First Superheavy Element Found In Nature

KentuckyFC writes "The first naturally occurring superheavy element has been found. An international team of scientists found several nuclei of unbibium in a sample of the naturally occurring heavy metal thorium. Unbibium has an atomic number of 122 and an atomic weight of 292. In general, very heavy elements tend to be unstable but scientists have long predicted that even heavier nuclei would be stable. The group that found unbibium in thorium say it has a half life in excess of 100 million years and an abundance of about 10^(-12) relative to thorium, which itself is about as abundant as lead."

I'd also like it known that my spell checker did not know 'unbibium' before today, but it is now one word closer to encompassing all human knowledge.

First superheavy element found in nature

The hunt for superheavy elements has focused banging various heavy nuclei together and hoping they’ll stick. In this way, physicists have extended the periodic table by manufacturing elements 111, 112, 114, 116 and 118, albeit for vanishingly small instants. Although none of these elements is particularly long lived, they don’t have progressively shorter lives and this is taken as evidence that islands of nuclear stability exist out there and that someday we’ll find stable superheavy elements.

But if these superheavy nuclei are stable, why don’t we find them already on Earth? Turns out we do; they’ve been here all along. The news today is that a group led by Amnon Marinov at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has found the first naturally occuring superheavy nuclei by sifting through a large pile of the heavy metal thorium.

What they did was fire one thorium nucleus after another through a mass spectrometer to see how heavy each was. Thorium has an atomic number of 90 and occurs mainly in two isotopes with atomic weights of 230 and 232. All these showed up in the measurements along with a various molecular oxides and hydrides that form for technical reasons.

But something else showed up too. An element with a weight of 292 and an atomic number of around 122. That’s an extraordinary claim and quite rightly the team has been diligent in attempting to exclude alternative explanations such as th epresence of exotic molecules formed from impurities in the thorium sample or from the hydrocarbon in oil used in the vacuum pumping equipment). But these have all been ruled out, say Marinov and his buddies.

What they’re left with is the discovery of the first superheavy element, probably number 122.

What do we know about 122? Marinov and co say it has a half life in excess of 100 million years and occurs with an abundance of between 1 and 10 x10^-12, relative to thorium, which is a fairly common element (about as abundant as lead).

Theorists have mapped out the superheavy periodic table and 122 would be a member of the superheavy actinide group. It even has a name: eka-thorium or unbibium. Welcome to our world!

This may well open the flood gates to other similar discoveries. Uranium is the obvious next place to look for superheavy actinides. I’d bet good money that Marinov and his pals are eyeballing the stuff as I write.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0804.3869: Evidence for a Long-lived superheavy Nucleus with Atomic Mass Number A = 292 and Atomic Number Z @ 122 in Natural Th

Nanomachine Kills Cancer Cells With Exposure To Light

At the University of California, Los Angeles, a non-invasive means of cancer drug delivery is currently under development. Scientists present what they named “nanoimpeller,” a nanomachine which can operate inside a living cell. This nano-sized machine is designed to combat one of the most prolific killers of today—cancer. UCLA’s nanoimpellers are created to work pretty much like how IntelliDrug does. However, while IntelliDrug releases drugs as controlled remotely, said nanoimpellers release cancer cell killers based on light stimulus. In other words, the nanoimpellers release the drug upon exposure to light. The dosage and amount of drug released could be controlled by the light intensity and specific wavelengths.

Image: Discovery.comNow, it’s at the pores of the nanoimpeller that drugs are equipped. In order for the system to work, the scientists had to make the pores photoactive (or light reactive). To do that, the scientists coated the inside of the pores with azobenzene, and used mesoporous silica nanoparticles. When the impellers are exposed to light, a wagging motion occurs which leads to the release of the medicine. To date, scientists have tested the system on pancreatic and colon cells, wherein which it was able to successfully kill the targets. The researchers have great faith in their invention. To quote: "This system has potential applications for precise drug delivery and might be the next generation for novel platform for the treatment of cancers such as colon and stomach cancer.”

Source: UCLA and Discovery

Scientists Build World's Smallest Transistor, Gordon Moore Sighs With Relief

British researchers have unveiled the world's smallest transistor, which measures one atom thick and ten atoms across.

The newly announced transistor is more than three times smaller than the 32 nanometer transistors at the cutting edge of silicon-based electronics.

"It's molecular electronics with the standard top-down approach which can be used in any semiconductor factory," said Kostya Novoselov, a researcher at the University of Manchester and a co-author of a new paper on the transistor in the journal Science.

Transistors form the logic gates that underpin computing. Finding new ways to make them smaller is key to the continuation of Moore's Law, which holds that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years. That doubling translates into performance gains for computers. While expected improvements to processes and materials, namely silicon, seem likely to keep the law going for the next ten years, even Gordon Moore questions technology's ability to keep pace after that.

This new transistor may extend Moore's Law for a while longer.

The transistor is made out of graphene, a new material exactly one-atom thick that was discovered by Novoselov' s research team in 2004.

Made of intricately linked carbon atoms, graphene has the ability to retain several important properties when only one atom thick -- most importantly conductivity.

When current silicon transistor technology goes below 10 nanometers in size, it's predicted it will run into the laws of physics and will no longer be able to create reliable transistors.

Graphene, on the other hand, is already seeing working transistors in the sub-10 nanometer range. The researchers say their latest, unpublished work has used graphene to make transistors a single nanometer across. "

From the point of view of physics, graphene is a goldmine," said Novoselov. "You can study it for ages."

The researchers created the graphene transistors using standard semiconductor fabrication technology. They begin with a small sheet of graphene and carve channels into the material using electron beam lithography. What remains is a quantum dot with a tiny circular cage at the center known as the central island. Voltage can change the conductivity of these quantum dots, allowing them to store logic states just like standard field-effect transistors.

In the picture above, the scale bar indicates 20 nanometers, but Novoselov claims the team's recently created one nanometer graphene transistor could represent the end of the line for Moore's Law.

"It's about the smallest you can get," said Novoselov.

With the creation of what could be the smallest possible transistor, the long line of technology that extends from the first transistor, created at Bell Labs in 1947 and (a replica of which is pictured at left), could come to an end.

For all the new transistors' promise, Novoselov noted that it is currently impossible to produce large amounts of graphene. They can only produce graphene crystals about 100 microns or 0.1 millimeters across, far too small for industrial production at Intel's scale. But the scientist believes that a process for producing graphene wafers is already in the foreseeable future.

"Probably this problem will be solved in the next couple of years," he said.

Image 1: Courtesy Mesoscopic Physics group at the University of Manchester

Image 2: Public domain image

Living Tissue to Power Your Computer?

A few years ago I read about an experiment that used living cortical neurons from a rat brain to perform calculations. More specifically, the neurons were connected to the controls of an F-22 fighter jet simulator. After some training, the brain was able to fly the jet in tough weather conditions. Today Geylen brought my attention to another similar experiment. An associate professor at the Uni. of Arizona has built a robot chassis controlled by the brain of a moth. He predicts we’ll be using such organic-machine hybrid computers soon.

A scientist who successfully connected a moth’s brain to a robot predicts that in 10 to 15 years we’ll be using ‘hybrid’ computers running a combination of technology and living organic tissue.
Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, has built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Higgins told Computerworld that he basically straps a hawk moth to the robot and then puts electrodes in neurons that deal with sight in the moth’s brain. Then the robot responds to what the moth is seeing — when something approaches the moth, the robot moves out of the way. [Usability News]

The benefit of using biological brains is flexibility and the ability to deal with things such as visual pattern recognition, which would otherwise require expensive “conventional” computers. (In quotes because technically biological systems are the conventional computers.)

Higgins goes on explaining his prediction; in the next few decades computers will utilize biological components for processing. The premise for his assumption is that it’ll become increasingly easier to grow biological components like hearts or brains in coming years. We won’t need to rip out the brains of grown animals or insects. (Or, like he does in this case, attach the whole moth to the exoskeleton and plug wires into its brain.) At the same time, our understanding of biology will advance and enable us to properly utilize complex, organic systems for various tasks.
Artificial lifeforms, bioprinters and related research

Personally I think its fascinating and a relatively plausible option. As a recent example of related technological advances I can point out the bioprinter — a modified Inkjet printer that prints 3D organic structures (read about it in this New Scientist article with the amusing title “Print me a heart and a set of arteries”).
However, I’m toying with the idea whether synthetic materials — sculpted from the ground up — will be a viable and possibly better option. Perhaps models of natural systems, yet made of new materials that aren’t as frail. I’ve written about Venter’s advances in creating the world’s first artificial lifeform. While it is organic material — our stride down the path of engineering complex systems will undoubtedly enable us to alter and improve them. But regardless of any superior solution, I’m sure we’ll see a myriad of living-machine hybrid experiments.
Would you buy a computer containing living tissue?
Like Higgins, I see no impending ethical issue and would be happy and intrigued to have my MacBook powered by living tissue, or possibly an entire lab-grown mouse brain for that matter if done properly. I decided to do a quick initial-reaction “consumer survey” on the matter. When I asked my girlfriend Diljá whether she’d want one she answered that she’d have to know more about it. My father said it was spooky. My teenage nephew totally wanted one, and his mother first covered her face over the bizarre question and then asked “How long would it last?”. Good question. But after giving it some thought, those who weren’t already became hesitant and uncertain.
I hope for fast advances in this area. I think that, aside from the fascinating science behind it, it’d be interesting to observe how gadgets containing living tissue are marketed.

Links & References
EarthSky has picture in their article on the robo-moth
The Higgins Lab
Science Daily article ‘Brain’ In A Dish Acts As Autopilot
Neuron image courtesy of BrainMaps

David Hoffman: Catch Sputnik mania!

Filmmaker David Hoffman shares footage from his feature-length documentary Sputnik Mania, which shows how the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to both the space race and the arms race -- and jump-started science and math education around the world.

The rocket that launched Sputnik-1, the R-7, was primarily developed as an ICBM. Surrounded by NATO bomber bases, the USSR decided in the early 1950s that it must have the capability of delivering a thermonuclear warhead to the American mainland. The R-7 had a range of 8000 km and carried the "Object-G" warhead weighing 5.4 tons with an explosive yield of 3.5 megatons. Due to problems with reentry systems, the first successful warhead delivery to their test range was not until March 1958, some months after Sputnik. So I am not sure I would characterize the reaction to the R-7 as just a propaganda shock . Missiles and atomic weapons were all too real.

Machine Interpretes Your Dreams, Robot Enacts Them

Sleep Waking is an art project that uses EEG and EKG to record brainwaves and heart activity of a sleeping person and feeds them into a humanoid robot (a Kondo KHR-2HV). The robot turns the data into an interpretive dance. In short, the robot dances your dreams. In addition, rapid eye movement is used to control the head of the robot, so if the sleeper’s eye looks left - the robots head looks left.

Live Science reports on the project:

The use of the EEG data is a bit more complex [than the use of rapid eye movements]. Running it through a machine learning algorithm, we identified several patterns from a sample of the data set (both REM and non-REM events). We then associated preprogrammed robot behaviors to these patterns. Using the patterns like filters, we process the entire data set, letting the robot act out each behavior as each pattern surfaces in the signal. Periods of high activity (REM) where [sic] associated with dynamic behaviors (flying, scared, etc.) and low activity with more subtle ones (gesturing, looking around, etc.). The “behaviors” the robot demonstrates are some of the actions I might do (along with everyone else) in a dream.” [LiveScience]

And here’s a video of it, dancing away [Alt].

Popout

The project is the brainchild of Fernando Orellana and Brendan Burns, who used the equipment of The Albany Regional Sleep Disorder Center in New York to record the data.

A robot dancing your dreams. Can’t help but feel inspired by that quip.

How Google News was created ...

This is a story of how breakthrough new products can emerge from the most unlikely of places.

‘After September 11th, one of our researchers, Krishna Bharat would go to 10-15 news sites everyday looking for information about the case. And he thought, why don’t I write a program to do this? So Krishna, who’s an expert in artificial intelligence, used a web crawler to cluster articles. He later emailed it around the company. My office mate and I got it, and we were like, this isn’t just a cool idea for Krishna. We could add more sources and build this into a great product.

That’s how Google News came about.’

Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience (as quoted in Fast Company, March, Page 79).

I like this story for a number of reasons:

1. Breakthrough ideas, insights and products often come about by accident. This is not to say that many stage-gate, formal processes are not useful but their importance is over-rated. What is more important is to have creative, passionate people that are willing to try new things.

2. Creative organisations like Google (rated the world’s most innovative company) are places and spaces where not only great ideas are produced but there is a culture of idea receptivity. In my work with leaders I constantly stress the need to encourage idea production at the same time as idea openness. An open door policy does not always translate to an open mind policy.

3. Google also has a policy of encouraging its engineers to spend 20% of their time on working on things that interest them. The actual percentage is not important nor is how it is implemented of much more value is the notion that people work at their creative best when they are passionate about what they do.

What are you passionate about?

4. Creativity is also found at the most unexpected of places, people and times. The lesson? Don’t make any assumptions about who you should invite to a meeting for example. Have the experts mix with the newcomers and see what happens.

Astronomers find first habitable planet outside solar system

Astronomers find first habitable planet outside solar systemThe first habitable planet similar in size and conditions to Earth has been located in a distant solar system, once again raising the possibility of life on other planets, scientists said on Wednesday.

The as-yet unnamed planet is only about one-and-a-half times the size of Earth and five times more massive, a team of European astronomers announced at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany."We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between zero and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid," said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory. "Models predict that the planet should be either rocky like our Earth or covered with oceans."The planet is located around a star known as the Gliese 581, about 20.5 light years from Earth's solar system and one of the 100 closest stars to the Sun.

Though the planet is much closer to its star than earth is to the Sun, conditions are similar because the Gliese 581, known as a red dwarf, is smaller and colder. One year lasts only 13 days on the planet."Red dwarfs are ideal targets for the search for such planets because they emit less light, and the habitable zone is thus much closer to them than it is around the Sun," said Xavier Bonfils of Lisbon University.More than 200 so-called exoplanets - planets outside of the Sun's solar system - have been discovered in the past 12 years since the first one was found. Most are massive bowls of gas similar to Jupiter.The same team of astronauts discovered another planet around the same red dwarf two years ago - a Neptune-sized planet about 15 times as massive as Earth. An extensive analysis of the latest find is to be revealed in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France said the newfound planet could inhabit life and will definitely be a target of future space missions to find extra-terrestrial beings."Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," he said. "On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."