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InD.I.Y.pendent News
Tribal News
* "Peppermint oil and cinnamon could help treat and heal chronic wounds" (2015-07-08, acs.org) [archive.is/vEgku]
Stranger News
* "Researchers find the organization of the human brain to be nearly ideal" (2015-07-06, northeastern.edu) [archive.is/RXAXW]
* "First images of dolphin brain circuitry hint at how they sense sound" (2015-07-08, esciencecommons.blogspot.de, Emory University) [archive.is/fvfN3], video [youtube.com/watch?v=FWOZXIqOcHM]
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* "US team beats Iranians in Robocup football final" (2015-07-22, AFP Newswire) [archive.is/1rxzb]
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* "Droplets Levitate on a Cushion of Blue Light" (2015-08-11, Applied Physics Letters) [archive.is/BPbfU]
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* "New method of quantum entanglement vastly increases how much information can be carried in a photon" (2015-06-29, newsroom.ucla.edu) [archive.is/TlpTS]
* "The Quantum Middle Man" (2015-07-02, oist.jp) [archive.is/ODBb2] [begin excerpt]: Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have identified a system that could store quantum information for longer times, which is critical for the future of quantum computing. Quantum computing -- which aims to use particles on the atomic scale to make calculations and store the results -- has the potential to solve some key problems much faster than current computers. To make quantum computing a reality, scientists must find a system that remains stable long enough to make the calculations. While this is an extremely short time frame, only thousandths of a second, the particles involved are so small that they are easily influenced by their surroundings. If the motion of the particles is disturbed, even a little, it throws off the whole calculation. Nuclei are promising contenders for quantum memory because they are not easily influenced by their surroundings. However, that also makes them extremely difficult to manipulate. Many quantum physicists have tried with little success. Instead of trying control the nucleus directly, the researchers focused on a “middle man” of sorts – the electrons orbiting the nucleus. The nucleus has a tiny internal magnet, called a “magnetic moment,” and the electrons orbiting around it also have magnetic moments that are about 1,000 times larger. Those magnets interact with each other, which is called the “hyperfine interaction.” Information in quantum computing is conveyed by photons, which are individual particles of light, which also make up other nonvisible electromagnetic waves, such as ultraviolet and microwaves. The information transmitted is actually the quantum state of the photon. The quantum state of the photon needs to be transferred to another particle so it will last long enough for the computation to take place. [end excerpt]
* "Smaller, faster, cheaper" (2015-07-28, ethz.ch) [archive.is/0Oel3] [begin excerpt]:
Transmitting large amounts of data, such as those needed to keep the internet running, requires high-performance modulators that turn electric signals into light signals. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed a modulator that is a hundred times smaller than conventional models.
In February 1880 in his laboratory in Washington the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell developed a device which he himself called his greatest achievement, greater even than the telephone: the “photophone”. Bell’s idea to transmit spoken words over large distances using light was the forerunner of a technology without which the modern internet would be unthinkable. Today, huge amounts of data are sent incredibly fast through fibre-optic cables as light pulses. For that purpose they first have to be converted from electrical signals, which are used by computers and telephones, into optical signals. In Bell’s days it was a simple, very thin mirror that turned sound waves into modulated light. Today’s electro-optic modulators are more complicated, but they do have one thing in common with their distant ancestor: at several centimeters they are still rather large, especially when compared with electronic devices that can be as small as a few micrometers.
In a seminal paper in the scientific journal “Nature Photonics”, Juerg Leuthold, professor of photonics and communications at ETH Zurich, and his colleagues now present a novel modulator that is a hundred times smaller and that can, therefore, be easily integrated into electronic circuits. Moreover, the new modulator is considerably cheaper and faster than common models, and it uses far less energy. [end excerpt]
(Photo: Haffner et al. Nature Photonics): Colourized electron microscope image of a micro-modulator made of gold. In the slit in the centre of the picture light is converted into plasmon polaritons, modulated and then re-converted into light pulses.
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* "Key element of human language discovered in bird babble" (2015-06-29, exeter.ac.uk) [archive.is/nGEaJ]. Stringing together meaningless sounds to create meaningful signals was previously thought to be the preserve of humans alone, but a new study has revealed that babbler birds are also able to communicate in this way.
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* "Dark Plumage Helps Birds Survive on Small Islands" (2015-07-22, The Auk: Ornithological Advances) [archive.is/KR1gt] [begin excerpt]: Animal populations on islands tend to develop weird traits over time, becoming big (like Galapagos tortoises) or small (like extinct dwarf elephants) or losing the ability to fly (like the flightless parrots of New Zealand). One less-studied pattern of evolution on islands is the tendency for animal populations to develop “melanism”—that is, dark or black coloration. J. Albert Uy and Luis Vargas-Castro of the University of Miami found an ideal species to study this phenomenon in the Chestnut-bellied Monarch (Monarcha castaneiventris), a bird found in the Solomon Islands. Most have the chestnut belly suggested by their name, but in the subspecies found in the Russell Islands, a few all-black birds coexist with the chestnut-bellied majority. After visiting 13 islands of varying sizes to survey their Chestnut-bellied Monarch populations, Uy and Vargas-Castro confirm in a new paper published this week in The Auk: Ornithological Advances that island size predicts the frequency of melanic birds, with populations on smaller islands including more dark individuals. [end excerpt]
Photo: A typical Chestnut-bellied Monarch (left) vs. a melanic individual (right). Photo credit: A. Uy
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* "Spiders can sail the oceans like ships" (2015-07-03, UPI Newswire) [archive.is/AUKMi]
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* "Stressed out plants send animal-like signals" (2015-07-29, adelaide.edu.au) [archive.is/AAXky] [begin excerpt]: “We’ve known for a long-time that the animal neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is produced by plants under stress, for example when they encounter drought, salinity, viruses, acidic soils or extreme temperatures,” says senior author Associate Professor Matthew Gilliham, ARC Future Fellow in the University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine. “But it was not known whether GABA was a signal in plants. We’ve discovered that plants bind GABA in a similar way to animals, resulting in electrical signals that ultimately regulate plant growth when a plant is exposed to a stressful environment.” [end excerpt]
Ancient News
* "Study: South Africans used milk-based paint 49,000 years ago" (2015-07-01, UPI Newswire) [archive.is/MLHPI]
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* "TAU Among International Researchers to Discover First Evidence of Farming in Mideast" (2015-07-22, aftau.org) [archive.is/Wez3z]
* "Researchers Identify Plant Cultivation in a 23,000-year-old site in the Galilee, 11,000 Years before Earliest-Known Agriculture" (2015-07-29, biu.ac.il) [archive.is/Tv2qn]
The megalithic mysteries of India [archive.is/kev83]. The following photograph is from the link here [archive.is/PpD9k], and shows the entrance of the VADATHIKA ROCK-CUT CAVES in the Nagarjuna Hills. Bihar.
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