Gravity weighs in on spectroscopy

The visible spectrum of neon and its characteristic emission lines. By Jan Homann via Wikimedia Commo

In 1814 the German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer observed narrow dark lines in the otherwise continuous spectrum of light emitted by the sun. Hundreds of them. As Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen later showed, these lines correspond to the absorption of light by various chemical elements in the sun. Each element has its own unique set of lines that correspond to energetic transition between the electronic states of these atoms. This discovery has laid the foundation to the field of spectroscopy, where the interaction of matter and light is probed.

 

A study published in Nature Physics this week by Hartmut Abele and colleagues from the University of Vienna in Austria now reports how gravity can be used instead to probe quantum states. And they’re not using atoms either, but neutrons, which are the electrically neutral particles in the atom’s core.

These neutrons are produced in nuclear research reactors, for example at the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, which I visited last year. In fact, the experiment by Abele and colleagues was done at ILL because there ultracold neutrons are available for research – “still the only source of ultracold neutrons for users in the world,” says Peter Geltenbort from the ILL, who took part in the experiments.

These ultracold neutrons are so slow that they can be kept in a container. Even though neutrons are subatomic particles that normally can pass easily through matter, when they are sufficiently slow they don’t have enough energy to overcome nuclear forces and pass through the container walls. Instead they’re bounced back.

Here, the ultracold neutrons pass horizontally between two mirrors. The top mirror has a rough surface, which leads to the absorption of neutrons that reach the mirror. However, it is only neutron with enough energy to overcome gravity that reach the top mirror. So, at the bottom mirror neutrons are confined through the hard surface, whereas at the top they are confined by the forces of gravity. Moreover, the absorption of neutrons that reach the top mirror ensures that only neutrons with low energy can pass through the experiment.

Furthermore, the distance between the mirrors is small enough, about 20 to 25 micrometers, to distinguish between quantum states of the neutrons. These quantum states can be seen as standing waves that form between two walls. As neutrons with higher energies are absorbed by the top mirror, those neutrons remaining in the experiment are for the most part in the lowest quantum state.

Next, the researchers wiggle the lower mirror at a fixed frequency, and measure the impact this has on the neutrons after they have passed through the mirrors. They find that for certain resonance frequencies the neutrons are elevated into a higher quantum state. In other words, the experiments can be used to measure the energy difference between two quantum states of neutrons.

This experiment is therefore in direct analogy to optical spectroscopy, say on neon atoms. The quantum states of the neutrons correspond to the electronic states of neon, and the resonant movements of the bottom mirror correspond to the oscillations of the lightwave.

The implications, however, are quite different.

In spectroscopy, typically the interesting part are the electronic states of atoms and molecules. Here, such experiments could be used to learn more about gravity itself. Small deviations in the gravitational force would have a direct impact on the experiments, as these would alter the energy difference between the quantum states of the neutrons. “New forces would change or modify Newtonian gravity,” explains Abele. “Such effects are for example predicted by string theories,” adds Tobias Jenke from the team.

Furthermore, Abele says, the sensitivity of the approach beats competing techniques that use mechanical vibrations occurring in micro-scale materials. Geoffrey Greene from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, United States, who works on neutron scattering experiments, agrees. “To date the best limits have been seen using very sensitive force balances, but these are limited to ranges greater than microns. Because the neutron is uncharged (and essentially non-polarizable), is massive, and is point-like down to the femtometer scale, it, in principle, could be used as a probe for very short range forces.”

Both, Greene and Abele stress that one particularly interesting force arising from string theories, and that could be verified for the first time, are so-called axion fields. In the same way that Fraunhofer’s discovery opened the door to the spectroscopy of atoms and molecules, the realization of this new spectroscopic tool could lead to an entirely new insight into gravity and related forces.

Reference:

Jenke, T., Geltenbort, P., Lemmel, H., & Abele, H. (2011). Realization of a gravity-resonance-spectroscopy technique Nature Physics DOI: 10.1038/NPHYS1970

Semiconductor optical switches reach the speed of light

Fibre optic cables transmit information so fast because they can make use of the unique properties of light and transmit many data channels at the same time. The digital 1s and 0s the light beams carry are imprinted onto the beams by semiconductors that in quick succession turn the light beam on and off. Unfortunately, that also puts a limit on the possible data rate, as materials switch slower than light. There are all-optical switches operating at the speed of light using special crystals, but what is needed are solutions that can be fabricated on a chip.

This is made possible now. Georgios Ctistis, Willem Vos, Jean-Michel Gérard and colleagues from the University of Twente and the FOM-Institute Amolf in the Netherlands, and the Institute for Nanoscience and Cryogenics in Grenoble in France have demonstrated that using a material to switch light is not a drawback anymore. They are able to switch a light beam within a semiconductor device at speeds of 0.3 picoseconds, where a picosecond is a millionth of a millionth second. That’s so fast that it approaches the limit set by the speed of light.

The principle of the ultimate optical switch. Top: a microcavity blocks the transmission of the red signal beam. Middle: in the presence of a control beam the cavity changes its properties and lets the beam pass. Bottom: as the control beam is off again, the switch also turns off. Figure provided by the authors.

In a conventional optical switch, a light beam (or an electrical voltage), is used to excite electrons in a semiconductor. These electrons then change the material’s optical properties in a way that switches the signal beam on or off. But this is a comparatively slow process. The idea here is to separate the optical effects from materials properties, which would only slow the device down. ”The key advance is that both the switch-on and -off times of the semiconductor microcavity is completely determined by the properties of light itself,” says Vos.

The way this works is to use a microcavity, where light is confined between two mirrors. The mirrors as well as the microcavity are made of precisely controlled layers of the semiconductors GaAs and AlAs, because these work particularly well for the wavelengths used in telecommunications.

The switching process involves two laser beams. It is important that these two lasers, the signal beam as well as the control beam that triggers the switching, have energies that are below the bandgap energy of the semiconductors. That way, the photons in the laser beam can’t excite electrons in the semiconductor, which as mentioned would slow down the switching. In fact, the energy of the signal beam is even less than half of the bandgap energy, so that there is not even the chance of two photons combining together to excite an electron.

Switching occurs only for that brief moment where the signal and the control beam come together. In that moment, the semiconductor microcavity, which normally would block the signal beam, lets it pass. This is due to an nonlinear optical effect, the so-called electronic Kerr effect. Again, electrons are not really relevant here, as the combined energy of signal and control beam isn’t enough to excite electrons above the bandgap. Rather, the increased light intensity, through the Kerr effect, modifies the refractive index of the semiconductors. This change in materials parameters changes the resonance frequency of the microcavity, so that light that otherwise would be trapped can escape.

Being a non-linear optical effect means that the laser intensities remain quite large says Vos. Therefore, he says, the next step now is to “switch to tiny micron-sized cavities (e.g. micropillars, photonic crystal) with weak pulses from on-chip lasers.” Smaller cavities require less switching power.

Either way, switching speeds on the order of a picosecond correspond to signal frequencies in the THz regime, which is what next generation optoelectronic switches need to achieve.  However, at this stage the researchers did not yet show successive switching at such frequencies. That’s one of their next tasks, comments Vos. “We are working hard to demonstrate repetitive switching where consecutive switch events occur every ps or so.” It won’t get much faster than that.

Reference:

Ctistis, G., Yuce, E., Hartsuiker, A., Claudon, J., Bazin, M., Gérard, J., & Vos, W. (2011). Ultimate fast optical switching of a planar microcavity in the telecom wavelength range Applied Physics Letters, 98 (16) DOI: 10.1063/1.3580615

NASA, GM Take Giant Leap in Robotic Technology

NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries.


Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side by side with people. Using leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants.


The two organizations, with the help of engineers from Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston, developed and built the next iteration of Robonaut. Robonaut 2, or R2, is a faster, more dexterous and more technologically advanced robot. This new generation robot can use its hands to do work beyond the scope of prior humanoid machines. R2 can work safely alongside people, a necessity both on Earth and in space.


"This cutting-edge robotics technology holds great promise, not only for NASA, but also for the nation," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "I'm very excited about the new opportunities for human and robotic exploration these versatile robots provide across a wide range of applications."


NASA and General Motors have come together to develop the next generation dexterous humanoid robot. The robots -- called Robonaut2 -- were designed to use the same tools as humans, which allows them to work safely side-by-side humans on Earth and in space. Credit: NASA.


"For GM, this is about safer cars and safer plants," said Alan Taub, GM's vice president for global research and development. "When it comes to future vehicles, the advancements in controls, sensors and vision technology can be used to develop advanced vehicle safety systems. The partnership's vision is to explore advanced robots working together in harmony with people, building better, higher quality vehicles in a safer, more competitive manufacturing environment."


The idea of using dexterous, human-like robots capable of using their hands to do intricate work is not new to the aerospace industry. The original Robonaut, a humanoid robot designed for space travel, was built by the software, robotics and simulation division at Johnson in a collaborative effort with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency 10 years ago. During the past decade, NASA gained significant expertise in building robotic technologies for space applications. These capabilities will help NASA launch a bold new era of space exploration.


"Our challenge today is to build machines that can help humans work and explore in space," said Mike Coats, Johnson's center director. "Working side by side with humans, or going where the risks are too great for people, machines like Robonaut will expand our capability for construction and discovery."


NASA and GM have a long, rich history of partnering on key technologies, starting in the 1960s with the development of the navigation systems for the Apollo missions. GM also played a vital role in the development of the Lunar Rover Vehicle, the first vehicle to be used on the moon.


For more information on Robonaut and video, visit: http://robonaut.jsc.nasa.gov

Robots Created That Develop Emotions in Interaction With Humans

The first prototype robots capable of developing emotions as they interact with their human caregivers and expressing a whole range of emotions have been finalised by researchers.

Led by Dr. Lola Cañamero at the University of Hertfordshire, and in collaboration with a consortium of universities and robotic companies across Europe, these robots differ from others in the way that they form attachments, interact and express emotion through bodily expression.

Developed as part of the interdisciplinary project FEELIX GROWING (Feel, Interact, eXpress: a Global approach to development with Interdisciplinary Grounding), funded by the European Commission and coordinated by Dr. Cañamero, the robots have been developed so that they learn to interact with and respond to humans in a similar way as children learn to do it, and use the same types of expressive and behavioural cues that babies use to learn to interact socially and emotionally with others.

The robots have been created through modelling the early attachment process that human and chimpanzee infants undergo with their caregivers when they develop a preference for a primary caregiver.

They are programmed to learn to adapt to the actions and mood of their human caregivers, and to become particularly attached to an individual who interacts with the robot in a way that is particularly suited to its personality profile and learning needs. The more they interact, and are given the appropriate feedback and level of engagement from the human caregiver, the stronger the bond developed and the amount learned.

The robots are capable of expressing anger, fear, sadness, happiness, excitement and pride and will demonstrate very visible distress if the caregiver fails to provide them comfort when confronted by a stressful situation that they cannot cope with or to interact with them when they need it.

"This behaviour is modelled on what a young child does," said Dr Cañamero. "This is also very similar to the way chimpanzees and other non-human primates develop affective bonds with their caregivers."

This is the first time that early attachment models of human and non-human primates have been used to program robots that develop emotions in interaction with humans.

"We are working on non-verbal cues and the emotions are revealed through physical postures, gestures and movements of the body rather than facial or verbal expression," Dr Cañamero added.

The researchers led by Dr. Cañamero at the University of Hertfordshire are now extending the prototype further and adapting it as part of the EU project ALIZ-E, which will develop robots that learn to be carer/companion for diabetic children in hospital settings.

Within this project, coordinated by Dr Tony Belpaeme of the University of Plymouth, the Hertfordshire group will lead research related to the emotions and non-linguistic behaviour of the robots. The future robot companions will combine non-linguistic and linguistic communication to interact with the children and become increasingly adapted to their individual profiles in order to support both, therapeutic aspects of their treatment and their social and emotional wellbeing.

The FEELIX GROWING project has been funded by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Commission. The other partners in the project are: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France), Université de Cergy Pontoise (France), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), University of Portsmouth (U.K.), Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (Greece), Entertainment Robotics (Denmark), and Aldebaran Robotics (France).
 

Researchers Give Robots the Capability for Deceptive Behavior

 A robot deceives an enemy soldier by creating a false trail and hiding so that it will not be caught. While this sounds like a scene from one of the Terminator movies, it's actually the scenario of an experiment conducted by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology as part of what is believed to be the first detailed examination of robot deception.

"We have developed algorithms that allow a robot to determine whether it should deceive a human or other intelligent machine and we have designed techniques that help the robot select the best deceptive strategy to reduce its chance of being discovered," said Ronald Arkin, a Regents professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing.

The results of robot experiments and theoretical and cognitive deception modeling were published online on September 3 in the International Journal of Social Robotics. Because the researchers explored the phenomena of robot deception from a general perspective, the study's results apply to robot-robot and human-robot interactions. This research was funded by the Office of Naval Research.

In the future, robots capable of deception may be valuable for several different areas, including military and search and rescue operations. A search and rescue robot may need to deceive in order to calm or receive cooperation from a panicking victim. Robots on the battlefield with the power of deception will be able to successfully hide and mislead the enemy to keep themselves and valuable information safe.

"Most social robots will probably rarely use deception, but it's still an important tool in the robot's interactive arsenal because robots that recognize the need for deception have advantages in terms of outcome compared to robots that do not recognize the need for deception," said the study's co-author, Alan Wagner, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

For this study, the researchers focused on the actions, beliefs and communications of a robot attempting to hide from another robot to develop programs that successfully produced deceptive behavior. Their first step was to teach the deceiving robot how to recognize a situation that warranted the use of deception. Wagner and Arkin used interdependence theory and game theory to develop algorithms that tested the value of deception in a specific situation. A situation had to satisfy two key conditions to warrant deception -- there must be conflict between the deceiving robot and the seeker, and the deceiver must benefit from the deception.

Once a situation was deemed to warrant deception, the robot carried out a deceptive act by providing a false communication to benefit itself. The technique developed by the Georgia Tech researchers based a robot's deceptive action selection on its understanding of the individual robot it was attempting to deceive.

To test their algorithms, the researchers ran 20 hide-and-seek experiments with two autonomous robots. Colored markers were lined up along three potential pathways to locations where the robot could hide. The hider robot randomly selected a hiding location from the three location choices and moved toward that location, knocking down colored markers along the way. Once it reached a point past the markers, the robot changed course and hid in one of the other two locations. The presence or absence of standing markers indicated the hider's location to the seeker robot.

"The hider's set of false communications was defined by selecting a pattern of knocked over markers that indicated a false hiding position in an attempt to say, for example, that it was going to the right and then actually go to the left," explained Wagner.

The hider robots were able to deceive the seeker robots in 75 percent of the trials, with the failed experiments resulting from the hiding robot's inability to knock over the correct markers to produce the desired deceptive communication.

"The experimental results weren't perfect, but they demonstrated the learning and use of deception signals by real robots in a noisy environment," said Wagner. "The results were also a preliminary indication that the techniques and algorithms described in the paper could be used to successfully produce deceptive behavior in a robot."

While there may be advantages to creating robots with the capacity for deception, there are also ethical implications that need to be considered to ensure that these creations are consistent with the overall expectations and well-being of society, according to the researchers.

"We have been concerned from the very beginning with the ethical implications related to the creation of robots capable of deception and we understand that there are beneficial and deleterious aspects," explained Arkin. "We strongly encourage discussion about the appropriateness of deceptive robots to determine what, if any, regulations or guidelines should constrain the development of these systems." 

How Beliefs Shape Effort and Learning

 If it was easy to learn, it will be easy to remember. Psychological scientists have maintained that nearly everyone uses this simple rule to assess their own learning.

Now a study published in an upcoming issue Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests otherwise: "Individuals with different theories about the nature of intelligence tend to evaluate their learning in different ways," says David B. Miele of Columbia University, who conducted the study with Bridgid Finn of Washington University in St. Louis and Daniel C. Molden of Northwestern University.


It has long been known that these theories have important effects on people's motivation to learn. So-called "entity theorists" believe each person possesses a fixed level of intelligence, and no amount of effort can change it. "As a result, entity theorists tend to disengage when something is challenging. They decide that they're not really capable of learning it," says Miele. Meanwhile, "incremental theorists" believe that intelligence is malleable. "They keep forging ahead when faced with a challenge, believing that more time and effort will yield better results."

To test whether these theories also affect the way people assess their own learning, the researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, 75 English-speaking students studied 54 pairs of Indonesian to English translations that varied in terms of how effortful they were to learn. The easy pairs consisted of English words that were nearly identical to their Indonesian counterpart (e.g, Polisi-Police) and required little effort to learn; many of the medium pairs were still connected in some way (e.g, Bagasi-Luggage) but required more effort to learn than the easy pairs; and the difficult pairs were entirely dissimilar (e.g., Pembalut-Bandage) and required the most effort to learn. After studying each pair for as long as they liked, the participants reported how confident they were about being able to recall the English word when supplied the Indonesian word on an upcoming test. Once they had finished studying and reporting their "judgments of learning" for all of the pairs, they then took the recall test. Finally, at the end of the experiment, they completed a questionnaire which assessed the extent to which they believed that intelligence is fixed or changeable.


The results of the experiment showed that, although all of the students did better at recalling the easy pairs compared to the difficult pairs, only entity theorists (who expressed more confidence the less time they spent studying) accurately predicted the magnitude of this effect. Incremental theorists (who expressed more confidence the more time they spent studying) tended to be overconfident about how likely they were to remember the difficult pairs and under confident about how likely they were to remember the easy pairs. This finding was also supported by the results of the second experiment. Thus, simply holding different beliefs about the nature of intelligence can lead people to form very different impressions of their own learning.



And which theory of intelligence is correct? "The truth lies somewhere in between," he says. "We have to be sensitive to personal limitations" -- say, a learning disability -- "and at the same time not feel those limitations are the end all-be all. Effort can always lead to some amount of improvement, but you also need to be aware of the law of diminishing returns." 

A Galactic Rose Highlights Hubble's 21st Anniversary

In celebration of the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers pointed Hubble at an especially photogenic group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273.

This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a group of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The larger of the spiral galaxies, known as UGC 1810, has a disc that is tidally distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. The swathe of blue jewels across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light.

The smaller, nearly edge-on companion shows distinct signs of intense star formation at its nucleus, perhaps triggered by the encounter with the companion galaxy.

A series of uncommon spiral patterns in the large galaxy are a telltale sign of interaction. The large, outer arm appears partially as a ring, a feature that is seen when interacting galaxies actually pass through one another. This suggests that the smaller companion actually dived deeply, but off-centre, through UGC 1810. The inner set of spiral arms is highly warped out of the plane, with one of the arms going behind the bulge and coming back out the other side. How these two spiral patterns connect is still not precisely known.

A possible mini-spiral may be visible in the spiral arms of UGC 1810 to the upper right. It is noticeable how the outermost spiral arm changes character as it passes this third galaxy, from smooth with lots of old stars (reddish in colour) on one side, to clumpy and extremely blue on the other. The fairly regular spacing of the blue star-forming knots fits with what is seen in the spiral arms of other galaxies and can be predicted from the known instabilities in the gas contained within the arm.

The larger galaxy in the UGC 1810-UGC 1813 pair has a mass that is about five times that of the smaller galaxy. In unequal pairs such as this, the relatively rapid passage of a companion galaxy produces the lopsided or asymmetric structure in the main spiral. Also in such encounters, the starburst activity typically begins earlier in the minor galaxy than in the major galaxy. These effects could be due to the fact that the smaller galaxies have consumed less of the gas present in their nucleus, from which new stars are born.

Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. The image shows a tenuous tidal bridge of material between the two galaxies that are separated by tens of thousands of light-years from each other.

The interaction was imaged on 17 December 2010, with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

This Hubble image is a composite of data taken with three separate filters on WFC3 that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.

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Scientists engineer nanoscale vaults to encapsulate ‘nanodisks’ for drug delivery

• There’s no question, drugs work in treating disease. But can they work better, and safer? In recent years, researchers have grappled with the challenge of administering therapeutics in a way that boosts their effectiveness by targeting specific cells in the body while minimizing their potential damage to healthy tissue.
• The development of new methods that use engineered nanomaterials to transport drugs and release them directly into cells holds great potential in this area. And while several such drug-delivery systems — including some that use dendrimers, liposomes or polyethylene glycol — have won approval for clinical use, they have been hampered by size limitations and ineffectiveness in accurately targeting tissues.
• Now, researchers at UCLA have developed a new and potentially far more effective means of targeted drug delivery using nanotechnology.
• In a study to be published in the May 23 print issue of the journal Small(and currently available online), they demonstrate the ability to package drug-loaded “nanodisks” into vault nanoparticles, naturally occurring nanoscale capsules that have been engineered for therapeutic drug delivery. The study represents the first example of using vaults toward this goal.
• The UCLA research team was led by Leonard H. Rome and included his colleagues Daniel C. Buehler and Valerie Kickhoefer from the UCLA Department of Biological Chemistry; Daniel B. Toso and Z. Hong Zhou from the UCLA Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics; and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA.
• Vault nanoparticles are found in the cytoplasm of all mammalian cells and are one of the largest known ribonucleoprotein complexes in the sub-100-nanometer range. A vault is essentially barrel-shaped nanocapsule with a large, hollow interior — properties that make them ripe for engineering into a drug-delivery vehicles. The ability to encapsulate small-molecule therapeutic compounds into vaults is critical to their development for drug delivery.
• Recombinant vaults are nonimmunogenic and have undergone significant engineering, including cell-surface receptor targeting and the encapsulation of a wide variety of proteins.
• “A vault is a naturally occurring protein particle and so it causes no harm to the body,” said Rome, CNSI associate director and a professor of biological chemistry. “These vaults release therapeutics slowly, like a strainer, through tiny, tiny holes, which provides great flexibility for drug delivery.”
• The internal cavity of the recombinant vault nanoparticle is large enough to hold hundreds of drugs, and because vaults are the size of small microbes, a vault particle containing drugs can easily be taken up into targeted cells.
• With the goal of creating a vault capable of encapsulating therapeutic compounds for drug delivery, UCLA doctoral student Daniel Buhler designed a strategy to package another nanoparticle, known as a nanodisk (ND), into the vault’s inner cavity, or lumen.
• “By packaging drug-loaded NDs into the vault lumen, the ND and its contents would be shielded from the external medium,” Buehler said. “Moreover, given the large vault interior, it is conceivable that multiple NDs could be packaged, which would considerably increase the localized drug concentration.”
• According to researcher Zhou, a professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics and director of the CNSI’s Electron Imaging Center for NanoMachines, electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography studies have revealed that both endogenous and recombinant vaults have a thin protein shell enclosing a large internal volume of about 100,000 cubic nanometers, which could potentially hold hundreds to thousands of small-molecular-weight compounds.
• “These features make recombinant vaults an attractive target for engineering as a platform for drug delivery,” Zhou said. “Our study represents the first example of using vaults toward this goal.”
• “Vaults can have a broad nanosystems application as malleable nanocapsules,” Rome added.
• The recombinant vaults are engineered to encapsulate the highly insoluble and toxic hydrophobic compound all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) using a vault-binding lipoprotein complex that forms a lipid bilayer nanodisk. 

source: University of California – Los Angeles

principals of tesla inventions incorporated in generating free energy/latest developments science technology

Fascinating demonstration of a new energy invention with the potential to vastly transform our world. Using only magnets, two plastic strips, and securing components, this video clip shows how a freestanding device can be built to generate power using nothing but natural magnetic forces. This is only a proof of concept video. There are many variables to be worked out, but the potential is clearly demonstrated. If you take the small model in the video and extend it for 20 feet upwards or so, the magnet should easily jump up 12 feet or more. A simple device could then pull the magnet off the track dropping it down and thus generating energy through gravity by passing through one or more rotors. Double the length and get twice the energy. After dropping, a curved track at the bottom could then slip the magnet right back into the bottom of the device where magnetism would again pull it up, thereby creating perpetual motion while generating power. A circular track might also create a similar effect. Any tinkerers want to play this one and potentially transform our world? For more on the origin, specifications, and future development ideas of this project, see http://www.PerpetualMotors.com. We ask you to spread the word and help to make this exciting project a reality. License is hereby granted for this invention. You are free to copy it, alter it, develop it, and include it in any non-commercial applications free of charge. Invite your friends and colleagues to work on it with you. If you do find a way to make a commercially viable product using this concept and profit financially from it — and we hope you will — then as an acknowledgment for our help in creating something useful, send us a royalty fee of ten percent of sales for units actually sold at the above website. We offer this powerful concept and demonstration into the creative commons. For more on this, please consult the website http://creativecommons.org and look under their licensing section. Let’s join our forces and work together to transform our world for the good of all of us!

Physicists discover new way to visualize warped space and time

When black holes slam into each other, the surrounding space and time surge and undulate like a heaving sea during a storm. This warping of space and time is so complicated that physicists haven’t been able to understand the details of what goes on—until now. “We’ve found ways to visualize warped space-time like never before,” says Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

By combining theory with computer simulations, Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech, Cornell University, and the National Institute for Theoretical Physics in South Africa have developed conceptual tools they’ve dubbed tendex lines and vortex lines.

Using these tools, they have discovered that black-hole collisions can produce vortex lines that form a doughnut-shaped pattern, flying away from the merged black hole like smoke rings. The researchers also found that these bundles of vortex lines—called vortexes—can spiral out of the black hole like water from a rotating sprinkler.

The researchers explain tendex and vortex lines—and their implications for black holes—in a paper that’s published online on April 11 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Tendex and vortex lines describe the gravitational forces caused by warped space-time. They are analogous to the electric and magnetic field lines that describe electric and magnetic forces.

Tendex lines describe the stretching force that warped space-time exerts on everything it encounters. “Tendex lines sticking out of the moon raise the tides on the earth’s oceans,” says David Nichols, the Caltech graduate student who coined the term “tendex.” The stretching force of these lines would rip apart an astronaut who falls into a black hole.

Vortex lines, on the other hand, describe the twisting of space. If an astronaut’s body is aligned with a vortex line, she gets wrung like a wet towel.

When many tendex lines are bunched together, they create a region of strong stretching called a tendex. Similarly, a bundle of vortex lines creates a whirling region of space called a vortex. “Anything that falls into a vortex gets spun around and around,” says Dr. Robert Owen of Cornell University, the lead author of the paper.

Tendex and vortex lines provide a powerful new way to understand black holes, gravity, and the nature of the universe. “Using these tools, we can now make much better sense of the tremendous amount of data that’s produced in our computer simulations,” says Dr. Mark Scheel, a senior researcher at Caltech and leader of the team’s simulation work.

Using computer simulations, the researchers have discovered that two spinning black holes crashing into each other produce several vortexes and several tendexes. If the collision is head-on, the merged hole ejects vortexes as doughnut-shaped regions of whirling space, and it ejects tendexes as doughnut-shaped regions of stretching. But if the black holes spiral in toward each other before merging, their vortexes and tendexes spiral out of the merged hole. In either case—doughnut or spiral—the outward-moving vortexes and tendexes become gravitational waves—the kinds of waves that the Caltech-led Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) seeks to detect.

“With these tendexes and vortexes, we may be able to much more easily predict the waveforms of the gravitational waves that LIGO is searching for,” says Yanbei Chen, associate professor of physics at Caltech and the leader of the team’s theoretical efforts.

Additionally, tendexes and vortexes have allowed the researchers to solve the mystery behind the gravitational kick of a merged black hole at the center of a galaxy. In 2007, a team at the University of Texas in Brownsville, led by Professor Manuela Campanelli, used computer simulations to discover that colliding black holes can produce a directed burst of gravitational waves that causes the merged black hole to recoil—like a rifle firing a bullet. The recoil is so strong that it can throw the merged hole out of its galaxy. But nobody understood how this directed burst of gravitational waves is produced.

Now, equipped with their new tools, Thorne’s team has found the answer. On one side of the black hole, the gravitational waves from the spiraling vortexes add together with the waves from the spiraling tendexes. On the other side, the vortex and tendex waves cancel each other out. The result is a burst of waves in one direction, causing the merged hole to recoil.

“Though we’ve developed these tools for black-hole collisions, they can be applied wherever space-time is warped,” says Dr. Geoffrey Lovelace, a member of the team from Cornell. “For instance, I expect that people will apply vortex and tendex lines to cosmology, to black holes ripping stars apart, and to the singularities that live inside black holes. They’ll become standard tools throughout general relativity.”

The team is already preparing multiple follow-up papers with new results. “I’ve never before coauthored a paper where essentially everything is new,” says Thorne, who has authored hundreds of articles. “But that’s the case here.”

Electronic Pills – Collecting Data Inside The Body

After years in development, wireless devices contained in swallowable capsules are now reaching the market.

Companies such as SmartPill based in Buffalo, New York and Israel-based Given Imaging (PillCam) market capsules the size of vitamin tablets that contain sensors or tiny cameras that collect information as they travel through the gastrointestinal tract before being excreted from the body a day or two later.

These new electronic inventions transmit information such as acidity, pressure and temperature levels or images of the esophagus and intestine to your doctor’s computer for analysis.

Doctors often use invasive methods such as catheters, endoscopic instruments or radioisotopes for collecting information about the digestive tract. So device companies have been developing easier, less intrusive ways, to gather information.

Digestive diseases and disorders can include symptoms such as acid reflux, bloating, heartburn, abdominal pain, constipation, difficulty swallowing or loss of appetite.

“One of the main challenges is determining just what is happening in the stomach and intestines.” says Dr. Anish A. Sheth, Director of the Gastrointestinal Motility Program at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Doctors can inspect the colon and peer into the stomach using endoscopic instruments. But some areas cannot be easily viewed, and finding out how muscles are working can be difficult.

Electronic pills are being used to measure muscle contraction, ease of passage and other factors to reveal information unavailable in the past.

Maple trees can be used to produce electricity to power small gadgets

Recently it was unveiled that maple trees can be used to produce electricity to power small gadgets. A report published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology says that maple trees produce a rather small but still measurable quantity of electricity.

Those of you who have heard about potato batteryprobably are aware that the plant material can produce current. However, the electricity produced but a tree is something completely different.

When creating a potato battery, there is a need of electrodes of two different metals in order to create a charge difference, which would make local electrodes flow. In the new study, scientists used electrodes created of the same material, reports Karen Hopkin for Scientific American. When researchers stuck one electrode into a tree while the other one was stuck into the soil, they noticed that big leaf maples produced a steady voltage of a few hundred millivolts.

In case scientists will continue exploring their finding, in the near future people could use maple trees to power various devices. This is due to the fact that scientist from the University of Washington in Seattle discovered that there’s quite enough electricity flowing in maple trees in order to run an electronic circuit. More inventions and discoveries are available here at www.InfoNIAC.com – please check the links at the bottom of the story.

Because several hundred millivolts is much less than a volt and a half, generated by a AA battery, researchers decided to design a 130-nanometer device that runs just on tree power.

Latest Invention: Solar Cells Thinner Than Human Hair

The new apparatus of Sanyo, the aggregation that not so continued ago appear about its ambition to become one of the better solar manufacturers in the acreage of the ascent sun by 2010, is a solar cell, which, according to the company, is thinner than a animal hair.

The array of Sanyo’s new apparatus is aloof 58 micrometers. The new solar corpuscle was developed to ability a about-face ability of 22.8 percent.

The solar beef are fabricated of two types of silicon, their adaptability akin is agnate to that of a cardboard and its amount will be 25 percent lower than the solar beef acclimated today.

Although the new solar beef are acceptable to hit the bazaar in a decade or so, their low amount and flexibility, could advice improve the solar industry.

Anna Hazare (Maze Bapu) - Presence of Mahatma Gandhi

(Respected Kisan Baburao Hazare)


Famous quates of respected Anna Hazare

"Money alone does not bring development, but it certainly corrupts."

"The ultimate goal of all politics and social work should be the upliftment of society and of the nation."

"In the process of rural development, social and economic development should go hand in hand."

"Education without spirituality cannot help development."

"If villages are to develop, politics have to be kept out."

"It is impossible to change the village without transforming the individual. Similarly it is impossible to transform the country without changing its villages."

"Ban on consumption and sale of alcohol lays the foundation of rural development."

"Over every huge tree that we see overground, there always is a seed that had submerged itself into the darkness of the soil."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anna Hazare, who give us dream of "POLITICALLY CLEAN INDIA" and give us "Right to information" as Right hand to clean India politically. 

We all Indian love your presence between us.

"No involvement, No commitment."

Regards

Founder of  HolyGrail

NASA's Next Generation Space Telescope Marks Key Milestone

NASA engineer Ernie Wright looks on as the first six flight ready James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror segments are prepped to begin final cryogenic testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. (Credit: NASA/MSFC/David Higginbotham)

The first six of 18 segments that will form NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror for space observations will begin final round-the-clock cryogenic testing this week. These tests will confirm the mirrors will respond as expected to the extreme temperatures of space prior to integration into the telescope's permanent housing structure.

The X-ray and Cryogenic Facility at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. will provide the space-like environment to help engineers measure how well the telescope will image infrared sources once in orbit.


Each mirror segment measures approximately 4.3 feet (1.3 meters) in diameter to form the 21.3 foot (6.5 meters), hexagonal telescope mirror assembly critical for infrared observations. Each of the 18 hexagonal-shaped mirror assemblies weighs approximately 88 pounds (40 kilograms). The mirrors are made of a light and strong metal called beryllium, and coated with a microscopically thin coat of gold to enabling the mirror to efficiently collect light.


"The six flight mirrors sitting ready for cryogenic acceptance tests have been carefully polished to their exact prescriptions," said Helen Cole, project manager for Webb activities at Marshall. "It's taken the entire mirror development team, including all the partners, over eight years of fabrication, polishing and cryogenic testing to get to this point."


During cryogenic testing, the mirrors are subjected to extreme temperatures dipping to minus 415 degrees Fahrenheit (-248C) in a 7,600 cubic-foot (approximately 215 cubic meter) helium-cooled vacuum chamber. This permits engineers to measure in extreme detail how the shape of the mirror changes as it cools. This simulates the actual processes each mirror will undergo as it changes shape over a range of operational temperatures in space.


"This final cryotest is expected to confirm the exacting processes that have resulted in flight mirrors manufactured to tolerances as tight as 20 nanometers, or less than one millionth of an inch," said Scott Texter, Webb Optical Telescope element manager at Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, Calif.


A second set of six mirror assemblies will arrive at Marshall in July to begin testing, and the final set of six will arrive during the fall.


The Webb Telescope is NASA's next-generation space observatory and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The most powerful space telescope designed, Webb will observe the most distant objects in the universe, provide images of the very first galaxies ever formed and help identify unexplored planets around distant stars. The telescope will orbit approximately one million miles from Earth.


"The Webb telescope continues to make good technological progress," said Rick Howard, JWST Program Director in Washington. "We're currently developing a new baseline cost and schedule to ensure the success of the program."


The telescope is a combined project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor under NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., is responsible for mirror development. L-3- Tinsley Laboratories Inc. in Richmond, Calif. is responsible for mirror grinding and polishing.


For more information about the James Webb Space Telescope, visit: http://www.jwst.nasa.gov 

100 years of superconductivity

Today marks the 100th anniversary of superconductivity by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. In a superconductor, the electrons flow without any electrical resistance.

(Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (photo from Museum Boerhaave))

Apart from their fundamental scientific interest, superconductors are used to make powerful electromagnets, for example for MRI and NMR machines in medical diagnostics. Other promising applications include power transmission cables with low losses, highly sensitive devices to measure magnetic fields and so on.

Working in his lab at Leiden University, on 8 April 1911 he experimented with the electrical resistance of mercury at low temperatures. In his notebook he noted that at 3 K (-270°C), ‘Kwik nagenoeg nul’, mercury’s resistance drops to ‘practically zero’.

 

This discovery at such low temperatures was only made possible by Kamerlingh Onnes previous achievement of liquifying helium at 4.22 K. this provided the means to cool samples down to even lower temperatures. For this breakthrough in cryogenics, Kamerlingh Onnes received the 1913 Nobel prize in physics.

When superconductivity was discovered, it certainly was a puzzling observation at the time. Some scientists believed that at low temperatures electrical resistance would shoot up towards infinity, whereas others thought that it would gradually go down, which is what indeed happens for many materials. However, superconductivity is not simply a new form of electrical resistance – it is a thermodynamic state in its own right, and its unique properties can’t be explained by classical physics alone. Indeed, it was not until 1957, when Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer provided the quantum-theory that explains superconductivity of materials such as mercury.

However, that’s not where research into superconductivity stops. In 1987, the so-called high-temperature superconductors were discovered. Their superconducting temperatures are so high that cooling with helium isn’t even necessary. Interestingly, mercury (Hg) plays a key role there as well: the superconductor with the highest known temperature at normal pressures (135 K) is HgBa₂Ca₂Cu₃O_x!

The origin of superconductivity in these new superconductors is different to the classical superconductors, and remains not fully understood. This makes Kamerlingh Onnes discovery all the more relevant to this day.

Further reading:

it seems this nice article is free access:

van Delft, D., & Kes, P. (2010). The discovery of superconductivity Physics Today, 63 (9) DOI: 10.1063/1.3490499

Karma-Buddhism quotes

Incubator,mentor and other related definition.....( Post:003-2011 )

What is a business incubator?
An organization which provides a conducive environment for successful development of start-up ventures by providing the entrepreneurs with proper guidance and specialized services

What is Business Incubation?
Business incubation is a dynamic process of business enterprise development. Incubators nurture young firms, helping them to survive and grow during the startup period when they are most vulnerable. The goal of business incubators is to produce healthy firms that create jobs and wealth, strengthen the economy, commercialize new technologies and revitalize communities.

Business incubators provide:

• hands-on management assistance 
• access to financing 
• business and technical support services 
• shared office space, access to equipment. 

What is Mentoring?
"Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be." Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring

Mentoring is a powerful personal development and empowerment tool. It is an effective way of helping people to progress in their careers and is becoming increasing popular as its potential is realised. It is a partnership between two people (mentor and mentee) normally working in a similar field or sharing similar experiences. It is a helpful relationship based upon mutual trust and respect.

What is Mentor?
A mentor is a guide who can help the mentee to find the right direction and who can help them to develop solutions to career issues. Mentors rely upon having had similar experiences to gain an empathy with the mentee and an understanding of their issues. Mentoring provides the mentee with an opportunity to think about career options and progress.

A mentor should help the mentee to believe in his/herself and boost his/her confidence. A mentor should ask questions and challenge, while providing guidance and encouragement. Mentoring allows the mentee to explore new ideas in confidence. It is a chance to look more closely at yourself, your issues, opportunities and what you want in life. Mentoring is about becoming more self aware, taking responsibility for your life and directing your life in the direction you decide, rather than leaving it to chance.

MORE SIMPLIFICATION:

In many professions, it is not uncommon for a newcomer to the field to be placed under the care of an established and seasoned professional. This professional is often charged with the task of helping to train, advise, and share practical experience with the new person in the organization. This process is commonly known as mentoring, and the professional who is responsible for the care and nurture of the newcomer is referred to as a mentor. Here are some examples of how a mentor goes about providing support.

One of the most important roles of a mentor is serving as a teacher to the novice. Mentors share their body of experience, relating what they have learned in ways that will connect with the newcomer. The range of experience often includes such valuable information as industry basics, some solid facts about how the corporation works, applications of the goods and services produced by the company, and tips on how to perform individual job responsibilities. Along with this official type of mentorship, the mentor may also serve as an unofficial advisor on such matters as which employees in the company should be watched with a close eye, and who tends to be trustworthy.

Mentors do not take the new employee through a basic orientation and then leave them on their own. The work of the mentor will continue well after the employee is past the usual ninety-day probation period for employment. That is because the mentor also functions as a counselor for the new employee. When there is frustration with an incident in the workplace, or a matter comes up that requires a different approach, the employee may wish to sit down with the mentor and talk through the situation. As counselors to new employees, mentors help the novice to draw not only draw on past experience for answers, but also help the novice to discover a new way to apply older principles.

Finally, mentors function as advisors. While counseling involves helping the novice discover answers, advising places the mentor in a position to provide a feasible course of action that is relevant to the situation. For example, if the novice is completely stumped as to handle a collections issue with a client that is about to go bankrupt, the mentor can probably provide the new employee with a step by step process of what needs to be done. Offering advice when unusual situations occur is a common part of the work of the mentor.

Being a mentor is not for the faint of heart. The responsibility requires knowledge, solid communication skills, and a great deal of patience. At the same time, being a mentor can be extremely rewarding, as there is a great deal of satisfaction in watching your former charges grow in prestige and competence over the years.

RELATED WEBSITES:
http://www.indianangelnetwork.com/incubator/faqs.html