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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 29, 2014 at 8:24am

Protection against chemical weapons
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that some compounds called polyoxoniobates can degrade and decontaminate nerve agents such as the deadly sarin gas, and have other characteristics that may make them ideal for protective suits, masks or other clothing. The use of polyoxoniobates for this purpose had never before been demonstrated, scientists said, and the discovery could have important implications for both military and civilian protection.
The study findings were just published in the European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry.

Some other compounds exist that can decontaminate nerve gases, researchers said, but they are organic, unstable, degraded by sunlight and have other characteristics that make them undesirable for protective clothing -- or they are inorganic, but cannot be used on fabrics or surfaces.

By contrast, the polyoxoniobates are inorganic, do not degrade in normal environmental conditions, dissolve easily and it should be able to incorporate them onto surfaces, fabrics and other material.
"As stable, inorganic compounds they have an important potential to decontaminate and protect against these deadly nerve gases."
Besides protection against nerve gas, their chemistry might allow them to function as a catalyst that could absorb carbon dioxide and find use in carbon sequestration at fossil-fuel power plants -- but little has been done yet to explore that potential.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 29, 2014 at 8:19am

Using thoughts to control airplanes
Pilots of the future may be able to control their aircraft by merely thinking commands, scientists say.

Researchers at the Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) in Germany have demonstrated the feasibility of flying via brain control - with astonishing accuracy.
The scientists have logged their first breakthrough: They succeeded in demonstrating that brain-controlled flight is indeed possible -- with amazing precision. Seven subjects took part in the flight simulator tests. They had varying levels of flight experience, including one person without any practical cockpit experience whatsoever. The accuracy with which the test subjects stayed on course by merely thinking commands would have sufficed, in part, to fulfill the requirements of a flying license test. "One of the subjects was able to follow eight out of ten target headings with a deviation of only 10 degrees," reports Fricke. Several of the subjects also managed the landing approach under poor visibility. One test pilot even landed within only few meters of the centerline.

The TU München scientists are now focusing in particular on the question of how the requirements for the control system and flight dynamics need to be altered to accommodate the new control method. Normally, pilots feel resistance in steering and must exert significant force when the loads induced on the aircraft become too large. This feedback is missing when using brain control. The researchers are thus looking for alternative methods of feedback to signal when the envelope is pushed too hard, for example.

Electrical potentials are converted into control commands

In order for humans and machines to communicate, brain waves of the pilots are measured using electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes connected to a cap. An algorithm developed by scientists from the Department of Biological Psychology and Neuroergonomics at the Berlin Institute of Technology allows the program to decipher electrical potentials and convert them into useful control commands.

Only the very clearly defined electrical brain impulses required for control are recognized by the brain-computer interface. "This is pure signal processing," emphasizes Fricke. Mind reading is not possible.

The researchers will present their results end of September at the "Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress."

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 29, 2014 at 8:15am

Scientists develop new hybrid energy transfer system
Scientists from the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the Universities of Sheffield and Crete, have developed a new hybrid energy transfer system, which mimics the processes responsible for photosynthesis. From photosynthesis to respiration, the processes of light absorption and its transfer into energy represent elementary and essential reactions that occur in any biological living system.

This energy transfer is known as Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET), a radiationless transmission of energy that occurs on the nanometer scale from a donor molecule to an acceptor molecule. The donor molecule is the dye or chromophore that initially absorbs the energy and the acceptor is the chromophore to which the energy is subsequently transferred without any molecular collision. However, FRET is a strongly distance dependent process which occurs over a scale of typically 1 to 10 nm.

In a new study, published in the journal Nature Materials, the researchers demonstrate an alternate non-radiative, intermolecular energy transfer that exploits the intermediating role of light confined in an optical cavity. The advantage of this new technique which exploits the formation of quantum states admixture of light and matter, is the length over which the interaction takes places, that is in fact, considerably longer than conventional FRET-type processes.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 29, 2014 at 7:18am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 29, 2014 at 6:05am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 28, 2014 at 6:44am

Nobel laureates offer new interpretations of quantum mysteries

http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548

The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. A View on the Quantum Nature of our Universe, Compulsory or Impossible?

Gerard 't Hooft

(Submitted on 7 May 2014)

When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, "quantum logic" is taking over from "classical logic" in the minds of almost all researchers today. Dissatisfied, the author investigated how one can look at things differently. This report is an overview of older material, but also contains many new observations and calculations. Quantum mechanics is looked upon as a tool, not as a theory. Examples are displayed of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and we argue that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, may be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analyse a system that could be classical at its core. We then explain how these apparently heretic thoughts can be reconciled with Bell's theorem and the usual objections voiced against the notion of 'super determinism'. Our proposal would eradicate the collapse problem and the measurement problem.

https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/nobel-laureates-offer-new-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 28, 2014 at 5:52am

climate-smart rice to save farmers in flood-prone areas
Farmers in India’s eastern region, prone for flash floods, are now shifting to flood-tolerant variety of rice, developed by Manila-based International Rice Research Institute, IRRI. The variety – Swarna-SUB1, is bread from a popular Indian variety of rice Swarna by upgrading it with SUB1, the gene for flood tolerance. Swarna was developed by Andhra Pradesh Agriculture University.

The new variety can withstand floods for two weeks, unlike existing varieties which would wilt if remained under water even for a few days resulting in economic loss to farmers. However, Swarna-SUB1 can rise back to life after having submerged for two weeks.

“The demand for this variety is increasing and we are readying 300 quintal breeder seed this year,” said Dr. O.N. Singh, Head of Crop Improvement Division of Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack Odhisa. He told Indian Science Journal, after successful experimental crop, Swarna-SUB1 would now be distributed for cultivation in flood-prone areas of eastern India – Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Odhisa and Andhra Pradesh.

Climate-smart rice varieties are made to especially thrive in environments affected by flooding, drought, cold temperatures, and soils that are too salty or contain too much iron that leads to iron toxicity. IRRI has distributed the climate-smart rice varieties to about 10 million of the poorest and most disadvantaged rice farmers in various countries in South Asia under Stress-Tolerant Rice for Africa and South Asia (STRASA) project promoted by IRRI. The STRASA project was initiated in 2007, with its first two phases funded with about USD 20 million each.

“Under the past phases of the project, 16 climate-smart rice varieties tolerant of flood, drought, and salinity were released in various countries in South Asia; about 14 such varieties were released in sub-Saharan Africa. Several more are in the process of being released,” said Abdelbagi Ismail, IRRI scientist and STRASA project leader.

In addition to improving varieties and distributing seeds, the STRASA project also trains farmers and scientists in producing good-quality seeds. Through the project’s capacity-building component, 74,000 farmers—including 19,400 women farmers—underwent training in seed production.

“An estimated 140,000 tons of seed of these varieties were produced between 2011 and 2013. These seed releases are estimated to have reached over ten million farmers, covering over 2.5 million hectares of rice land.” said Dr. Ismail. This is double the initial target of 5 million farmers reached.

IRRI collaborates with more than 550 partners in getting climate-smart rice varieties to farmers in South Asia and Africa. These partners include national agricultural research and extension programs, government agencies, nongovernment organizations, and private sector actors, including seed producers.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 28, 2014 at 5:27am

Microbes defy rules of DNA code

Researchers find widespread 'recoding'.
The instructions encoded into DNA are thought to follow a universal set of rules across all domains of life. But researchers report today in Science1 that organisms routinely break these rules.

The finding has implications for the design of synthetic life: by designing organisms that break the rules, researchers may be able to make novel life forms resistant to viral infection. Making these organisms also been proposed as a way to stop synthetic life forms from infecting unintended hosts. Widespread exceptions to these rules, however, could make it difficult to engineer organisms that will not pass on their DNA to those in the wild.
http://www.nature.com/news/microbes-defy-rules-of-dna-code-1.15283

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 27, 2014 at 9:59am

Visual Cortex Found To Process Sound As Well As Sight
''Decoding Sound and Imagery Content in Early Visual Cortex''
Human early visual cortex was traditionally thought to process simple visual features such as orientation, contrast, and spatial frequency via feedforward input from the lateral geniculate nucleus. However, the role of nonretinal influence on early visual cortex is so far insufficiently investigated despite much evidence that feedback connections greatly outnumber feedforward connections. Here, the researchers explored in five fMRI experiments how information originating from audition and imagery affects the brain activity patterns in early visual cortex in the absence of any feedforward visual stimulation. They show that category-specific information from both complex natural sounds and imagery can be read out from early visual cortex activity in blindfolded participants. The coding of nonretinal information in the activity patterns of early visual cortex is common across actual auditory perception and imagery and may be mediated by higher-level multisensory areas. Furthermore, this coding is robust to mild manipulations of attention and working memory but affected by orthogonal, cognitively demanding visuospatial processing. Crucially, the information fed down to early visual cortex is category specific and generalizes to sound exemplars of the same category, providing evidence for abstract information feedback rather than precise pictorial feedback. The results suggest that early visual cortex receives nonretinal input from other brain areas when it is generated by auditory perception and/or imagery, and this input carries common abstract information. The findings are compatible with feedback of predictive information to the earliest visual input level, in line with predictive coding models.
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2814%2900458-8

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on May 26, 2014 at 9:07am

How the escape from gravity works: The plane flies a series of parabolas. From an altitude of about 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), the aircraft quickly ascends maybe another 20,000 feet into the sky and then plummets. It climbs and drops over and over again — 30 times — creating short periods of weightlessness at the crest.

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