Recipe for Water: Just Add Starlight

ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapour.
Every recipe needs a secret ingredient. When astronomers discovered an unexpected cloud of water vapour around the old star IRC+10216 in 2001, they immediately began searching for the source. Stars like IRC+10216 are known as carbon stars and are thought not to make much water. Initially they suspected the star's heat must be evaporating comets or even dwarf planets to produce the water.

Now, Herschel's PACS and SPIRE instruments have revealed that the secret ingredient is ultraviolet light, because the water is too hot to have come from the destruction of icy celestial bodies.

"This is a good example of how better instruments can change our picture completely," says Leen Decin, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, the lead author of the paper about this work. The superb sensitivity of Herschel's instruments has revealed that the water around IRC+10216 varies in temperature from about -200°C to 800°C, which indicates that it is being formed much closer to the star than comets can stably exist.

IRC+10216 is a red giant star, hundreds of times the Sun's size, although only a few times its mass. If it replaced the Sun in our Solar System, it would extend beyond the orbit of Mars.

It is 500 light years away and while it is barely detectable at visible wavelengths, even in the largest telescopes, it is the brightest star in the sky at some infrared wavelengths. This is because it is surrounded by a huge envelope of dust that absorbs almost all its visible radiation and re-emits it as infrared light. It is in the envelope that the water vapour has been found. But how did the water get there?

The vital clue was found by Herschel. Observations had already revealed the clumpy structure in the dusty envelope around IRC+10216. The Herschel water detection made the astronomers realise that ultraviolet light from surrounding stars can reach deep into the envelope between the clumps and break up molecules such as carbon monoxide and silicon monoxide, releasing oxygen atoms. The oxygen atoms then attach themselves to hydrogen molecules, forming water.

"This is the only mechanism that explains the full range of the water's temperature," says Decin. The closer to the star the water is formed, the hotter it will be.

Decin and her colleagues now plan to extend the observations to other carbon stars. "We are very hopeful that Herschel will find the same situations around those stars too," she says.

On Earth, carbon compounds and water are the key ingredients for life. Now, thanks to Herschel, we know that both can be made around IRC+10216, and that the secret ingredient for water is ultraviolet light from surrounding stars.

Discovering A New Earth 430 Light Years Away Astronomers Spy Earth-like Planet Forming Around Distant Star

Astrophysicists analyzing infrared images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope found indications of a dust cloud surrounding a relatively young star. The star is 10 to 16 million years old, and analysis of the dust cloud suggests that it may coalesce and become a rocky planet like earth. It is located at a distance from the star that it may build an atmosphere, collect liquid water, and perhaps, in millions and millions of years, support life.

It took billions of years and the perfect conditions for our Earth to grow and form. Now, those same conditions can be seen in space, shaping a similar planet. Ivanhoe explains this exciting space discovery.

Far, far away, something amazing is brewing in space. Swirling around a giant star similar to our sun, astrophysicists have spotted the very early stages of a planet taking shape.

"What we think we're seeing is the actual formation of a planet -- terrestrial planet -- a rocky planet like the Earth, around the star," Carey Lisse, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., told Ivanhoe.

The Earth-like planet is about 430 light years away or 2.5x1015 miles from Earth. It's inside a huge dust belt -- bigger than our asteroid belt -- with enough dusty material to build a planet. "The material is forming at just the same distance, or close to the same distance where the Earth formed from the sun," Dr. Lisse says.

To find the planet, astronomers used images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. It looks for infrared light or heat radiating from the dusty materials. The images also confirm the rocky fragments forming the new planet are similar to materials found in the Earth's crust and core.

"So, the body that's going to form -- the planet that's going to form -- isn't going to be this gas giant with incredibly thick atmosphere," explains Dr. Lisse. It's going to be a rocky planet like Mars or Venus or the Earth."

There's also an outer ice belt circling the young planet, making it more likely that water could reach the new planet's surface … and maybe even life; but don't wait around for signs of life. The planet still needs another 100 million years before it's completely formed.

Astronomers say the star the new planet is spinning around is between ten and 16 million years old, which is the perfect age for forming Earth-like planets.



ABOUT THE SPITZER TELESCOPE: The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on 25 August 2003. Spitzer detects the infrared energy radiated by objects in space. Most of this infrared radiation is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground. Spitzer allows us to peer into regions of space that are hidden from optical telescopes.

Many areas of space are filled with vast, dense clouds of gas and dust that block our view. Infrared light, however can penetrate these clouds, allowing us to peer into regions of star formation, the centers of galaxies, and into newly forming planetary systems. Infrared also brings us information about the cooler objects in space, such as smaller stars which are too dim to be detected by their visible light, extrasolar planets, and giant molecular clouds. Also, many molecules in space, including organic molecules, have their unique signatures in the infrared.

WHAT IS INFRARED LIGHT? Infrared radiation is an invisible form of light that we usually detect as heat, like the sun shining on our face, or the warmth of a campfire. It has all the same properties as visible light: for example, it can be focused and reflected. The only difference is that it has a longer wavelength, which means we can't see it with the naked eye. Light is made of tiny particles called photons, and the wavelength tells us how fast those particles are vibrating. The shorter the wavelength, the faster the particles are moving. Shorter light waves look blue, and longer ones look red.

The wavelength of infrared light is so long that we can't see it at all. Any warm object gives off infrared radiation. By checking in the infrared spectrum, engineers can find heat leaks in buildings, doctors can find hidden tumors in the body, and biologists can locate diseased plants in a forest. Astronomers use infrared imaging to detect warm dust around new stars that are not yet "hot" enough to emit visible light.

The American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report.

Water in Earth's Mantle Key to Survival of Oldest Continents

Earth today is one of the most active planets in the Solar System, and was probably even more so during the early stages of its life. Thanks to the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet's surface, remnants of crust from Earth's formative years are rare, but not impossible to find. A paper published in Nature Sept. 2 examines how some ancient rocks have resisted being recycled into Earth's convecting interior.
Throughout the world there exist regions of ancient crust, referred to as cratons, which have resisted being recycled into the interior of our tectonically dynamic planet. These geologic anomalies appear to have withstood major deformation thanks to the presence of mantle roots. A mantle root is a portion of Earth's mantle that lies beneath the craton, extending like the root of a tooth into the rest of the underlying mantle.

Just like a tooth, the mantle root of a craton is compositionally different from the normal mantle into which it protrudes. It is also colder, causing it to be more rigid. These roots were formed in ancient melting events and are intrinsically more buoyant than the surrounding mantle. The melting removed much of the calcium, aluminum, and iron that would normally form dense minerals. Thus, these roots act as rafts bobbing on a vigorously convecting mantle, on which old fragments of continental crust may bask in comparative safety.

However, geophysical calculations have suggested that this buoyancy is not enough to stop destruction of the mantle roots. According to these calculations, the hotter temperatures that are widely thought to have existed in Earth's mantle about 2.5 to 3 billion years ago should have warmed and softened up the base of these roots sufficiently to allow them to be gradually eroded from below, leading to their eventual destruction as they were entrained, piece by piece, into the convecting mantle. A stronger viscosity contrast between the root and the underlying mantle is required to ensure preservation.

In the Sept. 2 issue of Nature, Anne Peslier, an ESCG-Jacobs Technology scientist working at NASA-Johnson Space Center and her colleagues David Bell from Arizona State University and Alan Woodland and Marina Lazarov from the University of Frankfurt, published measurements of the trace water content of rocks from the deepest part of a mantle root that offer an explanation for this mystery.

"It has long been suspected, but not proven, that cratonic mantle roots are dryer than convecting upper mantle," explains Bell, an associate research scientist in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the department of chemistry and biochemistry in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "The presence of very small quantities of water is known to weaken rocks and minerals. During partial melting, such as that experienced by the mantle roots, water -- like calcium, aluminum and iron -- is also removed."

The researchers used samples found in diamond mines of Southern Africa, where the ancient crust of the Kaapvaal craton was pierced about 100 million years ago by gas-charged magmas called kimberlites. These magmas were generated at depths of about 125 miles (200 kilometers) beneath the mantle root and ascended rapidly (in a matter of hours) through the Earth via deep fractures, bringing with them pieces of the rocks traversed, including diamonds. After erupting explosively at the surface, the magmas solidified into the pipe-like bodies of kimberlite rock that were subsequently mined for their diamonds.

The mantle rocks analyzed by the team were transported from a range of depths down to 125 miles (200 km) below the surface, where they had resided since their formation around 3 billion years ago. The samples of rock called peridotite are composed mainly of the mineral olivine, with minor quantities of pyroxenes and garnet. Olivine is, because if its abundance, the mineral believed to control the rheological properties of peridotite.

What Peslier and colleagues found is that beyond a depth of about 112 miles (180 km), the water content of olivines begins to decline with depth, so that the olivine in peridotite samples from the very base of the cratonic mantle root contained hardly any water. That makes these olivines very hard to deform or break up, and may generate the strong viscosity contrast with that geophysical models of craton root stability require.

Why the bottom of the mantle root has dry olivines is still a matter of speculation. One possibility, suggested by Woodland, is that reducing conditions thought to prevail at these depths would ensure that fluids would be rich in methane instead of water. Bell suggests that melts generated in the asthenosphere, such as those eventually giving rise to kimberlite eruptions, may scavenge any water present while passing through the base of the cratonic root and transport it into the overlying shallower mantle.

These results reiterate the belief shared by many scientists that knowing how much water is present deep in terrestrial planets and moons, like Earth, Mars or the Moon, is important to understanding their dynamics and evolutionary history.

Edible Nanostructures: Compounds Made from Renewable Materials Could Be Used for Gas Storage, Food Technologies

Sugar, salt, alcohol and a little serendipity led a Northwestern University research team to discover a new class of nanostructures that could be used for gas storage and food and medical technologies. And the compounds are edible.
The porous crystals are the first known all-natural metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that are simple to make. Most other MOFs are made from petroleum-based ingredients, but the Northwestern MOFs you can pop into your mouth and eat, and the researchers have.

"They taste kind of bitter, like a Saltine cracker, starchy and bland," said Ronald A. Smaldone, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern. "But the beauty is that all the starting materials are nontoxic, biorenewable and widely available, offering a green approach to storing hydrogen to power vehicles."

Smaldone is co-first author of a paper about the edible MOFs published by Angewandte Chemie. The study is slated to appear on the cover of one of the journal's November issues.

"With our accidental discovery, chemistry in the kitchen has taken on a whole new meaning," said Sir Fraser Stoddart, Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. The implications of what Sir Fraser refers to as "Bob's your uncle chemistry" go all the way from cleaner air to healthier living, and it all comes from a product that can be washed down the sink.

Stoddart led the research group that included a trio of postdoctoral fellows in chemistry at Northwestern and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of St. Andrews in the U.K.

Metal-organic frameworks are well-ordered, lattice-like crystals. The nodes of the lattices are metals (such as copper, zinc, nickel or cobalt), and organic molecules connect the nodes. Within their very roomy pores, MOFs can effectively store gases such as hydrogen or carbon dioxide, making the nanostructures of special interest to engineers as well as scientists.

"Using natural products as building blocks provides a new direction for an old technology," said Jeremiah J. Gassensmith, a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart's lab and an author of the paper.

"The metal-organic framework technology has been around since 1999 and relies on chemicals that come from crude oil," explained Ross S. Forgan, also a postdoctoral fellow in Stoddart's lab and co-first author of the paper. "Our main constituent is a starch molecule that is a leftover from corn production."

For their edible MOFs, the researchers use not ordinary table sugar but gamma-cyclodextrin, an eight-membered sugar ring produced from biorenewable cornstarch. The salts can be potassium chloride, a common salt substitute, or potassium benzoate, a commercial food preservative, and the alcohol is the grain spirit Everclear.

With these ingredients in hand, the researchers actually had set out to make new molecular architectures based on gamma-cyclodextrin. Their work produced crystals. Upon examining the crystals' structures using X-rays, the researchers were surprised to discover they had created metal-organic frameworks -- not an easy feat using natural products.

"Symmetry is very important in metal-organic frameworks," Stoddart said. "The problem is that natural building blocks are generally not symmetrical, which seems to prevent them from crystallizing as highly ordered, porous frameworks."

It turns out gamma-cyclodextrin solves the problem: it comprises eight asymmetrical glucose residues arranged in a ring, which is itself symmetrical. The gamma-cyclodextrin and potassium salt are dissolved in water and then crystallized by vapor diffusion with alcohol.

The resulting arrangement -- crystals consisting of cubes made from six gamma-cyclodextrin molecules linked in three-dimensions by potassium ions -- was previously unknown. The research team believes this strategy of marrying symmetry with asymmetry will carry over to other materials.

The cubes form a porous framework with easily accessible pores, perfect for capturing gases and small molecules. The pore volume encompasses 54 percent of the solid body.

"We achieved this level of porosity quickly and using simple ingredients," Smaldone said. "Creating metal-organic frameworks using petroleum-based materials, on the other hand, can be expensive and very time consuming."

Stoddart added, "It is both uplifting and humbling to come to terms with the fact that a piece of serendipity could have far-reaching consequences for energy storage and environmental remediation on the one hand and food quality control and health care on the other."

The National Science Foundation and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (U.K.) supported the research.

Model for Implantable Artificial Kidney to Replace Dialysis Unveiled

UCSF researchers have unveiled a prototype model of the first implantable artificial kidney, in a development that one day could eliminate the need for dialysis.

The device, which would include thousands of microscopic filters as well as a bioreactor to mimic the metabolic and water-balancing roles of a real kidney, is being developed in a collaborative effort by engineers, biologists and physicians nationwide, led by Shuvo Roy, PhD, in the UCSF Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences.

The treatment has been proven to work for the sickest patients using a room-sized external model developed by a team member in Michigan. Roy's goal is to apply silicon fabrication technology, along with specially engineered compartments for live kidney cells, to shrink that large-scale technology into a device the size of a coffee cup. The device would then be implanted in the body without the need for immune suppressant medications, allowing the patient to live a more normal life.

"This device is designed to deliver most of the health benefits of a kidney transplant, while addressing the limited number of kidney donors each year," said Roy, an associate professor in the UCSF School of Pharmacy who specializes in developing micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology for biomedical applications. "This could dramatically reduce the burden of renal failure for millions of people worldwide, while also reducing one of the largest costs in U.S. healthcare."

The team has established the feasibility of an implantable model in animal models and plans to be ready for clinical trials in five to seven years.

End-stage renal disease, or chronic kidney failure, affects more than 500,000 people per year in the United States alone, and currently is only fully treated with a kidney transplant. That number has been rising between 5-7 percent per year, Roy said, in part because of the kidney damage associated with diabetes and hypertension.

Yet transplants are difficult to obtain: a mere 17,000 donated kidneys were available for transplant last year, while the number of patients on the transplant waiting list currently exceeds 85,000, according to the Organ Procurement ant Transplant Network.

Roughly 350,000 patients are reliant on kidney dialysis, Roy explained, which comes at a tremendous cost. The Medicare system alone spends $25 billion on treatments for kidney failure -- more than 6 percent of the total budget -- while the disease affects only 1 percent of Medicare recipients, he said. That cost includes almost $75,000 per patient each year for dialysis, according to the U.S. Renal Data System.

Dialysis also takes a human toll. A typical dialysis schedule is three sessions per week, for 3 to 5 hours per session, in which blood is pumped through an external circuit for filtration. This is exhausting for patients and only replaces 13 percent of kidney function, Roy said. As a result, only 35 percent of patients survive for more than 5 years.

With the limited supply of donors, that means thousands of patients die each year waiting for a kidney.

The implantable device aims to eradicate that problem. The two-stage system uses a hemofilter to remove toxins from the blood, while applying recent advances in tissue engineering to grow renal tubule cells to provide other biological functions of a healthy kidney. The process relies on the body's blood pressure to perform filtration without needing pumps or an electrical power supply.

The project exemplifies the many efforts under way at UCSF to build collaborations across scientific disciplines that accelerate the translation of academic research into real solutions for patients, according to Mary Anne Koda-Kimble, PharmD, dean of the UCSF School of Pharmacy.

"This is a perfect example of the work we are doing at UCSF to address some of the most critical medical issues of our time, both in human and financial costs," Koda-Kimble said. "This project shows what can be accomplished by teams of scientists with diverse expertise, collaborating to profoundly and more quickly improve the lives of patients worldwide."

The creation of the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences -- a joint department in the UCSF schools of Pharmacy and Medicine -- was itself an effort to promote translational research at UCSF by forming collaborations across biomedical specialties. Roy is also a founding faculty member of the UCSF Pediatric Device Consortium, which aims to accelerate the development of innovative devices for children health, and a faculty affiliate of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at UCSF.

His team is collaborating with 10 other teams of researchers on the project, including the Cleveland Clinic where Roy initially developed the idea, Case Western Reserve University, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, and Penn State University.

The first phase of the project, which has already been completed, focused on developing the technologies required to reduce the device to a size that could fit into the body and testing the individual components in animal models. In the second and current phase, the team is doing the sophisticated work needed to scale up the device for humans. The team now has the components and a visual model and is pursuing federal and private support to bring the project to clinical use.

Ancient Brew Masters Tapped Antibiotic Secrets

A chemical analysis of the bones of ancient Nubians shows that they were regularly consuming tetracycline, most likely in their beer. The finding is the strongest evidence yet that the art of making antibiotics, which officially dates to the discovery of penicillin in 1928, was common practice nearly 2,000 years ago.
The research, led by Emory anthropologist George Armelagos and medicinal chemist Mark Nelson of Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

"We tend to associate drugs that cure diseases with modern medicine," Armelagos says. "But it's becoming increasingly clear that this prehistoric population was using empirical evidence to develop therapeutic agents. I have no doubt that they knew what they were doing."

Armelagos is a bioarcheologist and an expert on prehistoric and ancient diets. In 1980, he discovered what appeared to be traces of tetracycline in human bones from Nubia dated between A.D. 350 and 550, populations that left no written record. The ancient Nubian kingdom was located in present-day Sudan, south of ancient Egypt.

Armelagos and his fellow researchers later tied the source of the antibiotic to the Nubian beer. The grain used to make the fermented gruel contained the soil bacteria streptomyces, which produces tetracycline. A key question was whether only occasional batches of the ancient beer contained tetracycline, which would indicate accidental contamination with the bacteria.

Nelson, a leading expert in tetracycline and other antibiotics, became interested in the project after hearing Armelagos speak at a conference. "I told him to send me some mummy bones, because I had the tools and the expertise to extract the tetracycline," Nelson says. "It's a nasty and dangerous process. I had to dissolve the bones in hydrogen fluoride, the most dangerous acid on the planet."

The results stunned Nelson. "The bones of these ancient people were saturated with tetracycline, showing that they had been taking it for a long time," he says. "I'm convinced that they had the science of fermentation under control and were purposely producing the drug."

(The yellow film in the flask above shows tetracycline residue from dissolved bones.)

Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline, suggesting that they were giving high doses to the child to try and cure him of illness, Nelson says.

The first of the modern day tetracyclines was discovered in 1948. It was given the name auereomycin, after the Latin word "aerous," which means containing gold. "Streptomyces produce a golden colony of bacteria, and if it was floating on a batch of beer, it must have look pretty impressive to ancient people who revered gold," Nelson theorizes.

The ancient Egyptians and Jordanians used beer to treat gum disease and other ailments, Armelagos says, adding that the complex art of fermenting antibiotics was probably widespread in ancient times, and handed down through generations.

The chemical confirmation of tetracycline in ancient bones is not the end of the story for Armelagos. He remains enthused after more than three decades on the project. "This opens up a whole new area of research," he says. "Now we're going to compare the amount of tetracycline in the bones, and bone formation over time, to determine the dosage that the ancient Nubians were getting."

Two Chinese Satellites Have Close Encounter in Orbit

It would appear that China has successfully carried out a satellite rendezvous maneuver in orbit. And on August 19, the two satellites may have even touched, one probe being shunted aside by the other.

The event was first reported by the Russian media and U.S. military tracking data seems to back up these early reports. Now the question on everyone's mind is: Why?

It may be tempting to jump to the conclusion that this technology has some kind of military application -- after all, satellites have been in China's cross-hairs before.
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In January 2007, the nation demonstrated its anti-satellite prowess by destroying a defunct weather satellite at an altitude of over 500 miles. China was heavily criticized in the aftermath and the debris remains a problem to this day.

In 2008 however, the U.S. military replied by destroying a dead spy satellite demonstrating its ability to take out spacecraft too.

Although the tit-for-tat exchange of satellite carnage looks like the rumblings of a new arms race, this most recent unannounced satellite game of tag may not be as sinister as it seems.

The two Chinese "Shi Jian" ("Practice") satellites called SJ-06F and SJ-12 are officially designated as science spacecraft and their mission comes in advance of the launch of China's planned space station.

The first space station module (Tiangong-1) is set for launch in 2011 and to give the docking sensors and control systems a "test run" before trying it out on the space station could be the purpose of SJ-06F and SJ-12. But why all the secrecy?

"This sort of thing may very well be consistent with wanting to test drive the hardware and software before you test it on your space laboratory," said Dean Cheng, a Chinese policy expert with the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington DC. "You'd be doing it on a smaller, cheaper, less prestige-oriented item so that if something went wrong, it wouldn't necessarily be politically disastrous."

Also, China keeping the "test drive" quiet may seem fishy, but it is understandable, especially if the test docking procedure wasn't successful. National pride most likely dictated the silence.

But there is the concern that the satellite rendezvous could indicate another, more subtle, form of anti-satellite technology. Using an intercepting satellite to "hijack" an enemy's satellite would be quite useful after all.

However, the fact remains that there are far easier ways to "take out" a satellite using kinetic missiles or ground-based lasers to blind spy satellites.

BIG PIC: Could Observatory Lasers Damage Satellites?

Whatever the intention behind this orbital satellite handshake, it is an amazing feat. Only the U.S. has succeeded in commanding two robotic probes to meet in orbit, so this experiment has shown that the Chinese spaceflight capabilities are growing stronger by the day.

Sources: New Scientist, Wired

Alligator Gar

The largest of all the gars, this megafish earns its name with a wide, crocodilian head and rows of sharp teeth.

The prehistoric relatives of this megafish inhabited many parts of the world, but today gars live only in North and Central America.

Of the seven known gar species, the alligator is the largest, reaching up to ten feet (three meters) long and tipping the scales at up to 300 pounds (140 kilograms). These menacing-looking behemoths are generally olive green or yellow and have a heavily scaled body. A tooth-filled mouth and wide, alligator-like snout give the species its name.

These freshwater giants may look fierce, but attacks against people are unknown. They can pose a passive danger, though—the fish's eggs are poisonous to humans if ingested.

Adult gars have few natural predators, although alligators have been known to attack them. Young are preyed upon by larger fish. Alligator gars prey on fish, but they are opportunistic and have been known to feed on everything from waterfowl and small turtles to carrion.

Alligator gars are found throughout much of the coastal U.S. Southeast. They inhabit waters as far west as Texas and Oklahoma, as far north as the Mississippi River Basin and the lower Ohio and Missouri river systems, and southern drainages well into Mexico.

Gars inhabit lakes, bayous, and bays and are able to tolerate brackish and even salt water. But these toothy giants prefer large, slow-moving rivers, particularly those with wide floodplains, where shallow waters provide hatchlings with some protection from predators.

Unfortunately for the alligator gar, flood-control measures such as dams and dikes have dramatically altered their riverine ecosystems and largely eliminated their preferred spawning habitats across North America. These breeding challenges have contributed to significant population declines across much of the animal's range.

Alligator gars are also targeted by both commercial and sport fisheries and have frequently been overfished. They are now protected by law in parts of their range.

Apple’s ‘Ping’ Social Network Is Already Too Big to Fail

Apple audaciously seems to think the world actually needs another social network — one that you even need special software to be part of, to boot. With the introduction Wednesday of ‘Ping,” a music-centered community that exists only within iTunes, they are probably right — and then some.
Ping could easily be the opening gambit in a bid to create a wider network around the other premium creative content available through iTunes — movies, TV shows, books and other print media.

At Apple’s annual music event in San Francisco CEO Steve Jobs described “Ping,” part of the iTunes 10 upgrade coming soon, as “sort of like Facebook and Twitter meet iTunes.”

Even the occasionally hyperbolic Jobs may be selling it short. Sight unseen, we’d say Ping — a computer term for making contact — will be more like “Twitter meets Facebook at Last.fm’s and Rdio’s shared apartment to plan MySpace’s funeral.”

Jobs is correct to compare Ping to Facebook and Twitter, because its settings for deciding who can follow you borrow from both of those well-established networks. You can choose to approve followers and post listening habits to a limited “circle of friends,” the way Facebook lets you, or you can permit anyone at all to follow you, as in Twitter.

But unlike the wide-open spaces of Facebook and Twitter, Ping’s single-minded purpose is to create conversations (and commerce) around music. It watches what you play within iTunes or on your iPhone/iPod Touch, the better to create a profile of your tastes — precisely as Last.fm has done for years with its audioscrobbler plug-in. And in addition to offering customized social music charts that show each user what their friends are listening to (and buying the most) Ping presents that activity to others in a news stream — exactly as Rdio does for music.

If Ping tells you that all your friends are buying and listening to the new Ceelo single (NSFW audio, text), you might be more likely to snap it up yourself. And when you do, you’ll probably use iTunes’ 1-click purchasing feature, because you already have the program open — and it likely already has your credit card billing information, due to a previous purchase.

As for the MySpace part of our equation? That site is still quite useful for listening to obscure bands but has been largely been replaced by Twitter as a tool for artists to communicate with their fans — something Jobs hopes they will start doing with Ping. They will, if they know what’s good for their pocketbooks: Anywhere a track is mentioned, there is a way to buy it from iTunes. If the main conversation between artist and fan takes place within the iTunes store, a lot more music will probably be discovered and sold in what amounts to a gigantic point-of-sale emporium.

MySpace has been on life support for years, and Ping could finally deliver the coup de grace.

At the outset, Ping will lack a location component — currently the hot topic in social networking because it lets friends track each other in real space and helps advertisers target them more specifically. But location could be coming to Ping, which also runs on the location-aware iPhone. In addition, iTunes 10 alerts you when the artists you listen to the most are set to play a concert in your area. And as NYU’s Dave Winer pointed out, it’s likely that Apple Stores will have Ping profiles, so that you can follow them the way you would Lady Gaga, forming another cornerstone of an eventual Ping location feature.

Ping has significant advantages against other music-oriented social networks, such as Rdio and Blip.fm, which must fight desperately to make an impression on users who already have Facebook and Twitter accounts. And because iTunes is already built around commerce, Ping launches with access to the 160 million-plus credit card numbers already stored there from people who have already bought something — something that Twitter and Facebook lack.

Ping could easily be the opening gambit in a bid to create a wider network around the other premium creative content available through iTunes — movies, TV shows, books and other print media. After all, the iPod started out music-only as well, and now its high-end model does almost everything an iPhone does.

What is the potential upside? Apple recently counted over 150 million active customers of its iTunes store, which Jobs said Wednesday has sold downloaded 11.7 billion songs, 450 million television shows, 100 million movies, and 35 million books. So far.

5 Reasons Why Apple TV Is (Still) Boring

We know — the new Apple TV is really small, and it finally focuses on renting rather than purchasing television shows, integrates iOS devices as remote controls, has an optical audio output for surround sound, and costs just a hundred bones.
That’s all good, but Apple TV has yet to knock our socks off despite being the ripest area for expansion by a company that has already firmly established itself on the computer, phone, portable media player and tablet.

Let’s just get right down to it. Here are five reasons Apple TV is still boring — even after today’s improvements:
1. Paltry Selection of TV Shows

The biggest promise of devices such as Apple TV, from the consumer’s point of view, is that they might — at long last — allow them to “cut the cord,” replacing their cable or satellite connections with an internet-connected set-top box, the same way many have replaced their landlines with cellphones.

But with only two networks — ABC and Fox — included in Apple’s new television rental program, the only way a television viewer with normal viewing habits would be able to cut the cord using the new Apple TV would be to wait a day and download unsupported new shows from BitTorrent (more on that below), while relying on Netflix for older shows.

“To get the 88 percent of the U.S. market that doesn’t know what Apple TV is to pay attention, Apple has to offer more of what people want in the living room: more TV shows,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey after Wednesday’s announcement. “Yet only ABC and Fox have agreed to let Apple rent their TV shows. Meanwhile the Apple TV becomes merely one of dozens of devices — some even cheaper than $99 — that can stream Netflix videos to the living room.”

He’s right. This relative lack of television content appears to weaken the “TV” part of the “Apple TV” proposition more than any other factor. And the fact that one of only two launch partners Apple could secure is ABC — owned by Disney, of which Jobs is the largest shareholder — is not exactly a hopeful sign that the networks will be climbing aboard anytime soon.

2. No iOS

Apple’s iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) relies on a touchscreen, and a television — by its nature of being 10 or more feet away — does not. But Apple allows developers to simulate iOS devices on a computer that lacks such a touchscreen, so it’s possible to represent touch with a pointer. Similar technology — perhaps utilizing a Wii-style control wand, a gyroscopic mouse or even another iOS device — could solve that problem.

As Brian X. Chen wrote back in July — after both Engadget and The New York Times reported that Apple would include iOS in the next Apple TV overhaul — an iOS-based Apple TV would have led to the connected living room, an expanded iOS user base, TV apps, motion-based gaming, and a stronger alternative to cable or satellite.

Instead, Apple TV is more “Airport Express for television” than “iPhone for television.” Apple created (or helped create) custom Apple TV apps for Flickr, MobileMe, Netflix and YouTube in advance of this announcement. Why reinvent the wheel like that when Apple already has a thriving iOS app store?

Hopefully, for Apple’s sake and that of its customers, the next Apple TV will run iOS. If so, competing television networks would have less reason to balk, because they could create their own apps (see Hulu), which would go a long way towards solving our No. 1 objection, above.

As things stand now, the door is wide open for Google Android to take over the set-top boxes with a device that truly runs apps, essentially scaling the Boxee model out to hordes of Android users — and maybe even former iOS users.

3. No HD Antenna

It’s a real shame that more people don’t pull down HD broadcast signals to their television sets. Not only do those signals look better than the more-compressed signals on cable and satellite, but they’re free — just like the standard-definition signals most of us started ignoring when we switched to pay TV.

Apple’s point here is to encourage users to buy television shows from iTunes, and not to help them watch for free, and the $99, loss-leading price point of this hardware backs up that argument. But since some of the networks refuse to cooperate, an antenna would be a nice kluge for getting that content onto Apple TV — bonus points for linking it to a TiVo-like hard drive or streaming it to a computer, so that users could record (or at least watch) video from local HD broadcasters in addition to paying for it in the cloud.

4. No 1080p

To put it bluntly, this is 2010. Huge televisions cost next to nothing compared to just a few years ago. People want real high-definition signals from their “HD” equipment, not this watered-down 720p signal.
5. No replacement for BitTorrent

The dearth of content on Apple TV means it is no true replacement for cable and satellite, or for people who unabashedly run file sharing software such as BitTorrent to get their TV fix. This device doesn’t stop you from paying for cable or satellite as mentioned above, in which case it becomes little more than a streaming add-on to your traditional TV setup. But that add-on is not nearly powerful enough to offer a plausible alternative to BitTorrent or other file sharing networks.

Of course, BitTorrent users can just keep downloading videos to their main computers and streaming them from there — something the Apple TV does allow (so long as the files are in the H.264, MPEG-4 or M-JPEG formats, which could require some conversion).

Adam Philbin, in a widely echoed tweet offering speculation about this device’s target market, put it like this: “Apple TV … it’s like a shit, single-purpose Mac Mini for people who don’t know what BitTorrent is.”

Ouch.

Silicon Oxide Circuits Break Barrier: Nanocrystal Conductors Could Lead to Massive, Robust 3-D Storage

Rice University scientists have created the first two-terminal memory chips that use only silicon, one of the most common substances on the planet, in a way that should be easily adaptable to nanoelectronic manufacturing techniques and promises to extend the limits of miniaturization subject to Moore's Law.

Last year, researchers in the lab of Rice Professor James Tour showed how electrical current could repeatedly break and reconnect 10-nanometer strips of graphite, a form of carbon, to create a robust, reliable memory "bit." At the time, they didn't fully understand why it worked so well.

Now, they do. A new collaboration by the Rice labs of professors Tour, Douglas Natelson and Lin Zhong proved the circuit doesn't need the carbon at all.

Jun Yao, a graduate student in Tour's lab and primary author of the paper to appear in the online edition of Nano Letters, confirmed his breakthrough idea when he sandwiched a layer of silicon oxide, an insulator, between semiconducting sheets of polycrystalline silicon that served as the top and bottom electrodes.

Applying a charge to the electrodes created a conductive pathway by stripping oxygen atoms from the silicon oxide and forming a chain of nano-sized silicon crystals. Once formed, the chain can be repeatedly broken and reconnected by applying a pulse of varying voltage.

The nanocrystal wires are as small as 5 nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide, far smaller than circuitry in even the most advanced computers and electronic devices.

"The beauty of it is its simplicity," said Tour, Rice's T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. That, he said, will be key to the technology's scalability. Silicon oxide switches or memory locations require only two terminals, not three (as in flash memory), because the physical process doesn't require the device to hold a charge.

It also means layers of silicon-oxide memory can be stacked in tiny but capacious three-dimensional arrays. "I've been told by industry that if you're not in the 3-D memory business in four years, you're not going to be in the memory business. This is perfectly suited for that," Tour said.

Silicon-oxide memories are compatible with conventional transistor manufacturing technology, said Tour, who recently attended a workshop by the National Science Foundation and IBM on breaking the barriers to Moore's Law, which states the number of devices on a circuit doubles every 18 to 24 months.

"Manufacturers feel they can get pathways down to 10 nanometers. Flash memory is going to hit a brick wall at about 20 nanometers. But how do we get beyond that? Well, our technique is perfectly suited for sub-10-nanometer circuits," he said.

Austin tech design company PrivaTran is already bench testing a silicon-oxide chip with 1,000 memory elements built in collaboration with the Tour lab. "We're real excited about where the data is going here," said PrivaTran CEO Glenn Mortland, who is using the technology in several projects supported by the Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.

"Our original customer funding was geared toward more high-density memories," Mortland said. "That's where most of the paying customers see this going. I think, along the way, there will be side applications in various nonvolatile configurations."

Yao had a hard time convincing his colleagues that silicon oxide alone could make a circuit. "Other group members didn't believe him," said Tour, who added that nobody recognized silicon oxide's potential, even though it's "the most-studied material in human history."

"Most people, when they saw this effect, would say, 'Oh, we had silicon-oxide breakdown,' and they throw it out," he said. "It was just sitting there waiting to be exploited."

In other words, what used to be a bug turned out to be a feature.

Yao went to the mat for his idea. He first substituted a variety of materials for graphite and found none of them changed the circuit's performance. Then he dropped the carbon and metal entirely and sandwiched silicon oxide between silicon terminals. It worked.

"It was a really difficult time for me, because people didn't believe it," Yao said. Finally, as a proof of concept, he cut a carbon nanotube to localize the switching site, sliced out a very thin piece of silicon oxide by focused ion beam and identified a nanoscale silicon pathway under a transmission electron microscope.

"This is research," Yao said. "If you do something and everyone nods their heads, then it's probably not that big. But if you do something and everyone shakes their heads, then you prove it, it could be big.

"It doesn't matter how many people don't believe it. What matters is whether it's true or not."

Silicon-oxide circuits carry all the benefits of the previously reported graphite device. They feature high on-off ratios, excellent endurance and fast switching (below 100 nanoseconds).

They will also be resistant to radiation, which should make them suitable for military and NASA applications. "It's clear there are lots of radiation-hardened uses for this technology," Mortland said.

Silicon oxide also works in reprogrammable gate arrays being built by NuPGA, a company formed last year through collaborative patents with Rice University. NuPGA's devices will assist in the design of computer circuitry based on vertical arrays of silicon oxide embedded in "vias," the holes in integrated circuits that connect layers of circuitry. Such rewritable gate arrays could drastically cut the cost of designing complex electronic devices.

Zhengzong Sun, a graduate student in Tour's lab, was co-author of the paper with Yao; Tour; Natelson, a Rice professor of physics and astronomy; and Zhong, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Texas Instruments Leadership University Fund, the National Science Foundation, PrivaTran and the Army Research Office SBIR supported the research.

Astronomers Find Potassium in Giant Planet's Atmosphere

Any driver who's seen deer silhouetted by the headlights of an oncoming car knows that vital information can be conveyed by the outlines of objects.
Building on this concept, University of Florida astronomers have analyzed light passing through the upper atmosphere of the giant planet HD 80606 b, about 190 light years from Earth, and determined that its atmosphere contains the element potassium.

"It's wonderful that this method works so well for Jupiter-sized planets," said Knicole Colón, a UF astronomy doctoral student. "Now, we're working to apply this technique to observe smaller planets in an effort to pinpoint the components of their atmospheres."

Coincidentally, another team led by David Sing at the University of Exeter, in Devon, U.K., has just used the same technique to detect potassium in the atmosphere of XO-2b, another huge planet about 485 light years from Earth.

Both planets, known as gas giants, have extremely high temperatures by earthly standards -- HD 80606 b reaches about 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and XO-2b is about 1,700 degrees. That's hot enough to vaporize potassium.

Together, these observations support previous computer models that predicted what the atmospheres of such planets would be like. The findings also demonstrate the value of a new observational technique that could one day aid in the characterization of planets that might support life. The two groups' findings are available online at the arXiv preprint server, http://arxiv.org, and have been submitted to the journals Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Colón and Sing will present their findings at the ExoClimes 2010 conference to be held at the University of Exeter, Sept. 7-10.

The observational technique is called narrow-band transit spectrophotometry, and it can measure the light absorbed by the atoms and molecules in a planet's atmosphere, said Eric Ford, a UF astronomy associate professor and Colón's adviser.

"This new technique only works for planets that pass in front of their parent stars as viewed from Earth. Most of the nearly 500 known planets do not, and even fewer orbit stars that are bright enough for such precise observations," Ford said. "Another challenge is that observations must be carefully timed, in order to see the planets in silhouette against the backlighting of their parent star."

Transit spectrophotometry works like this: While the planet is backlit, astronomers measure the light that passed through its atmosphere. Atoms and molecules absorb specific wavelengths (colors) of light, providing a chemical signature that scientists can recognize. By analyzing the amount of absorption by the planet's atmosphere at specific wavelengths, astronomers can detect the presence of a particular atom or molecule -- in this case, potassium.

The UF team -- Colón and Ford, along with colleagues from the University of California, Santa Cruz, Penn State University, Wesleyan University and the Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain -- had help from another technological breakthrough.

These researchers, as well as the Exeter team, used one of the world's most powerful telescopes, the Gran Telescopio Canarias. The observatory includes a mirror almost 35 feet wide and is situated at one of the world's best locations for star-gazing, in the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. UF is a 5 percent partner in the enormous telescope, that captures enough light to make transit spectrophotometry possible, Colón said.

Sing says he's excited about future prospects for transit spectrophotometry.

"The initial results from both teams have been very encouraging," Sing said. "We still haven't explored the full capabilities or ultimate limitations of the instrument yet."

In 2002, the Hubble Space Telescope detected a similar element, sodium, in the atmosphere of the gas giant planet HD 209458 b. Since then, astronomers have detected sodium in only one other planet. Colón plans to search for potassium in the atmospheres of additional giant planets to learn about the diversity of planetary atmospheres. She hopes that planet searches such as NASA's Kepler Mission will identify many more planets that cross the faces of their parent stars.

"The Kepler Mission has the precision to find even more planets, including some as small as the Earth," she said. Ultimately, Ford and Colón want to examine smaller, Earth-like planets for molecules such as methane gas and water vapor, as both are intimately linked to life on Earth.

'Charitable' Behavior Found in Bacteria

Researchers at Boston University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have discovered that charitable behavior exists in one of the most microscopic forms of life -- bacteria. Their findings appear in the Sept. 2 issue of Nature.

In studying the development of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria, the researchers found that the populations most adept at withstanding doses of antibiotics are those in which a few highly resistant isolates sacrifice their own well being to improve the group's overall chance of survival.

This bacterial altruism results when the most resistant isolates produce a small molecule called indole.

Indole acts as something of a steroid, helping the strain's more vulnerable members bulk up enough to fight off the antibiotic onslaught. But while indole may save the group, its production takes a toll on the fitness level of the individual isolates that produce it.

"We weren't expecting to find this," said lead investigator James J. Collins, Ph.D., professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute. "Typically, you would expect only the resistant strains to survive, with the susceptible ones dying off in the face of antibiotic stress. We were quite surprised to find the weak strains not only surviving, but thriving."

The findings also shed new light on the level of complexity and heterogeneity within bacterial strains. Until now, it was assumed that the overall resistance level of any given population was reflected in each of its isolates. Instead, Collins and his team found that dramatic differences can exist within a single population with some bacteria showing exceptional resistance and some almost none, not unlike cancer cells in humans.

The fact that the full complexity of bacteria strains can now be more accurately understood has significant ramifications for the medical community. "Now, when we measure the resistance in a population, we'll know that it may be tricking us," said Collins. "We'll know that even an isolate that shows no resistance can put up a stronger battle against antibiotics thanks to its buddies."

Collins is a founder of the field of synthetic biology, an area of research that combines science and engineering to construct new biological circuits that can reprogram organisms, particularly bacteria, to perform desired tasks, much like we program computers now.

His research at Boston University has also led to the development of a new class of medical devices being developed at the Wyss Institute, including vibrating insoles that help reduce falls among elderly users and normalize the gait of children with cerebral palsy.

"The Wyss Institute was founded on the premise that by breaking down institutional barriers and bringing together some of the world's top minds in science and engineering, we could accelerate transformative discovery," said Donald E. Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., Founding Director of the Wyss Institute. "I'm proud to say that the research being done by Dr. Collins is a great example of how this vision is beginning to play out."

Metal-Mining Bacteria Are Green Chemists

Microbes could soon be used to convert metallic wastes into high-value catalysts for generating clean energy, say scientists writing in the September issue of Microbiology.
Researchers from the School of Biosciences at the University of Birmingham have discovered the mechanisms that allow the common soil bacterium Desulfovibrio desulfuricans to recover the precious metal palladium from industrial waste sources.

Palladium is one of the platinum group metals (PGMs) which are among the most precious resources on earth. They possess a wide variety of applications, due to their exceptional chemical properties. PGMs are routinely used in many catalytic systems and are the active elements of autocatalytic converters that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Kevin Deplanche who led the study explained why new ways of recovering PGMs are needed. "These metals are a finite resource and this is reflected in their high market value," he said. "Over the last 10 years, demand has consistently outstripped supply and so research into alternative ways of recovering palladium from secondary sources is paramount to ensuring future availability of this resource."

Previous work in the team's lab showed that Desulfovibrio desulfuricans was able to reduce palladium in industrial wastes into metallic nanoparticles with biocatalytic activity. Now, the precise molecules involved in the reduction process have been identified. Hydrogenase enzymes located on the surface membrane of the bacterium carry out the reduction of palladium, which results in the accumulation of catalytic nanoparticles. The bacterial cells coated with palladium nanoparticles are known as 'BioPd."

The group believes that BioPd has great potential to be used for generating clean energy. "Research in our group has shown that BioPd is an excellent catalyst for the treatment of persistent pollutants, such as chromium, that is used in the paint industry. BioPd could even be used in a proton exchange fuel cell to make clean electricity from hydrogen," said Dr Deplanche. "Our ultimate aim is to develop a one-step technology that allows for the conversion of metallic wastes into high value catalysts for green chemistry and clean energy generation," he said.

Commercial Organic Farms Have Better Fruit and Soil, Lower Environmental Impact, Study Finds

Side-by-side comparisons of organic and conventional strawberry farms and their fruit found the organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil healthier and more genetically diverse.

"Our findings have global implications and advance what we know about the sustainability benefits of organic farming systems," said John Reganold, Washington State University Regents professor of soil science and lead author of a paper published in the peer-reviewed online journal, PLoS ONE. "We also show you can have high quality, healthy produce without resorting to an arsenal of pesticides."

The study is among the most comprehensive of its kind, analyzing 31 chemical and biological soil properties, soil DNA, and the taste, nutrition and quality of three strawberry varieties on more than two dozen commercial fields -- 13 conventional and 13 organic.

"There is no paper in the literature that comprehensively and quantitatively compares so many indices of both food and soil quality at multiple sampling times on so many commercial farms," said Reganold. Previous Reganold studies of "sustainability indicators" on farms in the Pacific Northwest, California, British Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand have appeared in the journals Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

All the farms in the current study were in California, home to 90 percent of the nation's strawberries and the center of an ongoing debate about the use of soil fumigants. Conventional farms in the study used the ozone-depleting methyl bromide, which is slated to be replaced by the highly toxic methyl iodide over the protests of health advocates and more than 50 Nobel laureates and members of the National Academy of Sciences. In July, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked the EPA to reconsider its approval of methyl iodide.

Reganold's study team included Preston Andrews, a WSU associate professor of horticulture, and seven other experts, mostly from WSU, to form a multidisciplinary team spanning agroecology, soil science, microbial ecology, genetics, pomology, food science, sensory science, and statistics. On almost every major indicator, they found the organic fields and fruit were equal to or better than their conventional counterparts.

Among their findings:
* The organic strawberries had significantly higher antioxidant activity and concentrations of ascorbic acid and phenolic compounds.
* The organic strawberries had longer shelf life.
* The organic strawberries had more dry matter, or, "more strawberry in the strawberry."
* Anonymous testers, working at times under red light so the fruit color would not bias them, found one variety of organic strawberries was sweeter, had better flavor, and once a white light was turned on, appearance. The testers judged the other two varieties to be similar.

The researchers also found the organic soils excelled in a variety of key chemical and biological properties, including carbon sequestration, nitrogen, microbial biomass, enzyme activities, and micronutrients.

DNA analysis found the organically managed soils had dramatically more total and unique genes and greater genetic diversity, important measures of the soil's resilience to stress and ability to carry out essential processes.