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New Foam-Like Fabric Lets Sunshine In…and Keeps Road Noise Out

Veronique Greenwood — Fri, 06 May 2011 19:40:42 +0000

The weave of the new translucent fabric traps sound, while letting light—and in this photo from the Swiss lab, a view of neighboring houses—through.

What’s the News: Noisy rooms are no fun, but neither are those smothered in heavy sound-canceling drapes. The solution? A translucent curtain that quenches sound by behaving like foam, developed by Swiss materials scientists and a textile designer.

How the Heck:

To get a grip on what kind of curtain would block sound but not light, the research team at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Research built a computer model of the acoustic qualities of fabric. This model helped pinpoint the exact properties—for example, the fabric’s density and the shape of the microscopic holes that pepper it—that the new textile would require. They then passed their findings off to the designer, Annette Douglas, to turn into reality.

The curtains were tested in a seminar room
built specifically for measuring acoustics.

Douglas—who has been ...

Could Bacteria Communicate by Bouncing Electrons Around Their Chromosomes?

Veronique Greenwood — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 22:13:09 +0000

What’s the News: A group of physicists say they’ve found a way to account for the mysterious radio signals that may be emanating from colonies of E. coli—and it’s not because they’re trying to get our attention.

How the Heck:

While human chromosomes are long strings of DNA, bacterial chromosomes are loops. Free electrons travel from atom to atom around such a loop, and as they jump down from one discrete energy level to a lower one, they can emit photons, says a group of researchers, in a recent paper on the arXiv. The researchers calculate that the transition frequencies of these jumps would be 0.5, 1, and 1.5 kilohertz, about what was reported in an earlier study. In other words, the radio signals could be a result of the quantum nature of electrons and the structure of bacterial DNA.

What’s the Context:

It’s suspected that bacteria use waves of higher frequencies to communicate with each other and perform other functions, but radio signals aren’t usually discussed in this context. Radio signals being emitted by bacterial DNA were first observed during a bizarre episode two years ago in which Luc ...

520 Million-Year-Old “Walking Cactus” Could Be Forerunner of Arthropods

Andrew Moseman — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:00:54 +0000

From DISCOVER blogger Ed Yong:

Around 520 million years ago, a walking cactus roamed the Earth. Its body had nine segments, each bearing a pair of armour-plated legs, covered in thorns. It was an animal, but one that looked more like the concoction of a bad fantasy artist. Jianni Liu from Northwest University in Xi’an discovered this bundle of spines and named it Diania cactiformis – the “walking cactus from Yunnan”. And she thinks that it sits at the roots of the most successful group of animals on the planet.

If Liu is right, Diania is one of the earliest relatives of the arthropods – the group that includes insects, spiders, crabs, and more. These species all share a segmented body, a hard external skeleton and jointed legs. They are life’s winners, the most diverse of all animal groups.

For plenty more about this weird ancient armored creature, check out the rest of Ed’s post at Not Exactly Rocket Science.

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News Roundup: Coal Ash Aftermath, Suing to Save The Wolves, and More E.T. Science

Jennifer Welsh — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:08:47 +0000

Coal ash: Two years after the coal ash spill in Roane County, Tennessee residents are still grappling with ash dust, housing buyouts, and potentially toxic water. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a government-owned corporation who runs the plant, claims the ash is non-toxic, while the EPA takes it’s time deciding if it should be classified as hazardous waste.

Wolves: Activist group Center For Biological Diversity is planning to sue the Department of the Interior if they don’t expand wolf ranges in the lower 48. Some states in the Northern Rocky Mountains, where the population has made a comeback, have legalized hunting to protect their herds.

Elephant genomes: New genetics data is showing that the African elephant is actually two species: the forest elephant is smaller than the savanna elephant and has a much smaller population. Dividing the “African elephant” into two species is going to be important to conservation of the forest elephant’s habitat and save them from poachers.

IceCube is Online: The IceCube Neutrino Detector, which has actually been collecting data since 2005 is finally complete as of December 18th, when ...