Mystery: Brazil Looks for Answers After Huge Blackout

Officials were searching for answers early Wednesday after a power failure blacked out large swaths of Brazil and Paraguay for more than two hours late Tuesday.

The failure of three transmission lines at Itaipu, the world’s largest operating hydroelectric plant, created a domino effect that cut energy to 16 of 27 states in Brazil, including the country’s two largest cities, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and affected an estimated 60 million people. Airports in several cities were briefly shut down, and passengers had to be pulled from subway cars in São Paulo when the system lost power.

Electricity system operators were quick to dismiss the possibility of sabotage at the Itaipu dam and assigned initial blame to an unexplained atmospheric event possibly exacerbated by heavy rains. It was the first time that Itaipu had failed so completely in its 25 years of operation, energy officials said late Tuesday.

Energy experts in both countries said Wednesday that the major blackout was a cautionary sign of the dangers of interconnection and showed the vulnerability in Brazil’s transmission system.

“The interconnection system is necessary in a country that uses a lot of hydroelectric plants, but it needs to better managed,” said Luiz Pinguelli Rosa, a physics professor at the Federal University of Rio, speaking on television.

The power failure recalled the blackout of August 2003 in the northeastern United States, the country’s most widespread electrical blackout in history, which affected 10 million people in southeastern Canada and 45 million people in eight American states.

For Brazilians, Tuesday night’s blackout brought back painful memories of energy shortages in 2001, which led the country to step up its push for more natural gas and hydroelectric power generation. The president at the time, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, instituted nine months of energy rationing, and the country’s perceived energy fallibility was blamed for a considerable decline in Mr. Cardoso’s popularity as he ended his second term in office.

via Brazil Looks for Answers After Huge Blackout – NYTimes.com.

Nanoparticles damage DNA at a distance

Lab tests show that metal nanoparticles can affect DNA without actually coming into contact with it – though the results are difficult to extrapolate to the human body

Nanoparticles of metal can damage the DNA inside cells even if there is no direct contact between them, scientists have found. The discovery provides an insight into how the particles might exert their influence inside the body and points to possible new ways to deliver medical treatments.

The preliminary work also raises questions about the safety of nanoparticles – which are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair and used in everything from sunscreens to electronics – though the researchers point out that the doses they used in their study were higher than anything a person might come into contact with.

They also said it was difficult to extrapolate results from their laboratory tests to the human body.

In the experiment, scientists from the University of Bristol grew a layer of cells and exposed one side to cobalt-chromium nanoparticles. On the other side of this cellular barrier were human cells called fibroblasts. Though the nanoparticles never crossed the cellular barrier, they managed to damage the DNA of the fibrolasts via a cascade of biological signals in the intervening cells.

“We imagined a possibility that, in some way, that material had caused a change in the top cell layer and maybe there’s some sort of signalling going on from the top cell to the middle cell to the bottom cell,” said Patrick Case of the University of Bristol, who led the work.

Case’s team found that the DNA in the fibrolasts had around 10 times as much damage, in terms of breaks in the genetic material, compared with control conditions. DNA damage can lead to various diseases, including cancer, but Case said the changes observed in his experiments did not lead him to believe the fibrolasts were becoming cancerous.

The research team deliberately exposed the barrier cells in their experiment to a dose of nanoparticles thousands of times higher than anything that would occur naturally. “We used high doses of them because we wanted to make sure that the dose we used would cause damage to cells if the cells were exposed. When we measured the damage on the other side of the barrier, to our great surprise, not only did we see damage on the other side of the barrier but we saw as much damage as if we’d not had the barrier at all and had put the materials in contact with the cells underneath.”

via Nanoparticles could damage DNA at a distance | Science | guardian.co.uk.

Engineer Turned a Cellphone Into a Microscope

MICROSCOPES are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive.

Now an engineer, using software that he developed and about $10 worth of off-the-shelf hardware, has adapted cellphones to substitute for microscopes.

“We convert cellphones into devices that diagnose diseases,” said Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, who created the devices. He has formed a company, Microskia, to commercialize the technology.

The adapted phones may be used for screening in places far from hospitals, technicians or diagnostic laboratories, Dr. Ozcan said.

In one prototype, a slide holding a finger prick of blood can be inserted over the phone’s camera sensor. The sensor detects the slide’s contents and sends the information wirelessly to a hospital or regional health center. For instance, the phones can detect the asymmetric shape of diseased blood cells or other abnormal cells, or note an increase of white blood cells, a sign of infection, he said.

Dr. Ozcan’s devices provide a simple solution to a complex problem, said Ahmet Yildiz, an assistant professor of physics and molecular cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

“This is an inexpensive way to eliminate a microscope and sample biological images with a basic cellphone camera instead,” he said. “If you are in a place where getting to a microscope or medical facility is not straightforward, this is a really smart solution.”

Neven Karlovac, the chief executive of Microskia in Los Angeles, said that some of the company’s products would be adaptations of regular cellphones. For phones without cameras, or phones too compact to modify, the company has different designs, including a simple box with a sensing chip that can be plugged into a cellphone or laptop with a USB cord, he said.

via Novelties – How an Engineer Turned a Cellphone Into a Microscope – NYTimes.com.

Seattle team wins $900,000 in Space Elevator Games

A Seattle team has collected a $900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space — an idea spurred by science fiction novels.

The team’s robotic machine raced up more than 2,950 feet of cable dangling from a helicopter.

Powered by a ground-based laser pointed up at the robot’s photo voltaic cells that converted the light into electricity, the LaserMotive machine completed one of its climbs in about three minutes and 48 seconds, good for second-place money.

The contest is intended to encourage development of a theory that originated in the 1960s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke’s 1979 novel “The Fountains of Paradise.”

Space elevators are envisioned as a way to reach space without the risk and expense of rockets.

Instead, electrically powered vehicles would run up and down a cable anchored to a ground structure and extending thousands of miles up to a mass in geosynchronous orbit — the kind of orbit communications satellites are placed in to stay over a fixed spot on the Earth.

LaserMotive LLC was presented the check by Andy Petro, program manager of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, in a ceremony at Dryden Flight Research Facility on Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.

The three-day contest required competitors’ vehicles to get to the top, with rewards possible for completing climbs at two levels of speed. LaserMotive could have claimed $2 million if its robot had climbed faster.

The two other teams, KC Space Pirates of Kansas City, Mo., and the University of Saskatchewan’s Space Design Team, finished out of the money. Neither of their machines made it to the top.

via The Associated Press: Seattle team wins $900,000 in Space Elevator Games.

Secret Anti-Piracy Treaty Turns ISPs into Pirates

A leaked draft of the Internet chapter of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) reveals that ISPs will be held liable for the infringements of their customers, unless they disconnect those accused. The draft aims to strengthen the power of the entertainment industries and other copyright holders, at the cost of the public.

ACTA is an international agreement that aims to target piracy and counterfeiting globally. The degree of secrecy surrounding the negotiations is astonishing. Many institutions, the press and various individuals have requested that participating countries provide an insight into their plans, but none have succeeded thus far.

While the public is denied access to drafts of the controversial agreement, lawmakers continue to receive input from anti-piracy lobbyists such as the RIAA and MPAA. Today, the 6th round of ACTA negotiations have started in Seoul, South Korea, where representatives from the U.S, the European Union, Canada, Australia and several other countries will discuss the treaty’s content.

As happened previously, parts of the document have leaked out to the public and they reveal that the agreement’s scope is even more far-reaching than previously expected. The Internet chapter of ACTA has very little to do with counterfeiting, but adopts many of the same policies that anti-piracy lobbyists have been calling for.

Among other things, the ACTA draft calls for a global three-strikes policy to disconnect alleged file-sharers from the Internet, without solid evidence or a court order. If ISPs won’t do so, they will be held liable for the copyright infringements of their customers. …

via Secret Anti-Piracy Treaty Turns ISPs into Pirates | TorrentFreak.

Mercury probe fly-by maps mysterious inner planet

The US space probe MESSENGER’s third and final fly-by of the planet Mercury in September revealed an almost complete view of the solar system’s smallest planet, leaving only the polar regions to be surveyed, NASA said.

Flying at a low altitude, the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) probe’s cameras have now mapped some 98 percent of Mercury’s surface, and will complete the job after settling into permanent orbit in 2011.

Although the region viewed in September for the first time by spacecraft “was less than 350 miles (563 kilometers) across at the equator, the new images reminded us that Mercury continues to hold surprises,” said Sean Solomon, principal investigator from the Washington-based Carnegie Institution.

Using revolutionary image-capturing technology and a laser altimeter to survey the ground, MESSENGER revealed at close-range regions of the mysterious planet like never before.

Among the details collected during the latest fly-by, the probe captured images of large double-ringed impact basin about 180 miles (290 km) across, NASA said this week.

Brett Denevi, a member of the probe’s imaging team at Arizona State University, said the find could signify the youngest example of volcanic activity ever found on the planet.

The basin is about one billion years old — where most similar features are about four times older — and its inner floor appears to be even younger, said Denevi.

The third survey also revealed an abundance of iron and titanium on the planet’s surface, a surprise for the mission because the two previous fly-bys, earlier this year and in late 2008, observed a low concentration of such materials.

“Now we know Mercury’s surface has an average iron and titanium abundance that is higher than most of us expected, similar to some lunar mare basalts,” said David Lawrence, another member of the MESSENGER research team.

In a grand feat of engineering, the probe has completed almost three-quarters of its 4.9-billion-mile (7.8-billion-kilometer) journey to enter orbit around Mercury.

NASA scientists are combining data from the first two fly-bys and from Mariner 10, which made three passes in 1974 and 1975.

Mercury is the closest of all the planets to the sun, and because of the high-risks of its proximity — the sun’s enormous gravitational pull, and massively high levels of radiation — it is one of the most mysterious bodies in the solar system, even though it is relatively close to Earth.

via Mercury probe fly-by maps mysterious inner planet – Yahoo! News.

Would you like to live to be 1000 years old?

Artificially engendered humans have long been a science fiction staple – from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Huxley’s Brave New World and, most recently, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island – their heroes dehumanised figures depicted amid bleak, biotechnologically devastated landscapes.

But in the year of Darwin’s bicentenary, science fact presses hard on the heels of science fiction. Three decades since Louise Brown, the first ‘test tube baby’, woke to the world, breakthroughs are now trumpeted almost every month. Chinese scientists recently announced that they had cloned the first animals from skin cells. Earlier, British scientists revealed they had manufactured artificial sperm using stem cells from a fiveday- old male embryo.

Human enhancement provokes violent controversy: the American writer Francis Fukuyama branded ‘transhumanism’ (the radical enhancement of humanity by technological means) ‘the world’s most dangerous idea’. But genetic technologies are only one, if perhaps the most controversial, sector on the enhancement front.

Mood and cognitive enhancers such as Ritalin and Modafinil are now widely used. In sport, sophisticated performance enhancers consistently stay one jump ahead of the detecting authorities. At what is called ‘the mind­machine interface’ there are already treatments based on needles inserted into the brains of sufferers from Parkinson’s disease. In future we may well see genetically engineered, digital or nano-level implants. Beyond these lies the vista of life extension.

‘There is a significant chance that my own children will live beyond the age of 120′, says Julian Savulescu, Director of Oxford’s Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. ‘Thereafter we could be looking at two- or three-fold increases in human life spans.’

… ‘Enhancers that extend the healthy human lifespan would be well worth developing’, he adds. ‘Anti-aging research, in particular, deserves a much higher priority, since age-related disease is the most common cause of death globally.’ Ultimately, he predicts ‘our risk of dying in any given year might be like that of someone in their late teens or early twenties. Life expectancy would then be around 1,000 years.’

via Woe, Superman?.

If we lived as if we were going to be around for the next 1000 years, I think we would take better care of the planet.

Chemists describe solar energy progress and challenges, including the ‘artificial leaf’

Scientists are making progress toward development of an “artificial leaf” that mimics a real leaf’s chemical magic with photosynthesis — but instead converts sunlight and water into a liquid fuel such as methanol for cars and trucks. That is among the conclusions in a newly-available report from top authorities on solar energy who met at the 1st Annual Chemical Sciences and Society Symposium. The gathering launched a new effort to initiate international cooperation and innovative thinking on the global energy challenge.

The three-day symposium, which took place in Germany this past summer, included 30 chemists from China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was organized through a joint effort of the science and technology funding agencies and chemical societies of each country, including the U. S. National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The symposium series was initiated though the ACS Committee on International Activities in order to offer a unique forum whereby global challenges could be tackled in an open, discussion-based setting, fostering innovative solutions to some of the world’s most daunting challenges.

A “white paper” entitled “Powering the World with Sunlight,” describes highlights of the symposium and is available along with related materials here.

“The sun provides more energy to the Earth in an hour than the world consumes in a year,” the report states. “Compare that single hour to the one million years required for the Earth to accumulate the same amount of energy in the form of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not a sustainable resource, and we must break our dependence on them. Solar power is among the most promising alternatives.”

via Chemists describe solar energy progress and challenges, including the ‘artificial leaf’.

Remote controll your car by iPhone?

…Do you remember the scene from the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies,” when 007 escaped from almost certain death by using a remote-controlled BMW? Researchers at the German university [Germany's Freie Universitat of Berlin] announced last week the release of an iPhone app that allows you to remotely control your car, operating the steering, brakes, and accelerator while watching the view out of your windscreen on your iPhone screen.

The signals from a tiny video camera placed on the dashboard allows the user to see a driver’s view out the windscreen, while the commands issued from the iPhone are transmitted by radio to a receiver installed in the car’s transmission, allowing the user to manipulate the vehicle from as far away as the fourth floor of a building.

Both the car, the remote software, and the transmitters were developed by the artificial intelligence group at the University, and according to Professor Raul Rojas, who heads up the team, that the ultimate goal of the project is a 100 percent autonomous car.

That makes sense considering that the car used in the project — dubbed “The Spirit of Berlin” — first made headlines back in 2007, when it was used to negotiate streets and highways without a driver at the wheel, using information from the on-board satellite navigation system, laser range sensors, and strategically placed video cameras.

Originally developed under grants from the Berlin Police Department, the Microsoft Academic Alliance, and IBM Deutschland, the Spirit of Berlin is able to recognize pedestrians, cars, motorcycles, and other road users, as well as red lights and traffic signs, and was accepted as an entry in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, a race for robotic cars that takes place annually in California.

No firm release date has been announced on the IPhone apps store, though a spokesman for the University has said not to expect a release this year. …

via An app that 007 would approve of | CapeCodOnline.com.

Rocketeers Win $1 Million in Lunar Lander Contest

A California-based team of engineers has snagged a $1 million NASA prize by winning a pitched competition to fly homemade rockets on mock moon landing missions.

Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., successfully flew its rocket Xoie (pronounced Zoey) twice within a set time limit to qualify for the top Level 2 prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a NASA-sponsored contest to build mock lunar landers.

The Masten team beat longtime front-runner Armadillo Aerospace, a Texas-based team led by video game developer John Carmack, with precision flying on Oct. 30 that gave their Xoie vehicle the best landing accuracy of the multi-month competition. An award ceremony is set for Thursday in Washington, D.C.

“This was really the horse race that we were always hoping it would be,” Will Pomerantz, senior director of space prizes for the X Prize Foundation, told SPACE.com. “To come down and be so close, and have so many teams going back to back to back here at the end of the window, I think, has exceeded our expectations in a way that we’re thrilled about.”

The X Prize Foundation, which awarded the $10 million Ansari X Prize for privately-built suborbital manned spacecraft in 2004, has managed the lunar lander competition for NASA since it began in 2006. Northrop Grumman, the company that built NASA’s original moon landers for the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s, supported the event.  …

it was Masten Space Systems, led by engineer David Masten, which won last week after pushing through a communications glitch, a pad fire and a truck stuck in the sand to take home top billing. During an extra day of competition, Masten’s Xoie rocket flew twice with a landing accuracy of about 7 1/2 inches (19 cm).

“I can’t say enough good about the Masten team,” Masten said in a statement. “They take my crazy ideas and make them work.”

With first place for Level 2 in Masten’s hands, Armadillo Aerospace will take home the second place prize of $500,000.

Rockets built by two other California-based teams – Unreasonable Rocket led by a father-son team of Paul Breed, Sr. and Paul Breed, Jr., of Solano Beach and BonNova of Tarzana – failed to qualify for the challenge.

With all $2 million of NASA’s Lunar Lander Challenge prize money awarded, the competition is effectively over, unless the space agency opts to sponsor another round of competition.

via SPACE.com — Rocketeers Win $1 Million in Lunar Lander Contest.