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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 44:
'Lost world' discovered in remote Australia
An expedition to a remote part of northern Australia has uncovered three new vertebrate species isolated for millions of years, with scientists Monday calling the area a "lost world".
Quantum reality more complex than previously thought
Imagine you order a delivery of several glass vases in different colors. Each vase is sent as a separate parcel. What would you think of the courier if the parcels arrive apparently undamaged, yet when you open them, it turns out that all the red vases are intact and all the green ones are smashed to pieces? Physicists from the University of Warsaw and the Gdansk University of Technology have demonstrated that when quantum information is transmitted, nature can be as whimsical as this crazy delivery man.
Paleontologist presents origin of life theory
It has baffled humans for millennia: how did life begin on planet Earth? Now, new research from a Texas Tech University paleontologist suggests it may have rained from the skies and started in the bowels of hell.
Hans Blix calls on scientists to develop thorium nuclear fuel
(Phys.org) �Call it the great thorium divide: Thorium supporters and thorium critics do not agree over claims that thorium is an alternative nuclear fuel that could ensure a better future for the planet. Nonetheless, interest continues in thorium as a safer and abundant alternative to uranium. On the side of thorium, the latest call for action has come from Hans Blix, the former UN weapons inspector and former Swedish foreign minister. Urging nuclear scientists to develop thorium as a new fuel, Blix also called on the nuclear industry to start powering reactors with thorium instead of uranium. Blix said that the radioactive element may prove much safer in reactors than uranium and it is also more difficult to use thorium for the production of nuclear weapons.
First results from LUX dark matter detector rule out some candidates
In its first three months of operation, the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment has proven itself to be the most sensitive dark matter detector in the world, scientists with the experiment announced today.
Breakthrough in study of aluminum to yield new technological advances
Researchers at Oregon State University and the University of Oregon today announced a scientific advance that has eluded researchers for more than 100 years � a platform to fully study and understand the aqueous chemistry of aluminum, one of the world's most important metals.
Brain-inspired synaptic transistor learns while it computes
(Phys.org) �It doesn't take a Watson to realize that even the world's best supercomputers are staggeringly inefficient and energy-intensive machines.
Breakthrough research produces brighter, more efficiently produced lighting
By determining simple guidelines, researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Solid State Lighting & Energy Center (SSLEC) have made it possible to optimize phosphors �� a key component in white LED lighting �� allowing for brighter, more efficient lights.
Can an oil bath solve the mysteries of the quantum world?
For the past eight years, two French researchers have been bouncing droplets around a vibrating oil bath and observing their unique behaviour. What sounds like a high-school experiment has in fact provided the first ever evidence that the strange features of the quantum world can be reproduced on a macroscopic scale.
A new way of seeing: Metamaterial lens has ten times more power
(Phys.org) �A lens with ten times the resolution of any current lens, making it a powerful new tool for the biological sciences has been developed by researchers at the University of Sydney.
Security researcher discovers badBIOS malware that jumps using microphone and speakers
(Phys.org) �Highly respected Canadian security expert Dragos Ruiu has been fighting, he claims, an unknown bit of malware that that appears to run on Windows, Mac OS X, BSD and Linux, for approximately three years. After much research and effort, which he has been documenting using several online venues (mainly Twitter), he says he believes the malware infects computers via memory sticks, and vice versa. He says also that he's found evidence that the malware is able to create mini-networks between infected machines using high frequency sound waves that are passed from a computer's microphone to another's speakers, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, at this time, Ruiu is the only person that appears to know about the malware, which he has dubbed badBIOS.
Gimball: A crash-happy flying robot (w/ Video)
Gimball bumps into and ricochets off of obstacles, rather than avoiding them. This 34 centimeter in diameter spherical flying robot buzzes around the most unpredictable, chaotic environments, without the need for fragile detection sensors. This resiliency to injury, inspired by insects, is what sets it apart from other flying robots. Gimball is protected by a spherical, elastic cage which enables it to absorb and rebound from shocks. It keeps its balance using a gyroscopic stabilization system. When tested in the forests above Lausanne, Switzerland, it performed brilliantly, careening from tree trunk to tree trunk but staying on course. It will be presented in public at the IREX conference in Tokyo, Japan from November 5-9, 2013.
Necks question... how did the biggest dinosaurs get so big?
Alongside Tyrannosaurus rex, the basic sauropod dinosaur is one of the most iconic and instantly recognisable of prehistoric animals. Not only is their elegant shape with four columnar limbs, a long muscular tail and a hugely long neck with a relatively tiny head perched atop very well known, so is their prodigious size.
Researchers show how universe's violent youth seeded cosmos with iron
(Phys.org) �New evidence that iron is spread evenly between the galaxies in one of the largest galaxy clusters in the universe supports the theory that the universe underwent a turbulent and violent youth more than 10 billion years ago. That explosive period was responsible for seeding the cosmos with iron and other heavy elements that are critical to life itself.
New techniques produce cleanest graphene yet
Columbia Engineering researchers have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to electrically contact an atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) material only along its one-dimensional (1D) edge, rather than contacting it from the top, which has been the conventional approach. With this new contact architecture, they have developed a new assembly technique for layered materials that prevents contamination at the interfaces, and, using graphene as the model 2D material, show that these two methods in combination result in the cleanest graphene yet realized. The study is published in Science on November 1, 2013.
Pacific Ocean waters absorbing heat 15 times faster over past 60 years than in past 10,000
A recent slowdown in global warming has led some skeptics to renew their claims that industrial carbon emissions are not causing a century-long rise in Earth's surface temperatures. But rather than letting humans off the hook, a new study in the leading journal Science adds support to the idea that the oceans are taking up some of the excess heat, at least for the moment. In a reconstruction of Pacific Ocean temperatures in the last 10,000 years, researchers have found that its middle depths have warmed 15 times faster in the last 60 years than they did during apparent natural warming cycles in the previous 10,000.
Hubble's new shot of Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighbor
(Phys.org) �Shining brightly in this Hubble image is our closest stellar neighbor: Proxima Centauri.
Lasers might be the cure for brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, together with researchers at the Polish Wroclaw University of Technology, have made a discovery that may lead to the curing of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the so called mad cow disease) through photo therapy.
New generation laser will herald technological breakthrough
Research into a new type of laser will dramatically improve future devices used for sensing and in communications, according to scientists at the University.
Virtual-reality goggles go beyond gaming
The $300 goggles that Irvine, Calif.-based Oculus VR began shipping to software developers in March deliver a glimpse of a futuristic technology that's been long awaited by video gamers. They allow a player to step inside a computer-created virtual world.
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