• How does the council manage to cope with the vagaries of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? How does it function given the inherent unpredictability?
(Wealden District Council)
Lol
I wonder what my council is doing about this??
• How does the council manage to cope with the vagaries of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? How does it function given the inherent unpredictability?
(Wealden District Council)
Lol
I wonder what my council is doing about this??
The principle is this according to Wiki:
The principle states specifically that the product of the uncertainties in position and momentum is always equal to or greater than one half of the reduced Planck constant ħ, which is defined as the re-scaling h/(2&pi
of the Planck constant h. Mathematically, the uncertainty relation between position and momentum arises because the expressions of the wavefunction in the two corresponding bases are Fourier transforms of one another (i.e., position and momentum are conjugate variables). In the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, any non-commuting operators are subject to similar uncertainty limits.
From the BBC:
Chimpanzees appear to consider who they are "talking to" before they call out.
Researchers found that wild chimps that spotted a poisonous snake were more likely to make their "alert call" in the presence of a chimp that had not seen the threat.
This indicates that the animals "understand the mindset" of others.
The insight into the primates' remarkable intelligence will be published in the journal Current Biology.
The University of St Andrews scientists, who carried out the work, study primate communication to uncover some of the origins of human language.
To find out how the animals "talked to each other" about potential threats, they placed plastic snakes - models of rhino and gaboon vipers - into the paths of wild chimpanzees and monitored the primates' reactions.
"These [snake species] are well camouflaged and they have a deadly bite," explained Dr Catherine Crockford from University of St Andrews, who led the research.
"They also tend to sit in one place for weeks. So if a chimp discovers a snake, it makes sense for that animal to let everyone else know where [it] is."
The scientists put the snake on a path that the chimps were using regularly, secreting the plastic models in the leaves.
"When [the chimps] saw the model, they would be quite close to it and would leap away, but they wouldn't call," she told BBC Nature.
"It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction."
After leaping away, each chimp immediately, very carefully, approached the snake again. And this time, they would make a soft "hoo" sound if they were close to a chimp that was not aware the snake was there.
"We monitored the snake all day, so we knew which animals had seen it and which hadn't," Dr Crockford explained.
She added that when the primates called out, They were "very focused on their audience".
"That's not entirely new," she said.
"Lots of animals give alarm calls and are more likely to give an alarm call [when another animal is present]."
But what is new here, she continued, is that "they seem tuned, not into who the audience is, but to what the audience knows".
These findings, Dr Crockford said, provide an important insight into a factor that may have "kick-started" complex communication.
She explained: "Why would I bother to communicate something to you unless I realised that you didn't already know it?"
"Now we have seen that these chimps, human's close relatives, seem to recognise ignorance and knowledge in others.
And they're motivated to communicate missing and relevant information to that individual.
It's one of the things that's been missing from the evolution of language story."
Matthew Cobb, professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, explained that "imagining what another individual is thinking" is a crucial part of human language.
"This study gives us some insight into how this amazing ability may have evolved," he told BBC Nature.
"In the wild, faced with a natural stimulus, our close cousins the chimps alter their communication depending on what other chimps know.
It appears that humans aren't quite so unique, after all."
From the BBC:
"If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?"
That was the head-scratcher asked during a job interview for a product marketing post at Hewlett-Packard.
Technology firms featured heavily in this year's list of the 25 most oddball questions compiled by the US employment website Glassdoor.
Careers experts said the questions were intended to make a candidate display a thoughtful approach to problem-solving.
As well as HP's brain-acher, interviewees at other companies were asked:
Glassdoor said that while technology companies included questions designed to catch candidates off guard, they also posed tried and tested queries such as "Why did you apply for this job?" and "What are your strengths and weaknesses?".
Apple abuse
The late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, was notoriously tough on employees. In his authorised biography, Mr Jobs is said to have asked an "uptight" interviewee: "Are you a virgin?"
However, surprising questions can be an effective way to gauge a candidate's character, said Rusty Rueff, careers and workplace expert for Glassdoor.
"There's a bit of pressure to find how you think on your feet, trying to test that a little bit," he told the BBC.
"But more importantly, they're trying to get at how someone thinks, how they solve the problem."
Users submitted over 150,000 interview questions to Glassdoor this year.
Mr Rueff said the interviewers often did not have a correct answer in mind, but wanted candidates to display a coherent, logical thought process.
"What's most important is that you take a big deep breath, you don't get flustered, and you think out loud," he said. "Talk right through it."
Other questions included:
The answer to the last question which is an old chestnut is 3.
There are more than one answer to the lightbulb question. For instance someone might start off by trying in from floor 1. If that didn't break then from floor 2, then floor 3 etc. However, the lightbulb would deteriorate after repeated drops and so not a wholly reliable method.
There is a slight variation which Apple used, and this is a much harder question. Apparently only one person gave the correct answer.
This is it:
In my interview at Apple, this question also stated:
"You will get a bonus of $1000 for each remaining glass bulb after the test. What is the highest bonus you can absolutely guarantee, and with what algorithm?"
The interviewer told me that he only had it answered correctly once, and that person had a master's degree in pure mathematics. The candidate explained the theory behind the answer using lots of appropriately mathematical terms.
The long-winded, logic-based solution to prove that you can earn an $18'000 bonus goes as follows:
• If you drop a ball from floor X and it shatters, you will need to drop the other from floors 1 to x-1 in that order to find out the lowest floor at which the ball would break.
• Therefore, if you started at floor 20 and the ball shatters, you have to drop the other from 1 to 19 to see at which that one will shatter.
• If it shatters at floor 19, your bonus is all gone (you're performed 20 drops, losing $20'000 from your bonus).
• If the ball does *not* shatter at floor 20, then you might try again at floor 40, but then you'd only have 18 drops left— if it broke at 40, but not at 38 (when you've used all your drops) you don't know if 39 or 40 was the breaking-point.
• Therefore, after trying 20, you go up 19 floors to 39 and try again there.
• You repeat, going up 18 floors to 58, then 77, then 86, etc.
• However, this isn't optimized. You can't *guarantee* a bonus by stepping up by [20 19 18 …], since you could conceivably deduce the amount only using a full 20 drops.
• Therefore we look at how we can divide up our 100 floors by a descending sequence:
• 10 + 9 + 8 + … = 55 => No Good.
• 11 + 10 + 9 + … = 66 => No Good.
• Try going the other way; starting at 1 and counting up (sort of like the Fibonacci sequence), at which point do we pass 100?
• 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + … + 12 + 13 + 14 = 105.
• Therefore, we can start dropping the ball at floor 14 using the algorithm above, and still have enough drops to determine the exact floor at which the ball breaks, even should it be floor 99 or 100.
• Using 14 as a base, this means that the *maximum* number of times we will drop the ball is 14 times, while still guaranteeing that we drop at $BREAK_HEIGHT and $BREAK_HEIGHT-1.
Therefore, the correct solution can be calculated using only two glass balls, a maximum of two of which will smash, guaranteeing us a bonus of $18'000.
From the BBC:
An Australian crocodile reacted badly when a noisy lawnmower invaded his space - he stole it, forcing keepers to make a daring rescue.
Elvis, who lives at the Australian Reptile Park, lunged at the mower, grabbing it from operations manager Tim Faulkner and keeper Billy Collett.
Pulling it under water, the five-metre saltwater crocodile "drowned" the machine at the park near Sydney.
He then sat and watched his catch for more than an hour in his enclosure.
''Once he got it, he just sat there and guarded it,'' said Mr Faulkner. ''It was his prize, his trophy. If it moved, then he would attack it again.''
That, he told the BBC, was fairly typical crocodile behaviour.
But Elvis, who is one of the largest crocodiles in New South Wales, is also ''a big territorial male'' who likes his meat.
While the keeper lured Elvis to the other end of the enclosure with an offering of kangaroo meat, Mr Faulkner was able to jump in, retrieve the badly chewed up mower and two teeth that Elvis had lost in the process.
''He has extraordinarily large teeth - much bigger than most crocodiles,'' added Mr Faulkner. ''He punched his teeth through the top casing of the mower.''
'Ate his girlfriend'
Elvis, who was captured in the wild and is thought to be around 50 years old, has always been a cranky croc. He was attacking fishing boats in Darwin harbour when he was caught, his keeper said.
At the crocodile farm he was first brought to after being caught, he ate two of his girlfriends.
''He is so full of testosterone that he views everything as a threat,'' explained Mr Faulkner. ''Even potential mates.''
The mower was fortunate to have escaped then. But it will never work another day.
As for Mr Faulkner, it was all in a day's work.
''I've handled a lot of animals,'' he said. ''There is a moment when your breath is gone and your adrenalin rushes in.''
But, he stressed, there is difference between a crocodile getting a mower and getting a human.
''That has never happened. We treat the crocodiles with a lot of respect,'' he added.
And a clip posted on Youtube:
From the BBC:
A 1963 British comedy sketch which is cult New Year's Eve viewing in Germany has inspired a YouTube hit featuring Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.
The heads of the German Chancellor and the French President have been superimposed on to the two characters in the 18-minute sketch Dinner For One.
Ms Merkel "plays" 90-year-old Miss Sophie whose butler, "Mr Sarkozy", impersonates her imaginary friends.
The original is hugely popular in Germany but is little known in Britain.
It is traditionally broadcast by several different German TV stations on New Year's Eve, and its popularity in both Germany and Scandinavia has made it one of the world's most repeated television shows.
During the routine, British comedienne May Warden plays upper-class Miss Sophie who is hosting a dinner for her four close friends to mark her birthday.
But because she has outlived them all, her butler James - played by Freddie Frinton - impersonates each guest, getting more drunk with each toast.
'Triple A'
In the YouTube version, Angela Merkel's "guests" include former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, former Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and British PM David Cameron - all impersonated by "Nicolas Sarkozy".
"Mr Sarkozy", pretending to be Mr Cameron, tells "Mrs Merkel" in English, "You are looking younger than ever", before switching to German and saying, "You look richer than ever".
"Mrs Merkel" tells "Mr Cameron" during a toast: "Don't forget we speak German in Europe".
As "Mr Sarkozy" scurries around the table in an ever more drunken way, the narrator says: "This is what happens every euro rescue summit, whether or not anyone else is there, it is just these two doing everything themselves".
The parody ends - like the original - with the butler taking the old lady up to her bedroom. In the original, James asks Miss Sophie whether it will be the "same procedure as last year" then promises to do "his very best".
In the YouTube version, "Mr Sarkozy" tells "Mrs Merkel" he will give her his "triple A".
The sketch, made for German broadcaster ARD and entitled "The 90th euro rescue summit or euros for no-one", has been viewed on YouTube more than 200,000 times in the last week.
From the BBC:
Scientists have measured the way Loch Ness tilts back and forth as the whole of Scotland bends with the passing of the tides.
It is a tiny signal seen in the way the waters at the ends of the 35km-long lake rise and fall.
When combined with the direct tug from the gravity of the Moon and Sun, the loch surface goes up and down by just 1.5mm.
The study is reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
"If you were on a boat in the middle of the loch, you certainly wouldn't notice it," said Philip Woodworth from the UK National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Liverpool, "but a tide like this has never been observed in a western European lake before."
Prof Woodworth, David Pugh and Machiel Bos say their precision measurement technique could be used in other lakes around the world to understand better how the Earth's crust deforms as a result of ocean movements - rather like a carpenter will use a spirit level to gauge how a length of wood deviates from the horizontal.
"I have described Loch Ness as the largest spirit level in the world," David Pugh, who is a visiting professor at NOC, told BBC News.
None of us can feel it, but Britain rises and falls by centimetres every 12 hours and 25 minutes as a great bulge of ocean water washes around the country.
The pencil-shaped Loch Ness is the largest UK lake by volume, and although inland, is close enough to the North Sea to be influenced by this loading effect.
The team placed pressure sensors a few metres under the lake surface at six locations, from Fort Augustus in the far southwest to Aldourie in the far northeast. They then monitored the change in the height of the overlying water during the course of 201 days.
What the scientists saw was a clear spike in the data twice a day - the result of the gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun. But they could also tease out a second signal stemming from the way water rises and falls as a result of the tilting of the land. And, in fact, the latter effect sits on top of the first and is responsible for most of the amplitude change.
The team says the measurement was made to an accuracy of just 0.1 mm over the loch's 35 km length.
"We had to extract the tidal signal and get rid of all the noise. This involved very high precision," explained David Pugh.
"For example, the loch surface itself goes up and down every day by four centimetres just due to the pump storage scheme for hydroelectric generation, and we have to pull out a very small signal within that.
"The holy grail would be to learn from the effects of the tides something about the Earth's crust. So the more precise we can get, the more we may learn about the crust."
From the BBC:
US researchers have created silkworms that are genetically modified to spin much stronger silk.
Writing in the PNAS journal, scientists from the University of Wyoming say that their eventual aim is to produce silk from worms that has the toughness of spider silk.
In weight-for-weight terms, spider silk is stronger than steel.
Comic book hero Spiderman generated spider silk to snare bad guys and swing among the city's skyscrapers.
Researchers have been trying to reproduce such silk for decades.
But it is unfeasible to "farm" spiders for the commercial production of their silk because the arachnids don't produce enough of it - coupled with their proclivity for eating each other.
Silk worms, however, are easy to farm and produce vast amounts of silk - but the material is fragile.
Researchers have tried for years to get the best of both worlds - super-strong silk in industrial quantities - by transplanting genes from spiders into worms. But the resulting genetically modified worms have not produced enough spider silk until now.
GM worms produced by a team led by Professor Don Jarvis of Wyoming University seem to be producing a composite of worm and spider silk in large amounts - which the researchers say is just as tough as spider silk.
Commenting on the work, Dr Christopher Holland from the University of Oxford, said that the development represented a step toward being able to produce toughened silk commercially.
"Essentially, what this paper has shown is that they are able to take a component of spider silk and make a silkworm spin it into a fibre alongside its own silk. They have also managed to show that this composite, which contains bits of spider silk and mainly the silkworms' own silk, has improved mechanical properties," he said.
The main applications could be in the the medical sector creating stronger sutures, implants and ligaments. But the GM spider silk could also be used as a greener substitute for toughened plastics, which require a lot of energy to produce.
There are concerns, though, about creating GM worms for industrial applications in case they escape into the wild. But according to Professor Guy Poppy of Southampton University, they would not pose an environmental threat and he believes the benefits would outweigh any risk.
"It's hard to see how a silkworm producing spider silk would have any advantage in nature," he said.
From the BBC:
The Pentagon's premiere research agency has chosen a former astronaut to lead a foundation that is designed to take humanity to the stars.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and Nasa are sponsoring the project, known as the 100-Year Starship.
Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, was notified last week that she had won, according to a copy of a Darpa letter obtained by the BBC.
Since leaving Nasa, Jemison has been involved in science education programmes, and is known as a space travel enthusiast and long-time Star Trek fan.
Her organisation, the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, is partnered on the Darpa project with Icarus Interstellar, a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to interstellar travel, and the Foundation for Enterprise Development.
Since it was first announced last year, the 100-Year Starship project has been met with trepidation by some, and excitement by many.
With Nasa scaling back its manned space programmes, the idea of a manned trip to the stars, which is well beyond any current technology, may sound audacious.
But the goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel.
The money for the winning team, $500,000, is small, but is designed to help jumpstart the effort. According to a copy of the notification letter, Jemison's proposal was titled: "An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond".
A spokesman for Darpa declined to comment on the award, which has not been publicly announced.
From the BBC:
Human emissions of carbon dioxide will defer the next Ice Age, say scientists.
The last Ice Age ended about 11,500 years ago, and when the next one should begin has not been entirely clear.
Researchers used data on the Earth's orbit and other things to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one.
In the journal Nature Geoscience, they write that the next Ice Age would begin within 1,500 years - but emissions have been so high that it will not.
"At current levels of CO2, even if emissions stopped now we'd probably have a long interglacial duration determined by whatever long-term processes could kick in and bring [atmospheric] CO2 down," said Luke Skinner from Cambridge University.
Dr Skinner's group - which also included scientists from University College London, the University of Florida and Norway's Bergen University - calculates that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have to fall below about 240 parts per million (ppm) before the glaciation could begin.
The current level is around 390ppm, and other research groups have shown that even if emissions were shut off instantly, concentrations would remain elevated for at least 1,000 years, with enough heat stored in the oceans potentially to cause significant melting of polar ice and sea level rise.
Orbital wobbles
The root causes of the transitions from Ice Age to interglacial and back again are the subtle variations in the Earth's orbit known as the Milankovitch cycles, after the Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovic who described the effect nearly 100 years ago.
The variations include the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit around the Sun, the degree to which its axis is inclined, and the slow rotation of its axis.
These all take place on timescales of tens of thousands of years.
The precise way in which they change the climate of the Earth from warm interglacial to cold Ice Age and back every 100,000 years or so is not known.
On their own, they are not enough to cause the global temperature difference of about 10C between Ice Age and interglacial. The initial small changes are amplified by various factors including the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as warming begins, and absorption of the gas by the oceans as the ice re-forms.
It is also clear that each transition is different from previous ones, because the precise combination of orbital factors does not repeat exactly - though very similar conditions come around every 400,000 years.
The differences from one cycle to the next are thought to be the reason why interglacial periods are not all the same length.
Using analysis of orbital data as well as samples from rock cores drilled in the ocean floor, Dr Skinner's team identified an episode called Marine Isotope Stage 19c (or MIS19c), dating from about 780,000 years ago, as the one most closely resembling the present.
The transition to the Ice Age was signalled, they believe, by a period when cooling and warming seesawed between the northern and southern hemispheres, triggered by disruptions to the global circulation of ocean currents.
If the analogy to MIS19c holds up, this transition ought to begin within 1,500 years, the researchers say, if CO2 concentrations were at "natural" levels.
As things stand, they believe, it will not.
Loving CO2
The broad conclusions of the team were endorsed by Lawrence Mysak, emeritus professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who has also investigated the transitions between Ice Ages and warm interglacials.
"The key thing is they're looking about 800,000 years back, and that's twice the 400,000-year cycle, so they're looking at the right period in terms of what could happen in the absence of anthropogenic forcing," he told BBC News.
He suggested that the value of 240ppm CO2 needed to trigger the next glaciation might however be too low - other studies suggested the value could be 20 or even 30ppm higher.
"But in any case, the problem is how do we get down to 240, 250, or whatever it is? Absorption by the oceans takes thousands or tens of thousands of years - so I don't think it's realistic to think that we'll see the next glaciation on the [natural] timescale," Prof Mysak explained.
Groups opposed to limiting greenhouse gas emissions are already citing the study as a reason for embracing humankind's CO2 emissions.
The UK lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, for example, has flagged up a 1999 essay by astronomers Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, who argued that: "The renewal of ice-age conditions would render a large fraction of the world's major food-growing areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the extinction of most of the present human population.
"We must look to a sustained greenhouse effect to maintain the present advantageous world climate. This implies the ability to inject effective greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the opposite of what environmentalists are erroneously advocating."
Luke Skinner said his group had anticipated this kind of reception.
"It's an interesting philosophical discussion - 'would we better off in a warm [interglacial-type] world rather than a glaciation?' and probably we would," he said.
"But it's missing the point, because where we're going is not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO2 to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate.
"The rate of change with CO2 is basically unprecedented, and there are huge consequences if we can't cope with that."
From the BBC:
A giant Galapagos tortoise believed extinct for 150 years probably still exists, say scientists.
Chelonoidis elephantopus lived on the island of Floreana, and was heavily hunted, especially by whalers who visited the Galapagos to re-stock.
A Yale University team found hybrid tortoises on another island, Isabela, that appear to have C. elephantopus as one of their parents.
Some hybrids are only 15 years old, so their parents are likely to be alive.
The different shapes of the giant tortoises on the various Galapagos islands was one of the findings that led Charles Darwin to develop the theory of evolution through natural selection.
The animals are thought to have colonised the archipelago through floating from the shores of South America.
Colonies on each island remained relatively isolated from each other, and so evolved in subtly different directions.
C. elephantopus is especially notable for its saddleback-shaped shell, whereas species on neighbouring islands sported a dome-like carapace.
Three years ago, the Yale team reported finding some evidence of hybrids around Volcano Wolf at the northern end of Isabela Island, in amongst the native population of Chelonoidis becki.
They speculated that through careful cross-breeding, it might be possible to re-create the extinct lineage - a process likely to take many generations.
Now, in the journal Current Biology, they report that this might not be necessary. A further expedition to Volcano Wolf found 84 tortoises that appear, from genetic samples, to have a pure-bred C. elephantopus as a parent.
Thirty of these are less than 15 years old; so the chances of the pure-blood parents still being alive are high, given that they can live to over 100 years old.
"Around Volcano Wolf, it was a mystery - you could find domed shells, you could find saddlebacks, and anything in between," recounted Gisella Caccone, senior scientist on the new study.
"And basically by looking at the genetic fingerprint of the hybrids, if you do some calculations you realise that there have to be a few elephantopus around to father these animals.
"To justify the amount of genetic diversity in the hybrids, there should be something like 38."
This number appears to include both males and females, given that some of the hybrids carry C. elephantopus mitochondrial DNA, which animals inherit exclusively from their mothers.
The theory is that some of the tortoises were probably taken by whaling ships that sailed from Floreana via the relatively remote Volcano Wolf en route to multi-year cruises in the Pacific looking for sperm whales.
Some of the giants made it to shore on Isabela, somehow, and established a presence.
The tortoises made an ideal food stock for whaling ships, as they can go without food for months and provided a source of fresh meat whenever the captain decided to kill them.
Needles, haystacks
The giant tortoises are so large, growing to nearly half a tonne, that you might think the elusive C. elephantopus would be easy to find.
The reality is rather different, according to Dr Caccone.
"The landscape on Volcano Wolf is hard, the vegetation thick with lots of bushes and nooks, and the carapaces are translucent so you need a trained eye to see the shininess of the shell," she told BBC News.
"The thing that struck us is that no-one knows what the population is on Volcano Wolf. We took 40 people [on our last expedition], and we had to stop collecting basically when we finished our supplies."
That trip took samples from over 1,600 individuals - which could be a small fraction of the population, indicating just how big a role the giant tortoises play in the ecosystem of the islands.
The Yale team now plans to discuss with Galapagos authorities whether to mount further exploratory expeditions, or whether to press ahead with a captive breeding programme.
From the BBC:
Applications will soon open for new top-level domains in the biggest change to the system in over two decades.
From Thursday it will be possible to register almost any word as a web address suffix.
Familiar endings like .com and .org could potentially be joined by the likes of .pepsi, .virgin or .itv.
The proposals are controversial but Icann, the organisation which regulates domain names, says the change increases choice and competition.
In December, the US Federal Trade Commission wrote to Icann warning that the expansion of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) "has the potential to magnify both the abuse of the domain name system and the corresponding challenges we encounter in tracking down Internet fraudsters."
And in the US, the Association of National Advertisers, whose members include some of America's biggest companies, have also opposed the changes.
Not cheap
But Peter Dengate Thrush, a former chairman of Icann's board of directors, said the change was necessary.
"It's badly in need of overhaul," he told the BBC.
"No-one would design a domain name system now for several billion users just using a couple of names that we started the system with in 1985."
Mr Dengate Thrush is currently chairman of Top Level Domains Holdings, a company developing registry services for top level domains.
At a cost of $185,000 (£120,000) just to apply, obtaining one of the new names is a serious financial commitment.
"Probably you are closer to half a million dollars to get it off the ground," said Jonathan Robinson, a non-executive director of Afilias, a registry operator which manages extensions like .mobi and .info.
The cost has lead to concern among some non-profit organisations that they will have to spend considerable sums defending themselves from cyber squatters.
Last month, the Reuters agency reported that the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and 26 other international organisations wrote to Icann asking it to protect suffixes like .imf from cyber squatters.
Deadline approaching
In spite of the cost there has been significant interest in applying for the new general top-level domains before the deadline for applications closes in April, according to companies advising on registrations.
"We're already working on over 100 applications - we're expecting that to increase," said Stuart Durham of Melbourne IT DBS.
He said around 25% of those had been "from Fortune 500 companies", with the majority of interest from the retail and financial services sectors.
As well as brand names, Mr Durham said there is likely to be a lively interest in place names.
"A lot of the geographic extensions that are being discussed like .london or .nyc will have a very good solid business case," he said.
"We've recently had extensions like .cat for the Catalan community that's done very well as well."
However, Mr Dengate Thrush worried this could lead to some conflict issues with places like Wellington, capital of his native country New Zealand, which shares its name with other places around the world.
"I think there are about 20 or 30 other cities called Wellington." However, he believed the systems set in place by Icann will ensure these issues can be successfully negotiated.
Cyber squatting
Even those who support the change foresee some issues.
"I would say it's almost certainly a good thing," Afilia's Mr Robinson told the BBC.
However, he says "you open up a whole new second tier of real estate that could be cyber squatted".
But Mr Durham thinks that there's very little that could be done to eradicate malicious squatters and others seeking to exploit the system.
"Cockroaches would survive a nuclear attack," he said.
"Some cyber squatters and infringers would too."
Strong evidence that one can die from a broken heart. From the BBC:
The newly bereaved are at greatly increased risk of heart attack after the death of a close loved one, US researchers say.
Heart attack risk is 21 times higher within the first day and six times higher than normal within the first week, a study in the Circulation journal of nearly 2,000 people shows.
Symptoms to watch for include chest pain and shortness of breath.
Experts say intense grief puts extra strain on the heart.
The psychological stress associated with loss can raise heart rate, blood pressure and blood clotting, which, in turn, can increase the chance of a heart attack.
A person's sleep and appetite are also likely to be disrupted.
Compound this with self-neglect - such as not bothering to take regular medication - and the result can be grave.
The researchers say it is important for family and friends to be aware of these risks and to keep an eye out during such difficult times.
Emotional
Lead investigator Dr Murray Mittleman, of Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said: "During situations of extreme grief and psychological distress, you still need to take care of yourself and seek medical attention for symptoms associated with a heart attack.
"Caretakers, healthcare providers and the bereaved themselves need to recognise they are in a period of heightened risk in the days and weeks after hearing of someone close dying."
The researchers reached their estimates by studying 1,985 heart attack survivors and comparing how many of them had recently been bereaved.
Among the study participants, 270 (13.6%) experienced the loss of a significant person in the prior six months, including 19 within one day of their heart attack.
Heart attack risk went up significantly within the first week after the death of a close loved one.
The risk was highest in the first seven days following bereavement and declined steadily thereafter.
Vulnerable
The elevated risk ranged from about one in 300 to less than one in 1,000 depending on the individual's general heart health before bereavement.
Those with a history of heart disease already fared worse.
Prof Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation said: "We're already aware that, under exceptional circumstances, emotional stress can trigger a heart attack.
"But we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that heart attacks triggered by stress normally only happen in people with underlying heart disease. It's very important that if you're taking medication because you have, or are at high risk of, heart disease, don't neglect taking it following a significant bereavement."
Past research has already shown that recently bereaved people have heart rhythm changes which may make some of them more vulnerable to health problems.
And grieving spouses have higher long-term risks of dying, with heart disease and strokes accounting for around half of the deaths, findings suggest.
From the BBC:
Astronomers have determined exactly what colour our home galaxy the Milky Way is - and find it is aptly named.
While it appears white from Earth, that is literally a trick of the light; the question is how it looks from outside.
A comparison of star types in other galaxies gives perhaps an unsurprising result: white. But not just any white: specifically, like spring snow at an hour after sunrise or before sunset.
The finding was announed at the 219th American Astronomical Society meeting.
"For astronomers, one of the most important parameters is actually the colour of the galaxy," Jeffrey Newman of the University of Pittsburgh told BBC News.
"That tells us basically how old the stars in the galaxy are, how recently it's been forming stars - are they forming today or did its stars form billions and billions of years ago?"
Of course, it is difficult to see the Milky Way from the outside, because we are on the inside.
"But it's worse than that; not only are we looking at the Milky Way from the inside, but our view is blocked by dust," Prof Newman told the meeting.
"We can only see about one or two thousand light years in any direction."
Colour chart
So Prof Newman and his student Tim Licquia went about putting the Milky Way on the map of other galaxies that we can see from outside.
They gathered data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with information on about a million galaxies.
They compared those data with what they knew about the total mass in the Milky Way, as well as the rate of star formation, looking for near matches among other galaxies.
For those most nearly matched to our own galactic home, the team took an average and came up with a precise measure of what colour it must be.
"The best description I can give would be that if you looked at new spring snow, which has a fine grain size, about an hour after dawn or an hour before sunset, you'd see the same spectrum of light that an alien astronomer in another galaxy would see looking at the Milky Way," Prof Newman told BBC News.
This "colour temperature" is somewhere between that of an old-fashioned incandescent lightbulb and noon-time sunlight; both whites, but subtly different.
And what does the colour tell us about our Milky Way's development - is it a cosmic newcomer or past its prime?
"It appears our Milky Way is on the road between those two stages - based on the colour we find, the rate of formation of stars has been declining over time," Prof Newman said.
"The Milky way is in a very interesting evolutionary state right now."
From the BBC:
A $10m (£6.5m) prize is on offer to whoever can create a Star Trek-like medical "tricorder".
The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize has challenged researchers to build a tool capable of capturing "key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases".
It needs to be light enough for would-be Dr McCoys to carry - a maximum weight of 5lb (2.2kg).
The prize was launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
According to the official Star Trek technical manual, a tricorder is a portable "sensing, computing and data communications device".
The kit captured the imagination of the show's millions of viewers when it was first used in the cult series' first broadcast in 1966.
In the show, which was set in the 23rd Century, the crew's doctor was able to use the tricorder to diagnose an illness simply by scanning a person's body.
Science fact
The award organisers hope the huge prize may inspire a present-day engineer to figure out the sci-fi gadget's secret, and "make 23rd Century science fiction a 21st Century medical reality".
"I'm probably the first guy who's here in Vegas who would be happy to lose $10m," said X Prize Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis.
While the tricorder is obviously the stuff of science fiction, other X Prizes have become science fact.
In 2004, the Ansari X Prize for a privately funded reusable spacecraft was awarded to the team behind SpaceShipOne.
Much of the technology they developed was subsequently utilised by Virgin Galactic.
Prof Jeremy Nicholson, head of the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College London, told the BBC there are already medical devices which detect chemical signs of illness to assist diagnosis.
However, he warned that bringing this technology together into one tricorder-sized piece of equipment would be a very daunting challenge.
"The most likely sort of technology would be something that detects metabolites," Prof Nicholson said.
"What we use in our laboratory is big - the size of a Mini. The challenge is sticking it all into one device."
Medical use
Prof Nicholson thought "grand challenges" like the tricorder prize helped stimulate innovation, and are "good fun".
But he doubted the Qualcomm Foundation would be awarding the prize any time soon.
"The challenges are: What is it you detect, what are the samples you can get and how do you put it all together in one gizmo?
"I don't think there'll be many people getting that prize in the near future."
Even if the device could be made, he continued, testing and obtaining approval for medical use might take much longer.
However, for Mr Diamandis the mere fact the prize exists could transform healthcare.
"It's not a single point solution. What we're looking for is to launch a new industry," he said.
"The tricorder that was used by Spock and Bones inspires a vision of what healthcare will be like in the future.
"It will be wireless, mobile and minimally- or non-invasive.
"It may use digital imaging, it may be sequencing your DNA on the spot to tell you if you are allergic to something you just ate."
That may seem like an impossibly ambitious set of goals, but fortunately, for those trying to win the prize, one feature of the Star Trek tricorder is not needed.
"We don't have a requirement that it makes the same noise," Mr Diamandis said.
From the BBC:
Click here to see this article with picture
A project to spot the "bubbles" that young, massive stars blow in the gas surrounding them has come up trumps, finding more than 5,000 of the objects.
That increases the known catalogue of bubbles by more than a factor of 10.
The discoveries were made by citizen scientists studying images from the Spitzer space telescope, as part of the Milky Way Project.
The much-improved catalogue has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
One of the great remaining mysteries of how our Universe works is how stars themselves form in vast clouds of swirling gas.
Astronomers are keen to find star-forming regions, hoping to catch the process at various stages to better understand it.
Groups of stars form in clusters near particularly large stars, and one good hint of these stellar nurseries is the "bubble" that they blow into the surrounding gas - a bubble that can be seen in pictures taken by Spitzer's infrared camera.
Human intervention
But the task to find and list all the bubbles in existing high-resolution images taken by Spitzer is a daunting one.
The largest previous cataloguing effort was carried out in 2007 by a handful of US astronomers poring through the images with their own eyes; it came up with 269 bubbles.
Automating the process with a computer algorithm is not an option, said Eli Bressert of the European Southern Observatory.
"To have an algorithm that can identify that kind of structure, no one can do it a the moment - it's way too complex," he told BBC News.
"You need two things: pattern recognition and the ability to judge, based on the other data that you've seen, what's good and what's bad - and that's what humans are good at."
Enter the Milky Way Project, which grew from the riotously successful citizen science project to classify and describe types of galaxies, Galaxy Zoo .
The new project invites the public to take part by sifting through images from the huge archive of data provided by Spitzer's Glimpse and Mipsgal surveys.
The task is simply to look for bubbles in the pictures and mark them. The same images are presented to a number of participants, making use of the "wisdom of crowds" to shore up the certainty of each bubble identification.
Nearly a half a million images have been sifted through by about 35,000 volunteers, with about a million different individual identifications made.
The result reported in the new paper: 5,106 bubbles - suggesting that our galaxy, as Mr Bressert put it, "is basically like champagne, there are so many bubbles".
The data represent a valuable road map for star-forming regions in the galaxy, but they also show an inexplicable trend: a dearth of bubbles just on either side of the galactic centre.
That is just one of the research directions that will come out of the project, Mr Bressert said.
"We thought we were going to be able to answer a lot of questions, but it's going to be bringing us way more questions than answers right now.
"This is really starting something new in astronomy that we haven't been able to do."
From the BBC:
Members of the public are being asked to join the hunt for nearby planets that could support life.
Volunteers can go to the Planethunters website to see time-lapsed images of 150,000 stars, taken by the Kepler space telescope.
They will be advised on the signs that indicate the presence of a planet and how to alert experts if they spot them.
"We know that people will find planets that are missed by the computer," said Chris Lintott from Oxford University.
"When humans have looked at data, we know they find planets that computers can't."
FIND OUT MORE
- Join the hunt for exo-planets at the Planethunters site
- Watch Stargazing Live on BBC Two at 20:30GMT on Mon, Tue, Wed 16-18 Jan 2012
- Join the Talk Stargazing webchat during the programmes
The Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, has been searching a part of space thought to have many stars similar to our own Sun.
Its most exciting moment to date has been, the discovery of Kepler 22b, a planet close in size and temperature to Earth, lying about 600 light-years away.
Name check
Another nine months of data from the Kepler space telescope is being put online at the Planethunters website to coincide with three consecutive nights of BBC Two's Stargazing Live beginning on Monday 16 January.
Kepler Space Telescope
- Stares fixedly at a patch corresponding to 1/400th of the sky
- Looks at more than 155,000 stars
- Has so far found 2,326 candidate planets
- Among them are 207 Earth-sized planets, 10 of which are in the "habitable zone" where liquid water can exist
"By Wednesday we hope to have some exciting discoveries." said Dr Lintott.
The Planethunters website will have time-lapsed sequences of images of about 150,000 stars which have so far only been available to professional astronomers and their computers.
"We are very confident there are more planets lurking in there to be found," Chris Lintott explained.
Anyone spotting a potential planet can flag up the telltale data and, if a significant planet is found, they would be credited with the discovery and their name would appear in any subsequent scientific paper about the discovery.
The human brain would be particularly good at finding any weird or unusual systems says Lintott, involving variable or double stars or multiple interacting planets.
Already several planets have been discovered by the public since the site was put live last year by an international team including scientists from Yale and Oxford universities.
But sadly, volunteers cannot get a planet named after them, as planet names are derived from the stars they orbit.
Stargazing Live returns to BBC Two at 2030:GMT on Monday and 20:00 GMT on Tuesday and Wednesday, 16-18 January 2012. Preliminary results of the planet hunt by Stargazing viewers will feature in the final programme.
From the BBC:
Madagascar's mysterious aye aye warms up its extra-long finger when searching for dinner, scientists have found.
The lemur, the world's largest nocturnal primate, taps its specialised middle finger on tree trunks to find nutritious beetle larvae.
Studying thermal images, researchers found that the digit was colder than the others but warmed by up to 6C during foraging.
Scientists suggest that the aye aye saves energy by keeping the digit cool.
The findings are published in the International Journal of Primatology.
FINGER FACTS
- The aye aye's middle finger is long and very thin - less than half the width of its other digits
- It has a ball and socket joint so it is far more flexible when it comes to extracting grubs from trees
- The finger is also used for grooming, scraping out coconuts and drinking. The animal uses it to move water or nectar rapidly into its mouth
The team from Dartmouth University in New Hampshire, US, wanted to investigate the surface temperature of sensitive structures.
The aye aye's unusual middle finger has already been found to be super-sensitive to vibrations, so provided the perfect subject for their study.
"It was striking to see how much cooler the third digit was while not in use and how quickly it warmed to [match] the other digits when engaged in an active foraging task," said graduate student Gillian Moritz, who carried out the study under the guidance of her supervisor, Dr Nathaniel Dominy.
Black and white
When not in use, the finger appeared black on thermal images. This indicated a large difference in temperature between it and the white (hot) ears and eyes.
But when the animal was looking for food, the finger rose in temperature by up to 6C.
"We think the relatively cooler temperatures of the digit when not in use could be related to its [long, thin] form," said Ms Moritz.
"This form results in a relatively high surface-to-volume ratio [but] such a ratio is bad for retaining heat."
In order to sense the vibrations of beetle larvae through the bark of a tree, the finger is "packed with sensitive nerve endings", the scientist explained.
Because of its specialist sense receptors, using this tapping tool is very costly in terms of energy.
"Like any delicate instrument, it is probably best deactivated when not in use," Ms Moritz told BBC Nature.
Kink in the flow
The question of how the lemur controls the heat of a single digit remains unclear.
Ms Moritz suggested two explanations. The first was simply that the blood vessels that supplied the digit could be constricted or dilated.
The second more unusual possibility, she said, was that the creature might employ temperature control method that was linked to the flexibility of its finger.
Ms Moritz explained: "Because the finger is fragile and vulnerable to injury, it is often extended back and out of the way during locomotion and periods of inactivity," she said.
This extension could cause a "kink" in the artery that supplies warm blood to the digit.
In the same way a bent garden hose supplies less water, the artery could supply less blood, keeping the finger much colder than its fully supplied neighbouring digits.
Aye ayes are the only primates known to have this strange adaptation.
The species is listed as Near Threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), mainly because of threats to its habitat.
But the odd-looking primate also suffers direct persecution. Superstition in Madagascar describes the species as a bad omen. Those that are pointed at by the creature's mysterious finger are said to meet their death.
A clip found on Youtube:
From the BBC:
Leading internet firms have set 6 June as the World IPv6 launch day.
IPv6 is the new net address system that replaces the current protocol IPv4, which is about to run out of spaces to allocate.
Web companies participating in the event have pledged to enable IPv6 on their main websites from that date.
The Internet Society, which made the announcement, said the day represented "a major milestone" in the deployment of the standard.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo are the inaugural web firms involved.
Future-proof
Every device connected to the internet is assigned an internet protocol (IP) address, which is a string of numbers that allows other devices to recognise where data comes from or should be sent to.
The IPv4 system has approximately four billion IP addresses.
The growth in the number of smartphones, PCs and other web devices and services meant that net regulator Icann had already handed out its last IPv4 sets to regional registries.
At the time it said businesses needed to start preparing themselves for a switch to the IPv6 standard, which offers more than 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses.
To put that number in context BBC Future Media blogged last year that if "every man, woman and child on Earth had a billion devices each with an IPv6 address, you haven't even come close to scratching the surface of the number of addresses available".
Experts say the new system should ensure there are enough addresses for the foreseeable future.
Problem solving
IPv6 is incompatible with IPv4, so the transition has required old hardware to be replaced or updated.
Internet service providers (ISP) taking part have promised that by the launch date they will have enabled at least 1% of their fixed line subscribers to visit IPv6-enabled websites. The ISPs involved include the US firms AT&T and Comcast, and the Dutch firm XS4all.
The home networking equipment manufacturers Cisco and D-Link say they aim to enable IPv6 on all their home router products by the date.
And Akami and Limelight - two firms that help improve third parties' delivery of content over the net - have also promised to allow their customers to join the list of firms participating in the scheme by enabling the new protocol throughout their infrastructure.
Amsterdam-based RIPE NCC, which allocates IP addresses in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia, said: "Operational experience and measurements on World IPv6 Launch will help content providers and ISPs to identify and rectify any potential problems with delivering services."
Facebook's vice president of infrastructure engineering, Jay Parikh, added: "Last year's industry-wide test of IPv6 successfully showed that the global adoption of IPv6 is the best way to keep web devices communicating in the future.
"Permanently enabling IPv6 is vital to keeping the internet open and ensuring people stay connected online as the number of web users and devices continue to grow."
From the BBC:
The future of the world's time is being debated at a meeting in Switzerland.
Experts at the International Telecommunication Union are deciding whether to abolish the leap second.
This is an extra second that is added every few years to keep time measured by atomic clocks in sync with the time based on the Earth's rotation.
Countries such as the Unites States, France and Germany want to lose the leap second, but the UK, along with China and Canada, wants it to stay.
Bad timing
The proposal to eliminate leap seconds will be discussed on Thursday afternoon at the Radiocommunication Assembly meeting in Geneva.
If agreement amongst the 200 member states cannot be found, the issue will go to a vote.
Ron Beard, chairman of the ITU's working party on the leap second, said: "This is not a technical issue, it is more a diplomatic one."
The world's timescale, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), is based on the time measured by atomic clocks, which use the incredibly regular vibrations in atoms to count the seconds.
But these clocks are so accurate, they put our former timekeeper - our planet - to shame.
The Earth speeds up and slows down as it spins, which means that while one rotation is one day, some days end up being a few milliseconds longer or shorter than others.
As a result, leap seconds were established in 1972 to keep the time told by atomic clocks and the Earth's time in phase.
They are added once the International Earth Rotation Service, which monitors the Earth's activity, has found that the two have drifted out of time by 0.9 seconds.
Six month's notice is given for these incremental additions.
But those seeking to abolish the leap second say these one-second jumps are becoming increasingly problematic for navigation and telecommunication systems that require a continuous time reference.
These include satellite navigation, financial services, the internet, flight control and power systems, among others.
Dr Felicitas Arias, director of the time department at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris, said: "When leap seconds were defined, this was a request from maritime navigation - and today maritime navigation can use other ways to access rotational time.
"So there is no more real need for that synchronisation with a leap second."
However, those who want to keep leap seconds say that the difficulties they cause are not enough to justify abolishing them.
Out of synch
Peter Whibberley, senior research scientist in time and frequency at the National Physical Laboratory, in Teddington, UK, said: "A decision to stop using leap seconds to keep UTC aligned with mean solar time would be perhaps the most fundamental change to timekeeping for hundreds of years.
"For the first time, civil time worldwide would be based purely on man-made clocks and no longer tied closely to the Earth's rotation."
This could cause some long-term problems.
Over decades, the difference between Earth-based time and atomic clock time would amount to a few minutes, but over 500 years, they would be out by an hour. Over millennia, the discrepancy would grow even more.
The British Science Minister David Willetts said: "The UK position is that we should stick to the current system used throughout the world.
"Without leap seconds we will eventually lose the link between time and people's everyday experience of day and night."
This is not the first time that leap seconds have been brought to the time community's attention.
In 2005, the US proposed that the leap second should be abolished, and replaced with a leap hour, but this failed to be passed by the ITU's members.
This time though, if the decision does come to a vote, a 70% majority will be required in favour of the proposal, for these one second adjustments to go.
If this does happen, the ITU says that leap seconds would be eliminated from 1 January 2018.
Update on yesterday's item from the BBC:
A decision on whether to abolish the leap second - the occasional, extra second added to the world's time - has been deferred.
Experts at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) were unable to reach a consensus, so moved the matter to a meeting in 2015.
The US argued at the meeting that leap seconds were causing problems for communication and navigation systems.
But the UK said that the long-term consequences of losing it were great.
An ITU spokesman said that Canada, Japan, Italy, Mexico and France all supported the United States' stance on losing the leap second, while Germany, like the UK, wanted the extra second to stay.
More countries though, including Nigeria, Russia and Turkey, wanted further study.
As a result, the ITU decided that more research was needed to consider the broader social implications of losing the leap second before a decision could be taken.
The ITU suggested that a study group should investigate the issue, before presenting any proposals at the next World Radio Conference in 2015.
It means that for now, the world's time will continue to be linked to the Earth's rotation.
The next leap second is due to be added on 30 June 2012.
From the BBC:
An outpatient is recovering from shock after being billed $44.8m (£29.2m) in error by a New York hospital.
Alexis Rodriguez, 28, was one of a number of patients charged astronomical amounts because of a computer glitch, the New York Daily News reports.
The Bronx-Lebanon Hospital treated him for pneumonia, but the actual cost was no more than $300.
Billing firm PHY Services said it had mistakenly printed the patient invoice number where the amount should go.
Mr Rodriguez told the New York Daily News he could not believe his eyes when he opened the envelope last week.
"I think they should have somebody look over the bills before they send them out," said the unemployed doorman.
"To send out a lot of bills with numbers that big - someone could have had a heart attack."
PHY Services requested that patients ignore the bills, adding that new ones would be sent out.
From the BBC:
This unusual blackbird is attracting bird watchers to a Nottinghamshire country park.
The bird is leucistic, which is a genetic mutation that prevents pigments from being deposited normally in its feathers.
It has been residing for the last four years in the woodland of Rufford Abbey Country Park.
Each year, observers say, it has steadily shed its black feathers for white feathers.
Ghostly plumage
- Leucism is often confused with the rarer condition albinism, a genetic condition that prevents the production of melanin in the body; in leucism, these colouring chemicals are present in the body, but are not deposited in feathers
- Some colours in birds' plumage come from other pigments such as carotenoids, so birds can be albinistic and still have some colour
- Leucistic birds may be completely white and still have melanin in their bodies; as for this blackbird, such animals will have dark eyes and white feathers
- Albino birds and animals also have pink eyes, as the only colour in the eyes comes from the blood vessels behind the eyes
Park rangers took this picture of the blackbird - which is now completely white with no visible pigmented feathers - in the summer of 2011.
Leucistic birds are often very vulnerable to predators, because of their bright white plumage. So the park's managers are urging birdwatchers to keep an eye out for this unusual blackbird.
Site manager John Clegg said: "This bird has been steadily turning whiter over the years and last summer it was completely white.
"It has become quite a character at the park in recent years.
"It tends to appear in the warmer months and we have not seen it for a few months but hope it will return here soon."
Most leucistic birds have some spots or patches of colouration in their feathers from other pigments, so this is a particularly unusual specimen.
I found a clip of a white blackbird on Youtube:
From the BBC:
An international team of scientists has demonstrated the first soap that responds to magnets.
This means the soap and the materials that it dissolves can be removed easily by applying a magnetic field.
Experts say that with further development, it could find applications in cleaning up oil spills and waste water.
Details of the new soap, which contains iron atoms, are reported in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie.
It is similar to ordinary soap, but the atoms of iron help form tiny particles that are easily removed magnetically.
"If you'd have said about 10 years ago to a chemist: 'Let's have some soap that responds to magnets', they'd have looked at you with a very blank face," said co-author Julian Eastoe of the University of Bristol.
He told BBC News: "We were interested to see, if you went back to the chemical drawing board with the tool-kit of modern synthetic chemistry, if you could...design one."
Iron clad
Soap is made of long molecules with ends that behave differently: One end of the molecule is attracted to water and the other is repelled by it.
The "detergent" action of soap comes from its ability to attach to oily, grimy surfaces, with the "water-hating" end breaking up molecules at that surface. The soap molecules then gather up into droplets in which all the "water-loving" ends face outward.
Prof Eastoe and his team started with detergent molecules that he said were "very similar to what you'd find in your kitchen or bathroom" - one of which can be found in mouthwash.
The team found a way to simply add iron atoms into the molecules. The droplets that the soap formed were attracted to a magnet, just as iron filings would be.
But single iron atoms would not behave as tiny individual magnets, so some other process had to be at work. To get a look at what was going on in the chemical process required a view at the molecular level.
So the team sent their samples to the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, where an intense beam of the sub-atomic particles known as neutrons shed light on the matter.
They saw that the iron particles were clumping neatly together into iron nanoparticles, tiny clumps of iron that could in fact respond to a magnetic field.
Prof Eastoe said the research was still at the laboratory stages but was already the subject of discussion.
"The research at the University of Bristol in this field is about how we can take the ordinary and give it extraordinary properties by chemical design," he said.
"We have uncovered the principle by which you can generate this kind of material and now it's back to the drawing board to make it better."
From the BBC:
Google has changed its privacy policy, streamlining it across its multiple services including search, email, video and social networking sites.
More than 60 different policies will be combined into one that will go into effect 1 March, the company said.
Google said the new policy will give people more relevant search results and help advertisers find customers.
Google has previously faced criticism over the sharing of users data.
"We're rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it in a more readable way," said Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy, product and engineering.
The single privacy policy will apple to Google search, Gmail, YouTube and Google+, its social networking site.
The main change applies to users who have Google accounts.
"If you're signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries, or tailor your search results, based on the interests you've expressed in Google+, Gmail and YouTube," the company said, explaining the changes.
The revision comes after Google's previous attempt at social networking, Buzz, was shut down.
The company was criticised for inadvertently revealing users' most e-mailed contacts to other participants through the Buzz platform.
Last year, Google and the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement to prevent Google from misrepresenting how it uses personal information and from sharing a user's data without approval.
Google said it had been in touch with regulators over these latest changes to its privacy policy, which will apply globally, according to the Associated Press news agency.
An update on the earlier posting - from the BBC:
Critics have hit out at Google's decision to merge personal data from YouTube, Gmail, search, social network Google+ and dozens of other services.
Forthcoming changes to privacy settings will see data shared across all these platforms. Users cannot opt out of the changes.
Google said the update would offer more relevant searches.
But critics say it has more to do with the data battle the search giant is waging with rival Facebook.
The changes take effect from 1 March
Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy, product and engineering, said the changes were necessary to simplify current privacy settings.
"We're rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect and how we use it in a more readable way," she said.
The firm also laid out how it will improve search.
"If you're signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries, or tailor your search results, based on the interests you've expressed in Google+, Gmail and YouTube," the firm said.
Earlier this month Google integrated Google+ more closely with search, a move which Twitter said would have a negative effect on its own search rankings.
Data is a hugely valuable commodity as firms seek ways of making money from users' web habits with ever more targeted adverts.
But it can be controversial, said senior Ovum analyst Andy Kellett.
"Something I am interested in this week, I might not be interested in next week. I use Google's facilities as both a private individual and in my professional life. Which bit are they going to give back to me?" he said.
The biggest problem he sees with the changes is the fact that people do not have the option to opt out of them.
"If it simplifies things then that is a positive, but it does appear to be a case of if you don't like it, you have to walk away from it. Google has become a way of life for some people. They can't do without it even if they don't like the direction it is going in," said Mr Kellett.
Google's new mega privacy policy will combine more than 60 different policies into one. That itself is dangerous, thinks campaign organisation The Open Rights Group (ORG).
"Does this simplicity come at the expense of strong boundaries between Google products. Will details that users thought might be private on one be revealed in unexpected ways on another?" asked Peter Bradwell, a ORG campaigner.
Timeline changes
Facebook is also moving to merge people's data, with tweaks to how user information is displayed. Its new feature, Timeline, shares users' past history on the site in a more readable way. While it does not expose any more information that was previously available on its traditional profile page it does makes it easier to view older posts.
Currently the system is voluntary, but Facebook is making it compulsory.
"It fits a pattern where these big firms are slowing redrawing privacy boundaries. There are certain principles, such as user control and consent, that should come first," said Mr Bradwell.
On the Timeline changes, he said: "It should really be up to people how they display their information."
No details about how Google's new privacy policy will work are yet available but its previous forays into data sharing have not always ended well.
The launch of its first social network Buzz saw it rolled it out to all Gmail users without asking permission.
It led to a string of privacy investigations from regulators around the world and forced a radical rethink in the search giant's privacy strategy.
"You'd hope they had learnt lessons from Buzz," said Mr Bradwell.
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office warned that any changes must be communicated to users.
"It is important that technology companies, such as Google, are aware of the privacy concerns that exist when behavioural advertising is used to target particular content at individuals. Failure to inform users about changes may not only lead to a loss of trust in the company, but could also mean that they are failing to comply with the requirements of the Data Protection Act," it warned.
From the BBC:
Researchers have "cloaked" a three-dimensional object, making it invisible from all angles, for the first time.
However, the demonstration works only for waves in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
It uses a shell of what are known as plasmonic materials; they present a "photo negative" of the object being cloaked, effectively cancelling it out.
The idea, outlined in New Journal of Physics, could find first application in high-resolution microscopes.
Most of the high-profile invisibility cloaking efforts have focused on the engineering of "metamaterials" - modifying materials to have properties that cannot be found in nature.
The modifications allow metamaterials to guide and channel light in unusual ways - specifically, to make the light rays arrive as if they had not passed over or been reflected by a cloaked object.
Previous efforts that have made 3-D objects disappear have relied upon a "carpet cloak" idea, in which the object to be cloaked is overlaid with a "carpet" of metamaterial that bends light so as to make the object invisible.
Now, Andrea Alu and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have pulled off the trick in "free space", making an 18cm-long cylinder invisible to incoming microwave light.
Negative effects
Light of all types can be described in terms of electric and magnetic fields, and what gives an object its appearance is the way its constituent atoms absorb, transmit or reflect those fields.
Prior metamaterial approaches sidestep these effects simply by channelling light around an object, using carefully designed structures that bounce light in prescribed way, like a pinball machine.
By contrast, plasmonic materials can be designed to have effects on the fields that are precisely opposed to those of the object.
"What we do is different; we realise a shell that scatters [light] by itself, but the interesting point is that if you combine the shell with the object inside, the two counter out and the object becomes completely invisible," Prof Alu told BBC News.
The plasmonic material shell is, in essence, a photo-negative of the object being cloaked.
As a result, the cloak has to be tailored to work for a given object. If one were to swap different objects within the same cloak, they would not be as effectively hidden.
But the success with the cylinder suggests further work with different wavelengths of light is worth pursuing: "It's a real object standing in our lab, and it basically disappears," Prof Alu said.
However, the idea is unlikely to work at the visible light part of the spectrum.
Prof Alu explained that the approach could be applied to the tips of scanning microscopes - the most high-resolution microscopes science has - to yield an improved view of even smaller wavelengths of light.
Ortwin Hess, professor of metamaterials at Imperial College London, said the work was a "very nice verification that this approach works".
"There are some limits on where these things can be applied, but nevertheless it's really, really interesting and fundamental indeed," he told BBC News.
Prof Hess explained that for future applications, plasmonic materials could be combined with the structured metamaterials idea already in development elsewhere. Light can be channelled where it needs to go, or its effects undone, as need be.
Cloaking in visible light, hiding more complex shapes and materials - that is, a cloak of Harry Potter qualities - remains distant, but Prof Alu pointed out that the steps in the meantime will be put to use.
"There is still a lot of work to do," he said. "Our goal was just to show this plasmonic technique can reduce scattering from an object in free space.
"But if I had to bet in five years what kind of cloaking technique might be used for applications, for practical purposes, then I would say plasmonic cloaking is a good bet."
From the BBC:
Security firm Symantec has warned customers to stop using its pcAnywhere software.
The company confirmed that "old" source code stolen by a hacking group had exposed vulnerabilities in the remote access program.
An advisory note on Symantec's website explained how to minimise risks for customers who used pcAnywhere for "business-critical purposes".
Other software from the company is not at a heightened risk, Symantec said.
In its website note, the company said it recommended "disabling the product until Symantec releases a final set of software updates that resolve currently known vulnerability risks".
'Man in the middle'
"Malicious users with access to the source code have an increased ability to identify vulnerabilities and build new exploits," it added.
It said the vulnerability left pcAnywhere users exposed to "man in the middle" attacks - a security hole which puts data at risk of being intercepted.
An attacker could potentially gain remote control of a company's network and access sensitive information.
A Symantec spokesman said that fewer than 50,000 people used the standalone version of pcAnywhere - although the software was also bundled as part of other security packages.
It suggested that corporate customers who used pcAnywhere for business-critical activity should "understand the current risks" and "apply all relevant patches as they are released, and follow the general security best practices".
Blueprints
News of the source code theft emerged earlier this year after hacking group Lords of Dharmaraja - believed to be based in India - threatened to post it online.
Symantec initially said there was no risk to users as the stolen code was six years old, advising simply to make sure the most recent version of the products had been downloaded.
But the updated advice said the stolen material had included blueprints for Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition, Norton Internet Security, Norton SystemWorks (Norton Utilities and Norton GoBack) and pcAnywhere.
Of those products, only pcAnywhere is said to be at "increased risk", and users of the other software packages should not be concerned.
"The code that has been exposed is so old that current out-of-the-box security settings will suffice against any possible threats that might materialise as a result of this incident," the company reiterated on its website.
From the BBC:
The question of whether normal matter's shadowy counterpart anti-matter exerts a kind of "anti-gravity" is set to be answered, according to a new report.
Normal matter attracts all other matter in the Universe, but it remains unclear if anti-matter attracts or repels it.
A team reporting in Physics Review Letters says it has prepared stable pairs of electrons and their anti-matter particles, positrons.
A beam of these pairs can be used to finally solve the anti-gravity puzzle.
Falling up
For every particle in physics, there is an associated anti-particle, identical in every respect that scientists have yet measured, except that it holds an opposite electric charge.
Current theory holds that, at the birth of the Universe, matter and anti-matter were created in equal amounts. When they meet, however, they destroy each other in energetic flashes of light.
The question has remained, then, why did any Universe come into being at all, and why is the one we see overwhelmingly made of normal matter?
One of the characteristics that may differentiate anti-matter is its gravitational behaviour. Most scientists believe that anti-matter will be attracted to normal matter.
Others are not so sure; anti-matter may repel - it may "fall up".
That has implications for the question of why the Universe didn't disappear into a grand flash of light just as soon as it formed. It also might help explain why the Universe is expanding ever more quickly.
It has simply been impossible to test the idea, but researchers at the University of California Riverside are getting closer to addressing the question once and for all.
They have created electron-positron pairs that are in stable orbits around one another - the result is called positronium.
The pairs are kept from bumping into and destroying each other by carefully dumping energy into them to create what are known as "Rydberg states".
Like the lanes of an automotive test track, particles can move into different orbits around one another if they reach higher energies, and these Rydberg positronium atoms are spun up to high energies, lasting for a comparatively long three billionths of a second.
The team hopes to extend the method, up to a few thousandths of a second, preparing a beam of the artificial atoms and seeing just which way they fall.
From the BBC:
Skin cells have been converted directly into cells which develop into the main components of the brain, by researchers studying mice in California.
The experiment, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, skipped the middle "stem cell" stage in the process.
The researchers said they were "thrilled" at the potential medical uses.
Far more tests are needed before the technique could be used on human skin.
Stem cells, which can become any other specialist type of cell from brain to bone, are thought to have huge promise in a range of treatments. Many trials are taking place, such as in stroke patients or specific forms of blindness.
One of the big questions for the field is where to get the cells from. There are ethical concerns around embryonic stem cells and patients would need to take immunosuppressant drugs as any stem cell tissue would not match their own.
An alternative method has been to take skin cells and reprogram them into "induced" stem cells. These could be made from a patient's own cells and then turned into the cell type required, however, the process results in cancer-causing genes being activated.
Direct approach
The research group, at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, is looking at another option - converting a person's own skin cells into specialist cells, without creating "induced" stem cells. It has already transformed skin cells directly into neurons.
This study created "neural precursor" cells, which can develop into three types of brain cell: neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.
These precursor cells have the advantage that, once created, they can be grown in a laboratory into very large numbers. This could be critical if the cells were to be used in any therapy.
Brain cells and skin cells contain the same genetic information, however, the genetic code is interpreted differently in each. This is controlled by "transcription factors".
The scientists used a virus to infect skin cells with three transcription factors known to be at high levels in neural precursor cells.
After three weeks about one in 10 of the cells became neural precursor cells.
Lead researcher Prof Marius Wernig said: "We are thrilled about the prospects for potential medical use of these cells.
"We've shown the cells can integrate into a mouse brain and produce a missing protein important for the conduction of electrical signal by the neurons.
"More work needs to be done to generate similar cells from human skin cells and assess their safety and efficacy."
Dr Deepak Srivastava, who has researched converting cells into heart muscle, said the study: "Opens the door to consider new ways to regenerate damaged neurons using cells surrounding the area of injury."
From the BBC:
A self-guiding bullet that can steer itself towards its target is being developed for use by the US military.
The bullet uses tiny fins to correct the course of its flight allowing it to hit laser-illuminated targets.
It is designed to be capable of hitting objects at distances of about 2km (1.24 miles). Work on a prototype suggests that accuracy is best at longer ranges.
A think tank says the tech is well-suited to snipers, but worries about it being marketed to the public.
Work on the project is being carried out by an Albuquerque-based subsidiary of defence contractor Lockheed Martin on behalf of the US government.
The current prototype involves a 4in (10cm) bullet which includes an optical sensor in its nose to detect the laser. This information is then processed and used to move motors within the bullet which steer tiny fins, altering the ammunition's path.
"We can make corrections 30 times per second," said researcher Red Jones.
"That means we can over-correct, so we don't have to be as precise each time."
Accuracy
The team has carried out both field tests and computer simulations, and says "engineering issues" remain. However, they add that they are confident of bringing the product to market.
Experts say there would be great demand for the innovation on the battlefield.
"One of the big successes in Libya was that the accuracy of the munitions used was much higher than in previous campaigns," Elizabeth Quintana, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank told the BBC.
"97% of Nato's weapons hit their target to within about 2m (6.5ft). But that was achieved through air munitions.
"This would be a revolution for ground forces, and may help further cut down on civilian casualties in future conflicts."
Unlike most bullets the self-guided prototype minimises spin, aiming to fly like a dart.
But the team's patent application notes that previous attempts to create self-guiding rapidly-spinning bullets ran into the problem that the electronics required became too complicated.
To simplify things the researchers moved the bullet's centre of gravity further forward than it would normally be.
When combined with the fins this caused it to only spin a few revolutions per second, making it easier to steer. Because the bullet's motion settles the longer it is in flight, the researchers say its accuracy improves at longer ranges.
Tests with commercially available gunpowder have measured the bullet reaching just over twice the speed of sound (2,400ft per second), which is still below standard military speeds.
But the researchers say they are confident that they can increase its velocity with customised gunpowder.
Terrorism
A press release said that: "Potential customers include the military, law enforcement and recreational shooters."
That concerns some industry watchers.
"The public may be uncomfortable with the implications of people being able to use this without needing to have a sight line to the target - you could see this having terrorist uses," said Ms Quintana.
"There's talk of selling to recreational hunters, but I would imagine the authorities would want to limit the public's access to this kind of technology.
"But it would be useful for law enforcement - particularly in hostage situations."
From the BBC:
The eruption of some of the largest volcanoes on the planet could be predicted several decades before the event, according to researchers.
Analysis of rock crystals from the Greek island of Santorini suggests eruptions are preceded by a fast build-up of magma underground, which might be detected using modern instrumentation.
Such volcanoes can produce enough ash and gas to temporarily change the global climate.
The research is in the journal Nature.
Volcanologists refer to history's largest volcanoes as "caldera-forming eruptions", as the magma ejected is so voluminous that it leaves a massive depression on the Earth's surface and a crater-like structure known as a caldera.
The largest of these volcanoes have been dubbed "super volcanoes" and their eruptions can trigger devastation with global impacts.
Such volcanoes can lie dormant for hundreds of thousands of years before blowing. But while researchers believe seismic data and other readings would give us a few month's notice of such an eruption, the new study suggests we might anticipate these events much earlier.
"When volcanoes awaken and when the magma starts to ascend to the surface, cracking rock as it does, it sends out signals," Prof Tim Druitt of France's Blaise Pascal University and lead researcher told BBC News.
"You get seismic signals, you get deformation of the surface, increasing gas emission at the surface - and this can be detected.
"The question we're addressing here is what's going on at depth prior to these big eruptions. The classical view was that during long repose periods over thousands of years, magma slowly accumulates a few kilometres below the volcano and finally it blows.
"What we're finding is that there's an acceleration phase of magma build-up on a time scale of a few decades, and that's surprisingly short given the thousands of years of repose that have preceded that eruption."
The evidence comes from analysis of crystals in pumice rock from the Santorini site, which the researchers in France, Switzerland and Singapore analysed using modern instrumentation including electron and ion microprobes.
"The changes in composition of the crystals with time provide little histories of how the magma itself has evolved," said Prof Druitt.
"What we found was that all the crystals in the magma grew within a few decades of the eruption."
Early warning
Caldera-forming eruption sites can be found all over the world, although it is believed that all are currently dormant. They include sites in Yellowstone National Park in the United States, Campi Flegrei in Italy and Santorini and its accompanying islands.
The eruption at the latter site over 3,600 years ago is called the "Minoan" eruption as it occurred at the height of the Minoan civilisation on the nearby island of Crete and was once thought to have caused its collapse, although that is now a moot point.
Predicting such events years rather than months before they happen could prove vital, says Prof Druitt.
"What we're saying is that all caldera volcanoes, even those in remote regions of the globe, should be monitored using highly sensitive modern instruments in order to pick up these deep signals which may suggest reactivation," he said.
"If you had a big eruption of this sort, let's say in the middle of Europe today, the effects would be enormous and a few months might not be enough to get your act together."
Commenting on the paper, Prof David Pyle, a volcanologist from Oxford University said: "This new work on Santorini sheds new light on what happens in the lead-up to the rare catastrophic eruptions, like the Bronze Age 'Minoan' eruption, which happen every 20,000 years or so.
"The new evidence from mineral grains appears to strengthen the idea, which has been developing in recent years, that large magma systems appear to awaken from long periods of repose only shortly (months, years or decades) prior to eruption.
"That is, the magma which eventually erupts appears to rise into position, in the top few kilometres of the crust, only a short time before the eruption begins."
However, he said the next problem was to try to understand what was causing this accelerated build up of magma.
"The challenge for volcanologists is to understand what it is that causes these bursts of melt movement; to understand where the melts have come from, and to be able to recognise their signals before an eruption begins."
From the BBC:
Primitive moss-like plants could have triggered the cooling of the Earth some 470 million years ago, say researchers.
A study published in Nature Geoscience may help explain why temperatures gradually began to fall, culminating in a series of "mini ice ages".
Until now it had been thought that the process of global cooling began 100 million years later, when larger plants and trees emerged.
The simple plants' interactions with rocks are believed to be the cause.
"The humble moss has created the climate which we enjoy today, from which the life we see all around us evolved," said Prof Tim Lenton of Exeter University, one of the lead researchers.
Carbon dioxide insulates the planet, rather like a duvet wrapped around it: the higher the concentration of CO2, the higher the average global temperature.
Atmospheric levels of the gas 480 million years ago are thought to have been 16 times higher than they are now, and average global temperatures are thought to have been 25C, around 10C higher than they are now.
But by 460 million years ago, CO2 levels had fallen by half and the planet began to cool, allowing the formation of the polar ice caps.
The question is: what caused the drop in CO2 levels? The answer, according to an experiment by Prof Lenton and his colleague Prof Liam Dolan of Oxford University is "moss".
According to Prof Dolan, the invasion of the land by moss was a "pivotal" time in our history. "It brought about huge changes to our climate," he said.
The researchers wanted to investigate whether their interaction with rocks, in a process known as chemical weathering, could have been responsible for the drop in CO2 levels.
Weathering involves the mosses extracting nutrients from rock formations by dissolving them with acid. This chemical reaction also leads to CO2 reacting with the rocks and being removed from the atmosphere.
By studying this process with modern mosses, the researchers found that the plants' appetite for CO2 is voracious and could indeed explain the drop in temperature.
From the BBC:
Click here to see this article with a video of the 3D printer in action and pictures
A 3D printer-created lower jaw has been fitted to an 83-year-old woman's face in what doctors say is the first operation of its kind.
The transplant was carried out in June in the Netherlands, but is only now being publicised.
The implant was made out of titanium powder - heated and fused together by a laser, one layer at a time.
Technicians say the operation's success paves the way for the use of more 3D-printed patient-specific parts.
The surgery follows research carried out at the Biomedical Research Institute at Hasselt University in Belgium, and the implant was built by LayerWise - a specialised metal-parts manufacturer based in the same country.
Articulated joints
The patient involved had developed a chronic bone infection. Doctors believed reconstructive surgery would have been risky because of her age and so opted for the new technology.
The implant is a complex part - involving articulated joints, cavities to promote muscle attachment and grooves to direct the regrowth of nerves and veins.
However, once designed, it only took a few hours to print.
"Once we received the 3D digital design, the part was split up automatically into 2D layers and then we sent those cross sections to the printing machine," Ruben Wauthle, LayerWise's medical applications engineer, told the BBC.
"It used a laser beam to melt successive thin layers of titanium powder together to build the part.
"This was repeated with each cross section melted to the previous layer. It took 33 layers to build 1mm of height, so you can imagine there were many thousand layers necessary to build this jawbone."
Once completed, the part was given a bioceramic coating. The team said the operation to attach it to the woman's face took four hours, a fifth of the time required for traditional reconstructive surgery.
"Shortly after waking up from the anaesthetics the patient spoke a few words, and the day after the patient was able to swallow again," said Dr Jules Poukens from Hasselt University, who led the surgical team.
"The new treatment is a world premiere because it concerns the first patient-specific implant in replacement of the entire lower jaw."
Screw-in teeth
The woman was able to go home after four days.
Her new jaw weighs 107g, just over a third heavier than before, but the doctors said that she should find it easy to get used to the extra weight.
Follow-up surgery is scheduled later this month when the team will remove healing implants inserted into holes built into the implant's surface.
A specially made dental bridge will then be attached to the part, following which false teeth will be screwed into the holes to provide a set of dentures.
Printed organs
The team said that it expected similar techniques to become more common over the coming years.
"The advantages are that the surgery time decreases because the implants perfectly fit the patients and hospitalisation time also lowers - all reducing medical costs," said Mr Wauthle.
"You can build parts that you can't create using any other technique. For example you can print porous titanium structures which allow bone in-growth and allow a better fixation of the implant, giving it a longer lifetime."
The research follows a separate project at Washington State University last year in which engineers demonstrated how 3D-printer-created ceramic scaffolds could be used to promote the growth of new bone tissue.
They said experiments on animals suggested the technique could be used in humans within the next couple of decades.
LayerWise believes the two projects only hint at the scope of the potential medical uses for 3D printing.
Mr Wauthle said that the ultimate goal was to print body organs ready for transplant, but cautioned that such advances might be beyond their lifetimes.
"There are still big biological and chemical issues to be solved," he said.
"At the moment we use metal powder for printing. To print organic tissue and bone you would need organic material as your 'ink'. Technically it could be possible - but there is still a long way to go before we're there."
From the BBC:
Scientists in the US have successfully made human brain cells in the lab that are an exact replica of genetically caused Parkinson's disease.
The breakthrough means they can now see exactly how mutations in the parkin gene cause the disease in an estimated one in 10 patients with Parkinson's.
And it offers a realistic model to test new treatments on - a hurdle that has blighted research efforts until now.
The team told Nature Communications their work was a "game-changer".
Lab-grown
"This is the first time that human dopamine neurons have ever been generated from Parkinson's disease patients with parkin mutations," said Dr Jian Feng who led the investigations.
"Before this, we didn't even think about being able to study the disease in human neurons.
"The brain is so fully integrated. It's impossible to obtain live human neurons to study."
Studying human neurons is critical in Parkinson's disease since animal models that lack the parkin gene do not develop the condition, rendering them useless for this research purpose.
To make the human neurons the scientists used a technique already successfully tested by others which can turn donated skin cells into brain tissue.
They used skin samples from four volunteers - two healthy people and two with Parkinson's disease caused by a parkin gene mutation.
This allowed them to observe the parkin gene at work.
Normally, parkin controls the production of an enzyme called MAO (monamine oxidase) which, in turn, keeps a check on the brain-signalling chemical dopamine.
When parkin is mutated, that regulation is lost and levels of MAO increase, which can be toxic to dopamine-producing brain cells.
The scientists now want to test new treatments that might prevent this damage occurring and stop this form of Parkinson's.
They have already shown that they can reverse the defect by putting a normal parkin gene into diseased neurons.
Dr Michelle Gardner, research development manager at Parkinson's UK, said the study was particularly exciting because it provided a new way to investigate this genetic form of Parkinson's.
"Parkinson's UK funded research has already shown that parkin plays a key role in how Parkinson's develops in the brain nerve cells that die."
From the BBC:
Click here to see this article with photos
Why zebras evolved their characteristic black-and-white stripes has been the subject of decades of debate among scientists.
Now researchers from Hungary and Sweden claim to have solved the mystery.
The stripes, they say, came about to keep away blood-sucking flies.
They report in the Journal of Experimental Biology that this pattern of narrow stripes makes zebras "unattractive" to the flies.
They key to this effect is in how the striped patterns reflect light.
"We started off studying horses with black, brown or white coats," explained Susanne Akesson from Lund University, a member of the international research team that carried out the study.
"We found that in the black and brown horses, we get horizontally polarised light." This effect made the dark-coloured horses very attractive to flies.
It means that the light that bounces off the horse's dark coat - and travels in waves to the eyes of a hungry fly - moves along a horizontal plane, like a snake slithering along with its body flat to the floor.
- There are many theories about why zebras are striped
- Scientists have proposed that the mass of stripes in a large herd confuses predators
- Others have shown that stripes may help the animals regulate their temperature, and that zebras recognise other individuals by their stripes
- Studies of zebra embryos show that, early in development, they are black and they develop their white stripes later
Dr Akesson and her colleagues found that horseflies, or tabanids, were very attracted by these "flat" waves of light.
"From a white coat, you get unpolarised light [reflected]," she explained. Unpolarised light waves travel along any and every plane, and are much less attractive to flies. As a result, white-coated horses are much less troubled by horseflies than their dark-coloured relatives.
Having discovered the flies' preference for dark coats, the team then became interested in zebras. They wanted to know what kind of light would bounce off the striped body of a zebra, and how this would affect the biting flies that are a horse's most irritating enemy.
"We created an experimental set-up where we painted the different patterns onto boards," Dr Akesson told BBC Nature.
She and her colleagues placed a blackboard, a whiteboard, and several boards with stripes of varying widths into one of the fields of a horse farm in rural Hungary.
"We put insect glue on the boards and counted the number of flies that each one attracted," she explained.
The striped board that was the closest match to the actual pattern of a zebra's coat attracted by far the fewest flies, "even less than the white boards that were reflecting unpolarised light," Dr Akesson said.
"That was a surprise because, in a striped pattern, you still have these dark areas that are reflecting horizontally polarised light.
"But the narrower (and more zebra-like) the stripes, the less attractive they were to the flies."
To test horseflies' reaction to a more realistic 3-D target, the team put four life-size "sticky horse models " into the field - one brown, one black, one white and one black-and-white striped, like a zebra.
The researchers collected the trapped flies every two days, and found that the zebra-striped horse model attracted the fewest.
Prof Matthew Cobb, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Manchester pointed out that the experiment was "rigorous and fascinating" but did not exclude the other hypotheses about the origin of zebras' stripes.
"Above all, for this explanation to be true, the authors would have to show that tabanid fly bites are a major selection pressure on zebras, but not on horses and donkeys found elsewhere in the world... none of which are stripy," he told BBC Nature.
"[They] recognise this in their study, and my hunch is that there is not a single explanation and that many factors are involved in the zebra's stripes.
