The wreck is believed to have sunk in the 1840s, and has already given up its bountiful booty including the world’s oldest bottle of champagne considered drinkable. That champagne was auctioned off and now scientists have turned their tech to a bottle of beer discovered in the wreck.

According to the researchers, the beer they analyzed had not stood the test of time well, but did retain its pale golden color. The scientists believe the beer originally had hints of rose, almond, and cloves. The researchers say that with their chemical analysis and the help of a master brewer it’s possible to re-create the beer so beer fans can have a taste of what sailors drank 170 years ago.

[via Reuters]

Scientists in Japan have taken a bald mouse and successfully regrown its hair. Even more interesting is that the scientists were able to control the color and density of hair. You see that on this particular bald mouse that appears to have eyelashes growing out of his neck. Mice are so ugly.

These researchers cultivated two different kinds of mice hair follicles and then transplanted them onto a mouse. It took about three weeks for 74% of the follicles to grow hair. The scientists then transplanted the hair follicles on the mouse’s back, and it grew human hair. Certainly, if they can grow human hair on a mouse, they’ll be able to grow it on human heads before long.

[via CBS News]

The study could make surgery using ultrasound techniques more precise, but more importantly, one day it might go in your pocket and help you escape a horde of Daleks. It might also help get you a cute sidekick.

The scientists used energy from an ultrasound array to form a beam. This beam can carry momentum to push away an object in its path and, by using a beam shaped like a helix or vortex, cause the object to rotate. Hence, “unscrewing”. Next I hope they work on some psychic paper.

[via BBC]

It seems that it takes the average person about two pints of beer to reach that level. I wager much more than that you would turn into the drooling, drunken idiot your friends think you are. The study was conducted by the University of Illinois in Chicago. The researchers set up a bar game with 40 participants and 20 of the participants got to drink two cold pints before playing.

Participants were given three words in a series and then challenged to name a fourth word that would continue the theme. One example is users being given the words blue, cottage, Swiss and then answering cheese. Interestingly, these researchers think the alcohol may account for the reason why good ideas come to people when you’re having a glass of wine at dinner. It may also explain why some drunks like Ernest Hemingway were also able to write some of the best literature ever.

[via NYDailyNews]

Scientists at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Barcelona, Spain have invented what they claim to be the most accurate nanomechanical sensor for measuring mass ever. The sensor so sensitive it can measure a change in mass as small as 1.7 yoctograms. That is roughly the mass of a single proton.

The sensor uses a tiny carbon nanotube that is shorter than those that previous sensors utilized. To work, the sensor must be lowered to a temperature of -269°C and placed in a ultra-high vacuum. The sensor was able to weigh an atom of xenon to the nearest yoctogram. The researchers think in the future such a sensor might be able to measure human tissue at an atomic level to allow for diagnosis of disease conditions.

[via New Scientist via Geek.com]

The scientists are using a technique that they use when studying ice crystal formation in avalanches to figure out why ice cream loses flavor and texture after sitting in the freezer too long. The key bit of tech used to hone ice cream to a creamy and freezing point is an x-ray machine. The machine allows the scientists to look closer into the structure of ice cream than ever before.

How creamy and tasty ice cream is depends on the size and shape of the ice crystals. Apparently the larger the ice crystals are, the chewier and less tasty the ice cream is to eat according to the researchers. We already knew that the quicker you can freeze ice cream, the creamier it is thanks to smaller ice crystals. Part of the reason ice cream doesn’t taste as good after a while is blamed on our freezers that can fluctuate a few degrees in either direction. That slight temperature fluctuation allows part of the ice cream to melt and then refreeze causing a loss of flavor and texture. The goal of the study is to create ice cream better able to withstand fluctuations in temperature.

[via MNN]

Space junk poses a hazard not only the satellites that we need for communications and other things, but the lives of astronauts living on the International Space Station. In fact, this past Saturday morning the crew of the ISS had to board the two Russian escape vessels attached to the ISS due to debris that came too close the ISS for NASA’s comfort.

NASA didn’t discover the debris in time to move the ISS to a higher altitude and avoid the problem. Chunks of satellite debris passed within 9 miles of the ISS. While that doesn’t sound that close, even tiny chunks of space debris traveling at speeds of about 17,500 miles an hour can have devastating effects if it impacts the space station, so caution was the best option for the crew. For now, all is back to normal on the ISS, but this underscores how much of a problem space junk poses for the ongoing exploration of space.

[via NYT]

When Einstein died, he bequeathed most of his scientific work to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Rather than stuffing all that scientific knowledge and awesome away in storage where no one ever sees it again, the university is putting it all online for anyone to check out, even if most of us can’t understand the work.

The project will take several years but the first 2,000 documents out of the 80,000 item archive are already online at the Einstein Archives Online Portal. The works include all kinds of personal correspondence, scientific writings, report cards from his childhood and more. Among the content is Einstein’s notebook with his original writings on the theory of general relativity. Interestingly, one of the things that may have helped Einstein to be so much smarter than us normal people was a massive corpus callosum, the interconnect between the two halves of our brain, believed to be part of the reason for his genius.

You can dive right in and check out some highlights of the Einstein Archives here.

[via PCMag]

MIT announced back in 2010 that it was developing the special camera that would use light echoes to see around corners. It took two years and the researchers are now showing off the camera in action. The camera fires 50 individual femtosecond laser pulses in a burst at 60 different times at various spots on a wall. The imaging sensor then picks up the light assets reflected back to the camera and uses complicated algorithms to piece together an image of what’s going on around the corner.

It’s easy to see practical military and police applications for such a camera. However, it currently takes several minutes for the image sensor to piece the image together, and the image isn’t exactly accurate as of yet. The MIT researchers hope to cut that to 10 seconds to make it usable in the real world. Ten seconds is still a long time and things around the corner can change significantly and 10 seconds making me think that the camera needs to get down into the one to second range for most practical applications.

[via Scientific American via PetaPixel]

A Japanese mechanical engineer named Xinwei Wang has been investigating spider silk from a spider called the Golden Silk Orbweaver that is known for making complicated webs. The engineer was testing the spider silk for external connectivity and discovered that it is about 800 times more effective at conducting thermal energy than any other organic material tested.

In fact, it was better than almost all non-organic materials tested including copper, iron, and silicon. Another interesting factoid is that the research team discovered that by stretching the silk to 20% of its capacity, thermal conductivity also increased by 20%. Typically, when material is stretched it loses thermal conductivity. There are no plans to use this spider silk for making electronics right now, but in the future spiders webs inside your computer could be there to keep your PC cool rather than because you don’t keep it clean.

[Iowa State University via GizMag]

They accomplished this with a cylindrical container with a second smaller cylinder inside that is attached to a hand crank. The “Stokes Flow” is what makes this feat possible, named after George Gabriel Stokes. It’s a type of liquid flow that is defined by the battle between inertial forces and the viscosity of the fluids in question. In layman’s terms, the liquid used here is so thick that it halts the scatter that would normally happen if the dyes were placed in a thinner substance like plain water. So the dyes get mixed by momentum diffusion, instead of molecular diffusion, which makes the process reversible.

Pretty cool, no? Too bad we can’t rewind plain old water and get rid of pollution.

[via FYFD via Geek]

The device is called the MinION. I would imagine that the samples of DNA still need to be prepared in the lab, then the samples would be dropped into its little sequencer chamber where they be sequenced continuously as a DNA strand is pulled through a small hole and inside the machine. The sequencing requires some sort of enzyme solution and inside the device is a small bio-mechanical sieve.

MinION will cost about $900(USD) when it comes to market sometime later this year, however it sounds like that it’s a disposable device which would be used for just a single experiment.

I wonder if this tiny device is the start of a society like that in the movie Gattaca where DNA determines everything you can do. Probably not, but this should make it much cheaper for companies and educational institutions to get into DNA sequencing, assuming the device is accurate.

[via EverythingUSB]

The process of using roaches to create power has something to do with an enzyme roaches have that can be turned into a cockroach biofuel cell. The enzyme from the roach is able to break down sugars in the digestive tract into simpler sugars called monosaccharides. A second enzyme is introduced that oxidizes the monosaccharides and results in the release of electrons or creation of power.

So far, the system only produces around 100 µW of power, which admittedly isn’t much. Who knows what be done with that little bit of power in the future, perhaps something along the lines of little remote-control roaches to invade roach strongholds and disperse bug killer. According to the researchers, hailing from Case Western Reserve University, the little bugs aren’t harmed in any way. The electronics that are used to create power can be removed from the insects with no lasting effects.

[via medGadget via OhGizmo!]

The coolest of the projects that received grant money is one proposed by a team of scientists at Boston University that want to figure out if you can grow brown fat cells and then inject them into the human body as a way to boost metabolism and burn fat, leading to weight loss. The human body has both brown adipose tissue and white adipose tissue. The white fat cells make people obese, yet the brown fat cells help burn calories.

In fact, a recent study showed that a pockets of brown fat cells can burn as much as 250 calories in a three-hour time span. Those brown fat cells can even steal energy from white fat cells, further stunting obesity. The researchers hope to develop a method of growing those brown fat cells and injecting them into the body with the goal of helping overweight soldiers lose weight. You can bet that if the team is successful, this will also be highly profitable in the private sector with obese people looking for a way to lose weight.

[via Wired: Danger Room]

Right now the single biggest space hazard in orbit are the thousands of pieces of debris left over after the Chinese conducted an anti-satellite test with a missile back in 2007. Early Sunday morning this past weekend, mission controllers in Russia had to make a change in the orbital altitude of the ISS to avoid a chunk of that Chinese space debris that was coming perilously close to the ISS.

Mission controllers fired up the engines on the Russian Zvezda service module and over 64 seconds raised the orbit of the ISS by 1.7 km. The ISS is now orbiting at an altitude of 391.6 km above the surface of the Earth. The increased orbital distance was enough to get the ISS away from the chunk of space debris. It seems like we need to start coming up with a good plan to clean up all the junk orbiting the Earth.

[via SpaceDaily]

According to the Russian, the object is an organism with the body of a scorpion or a crab, a disc shape and a back flap that changed position from one shot to the next the probe took. Life on Venus is hard for most people to imagine, since the surface of the planet can reach temps of 464°C, and the gravity is nine times that of Earth.

A scientist that works with the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University doesn’t believe the Russian is seeing what he thinks. According to Jonathon Hill, who processes images NASA takes of Mars, what Prof. Ksanfomaliti sees is a piece of mechanical equipment which broke off on landing. He also thinks that the reason it looks like it changed positions is that the images were taken by two different cameras on the craft.

Hill also says that the same object shows up in photos taken by another probe called Venera 14 that landed nearby. Venera 14 and Venera 13 are identical, and likely both dropped the same bit of debris on the ground. What do you think from the blurry images here? I can certainly see something you might think are legs, but the mechanical equipment theory seems much more logical.

[via Telegraph]

Demonstrated in the video below – albeit on a very small fire – their system manages to snuff out a flame by destabilizing the fire by playing with electromagnetism and acoustics. While the DARPA program that drove the experiment aims to extinguish fires instantly, this technique does take a few seconds to kill these small methane flames.

It’s unclear exactly how it works, and there’s no evidence that they could scale it up to put out larger fires with the same technique. Still, it’s kind of magical how they just wave that little wand over the flames, and it puts them out for good.

[DARPA via Geekosystem]

The project is aimed at making a roof for a car that would allow the people inside to see out at during the day and capture solar energy as well. Then at night, the roof turns into a glowing OLED light. I think the windows of homes could someday use this technology too. They could capture solar power during the day to power the house and then turn into room lighting at night.

The OLED light is only 1.8mm thick and provides a uniform and soft glow across the entire surface. By combining this with an invisible solar panel, you get power and light in one device without blocking your view. Apparently, the technology is being developed for the sunroof of Daimler’s unusual Smart Forvision concept EV, shown below:

[via TG Daily and OLED-Info]

For people who are wound up too tight, it’s a great way to release the stress and pent-up energy. And for the interns at  Open University’s computer science department, it’s something that has been programmed to take punches and turn them into different forms of stimulus and feedback.

The characteristics of each punch are detected using impact sensors and an accelerometer. These signals are then processed in an Arduino processor, which provides sounds, lights, images, and other information. In addition to playing music, this particular punching bag can also emit laughter, or even a sigh when hugged.

The interactive punching bag was intended investigate the impact of feedback and stimulus on the users (or the punchers), as well as observe what effects impact interactive design might make on the user (or puncher) experience over time.

Pretty cool, huh?

[via Dvice]

Generally, the smaller the wires in a semiconductor get, the more resistance they have making them less efficient. The team of researchers from the University of New South Wales has discovered a way to make tiny wires that have extremely low resistance. The tiny wires are made by stringing together individual atoms on silicon making wires as tiny as four atoms wide. For those of you counting, four atoms measure about 1.5 nanometers.

The team prepared each wire by lithographically writing lines onto a silicon sample with microscopy techniques and then depositing phosphorus along the line. The closely packed phosphorus atoms were then encase in silicon and resistivity stayed down, at least at low temperatures. The new wires have the carrying capacity of copper and could allow microchips to continue the shrink and meet Moore’s law ever-increasing demands.

[via Scientific American]