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  • Four-atom-wide wire may herald tiny computers

    Purdue University / Sunhee Lee, Hoon Ryu and Gerhard Klimeck

    This image from a computational simulation run of the newly created wires shows electron density as electrons flow from left to right. The wires are 20 times smaller than the smallest wires now available and measure just four atoms wide by one phosphorus atom tall.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    A wire that is just four atoms wide and one atom tall, yet works just as well as the ordinary copper wires running behind your wall, was recently created by an international team of scientists. 

    The breakthrough brings closer to reality a future where computers smaller than a pinhead are faster and more powerful than some of today's supercomputers, according to the researchers.

    Such so-called quantum computers will require wires to get information in and out of the quantum bits, or qubits, that perform calculations, explained Gerhard Klimeck, an electrical and chemical engineer at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

    "These wires are our approach to how we might drive quantum computing bits," he told me Tuesday.

    Dirt in silicon
    The wires, which are 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, were made by placing chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal.

    Phosphorus is essentially "dirt" that adds electrons to silicon, Klimeck explained.

    "What's novel here is that we can put so many phosphor impurities together and close that they have an effect of making a metal-like conductor inside silicon … which is like an insulator around the wire," he said.

    The research was led by Bent Weber, a graduate student in quantum computing at the University of New South Wales in Australia and described in the Jan. 5 issue of Science. Below is a video news release explaining the breakthrough.

    The tiniest silicon conducting wire ever made takes us a step closer to the creation of a practical quantum computer. Developed by UNSW PhD student Bent Weber, the wire is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

    Testing laws
    The finding proves that Ohm's law, which demonstrates the relationship between electrical current, resistance, and voltage, applies all the way down to the atomic scale.

    Some researchers believed the law would break down at the microscopic scale where quantum mechanics would drive the behavior of electron motion, David Ferry, a computer and electrical engineer at Arizona State University, explains in an accompany perspective article in Science.

    The finding that "Ohm's law remains valid, even at very low temperatures [is] a surprising result that reveals classical behavior in the quantum regime," he writes.

    While this may jigger how scientists sort quantum effects from classical ones, he adds, it comes as good news to the semiconductor industry which seeks to extend Moore's Law down to the atomic scale.

    This is the law that says the number of transistors squeezed onto an integrated circuit at least doubles every two years.

    "It has been thought that quantum effects would limit this in the near future," writes Ferry, "but the results presented by Weber et. al suggest that several generations are still possible."

    Tiny computers
    This atomic-scale wire, noted Klimeck, will allow computer chip manufacturers to connect traditional or novel transistors at the atomic scale. 

    "Architecturally, it may not look very different than today's Intel chip, in terms of how that thing actually works," he said.

    Different-looking chips will come with advances in quantum computing, where individual atoms inside a piece of silicon may perform computations in the way that linked transistors do in today's computers.

    The atomic-scale wires will get information in and out of these quantum bits.

    Both concepts of tiny computers, though, won't get any smaller than the atomic scale, Klimeck added. "You have to have atomic wires that get down to the atomic scale to get the information in and out."

    The wire they created "is the end of Moore's Law," he said. "You are not going to make a wire smaller than that." 

    Not yet for sale
    Consumers eager to get their hands on these teeny tiny computers will have to wait awhile, noted Klimeck. 

    The lab manufacturing process involves using a scanning tunneling microscope to carve a pattern into the surface of silicon one atom at a time, which is much too slow for industrial scale production.

    "While we demonstrated that you can make these wires, and that they function, we have not demonstrated a scalable way of how to mass produce them," he said.

    This will likely eventually be figured out by an innovator in the multi-billion computer technology industry racing to keep up with Moore's Law. 

    In the meantime, people looking for small computers might want to check out the Ultrabooks unveiled this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

    More on quantum computers and Moore's Law:

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

     

     

     

    From wearable motion sensors to social network maps, Intel is exploring how to build technology for the rapidly growing senior population.

     

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  • Saturn's moons and rings mix it up

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI

    Saturn's rings stretch in front of the moons Titan and Tethys in a Dec. 7 image captured by NASA's Cassini orbiter.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News



    What do you get when you cross the rings and moons of Saturn? That sounds like the set-up for a joke, but for the team that processes the pictures from NASA's Cassini orbiter, the answer is totally serious: You get stunning images of the moons' interplay with the giant planet's rings.

    The picture above, released today, shows Saturn's rings nearly edge-on, in front of the moons Titan (left) and Tethys (right). Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured the view on Dec. 7, 2011, as it was flying by a distance of about 1.4 million miles from icy Tethys (TEETH-iss) and 1.9 million miles from smog-covered Titan.

    Last week the Cassini imaging team released another stunner snapped on the same day, showing tiny Tethys (660 miles wide) near the center of Saturn's disk, just below the ring plane.

    Cassini was so close to Saturn's equator that the rings look like little more than a straight line, but you can see the delicate shadows of the rings stretching across the planet's sunlit disk into darkness. When Cassini's wide-angle camera took this picture, Tethys was about 1.1 million miles away.

    Saturn, with a diameter of 74,900 miles, overwhelms Tethys in size. But the gas giant's density is such that it could float in water — that is, if there were a body of water big enough for it to float in. Does that mean Saturn could take a bath? Yes ... but it might leave a ring.

    NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI

    The Saturnian moon Tethys is dwarfed by the ringed planet's disk in this Dec. 7 picture from the Cassini orbiter.

    More imagery from Cassini and other space probes:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding the Cosmic Log Google+ page to your circles. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • How to get a cosmos from nothing

    Physicist Lawrence Krauss discusses how the universe could have naturally arisen from nothing.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News



    Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss has taken on plenty of edgy topics, ranging from evolution to the state of science policy, to quantum quackery, to the science of "Star Trek." But in his latest book, he takes on what might be the edgiest topic of all: how all the somethingness of our universe could have arisen from nothingness without divine intervention.

    The argument that God had to be the "unmoved mover," sparking the cosmos into existence, goes back to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. In his debates with theologians, "the question 'why is there something rather than nothing' always comes up as the one 'indefensible' issue that implies there must be a creator," Krauss told me over the weekend.

    "We've come so far, that addressing that question — or at least addressing similar questions — has become a part of science," said Krauss, who heads the Origins Project at Arizona State University.

    He addressed the question in a lecture that was videotaped at an Athiest Alliance International conference in 2009, and the video has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube since then. The video prompted Krauss to write his newly published book on the subject, "A Universe From Nothing."

    Why is there something rather than nothing? Krauss said that question implies a search for purpose that really doesn't mesh with scientific inquiry. "The 'why' question is never really a 'why' question ... really, when we say 'why,' we mean 'how,'" he told me.

    OK, so how can you get a cosmos from nothing? Krauss traces a series of discoveries building up from Einstein's general theory of relativity to the latest studies of dark energy, explaining how scientists have determined that empty space is seething with energy in the form of virtual particles. From the perspective of quantum physics, particles are popping into and out of existence all the time. The way Krauss and many other theorists see it, nothingness is so unstable that it has to give rise to something ... in our case, the universe as we know it.

    What's more, Krauss and his colleagues are coming around to the view that there could be a countless succession of big bangs, creating many universes with different parameters and laws of physics. Some of the universes in this multiverse fizzle back into nothingness immediately, while others — such as ours — hang around long enough to spawn galaxies and stars, planets and life. Scientists haven't yet figured out a way to test this hypothesis, but it would explain how we're lucky enough to live in a long-lasting universe: We just happened to win the prize of existence in a cosmic lottery.

    "Some people say, 'Well, that's just a cop-out,'" Krauss acknowledged. "But it's actually less of a cop-out than God."

    Positives and negatives
    Krauss' book isn't the only one to claim that God's not needed for the creation of the universe. British physicist Stephen Hawking, a good friend of Krauss', made a similar point in his own most recent book, "The Grand Design." A key point in the argument is that the positive energy bound up in matter is balanced by negative gravitational-field energy. From the quantum perspective, the total energy of the universe is pretty much zero. Thus, the energy of "nothingness" is conserved, even when somethingness enters the picture.

    This idea of positive and negative energy balancing out at zero has sparked criticism from the creationist side of the fence, but Krauss said the concept fits with current cosmological theories.

    NASA / WMAP Science Team

    This graphic traces the evolution of the universe from the big bang (at left) to the present, based on data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (far right). So what gave rise to the big bang? Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss says addressing such questions "has become a part of science."

    "It sounds like a scam," he told me. "It isn't a scam. Once you allow gravity, the amazing thing is that you can start out with zero energy and end up with lots of stuff, and that stuff can have positive energy, as long as you counteract it with negative energy. Gravity allows energy to be negative. I liken it to the difference between a very savvy stockbroker and an embezzler. The savvy stockbroker will buy on margin, and buy more stuff than they actually have money to account for. But as long as the stock goes up and they sell it in the end, no one knows the difference and everyone's happy — whereas the embezzler takes the money and of course is discovered. The universe is more like the savvy stockbroker."

    In the ultra-long term, when all the galaxies have spread out in our expanding universe, and all the stars have died out, the positives and negatives cancel each other out, turning our universe back into the uniformity of empty space. "The 'somethingness' may be here for just a short time," Krauss said.

    Accentuate the positive
    For a lot of people, all this might sound positively soul-killing. Evolutionary biologist (and crusading atheist) Richard Dawkins says as much in his afterword to Krauss' book: "If you think that's bleak and cheerless, too bad. Reality doesn't owe us comfort."

    But Krauss said he doesn't intend the book to be a downer.

    "My goal is not to destroy religion, though in fact that would be an interesting side effect," he said. "It's not any more my goal than it was Charles Darwin's goal with his book ["On the Origin of Species"]. My goal is to use the hook of this fascinating question, whiich everyone asks, to motivate people to learn about the real universe." 

    Krauss said a scientific perspective on the origins and the fate of the universe offers a valid alternative to the solace traditionally provided by religion.

    Free Press

    "A Universe From Nothing" aims to explain how something can come from nothingness in accord with the laws of physics.

    "Here are these remarkable laws of nature that have arisen and produced what you never would have expected, something much more interesting than any fairy tale," Krauss said. "We are the lucky beneficiaries of that, and we should enjoy the remarkable fact that we have a consciousness that can appreciate this remarkable universe. If it's a remarkable accident, how lucky are we to be a part of it! I do think you can create a 'theology' around this if you want."

    Krauss doesn't mean "theology" in the literal sense of the study of God's ways, of course, but rather in the sense of an attitude toward life and its meaning (or meaninglessness). What's your attitude? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

    Update for 1 a.m. ET Jan. 11: I should make clear that neither Krauss nor any scientist claims to have "the answer" as to the origin of the cosmos. Theorists are just trying to figure out the possible answers to the deepest questions about the universe. Perhaps the most "remarkable" thing about all this — to borrow one of Krauss' favorite words — is that it's actually plausible for scientists to address these questions at all. (And in case you're wondering, the answer to the ultimate question is still 42.)

    More about cosmic perspectives:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • 100-year-old whisky highlights art of blending

    NZAHT.org

    This file photo shows the crates of Mackinlay's Scotch whisky that were excavated from beneath British explorer Ernest Shackleton's hut in Antarctica.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    Antarctica-bound explorers would be wise to bring a case or two of Scotch whisky to endure chilly nights. Ernest Shackleton was wise.

    In fact, the Scotch he packed for the Nimrod's 1907 attempt to reach the South Pole was exceptional, according to distillers who sampled and re-created the drink.

    Low on supplies and hungry, the expedition was forced to evacuate about 100 miles shy of its goal. When the crew departed Cape Royds, they left behind equipment and goods, including three cases of Mackinlay's "Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky" that was stashed in the ice beneath a hut.

    And there it sat until the Antarctic Heritage Trust discovered it in 2006, nearly 100 years later.

    In 2010, chemists and distillers with Whyte & MacLay, Ltd., which now owns Mackinlay's, got their hands on a few bottles and sampled a dram.

    "The whisky had been in deep freeze ever since it was delivered to Antarctica," James Pryde, chief chemist at the distillery, recounted to me in an email. "We had no idea what we would find."

    The hope was that given the cold storage coupled with a tight cork seal the whisky would be as good in 2010 as it was when it was blended more than a century earlier.

    "This is what we found," Pryde said.

    For aficionados of Scotch, that could be seen as backhanded compliment. Single malt whiskies from this period were generally regarded as "harsh and heavily peated," he noted - in other words, nothing to get excited about.

    "Given we had no idea what we would find, it is not understatement that this dram turned out to be the 'nectar of the gods' — it was a revelation in its complexity, particularly the control of the peating level and the quality of the wood," Pryde said.

    The  storage under the hut while wrapped in straw and packed in wooden crates prevented the whisky from turning to ice and thus messing with the flavor profile. The preservation prompted an extensive analysis of the liquid.

    "This as far as we know was the first analysis of a pristine whisky sample from the late 1800s and gave us real insight to what our forefathers were capable of when it came to whisky production," said Pryde.

    The team determined the freezing point (-34.3 degrees C), alcoholic strength (47.19 percent), origin of the peat used in malting (Isle of Eday), and the nature of the wood casks used to mature it (American oak), for example.

    The relatively high alcohol likely contributed to the lack of haze formation. "To have your whisky go cloudy would have been a PR disaster," noted Pryde.

    The distillery had access to American oak casks used to transport sherry and wine and given its location near a port where this trade was particularly active, the distillery likely had the pick of the bunch.

    All these aspects made for the exceptional blend for Shackleton and crew to sip, the team concludes in a paper detailing their analysis in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing.

    Want to know just how good this whisky tasted? No problem, a re-creation is available for you to try.

    To make it, Richard Pearson, master blender at Whyte & McKay Ltd., "used the best modern stocks of whisky that were at his disposal," noted Pryde. The blend was then subjected to the same scientific analysis as the original, confirming an almost identical match.

    The lesson from the research project?

    "I don't expect that any major changes will result from this work to the actual production of whisky," noted Pryde. But their findings do offer some sage advice for craft distillers of the future: master the art of blending.

    "That is the most important thing that has been passed down from the 1900s."

    More on old Scotch and distilling tech:


    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his  website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below. 

    The modernist kitchens of Grant Achatz are known for using experimental equipment to produce unusual cuisine, thanks to an unusual partnership with PolyScience, a lab equipment.

  • Skipper chosen for starship effort

    From April 15, 2010: Former astronaut Mae Jemison tells MSNBC she believes President Barack Obama's plans for NASA will help the agency move forward. Jemison is to lead the "100 Year Starship" effort.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News



    The Pentagon's think tank has selected the group that will manage its "100 Year Starship" project to explore what it would take for a multigenerational mission beyond the solar system, and sources say the leader will be Mae Jemison, who became the first black woman in space in 1992.

    In the 20 years since then, Jemison has founded several ventures — including The Jemison Group, a technology design and consulting company; and the Houston-based Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, which takes on educational projects. Jemison, a 55-year-old Alabama native who has experience as a physician and a Peace Corps worker as well as an astronaut, played a prominent role in facilitating the 100 Year Starship symposium organized by NASA and the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Florida last fall.

    One of the follow-ups from that seminar was to be the award of a $500,000 contract from DARPA to continue study of the technological, political and social requirements for ultra-long-term projects such as interstellar space missions. Several ventures put in proposals, and one of the groups that didn't win the contract, the Tau Zero Foundation, said in this week's email update that the contract was going to a team "led by an ex-astronaut."

    The BBC identified the ex-astronaut as Jemison, based on the text of an unreleased letter from DARPA. It also reported that Jemison's foundation was teaming up with two other groups, Icarus Interstellar and the Foundation for Enterprise Development.

    NASA file

    Jemison was the first black woman in space in 1992.

    DARPA has not yet publicly announced the selection, and my efforts to contact the agency's representatives have been unsuccessful so far. But after the BBC's story, the report was confirmed on the Centauri Dreams blog by Paul Gilster, who is affiliated with the Tau Zero Foundation. Gilster said Jemison's organization "now takes on the challenge of building a program that can last 100 years, and might one day result in a starship."

    Adam Crowl, director of Icarus Interstellar, elaborated in a blog comment:

    "... Project Icarus will keep running as it has since 2009, and the end point will be an interstellar probe design, chiefly fusion-propelled in the boost phase. That’s due at some point in 2014.

    "Icarus Interstellar is a broader banner for a whole group of interstellar related research projects, Project Icarus being just one, which will be producing designs and doing basic research with the common goal of building the technical foundation required for eventual successful interstellar flight.

    "Now in light of this news, we’ll be under the banner of the 100 Year Starship Organization, which covers more than just the technical aspects. Each of the triad came to our happy union with different strengths and emphases – Mae Jemison’s organization covering education and broader social goals, the Foundation for Enterprise Development covering innovative organization and operational approaches, and Icarus Interstellar covering the technical aspects. Together we’ll be working towards an organization that will last 100 years and produce a viable interstellar technology, with benefits for all humankind."

    The $500,000 DARPA grant is intended to serve as seed money for the 100 Year Starship Organization. Meanwhile, the founder of Tau Zero, former NASA researcher Marc Millis, suggested in his email update that Tau Zero would lower its profile:

    "It is too soon to know how this selection will affect Tau Zero's goal to rigorously and impartially guide progress toward interstellar flight.  With insufficient funding to go around, I feel that it would be a disservice to the community for Tau Zero to attempt to compete with this new organization, especially considering that this new organization now has significantly more than an order of magnitude more funding. I hope they serve the community well."

    Millis said Centauri Dreams would "continue to operate as an impartial and articulate news source and discussion forum on all things interstellar."

    Courtesy of Adrian Mann

    An artist's impression shows the Icarus starship accelerating past Jupiter, gaining a valuable boost in speed with the help of the gas giant's gravity, slingshotting it toward its interstellar destination.

    Jemison has made a name for herself not only as the first black woman in space, but also as the first real-life astronaut to appear on a "Star Trek" episode. How big of a role will she and her partners play in turning the "Star Trek" vision into reality, and on what time scale? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

    Update for 9 p.m. ET Jan. 9: DARPA confirmed the selection of Jemison's foundation in a brief statement attributed to Paul Eremenko, DARPA program manager, but indicated that the deal was not yet completely done:

    "We can confirm that the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence has been selected for negotiation for a grant award for the 100 Year Starship effort. We have no further comment until the grant is awarded."

    More about interstellar flight:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Meteor quest turns up treasures

    (c) Jeff Berkes Photography

    This photo combines the landscape of the Florida Keys with the flash of a meteor above on the night of Jan. 3-4, at the peak of the Quadrantid meteors.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News



    January is the perfect time for a road trip to Florida, and if there's a promising meteor shower to see, so much the better. That's what brought photographer Jeff Berkes down from Pennsylvania to the Florida Keys. The payoff came in the form of a stunning set of pictures showing the Quadrantid meteors at their peak.

    "The Florida Keys sounded really good in January for the Quadrantid meteor shower, but Mother Nature had the cold front follow me all the way south," Berkes wrote in his Flickr photo gallery. "The record low temperature for Key West is 41 degrees. It went down to 46, with winds around 20-30 mph near Big Pine Key this particular night on January 3rd / 4th, 2012."

    Berkes bundled up in two sweatshirts and a fleece, plus "a mad bomber hat" and winter gloves. Then he waited for the light show to begin. He wasn't disappointed.

    One picture shows twisted trees in the Keys, with a meteor flashing in the sky above. "That was captured earlier in the night, while the moon was still up," Berkes told me in an email. "It might even be just a random meteor instead of a Quadrantid meteor."

    Scientists say the Quadrantids are sparked every year on the night of Jan. 3-4, when Earth passes through the trail of cosmic grit left behind by a burnt-out comet now known as asteroid 2003 EH1. These particular meteors appear to emanate from a now-obsolete constellation known as Quadrans Muralis, or the Mural Quadrant. That's why they're known as the Quadrantids.

    This year was a particularly good year for the "Quads," in part because because the moon had set by the time the meteor shower really got going. This year's shower was reported to reach a peak ratae of roughly 80 shooting stars per hour in the wee hours of Jan. 4. Berkes benefited from a bonus: the faint glow of the zodiacal light. You can see it in the picture below:

    (c) Jeff Berkes Photography

    A green light pen was used to add "2012" as a signature to this photo of a meteor and the zodiacal light over the Florida Keys.

    "The triangular column of light you see is the zodiac lights, stretching up into the night sky before dawn," Berkes told me. "Light coming from the sun [while it's] well below the horizon is scattered by 'space dust,' making it visible in dark locations before sunrise and after sunset. It is definitely something I do not see every day."

    Berkes said he counted close to 100 meteors while he was out. He has mastered a technique called "light painting," which calls for adding illumination to a night scene during a long exposure. We featured one of his light-painting photos last fall during the Orionid meteor shower, and you can see the effect in these photo as well.

    "The '2012' in green is just another light-painting trick with a special green pen," he wrote. "The Quadrantids of 2012 were certainly better than 2011. I'm thinking it could be a sign that 2012 will be an even better year than 2011."

    I'm thinking the same... Or at least wishing it will be so.

    Check out Berkes' Flickr photostream or his Web site for additional visual treasures. You'll find more Quadrantid images at the SpaceWeather.com Web site. There could be still more night-sky sights on the way: SpaceWeather.com's Tony Phillips says a coronal mass ejection from the sun "might deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field" on Saturday, sparking enhanced auroras.

    The next big meteor show is farther out on the schedule: The Lyrids are due to reach their peak on the night of April 22-23. 

    More meteoric marvels:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • 'The Hoff' loves his celebrity crabs

    (c) NERC ChEsSo Consortium

    White crustaceans that have been nicknamed Hasselhoff crabs are piled around hydrothermal vents.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News



    When word got around that scientists nicknamed a particularly hairy-chested kind of deep-sea crab after "Baywatch" star David Hasselhoff, "The Hoff" didn't get huffy. Instead, he proudly tweeted the news to his 358,000 Twitter followers. The Southern Ocean's "Hoff crabs" are just the latest critters to get celebrity nicknames.

    The saga of Hasselhoff's crabs came out this week when researchers reported the discovery of a "lost world" in waters off the Antarctic coast in the journal PLoS Biology. Piles of white yeti crabs were found clumped around hydrothermal vents at the ocean's bottom, in an area known as the East Scotia Ridge.

    Baywatch

    David Hasselhoff in his "Baywatch" heyday.

    Expedition leader Alex Rogers, a zoologist at Oxford University, said the crabs were notable because they had long hairs, or setae, covering their smooth undersides. "Their nickname on the cruise ship was the 'Hasselhoff crab,' which gives you some idea of what they look like," Rogers told the BBC.

    Rogers was clearly referring to the hairy-chested look that Hasselhoff sported when he portrayed a beefcake lifeguard on the '90s TV series "Baywatch." Hasselhoff, now 59, has had his ups and downs in recent years, but he saw the story of the Hoff crabs as one of the ups. "Check this out!" he said in a Twitter tweet pointing to the BBC story and bearing the hashtag "Got Hoff Crabs." He even urged one of his followers to retweet the news.

    Rogers and his colleagues still have to decide what the crabs' scientific Latin-derived species name will be. The crabs are part of the genus Kiwa, along with other types of yeti crabs, so Kiwa hasselhoffi is a possibility; however, Hasselhoff would be well-advised not to get his hopes up just yet.

    "There are no plans to formally name the crab after David, but I am yet to discuss this with my colleagues," Rogers told me today in an email. "The species is distinct from Kiwa hirsuta and Kiwa puravida, and we are describing it at present. An alternative name that was being batted around was the wookie crab — again for obvious reasons. The Hoff stuck...."

    Rogers et al. / PLoS Biology

    A single "Hoff crab" is surrounded by gastropods in this picture from a research team's expedition to the Southern Ocean.

    I'm not aware that any species has so far been formally named after the Hoff — or after Wookiees, for that matter. But there have been plenty of celebrities honored with scientific species names, including an ant and a spider named after the guy who played Han Solo (Pheidole harrisonfordi and Calponia harrisonfordi, respectively), a beetle that looks as if it has Arnold Schwarzenegger's bulging biceps (Agra schwarzeneggeri), a bunny named after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri), a lichen named after President Barack Obama (Caloplaca obamae), and a beetle and spider named after talk-show comedian Stephen Colbert (Agaporomorphus colberti and Aptostichus stephencolberti).

    Asteroids and other celestial bodies can provide celebrities with additional pieces of scientific immortality. There's no Asteroid Hasselhoff yet, but the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center lists Spielberg, Lancearmstrong, Tomhanks, Megryan and more. When astronomers found a world on the solar system's rim that was bigger than Pluto, they gave it the nickname Xena, in honor of the TV warrior princess. (It was later named after Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and strife.)

    Whether or not those Southern Ocean crabs get the scientific name "Kiwa hasselhoffi," they'll probably end up being known informally as Hoff crabs from now on. But it's a delicate environment down there, so I wouldn't advise any celebrity junkets to the hydrothermal vents.

    Come to think of it, that should be set down as one of the ironclad rules on the East Scotia Ridge: Don't hassle the Hoff crabs.

    More about yeti crabs:

    More about scientific names: 

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Biofuel cells may turn cockroaches into cyborgs

    Julie Larsen Maher

    This cockroach may look harmless, but researchers are working on biofuel cell technology that can turn these bugs into spies.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    The sugars in a cockroach's belly have been harnessed by a fuel cell and converted into electricity, a big step toward turning insects into cyborgs, scientists are reporting.

    Once miniaturized to the point that the fuel cells are non-invasive to the cockroaches, they can be implanted to power sensors or recording devices, for example.

    A rechargeable battery inserted along with the so-called biofuel cell would store the trickle of energy it generates, explained Daniel Scherson, a chemist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

    "If you want to be futuristic, one may use the energy stored to try to control the neurological system of the cockroach and then you might be able to (control) the cockroach (with) a joystick," he told me.

    Yes, in the future, that nasty cockroach scurrying across the kitchen floor might actually be a spy set loose by a nosy neighbor, or the CIA.

    Sugar fuel
    The power supply for this fuel cell is food the cockroaches eat, avoiding the need for devices that harness electricity from movement, such as shoes that turn mechanical energy into electricity.

    The fuel cell devised by Scherson's team uses a cascade of reactions by enzymes to convert energy stored as sugars into electricity.

    The first enzyme breaks down the sugar trehalose, which cockroaches constantly produce from their food, into two simpler sugars. 

    A second enzyme oxidizes the simple sugars, releasing electrons that "can then be funneled together to electrodes where they are captured and delivered to oxygen," Scherson explained.

    The team first tested the system on trehalose solutions, then inserted prototype electrodes into the belly of a female cockroach. It worked.

    The biofuel cell produced a trickle of electricity — 0.2 volts. Full details on the system are published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

    Intermittent tasks
    Since the researchers don't want to load down a bug with a heavy fuel cell and impair its ability to move, they envision storing the energy up in a battery, then using that energy to perform tasks such as power sensors.

    One potential application is to equip social insects such as bees or ants with sensors tuned to detect a dangerous chemical and send them out to the environment. 

    Periodically, the sensor would turn on and broadcast its finding, shutting down between broadcasts to allow the battery time to recharge.

    Operating at 0.2 volts is enough power to send a message a few inches, according to Scherson, far enough that a message could be sent down a line of ants spying on a top-secret meeting in a park.

    To get there, the researchers need to shrink their fuel cells so they can be fully implanted, find long-lasting materials to make them with so they don't breakdown inside the bugs' bodies, and build the signal transmitters.

    All of this is in the realm of possibility, noted Scherson.

    "People do wonderful things with circuitry."

    More on cyborg insects:

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

    Ten years of war have given robot developers a chance to refine and improve their bots. Now the robots are finding all sorts of new jobs on the homefront.

  • Getting out the truth about 2012

    This week's Space Hangout touches upon NASA's Grail mission, Phobos-Grunt's problems, the Quadrantid meteor shower, 2012 nonsense and President Barack Obama's purported trip to Mars.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Even an hour isn't long enough to cover the universe, as evidenced by this Google+ Hangout organized by Universe Today's Fraser Cain. The gang included Cain as well as his UT colleagues Nancy Atkinson and Jon Voisey, Bad Astronomy's Philip Plait, Discovery News' Ian O'Neill and Nicole Gugliucci, Astronomy Cast's Pamela Gay, BAUT Forum's Jay Cross and yours truly. We talked about NASA's Grail mission to the moon, the impending fall of Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe and the Quadrantid meteor shower — but the biggest theme was the weirdness over 2012, the Mayan calendar and tales of psychic travel to Mars. This year may be a peak time for pseudoscientific craziness, but it's also a "teachable moment" for astronomy. Does it do more harm than good to talk about doomsday pronouncements and UFO claims? When is the right time to do a reality check? Watch the YouTube vidcast for more on all these subjects, and feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

    More about the round table's topics:

    Check out our previous experimental Hangout on the Air, which focused on the planet quest.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • What mystifies Dr. Hawking? Women

    Sarah Lee / Science Museum via Reuters

    Physicist Stephen Hawking has decorated his office at the University of Cambridge with "Simpsons" memorabilia - and a prominent portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News



    As famed physicist Stephen Hawking turns 70, the subject that most occupies his thoughts is not how the universe arose from nothing, or how he's been able to live with neurodegenerative disease for so long. Here's what he thinks about most: "Women. They are a complete mystery."

    That's the bottom line from New Scientist's interview with Hawking, timed to coincide with this weekend's birthday celebration at Cambridge. The theorist is almost completely paralyzed due to his decades-long struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and had to provide his answers by laboriously twitching his cheek to operate a computerized speech-translation system.

    Hawking also listed what he saw as his "biggest blunder in science" (his now-repudiated insistence that information was destroyed in black holes), the most exciting development in physics during his career (the discovery of the big bang's imprint in cosmic microwave radiation) and the potential discovery that would do the most to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos (discovery of supersymmetric particles at the Large Hadron Collider).

    But it's his brief comment on women that attracted the most attention: How could it be that a scientist who has plumbed the deepest mysteries of the cosmos finds himself mystified by women?

    Based on the view most folks have of geniuses, how could it not be?

    The saga of the super-smart professor who is flummoxed by interpersonal relations, particularly with the opposite sex, is at least as old as Sigmund Freud (who famously wondered, "What does a woman want?"), Jerry Lewis' fictional "Nutty Professor" and the stereotype we have of Albert Einstein. It's as up to date as the TV astrophysicist on "The Big Bang Theory" who can't say a word to women unless he's under the influence.

    Somehow, folks get a satisfying sense of karma from the idea that geniuses are socially stupid. But the stereotype doesn't really hold true, particularly in Hawking's case.

    Like the real-life Einstein, Hawking has had an active romantic life, marked by two marriages. (Einstein's second marriage ended with the death of his wife and cousin Elsa; Hawking's ended in an ugly divorce.) Hawking's disease does not affect his sexual ability or his potency, and the fact that he's fathered three children is evidence of that. 

    "The disease only affects voluntary muscle," Hawking's been quoted as saying.

    He's been called an "incorrigible flirt" and a "party animal who likes to dance in his wheelchair." Having seen Hawking playfully chase his grandson around a backstage room in his wheelchair after a Seattle lecture, I can readily believe the "party animal" part. And having seen the way his expressive eyes light up a room, I know he can turn on the charm despite his disability.

    Through the years, Hawking has had a special thing for Marilyn Monroe. A picture of the enigmatic blonde hangs in his Cambridge office, and Hawking once told The Guardian that if he could travel back in time, he'd rather meet Monroe than the great physicist Isaac Newton, who "seems to have been an unpleasant character."

    Even as he approaches the age of 70, Hawking seems to have kept his playful, pleasant, mischievous character. That may help explain his latest comment about the mystique surrounding women, as well as his own mystique.

    Here's a classic example: Actress Jane Fonda was clearly won over last year when Hawking came backstage after her performance in a play about a woman musicologist in the early stages of neurodegenerative disease. "I took his hand and carefully uncurled the fingers one by one, wanting to see how they felt and looked ... soft, pale, safe," she recalled in a blog posting.

    When Fonda asked Hawking what he thought of her performance, Hawking typed out a short response: "You were my heartthrob" — which got a big laugh. Fonda came away starstruck. "This man who cannot move or speak, can, nonetheless, comprehend the incomprehensible," she wrote.

    Hmm ... Maybe women aren't such a complete mystery to Hawking after all.

    More about Stephen Hawking:

    Where in the Cosmos?

    This year we'll be experimenting with a Cosmic Log Facebook series called "Where in the Cosmos?" WITCo will offer pictures from cosmic locales and ask you to figure out where the pictures came from. But our first WITCo picture poses a slightly different challenge: In honor of Stephen Hawking's 70th birthday, the Science Museum has commissioned a series of pictures showing the physicist in his office, surrounded by knick-knacks and pictures. One of the pictures is at the top of this item. We've posted another picture to the Cosmic Log Facebook page, but we need your help to figure out what the knick-knacks are, what the pictures on Hawking's wall show, and what the equations on his blackboard refer to. Head on over to Facebook, "like" the Cosmic Log page, and help us solve the puzzle by adding your comments.

    Hawking's birthday will be marked on Sunday at Cambridge University with a symposium on "The State of the Universe," featuring talks from 27 leading scientists, including Hawking himself. The public sessions on Sunday will be streamed live over the Internet. There's also a scientific symposium that got under way today. Those sessions, which continue on Friday and Saturday, are also being streamed.

    Hawking retired from his post as a mathematics professor at Cambridge in 2009 and is now director of research at the university's Center for Theoretical Cosmology. He also holds a distinguished research chair at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. For an in-depth look at his life, his work and his mystique, check out "Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind," a new biography by Kitty Ferguson.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Suit lets young folks feel like 75

    Meet AGNES -- the MIT AgeLab's Age Gain Now Empathy System. This suit was designed to provide insight into the physical effects of aging.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    Want to know what it's like to shuffle around the grocery store like achy old folks do? Just in case that sounds like fun, researchers at MIT's Agelab have created a jumpsuit that brings the experience to life for the young, able-bodied masses.

    The Age Gain Now Empathy System (AGNES, get it?) was created to provide insight into the physical effects of aging. 

    That's important because all those baby boomers who've dictated politics and the economy for what seems like forever are now getting old. To continue making money by selling them stuff, products need to be designed that make life groovy for people with poor eyesight, stiff joints and a hunched back.

    AGNES consists of arm, leg and neck braces as well as a web of stretchy cords that make moving around cumbersome and uncomfortable. Yellow goggles mimic reduced vision. A safety helmet strapped to the body gives the feeling of a compressed spine. Custom shoes make you feel off balance.

    What's more, fashion-conscious researchers who get to wear the suit around will feel the bliss of what it's like to not give a hoot about how they look in the public. 

    More importantly, though, the suit really could help make life more comfortable and enjoyable for our aging population. In turn, maybe these happy old folks will be inclined to share their wisdom with those of us who wise up to their plight.

    [Via: Discovery News and PopSci]

    More on old age:

     

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

     

    As the over-65 population expands, new gadgets and systems will allow seniors to live at home and receive improved healthcare. From sleep-sensing beds to robots piloted by grandchildren, we look at how "health surveillance" can improve quality of life.

  • The secret formula for silly science

    Improbable.com

    The Ig Nobel Prizes sometimes knock scientific decorum off its pedestal.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Updated 10:25 p.m. ET

    If there's a formula for silly science, Ig Nobel founder Marc Abrahams surely has it figured out. For 21 years, he and his friends at the Annals of Improbable Research have made international headlines by honoring breakthroughs like the first study of homosexual necrophiliac ducks, and the invention of the bra that turns into a gas mask.

    But here's a clue or two for future laureates: Make sure there's a dash of seriousness to go with the silliness. One sure way not to win an Ig Nobel is to try too hard to be funny.

    "If you were to set out and try to win an Ig Nobel Prize, you would almost certainly fail," Abrahams told me. "To win a prize, you've got to do something that makes pretty much everyone laugh when they first hear about it, and then it gets into their mind enough that they just want to keep thinking about it and finding out more. It's not that hard to make something funny, and it's not that hard to come up with something that will make people scratch their head and wonder about it. But it's very hard to come up with things that will do both of those."

    Abrahams talked about the ingredients of Ig-worthy science tonight during "Virtually Speaking Science," our monthly talk show on the Web and in the Second Life virtual world. If you missed the live show, you can still catch up with the podcast on BlogTalkRadio as well as on iTunes.

    The subject of tonight's show was particularly apt because today we announced the winners of this year's Weird Science Awards. The Weirdies celebrate the silliest science of the past year, from A (for Aflockalypse) to Z (for zombie ants).

    The Ig Nobels, which take their inspiration from the Nobel Prize, are a much bigger production. They're announced each September (or sometimes early October) during a Harvard ceremony that features real Nobel laureates, musical interludes and occasional barrages of paper airplanes. For the past two decades, it's been a formula for success for Abrahams and his fellow AIR-heads. After the Ig Nobel festivities, Abrahams takes the show on the road, to Britain, the Netherlands and other locations around the globe. Abrahams has also written several books that recount the tales behind the Ig Nobel winners.

    I discussed the Ig phenomenon with Abrahams during a phone interview on Tuesday. Here's an edited transcript of the Q&A:

    Cosmic Log: Are there particularly better or worse years for the Ig Nobels? Where does this past year rate?

    Marc Abrahams: One of the main qualities that everything has to have if we're doing a good job is that it's surprising. If each of the winners is not surprising, we have not been doing a good job. So I think the idea of surprise is like the idea of infinity. It's hard to compare infinities. It's hard to compare surprises. As long as everything is surprising, we're happy. And for all the winners we had, we saw plenty of people who were very, very surprised.

    Q: So whether it's infinity, or infinity times two, it's hard to compare. It almost sounds like you're saying "I can't decide which of my children I like best."

    A: Well, you probably can. But if you were to be asked on consecutive days, the answers would not be very consistent, probably.

    Q: Have you seen any areas that are really ripe for being recognized with an Ig Nobel? Any subject that is just crying out for the Ig Nobel treatment?

    A: There are so many ... I can't think of a particular subject that stands out over the others as having not been recognized. It's more that there are certain things that people do that seem to keep on producing this quality of work. We've seen no signs that anything is slowing down. Humanity seems to be getting better and better at producing this stuff. Or maybe just at making it apparent to the rest of the world so that we can find it.

    Anything that's so complicated that people will probably never really understand it is going to produce some good Ig Nobel prizes, because people are going to try their hardest to understand it, or pretend to understand it. I'll mention medicine, because medicine is far too complicated, and most doctors who know what they're doing seem to spend most of their time realizing that they barely know anything at all. But there are other doctors who don't seem to feel that way. Those are the ones who tend to win more Ig Nobel Prizes.

    Q: Are there some researchers who go out and deliberately try to win a prize?

    A: Oh, yeah. From the beginning we've had far more people than we would have ever expected who seem to devote their lives to trying to get an Ig Nobel Prize. There are some who are constantly sending in all sorts of things. They're welcome to nominate themselves. Anybody can. But we get thousands and thousands of nominations every year. Ten to 20 percent of those are people nominating themselves. They almost never win. And of the very few people who have nominated themselves and won, in almost every case, they did not set out to win an Ig Nobel Prize. They may have set out to win a Nobel Prize, but the way it came out was just a side effect. They had something they were trying to get done, and somewhere along the way, or after it was all finished, it became apparent that, wow, this is Ig Nobel-class work.

    Q: Have some researchers' lives been changed because they won an Ig Nobel? For example, the woman who invented the bra that converts into a pair of gas masks?

    A: Yeah, that's a good example. Especially in the last five or 10 years, there seem to be a fair number of people who have had pretty good things happen to them. They've started businesses, or their businesses have taken off. They've gotten book contracts or have become better known. Elena Bodnar is a good example. Kees Moeliker, the homosexual-necrophiliac-duck guy. Even Andre Geim, who used magnets to levitate a frog and win an Ig, and then 10 years later got a Nobel Prize ... the Ig Nobel had nothing to do with him getting a Nobel Prize, but Andre being Andre, the same kinds of forces were at work in him that led to both those things.

    I've seen Andre say several times in interviews that it took a lot more courage for him and his colleague Michael Berry to accept their Ig Nobel Prize than the Nobel Prize. They've both been well-known and respected scientists for a long time, and sometimes there's been a little bit of a stigma against scientists getting up in public and appearing to be fully human and enjoying life. If you look back at the last century or so, it's hard to come up quickly with more than two or three names of scientists who enjoyed being funny in public. Richard Feynman is about the only one.

    Q: During September's Ig Nobel ceremony, the mathematics prize went to preacher Harold Camping and other doomsayers who predicted the end of the world, erroneously. Is there room for a prize to recognize the 2012 Maya apocalypse this year?

    A: It's certainly possible. We have a policy of not discussing candidates for future prizes in public. But I'm comfortable in saying that pretty much anything you can think of could be a candidate, if someone were to make a nomination. With those predictions, the problem is, who do you nominate? We're hesitant to give a prize in a case where it's not at all clear who we're giving it to. We don't award the prize to a concept. We award it to a specific person or a specific group of people.

    Q: I'm greatly tempted to ask you to list some of your favorite prizes from the past...

    A: I don't have any one that is the absolute favorite. There's the levitating frog with magnets, there's the homosexual necrophiliac duck, Elena Bodner's emergency bra ... boy, where to stop? Jacques Benveniste won two Ig Nobel Prizes: one for explaining that water molecules are able to remember things, and the second for extending that research and starting a company that was going to let the public send credit card information over the Internet or a phone line, in return for which this company would send you drugs over the Internet or the phone line. You would somehow take a glass of water and hook it up to your telephone, and they would deliver your medicine to you.

    Q: If you're talking about multiple winners, there's the Japanese slime-mold research group.

    A: Yup. And who knows? It's conceivable that any of the winners could win again in the future for things they haven't yet done.

    There's also the case of the prize that went to two teams of researchers who independently came up with studies saying that herring, those little fish, communicate by farting. One of the groups has an especially good story. It was research done in Sweden, in Stockholm harbor, at the request of the Swedish government. This was back when the Soviet Union still existed, and the Swedish government was convinced that the Soviets were sending submarines into the harbor, but they needed proof before they could get up in public and accuse them.

    So they put some microphones underwater, figuring that they would get recordings of the sounds of the submarines. They heard some mechanical clanking, very rhythmic. It sounded like metal banging, and they thought, "This is it! These are the submarines. But we're going to do this right, and we're going to get some good biologists to analyze this and tell us for sure what this is."

    So they got these guys, who pretty quickly realized that these were not Soviet submarines. These were herrings, farting. We occasionally do shows in Scandinavia, and if one of them comes to the show, they'll usually go to the market beforehand, buy a freshly cut herring, bring it to the show and demonstrate. "This is a herring, and I'm going to show you the sound it makes."

    I recently ran across a big report about the Swedish effort to detect submarines, and it was a wonderful report to read ... only it was missing this vital information. It didn't say anything at all about this, which in a way was one of the key elements in the whole history of the relationship between these two countries.

    That got me thinking about all the history that's taught in schools, and how it's always so dignified. You never get these things that are sometimes really right in the heart of what happened. Nobody talks about them because they're not dignified.

    Tonight's "Virtually Speaking Science" conversation took place in Second Life and will be archived on BlogTalkRadio and iTunes. Check out these other podcasts from the "VSScience" show:

    Many thanks to the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics for co-sponsoring Wednesday's Second Life talk at the MICA Small Auditorium at Stella Nova.

    Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding me to your Google+ circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

  • Silkworms hacked to spin spider-like silk

    Getty Images

    Researchers have engineered silkworms to produce silk with the strength and elasticity of spider silk. The breakthrough avoids the task of spider farming.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    Researchers have hacked the silkworm genome to spin fibers containing spider-silk proteins, a breakthrough that could lead to a long-sought biomaterial for a range of applications such as sutures, artificial ligaments and even bulletproof vests.

    To prove the engineered silkworms were actually producing the synthetic silk, the researchers tagged some with green fluorescent protein, creating green-glowing silk.

    As spooky as this may seem, it is a big step on a path to manufacturing silk with spider-silk-like qualities without having to venture into the even scarier proposition of spider farming.

    Indeed, spider farming isn't even a viable option given spiders' penchant for "territorialism and cannibalism," note the researchers in this week's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    The team, led by Donald Jarvis at the University of Wyoming, isn't the first to incorporate spider silk proteins into silkworms, but is the first to report stable integration of spider proteins in the composite silk fibers.

    "On average, the composite fibers produced by our transgenic silkworm lines were significantly tougher than those produced by parental animals and as tough as native dragline spider silk fiber," the team concludes.

    The caveat is that "very few of the transgenic animals produced anything nearly so tough. And there was little consistency among the different transgenic lines," John Timmer notes in Ars Technica.

    Improved results could come with further transgenic constructs or knocking out some of the silkworm's native genes, he says, but adds improving the inconsistent quality of the silk is "a tough hurdle to clear."

    More stories on silk:

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

    A five-thousand-year-old material gets new life and super strength thanks to new technology. From the 103rd story of the Willis Tower in Chicago to Apple's future headquarters to a Corning research lab, we see how tough glass can get while maintaining its timeless beauty.

     

  • Robots show randomness in evolution of language

    Steffen Wischmann / University of Lausanne

    Researchers used a simulated version of these two-wheeled robots with flashing lights to show how randomness in the occurrence of genetic traits can drive evolution of language.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    Even if everything about different groups of animals is identical down to the level of their genes and physical surroundings, they can develop unique ways to communicate, according to an experiment done with robots that use flashing lights to "talk."

    The Swiss researchers used the robots to get handle on why there is such diversity in communication systems within and between species, something that is difficult to do in living animals. 

    The answer, they found, "is contingencies in evolutionary history, i.e. stochasticity (randomness) in the occurrence order of new ... traits," Steffen Wischmann, a researcher in the department of ecology and evolution at the University of Lausanne, told me in an email.

    He and his colleagues started with 20 populations of identical two-wheeled robots each equipped with a camera, a food detection sensor, a simple information processing program, and a ring that could emit a blue or green light.

    These robots, grouped in populations of 20 individuals, were placed in an arena containing a food source. The team ranked each robot according to how long they spent at the food source. 

    They then used a "standard roulette-wheel selection algorithm" to select 100 robots' programs, or genes, for reproduction, according the paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    "Because the 'genes' — which encoded specifications of the robots neural controllers, responsible for processing sensory information and producing motor actions — were initially set to random values, the robots behaved unpredictably at first," the journal explains in a news advisory.

    "But after 1,000 generations, all 20 populations emitted light to indicate food location. In approximately half the populations, the robots emitted a signal only in the presence of food, while the other populations also emitted a different color light in areas without food."

    It turned out that the one-signal robots were the most efficient communicators — they found the food faster — but they were also the weakest competitors when pitted against other groups of robots who communicated with two flashing lights.

    In other words, there's a tradeoff between communication efficiency and competitive robustness, the researchers note. And, randomness in evolutionary history can affect the outcome of competition between populations.

    "Since the two-signal populations use both signals they can also utilize the signals of other populations independent of which signal this other population uses to signal the presence of food," Wischmann explained to me.

    Further analysis of the data gleaned from the robots shows that the signaling differences occurred early in the robots' evolution. 

    This randomness in the occurrence of mutations can drive the evolution of language and "might also be involved in speciation processes," the team concludes.

    More on language evolution:

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

    Ten years of war have given robot developers a chance to refine and improve their bots. Now the robots are finding all sorts of new jobs on the homefront.

     

  • Political markets get first 2012 test

    Jim Bourg / Reuters file

    The GOP presidential field includes, from left, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, shown at attention during the playing of the National Anthem during a Nov. 22 debate. Romney, Paul and Santorum are favored to finish in the top three spots in the Iowa GOP caucuses, while Perry's fortunes have fallen in the polls and the prediction markets.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News



    Last updated 12:45 p.m. ET Jan. 4:

    The pundits portrayed the Iowa GOP presidential caucuses as a tight three-way race, but market traders settled on an order of finish even before Tuesday's voting began. They had former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney first, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul second, and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum third.

    The contest turned out to be tighter than even the pundits expected: Romney led Santorum by just eight votes, with Paul not too far behind in third. But when it comes to the Republican nomination, Romney holds a far more commanding lead, at least for now.

    Iowa's precinct-level party caucuses were convened to select delegates to go to the county-level conventions, but the real reason why GOP presidential candidates spent the past few months shuttling around the Hawkeye State was because this was the first real-world test of strength in an actual 2012 election. The same could be said for the pollsters and the prediction markets.

    Most of the political handicapping you've heard about is based on traditional polling, which tallies up voters' preferences as expressed during telephone interviews. But for more than two decades, researchers have been experimenting with market techniques for sizing up political propositions — and so far, they've found that open market exchanges have been at least as accurate as the pollsters in predicting the results of elections.

    Justin Wolfers, an economist at Penn's Wharton School who's been studying prediction markets for years, expected the accuracy record to hold for Tuesday's results, even though caucus outcomes are notoriously difficult to predict.

    "All the usual ways we have for gathering information, including polls, are going to be much more screwy," he told me on Tuesday. "Someone's going to be surprised tomorrow. But ... empirical evidence suggests that prediction markets will be the least bad predictor."

    How political markets work
    Prediction markets let investors purchase "shares" in a particular proposition — for example, that Romney would finish either first or second in the Iowa caucus vote. Over the course of the campaign, they can sell off those shares and buy different ones, depending on how they gauge the candidates' chances. The price fluctuates based on supply and demand, but when the election occurs, the traders who backed the winning proposition get a set payoff. The traders who backed the wrong horse get nothing.

    The idea is that markets provide a good vehicle for distilling the "wisdom of crowds," particularly when traders put their money or prestige behind their prediction. It's a lot like online gambling, but totally legal.

    The nation's longest-running political prediction market happens to be headquartered in the Hawkeye State: Traders on the Iowa Electronic Markets buy and sell shares with real money, in hopes of reaping a $1-per-share return. Their account is limited to $500, so nobody makes a fortune. But the exercise is a valuable research tool for economists at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business, which manages the markets under a no-action arrangement with federal regulators.

    Inkling Markets offers similar political trading, but with play money rather than real money at stake. And then there are offshore betting markets such as InTrade and Betfair. A website known as PredictWise.com aggregates the InTrade and Betfair statistics for political propositions.

    On all these markets, the stated percentage or value for a given proposition reflects the probability that the proposition will come true. That's different from political polls, which reflect voter preferences in percentage terms. Thus, the numbers you see on the political markets don't exactly track the numbers you see in polling results. But the rankings on Tuesday afternoon were the same as what was seen in the polls: Romney first, followed by Paul and Santorum. Here's how the markets looked at 4:45 p.m. ET Tuesday afternoon, with 100 being the maximum value:

    • Iowa Electronic Markets: 81.8 cents for Romney, 69.6 cents for Paul, 51.8 cents for "Rest of Field" (primarily Santorum). This is a market to predict who'll be in the top two.

    • Inkling Markets: 73.2 percent for Romney, 15.3 for "Anyone Else" (primarily Paul), 10.1 for Santorum.

    • Betfair: 48.3 percent for Romney, 29.4 for Paul, 23.1 for Santorum.

    • InTrade: 49.3 percent for Romney, 25.6 for Paul, 24.2 for Santorum.

    IEM

    This chart shows the wildly fluctuating values for candidates' shares on the Iowa Electronic Markets. For the past few days, Mitt Romney's shares have been most highly valued, followed by Ron Paul and ROF or "Rest of Field," which includes Rick Santorum.

    The projected outcome, as reflected in the markets, closely tracked what the polls were suggesting, Wolfers said. "The prediction markets are somewhat more bullish about Mitt Romney," he observed. If Romney didn't lead the pack, that would have been a surprise for the pundits — and for the traders as well.

    There are a few additional twists to the trading. For example, much was made of Santorum's late surge in the polls, but the trading suggested that the surge hit its peak a few days ago and fell back somewhat.

    After the top three, the GOP field's share values dropped dramatically. University of Iowa spokesman Tom Snee noted that within the past few days, traders had U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's shares at 0.2 cents, compared with businessman Herman Cain's 0.3 cents. "What they're saying is that Bachmann has less of a chance to win than someone who's not running anymore," Snee said. (Cain's shares have sunk since then, however.)

    The big picture for the GOP nomination
    For now, the traders on all the markets give Romney the overwhelming edge for the Republican nomination. The IEM had him at 81 cents on Tuesday, Inkling had him at 85.06 percent, and Betfair and InTrade had him at 74.4 and 79.8 percent, respectively.

    If Romney faltered in Iowa, these prices could have changed overnight. Literally.

    Joyce Berg, the IEM's director, noted that four years ago, Hillary Clinton was the market favorite before the Iowa caucuses, but was displaced by Barack Obama afterward. Clinton made an unexpected resurgence in the 2008 New Hampshire primary but eventually lost ground again to Obama. "What we're seeing is that markets are very good aggregators of news," Berg said. "In our markets, people appear to trade with their heads, not their hearts."

    The IEM's traders are primed to respond quickly to the results of the caucuses, just as traders on the New York Stock Exchange respond quickly to the latest unemployment figures. So the fact that Romney has been on top for the past few months is no guarantee, in the political world or in the marketplace. "If he did not finish in the top two, that would be news," Berg said. "You would expect that to show up in the Republican convention market."

    Wolfers said the fact that the GOP field was so wide in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses made this "one of the most unstable markets we've ever seen," in large part because the different voting constituencies didn't want to waste their votes on someone who wasn't perceived as a potential winner. Evangelical Christians, for example, might have wavered between several candidates based on the perception of their chances. Now there's a good chance that the evangelical vote will coalesce behind Santorum.

    "It's not a standard two-horse race," Wolfers observed. "The dynamics when you have strategic voting are very, very volatile."

    How do you think the Iowa caucus results compared with the pre-election predictions? Weigh in with your comments below.

    Update for 5:45 p.m. ET Jan. 3: Mashable and Global Point Research are checking out whether positive sentiments expressed in Twitter tweets can be correlated with the Iowa caucus results. Analysis of data collected between Dec. 27 and 30 shows a big spike for Santorum, which would mesh with his surge of support in the polls and prediction markets.

    Update for 9:28 p.m. ET Jan. 3: The betting on InTrade and Betfair shifted quickly toward Ron Paul, making him the betting favorite. Romney fell to No. 2, with Santorum rated No. 3. The order on the IEM and Inkling Markets was unchanged: Romney, Paul, Santorum. Inkling, meanwhile, closed its market for the night at 9 p.m. ET, so there'll be no chance for folks to change their prediction.

    Update for 11:25 p.m. ET Jan. 3: By this time it was clear that Ron Paul will finish third, but Romney and Santorum were neck-and-neck for first and second. InTrade and Betfair favored Romney to squeak out a victory. The IEM's traders basically valued Romney's and Santorum's shares at the maximum price of $1, in recognition of the fact that they were both assured of finishing in the top two. It was possible to make a quick buck by betting on Santorum: Someone who invested $51.80 in 100 of his shares on Tuesday afternoon will get $100 on Wednesday.

    Update for 3:40 a.m. ET Jan. 4: I've updated this report with the complete results from Iowa, headlined by Romney's eight-vote edge and Santorum's surprisingly strong surge.

    Update for 12:45 p.m. ET Jan. 4: One of the night's other big winners was Justin Wolfers, the prediction-market expert from Penn's Wharton School. FiveThirtyEight.com's polling guru, Nate Silver, bet Wolfers a steak dinner that Santorum would be the top vote-getter in the Iowa caucuses, but Wolfers prevailed along with Romney by an eight-vote margin. Wolfers is a pescetarian who eats fish but not steak, so Silver will have to pay off with seafood. "Am I allowed to request a recount in Iowa if I have a seafood dinner riding on the outcome?" he asked in a Twitter tweet. (Sorry, Nate, there'll be no recount, even if seafood is at steak ... er, stake.)

    More about prediction markets:

    For the latest results from Iowa and their significance for the 2012 presidential campaign, check in with NBCPolitics.com.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Australia's hybrid shark reveals evolution in action

    University of Queensland

    This image shows a hybrid black tip shark containing both Common and Australian black tip DNA.

    By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News

    Hybrid sharks have been discovered swimming in the waters off Australia's east coast. The finding may be driven by climate change, a research team says, suggesting such discoveries could be more common in the future.

    The hybridization is between the Australian black tip shark which favors tropical waters and the larger, common black tip shark, which favors sub-tropical and temperate waters.

    While the distribution for the genetically distinct species overlaps along the northern and eastern Australian coastline, the finding that they mated and produced offspring is unprecedented, according to the discovery team from the University of Queensland.

    "To actually find something like this and prove it genetically is unprecedented," Bob Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, told me Tuesday.

    Hueter was not involved with the research, though one of the scientists responsible for the discovery used to work in his lab, which he said lends the finding credibility. The finding is based on genetic testing and body measurements and reported December 2011 in the journal Conservation Genetics.

    The team identified 57 of the hybrids from five locations spanning 1,250 miles along the Australian coast. 

    "Wild hybrids are usually hard to find, so detecting hybrids and their offspring is extraordinary," Jennifer Ovenden, an expert in genetics of fisheries species and team member, said in a news release.

    The hybridization could be an adaptation to climate change, the team noted, allowing the tropical Australian black tip shark to live in the cooler, sub-tropical waters. 

    It could also be a technique to survive in over-fished waters, speculated Hueter. As fisheries are depleted, hybridization is a way to keep reproducing. 

    "In a sense, it is catching evolution in action," he told me. 

    More stories on hybridization:

    John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

     

    The modernist kitchens of Grant Achatz are known for using experimental equipment to produce unusual cuisine, thanks to an unusual partnership with PolyScience, a lab equipment.

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