Building off of Tomas’ post on nanowires and the cool stuff they can do, we see a letter to Nature discussing the possibility of nanowires that can be powered by the sun, thereby requiring no external power source. Supposedly, these nanowires would be more efficient than a crystal in creating electricity from solar energy.
(via Ars Technica) (image from Inexpressible is possible)
A new type of "combination therapy" is being hailed by researchers as being an effective cure for the HIV virus. I’m sure I’ve read similar headlines before, but given recent advances in biotechnology, I’ve a little more hope of this being the real deal. However, although I’m no biologist, I’m not entirely sure "cure" is the right word – the article mentions that the therapy "prevents HIV from mutating and spreading", which doesn’t sound quite the same as actually eradicating it from the host body. Still, it’s satisfying to think that perhaps the most frightening disease of the Twentieth Century may soon be little more than a bad memory. [Via OurTechnologicalFuture] [Image from ScienceDaily article, credited to CDC/Dr. A. Harrison; Dr. P. Feorino]
It’s that classic pub quiz question that fools everyone: what is the biggest man made thing on the planet? Of course, nine times out of ten we’ll say with great confidence “The Great Wall Of China”. After all, it can be seen from space, right? However the smug quizmaster (or a contestant that had this question in trivial pursuit years ago) will inform you that the real answer is rubbish: the giant landfill of rubbish on Staten Island, Fresh Kills. The remains of the World Trade Centre is there.
However, if you get this question in a quiz, you can now happily outsmug the quizmaster, albeit tinged with a bit of self-loathing for the impact of your species. The largest man-made object is now an even bigger collection of human waste. It’s not a landfill, at least not intentially. It’s the size of Africa, some ten million square miles. It’s at the centre of the Pacific ocean and it’s full of plastic refuse. The circular atmospheric currents form a ring of current, inside which there is a still region of ocean where anything drifting into the Pacific accumulates. Non-biodegradable plastics that reach this point will never leave, being broken down by the sun into ever smaller pieces to make their way into the entire marine food chain.
While we’re still a way off from being able to meaningfully extend the functional capabilities of the human body through elective surgery (at least affordably), there’s still plenty of more cosmetic tweaks available. But the lines between personal decoration and function can be blurred, especially when art comes in to play – like this "haptic tattoo" concept from the digital media art department of Berlin University, which could theoretically allow people with restricted or low-function vision to parse information about a person by touch. Granted, it’s not a use that I can envisage a huge demand for, but the concept is interesting – and as a body-modder of sorts, it’s refreshing for me to see things like sub-dermal implants being taken seriously by academia, as opposed to being castigated as a form of primitivism. [Via Technovelgy]
Researchers at a university in Scotland believe that thanks to ever-expanding research into ultra thin nanowires, supercomputers the size of matchboxes might not be more than a decade away. Nanowires, some 1000 times smaller than a human hair, have exhibited strange behaviour due to their small size but the scientists at the University of Edinburgh think they have worked out how to minimise it, leading to their bold prediction.
The department of Physics where I study in Bristol has a massive new nanoscience building nearing completion. The field is full of promising breakthroughs for micro-sized (and so less energy intensive) devices, especially in computing. Anyone hoping to build a palm held supercomputer may well use devices like the holographic nanoassembler coupled with high speed atomic force microscopy to put together such tiny machines. The holographic nanoassembler is especially fascinating research as it never touches the tiny particles, using lasers to manipulate the smallest of objects. Nanowires are also incredibly useful for solar panels, where current efficiency is limited by the large metal substrates that carry electric charge, which obscure some of the sun-collecting surface.