Science
DARPA produces 10 million flu vaccine doses in one month
A familiar news topic during the flu season is the difficulties that the authorities face in producing enough flu vaccine fast enough to control the outbreak. That’s a serious enough problem, but when the influenza outbreak turns out to be the start of a global pandemic, then hundreds of millions of lives could be at risk. To combat this, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has developed a new way of making vaccines that has turned out 10 million doses of H1N1 influenza vaccine in a month, in a recent test run. Read More
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has released a new video showing the progress of its Phoenix project, which aims at salvaging parts from defunct communications satellites to build new ones. Based on a new class of nanosatellites and a robotic “tender,” its purpose is to use repurposed satellites to construct a new communications net for the military at low cost. Read More
Given the horrific event that occurred last month in Newtown, Connecticut, it’s not surprising that we’re seeing a rise in products designed specifically to protect children against shootings in schools. One of the latest such devices is a bulletproof dry-erase whiteboard. Read More
Despite its numerous wondrous properties, a propensity to stick together and be difficult to flatten out once crumpled can make working with graphene difficult and limit its applications. Engineers at Duke University have now found that by attaching graphene to a stretchy polymer film, they are able to crumple and then unfold the material, resulting in a properties that lend it to a broader range of applications, including artificial muscles. Read More
Researchers at the University of Buffalo have created spherical silicon nanoparticles they claim could lead to hydrogen generation on demand becoming a “just add water” affair. When the particles are combined with water, they rapidly form hydrogen and silicic acid, a nontoxic byproduct, in a reaction that requires no light, heat or electricity. In experiments, the hydrogen produced was shown to be relatively pure by successfully being used to power a small fan via a small fuel cell. Read More
New “super gel” is liquid when cold and stiffens when heated
Gelatins take on a semi-solid state when cool, and become a liquid when heated, right? Well, not always. Chemists from Radboud University Nijmegen, in The Netherlands, have created a “super gel” that behaves in the opposite manner – it’s liquid when cool, and stiffens when heated. What’s more, it reportedly absorbs water 100 times better than other gels. To make it, the researchers copied the protein structure of human cells. Read More
Mathematical model predicts Hollywood blockbusters
With Hollywood movie studios increasingly gambling astronomical sums of money on the next big thing, they might want to pay attention to the work being done by Akira Ishii at Tottori University. His research group claims to have developed a mathematical equation that combines advertising, word-of-mouth, and social networks to predict if a movie will be successful. Read More
Making teleportation more energy-efficient
An international team of researchers has achieved an important theoretical result by finding that quantum teleportation – the process of transporting quantum information at the speed of light, which could in theory be used to teleport macroscopic objects and, one day, even humans – can be achieved in a much more energy-efficient way than was previously thought. Read More
Jupiter and the Moon do a close, slow dance for stargazers
Owners of small telescopes, rejoice! For that matter, on the night of January 21 everyone else can also enjoy the sight of Jupiter and the Moon at nearly the same position on the celestial sphere. Here's our advice on how best to observe this – the closest approach of the Moon and Jupiter until 2026. Read More
Nanoscale spiky balloons being developed for targeted drug delivery
For several years now, scientists have been exploring the use of patches of arrayed microneedles as a means of “injecting” medication through the skin. Researchers at North Carolina State University are now working on something similar, but at a much smaller scale – they're developing tiny needle-covered balloons, to deliver medication to individual cells. Read More