Gizmorama
January 19, 2011
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Good Morning,
In today's issue of Gizmo, scientists look back to theories
on the facial structure of prehistoric Neanderthals. Prior
studies suggest that it was a key feature in enduring the
harsh cold temperatures, but now scientists have discovered
evidence opposing this theory. Read about all the findings
in the last article.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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Climate clues found in world's deep waters
EDINBURGH, Scotland - European scientists say they are pro-
bing the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific, the deepest
spot in the world's oceans, for climatological clues. The
international team of researchers is using a submersible
designed to withstand immense pressures to study the bottom
of the 6.7-mile-deep underwater canyon, the BBC reported
Monday. Early results show ocean trenches are acting as
carbon sinks, suggesting they are a bigger factor in regu-
lating the Earth's chemistry and climate than previously
thought, researchers say. Lead researcher Ronnie Glud, from
the University of Southern Denmark and the Scottish Associ-
ation for Marine Science, said operating at pressures of more
than 2 million pounds per square inch was challenging, but
advances in technology had made it possible. "This is the
first time we have been able to set down sophisticated in-
struments at these depths to measure how much carbon is
buried there," he told BBC News. A lander equipped with
special sensors packed in a titanium cylinder able to resist
the pressures was launched from a ship and took 3 hours to
free-fall to the sea bottom, carrying out pre-programmed
experiments before releasing its ballast and returning to
the surface. The experiments allowed scientists to assess the
abundance of carbon at the bottom of the deep trenches.
"Although these trenches cover just 2 percent of the ocean,
we thought they might be disproportionately important, be-
cause it was likely that they would accumulate much more car-
bon because they would act as a trap, with more organic mat-
ter drifting to the bottom of them than in other parts of the
ocean," Glud said. "What it means is that we have carbon
storage going on in these trenches that is higher than we
thought before, and this really means that we have a carbon
dioxide sink in the deep ocean that wasn't recognized before."
Material makes electricity from waste heat
EVANSTON, Ill. - U.S. researchers say they've found a materi-
al that can generate electricity from the waste heat of car
exhaust systems or industrial processes and equipment. Re-
searchers at Northwestern University placed nanocrystals of
rock salt into lead telluride to create a material that is
expected to be able to convert 14 percent of heat waste to
electricity, a university release said Tuesday. "It has been
known for 100 years that semiconductors have this property
that can harness electricity," chemistry Professor Mercouri
Kanatzidis said. "To make this an efficient process, all you
need is the right material, and we have found a recipe or
system to make this material." "We can put this material in-
side of an inexpensive device with a few electrical wires
and attach it to something like a light bulb," said Vinayak
Dravid, professor of materials science and engineering and
co-author of the paper. "The device can make the light bulb
more efficient by taking the heat it generates and converting
part of the heat, 10 to 15 percent, into a more useful energy
like electricity." Automotive, chemical, brick, glass and
other industries that use heat to make products could make
their systems more efficient with the use of this scientific
discovery, Kanatzidis said.
'Eyeball' camera that can zoom developed
EVANSTON, Ill. - U.S. researchers say they've developed a
tiny camera that mimics the human eye with the added bonus
of a zoom capability, something the eye cannot do. Scientists
at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., say the "eye-
ball camera" has a 3.5x optical zoom, takes sharp images, is
inexpensive to make and is only the size of a nickel, a uni-
versity release reported Monday. The camera could have many
applications, including night-vision surveillance, robotic
vision, endoscopic imaging and consumer electronics, resear-
chers say. "We were inspired by the human eye, but we wanted
to go beyond the human eye," said Yonggang Huang of North-
western's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sci-
ence. "Our goal was to develop something simple that can
zoom and capture good images, and we've achieved that." The
tiny camera has the simple lens of the human eye, allowing
the device to be small, and the zoom capability of a single-
lens reflex camera without the bulk and weight of a complex
lens. The secret to its capabilities is that both the simple
lens and the camera's photodetectors are on flexible sub-
strates. A hydraulic system can change the shape of the sub-
strates appropriately, enabling a variable zoom. Earlier
eyeball cameras could not zoom because they had rigid detec-
tors. For variable zoom, the detector must change shape as
the in-focus image changes shape with magnification. To
achieve an in-focus and magnified image as the camera zooms,
hydraulics are used to change the curvatures of the lens and
detector in a coordinated manner.
Study: Neanderthals' looks not from cold
LONDON - The broad foreheads and large noses of Neanderthals
were not an adaptation to living in the cold of Europe's last
ice age as long thought, researchers say. Scientists have
long attributed these facial differences from modern humans
to an adaptation that allowed Neanderthals to live in the
freezing conditions, believing our prehistoric human rela-
tives had enlarged sinuses that helped warm the air as they
breathed it in, The Daily Telegraph reported. However, re-
search using scans and X-ray images of Neanderthal skulls
has revealed their sinuses were no bigger than modern humans
who evolved in more temperate climates, and so had no affect
on the size of their facial features. "The view that Neander-
thals were knuckle-dragging cave men who scraped a living by
hunting large mammals on the frozen wastes of the tundra has
been around since they were first discovered because they
were known to live at a time when Europe was in the grip of
the last Glacial Age," Todd Rae, an evolutionary anthropolo-
gist at Roehampton University in London, says. "As a result
a lot of their physical traits have been attributed as adap-
tations that helped them live in the cold, even when it
doesn't make any sense." The finding suggests Neanderthals
evolved in much warmer temperatures before moving into Europe
and then moved south to avoid the glaciers, he says. It also
"raises other possibilities for what caused Neanderthals to
eventually die out," Rae says. "If they were restricted to
living in warmer refuges at the height of the last ice age,
it is possible their populations became too isolated and
small to survive."
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