CWL

laboratoryequipment:

Nanofibrillar Cellulose Film Platform Aids Medical Tests

Researchers at Aalto Univ. have succeeded in developing a durable and affordable nanofibrillar cellulose film platform to support medical testing. New environmentally friendly, reliable nanofibrillar cellulose (NFC) platforms are more diverse than plastic films.

New film can be made, for instance, hydrophobic, hydrophilic and the electric charge can be changed. This will enhance the possibility of conducting thousands of different medical tests at home or in physicians’ receptions instead of waiting for results from laboratories.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/nanofibrillar-cellulose-film-platform-aids-medical-tests

10 Military Aircraft that Never Made it Past the Test Phase

Artificial Intelligence Could Be on Brink of Passing Turing Test

One hundred years after Alan Turing was born, his eponymous test remains an elusive benchmark for artificial intelligence. Now, for the first time in decades, it’s possible to imagine a machine making the grade.

Turing was one of the 20th century’s great mathematicians, a conceptual architect of modern computing whose codebreaking played a decisive part in World War II. His test, described in a seminal dawn-of-the-computer-age paper, was deceptively simple: If a machine could pass for human in conversation, the machine could be considered intelligent.

Artificial intelligences are now ubiquitous, from GPS navigation systems and Google algorithms to automated customer service and Apple’s Siri, to say nothing of Deep Blue and Watson — but no machine has met Turing’s standard. The quest to do so, however, and the lines of research inspired by the general challenge of modeling human thought, have profoundly influenced both computer and cognitive science.

There is reason to believe that code kernels for the first Turing-intelligent machine have already been written.

“Two revolutionary advances in information technology may bring the Turing test out of retirement,” wrote Robert French, a cognitive scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in an Apr. 12 Science essay. “The first is the ready availability of vast amounts of raw data — from video feeds to complete sound environments, and from casual conversations to technical documents on every conceivable subject. The second is the advent of sophisticated techniques for collecting, organizing, and processing this rich collection of data.”

Read on..

MASTIF Wrecks Havoc

A long exposure of Astronaut Gus Grissom sitting within the fearsome ‘MASTIF’ (an acronym for Multiple Axis Space Test Inertia Facility). The g-force throttling, spinning MASTIF is designed to help teach an astronaut how to bring a tumbling capsule under control.

Beauty of Science: Picture of Neutrino Processed At FermiLab

Interaction in the Fermilab 15-foot Bubble Chamber with heavy neonhydrogen liquid mixture taken in April, 1976. Nearly one neutrino interaction per picture is found with the current run targeting 1013 protons at 400 GeV with the wide band - two horn system. Frequently the chamber is flooded with tracks from several neutrino interactions in the same exposure. In addition to increasing the interaction rate, the heavy neon mixture allows many of the particles from neutrino interactions to be recognized by direct inspection of the track appearance: protons, charged pions and kaons produce secondary interactions; neutral pions are evidenced by their gamma rays converting to electron pairs; muons sail right through the liquid without interacting and direct electrons or positrons from the vertex are recognized by successive kinks and associated gamma ray conversions along their tracks. A major interest in the present experiment by a Columbia University-Brookhaven Laboratory collaboration is the study of “di-lepton” events in which two muons or a muon and an electron are produced in high energy neutrino interactions.

Credit: FermiLab

Physicists Build Big Bang in a Box

Sitting on a bench at the University of Maryland is the first-ever desktop model of the Big Bang.

Don’t worry, the 20-micrometer&endash;wide device simulates how light behaved and time flowed at the universe’s spark, not the explosion itself. It could someday help explain why time marches in only one direction.

“What we have done, with simple experimental geometry, is reconstruct the way that space-time expands,” said Igor Smolyaninov, who describes the model in a paper submitted to Physical Review Letters.

Smolyaninov and Yu-Ju Hung, both electrical engineers at the University of Maryland, made their Big Bang simulation from exotic substances called metamaterials, which use alternating slices of different materials to twist light in unusual ways.

Researchers have suggested using metamaterials as invisibility cloaks that bend light around objects, to disguise one object as another and to build a perfect lens. A few years ago, physicists realized that metamaterials can also mimic astronomical events: a planet orbiting a star, light being trapped in black holes.

Building a toy cosmos in the lab lets physicists run otherwise impossible experiments on the nature of space and time. With Smolyaninov and Hung’s setup, researchers could study the thermodynamic arrow of time, a long-standing problem in physics.

Most physical laws work just as well whether time runs forwards or backwards, but not the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It dictates that disorder must always increase with time. That’s why people can’t age backwards, eggs can’t become uncracked, and Groundhog Day is fiction.

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First wearable brain scanner lets rats run free

A miniature brain scanner small enough for rats to wear is enabling researchers to watch how the brain influences behaviour for the first time.

Animals usually have to be anaesthetised before they can be scanned, so the “ratCAP” makes it possible to see in real time how sexual, addictive and depressive behaviours affect, and are affected by brain chemistry.

“It means we can watch how the animals behave and observe their brain chemistry at the same time,” says David Schlyer, co-leader of the team that developed the mini-scanner at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.

“We can start to understand the brain chemistry involved in behaviour to a much greater extent than before in rodents,” says Schyler.

The scanner is shaped like an Elizabethan “ruff” and encircles the rat’s head between the eyes and ears, while still allowing the animal to see ahead through the hole in the middle.

A NASA team has tested a space suit in a setting with extreme conditions akin to some of those found on Mars — an Argentine base in Antarctica — for possible use on a visit to the Red Planet.

(via Reuters)

cosmosweednlife:

Beauty of Science: Picture of Neutrino Processed At FermiLab

Interaction in the Fermilab 15-foot Bubble Chamber with heavy neonhydrogen liquid mixture taken in April, 1976. Nearly one neutrino interaction per picture is found with the current run targeting 1013 protons at 400 GeV with the wide band - two horn system. Frequently the chamber is flooded with tracks from several neutrino interactions in the same exposure. In addition to increasing the interaction rate, the heavy neon mixture allows many of the particles from neutrino interactions to be recognized by direct inspection of the track appearance: protons, charged pions and kaons produce secondary interactions; neutral pions are evidenced by their gamma rays converting to electron pairs; muons sail right through the liquid without interacting and direct electrons or positrons from the vertex are recognized by successive kinks and associated gamma ray conversions along their tracks. A major interest in the present experiment by a Columbia University-Brookhaven Laboratory collaboration is the study of “di-lepton” events in which two muons or a muon and an electron are produced in high energy neutrino interactions.

Credit: FermiLab

First wearable brain scanner lets rats run free

A miniature brain scanner small enough for rats to wear is enabling researchers to watch how the brain influences behaviour for the first time.

Animals usually have to be anaesthetised before they can be scanned, so the “ratCAP” makes it possible to see in real time how sexual, addictive and depressive behaviours affect, and are affected by brain chemistry.

“It means we can watch how the animals behave and observe their brain chemistry at the same time,” says David Schlyer, co-leader of the team that developed the mini-scanner at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.

“We can start to understand the brain chemistry involved in behaviour to a much greater extent than before in rodents,” says Schyler.

The scanner is shaped like an Elizabethan “ruff” and encircles the rat’s head between the eyes and ears, while still allowing the animal to see ahead through the hole in the middle.

Galactic Smashups Leave Giant Black Holes Hungry

A sample of the galaxies studied; sorted based on whether they show no signs of a recent merger (top row), minor signs (middle) or major disruptions (bottom). The black spot in the center of each galaxy ensured that the test was blind. The team blocked out the bright nuclei from active galaxies and added a spot to galaxies with dim centers, so the sorters couldn’t tell which was which.

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Cisternas (Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy)