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Can We Detect Quantum Behavior in Viruses?

An illustration of the famous "Schrödinger's Cat" thought experiment. Created with Photoshop CS2 using illustrations from the Commons. (GNU Free Documentation License)

An illustration of the famous "Schrödinger's Cat" thought experiment. Created with Photoshop CS2 using illustrations from the Commons. (GNU Free Documentation License)

The weird world of quantum mechanics describes the strange, often contradictory, behaviour of small inanimate objects such as atoms. Researchers have now started looking for ways to detect quantum properties in more complex and larger entities, possibly even living organisms.

A German-Spanish research group, split between the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), is using the principles of an iconic quantum mechanics thought experiment - Schrödinger’s superpositioned cat – to test for quantum properties in objects composed of as many as one billion atoms, possibly including the flu virus.

New research published today, Thursday 11 March, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society), describes the construction of an experiment to test for superposition states in these larger objects.

Quantum optics is a field well-rehearsed in the process of detecting quantum properties in single atoms and some small molecules but the scale that these researchers wish to work at is unprecedented. (more…)

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Mar 11, 2010 | Categories: Frontiers of Scientific Exploration | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Scavenging Energy Waste to Turn Water Into Hydrogen Fuel

UW-Madison geologist and crystal specialist Huifang Xu.

UW-Madison geologist and crystal specialist Huifang Xu.

Materials scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have designed a way to harvest small amounts of waste energy and harness them to turn water into usable hydrogen fuel.

The process is simple, efficient and recycles otherwise-wasted energy into a useable form.

“This study provides a simple and cost-effective technology for direct water splitting that may generate hydrogen fuels by scavenging energy wastes such as noise or stray vibrations from the environment,” the authors write in a new paper, published March 2 in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. “This new discovery may have potential implications in solving the challenging energy and environmental issues that we are facing today and in the future.”

The researchers, led by UW-Madison geologist and crystal specialist Huifang Xu, grew nanocrystals of two common crystals, zinc oxide and barium titanate, and placed them in water. When pulsed with ultrasonic vibrations, the nanofibers flexed and catalyzed a chemical reaction to split the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

When the fibers bend, asymmetries in their crystal structures generate positive and negative charges and create an electrical potential. This phenomenon, called the piezoelectric effect, has been well known in certain crystals for more than a century and is the driving force behind quartz clocks and other applications. (more…)

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Mar 11, 2010 | Categories: Frontiers of Scientific Exploration | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Shocking Recipe for Making Killer Electrons

Artist's impression of the Cluster constellation. ESA's mission Cluster consists of four identical spacecraft flying in formation between 19 000 and 119 000 km above the Earth. They study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere, or the Sun-Earth connection in 3D. (ESA)

Artist's impression of the Cluster constellation. ESA's mission Cluster consists of four identical spacecraft flying in formation between 19 000 and 119 000 km above the Earth. They study the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere, or the Sun-Earth connection in 3D. (ESA)

Take a bunch of fast-moving electrons, place them in orbit and then hit them with the shock waves from a solar storm. What do you get? Killer electrons. That’s the shocking recipe revealed by ESA’s Cluster mission.

Killer electrons are highly energetic particles trapped in Earth’s outer radiation belt, which extends from 12 000 km to 64 000 km above the planet’s surface. During solar storms their number grows at least ten times and they can be dislodged, posing a threat to satellites. As the name suggests, killer electrons are energetic enough to penetrate satellite shielding and cause microscopic lightning strikes. If these electrical discharges take place in vital components, the satellite can be damaged or even rendered inoperable.

On 7 November 2004, the Sun blasted a solar storm in Earth’s direction. It was composed of an interplanetary shock wave followed by a large magnetic cloud. When the shock wave first swept over the ESA-NASA solar watchdog satellite SOHO, the speed of the solar wind (the constant flow of solar particles) suddenly increased from 500 km/s to 700 km/s.  (more…)

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Mar 11, 2010 | Categories: Frontiers of Scientific Exploration | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

ARS Sends Third Seed Shipment to Norway Seed Vault

svalbard-1A shipment of seed sent by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) earlier this month to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway included a wild Russian strawberry that an expeditionary team braved bears and volcanoes to collect.

The seed shipment–ARS’ third since January 2008–included wild and cultivated soybeans, semi-dwarf wheat and rice cultivars, and other samples maintained in the agency’s National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS). ARS’ goal, over the next 10 to 15 years, is have the majority of the system’s 511,000 collections stored in the vault, which is administered by Norway’s Nordic Genetic Resources Center together with the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

The vault itself is built into a mountainside on Spitsbergen Island, located midway between Norway’s northernmost coast and the North Pole. With this third U.S. shipment, the facility will house more than 500,000 plant accessions obtained from around the world. However, the total storage capacity is likely 10 times that amount, notes plant physiologist David Ellis with ARS’ National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colo. Ellis coordinates the shipments of seed obtained from multiple ARS locations. (more…)

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Mar 11, 2010 | Categories: Human Ecology, Climate Change, Sustainability | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Generating Clean Hydrogen Fuel With Sunlight

Emory University chemists have developed the most potent homogeneous catalyst known for water oxidation, considered a crucial component for generating clean hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight. (Photo by Benjamin Yin, Emory University)

Emory University chemists have developed the most potent homogeneous catalyst known for water oxidation, considered a crucial component for generating clean hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight. (Photo by Benjamin Yin, Emory University)

Emory University chemists have developed the most potent homogeneous catalyst known for water oxidation, considered a crucial component for generating clean hydrogen fuel using only water and sunlight. The breakthrough, published March 11 in the journal Science, was made in collaboration with the Paris Institute of Molecular Chemistry.

The fastest, carbon-free molecular water oxidation catalyst (WOC) to date “has really upped the standard from the other known homogeneous WOCs,” said Emory inorganic chemist Craig Hill, whose lab led the effort. “It’s like a home run compared to a base hit.”

In order to be viable, a WOC needs selectivity, stability and speed. Homogeneity is also a desired trait, since it boosts efficiency and makes the WOC easer to study and optimize. The new WOC has all of these qualities, and it is based on the cheap and abundant element cobalt, adding to its potential to help solar energy go mainstream.

Benjamin Yin, an undergraduate student in Hill’s lab, is the lead author on the Science paper. Emory chemists who are co-authors include Hill, Yurii Gueletii, Jamal Musaev, Zhen Luo and Ken Hardcastle. The U.S. Department of Energy funded the work.

The WOC research is a component of the Emory Bio-inspired Renewable Energy Center, which aims to mimic natural processes such as photosynthesis to generate clean fuel. The next step involves incorporating the WOC into a solar-driven, water-splitting system. (more…)

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Mar 11, 2010 | Categories: Frontiers of Scientific Exploration | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

A Huge Step Toward Mass Production of Graphene

This graphic represents an atom-thin sheet of graphene, a form of carbon that could replace silicon in future electronic devices. Scientists have developed a simple manufacturing method that could allow its mass production. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

This graphic represents an atom-thin sheet of graphene, a form of carbon that could replace silicon in future electronic devices. Scientists have developed a simple manufacturing method that could allow its mass production. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists have leaped over a major hurdle in efforts to begin commercial production of a form of carbon that could rival silicon in its potential for revolutionizing electronics devices ranging from supercomputers to cell phones. Called graphene, the material consists of a layer of graphite 50,000 times thinner than a human hair with unique electronic properties. Their study appears in ACS’ Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

Victor Aristov and colleagues indicate that graphene has the potential to replace silicon in high-speed computer processors and other devices. Standing in the way, however, are today’s cumbersome, expensive production methods, which result in poor-quality graphene and are not practical for industrial scale applications.

Aristov and colleagues report that they have developed “a very simple procedure for making graphene on the cheap.” They describe growing high-quality graphene on the surface of commercially available silicon carbide wafers to produce material with excellent electronic properties. It “represents a huge step toward technological application of this material as the synthesis is compatible with industrial mass production,” their report notes.

Download full text article here:  http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/nl904115h

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Mar 10, 2010 | Categories: Frontiers of Scientific Exploration | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Prehistoric Response to Global Warming Informs Human Planning Today

UB anthropologist Ezra Zubrow and colleagues are investigating climate changes experienced by ancient societies living in remote Arctic regions.

UB anthropologist Ezra Zubrow and colleagues are investigating climate changes experienced by ancient societies living in remote Arctic regions.

Since 2004, University at Buffalo anthropologist Ezra Zubrow has worked intensively with teams of scientists in the Arctic regions of St. James Bay, Quebec, northern Finland and Kamchatka to understand how humans living 4,000 to 6,000 years ago reacted to climate changes.

“The circumpolar north is widely seen as an observatory for changing relations between human societies and their environment,” Zubrow explains, “and analysis of data gathered from all phases of the study eventually will enable more effective collaboration between today’s social, natural and medical sciences as they begin to devise adequate responses to the global warming the world faces today.”

This study, which will collect a vast array of archaeological and paleoenvironmental data, began with the Social Change and the Environment in Nordic Prehistory Project (SCENOP), a major international research study by scientists from the U.S., Canada and Europe of prehistoric sites in Northern Quebec and Finland. (more…)

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Mar 10, 2010 | Categories: Frontiers of Scientific Exploration | Tags: , , | Leave A Comment »

Conquering the Chaos in Modern, Multiprocessor Computers

Luis Ceze, a University of Washington assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

Luis Ceze, a University of Washington assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

Computers should not play dice. That, to paraphrase Einstein, is the feeling of a University of Washington computer scientist with a simple manifesto: If you enter the same computer command, you should get back the same result. Unfortunately, that is far from the case with many of today’s machines. Beneath their smooth exteriors, modern computers behave in wildly unpredictable ways, said Luis Ceze, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

“With older, single-processor systems, computers behave exactly the same way as long as you give the same commands. Today’s computers are non-deterministic. Even if you give the same set of commands, you might get a different result,” Ceze said.

He and UW associate professors of computer science and engineering Mark Oskin and Dan Grossman and UW graduate students Owen Anderson, Tom Bergan, Joseph Devietti, Brandon Lucia and Nick Hunt have developed a way to get modern, multiple-processor computers to behave in predictable ways, by automatically parceling sets of commands and assigning them to specific places. Sets of commands get calculated simultaneously, so the well-behaved program still runs faster than it would on a single processor. (more…)

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Mar 10, 2010 | Categories: Frontiers of Scientific Exploration | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

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