Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers have devised an undersea optical communications system that—complemented by acoustics—enables a virtual revolution in high-speed undersea data collection and transmission. Its developers are likening the new technology to the cell phone and wireless Internet access. Their report will be presented Feb. 23 at the 2010 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland Ore.
Compared to communication in the air, communicating underwater is severely limited because water is essentially opaque to electromagnetic radiation except in the visible band. Even then, light penetrates only a few hundred meters in the clearest waters; less in sediment-laden or highly populated waters.
In a study in Nano Letters, scientists report that they have developed a flexible, biocompatible rubber film called Piezo-rubber for use in implantable or wearable energy harvesting systems. The material could be used, for instance, to harvest energy from the motion of the lungs during breathing and used to run pacemakers without the need for batteries that must be surgically replaced every few years.
Engineers from the University of Florida and Hanyang University, Seoul, South Korea have developed what they call a 'nearly perfect hydrophobic interface' by reproducing, on small bits of flat plastic, the shape and patterns of the minute hairs that grow on the bodies of spiders. A paper describing the new water repellent surface, appears this month in Langmuir.
"They have short hairs and longer hairs, and they vary a lot. And that is what we mimic," said Wolfgang Sigmund, a professor of materials science and engineering.
According to a new study in Social Psychology Quarterly, the higher your IQ the more likely you are to be a liberal and an atheist. The author says this is because more intelligent people exhibit social values and political preferences that are novel to the human species in evolutionary history--mainly, liberalism and atheism.
The study advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values. The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years."
Researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland have found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's.
The significance? The human brain is a big believer in equality, the scientists say. Their results are detailed in a new study appearing in Nature.
Many scientists warn that with a changing climate there's a good chance that forest fires in the Pacific Northwest will become larger and more frequent – and according to one expert, that's just fine.
The future of fire in this region is difficult to predict, will always be variable, and undoubtedly a part of the future landscape. People should understand, however, that fire is not only inevitable but also a valuable part of forest ecosystems and their management, says John Bailey, an associate professor in the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management at Oregon State University.
