ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Fierce 2012 magnetic storm barely missed Earth: Earth dodged huge magnetic bullet from the sun
• First interactive mosaic of lunar north pole
• NIST chips help BICEP2 telescope find direct evidence of origin of the universe
• New statistical models could lead to better predictions of ocean patterns
• Looking to have fun during March madness? Don't bet on it!
• Building heart tissue that beats
• New window into quantum physics opened with superconductivity in LEDs
• Much misinformation tweeted after 2013 Boston Marathon bombing
• Video-game device with goal of preventing patient falls
• Bright future for protein nanoprobes
• New lens design drastically improves kidney stone treatment
• New view of supernova death throes in 3-D
• Geographers create 'easy button' to calculate river flows from space
• Coercivity of material changed by patterning surface
• Follow the ant trail for drug design: Ant behavior inspires software design
• Mental health on the go: Reducing anxiety with smartphone app
• Scanning electron microscopes: Getting rid of bad vibrations
• Hubble revisits the Monkey Head Nebula
• Electronic media associated with poorer well-being in children
• Real-looking snow in Disney's 'Frozen' based in simulations that predict blast scenarios
• Stretchable antenna for wearable health monitoring
• Antimony nanocrystals for batteries
• Astronomers complete cosmic dust census
• Biodiesel from alligator fat reduces waste

Fierce 2012 magnetic storm barely missed Earth: Earth dodged huge magnetic bullet from the sun Posted: 18 Mar 2014 12:49 PM PDT On July 23, 2012, a huge magnetic storm propelled by two nearly simultaneous coronal mass ejections on the sun plowed through Earth's orbit. Luckily, Earth was on the other side of the sun at the time. Had the outburst hit Earth, however, it would have rivaled the largest magnetic storm to strike Earth in recorded history, possibly wreaking havoc with the electrical grid, satellites and GPS.

First interactive mosaic of lunar north pole Posted: 18 Mar 2014 12:49 PM PDT Scientists have created the largest high resolution mosaic of our moon's north polar region. The six-and-a-half feet (two-meters)-per-pixel images cover an area equal to more than one-quarter of the United States. The entire image measures 931,070 pixels square -- nearly 867 billion pixels total. A complete printout at 300 dots per inch -- considered crisp resolution for printed publications -- would require a square sheet of paper wider than a professional U.S. football field and almost as long.

NIST chips help BICEP2 telescope find direct evidence of origin of the universe Posted: 18 Mar 2014 12:49 PM PDT The BICEP2 tlescope camera that produced the data behind the announcement of the first direct evidence of the rapid inflation of the universe at the dawn of time relies in part on the extraordinary signal amplification made possible by NIST's superconducting quantum interference devices.

New statistical models could lead to better predictions of ocean patterns Posted: 18 Mar 2014 12:49 PM PDT The world's oceans cover more than 72 percent of the earth's surface, impact a major part of the carbon cycle, and contribute to variability in global climate and weather patterns. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri applied complex statistical models to increase the accuracy of ocean forecasting that influences the ways in which forecasters predict long-range events such as El NiDo and the lower levels of the ocean food chain.

Looking to have fun during March madness? Don't bet on it! Posted: 18 Mar 2014 12:47 PM PDT Planning to enter an office pool during this year's NCAA March Madness tournament? Be careful. You might not enjoy the games very much if you bet, says a researcher.

Building heart tissue that beats Posted: 18 Mar 2014 12:47 PM PDT When a heart gets damaged, such as during a major heart attack, there's no easy fix. But scientists working on a way to repair the vital organ have now engineered tissue that closely mimics natural heart muscle that beats, not only in a lab dish but also when implanted into animals.

New window into quantum physics opened with superconductivity in LEDs Posted: 18 Mar 2014 11:05 AM PDT Physicists hae proposed a novel and efficient way to leverage the strange quantum physics phenomenon known as entanglement. The approach would involve combining light-emitting diodes with a superconductor to generate entangled photons and could open up a rich spectrum of new physics as well as devices for quantum technologies, including quantum computers and quantum communication.

Much misinformation tweeted after 2013 Boston Marathon bombing Posted: 18 Mar 2014 09:47 AM PDT Researchers have found that misinformation spread widely on Twitter after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing despite efforts by users to correct rumors that were inaccurate. If that information is incorrect, especially in a crisis, it's hard for the social media community to gain control and push out accurate information, new research shows.

Video-game device with goal of preventing patient falls Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:39 AM PDT Infrared motion-capture technology used in video games is making its way to hospital rooms, where researchers hope to learn new ways to prevent falls among hospital patients. The device looks like a thin black box. The system works by sending a grid pattern of infrared light, invisible to the human eye, into a room, and then examining how objects and persons in the room distort the pattern. The machine analyzes these distortions to make a 3-D map, showing a patient, her bed and tray table, and everything else in the room. If the system detects a person on the floor, it automatically reviews the preceding events as the person moved to the floor, and can detect if that represents a fall.

Bright future for protein nanoprobes Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:39 AM PDT Surprising new rules for creating ultra-bright light-emitting crystals that are less than 10 nanometers in diameter have been discovered by a team of researchers. These ultra-tiny but ultra-bright nanoprobes should be a big asset for biological imaging, especially deep-tissue optical imaging of neurons in the brain.

New lens design drastically improves kidney stone treatment Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:37 AM PDT Engineers have reversed a decades-long trend of decreasing efficiency in lithotripsy machines by designing simple modifications to shock wave lenses. The incidence of kidney stones in the United States has more than doubled during the past two decades, due at least in part to the expanding waistlines of its citizens. The condition has also been linked to hot, humid climates and high levels of stress -- a combination of living environments that seems to have led to a rise in kidney stone rates of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

New view of supernova death throes in 3-D Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:36 AM PDT A powerful, new three-dimensional model provides fresh insight into the turbulent death throes of supernovas, whose final explosions outshine entire galaxies and populate the universe with elements that make life on Earth possible. It shows how the turbulent mixing of elements inside stars causes them to expand, contract, and spit out matter before they finally detonate.

Geographers create 'easy button' to calculate river flows from space Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:22 AM PDT The frustrated attempts of a graduate student to quantify the amount of water draining from Greenland's melting ice sheet led him to discover a new way to measure river flows from outer space. The new approach relies exclusively on measurements of a river's width over time, which can be obtained from freely available satellite imagery.

Coercivity of material changed by patterning surface Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:20 AM PDT Researchers have found a way to reduce the coercivity of nickel ferrite (NFO) thin films by as much as 80 percent by patterning the surface of the material, opening the door to more energy efficient high-frequency electronics, such as sensors, microwave devices and antennas.

Follow the ant trail for drug design: Ant behavior inspires software design Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:20 AM PDT New drugs often fail because they cause undesirable side effects. Researchers have now developed simulation software that predicts the properties of active agents and virtually builds new ones. The software's search process is modeled after the behavior of ants. In order to allow the software to search for new composite agents, the research team uses an ant algorithm. Like an ant colony on the search for food, the algorithm screens through the molecular building blocks for components with the desired properties. Depending on the strength of the desirable and undesirable effects of the virtual products, the building blocks receive a 'grade'. In the ant world, this would equate to marking the trail to food with pheromones.

Mental health on the go: Reducing anxiety with smartphone app Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:19 AM PDT Playing a science-based mobile gaming app for 25 minutes can reduce anxiety in stressed individuals, according to research. The study suggests that 'gamifying' a scientifically-supported intervention could offer measurable mental health and behavioral benefits for people with relatively high levels of anxiety. The game is based on an emerging cognitive treatment for anxiety called attention-bias modification training. The treatment involves training patients to ignore a threatening stimulus (such as an angry face) and to focus instead on a non-threatening stimulus (such as a neutral or happy face). This type of training has been shown to reduce anxiety and stress among people suffering from high anxiety.

Scanning electron microscopes: Getting rid of bad vibrations Posted: 18 Mar 2014 08:17 AM PDT Scanning electron microscopes are extremely sensitive and even subtle movements going on around them can affect their accuracy. Vibration control tables already exist to dampen these sometimes barely perceptible disturbances. But now a new kind of isolation platform for the first time integrates sensors and actuators into the mount – resulting in a platform that is more cost-effective and compact than its predecessors.

Hubble revisits the Monkey Head Nebula Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:40 AM PDT To celebrate its 24th year in orbit, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has released a beautiful new image of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula. This colorful region is filled with young stars embedded within bright wisps of cosmic gas and dust.

Electronic media associated with poorer well-being in children Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:39 AM PDT The use of electronic media, such as watching television, using computers and playing electronic games, was associated with poorer well-being in children. Researchers noted that using electronic media can be a sedentary behavior and sedentary behavior is associated with adverse health outcomes, and may be detrimental at a very young age. Similarly, less monitoring by mothers of the time their children spent watching TV or playing video games appears to be associated with higher BMI for children at age 7 and increasing deviance from child BMI norms between the ages of 5 to 9 years.

Real-looking snow in Disney's 'Frozen' based in simulations that predict blast scenarios Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:39 AM PDT Simulation-based engineering science allows researchers to predict the effects of building explosions and analyze the response of building materials to those threats. Researchers developed the Material Point Method, a computer-generated tool that not only creates blast scenarios that informs blast and impact resistant materials and design, but also is crossing over into Hollywood animation -- most recently, Disney's Oscar-winning animated film, Frozen.

Stretchable antenna for wearable health monitoring Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:37 AM PDT Engineering researchers have developed a new, stretchable antenna that can be incorporated into wearable technologies, such as health monitoring devices. The researchers wanted to develop an antenna that could be stretched, rolled or twisted and always return to its original shape, because wearable systems can be subject to a variety of stresses as patients move around.

Antimony nanocrystals for batteries Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:32 AM PDT Researchers have succeeded for the first time to produce uniform antimony nanocrystals. Tested as components of laboratory batteries, these are able to store a large number of both lithium and sodium ions. These nanomaterials operate with high rate and may eventually be used as alternative anode materials in future high-energy-density batteries.

Astronomers complete cosmic dust census Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:32 AM PDT Astronomers have completed a benchmark study of more than 300 galaxies, producing the largest census of dust in the local Universe, the Herschel Reference Survey. Astronomers observed galaxies at far-infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths and captured the light directly emitted by dust grains.

Biodiesel from alligator fat reduces waste Posted: 18 Mar 2014 06:30 AM PDT Animal fat from chicken, pork, beef and even alligators could give an economical, ecofriendly boost to the biofuel industry, according to researchers who reported a new method for biofuel production. The report follows up on their earlier study on the potential use of gator fat as a source of biodiesel fuel.

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