| December 2009 |
Newsbriefs |
| Reports from the edge of science |
Staying power for discreet Drones
The key to fielding tiny unmanned aerial vehicles for surveillance is keeping them undetectable. That’s why designers prefer to use fuel cells to power... |more| |
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Is my robot happy to see me? |
| People are social creatures. |
Robots… less so. However, if science fiction has taught us anything, it’s that we crave emotion, even in our robots – think C-3PO or Star Trek’s Data. So it stands to reason that if robots are ever... |more| |
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Titanium-eye view of history |
| The price of Titanuim sponge |
The prices of raw materials offer a barometer to measure the ebbs and fl ows of manufacturing – and, in that way, the titanium market is a mirror of the often erratic aerospace industry. The price of... |more| |
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Did this impact |
| Doom the dinosaurs? |
A mysterious basin off the coast of India could be the largest, multi-ringed impact crater the world has ever seen – and the bolide (perhaps 40 km in diameter) may have been responsible for killing... |more| |
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What seeps below |
| An international team of scientists has found hundreds of methane gas plumes in the depths of the Arctic Ocean. |
German and English researchers used sonar to detect 250 columns of bubbles pushing out of the seabed of West Spitsbergen and then sampled the water in those areas, finding that the gas was... |more| |
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Bejewelled drill bit |
| Diamond encrusted drill bit |
Composite carbon fi bre is at the foundation of some of aviation’s most advanced projects, including the F-35 Lightning II aircraft. The material, which is lighter and stronger than metal, requires a... |more| |
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Smart bomb against cancer |
| How do you target radiation treatments to kill Only cancer cells? Build a particle accelerator and aim carefully. |
Radiation treatments for cancer are double-edged swords: They indiscriminately destroy healthy tissue along with cancer cells, causing debilitating side-effects. To target cancer cells alone, the... |more| |
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Cosmic clue |
| After something whacked jupiter, surprised astronomers Turned into sleuths to find out what happened. |
Earlier this year, throngs of professional astronomers scrambled to secure time on the world's largest telescopes after an amateur skywatcher discovered a new scar on Jupiter's surface, the result of... |more| |
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Secrets of Napoleon’s cannons |
| Napoleon’s cannons |
Historians have turned to violence to recreate the last moments of a 210-year-old warship that sank outside Acre in northern Israel. Archaeologists long believed it was a British vessel sunk during... |more| |
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Off-road warrior |
| After eight years of fighting, Troops in afghanistan are getting a Vehicle designed for the war. |
US and coalition troops in Afghanistan load into convoys of mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles called MRAPs to protect themselves from improvised explosive devices. But the family of MRAPs... |more| |
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