Doubletwist Android Player adds Internet Radio

There’s a new version of the doubleTwist media player app for Google Android, and in addition to support for playing music and podcasts on your device, doubleTwist 1.1 now lets you play online radio streams.
You can access a director of radio stations by clicking the Radio tab on the home screen. From there you can browse through a lengthy list of categories and subcategories. For instance, under Folk, there are alternative folk, contemporary folk, traditional folk, folk rock, and world folk categories.

Turn any surface into touch screen

Now you can convert your devices like mobile phone and TV in to touch screen ones a miracle technology from an interactive hardware company called DISPLAX.
                                           Displax skin is a paper thin, transparent and flexible film that transforms any non-metallic in to a interactive touch screen. The film uses projected capacitive technology and has a controller. It can be applied up to three meters across, and detect about 16 finger for a screen as large as 127 cm.
                                           Basically skin uses a grid of nano wires embedded with polymer film. Each time a user make contact with the surface, either by blowing on it or directly touching it, a small electrical disturbance is detected, allowing the microprocessor controller to pinpoint the movement or direction of the air flow.

ROBOT WITH EMOTIONS

Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire have designed a robot that not only show human emotions but also develop them on its own. Nao imitates the social and emotional skills of a one-year old child; the humanoid machine looks down when its feel sad and raises its arms angling for a hug to express happiness.

Nao needs to know a person,study his body language and       

facial expression to detect his emotions.the more interaction

with someone,themore adept the robo at reading per son's 

mood.Nao makes use of video cameras to detect how a 

close a person comes and sensor to determine how people

are interacting with him and act accordingly.

The robot is part of felix growing--a EUROPEAN

project that  aims at creating comapnions who can

live with people and support them in daily activities.

Estimating Crop Water Needs Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Andalusian scientists of the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS) -part of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC)- and the University of Córdoba (UCO) are leading a campaign of measures in the USA to estimate crop water needs using their own system of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) equipped with thermal multispectral cameras.

In this case it is not only a case of cooperation in the scientific field. According to Pablo J. Zarco-Tejada, one of the participating researchers, ‘is a work also related to private companies (through the program of research result transfer of the University of California to agriculture companies). The companies interested in this technology are AgriWorld and Paramount, the two largest pistachio and almond producers in the world'.In collaboration with the University of California (and thanks to an invitation from the Vice-President of such university for a project led by Dr. David Goldhamer) will be conducting flights over experimental plots with different crops, some of them being the largest pistachio nut crop in the world, as well as over almond tree and vineyard crops spread across the State of California. This system allows you to know the ideal time to water the crops, saving water, and it can even be used to detect situations of water waste or water leaks in the irrigation system. The method has been used in more than 600 flights made between 2007 and 2009 in wheat, corn, peach, olive, orange and vineyards fields in Spain.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) equipped with thermal multispectral cameras. (Credit: Image courtesy of Andalucía Innova)

The system is based in small unmanned planes which can fly between 50 minutes and 2 hours and explore up to 1,000 hectares at an altitude of 300 m. above the ground. ‘The planes are equipped with a GPS system that continuously informs of its location to a base station from which the platform is operated and its mapping is observed' Dr. Zarco‑Tejada explains, a researcher of the CSIC leading the project of Cordoba Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS).

'Moreover the aerial robot flying plan can be updated in real time' J.A. Berni said, researcher who has Developer the UAV remote detection integrated system. Planes, which fly above crop fields at an altitude of 150 to 1000 m., are equipped with a thermal camera and a multispectral one. The former delivers the temperature of the surface vegetation and after a series of calculations based on crop transpiration models, it detects water stress vegetation.

The most advanced available system

'There are unmanned aerial vehicles in some countries, mainly in the military sector. In civil applications we can say that our unmanned platform, together with the multispectral and thermal cameras for remote detection, is the advanced one in the market now, fully equipped and fully operative', Professor Zarco-Tejada added.

The idea of these new systems is part of the project on controlled deficit irrigation called CONSOLIDER-RIDECO, led by Professor Elías Fereres Castiel in which researchers from all over Spain are working. Fereres, through the University of Cordoba and the Sustainable Agriculture group of the CSIC, has been collaborating for over 20 years with the University of California at a scientific level.

The international participation of this type of groups specialised in unmanned aerial robots for studies on water needs is scarce. This is what precisely makes this Project particularly interesting for several companies and bodies in and outside Spain', ‘specially for countries or areas with Mediterranean climate where water is scarce'.

Satellite Navigation Steers Unmanned Micro-Planes

An unmanned aircraft system guided by satnav has been developed within ESA's Business Incubation Centre to provide rapid monitoring of land areas and disaster zones. The planes have already helped Spanish farmers in Andalusia to fight land erosion.

The German start-up company MAVinci has developed the new system that uses autonomous micro-air vehicles (MAVs) with a wingspan of less than two metres, to inspect land areas.

"At the moment, the remote-sensing market uses mainly manned aeroplanes," explains Johanna Born, CEO of MAVinci, "but they are expensive and not always available.

"Our MAVs are cost-efficient, available at short notice and easy to use for surveillance of development areas, construction sites, disaster zones and waste disposal sites, just to mention a few.

"They can carry visual and thermal cameras or other customer-specific measuring equipment."

Developed at ESA's Business Incubation Centre

MAVinci is hosted by ESA's Technology Transfer Programme Office at the Business Incubation Centre Darmstadt, Germany. Here, ESA engineers provide expertise on attitude-determination algorithms and exploiting satnav data.

ESA's optical lab at ESTEC in the Netherlands also helps MAVinci with the calibration of their optical camera.

A MAVinci micro air vehicle (MAV) is inspected before taking off. (Credit: MAVinci)

"The principles for the attitude determination of satellites and for autonomous aircraft such as MAVincis are identical, only the scale is different," says ESA Flight Dynamics Engineer Michael Flegel.

"Where a satellite might use the measured direction of the Sun, Earth or of known star patterns, the MAV aircraft will use the local magnetic field direction, the direction of 'down' and similar local quantities.

"Obtaining meaningful information from the data is an art and the expertise can be applied to both satellites and spacecraft alike."

The autopilot controls the aircraft from takeoff to landing, and uses satnav to follow a planned track, triggering the camera to image the target area. From the ground, the plane is followed by radio by a safety pilot who can take over the controls at anytime.

Helping to fight soil erosion in Spain

Erosion is a severe problem for land use and water supply in wide areas of southern Europe and northern Africa. According to UNESCO, erosion in Andalusian olive tree plantations results in the loss of an estimated 80 tonnes of soil per hectare per year.

Last October, one of MAVinci's micro-aircraft imaged several of the many erosion canyons in Andalusia to improve understanding of the dynamics of erosion and to find solutions for local farmers.

Using The Weather To Go Green

Engineers And Meteorologists Catalogue Weather Activity To Devise Green Energy Plan

Researchers installed weather stations to track the best locations for taking advantage of renewable resources. Tracking sunlight exposure helps pinpoint the ideal location for solar panels, and measuring wind speed and other weather data highlights the preferred times to open windows or vents for temperature control.

If you're looking for ways to bring your energy costs down you may want to take a look outside. The weather can save you big money if you learn how to work with it.

If professor Jan Kliessl is right this little computer will shave ten percent off University of California, San Diego's energy bill.

From athletic fields to utility poles to a rooftop robot -- Kleissl's engineering students track climate conditions across campus. The cool coastal conditions on one side and hot inland conditions on the other side of campus make UCSD an ideal lab for using weather to cut energy costs.

"I live in the residence halls over there and they don't have air conditioning so I kind of learned to use cross ventilation in the morning and in the evening to try to cool down the place," Roger Huang, UCSD student, told Ivanhoe.

That's one student anticipating the day's weather. Imagine what a 12-hundred acre campus could do with detailed data on temperature, wind speed, solar radiation, and rainfall.

"If you know what the prevailing wind is, you can use that as a way of cooling the building on hot days. You can use how much solar radiation there is to figure out how much the sun will heat the building up," Paul Linden, professor of Environmental Engineering at UCSD, told Ivanhoe.

The weather stations, powered by car batteries and solar panels, transmit data around the clock to a campus computer. That info will determine when to irrigate fields and open vents, where to place solar windows and how to design buildings to take advantage of weather patterns.

"Advanced homes now have their own computer systems that can open windows and close windows, pull shades down and regulate the air conditioning system," Jan Kleissl, assistant professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at UCSD, told Ivanhoe.

Kliessl hopes the merging of engineering and meteorology will provide a blueprint for energy conservation in your home and worldwide.

ABOUT SOLAR CELLS: In the future, more homes will most likely incorporate solar cells, also known as photovoltaics. Solar cells are made of semiconductor materials (usually silicon), which absorb sunlight's energy and stores it until it is needed to power something. Unfortunately, present solar cells can only absorb between 15-25 percent of sunlight's energy. This is because it only absorbs visible light; other kinds of light pass right through the cell as if it were transparent.

SENSORS MEASURE WEATHER CONDITIONS: A sensor is a type of transducer: an electronic device that converts energy from one form to another. For instance, microphones convert sound waves into electrical signals, while speakers receive the electrical signals and convert them back into sound waves. There are many different kinds of sensors, but most are electrical or electronic. A photosensor is an electronic component that detects the presence of various wavelengths of light: visible, infrared, or ultraviolet for example. The electrical conductance will change in response to the intensity of the light being detected, and this change is recorded by a computer. At UCSD, they are measuring conditions at many campus locations in order to learn the best places to place solar panels and other technology that will help them save energy.

Solar Energy: Cheaper Solar Concentrator With Fewer Photovoltaic Cells

A new solar concentrator design from an electrical engineering Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego could lead to solar concentrators that are less expensive and require fewer photovoltaic cells than existing solar concentrators. The graduate student, Jason Karp and his colleagues at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering presented the new solar concentrator in a paper in the January 2010 issue of the journal Optics Express.

While engineers have already developed high-efficiency solar concentrators that incorporate optics to focus the sun hundreds of times and can deliver twice the power of rigid solar panels, the new design offers potential new benefits. Existing solar concentrator systems typically use arrays of individual lenses that focus directly onto independent photovoltaic cells which all need to be aligned and electrically connected. In contrast, the new solar concentrator collects sunlight with thousands of small lenses imprinted on a common sheet. All these lenses couple into a flat "waveguide" which funnels light to a single photovoltaic cell.

A new solar concentrator design from an electrical engineering Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego could lead to solar concentrators that are less expensive and require fewer photovoltaic cells than existing solar concentrators. The graduate student, Jason Karp and his colleagues at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering presented the new solar concentrator in a paper in the January 2010 issue of the journal Optics Express. (Credit: UC San Diego / Jason Karp)

Karp built a working prototype with just two primary optical components, thus reducing materials, alignment and assembly. This solar concentrator is compatible with high-volume, low-cost manufacturing.

"The real reason that we are trying to do this type of concentrator is certainly for cost," said Karp in an interview after winning best poster at Research Expo 2010 at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Karp explained that his design minimizes the cost for the optics associated with the entire system. One path to building optics very cheaply leads engineers to existing manufacturing techniques. The new solar concentrator is compatible with existing roll-to-roll processing techniques involved in fabricating large televisions.

Karp designed and built prototypes for the new solar concentrator in the Photonic Systems Integration Laboratory led by electrical engineering professor Joseph Ford from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

On April 15, Karp and his solar concentrator won the 2010 Rudee Research Expo Outstanding Poster Award at the 29th Annual Research Expo at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the California Energy Commission (CEC) provided some of the funding for this research.

Huwaei brings sub 6k Android Froyo Ideos Smartphone to India…

An Android Phone below Rs. 6000 ? Yes, it is possible and very much here. Huwaei has announced its newest Android based phone, which is expected to be in sub Rs. 6000 price range(We tried to find the exact pricing, but could not get…most of them report Rs. 5600..)

What this means is – Android Operating system has now come within reach of Millions of consumers, who could not afford significant costs of a smartphone earlier. Over last few months, we are already seeing many handset manufacturers bringing low cost (about Rs. 10-12k range) Android phones in the market and now with Huwaei bringing it to around 5-6k range, the market dynamics are set to change in a big way.

Huwaei Ideos – Cheapest Android Smartphone

At sub Rs. 6k price, Huwaei Ideos does seem to have packed quite bit of punch into the phone, starting with Android 2.2 which is currently on very few devices like EVO 4G, Nexus One and Droid.

Now, another thing you must be thinking – This looks like any other crappy Chinese phone – NO, it is not. Huawei has built this phone in collaboration with Google and consumers will be able to carry out updates etc directly to Android.

Huwaei Ideos features:

• OS:Android OS, v2.2 (Froyo)
• CPU:528 MHz processor
• GPRS/EDGE
• 3G HSDPA 3.6 Mbps
• Display Type: 2.8-inch TFT resistive touchscreen, 256K colors,240 x 320 pixels
• 3G connectivity
• 3.2 megapixel camera
• Wireless LAN
• GPS support
• Quad band GSM,3G HSDPA
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate
• MEMORY microSD up to 32GB
• WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• microUSB v2.0
• CAMERA: 3.2 megapixel, 2048×1536 pixels, autofocus
• Messaging:SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM
• Colors:Black body – blue, red, yellow back panels
• GPS with A-GPS support
• Java Via third party application
• Google Search, Maps, Gmail, Talk
• MP3/WMA/eAAC+ player
• MP4/H.263/H.264 player
• Photo viewer/editor
• Adobe Flash support
• Standard battery, Li-Ion

Here is what I think – We will see most of the Local Indian Brands like Micromax, Zen, Karbonn etc coming up with similar Android based phones shortly and they will priced around Rs. 5k range.

NASA and Microsoft Provide Mars 3-D Close Encounter

NASA and Microsoft Research are bringing Mars to life with new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with a high-resolution 3-D map of the Red Planet.

Microsoft's online virtual telescope explores the universe using images NASA spacecraft return from other worlds. Teams at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., jointly developed the software necessary to make NASA's planetary data available in WorldWide Telescope.

The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provides this view of Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in the solar system. Image credit: (Credit: NASA/JPL/Microsoft/University of Arizona)

"By providing the Mars dataset to the public on the WorldWide Telescope platform, we are enabling a whole new audience to experience the thrill of space," said Chris C. Kemp, chief technology officer for information technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The fully-interactive images and new NASA data will allow viewers to virtually explore Mars and make their own scientific discoveries. New features include the highest-resolution fully interactive map of Mars ever created, realistic 3-D renderings of the surface of the planet, and video tours with two NASA scientists, James Garvin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Carol Stoker of Ames.

Garvin's tour walks viewers through the geological history of Mars and discusses three possible landing sites for human missions there. Each landing site highlights a different geological era of the planet.

Stoker's tour addresses the question: "Is there life on Mars?" and describes the findings of NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander.

"Our hope is that this inspires the next generation of explorers to continue the scientific discovery process," said Ames Center Director S. Pete Worden.

The Intelligent Robotics Group at Ames Research Center developed open source software that runs on the NASA Nebula cloud computing platform to create and host the high-resolution maps. The maps contain 74,000 images from Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbiter Camera and more than 13,000 high-resolution images of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. Each individual HiRISE image contains more than a billion pixels. The complete maps were rendered into image mosaics containing more than half a billion smaller images.

"These incredibly detailed maps will enable the public to better experience and explore Mars," said Michael Broxton, a research scientist in the Intelligent Robotics Group at Ames. "The collaborative relationship between NASA and Microsoft Research was instrumental for creating the software that brings these new Mars images into people's hands, classrooms and living rooms."

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the planet in 2006 to begin a two-year primary science mission. The mission has returned more data about Mars than all other spacecraft sent to the Red Planet. Mars Global Surveyor began orbiting Mars in 1997. The spacecraft operated longer than any other Mars spacecraft, ceasing operations in November 2006.

"Microsoft has a long-standing relationship with NASA that has enabled us to jointly provide the public with the ability to discover space in a new way," said Tony Hey, corporate vice president of the External Research Division of Microsoft Research.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego provided and operated the Mars Orbiter Camera.

To learn more and download the WorldWide Telescope, visithttp://www.worldwidetelescope.org.

For more information and images of Mars taken by HiRISE, visit http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu.

For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, visithttp://www.nasa.gov/mro.

Miniature Auto Differential Helps Tiny Aerial Robots Stay Aloft

Microrobots could be used for search and rescue, agriculture, environmental monitoringEngineers at Harvard University have created a millionth-scale automobile differential to govern the flight of minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people.

Engineers at Harvard University are developing minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people. (Credit: Pratheev S. Sreetharan/Harvard University)

Their new approach is the first to passively balance the aerodynamic forces encountered by these miniature flying devices, letting their wings flap asymmetrically in response to gusts of wind, wing damage, and other real-world impediments.

"The drivetrain for an aerial microrobot shares many characteristics with a two-wheel-drive automobile," says lead author Pratheev S. Sreetharan, a graduate student in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "Both deliver power from a single source to a pair of wheels or wings. But our PARITy differential generates torques up to 10 million times smaller than in a car, is 5 millimeters long, and weighs about one-hundredth of a gram -- a millionth the mass of an automobile differential."

High-performance aerial microrobots, such as those the Harvard scientists describe in the Journal of Mechanical Design, could ultimately be used to investigate areas deemed too dangerous for people. Scientists at institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, University of Delaware, University of Tokyo, and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are exploring aerial microrobots as cheap, disposable tools that might someday be deployed in search and rescue operations, agriculture, environmental monitoring, and exploration of hazardous environments.

To fly successfully through unpredictable environments, aerial microrobots -- like insects, nature's nimblest fliers -- have to negotiate conditions that change second-by-second. Insects usually accomplish this by flapping their wings in unison, a process whose kinematic and aerodynamic basis remains poorly understood.

Sreetharan and his co-author, Harvard engineering professor Robert J. Wood, recognized that an aerial microrobot based on an insect need not contain complex electronic feedback loops to precisely control wing position.

"We're not interested so much in the position of the wings as the torque they generate," says Wood, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Harvard. "Our design uses 'mechanical intelligence' to determine the correct wing speed and amplitude to balance the other forces affecting the robot. It can slow down or speed up automatically to correct imbalances."

Sreetharan and Wood found that even when a significant part of an aerial microrobot's wing was removed, the self-correction engendered by their PARITy (Passive Aeromechanical Regulation of Imbalanced Torques) drivetrain allowed the device to remain balanced in flight. Smaller wings simply flapped harder to keep up with the torque generated by an intact wing, reaching speeds of up to 6,600 beats per minute.

The Harvard engineers say their passive approach to regulating the forces generated in flight is preferable to a more active approach involving electronic sensors and computation, which would add weight and complexity to devices intended to remain as small as lightweight as possible. Current-generation aerial microrobots are about the size and weight of many insects, and even make a similar buzzing sound when flying.

"We suspect that similar passive mechanisms exist in nature, in actual insects," Sreetharan says. "We take our inspiration from biology, and from the elegant simplicity that has evolved in so many natural systems."

Sreetharan and Wood's work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Computer Memory: New Material Could Dramatically Boost Data Storage, Save Energy

North Carolina State University engineers have created a new material that would allow a fingernail-size computer chip to store the equivalent of 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, far exceeding the storage capacities of today's computer memory systems.

Led by Dr. Jagdish "Jay" Narayan, John C.C. Fan Family Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at NC State, the engineers made their breakthrough using the process of selective doping, in which an impurity is added to a material that changes its properties. The process also shows promise for boosting vehicles' fuel economy and reducing heat produced by semiconductors, a potentially important development for more efficient energy production.

Working at the nanometer level -- a pinhead has a diameter of 1 million nanometers -- the engineers added metal nickel to magnesium oxide, a ceramic. The resulting material contained clusters of nickel atoms no bigger than 10 square nanometers, a 90 percent size reduction compared to today's techniques and an advancement that could boost computer storage capacity.

"Instead of making a chip that stores 20 gigabytes, you have one that can handle one terabyte, or 50 times more data," Narayan says.

Information storage is not the only area where advances could be made. By introducing metallic properties into ceramics, Narayan says engineers could develop a new generation of ceramic engines able to withstand twice the temperatures of normal engines and achieve fuel economy of 80 miles per gallon. And since the thermal conductivity of the material would be improved, the technique could also have applications in harnessing alternative energy sources like solar energy.

The engineers' discovery also advances knowledge in the emerging field of "spintronics," which is dedicated to harnessing energy produced by the spinning of electrons. Most energy used today is harnessed through the movement of current and is limited by the amount of heat that it produces, but the energy created by the spinning of electrons produces no heat. The NC State engineers were able to manipulate the nanomaterial so the electrons' spin within the material could be controlled, which could prove valuable to harnessing the electrons' energy. The finding could be important for engineers working to produce more efficient semiconductors.

Working with Narayan on the study were Dr. Sudhakar Nori, a research associate at NC State, Shankar Ramachandran, a former NC State graduate student, and J.T. Prater, an adjunct professor of materials science and engineering. The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

A Decade of Studying the Earth's Magnetic Shield, in 3-D

Space scientists around the world are celebrating ten years of ground-breaking discoveries by 'Cluster', a mission that is illuminating the mysteries of the magnetosphere, the northern lights and the solar wind.

Cluster is a European Space Agency mission, launched in summer 2000. It consists of a unique constellation of four spacecraft flying in formation around Earth, studying the interaction between the solar wind and the magnetosphere. The spacecraft each carry an identical set of 11 scientific instruments, which together capture 3D information about the magnetosphere -- Earth's 'magnetic shield'.

An artist's impression of the Cluster quartet. (Credit: ESA)

A key instrument -- PEACE -- was designed by a team led by space scientists at UCL.

The solar wind is a continuous outflow of hot, magnetised, electrified gas from the Sun. Earth is shielded from the solar wind by its magnetic field, which surrounds the planet in a zone called the magnetosphere, many times larger than the Earth.

The magnetosphere prevents the solar wind from stripping away the atmosphere and protects Earth from deadly energetic particles produced by storms on the Sun. However the magnetosphere is not a perfect shield. Energy and material from solar wind can get inside, to cause the northern lights, ionospheric disturbances, the generation of radiation belts and disturbances to the ground-level magnetic field. These "space weather effects" are important because they interfere with spacecraft operations, communications, GPS signals and electrical power systems on the ground. Cluster is being used to find out how transfer of solar wind energy to the magnetosphere leads to these diverse effects.

PEACE measures electrons and electric currents in the solar wind, magnetosphere and aurora. During Cluster's mission PEACE has been used to study huge bubbles of plasma three times the size of Earth jetting through the magnetosphere, very thin sheets of electric current flowing through space where explosive magnetic reconnection occurs, and grand waves on the edge of the magnetosphere, formed by the solar wind 'blowing' over the surface before breaking and forming tornado-like vortices.

Dr Andrew Fazakerley, from UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, and Principal Investigator for PEACE, said: "Cluster is revolutionising the study of the solar wind and the magnetosphere because it is the first space mission to reveal what plasmas are like in 3D, which is crucial to testing our theoretical models."

Cluster is also the first multi-spacecraft mission to study the northern lights or aurora. The aurora are caused when electrons from the magnetosphere smash into the upper atmosphere, but it's a mystery how these electrons are accelerated to high enough energies. Cluster's simultaneous measurements at different locations have given scientists the first opportunity to test ideas about what could be the cause.

"Cluster was not designed to visit the aurora, but luckily the orbit of the four spacecraft has naturally evolved to allow us to explore the unexplained auroral acceleration region which is the key to the formation of the aurora," said Dr Forsyth.

"We are very excited at the coming opportunity to investigate how the magnetosphere responds in the near future, as solar activity increases to solar maximum," said Dr Fazakerley.

Researchers Create 'Quantum Cats' Made of Light

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created "quantum cats" made of photons (particles of light), boosting prospects for manipulating light in new ways to enhance precision measurements as well as computing and communications based on quantum physics.

These colorized plots of electric field values indicate how closely the NIST "quantum cats" (left) compare with theoretical predictions for a cat state (right). The purple spots and alternating blue contrast regions in the center of the images indicate the light is in the appropriate quantum state. (Credit: Gerrits/NIST)

The NIST experiments, described in a forthcoming paper, repeatedly produced light pulses that each possessed two exactly opposite properties -- specifically, opposite phases, as if the peaks of the light waves were superimposed on the troughs. Physicists call this an optical Schrödinger's cat. NIST's quantum cat is the first to be made by detecting three photons at once and is one of the largest and most well-defined cat states ever made from light. (Larger cat states have been created in different systems by other research groups, including one at NIST.)

A "cat state" is a curiosity of the quantum world, where particles can exist in "superpositions" of two opposite properties simultaneously. Cat state is a reference to German physicist Erwin Schrödinger's famed 1935 theoretical notion of a cat that is both alive and dead simultaneously.

"This is a new state of light, predicted in quantum optics for a long time," says NIST research associate Thomas Gerrits, lead author of the paper. "The technologies that enable us to get these really good results are ultrafast lasers, knowledge of the type of light needed to create the cat state, and photon detectors that can actually count individual photons."

The NIST team created their optical cat state by using an ultrafast laser pulse to excite special crystals to create a form of light known as a squeezed vacuum, which contains only even numbers of photons. A specific number of photons were subtracted from the squeezed vacuum using a device called a beam splitter. The photons were identified with a NIST sensor that efficiently detects and counts individual photons. Depending on the number of subtracted photons, the remaining light is in a state that is a good approximation of a quantum cat says Gerrits -- the best that can be achieved because nobody has been able to create a "real" one, by, for instance, the quantum equivalent to superimposing two weak laser beams with opposite phases.

NIST conducts research on novel states of light because they may enhance measurement techniques such as interferometry, used to measure distance based on the interference of two light beams. The research also may contribute to quantum computing -- which may someday solve some problems that are intractable today -- and quantum communications, the most secure method known for protecting the privacy of a communications channel. Larger quantum cats of light are needed for accurate information processing.

Hubble Observations of Supernova Reveal Composition of 'Star Guts' Pouring out

Observations made with NASA's newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope of a nearby supernova are allowing astronomers to measure the velocity and composition of "star guts" being ejected into space following the explosion, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The team detected significant brightening of the emissions from Supernova 1987A, which were consistent with some theoretical predictions about how supernovae interact with their immediate galactic environment. Discovered in 1987, Supernova 1987A is the closest exploding star to Earth to be detected since 1604 and resides in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy adjacent to our own Milky Way Galaxy.

A team of astronomers led by the University of Colorado at Boulder is charting the interactions between Supernova 1987A and a glowing gas ring encircling the supernova remnant known as the "String of Pearls." (Credit: NASA)

The team observed the supernova in optical, ultraviolet and near-infrared light, charting the interplay between the stellar explosion and the famous "String of Pearls," a glowing ring 6 trillion miles in diameter encircling the supernova remnant that has been energized by X-rays. The gas ring likely was shed some 20,000 years before the supernova exploded, and shock waves rushing out from the remnant have been brightening some 30 to 40 pearl-like "hot spots" in the ring -- objects that likely will grow and merge together in the coming years to form a continuous, glowing circle.

"The new observations allow us to accurately measure the velocity and composition of the ejected 'star guts,' which tell us about the deposition of energy and heavy elements into the host galaxy," said CU-Boulder Research Associate Kevin France of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, lead study author. "The new observations not only tell us what elements are being recycled into the Large Magellanic Cloud, but how it changes its environment on human time scales."

A paper on the subject was published in the Sept. 2 issue ofScience. The international study involved study co-authors from 15 other universities and institutes and included CU-Boulder astrophysicist Richard McCray, the Science paper's second author.

In addition to ejecting massive amounts of hydrogen, 1987A has spewed helium, oxygen, nitrogen and rarer heavy elements like sulfur, silicon and iron. Supernovae are responsible for a large fraction of biologically important elements, including oxygen, carbon and iron found in plants and animals on Earth today, he said. The iron in a person's blood, for example, is believed to have been made by supernovae explosions.

Hubble is the only observatory in the world that can observe the brightening of the String of Pearls in ultraviolet light, said France. Most of the data for the study was gathered by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, or STIS, which was installed on Hubble in 1997 and was one of the workhorse instruments before its power supply failed in 2004. A faulty circuit board on STIS was replaced by astronauts on the final Hubble repair mission in May 2009.

The team compared STIS observations in January 2010 with Hubble observations made over the past 15 years on 1987A's evolution. STIS has provided the team with detailed images of the exploding star, as well as spectrographic data -- essentially wavelengths of light broken down into colors like a prism that produce unique fingerprints of gaseous matter. The results revealed temperatures, chemical composition, density and motion of 1987A and its surrounding environment, said France.

Since the supernova is roughly 163,000 light-years away, the explosion occurred in roughly 161,000 B.C., said France. One light year is about 6 trillion miles.

"To see a supernova go off in our backyard and to watch its evolution and interactions with the environment in human time scales is unprecedented," he said. "The massive stars that produce explosions like Supernova 1987A are like rock stars -- they live fast, flashy lives and die young."

France said the energy input from supernovae regulates the physical state and the long-term evolution of galaxies like the Milky Way. Many astronomers believe a supernova explosion near our forming sun some 4 to 5 billion years ago is responsible for a significant fraction of radioactive elements in our solar system today, he said.

"In the big picture, we are seeing the effect a supernova can have in the surrounding galaxy, including how the energy deposited by these stellar explosions changes the dynamics and chemistry of the environment," said France. "We can use this new data to understand how supernova processes regulate the evolution of galaxies."

Some of the upcoming Hubble observations of Supernova 1987A will be made with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, a $70 million instrument designed by a team at CU-Boulder's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy that was installed on Hubble during the 2009 servicing mission. The instrument is designed to help scientists better understand the "cosmic web" of material permeating the cosmos by gathering information from UV light from distant objects, allowing scientists to look back in time and space and reconstruct the condition and evolution of the early universe.

France became a member of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph science team in 2007 and has been using data gathered by instrument to study topics ranging from the chemistry of the early universe about 2.5 billion years after the Big Bang occurred roughly 13.7 billion years ago, to the evaporation of the atmosphere around a planet that is orbiting another star. "COS has been extremely productive in the early phases of its mission and has great scientific breadth," said France.

God did not create the universe, says Hawking

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God did not create the universe, says Hawking

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God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking speaks at the Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics in Ontario, June 20, 2010. REUTERS/Sheryl Nadler

In "The Grand Design," co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," Hawking writes.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book "A Brief History of Time," an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics -- Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History ... "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world's leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in "Star Trek" and the cartoons "Futurama" and "The Simpsons."

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University's Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

"The Grand Design" is due to go on sale next week.