Monthly Archives: March 2012
Speech controlled artificial hand movements
A new technology enables a person to speak or sing using only their hands to control a speech synthesizer. This synthesizer technology that converts voice gestures to some extent reproduces anatomical processes used by humans to speak.
Using this new technology is like playing a musical instrument that produces voice. Among the applications can include helping people with speech disorders and new forms of musical expression.
The role of neuronal electrical signals to store memories permanently
The brain’s ability to repeat as closely as possible the electrical impulses can be crucial to make something just saved from becoming a permanent reminder. This is the conclusion has been reached thanks to the results of new research conducted by the team of psychologist Clayton Dickson of the University of Alberta, Canada.
The process could be likened to when someone tries to make permanent a phone number repeating itself several times the number. Neurons probably prepared for the task of remembering things just memorized resorting to the use of periods of reduced activity of the brain to send signals and forward, thus ensuring the availability of synaptic connections well proven and well tested sending signals through them.
Energy sources whose immediate adoption could slow global warming
Could you stop global warming in this century if power plants that use coal as fuel consumption would switch to natural gas, and also efforts be made hastily build as many solar power plants, wind farms, hydroelectric dams, and infrastructure for various obtaining other forms of clean energy? In a recent study, we calculated what the effects would be expected to see in the climate due to the replacement of power plants based on coal by any of eight options cleaner.
In each case, the team of Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in the U.S., and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures Company, in the same nation, found that to achieve a substantial benefit in this century, humanity needs to begin a rapid transition to less polluting energy technologies like solar or wind power. Researchers have concluded that curbing global warming requires more time than previously thought.
Wet batteries for power plants, a key way to store solar and wind energy
The major disadvantage of many sources of clean, renewable energy, already in use or have been proposed, is its intermittency: the wind does not always blow, the sun does not always look in the sky, and produce electricity that these energies can not be available on some occasions when it is needed. One of the major goals of the research on the use of these energies has been finding ways to regulate these supplies fickle.
New results of a research program currently being conducted at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), U.S., show the feasibility of a technology that can help achieve one of the objectives sought: a way to store for supply electricity when the sun is not shining or the wind blows, and with a lower cost and longer than allowed by previous methods. The new system uses high temperature batteries whose liquid components are positioned on their own, naturally, in different layers due to their different densities.
Findings on the creation and distribution of stomata in plants
The leaves of the plants are sealed with a strong layer of wax to prevent water loss. Plants breathe through microscopic pores called stomata, found on the surface of the leaves. Approximately 40 percent of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere passes through the stomate each year and a water volume equal to twice that exist in the entire atmosphere.
Being the key conduit for the absorption of CO2 and water evaporation, the stomata are essential for both the climate and plant productivity. Thus it is not surprising that the total number and distribution of the stomata is very tightly regulated by plants to optimize photosynthesis and also to minimize water loss.
Improved control system for language version
An innovative wireless technology that allows people with certain disabilities, including some spinal cord injuries high level skillfully maneuver a power wheelchair, or control a mouse cursor, using all simple movements of the tongue, has been perfected so that now it is less cumbersome and more efficient.
The innovative control system using a language is gaining increasing prominence among the latest devices to assist people with severe disabilities, such as from spinal cord injuries or degenerative diseases. The new technology takes advantage of advances in microelectronics, miniaturized sensors and wireless devices.
Antarctic fish threatened by global warming
A study of the evolutionary history of some Antarctic fish antifreeze proteins and shows how tens of millions of years ago, a lineage of fish adapted to polar conditions newly emerged, and how their descendants today are threatened by the rapid increase ocean temperatures is recorded in the area.
A rise of 2 degrees Celsius water temperature would probably have a devastating impact on this line of Antarctic fish, which are well adapted to living in very cold water temperatures, but not in warmer waters.
Identify marine bacteria capable of degrading a compound common in oil spills
Scientists from CSIC have identified a group of marine bacteria capable of biodegrading, i.e. food and eliminate naphthalene. This compound derived from petroleum refining is very common in pollutant discharges into the sea.
For the isolation of these anaerobic bacteria, can live without oxygen because they breathe nitrate samples were taken from the seabed near the Cies Islands (Galicia), two years after the Prestige oil spill in 2004. The fuel was mixed in with the sandy bottom, forming a contamination layer ‘sandwich’ type of tar and sand.
The isolates were cultured in the laboratory using a growth medium like they have in their natural environment and fed only with naphthalene. “We started with some cultures containing many bacterial species, until, little by little, they were selecting only those able to degrade this substance,” says Silvia Marques Martin, a researcher at the CSIC.
H1N1 flu may cause delirium in children
The H1N1 flu may cause delirious behavior in children infected with late onset and may last up to two days, concluded a study released by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). Confirmation of delirious behavior associated with a relatively new type of influenza offers physicians more elements to assess and differentiate cases of H1N1 seasonal flu and act accordingly.
The study, prepared by a group of Japanese researchers and scientific centers of the University of California, states that this behavior of delirium associated with the flu usually starts in a few days after the fever lasts less than 24 hours.
Obtained the complete genome and detailed Denisova Man
The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has completed a high resolution genome sequencing Denisova Man, representative of an Asian group of extinct humans related to Neanderthals.
In 2010, Svante Paabo and colleagues presented a draft of the genome derived from a small fragment of a finger bone discovered in the Denisova Cave, located in southern Siberia. The DNA sequences showed that this individual came from a previously unknown group of extinct human, now known as the Denisova Cave hominids. Along with the Neanderthals, these hominids are our closest extinct evolutionary relatives.