Aussies Swap Beer For Smartphones and Social media

Blogger and ABC contributor Peter Ryan has a superneat post on a new report confirming what most of us  already knew: Australians are addicted to their smartphones. The survey of smartphone users by tech behemoth Cisco reveals that the daily ritual for Gen Y Aussies kicks off with a quick txt.

Many of the survey participants admitted that they checked for messages, emails and updates at least twice an hour, many becoming anxious when their phone goes astray.

Kevin Bloch isn’t alone, our favourite news agency – Reuters – has an ubercool post on our latest addiction, Social Media.

Social media is now apparently a recognised addiction, a study undertaken last year by the University of Chicago found that Liking and Tweeting can be even more addictive than cigarettes or alcohol. The research showed that social networking sites gave users a burst of the addictive neurotransmitter dopamine :: Read the full article »»»»

Australian Nanotechnology: UNSW Single Atom Transistor

An Australian team of physicists have created the world’s first – and smallest – functioning single-atom transistor, which could prove a critical building block toward the development of super-fast computers. In what can only be described as nanotechnology at it’s purest – the ability to control matter at the atomic scale, build devices with atomic precision, is the central definition of nanotechnology. Though several groups have attempted this amazing feat before, never has it been accomplished with such puristic accuracy. As if nonotechnology wasn’t already übercool: The transistor itself is composed of a single phosphorous-31 isotope, which has been precisely placed on a base of silicon using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope in an ultra-high vacuum chamber. What’s particularly amazing about their technique is that they were able to position the individual phosphorous atoms precisely.

The Australian teams tiny electronic device – described in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology - uses as its active component an individual phosphorus atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates. The Nanotechnology paper elegantly describes a brilliant process: Researchers fabricated a single-atom transistor in which a single phosphorus atom is positioned between highly doped source and drain leads with a lateral spatial accuracy of ±1 atomic lattice spacing. researchers demonstrate that they were able to register source, drain and gate contacts to the individual donor atom and observe well-controlled transitions for 0, 1 and 2 electron states, in agreement with atomistic modelling of the device. What was also amazing said Dr Fuechsle was that the electronic characteristics exactly matched theoretical predictions undertaken with Professor Gerhard Klimeck’s group - using NEMO-3D, a Nanoelectronic Modeling tool - at Purdue University in the US and Professor Hollenberg’s group at the University of Melbourne.  Read the full article »»»»

Doctors Working With X-Rays Adapting to Radiation at the Cellular Level

Gone for an X-Ray lately, find it eeksom that your sourrounded by lead, that everyone leaves the room to press the go-button? It turns out that minute doses of ionizing – the harmful form – of radiation may not be so bad after all. Lets back that up before you run down to your local pathology lab and treat the x-ray machine like a tanning booth. Oxford Journals has published a study which hints that doctors whose bodies are regularly exposed to x-rays may be adapting at the cellular level to protect themselves against radiation :: Read the full article »»»»

Japanese Researchers Examine Asteroid Skin

Asteroid dust collected by a Japanese spacecraft – HAYABUSA - has given scientists their first look into the outer covering of an asteroid.

The asteroid explorer HAYABUSA – previously named Muses-C – was launched in 2003 by JAXA – Japanese Aerospace Agency – The craft succesfully rendezvoused with Asteroid 25143-Itokawa, located some 320 million km from Earth in 2005. Hayabusa successfully re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in June 2010. As Hayabusa burnt up she dropped her payload- a heat resistant capsule -  safely at Woomera in outback South Australia.

“Until now, asteroid exploration had been a one-way trip; however, the Hayabusa is a round-trip space mission. We’re now designing an improved next-generation space ship and are expecting the arrival of the Grand Navigation Era to the Solar System, such as a round trip to a main belt asteroid or to Venus, or a round trip via a deep space port” said project manager Junichiro Kawaguchi Read the full article »»»»

MIT’s Themo Photovoltaic

Power, electrical power is the life blood of our modern world, a constant heartbeat that drives every gadget on the planet. MIT scientist have demonstrated a huge breakthrough in power, a Zippo lighter sized power station that’s three times as powerful as lithium-ion batteries and runs off a tiny cap of methanol. The technology behind the tiny device is able to convert any source of heat into electricity. Called a Thermo-Photovoltaic system – TPV -, the Zippo generator is able to convert heat into specific frequencies of light which is used by a tuned PV cell – solar cell – to generate electricity. While it may sound complicated, there are no moving parts, nothing to wear out and it is made of cheap materials. The team of MIT researchers have managed to produce a cheap and efficient take on the technology previously only available to NASA. Will the Zippo make a come back as every iPhones best friend, maybe.

Themo-Photovoltaic cells – TPV – like the Zippo convert heat into photons which are converted to electricity by solar cell like layer. First demonstrated in 1956 by Henry Kolm, TPV’s didn’t become practical to produce until Pierre Aigrain’s lectures on the subject in 1960. While the basic TPV principle here is the same the technology leap here is based on very tiny holes etched into tungsten. The source of the heat used by this system is virtually unlimited, a camp-fire battery charger could be placed near a fire to charge your phone, exhaust heat from combustion engines becomes a power source. The most contentious heat source of all can even be used, sources of the radioactive type. Used for a long time in space craft there are actually radioactive variants that are very safe, last 30-50 years and burn the radioactive material completely. Read the full article »»»»

Chameleon Magnets aka Electrically Induced Ferromagnetism at Room Temperature in Cobalt-Doped Titanium Dioxide

Magnetism is more than just a fun property to experiment with in Science 101, not just a scientific curiosity. Scientists have discovered the Chameleon Magnet, a perminant magnet that can be switched on and off at will. Magnetism is the glue that holds every atom and molecule together.

The very small world of nano magnetism – magnatism of atom’s nd molecules -  is very a different beast, not high school magnetism. In this world free electrons can be used to pass spin information on to other electrons, large groups of electrons spinning in sync can set up a magnetic field. All of these bizarre effects are being studied and applied to Chameleon Magnets and Spintronics, the science of using the spin of electrons to do work in electronics gadgets :: Read the full article »»»»