Tech

Earth

Tsunamis could telegraph their imminent arrival

Telecommunication cables could give early warnings of giant waves.

Tech

2009 Science News of the Year: Technology

A polymer doped with a color-changing molecule turns red seconds before snapping. Credit: D. Stevenson, A. Jerez, A. Hamilton, D. Davis About to breakEngineers one day may not need to guess when a bridge is near its breaking point. New materials that flush red in response to damage may provide a visual warning sign of […]

Chemistry

Batteries made from nanotubes … and paper

Scientists have made batteries and supercapacitors with little more than ordinary office paper and some carbon and silver nanomaterials.

Earth

Countering Copenhagen’s Carbon Footprint

The United Nations’ Climate Change Conference, beginning Monday (Dec. 7), will draw legions of people to Copenhagen from 192 countries. Traveling to Denmark — sometimes from the far corners of the Earth — will expend huge amounts of energy. And spew plenty of the very carbon dioxide that the meeting negotiators are trying to rein in. So several bodies will be offsetting the carbon footprint of this gathering — with bricks. Or brick ovens, anyway.

Computing

First programmable quantum computer created

System uses ultracold beryllium ions to tackle 160 randomly chosen programs.

Tech

House passes medical isotopes bill

A spot of encouraging news emerged yesterday on the medical-isotope front. The House of Representatives voted 440 to 17 in favor of a bill to reestablish domestic production of molybdenum-99. It’s the feedstock for the most heavily used nuclear agent in diagnostic medicine.

Tech

Large Hadron Collider suffers carb attack

Efforts to get the Large Hadron Collider up and running just encountered a temporary snag, according to yesterday's online edition of The Times of London. A crusty chunk of bread “paralysed a high voltage installation that should have been powering the cooling unit.”

Earth

Nanoparticles’ indirect threat to DNA

Tiny metal nanoparticles can damage DNA, essentially by triggering toxic gossip.

Computing

Quantum computers could tackle enormous linear equations

New work suggests that the envisioned systems would be powerful enough to quickly process even trillions of variables.

Chemistry

Concerned about BPA: Check your receipts

Some cash register receipts offer the potential for relatively large exposures to an estrogen mimic.

Tech

Nobel Prize in physics awarded for work with light

Charles K. Kao wins for discoveries enabling fiber-optic communication, and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith win for inventing the charge-coupled device

Humans

Flu: Grim stats

Though risk of death from conventional flu strains escalates dramatically, beginning around age 45, a new study finds that masks do a fair job of slowing the infection's transmission.