Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve seen scientists experiment with DNA as a storage medium — most recently with a Harvard team fitting 704TB of data onto a single gram of the genetic material — and it looks like that research trend is only picking up. Scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute in the UK have encoded an MP3 file — along with a digital photo and all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets — into DNA, with a hulking storage density of 2.2 petabytes per gram. The information was written using the language of DNA’s four bases (A, T, C and G, if you remember high-school bio), and to provide error correction the scientists reserved one of the letters to break up long runs of any of the other three bases. In practice, this system allowed for 100-percent accuracy in sequencing and retrieving the encoded files. Though DNA storage is still quite expensive, the researchers say this method could eventually provide a viable option for archiving information, especially considering DNA’s high capacity and long life span. Still, you won’t be ditching that hard drive just yet.

Filed under: Storage, Science, Alt

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Via: Ars Technica, New Scientist

Source: Nature

DARPA made some bold promises last summer when it announced its Phoenix program to harvest dead satellites for still-valuable parts, but it didn’t have much more than some concept videos to show at the time. It looks like the agency has been making some steady progress since then, though, and has today released a new video showing some of the work it’s done up through November of last year. As you can see after the break, that work is all still being doing in the lab, but it covers quite a few of the components that DARPA ultimately hopes to use in space, including robotic arms and gripping mechanisms. Those tests will remain Earth-bound for the next few years, but a demonstration mission is slated for 2016 to see how the system fares on an actual satellite in orbit.

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: PhysOrg

Source: DARPA

Aside from the sweltering daytime heat and the freezing night-time temperatures, the biggest problem for folks living in desert regions is finding sources of water. Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic have leveraged those temperature swings to help solve the arid region hydration conundrum with a cotton material that absorbs water straight from the surrounding air. Of course, it’s not your run-of-the-mill fabric woven from fluffy white stuff. This cloth is coated in a special polymer, called PNIPAAm, that’s hydrophilic (read: super absorbent) at temperatures 34°C and below, but becomes hydrophobic (read: repels water) when it gets any hotter.

In absorption mode, the cloth can hold 340 percent of its own weight — compared to just 18 percent without the polymer’s aid — and when it warms up, it releases the collected moisture as clean and pure potable water. So, it can help hydrate both plants and people in desert regions around the world. The boffins who created the stuff claim it’s reusable and can be used on locally-sourced cotton fabrics for a minimal, 12 percent cost increase given current manufacturing conditions. Not impressed? Well, the magical moisture-absorbing material may get even better, as the plan is to increase the amount of water the material can hold and lower the temperature threshold for its release.

Filed under: Wearables, Science, Alt

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Via: Extreme Tech

Source: Eindhoven University of Technology

Mars Express‘ mooch around the red planet has yielded another set of snaps it felt worthy of adding to its Facebook wall. It’s spent some time looking at the Reull Valliss, a dry river that runs for the better part of 932 miles (1,500km) through the Promethei Terra highlands — and in some places is over 4.3 miles (7km) wide and nearly 1,000 feet (300m deep). Scientists think that at some point, there was plenty of water in the area, as the landscape shows signs of glaciation. Fancy a short game of amateur topographer? Check out the gallery we’ve got for you.

[Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU, G. Neukum]

Filed under: Science, Alt

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Via: Slashgear

Source: European Space Agency

Alt-week takes a look at the best science and alternative tech stories.

It’s 2013 and yet somehow we haven’t ascended into a creature made of pure energy, so we’d better put some clothes on and get back to work. We’ve got lasers that are made from gas, a team of student physicists that are determined to prove George Lucas wrong, the world’s oldest underground railway celebrating its sesquicentennial and we’ll learn how the NYPD wants to track drug addicts with GPS. If that doesn’t sound like the Alt-weekiest Alt-week you ever did see, then we can’t be friends.

A team of physicists from the Institut Non Linéaire de Nice have discovered how to produce a laser from a cloud of gas for the first time. Normally, Lasers amplify light by bouncing it around inside a confined space like a crystal, simulating the emission of radiation. While the phenomenon has been found on other planets, reproducing the effect on Earth has been difficult, because gas is less ordered and refined than your average crystal. The team succeeded by using a cloud of rubidium in a magneto-optical trap, and the discovery should help scientists understand more about gas lasers and help them to discover new forms of artificial light.

The world’s oldest underground railway had its 150th birthday earlier in the month, and Google celebrated the moment with a Harry Beck-themed doodle. London’s Metropolitan railway opened up on January 9th 1863 and has been serving customers ever since. London Underground will also be recreating the journey by pulling a steam locomotive between Paddington and Farringdon — the hottest ticket in town, give or take the odd show.

The NYPD is working with pharmacies in New York to add GPS trackers to OxyContin bottles in order to track thieves across the city. Commissioner Ray Kelly is announcing a plan that’ll give pharmacists “bait” bottles to hand over the next time they’re robbed, letting the police know exactly where they end up. Commissioner Kelly is also asking researchers to develop trackers small enough to fit inside an individual pill — which sounds great for law enforcement officials, but might make the ACLU wince a little.

From Star Wars to that Windows screensaver, everyone knows what Hyperspace looks like. As your vessel makes the jump, the stars instantly become streaks of light that zoom past your eyes. Except a quartet of students from Leicester think that the reality would be closer to staring into a light bulb. Thanks to Doppler blue-shift, visible light would shorten and shift into the X-ray spectrum, while cosmic background radiation would go the other way. The result would be a central disc of bright light that emits so much pressure that it’d feel like you were trapped at the bottom of the ocean. Riley Connors, one of the students determined to disprove George Lucas said that “sunglasses would certainly be advisable,” as well as some lead-lined clothes to keep out all of those X-rays.

Seen any other far-out articles that you’d like considered for Alt-week? Working on a project or research that’s too cool to keep to yourself? Drop us a line at alt [at] engadget [dot] com.

Filed under: Alt

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