Scientists love the cell phone. Researchers have used the ubiquitous device as a portable polling station, a tracking device, and a sensor. Now, computer scientists want to use mobile phones to exchange data without using the phone's network, instead of communicating directly with cellular towers, base stations, and the occasional wireless network.

That's the vision of a group of computer scientists who believe that spreading data virally could open up a whole new manner of applications on peer-to-peer mobile device networks, known more formally as "pocket-switched networks." Such an ad hoc network--sort of a Sneakernet on steroids--could allow victims of a natural disaster to pass messages from one person to another even if the cell towers are destroyed. In another scenario, visitors to specific locations could have important information forwarded to them via the local folks' devices. And groups of friends could poll each other on where to eat dinner that night, without using the Internet.

IMAGINE you are an experienced martial arts referee. You are asked to score a number of taekwondo bouts, shown to you on video. In each bout, one combatant is wearing red, the other blue. Would clothing colour make any difference to your impartial, expert judgement? Of course it wouldn't.

Yet research shows it almost certainly would. Last year, sports psychologists at the University of Münster, Germany, showed video clips of bouts to 42 experienced referees. They then played the same clips again, digitally manipulated so that the clothing colours were swapped round. The result? In close matches, the scoring swapped round too, with red competitors awarded an average of 13 per cent more points than when they were dressed in blue (Psychological Science, vol 19, p 769). "If one competitor is strong and the other weak, it won't change the outcome of the fight," says Norbert Hagemann, who led the study. "But the closer the levels, the easier it is for the colour to tip the scale."

Tesla Motors says its all-electric Model S sport sedan will join the Roadster in late 2011 and be sold initially with battery packs offering 165 and 230 miles of range.

But Tesla has also said that the $57,400 base-price car (which is eligible for a $7,500 federal tax credit) would have a third option a year after launch: a battery pack that will give it an impressive range of 300 miles between charges. But just how big would that pack have to be?

In an interview, J.B. Straubel, Tesla’s chief technical officer, said that the size of the pack has not been finalized. But, he said, a range of 85 to 95 kilowatt-hours is possible. “We hesitate to print a number,” Mr. Straubel said. “It would be the biggest pack on the market, and we’re designing and building it ourselves.”

Seen under a microscope, the new bacterium are stained green.

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Seen under a microscope, the new bacterium are stained green.

A new type of organism discovered in an Arctic tunnel came to life in the lab after being frozen for 32,000 years.

The deep-freeze bacteria could point to new methods of cryogenics, and they are the sort of biology scientists say might exist on Mars and other planets and moons.

"The existence of microorganisms in these harsh environments suggests -- but does not promise -- that we might one day discover similar life forms in the glaciers or permafrost of Mars or in the ice crust and oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa," said Richard Hoover, an astrobiologist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

And That's Not All ... Scientists report in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Nature the discovery of live bacteria collected from a quarter-mile (400 meters) under the floor of the ocean. Researchers have long known there were lots of biological cells embedded deep in ocean sediment. But they could not determine how much of it was alive. The new study drew samples of sediment from beneath the Pacific. Between 10 and 30 percent of the cells were alive. That's a lot, considering that ocean sediment covers about two-thirds of the planet. "This study brings us closer to understanding the limits of life," says Lev Neretin of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany. -- RRB

Other microbes have been discovered in similar frigid environments, sometimes clinging to pockets of liquid water in ice packs. And some microbes survive in ice as spores, but they need to be cultured to bring them to life.

NASA described the newfound critter as "the first fully described, validated species ever found alive in ancient ice."

"They immediately started swimming when the ice melted," Hoover told LiveScience, adding that the cryopreserved bacteria were instantly ready to eat and multiply.

Cousins on Mars?

The announcement of the discovery Wednesday comes just a day after a team of European researchers said they found blocks of ice just under the surface of Mars near the equator. The Europeans said the ice, between 2 million and 5 million years old, could serve as storehouses for life.

Hoover said the creatures he has found might be able to survive in their suspended state for millions of years. The discovery opens up a whole new possibility that a future mission to Mars might be able to retrieve any life that's there.

"Ice samples from this [Martian ice] sea could contain cryopreserved microorganisms if life ever flourished on the surface of Mars," Hoover said in a telephone interview. He is particularly excited about the instant revival qualities of the creatures found in Alaska.

"You might actually get them growing in pure culture," he said of the potential Martian cousins. It would be a "wonderful way of retrieving intact, viable Martian organisms, if they are there."

Water does not guarantee life, but it is a crucial ingredient.

Hoover said the Martian ice blocks are so near the surface that they might partly melt in summer, creating underground pools of water that would allow any microorganisms to grow and reproduce. (Life above ground is considered unlikely due to Mars' dry surface conditions and intense radiation.)

Long process

The discovery process goes back to 1999, when Hoover and a colleague started a search for extremophiles in a tunnel north of Fairbanks, Alaska. The tunnel was dug by the Army Corps of Engineers in the mid-1960s to help scientists study permafrost prior to construction of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline.

Other Extreme Life

Hoover went in search of one type of creature, but also found bacterial cells that surprisingly came to life as soon as the ice thawed. The bacteria thrive on sugars and proteins in total absence of oxygen.

"Life is far more diverse, and far more resistant to conditions we consider hostile, than was thought possible only a decade or two ago," Hoover said. "Studying these organisms helps us understand that life may be far more widespread in the cosmos than we previously imagined."

The bacteria, called Carnobacterium pleistocenium, might also be interesting to medical researchers.

"The enzymes and proteins it possesses, which give it the ability to spring to life after such long periods of dormancy, might hold the key to long-term, cryogenic -- or very low temperature -- storage of living cells, tissues and perhaps even complex life forms," Hoover said.

Microbiologist Elena Pikuta of the University of Alabama in Huntsville contributed to the research.

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It's the first step in computing.
The Babbage Difference Engine was the first digital computer ever designed. It weighs nearly 5 tons and doesn't use electricity. See it Now.

Until May, 2009, the American public will be able to see one of only two ever made, on display inside the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.

"The machine works exactly as Babbage intended. There's not a single logical design flaw in the entire design," says its builder Doron Swade. "That's 8,000 parts." And 248 gears of iron, brass and steel. It was designed by British mathematician Charles Babbage in 1822, but never built. Swade says of Babbage, "He's famous for two things: inventing computers, and failing to build them."

So, Swade persuaded his Museum of Science in London to complete Babbage's work. And as Senior Curator of Computing, he oversaw its construction as Director of the Babbage Project. It's called a difference engine because it doesn't multiply; it only adds. That doesn't mean it's a glorified abacus.
"No!", laughs Swade."It is the first successful transference of intelligence to machine."

The device solves complex polynomial equations like this one mechanically:

5 tons of Victorian engineering

And it does so more precisely than any handheld calculator. It cannot calculate the value of a polynomial without some initial value set by the operator. (That would require multiplication.) Its final product is a trigonometric table for use in navigation and artillery — one new value every 6 seconds.

How similar is this to a modern microprocessor? Think of the crank at one end as the on switch. Beneath that, a stack of cams acts like the microprogram that controls the operation of all the other parts. Think of the tall brass stacks of 31 rotating gears, as digital registers. They store and change the numbers during the calculations. And there is a display, of sorts, too. All of the results are displayed at the opposite end in 3 ways: First, one stack of gears acts like the on-screen display. Second, it prints the results on paper, and below that it stamps into soft metal something that a typesetter can use.

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AMES, Iowa - Srinivas Aluru recently stepped between the two rows of six tall metal racks, opened up the silver doors and showed off the 3,200 computer processor cores that power Cystorm, Iowa State University's second supercomputer.

And there's a lot of raw power in those racks.

Cystorm, a Sun Microsystems machine, boasts a peak performance of 28.16 trillion calculations per second. That's five times the peak of CyBlue, an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer that's been on campus since early 2006 and uses 2,048 processors to do 5.7 trillion calculations per second.

 

Schematic illustration of experimental setup that found the human body, especially the face, emits visible light in small quantities that vary during the day. B is one fo the test subjects. The other images show the weak emissions of visible light during totally dark conditions. The chart corresponds to the images and shows how the emissions varied during the day. The last image (I) is an infrared image of the subject showing heat emissions. Credit: Kyoto University; Tohoku Institute of Technology; PLoS ONE

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Schematic illustration of experimental setup that found the human body, especially the face, emits visible light in small quantities that vary during the day. B is one fo the test subjects. The other images show the weak emissions of visible light during totally dark conditions. The chart corresponds to the images and shows how the emissions varied during the day. The last image (I) is an infrared image of the subject showing heat emissions. Credit: Kyoto University; Tohoku Institute of Technology; PLoS ONE

 

The human body literally glows, emitting a visible light in extremely small quantities at levels that rise and fall with the day, scientists now reveal.

Past research has shown that the body emits visible light, 1,000 times less intense than the levels to which our naked eyes are sensitive. In fact, virtually all living creatures emit very weak light, which is thought to be a byproduct of biochemical reactions involving free radicals.

(This visible light differs from the infrared radiation — an invisible form of light — that comes from body heat.)

To learn more about this faint visible light, scientists in Japan employed extraordinarily sensitive cameras capable of detecting single photons. Five healthy male volunteers in their 20s were placed bare-chested in front of the cameras in complete darkness in light-tight rooms for 20 minutes every three hours from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for three days.

The researchers found the body glow rose and fell over the day, with its lowest point at 10 a.m. and its peak at 4 p.m., dropping gradually after that. These findings suggest there is light emission linked to our body clocks, most likely due to how our metabolic rhythms fluctuate over the course of the day.

Faces glowed more than the rest of the body. This might be because faces are more tanned than the rest of the body, since they get more exposure to sunlight — the pigment behind skin color, melanin, has fluorescent components that could enhance the body's miniscule light production.

Since this faint light is linked with the body's metabolism, this finding suggests cameras that can spot the weak emissions could help spot medical conditions, said researcher Hitoshi Okamura, a circadian biologist at Kyoto University in Japan.

"If you can see the glimmer from the body's surface, you could see the whole body condition," said researcher Masaki Kobayashi, a biomedical photonics specialist at the Tohoku Institute of Technology in Sendai, Japan.

The scientists detailed their findings online July 16 in the journal PLoS ONE.