Topic: SCIENCE - on May 12, 2007 at 4:38:00 PM CEST
Asphalt-Munching Bacteria Discovered
Vehicles may crowd the asphalt of downtown Los Angeles freeways above ground, but below ground hundreds of newly discovered bacteria thrive by munching on heavy oil and natural asphalt.
Trapped in the Rancho La Brea tar pits 28,000 years ago, the bacteria are equipped with special enzymes that can break down petroleum, environmental scientists at the University of California, Riverside report in a recent issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on May 3, 2007 at 2:18:00 PM CEST
Beer maker, scientists to create energy
Scientists and Australian beer maker Foster's are teaming up to generate clean energy from brewery waste water — by using sugar-consuming bacteria.
The experimental technology was unveiled Wednesday by scientists at Australia's University of Queensland, which was given a $115,000 state government grant to install a microbial fuel cell at a Foster's Group brewery near Brisbane, the capital of Queensland state.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on May 3, 2007 at 2:16:00 PM CEST
Hot-air powered railway to harvest energy from cars
An American architect has come up with a scheme, now picked up on Slashdot, to harvest the wind generated by fast-moving motor vehicles and use it to power a light-rail network running alongside the highway.
The idea is that sections of dividing barriers would be replaced by rows of Darius turbines, which would whirl in the wakes of the cars and trucks speeding along on either side and generate loads of electricity. Mark Oberholzer, a greenly-positioned Houston architect, had originally proposed no more than this, back in 2006. This year, however, he has refined his ideas.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on May 3, 2007 at 12:26:00 PM CEST
Rare Skeleton, Jewels Found in Pyramid
Archeologists have uncovered the 1,300-year-old skeleton of a ruler or priest of the ancient Tiwanaku civilization together with precious jewels inside a much-looted pyramid in western Bolivia.
The bones are "in very good condition" and belong to either "a ruler or a priest," Roger Angel Cossio, the Bolivian archeologist who made the discovery, told Reuters on Wednesday.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 24, 2007 at 12:29:00 PM CEST
'Kryptonite' discovered in mine
Kryptonite is no longer just the stuff of fiction feared by caped superheroes.
A new mineral matching its unique chemistry - as described in the film Superman Returns - has been identified in a mine in Serbia.
According to movie and comic-book storylines, kryptonite is supposed to sap Superman's powers whenever he is exposed to its large green crystals.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 20, 2007 at 11:28:00 AM CEST
Forscher entdecken natürlichen HIV-Blocker
Eiweißfragment stoppt im Labor sogar Viren, die gegen andere Wirkstoffe resistent geworden sind
Deutsche Wissenschaftler haben im menschlichen Blut einen natürlichen HIV-Blocker entdeckt. Das Eiweißfragment wirkt mithilfe eines anderen Mechanismus als bisher bekannte Hemmstoffe und kann eine Reihe von verschiedenen HIV-Varianten abwehren – auch solche, die gegen bisherige antivirale Wirkstoffe resistent sind. So könnten neue, noch wirksamere Medikamente gegen die Immunschwächekrankheit Aids entwickelt werden, hoffen die Forscher.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 18, 2007 at 10:59:00 AM CEST
Another chapter in the story of the world’s most mysterious book
Gordon Rugg’s work showed that the Voynich Manuscript could have been hoaxed. Whether or not the manuscript actually was a hoax was another question. A key problem was finding a suitable type of statistical analysis.
A breakthrough comes with the publication in Cryptologia this April of an article by Austrian researcher Dr Andreas Schinner, a theoretical physicist and software engineer at the Johannes Kepler University. Schinner analysed the text of the manuscript using specialist statistics capable of handling quasi-stochastic distributions, and found that the manuscript’s statistical properties were consistent with a hoax consisting of meaningless gibberish produced using Rugg’s method or a similar quasi-random method.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 18, 2007 at 10:53:00 AM CEST
Das Geheimnis des mysteriösen Voynich-Codes
Eine der rätselhaftesten mittelalterlichen Handschriften ist wahrscheinlich das raffinierte Werk eines Schelms: Der österreichische Wissenschaftler Andreas Schinner bekräftigt nach einer Analyse des Texts die Vermutung, das in einer Geheimschrift verfasste Voynich-Manuskript enthalte lediglich bedeutungsloses Geschwafel. Wie er zeigte, unterliegt die Wortfolge im Manuskript einer gewissen Regelmäßigkeit und unterscheidet sich damit von in natürlichen Sprachen geschriebenen Texten. Die so genannte Schabernack-Hypothese würde erklären, warum es Kryptologen bisher nicht gelang, dem 250-seitigen Buch eine chiffrierte Botschaft zu entlocken.
wissenschaft.de Good scans of the Voynich Manuscript are hard to find. These are from the Yale Library (download instructions), though unfortunately in a proprietary graphics format, which I converted to jpeg.Voynich-Manuskript [wikipedia]
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 17, 2007 at 1:52:00 PM CEST
Gravity-B proves Einstein right
The first data from Gravity Probe-B has confirmed that Einstein was a pretty clever chap who knew what he was talking about when it came to space, time, and the universe.
The team working on the mission have demonstrated the so-called geodetic effect, the amount by which the Earth's mass distorts local space time.
So far, the figures are fairly broad brush, but the scientists say by the end of the year they expect to have significantly refined their results.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 15, 2007 at 5:27:00 PM CEST
Brain, not heart, causes high blood pressure: researchers
The brain, not the heart is responsible for high blood pressure, according to details of a study by British researchers released Sunday.
The scientists said that hypertension, which can lead to heart attacks, strokes and kidney damage, is an inflammatory vascular disease of the brain rather than the heart, as previously thought.
They discovered that a protein located in the brain, JAM-1, trapped white blood cells, which can then cause inflammation and obstruct blood flow, leading to poor oxygen supply to the brain.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 13, 2007 at 10:56:00 AM CEST
Who are you calling chicken? T. rex's closest living relative found on the farm
Scientists have at last uncovered the closest living relative of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex, the most feared and famous of all the dinosaurs. For the first time, researchers have managed to sequence proteins from the long-extinct creature, leading them to the discovery that many of the molecules show a remarkable similarity to those of the humble chicken.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on April 11, 2007 at 12:15:00 PM CEST
Lithium Ion batteries to yield longer recharge times
Nanostructured batteries expected to benefit electric vehicles as well as consumer electronics. Based on a process called 'nanostructuring', the new batteries will be built in very small sizes - measurable in nanometres - to shorten the distance between electrodes on either end of a Li-ion battery.
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