Aestus Ajith

Whoa. One cosmologist is proposing that the universe isn't actually expanding, as the standard theory goes. Instead, the redshift effects astronomers see could mean that everything is just gaining more mass, while possibly staying in place, or even contracting. The theory, which comes from a University of Heidelberg physicist named Christof Wetterich, hasn't yet been peer reviewed,  Nature News  reports . Interestingly,  Nature News  also reports that the idea isn't testable because masses are measured relative to one another, so even if the universe were gaining mass, we'd never know, because they'd all still be the same relative to one another. Nevertheless, Wetterich told Nature News that the advantages of his idea include: 1) another way of looking at the universe, which could be helpful, and 2) a theory of the universe that helps explain some troublesome predictions from the standard expansion idea. A mass-gaining universe could create a phenomenon that...

Dr. Lianbing Hu heads the group that developed a new battery made with wood at the Energy Research Center at the University of Maryland in College Park. The big idea behind  Joe's Big Idea  is to report on interesting inventions and inventors. When I saw the headline  "An Environmentally Friendly Battery Made From Wood,"  on a press release recently, I figured it fit the bill, so went to investigate. The battery is being developed at the  Energy Research Center  at the University of Maryland in College Park. I really wasn't sure what a wood battery would look like. I knew you could make a battery out of a potato  and wires, so I figured maybe they were doing something similar with a block of wood. Wrong. The "wood" is actually microscopic wood fibers that are fashioned into thin sheets. The sheets are then coated with carbon nanotubes and packed into small metal discs. The wood batteries use sodium ions, rather than the lithium ions that ...

The discovery of two new jumbo-sized viruses is blurring the lines between viral and cellular life and could point to the existence of a new type of life, scientists suggest. The two large viruses, detailed in this week's issue of the journal  Science , have been dubbed "Pandoraviruses" because of the surprises they may hold for biologists, in reference to the mythical Greek figure who opened a box and released evil into the world. The discovery of Pandoraviruses is an indication that our knowledge of Earth's microbial biodiversity is still incomplete, explained study coauthor  Jean-Michel Claverie , a virologist at the French National Research Agency at Aix-Marseille University. "Huge discoveries remain to be made at the most fundamental level that may change our present conception about the origin of life and its evolution," Claverie said. Eugene Koonin , a computational evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information ...

Researchers argue that cold-blooded dinosaurs would not have had the required muscular power to prey on other animals and dominate over mammals. Image: Catmando/Shutterstock Research has shown new evidence that dinosaurs were warm-blooded like birds and mammals, not cold-blooded like reptiles as commonly believed. In a paper published in  PLoS ONE , Professor Roger Seymour of the University's School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, argues that cold-blooded dinosaurs would not have had the required muscular power to prey on other animals and dominate over mammals as they did throughout the Mesozoic period. "Much can be learned about dinosaurs from fossils but the question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded or cold-blooded is still hotly debated among scientists," says Professor Seymour. "Some point out that a large saltwater crocodile can achieve a body temperature above 30°C by basking in the sun, and it can maintain the high temperature overnig...

New research shows oxytocin isn't the anti-anxiety drug we thought it was. Oxytocin, the feel-good bonding hormone released by physical contact with another person, orgasm and childbirth (potentially encouraging  monogamy ), might have a darker side. The  love drug  also plays an important role in intensifying  negative emotional memories  and increasing feelings of fear in future stressful situations, according to a new study. Two experiments performed with mice found that the hormone activates a signaling molecule called extracellular-signal-related kinases (ERK), which has been associated with the way the brain  forms memories   of fear . According to Jelena Radulovic, senior author on the study and a professor at Northwestern University's medical school, ERK stimulates fear pathways in the brain's lateral septum, the region with the highest levels of oxytocin. Mice without oxytocin receptors and mice with even more oxytocin receptors tha...

A new nanoparticle material conducts electricity even when stretched to twice its original length. Gold Conductor  Researchers embedded a sample of polyurethane with gold nanoparticles. When stretched to extremes the material maintained conductivity.  A team of scientists at the University of Michigan has  discovered  that when stretched to their limits, gold nanoparticles embedded into elastic material self-assemble into conductive pathways. The finding has applications for  flexible electronics  and gentle medical devices. For their experiment, lead researchers Nicholas Kotov and Yoonseob Kim applied gold nanoparticles to a sample of polyurethane. Observing the effects with an electron microscope, the team slowly began to stretch the material. The nanoparticles responded to the tension by rearranging themselves into chains. Kotov and Kim tested two versions of the material. The first involved alternating layers of polyurethane and nanoparticles...

Savants have almost super-human abilities in art, music or memory – and not all are born that way. But is severe head trauma the only way to become a ‘sudden savant’ Image  1  of  3 On Southport’s stately seafront, the opening of a new art exhibition is drawing a late summer crowd. Long and unusually complex in the planning, it features the paintings of Tommy McHugh, an ex-builder from nearby Liverpool whose work has attracted worldwide attention. Despite the appreciative buzz, Tommy, unfortunately, can’t be present. I later find him in the intensive care unit of a hospital on the Wirral, where he has been taken with acute pneumonia. A few weeks later he is dead. The redoubtable, 62 year-old latecomer to the world of art had been plagued with illness for some time, but harboured mixed feelings about his afflictions. It was after a near-fatal stroke, 11 years ago, that he discovered – to no one’s greater surprise than his own – that he could ...

Hill, Cox/Proceedings of the Royal Society A Scientists have extended Einstein's equations for faster-than-light travel. Here a three-dimensional (right) graph shows the relationship between three different velocities: v, u and U, where v is the velocity of a second observer measured by a first observer, u is the velocity of a moving particle measured by the second observer, and U is the relative velocity of the particle to the first observer. Although Einstein's theories suggest nothing can move faster than the speed of light, two scientists have extended his equations to show what would happen if faster-than-light travel were possible. Despite an apparent prohibition on such travel by Einstein’s theory of special relativity , the scientists said the theory actually lends itself easily to a description of velocities that exceed the speed of light. "We started thinking about it, and we think this is a very natural extension of Einstein's equations," sai...

Dominguez-Rodrigo M. et al., PLoS ONE A fragment of a child's skull discovered at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, shows the oldest known evidence of anemia caused by a nutritional deficiency. Fragments of a 1.5-million-year-old skull from a child recently found in Tanzania suggest early hominids weren't just occasional carnivores but regular meat eaters, researchers say. The finding helps build the case that meat-eating helped the human lineage evolve large brains, scientists added. "I know this will sound awful to vegetarians, but meat made us human," said researcher Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo, an archaeologist at Complutense University in Madrid. Past research suggested prehuman hominids such as australopithecines  may have eaten some meat . However, it is the  regular consumption of meat  that often is thought to have triggered major changes in the human lineage, the genus Homo, with this high-energy food supporting large human brains . Given its importance t...

Cable bacteria in the mud of the sea bottom. (Mingdong Dong, Jie Song & Nils Risgaard-Petersen) Tiny bacteria living on the ocean floor produce electric currents that help them break down matter to generate energy. Danish researchers discovered evidence of electricity in the seabed nearly three years ago, and have traced it back to bacteria that are only one centimeter (0.4 inches) long and 100 times thinner than a hair. “Our experiments showed that the electric connections in the seabed must be solid structures built by bacteria,” said study co-author Christian Pfeffer at Aarhus University, in a press release. Inside each of these bacteria is a bundle of insulated wires that can conduct a current from one end to the other. “The incredible idea that these bacteria should be electric cables really fell into place when, inside the bacteria, we saw wire-like strings enclosed by a membrane,” said Nils Risgaard-Petersen, also at Aarhus University, in the release. One sq...

Nobel prizes often attract controversy, but usually after they have been awarded. Albert Einstein's physics prize was the subject of argument for years before it was even a reality Albert Einstein in 1920. He would receive the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year, but not for relativity. Photograph: Roger Viollet/Getty Images There was a lot riding on Einstein winning a Nobel prize. Beyond his academic reputation, and that of the Nobel Institute for recognising greatness, the wellbeing of his former wife and their two sons depended upon it. In the aftermath of the first world war, defeated Germany was being consumed by hyper-inflation. The government was printing more money to pay the war reparations and, as a result, the mark went into freefall against foreign currencies. Living in Berlin, Einstein was naturally affected by the crisis. He had divorced Mileva in 1919, several years after she had returned to Switzerland with the boys, Hans-Albert and Eduard....

The hot droplet is suspended in a vacuum between two electrodes. While the droplet cools down or is heated up, its structure is continuously monitored by exposing it to radiation from the synchrotron source. Credit: Institute of Materials Physics in Space at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Cologne, Germany. If a liquid metal alloy is cooled slowly it will eventually form a solid phase. Before it solidifies, however, the liquid undergoes a liquid-liquid transition to a phase in which it has the same concentration but a more strongly ordered structure. This structure has now been demonstrated for the first time by material scientists from Saarland University in a collaborative project with the German Aerospace Centre and the Leibniz Centre for Solid State and Materials Research in Dresden. The experimental work, which was performed at the German Electron Synchrotron Facility (DESY) in Hamburg, involved levitating hot metal droplets and observing them as they cooled by irradiatin...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a solid-state refrigerator that uses quantum physics in micro- and nanostructures to cool a much larger object to extremely low temperatures. NIST's prototype solid-state refrigerator uses quantum physics in the square chip mounted on the green circuit board to cool the much larger copper platform (in the middle of the photo) below standard cryogenic temperatures. Other objects can also be attached to the platform for cooling. Credit: Schmidt/NIST View hi-resolution image What's more, the prototype NIST refrigerator, which measures a few inches in outer dimensions, enables researchers to place any suitable object in the cooling zone and later remove and replace it, similar to an all-purpose kitchen refrigerator. The cooling power is the equivalent of a window-mounted air conditioner cooling a building the size of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. "It's one of...

The new composite material harnesses the mechanical properties of nanowires, is twice as strong as high strength steel and is extremely elastic. It may be used to create medical applications, such as implants. Image: Pling/Shutterstock In a world first, a team of researchers from Australia, China and the US has created a super strong metallic composite by harnessing the extraordinary mechanical properties of nanowires. Co-author and Head of the School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering at The University of Western Australia, Winthrop Professor Yinong Liu, said the work has effectively overcome a challenge that has frustrated the world's top scientists and engineers for more than three decades, nicknamed the "valley of death" in nanocomposite design. "We know that nanowires exhibit extraordinary mechanical properties, in particular ultrahigh strengths in the order of several gigapascal, approaching the theoretical limits.  With the fast development of o...