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Innovation & Technology
Weekly
This is the online version of the latest
UNU-Merit I&T Weekly digest which is sent out by
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This week's headlines:
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Publish in Wikipedia or perish |
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Platinum-free fuel cell promises cheap, green power |
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US government lab, 14 firms team up on lithium battery |
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One Laptop Per Child project reaching 600,000 children |
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Gas memory could send spooky messages the full distance |
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Scientists write guide to build supercomputer from Sony Playstation3 |
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How to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage |
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| Publish in Wikipedia or perish |
| Wikipedia, meet RNA. Anyone submitting to a section of the journal RNA
Biology will, in the future, be required to also submit a Wikipedia page
that summarizes the work. The journal will then peer review the page
before publishing it in Wikipedia.
The initiative is a collaboration between the journal and the RNA family
database (Rfam) consortium led by the UK Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
in Hinxton. The aim is to boost the quality of the scientific content on
Wikipedia while using the entries to update the Sanger database.
RNA Biology will require Wikipedia pages from all authors who submit
work to a new section of the journal that describes families of RNA
molecules. The goal is to encourage more scientists who work on RNA to
get involved in creating and updating public data on RNA families, while
being rewarded by the traditional method of a citable publication.
The Sanger Institute created the Rfam database in 2005, and it now
contains data on about 1,200 RNA families from some 200 complete genome
sequences. Sanger last year started to experiment with the idea of using
Wikipedia to improve the database. It set up an RNA subsection on the
encyclopaedia, called RNA WikiProject 2, which has the same entries as
those on the Rfam database. The database is synchronized each night with
Wikipedia, so that any changes made to the Wikipedia pages are
transferred to the corresponding entries in the Rfam database. |
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| Platinum-free fuel cell promises cheap, green power |
| Doing away with the use of the precious metal platinum could lead to a
new class of low-cost fuel cells, engineers at Wuhan University claim.
In a standard fuel cell, a platinum catalyst at one electrode breaks
down hydrogen into protons and electrons. The protons pass through a
proton exchange membrane to a second electrode where they react with
oxygen to produce water. The electrons are siphoned off as electric
current. Platinum has so far been the metal of choice because the
membranes used in fuel cells create a very acidic environment, and the
metal is stable in such corrosive conditions.
Now, though the Chinese team has designed a new membrane that is alkali,
not acidic - making it possible to use a much cheaper, nickel, catalyst.
The team's new polymer proves easy to make into fuel-cell membranes, and
can also be mixed with the catalyst itself - this increases the contact
between the two components and boosts efficiency.
A working prototype of the new low-cost fuel cell shows a 'decent'
performance of 50 milliwatts per square centimetre at 60 °C, according
to the researchers. |
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| US government lab, 14 firms team up on lithium battery |
| Aiming to mass-produce a lithium battery for vehicles, 14 US companies
with expertise in batteries and advanced materials have formed an
alliance with Argonne National Laboratory. The alliance, which includes
battery industry giants such as 3M Co and Johnson Controls-Saft, intends
to secure USD 1bn-2bn in US government funding over the next five years
to build a manufacturing facility with an 'open foundry' for the
participants to pursue the goal of perfecting lithium-ion batteries.
China, Japan and South Korea are the current leaders in lithium battery
research. The best-selling hybrid vehicles such as Toyota's Prius use a
nickel metal hydride battery. Lithium batteries are widely considered to
be the next technological leap forward for electric-powered vehicles, as
they can be recharged in a wall socket like a computer battery.
The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell
Manufacture was modelled after SEMATECH, the successful public-private
venture created in the late 1980s to restore US prominence in computer
semiconductor technology. |
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| One Laptop Per Child project reaching 600,000 children |
| The ultra-cheap XO computer from the One Laptop Per Child project is now
being used by 600,000 children in the developing world.
The XO is a small, 'netbook'-sized laptop built into a very tough,
clamshell casing. It runs Sugar, a Linux-based operating system
developed especially for the XO, and around 30 applications that cover
everything from word processing to games and music making. Twin Wi-Fi
antennas flank a rotating LCD screen, which has a low-power,
black-and-white mode which can be read in direct sunlight. That is a
valuable feature in places where school takes place outdoors.
The laptop's green and white livery is drawn from Nigeria's national
flag, the president having been an early supporter of the project. The
next OLPC model - XO2 - will be launched in 2010. Users so far are
spread across 31 countries, including Peru, Rwanda, and Cambodia.
Palestine will be the next nation to receive a shipment.
An interview with the project's founder, former MIT Media Lab director
Nicholas Negroponte can be read by clicking the link below. |
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| Gas memory could send spooky messages the full distance |
| Quantum entanglement would be the perfect way to communicate data - if
technical hurdles could be overcome. The method involves linking the
quantum properties of two objects such that a change to one is instantly
reflected in the other - offering a whole new way to transmit
information from opposite sides of the globe.
Entanglement has already been exploited as a way to securely share pass
phrases for secret communications, but only over distances of less than
200 kilometres. The inability of the gas-based quantum computer memory
used to hold onto information for more than a fraction of a second is to
blame. Now Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have succeeded in
creating quantum memories that last for 7.2 microseconds - more than two
orders of magnitude longer than previously reported, and time enough to
transmit quantum information over 1000 kilometres.
The team's qubits are stored in gas atoms, encoded into a magnetic
property known as 'spin'. The key to lengthening the attention span of
gas qubits is to shield them from magnetic fields that can distort their
spin and dissolve the stored state. The team has done just that by
encoding the spin information into particular energy levels within the
atoms that are relatively immune to magnetic disturbances. |
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| Scientists write guide to build supercomputer from Sony Playstation3 |
| Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, US, have
created a step-by-step guide to building a home-brewed supercomputer
that can reduce the cost of university and general computing research.
The resource fully illustrates how to create a fully functioning and
high performance supercomputer with the Sony Playstation 3.
Last year, the researchers' construction of a small supercomputer using
eight Sony-donated Playstation 3 gaming consoles made headlines
nationwide in the scientific community. The consoles are used to solve
complex equations designed to predict the properties of gravitational
waves generated by the black holes located at the centre of the
galaxies.
Typically, scientists rent supercomputer time by the hour. A single
simulation can cost more than 5,000 hours at USD 1 per hour on the
National Science Foundation's TeraGrid computing infrastructure.
The guide is freely available to the public under an open source license
at www.ps3cluster.org. |
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| How to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage |
| Most people have got one lying around somewhere: a bottle of cheap,
nasty wine left over from a dinner party just waiting to be offloaded on
someone else. But what if you could turn that bargain-basement plonk
into fine wine in minutes? The secret is an electric field. Pass an
undrinkable, raw red wine between a set of high-voltage electrodes and
it becomes pleasantly quaffable.
Researchers at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou
treated wine with fields of different strengths for different periods of
time. Batches of wine spent 1, 3 or 8 minutes in various electric
fields. The team then analysed the treated wine for chemical changes
that might alter its 'mouth feel' and quality, and passed it to a panel
of 12 experienced wine tasters who assessed it in a blind tasting.
The results were striking. With the gentlest treatment, the harsh,
astringent wine grew softer. Longer exposure saw some of the hallmarks
of ageing emerge- a more mature 'nose', better balance and greater
complexity. The improvements reached their peak after 3 minutes at 600
volts per centimetre: this left the wine well balanced and harmonious,
with a nose of an aged wine and, importantly, still recognisably a
cabernet sauvignon. |
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