Wi-Fi twenty times faster.

Statistical analysis projects future temperatures in North America
For the first time, researchers have been able to combine different climate models using spatial statistics - to project future seasonal temperature changes in regions across North America.

Bacteria alive (more or less) in 86-million-year-old seabed clay
(Phys.org) -- A new study by scientists from Denmark and Germany has found live bacteria trapped in red clay deposited on the ocean floor some 86 million years ago. The bacteria use miniscule amounts of oxygen and move only extremely slowly.

People see sexy pictures of women as objects, not people
Perfume ads, beer billboards, movie posters: everywhere you look, women's sexualized bodies are on display. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that both men and women see images of sexy women's bodies as objects, while they see sexy-looking men as people.

Harnessing the awesome power of the ocean waves
MBARI engineer Andy Hamilton looks out his office window in Moss Landing and points at the waves crashing on the beach below. “Pretty impressive, aren’t they? You’d think there’d be a way to make use of all that energy.” Since 2009, Hamilton has led a team of engineers trying to do just that. Their goal is not to replace the hulking power plant that overlooks Moss Landing Harbor, but to provide a more generous supply of electricity for oceanographic instruments in Monterey Bay.

Quantum computer leap
(Phys.org) -- The main technical difficulty in building a quantum computer could soon be the thing that makes it possible to build one, according to new research from The Australian National University.

New technique reveals unseen information in DNA code
Imagine reading an entire book, but then realizing that your glasses did not allow you to distinguish "g" from "q." What details did you miss? Geneticists faced a similar problem with the recent discovery of a "sixth nucleotide" in the DNA alphabet.

What does Islam say about the fate of others?
Since Sept. 11, it has become increasingly common to hear about Muslims who condemn all non-Muslims – or "infidels" – to hell, but this has never been a foundation of Islamic thought, argues a Michigan State University professor who recently published a first-of-its-kind book on non-Muslim salvation.

Three-telescope interferometry allows astrophysicists to observe how black holes are fueled
(Phys.org) -- By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, an international research team has observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, a method that has yielded an unprecedented amount of data for such observations. The resolution at which they were able to observe this highly luminescent active galactic nucleus (AGN) has given them direct confirmation of how mass accretes onto black holes in centers of galaxies.


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