Jul

2

BELLA: Building a Table-Top Accelerator

July 2, 2009 | 1 Comment

BELLA: Accelerating Science by Accelerating Electrons: Berkeley Lab scientists stunned the world in 2006 when they proved they could accelerate electrons to very high energies (1 GeV, or a billion electron volts) in a distance of centimeters rather than hundreds of meters. Using the same concepts, those scientists plan to take the project to the [...]

Apr

15

Next Generation Nanofilms

April 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Next generation nanofilms created – new research described in AIP’s the Journal of Chemical Physics. ‘With the human genome in hand, biochemists have cataloged the 3-D structures of thousands of proteins isolated from living cells. But one important class of proteins — those stuck in the cell membranes — has proven difficult to extract and [...]

May

5

Open Access Directory (OAD)

May 5, 2008 | 1 Comment

Press Release: Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at [...]

Jan

20

On the Road to an Antitumor Vaccine

January 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Polymeric Nanoparticles for Tumor Vaccines. ‘The quest for an effective antitumor vaccine has received a boost from the results of work aimed at developing a nanoparticle that delivers tumor antigens to the immune system cells that trigger antibody production. The results of this effort, led by Shinsaku Nakagawa, Ph.D., and Naoki Okada, Ph.D., of Osaka [...]

Jan

16

Scientific American on Science 2.0: An Experiment

January 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?: Wikis, blogs and other collaborative web technologies could usher in a new era of science. Or not.
‘Welcome to a Scientific American experiment in “networked journalism,” in which readers—you—get to collaborate with the author to give a story its final form.
The article is a particularly apt candidate [...]

Jan

16

Touch the Invisible Sky: NASA Unveils Cosmic Images Book in Braille

January 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

NASA Unveils Cosmic Images Book in Braille for Blind Readers. ‘At a ceremony today at the National Federation of the Blind, NASA unveiled a new book that brings majestic images taken by its Great Observatories to the fingertips of the blind.
Touch the Invisible Sky is a 60-page book with color images of nebulae, stars, galaxies [...]

Dec

23

Identifying Tumors with Gold Nanoparticles and ScFv Peptides

December 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Gold nanoparticle probes may allow earlier cancer detection. ‘Using tiny gold particles embedded with dyes, researchers have shown that they can identify tumors under the skin of a living animal. These tools may allow doctors to detect and diagnose cancer earlier and less invasively
Studded with antibody fragments called ScFv peptides that bind cancer cells, the [...]

Oct

29

Bad News for Biofuels: Five-Year Moratorium Proposed

October 29, 2007 | 2 Comments

BBC News: Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’. ‘A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger. The growth in the production of [...]

Oct

28

Supersolidity

October 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Evidence for “Supersolidity” Becomes More Solid. ‘In recent years, no topic in condensed matter physics has been hotter than the study of ultracold solid helium. Subtle experiments suggest that as temperatures dip toward absolute zero, crystalline helium can bizarrely flow like a liquid with no viscosity, a phenomenon known as supersolidity. Now, a new experiment [...]

Oct

9

h-Index for Non-Prominent Scientists: A Case Study by Michael Schreiber

October 9, 2007 | Leave a Comment

A case study of the Hirsch index for 26 non-prominent physicists, Michael Schreiber, 10.1002/andp.200710252. Abstract: ‘The h index was introduced by Hirsch to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. It has been widely used in different fields to show the relevance of the research work of prominent scientists. I have worked out 26 practical cases [...]

Oct

1

Cellulosic Ethanol on Wired Magazine

October 1, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Cellulosic Ethanol: One Molecule Could Cure Our Addiction to Oil. ‘On a blackboard, it looks so simple: Take a plant and extract the cellulose. Add some enzymes and convert the cellulose molecules into sugars. Ferment the sugar into alcohol. Then distill the alcohol into fuel. One, two, three, four — and we’re powering our cars [...]

Sep

28

Economist Article on Biofuels

September 28, 2007 | 1 Comment

Economist: Ethanol, schmethanol. ‘Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong.
SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known [...]