Technology Trends

Buried land mines kill more than 15,000 people each year worldwide. At the current removal rate, it will take about 450 years to clear the world of undetected anti-personnel land mines. Many detection methods have been tried, including the use of high-tech ones, such as ground-penetrating radar, infrared imaging, acoustic and seismic methods. But right now, the most common technique is the use of dogs who locate buried land mines through smell. Still, the dogs need to be accompanied by men. And their combined weights can inadvertently cause the explosion of a mine, putting them in constant danger. Now, researchers from several U.S. universities are training honey bees to locate buried land mines through odor detection. Read more…

And this is a very clever idea, which could save many lives. For example, here are some short excerpts from an article from Optics.org, “Honey bees sniff-out landmines.”

Bees do not explode the mines, do not require a handler and can be trained in a couple of days to pick up the scent of the explosive in the landmine.

Jerry Bromenshenk and his colleagues from the University of Montana at Missoula are responsible for training the bees. “By injecting trace amounts of target chemical into feeders, the foraging bees seek sources of food with the same smell. Bees can be trained in one or two days to seek out buried explosives because of their high odor sensitivity in the low parts per trillion range.”

Now, let’s look at another article, “Finding Land Mines by Following a Bee,” from BusinessWeek Online, to discover what bees do after being trained to smell traces of explosives.

After one or two days, the insects naturally become attracted to the smell. When released into a minefield, the bees find their way toward the mines. Of course, they find no actual food, and after lingering disappointedly for a few seconds, they fly off. With thousands of bees flying around, however, scientists have to be able to track these swarms.

But is this method really working?

Bees are too small to detect either with the naked eye or high-resolution video at long ranges. So instead, the team employs a laser emitter that sweeps an area like radar or sonar. When the light hits a bee, it reflects, and sensors are able to tell by the reflection just where the bee is. After sweeping several times, the scientists are able to crunch the data and see statistically where the higher occurrences of bees are located.

In controlled situations, the method is extremely effective: Bees can detect very small traces of explosive vapors with 97% accuracy and are “wrong” — that is, passing over a mine without noticing it — less than 1% of the time.

For more information, the latest research work about bees sniffing for land mines has been published by Optics Express on July 25, 2005 under the name “Polarization lidar measurements of honey bees in flight for locating land mines” (Vol. 13, No. 15, Pages 5853 - 5863).

[Note: LIDAR is an acronym for LIght Detection And Ranging. In fact, Lidar, laser radar, optical radar, and ladar are all names used for "radar" systems utilizing electromagnetic radiation at optical frequencies. FOr more information about lidar systems,please check thes two pages from the NASA web site, here or there.]

Here are the links to the abstract and to the full paper (PDF format, 11 pages, 284 KB).

After reading how bees can help us, I will never look at them as I did before…

Sources: Jacqueline Hewett, Optics.org, August 11, 2005; Burt Helm, BusinessWeek Online, August 16, 2005; and various web sites

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Gecko lizards, which can climb any vertical surface and hang from a ceiling with one toe, have fascinated scientists for a long time. Their foot-hairs have a structure which allow them to strongly adhere to any type and shape of surface. Now, according to this short news release from the National Science Foundation (NSF), researchers from the University of Akron, Ohio, have developed synthetic hairs from multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) that have adhesion forces 200 times higher than those observed with gecko foot-hairs. This could lead to new dry adhesives used in microelectronics, robotics or space applications. Read more…

Here is the first paragraph of the NSF press release (here is another link if you want to see a picture of a gecko lizard).

Renowned for their ability to walk up walls like miniature Spider-Men–or even to hang from the ceiling by one toe–the colorful lizards of the gecko family owe their wall-crawling prowess to their remarkable footpads. Each five-toed foot is covered with microscopic elastic hairs called setae, which are themselves split at the ends to form a forest of nanoscale fibers known as spatulas. So when a gecko steps on almost anything, these nano-hairs make such extremely close contact with the surface that they form intermolecular bonds, thus holding the foot in place.

So researchers from the University of Akron, helped by a $400,000 grant from the NSF, have developed synthetic hairs from carbon nanotubes that have adhesion forces 200 times higher than those observed with gecko foot-hairs. Here is a link to their own news release.

They built new structures, based on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) constructed on polymer surfaces with strong nanometer level adhesion. These structures can be used as dry adhesives similar to or stronger than gecko foot-hairs.

Here is an example of such nanostructures.

The pictures above illustrate the topography and force measurement of multiwalled carbon nanotube brushes on PMMA with a scanning force microscope (SPM). (A) and (B) show real SPM height images taken by tapping mode for vertically and horizontally aligned MWNT, respectively. The bars represent 5 nm and 150 nm, respectively (Credit: University of Akron).

[Note:PMMA, which stands for Poly(methyl methacrylate), is a transparent plastic sold under different names, such as Plexiglas, and is often simply called Acrylic.]

The research paper about this work has been published by Chemical Communications on July 5, 2005 under the title “Synthetic gecko foot-hairs from multiwalled carbon nanotubes” (Issue 30, 2005, Pages 3799 - 3801). Here is a link to the short abstract.

We report a fabrication process for constructing polymer surfaces with multiwalled carbon nanotube hairs, with strong nanometer-level adhesion forces that are 200 times higher than those observed for gecko foot-hairs.

The full paper is available for free for registered users of the Institute of Physics for a duration of one month. Here is a link to this paper (PDF format, 3 pages, 313 KB).

For more information, you also can read a previous entry about a related project, “Spider Legs Lead to Better Post-it Notes.”

These two projects don’t follow the same approach, but they have a similar goal: design improved adhesives that will have critical applications in microelectronics, information technology, robotics, space and other areas.

Sources: National Science Foundation news release, via EurekAlert!, August 15, 2005; and various web sites

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In all networks, like road or airline traffic networks, the Internet, cancer tumors or industry supply chains, you need to pass packets from node to node, such as cars, information or data. But which are the most efficient, decentralized networks or hub-like centralized ones? According to Technology Research News (TRN), researchers from Oxford University, U.K., have designed a model which maps traffic congestion. This model combines roads going through the center of a city and other ones avoiding it. And they found that, from a cost point of view, it would be sometimes better to close roads going through cities than adding more. They also think that these conclusions can be applied to almost all kinds of networks, biological ones or created by humans. Read more…

Here are two of the opening paragraphs of the TRN article.

Researchers from Oxford University in England have tackled the problem [of network optimization] by examining the congestion costs within a network model that combines paths that go around the perimeter of the network and central hubs that provide shorter paths through the network. Real-world networks are too complicated to describe exactly mathematically. The researchers’ model is simple enough to solve exactly, yet realistic enough to provide insights into real networks.

The research is aimed at finding ways to ease bottlenecks in networks involving manufacturing, the Internet and traffic, and ways to disrupt networks like tumor blood flow and terrorist supply chains. The findings could also help design better networks.

Below are two examples of networks, the first one being a model of traffic analysis, while the second one is a real natural network (Credit: Oxford University).

On the figure above, the model network shows transport pathways through the central hub (thick lines) and around the ring (thin lines). The graph itself shows there is an optimal value for the number of connections, in this case 44 connections for 1,000 nodes.

And this photon scintillation image shows the nutrient distribution within a laboratory-grown fungus Phanerochaete velutina. Nutrient density increases going from blue to green to red.

As you can see from the network model above, traffic congestion in a city would increase if the number of roads to the center also increases after a certain point.

The model showed that above a certain number of roads to the center, adding a new road always increases the bottleneck to such an extent that the added benefit of a new route is outweighed by the time delay due to increased congestion in the center. “The interesting and counter-intuitive result that we found is that in such situations we should actually reduce the number of roads connecting to the center,” said Neil Johnson, Professor of Physics at Oxford University.

The problem can also be turned on its head, said Johnson. “Given the number of roads which exists to the center and which we assume cannot easily be changed, what cost should be imposed for passing through the center [so] that drivers between A and B experience a minimum journey time,” he said. “This charge could be an artificially induced time-delay — lights or ramps with long waiting times — or monetary.”

The researchers have applied their model to London, where you have to pay £5 to cross the center with your car, and concluded that such a flat fee leads to some inefficiencies.

The researchers’ model showed that in London, where a flat fee of five pounds is charged for passing through the center, a usage-dependent cost would make the network more efficient. “These costs could be advertised on electronic boards around the ring road so that people decide ahead of time whether to use the center or not,” said Johnson.

If you want to learn more about this research, the latest work has been published by Physical Review Letters in February 2005 under the title “Effect of Congestion Costs on Shortest Paths Through Complex Networks” (Volume 94, Number 5, Article 058701, February 11, 2005). Here are two links to the abstract and to the full paper — thanks to arXiv.org (PDF format, 4 pages, 242 KB). The above illustrations come from this paper.

Finally, here is a link to an article from New Scientist about the same subject, “New roads can cause congestion,” published on February 1, 2005

Sources: Kimberly Patch, Technology Research News, July 27/August 3, 2005; and various web sites

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No, it’s not a typo. American biologists have discovered that a common corn fungus is able to blast its spores with an acceleration equivalent to 870,000g (1g is the acceleration caused by Earth’s gravity). According to this Duke University news release, “Corn fungus is nature’s master blaster,” this acceleration breaks the previous natural record by two orders of magnitude. And these spores also travel much faster than rifle bullets, but they don’t go very far, stopping after only 5 millimeters. Is this discovery important for us? Probably not, but this is another story for the fungus. Moving away from the parent, the spores can get into air currents and acquire their independence. Read more…

Let’s start with a picture. The illustration below describes the launching devices of three different organisms (Credit: Steven Vogel).

The fungus Pilobolus is shown with the sporangium on top of the subsporangial swelling just before it shoots upward on a jet of cell sap. Sphaerobolus appears just before and just after a global mass of spores gets sent aloft by eversion of the floor of the cup. The seed Ruellia has been caught just before the end of launch, with each seed propelled upward by motion of the ejaculator beneath it.

Now, why are biologists studying such a phenomenon? Here is the explanation from the Duke University news release — obviously not written in plain English.

The purpose of the study that revealed the fungus’s extraordinary launch capabilities was to better understand the biological mechanism behind the fungal supergun.

Basically, the gun is powered by the buildup of pressure inside the spore-containing fungal fruiting body, called the perithecium, due to the ability of sap to create an osmotic pressure. Such pressure is due to water flowing across a membrane into the perithecium as it tries to equalize the concentration of a salt solution inside the chamber. In the case of the fungus, at question was whether the sugar mannitol or potassium ions were responsible for the osmotic pressure that generated the propulsive force.

The researchers — Frances Trail and Iffa Gaffoor of Michigan State University, and Steven Vogel of Duke University have published their findings in the scientific journal Fungal Genetics and Biology (Volume 42, Issue 6, Pages 528-533, June 2005). Here is a link to the abstract of this paper named “Ejection mechanics and trajectory of the ascospores of Gibberella zeae (anamorph Fuarium graminearum).”

One of the researchers, Steven Vogel, has recently written another paper on the subject, which has been accepted by the Journal of Biosciences, a quarterly journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore. Here is a link to the full paper named “Living in a physical world: III. Getting up to speed” (PDF format, 10 pages, 278 KB). This article contains a table giving the accelerations for a large variety of biological projectiles. The image above comes from this paper.

And here is Vogel’s conclusion about the Gibberella zeae, the nature’s most powerful known cannoneer.

“An obvious question is why the fungus even bothers. Given the short range of its spores, why bother accelerating to eighty miles per hour to go a mere five millimeters?,” said Vogel. “Since there is almost no air movement at the surface where the spore grows, the real object of the launch is to get the spore even a little ways from the parent, so that it can get into air currents, which will really give the spore some range.”

It seems than even for fungus, kids need to run away from their parents…

Sources: Duke University news release, via EurekAlert!, July 25, 2005; and various web sites

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Alex is a 28-year-old grey parrot who lives in a lab at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and can count, identify objects, shapes, colors and materials. And now, Alex has grasped the concept of zero, according to World Science. In fact, Alex can describe the absence of a numerical quantity on a tray containing colored cubes. When a color is missing, Alex consistently identified this “zero quantity” by saying “none.” You might think that this is just a parrot trick, but this research about ‘bird intelligence’ might also help autistic and other learning-disabled children “who have trouble learning language and counting skills.” Read more…

One of the really interesting things about Alex is that it had learned in the past that “none” meant a lack of information. And without any training, when Alex was asked to say how many green or red cubes were on a tray in front of him, he spontaneously said “none” when there was no cubes with this color. In fact, he was able to connect two different concepts, a lack of information and the absence of a quantity. Pretty brilliant parrot, isn’t?

Before going further, below is a picture of Alex in front of his counting blocks (Credit: Brandeis University). And here is a link to a larger version (193 KB).

Now, let’s look at how the researchers made the discovery that Alex possessed a “zero-like concept.”

The story began when researchers started testing Alex to see whether he understood small numbers, between one and six. Zero wasn’t expected of him. The researchers would lay out an array of objects of different colors and sizes, and asked questions such as “what color four?” — meaning which color are the objects of which there are four.

Apparently, Alex was pretty good on these tests, until he got bored. So the researchers “found some more interesting toys to give as rewards.” And here came the decisive experiment.

One of these apparent lapses occurred one day when an experimenter asked Alex “what color three?” Laid out before Alex were sets of two, three and six objects, each set differently colored. Alex insisted on responding: “five.” This made no sense given that the answer was supposed to be a color.

After several tries the experimenter gave up and said: “OK, Alex, tell me: what color five?” “None,” the bird replied. This was correct, in that there was no color that graced exactly five of the objects. The researchers went on to incorporate “none” into future trials, and Alex consistently used the word correctly, they said.

A few days after this article was published, Brandeis University decided to issue a press release adding that Alex was the “first bird to comprehend numerical concept akin to zero.”

“It is doubtful that Alex’s achievement, or those of some other animals such as chimps, can be completely trained; rather, it seems likely that these skills are based on simpler cognitive abilities they need for survival, such as recognition of more versus less,” explained comparative psychologist and cognitive scientist Dr. Irene Pepperberg.

Dr. Pepperberg’s research, which uses a training method called the model-rival technique, also holds promise for teaching autistic and other learning-disabled children who have difficulty learning language, numerical concepts and even empathy.

So far, results using this learning technique with small groups of autistic children have been very promising.

The latest research work about Alex and his comprehension of zero has been published by the Journal of Comparative Psychology in its May 2005 issue (Volume 119, Issue 2) under the name “Number Comprehension by a Grey Parrot (Psittacus erithacus), Including a Zero-Like Concept.” You’ll get to the abstract from this page (scroll to number #8).

A Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) that was able to quantify 6 item sets (including subsets of heterogeneous groups, e.g., blue blocks within groupings of blue and green blocks and balls) using English labels was tested on comprehension of these labels, which is crucial for numerical competence . He was, without training, asked “What color/object [number]?” for collections of various simultaneously presented quantities (e.g., subsets of 4, 5, and 6 blocks of 3 different colors; subsets of 2, 4, and 6 keys, corks, and sticks). Accuracy was greater than 80% and was unaffected by array quantity, mass, or contour. His results demonstrated numerical comprehension competence comparable to that of chimpanzees and very young children. He also demonstrated knowledge of absence of quantity, using “none” to designate zero.

For more information, you can buy this article for $11.95.

Finally, if you still want to know more about Irene Pepperberg’s work with gray parrots, you can visit the Alex Foundation, where you’ll find that someday, Alex may be able to read. Amazing…

Sources: World Science, July 2, 2005; and various web sites

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Geophysicists from the University of Colorado at Boulder have developed a new imaging technique to visualize the movement of rocks below the earth’s surface. And they applied this technique to the Himalaya to discover how the Indian plate moves as it passes beneath the Himalayan plateau. They used 29 broadband seismometers installed in Nepal and Tibet to record about 1,700 earthquakes between 2001 and 2003. Now, they think their technique can be used to assess earthquake hazards, even it can’t predict them accurately. Read more…

“We imaged the boundary between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates by developing a new technique that highlights strongly deformed rocks beneath Earth’s surface, and applied it to data we collected with a network of temporary seismic sensors deployed in Nepal and Tibet,” said Vera Schulte-Pelkum, a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

The network included 29 broadband seismometers operated by the CU-Boulder and SUNY Binghamton teams. About 1,700 earthquakes from as far away as Europe, Alaska and Japan were recorded during an 18-month period starting in 2001. The study was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation.

Below is a map showing where the broadband seismometers in Nepal and Tibet were located (Credit: CIRES).

[This location map has two parts:] (a) Overview map with topography. The extent of the study area map in (b) is outlined in red. The location of INDEPTH profiles is indicated in blue. (b) Topography map of the study area. Stations deployed for this study are shown in black (three stations with little to no data owing to equipment problems or vandalism are shown in white). Hypocentres relocated with our network are colour coded by depth (scale in km).

The scientists found a shear zone above the base of the Indian crust beneath the Himalaya.

Shear zones are similar to faults, Schulte-Pelkum said. Faults are brittle structures at or near the surface of the earth, while shear zones are found at depths of 10 miles or more where heat causes more ductile, or flowing, rock movement.

In subduction zones such as where India and Asia collide, however, earthquakes along brittle faults can occur at depth because rock temperatures are cooler, the researchers said.

Of course, this will not help to forecast earthquakes — only to understand them better.

With the team’s new method, geophysicists can study the deep crust and determine the direction rocks are being sheared. The shearing is similar to a deck of cards being spread out on a table, said Sheehan, an associate professor of geological sciences at CU-Boulder and a CIRES researcher. “We can see how the deep crust has moved. Seeing where these structures are and how they have moved in the subsurface helps us better understand where local hazards are.

“If we can more accurately calculate the subsurface geometries, we can improve our estimations of how the ground will shake during an earthquake. We can’t predict earthquakes, but we can get a better idea of how an earthquake’s energy will radiate,” explained Sheehan.

The research work has been published by Nature on June 30, 2005 under the name “Imaging the Indian subcontinent beneath the Himalaya.” Here is a link to the first paragraph and this is an excerpt.

Here we report seismic images both of the decollement at the base of the Himalaya and of the Moho (the boundary between crust and mantle) at the base of the Indian crust. A significant finding is that strong seismic anisotropy develops above the decollement in response to shear processes that are taken up as slip in great earthquakes at shallower depths.

If you want to read the full paper (PDF format, 4 pages, 574 KB), you need to be a subscriber to Nature or purchase the article for $30. The above illustration comes from this paper.

Sources: University of Colorado at Boulder news release, June 29, 2005; and various web sites

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Once again, man is imitating nature for the best. A team of Dutch physicists has created artificial cricket hairs, which are among the most sensitive sound detectors on Earth. These artificial sensory hair systems will help to develop sensor arrays useful for a variety of applications. For example, these sensor arrays could be used to visualize airflow on surfaces, such as an aircraft fuselage. But more importantly, this “could lead to a new generation of cochlear implants, for people with severe hearing problems.” Even if it doesn’t happen overnight, the low energy consumption and costs of fabrication are excellent news for deaf people. Read more…

First, let’s look at how real crickets are using their hairs.

Crickets spend most of their lives on the ground, making them vulnerable to wandering and flying predators. Species such as the wood cricket Nemobius sylvestris have developed a pair of hairy appendages at the abdominal end of their body called cerci, which are incredibly good at detecting small fluctuations in air currents — the kind that might be caused by the beating of a wasp’s wings or the jump of an attacking spider.

On the figure below, you can see the sensory hairs of the cricket (Credit: University of Twente, The Netherlands).

The sensory hairs of the cricket are situated on the back of the cricket’s body on appendices called cerci. [...] Each hair is lodged in a socket, guiding the hair to move in a preferred direction. The hair is held in its socket by an elastic material surrounding the base. Airflow causes a neuron to be fired, by rotation of the hair base. The cricket is able to pinpoint low-frequency sound from any given direction, by using the combined neural information of all sensory hairs.

Now, let’s focus on how these Dutch physicists have created artificial cricket hairs.

Physicists at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have now succeeded in building artificial sensory hair systems, which they hope will enable them to unravel the underlying process and develop sensor arrays with a variety of important applications.

The Twente team built a mechanical array with up to a few hundred artificial hairs using technologies often referred to as MEMS technology. The sensors are made by depositing and structuring various thin layers of electrically insulating and conducting materials, creating structured electrodes on a suspended membrane. The structured electrodes form two capacitors with the underlying substrate.

Below is a picture of an array of spiral-suspended sensory hairs, obtained through “a relatively simple fabrication process” (Credit: University of Twente, The Netherlands).

The news release gives some more details, but for more information, the research work has been published on June 20, 2005 by the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering under the name “Artificial sensory hairs based on the flow sensitive receptor hairs of crickets.” Here is a link to the abstract.

This paper presents the modelling, design, fabrication and characterization of flow sensors based on the wind-receptor hairs of crickets. Cricket sensory hairs are highly sensitive to drag-forces exerted on the hair shaft. Artificial sensory hairs have been realized in SU-8 on suspended Si_xN_y membranes. The movement of the membranes is detected capacitively. Capacitance versus voltage, frequency dependence and directional sensitivity measurements have been successfully carried out on fabricated sensor arrays, showing the viability of the concept.

And if you’re a registered member of the Institute of Physics, here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 7 pages, 686 KB) (you can register for free from the abstract link). The above illustrations were extracted from this paper.

Finally, you can find other technical information on the CICADA project page at the University of Twente — CICADA standing for ” Cricket Inspired perCeption and Autonomous Decision Automata.”

Sources: Institute of Physics news release, June 20, 2005; and various web sites

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IsraCast is a Jerusalem-based multimedia network and one of its reporters just wrote an article about a dream come true, “Like a Fish: Revolutionary Underwater Breathing System.” An Israeli inventor, Alan-Izhar Bodner, “has developed a breathing apparatus that will allow breathing underwater without the assistance of oxygen tanks.” This invention is based on how fish are breathing, picking the air which is dissolved in the water. Right now, a prototype has been built which uses rechargeable batteries and which will allow for one hour of diving time. But don’t run to your diving store yet, this system will only be available in a few years. Read more…

The author, Iddo Genuth, first looks at the limitations of current underwater breathing methods: the amount of time a diver can stay underwater; the dependence on oxygen refueling facilities; and the actual use of oxygen tanks underwater.

Of course, many engineers around the world have tried to design better and lighter systems. But now, Alan-Izhar Bodner, has developed his invention by looking at how fish are breathing, explains Genuth.

Fish do not perform chemical separation of oxygen from water; instead they use the dissolved air that exists in the water in order to breathe. In the ocean the wind, waves and underwater currents help spread small amounts of air inside the water. Studies have shown that in a depth of 200m below the sea there is still about 1.5% of dissolved air. This might not sound like much but it is enough to allow both small and large fish to breathe comfortably underwater. Bodner’s idea was to create an artificial system that will mimic the way fish use the air in the water thus allowing both smaller submarines and divers to get rid of the large, cumbersome oxygen tanks.

The idea really sounds neat, but how will it be exploited?

Bodner has already built and tested a laboratory model and he is on the path to building a full-scale prototype. Patents for the invention have already been granted in Europe and a similar one is currently pending examination in the U.S. Meetings have already been held with most major diving manufacturers as well as with the Israeli Navy. Initial financial support for the project has been given by Israel Ministry of Industry and Commerce and Bodner is currently looking for private investors to help complete his project.

This is a photograph of the prototype that the inventor sent to IsraCast (Credit: Alan-Izhar Bodner). As says Iddo Genuth, there is “not really much to look at” but it’s a first draft of the device. We’ll see how it goes in the coming years.

This method for breathing underwater was patented in Europe in 2002 and 2003. For more information, you can use the Online European Patent Register search engine. You just have to enter the application number “EP20010996491″ without quotes.

For a quicker access, here are the direct links to this patent, “Open-Circuit Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus,” referenced as WO0240343 (May 23, 2002) or EP1343683 (September 17, 2003).

Here is the abstract.

A self-contained open-circuit breathing apparatus for use within a body of water naturally containing dissolved air. The apparatus is adapted to provide breathable air. The apparatus comprises an inlet means for extracting a quantity of water from the body of water. It further comprises a separator for separating the dissolved air from the quantity of water, thereby obtaining the breathable air. The apparatus further comprises a first outlet means for expelling the separated water back into the body of water, and a second outlet means for removing the breathable air and supplying it for breathing. The air is supplied so as to enable it to be expelled back into the body of water after it has been breathed.

Finally, here is the conclusion of the IsraCast article.

If everything goes according to plan, in a few years the new tankless breathing system will be operational and will be attached to a diver in the form of a vest that will enable him to stay underwater for a period of many hours.

Sources: Iddo Genuth, IsraCast, May 31, 2005; and various websites

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The Barbary Apes who live on Gibraltar’s Rock are the only semi-wild monkeys in Europe. And for decades, nobody knew where they came from. Now, after studying mitochondrial DNA from 280 individual samples, an international group of scientists from Germany, Switzerland and the U.S. has solved the mystery of the origin of Gibraltar’s macaques. Their study reveals that they descended from founders picked in both Morocco and Algeria. Of course, another mystery needs to be solved. You might not know that a local story says that if the monkeys disappear from Gibraltar, so will the British. So when the population of these Barbary Apes was almost reduced to zero sixty years ago, did British Prime Minister Winston Churchill order to capture some of them in nearby Africa? Read more…

Before going further, here is a great photograph of one of these Gibraltar’s Barbary Apes.

Now, let’s return to this news release from the Field Museum in Chicago.

An analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 280 individual samples reveals that the macaques on Gibraltar descended from founders taken from forest fragments in both Morocco and Algeria. The embargoed research will be published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org/papbyrecent.shtml) .

[Note: this research should have been published online on April 25, 2005 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but is not yet available.]

Now, here are some more scientific details.

In mammals, mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively from the female, so it can be analyzed to determine matrilineal origins. This is especially relevant with mammals, such as macaques, that practice female philopatry, a social system in which females remain in their birth groups while males migrate between groups.

The research first identified 24 different haplotypes in the Algerian and Moroccan colonies of macaques. Each mitochondrial haplotype is identified by means of a specific DNA sequence.

Since the Algerian and Moroccan haplotypes are clearly distinct, evidence of any given haplotype in the mitochondrial DNA of Gibraltar macaques would indicate that they descended from the geographical population with that haplotype. [...] In fact, both Algerian and Moroccan haplotypes were found among the Gibraltar macaques, indicating that the Gibraltar colony was founded by female macaques from both regions.

The study is still speculating about when these apes were introduced in Gibraltar.

Some scientists believe the Barbary macaques were first brought to Gibraltar by the Moors, who occupied Spain between 711 and 1492. On the other hand, it’s possible that the original Gibraltar macaques were a remnant of populations that had spread throughout Southern Europe during the Pliocene, up to 5.5 million years ago.

So was it 5 million years ago or 60 years ago? A future study will tell.

In the mean time, you might want to read two additional pages from Wikipedia about Gibraltar and the Barbary Ape.

Sources: The Field Museum news release, April 25, 2005; and various websites

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Two entomologists at Cornell University who were in charge to name several new species of slime-mold beetles have decided to honor U.S. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, according to this news release. These beetles are living in different environments, and pretty far from the White House: the Agathidium bushi lives in Southern Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia, while the Agathidium rumsfeldi and the Agathidium cheneyi come from different regions of Mexico. Anyway, executives from the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) have some concerns, and these names might not be approved by this organization. Read more…

Here is the beginning of the story.

Two former Cornell University entomologists who recently had the job of naming 65 new species of slime-mold beetles named three species that are new to science in the genus Agathidium for members of the U.S. administration. They are A. bushi Miller and Wheeler, A. cheneyi Miller and Wheeler and A. rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler.

These naming rules are strongly codified and here is a short explanation.

According to rules established by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the first word of a new species is its genus; the second word must end in “i” if it’s named after a person; and the final part of the name includes the person or persons who first described the species. That’s why all the new slime-mold beetle species’ names end with Miller and Wheeler.

Before going further, let’s look at a good-looking beetle.

Now, why have these entomologists decided to give the names of U.S. political leaders to some insects?

The decision to name three slime-mold beetles after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, however, didn’t have anything to do with physical features, says Quentin Wheeler, a professor of entomology and of plant biology at Cornell for 24 years until last October, but to pay homage to the U.S. leaders. “We admire these leaders as fellow citizens who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to do the very difficult and unpopular work of living up to principles of freedom and democracy rather than accepting the expedient or popular,” says Wheeler.

So far, eyebrows are raised at the ICZN, but according to its executive secretary, Andrew Polaszek, in this news report, there is no formal opposition to the names of these insects.

“Religion and politics should be kept out of naming of animals,” Mr Polaszek said. “It goes really against the spirit of the [nomenclature] code.”

There are no rules in the code that specifically ban biologists from naming species after political figures. However, it does allow for proposed names to be barred if they cause offence.

So will we see one day A. chiraci or A. blairi species? Who knows?

Finally, for more information about beetles, check this Wikipedia page.

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There are many articles in the press today about the cloning of a champion endurance horse named Pieraz. I want to give my “Best Title of the Month” award to News24, in South Africa, for “Castrated horse becomes dad.” This is true, Pieraz, as most endurance horses, those engaged in races of up to 50 kilometers, was castrated. But its clone, created by Italian and French scientists, and called Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion, will be different from the original horse. It might not be able to race, but it will be put to stud to breed other horses within two years. Read more…

Before going further, here are two pictures of the champion horse and his young clone (Credit: Cryozootech).

On the left, you can see Pieraz, ridden by Valerie Kanavy, who was the owner and the trainer of the horse. On the right, Eric Palmer, from Cryozootech, is talking with Pieraz’s clone.

You might also want to look at this short video of Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion (RealAudio format, 71 seconds).

Now, here are some details from an article by New Scientist, “First clone of champion racehorse revealed.”

Like most endurance racehorses, Pieraz was castrated young and so cannot breed. The idea of cloning him was to “recreate his testicles” for breeding purposes, says Eric Palmer of Cryozootech, a company based in Paris, France, which supported Galli’s latest cloning work.

[Notes: Cesare Galli produced both horses at the University of Bologna in Cremona, Italy; and Cryozootech is based in Sonchamp, near Paris.]

“The plan is to make this horse a stallion,” says Palmer, and the clone will be mature enough to breed within two years. But although the new clone is Pieraz’s genetic twin, he says there is no guarantee that it will perform as well as the champion racehorse. Environmental factors could be crucial.

Cryozootech has ambitious plans, and wants to clone more than thirty other horses specialized in dressage or jumping. But it’s not that simple. The new foal was the only one which came alive, from 34 embryos implanted into 12 foster mothers.

In “Champion endurance horse cloned,” BBC News gives other details, picking some facts from this Cryozootech press release (PDF format, 1 page).

The new clone, called Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion, was born on 25 February, weighing 42kg. He will not be used for competition himself, but will instead make his living siring new generations of horses.

Pieraz, the donor of the genetic material used to create the foal, reached the top of his equestrian discipline in 1994 and 1996. He is owned by the Kanavy family of Fort Valley, Virginia, US. In 2002, Valerie Kanavy heard about cloning and immediately liked the idea that her champion could transmit his qualities to future generations despite being castrated.

And it is obvious that these scientists want to preserve the genetic heritage of this champion and of some others. They will probably make some money too.

What do you think about this cloning experiment?

Update on April 16, 2005: If you understand French, France-Info, an all-news radio station, is airing a short audio segment about this clone, with an interview with Eric Palmer, under the name “Pieraz : le deuxième cheval cloné au monde.”

Here are two links to the text version and to the audio one (RealAudio format, 1 minute and 55 seconds).

Sources: Various websites, April 2005

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Do you want to use an economical and environmentally friendly biofuel? Just grow grass. Burning grass pellets will produce an energy-efficient biofuel, according to Jerry Cherney, a professor of agriculture at Cornell University. In this news release, “Grass as Fuel,” he says “Burning grass pellets makes sense; after all, it takes 70 days to grow a crop of grass for pellets, but it takes 70 million years to make fossil fuels.” Unfortunately, there is anything like a grass political lobby in Washington, so he might not be heard. But with current oil prices, more and more people will be tempted to use cheaper — and cleaner — sources of energy. Read more…

Here is the introduction of the Cornell University news release.

Grow grass, not for fun but for fuel. Burning grass for energy has been a well-accepted technology in Europe for decades. But not in the United States.

Yet burning grass pellets as a biofuel is economical, energy-efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable, says a Cornell University forage crop expert.

This alternative fuel easily could be produced and pelleted by farmers and burned in modified stoves built to burn wood pellets or corn, says Jerry Cherney, the E.V. Baker Professor of Agriculture. Burning grass pellets hasn’t caught on in the United States, however, Cherney says, primarily because Washington has made no effort to support the technology with subsidies or research dollars.

Why is it important for environment?

Burning grass pellets makes sense; after all, it takes 70 days to grow a crop of grass for pellets, but it takes 70 million years to make fossil fuels,” says Cherney, who notes that a grass-for-fuel crop could help supplement farmers’ incomes.

Cherney points out that grass biofuel pellets are much better for the environment because they emit up to 90 percent less greenhouse gases than oil, coal and natural gas do. Furthermore, he says, grass is perennial, does not require fertilization and can be grown on marginal farmland.

Cherney recently presented his conclusions about grass biofuel at the Greenhouse Gases & Carbon Sequestration in Agriculture and Forestry conference, held March 21-24 in Baltimore.

You can find the abstract of his talk, “Grass Bioenergy in the Northeastern USA,” on this page. Just scroll a little bit or search for Cherney on the page.

If you’re interested in this subject, here is a link to the July 2004 issue of the “Dairy & Field Crops digest” (PDF format, 12 pages, 728KB). The article “Grass Management for Forage or Biofuel?” appears on pages 7 and 8.

In this article, Cherney argues that “grass is converted to useable heat at over 80% efficiency, with an energy output:input ratio exceeding 10:1, compared to other bioenergy sources with typicalsystem energy output:input ratios around 1:1.”

The cost-effectiveness of pelletized grass as a fuel results from:

• efficient use of low cost marginal farmland for solar energy collection
  
• minimal fossil fuel input use in field production and energy conversion
  
• minimal biomass quality upgrading which limits energy loss from the feedstock
  
• efficient combustion in advanced yet modestly priced and simple to use devices
  
• replacement of expensive high-grade energyforms in space and water heating

Cherney is convincing, but it’s hard to help him while living in Paris.

Sources: Cornell University News Service, March 31, 2005; and various websites

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Two months ago, I told you that the Wildlife Conservation Society was planning to count elephants from space. So I was very intrigued by a very short article from the Inquirer, “Elephants text their location.” This teasing story said that when elephants start to approach their fields, the farmers are alerted by SMS in time to politely ask the elephants to move over and save their crops. The whole story is told on the Save the Elephants (STE) site. In fact, these conservationists are putting GSM/GPS collars around elephants in some areas of Kenya. And the collared elephants are sending SMS messages directly to farmers’ phones. You can even track individual elephants on the Web — if you’re an authorized user. But read more…

Here is the first paragraph of the Inquirer article.

A reliable source informs the INQ that conservationists in Kenya have been fitting elephants with mini mobile phones. The phone gives away the elephant’s location via a text (SMS) message.

Because the Inquirer was short on facts, let’s start with some pictures coming from the Save the Elephants website.

Here is a link to a project progress report (June 2004, PDF format, 12 pages, 899 KB) from which the above pictures have been extracted.

One of the goals of this project which started in February 2004 was to “develop state-of-the-art miniaturised radio-collars using GSM mobile phone technology, for monitoring endangered wildlife.”

Here are some more details about the project.

The new GPS-GSM tags are lighter, cheaper and last longer, and enable the advantages of GPS tracking to be spread to other species which have previously been excluded due to the bulk and weight of current GPS collars. David Gachuche (STE’s software engineer) has designed the Animal Tracking System which will allow users to access the system over the internet, using a standard web browser and view the most current locations of collared animals in (near) real-time [and other ways.]

All these different access points are all fed by the same spatial database that is automatically updated when the GPS-GSM tag sends a message, via Short Message Service (SMS), indicating the latest GPS position of the animal.

And here is one of the first conclusions of this experiment.

Our elephant tracking has already shown that there are certain crucial corridors that need to be left open so that elephants can reach their feeding grounds.

For more information, please visit the STE website.

Sources: Tony Dennis, The Inquirer, March 15, 2005; and Save the Elephants website

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A surprising new study from NASA reveals that a new trend about the evolution of phytoplankton in our oceans is emerging. Instead of declining globally by 6 percent between the 1980s and 1990s, phytoplankton levels are now growing, by more than 4 percent between 1998 and 2003. But according to the data gathered by NASA satellites, this evolution is not uniform. The increase is by far larger near the coasts, where the ocean floor is less than 200 meters and where phytoplankton levels grew by more than 10 percent in the last 5 years. At a moment where everyone is concerned by the global warming effect, this is very good news because one of the things phytoplankton does is absorbing carbon dioxide.

Let’s start our today’s story with more details about the importance of phytoplankton.

The tiny ocean plants help regulate our atmosphere and the health of our oceans. Phytoplankton produce half of the oxygen generated by plants on Earth. They also can soften the impacts of climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas. In addition, phytoplankton serve as the base of the ocean food chain, so their abundance determines the overall health of ocean ecosystems.

Now, what are the results of this new study from NASA?

The researchers used NASA satellite data from 1998 to 2003 to show that phytoplankton amounts have increased globally by more than 4 percent. These increases have mainly occurred along the coasts. No significant changes were seen in phytoplankton concentrations within the global open oceans, but phytoplankton levels declined in areas near the center of the oceans, the mid-ocean gyres.

The above images don’t really show it, but ocean colors also have changed.

Mid-ocean gyres are “ocean deserts”, which can only support low amounts of phytoplankton. When viewed by satellite, these phytoplankton-deprived regions look deep-blue, while in aquatic regions where plant life thrives, the water appears greener.

“The ocean deserts are getting bluer and the coasts are getting greener,” said Watson Gregg, an oceanographer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, Md. “The study suggests there may be changes occurring in the biology of the oceans, especially in the coast regions.”

This evolution is so recent that the researchers are cautious before giving conclusions.

“We don’t know the causes of these coastal increases,” said Gregg. “The trends could indicate improved health of the ecosystems as a whole, or they could be a sign of nutrient stress.” Causes of nutrient stress include land run-off that deposits agricultural fertilizers and other nutrients in the oceans. The run-off can promote large algal blooms that can deplete the water of oxygen.

For more technical information, this study has been published on February 8, 2005 by Geophysical Research Letters under the title “Recent trends in global ocean chlorophyll.” Here is a link to the abstract.

A 6-year time series of remotely-sensed global ocean chlorophyll was evaluated using linear regression analysis to assess recent trends. Global ocean chlorophyll has increased 4.1% (P < 0.05). Most of the increase has occurred in coastal regions, defined as bottom depth < 200 m, where an increase of 10.4% was observed. The main contributors to the increase were the Patagonian Shelf, Bering Sea, and the eastern Pacific, southwest African, and Somalian coasts. Although the global open ocean exhibited no significant change, 4 of the 5 mid-ocean gyres (Atlantic and Pacific) showed declines in chlorophyll over the 6 years. In all but the North Atlantic gyre, these were associated with significant increases in sea surface temperature in at least one season. These results suggest that changes are occurring in the biology of the global oceans.

Sources: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center news release, via EurekAlert!, March 3, 2005; and various websites

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In “Lobster colour has quantum cause,” Nature writes that Dutch researchers have found why lobsters change colors when they are cooked. According to Nature, “a lobster’s colour is due to a pigment molecule called astaxanthin, which is attached to a protein called crustacyanin.” The Dutch team, using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and computer simulations, showed that these astaxanthin molecules, grouped in pairs, are interfering with one another. As a result, it shifts their quantum energy states, altering the wavelength of light they can absorb, thus turning black when cooked. The article doesn’t say how many lobsters the researchers used — and ate — for their experiments, but read more…

First, Nature describes the problem — or the situation.

Chemists know that a lobster’s colour is due to a pigment molecule called astaxanthin, which is attached to a protein called crustacyanin. Astaxanthin is one of the carotenoid pigments responsible for the bright red colours of many animals and plants, including those of oranges, tomatoes and some birds’ feathers.

When a lobster is boiled, its crustacyanin proteins unwind in the heat and the astaxanthin pigment falls off. This ‘free’ astaxanthin is red, just like most other carotenoids, and gives the lobster its freshly-cooked colour. But chemists were mystified as to why live lobsters are blue-black.

Then, Nature describes the Dutch team’s experiments.

The team followed up on the discovery in 2002 that astaxanthin molecules in the crustacyanin proteins are grouped in pairs that cross each other in an X-shape.

This pairing, the researchers’ calculations show, means that the two molecules interfere with one another, like cross-talk between electrical signals in neighbouring wires, and this shifts their quantum energy states. That in turn alters the wavelength of light that they absorb, accounting for most of the blackness.

And here is the conclusion of Francesco Buda of Leiden University in the Netherlands, one of the researchers involved in the project.

“It’s surprising that it took such a long time to solve this problem,” says Buda. But he admits it is only in the past five to ten years that computers have been able to handle the demanding quantum-mechanical calculations involved.

The research work has been published by the Journal of the American Chemical Society under the title “Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Modeling Reveal a Predominant Contribution of Excitonic Interactions to the Bathochromic Shift in -Crustacyanin, the Blue Carotenoprotein in the Carapace of the Lobster Homarus gammarus.” Here is a link to the abstract.

And if you want to know more about lobsters, but in plain English, you can read this page at Wikipedia. Or you can check Lobster Facts, written by Alan M. Stewart. It features a picture of a two-color lobster named the Joker, introduced by these words: “The odd thing about this animal is that the cephalothorax is all one [natural] color while the rest of the animal is symmetrically different. Even its mouth parts were normal-colored on the right, and orange on the left.” Is this a real lobster or a PhotoShop joke? You’ll tell me.

Sources: Philip Ball, Nature, February 15, 2005; and various websites

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