Nail-Worn Tech At Your Fingertips

It’s the classic conflict presented by touchscreens--they display beautiful content that reacts instantly to your every move, but you can’t operate them without obscuring part of your view.
According to Theverge, a team at the National Taiwan University in Taipei is taking a neat approach to solving the problem, however, with tiny screens that you can wear on your fingertips.
The team envisages the technology being used with flexible displays that fit over your nails like polish, but sadly notes that such a screen is not yet commercially available.
Instead, the current NailDisplay prototype is a thimble-sized 96 x 64 OLED screen which syncs to the phone and displays relevant information.
Touch a virtual keyboard with your thumb, for example, and the display will show you which ‘key’ is being pressed--effectively letting you see “through” the digit. Another use case imagined is as a screen for a device that otherwise wouldn’t have one, such as an iPod shuffle.
The team says it wants to investigate the possibilities for multiple devices at once, as well as the potential for eye-tracking software to improve the sensation of a “transparent finger”.

Sugar Influences Onset of Flowering

Only when light, age and energy conditions are right do plants flower.
According to ScienceDaily, a plant can reproduce successfully only if it flowers at the appropriate time. Therefore, a complex network of photoreceptors and other proteins has evolved to monitor environmental conditions such as light and temperature. It has long been thought that plants must also ensure that they have sufficient resources for the energy intensive process of building flowers.
As scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen now report, the sugar molecule trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P) takes on a key role in monitoring energy reserves in thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana, thereby controlling flowering time in relation to energy reserves.
Day length is critical for regulating flowering time in a wide range of species. Some plants need long days and thus flower in summer, while others need short days and accordingly flower in spring or autumn. When the appropriate day length is perceived in leaves, an interplay of photoreceptors and other proteins leads to expression of the FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) gene. The FT protein then migrates to the tip of the shoot, where it triggers the formation of flowers instead of leaves.
However, once it reaches a certain age, thale cress produces flowers independently of day length. This safety mechanism is controlled by a specific microRNA, serving as a redundant pathway ensuring eventual flowering.
In addition to light and age, the energy status is also thought to have an influence on flowering time. The formation of flowers is an energy-intensive process, and this energy must be available to the plant in the form of sugar.

Picasso’s Genius Revealed

Pablo Picasso, famous for pushing the boundaries of art with cubism, also broke with convention when it came to paint, new research shows.
X-ray analysis of some of the painter’s masterworks solves a long-standing mystery about the type of paint the artist used on his canvases, revealing it to be basic house paint, LiveScience said.
Art scholars had long suspected Picasso was one of the first master artists to employ house paint, rather than traditional artists’ paint, to achieve a glossy style that hid brush marks. There was no absolute confirmation of this, however, until now.
Physicists at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., trained their hard X-ray nanoprobe at Picasso’s painting “The Red Armchair,” completed in 1931, which they borrowed from the Art Institute of Chicago. The nanoprobe instrument can ‘see’ details down to the level of individual pigment particles, revealing the arrangement of particular chemical elements in the paint.
The analysis showed that Picasso used enamel paint that matches the precise chemical composition of the first brand of commercial house paint, called Ripolin.

Charge Batteries With Ambient Energy

We’re surrounded by electromagnetic fields almost everywhere these days.
Just because they’re almost imperceptible doesn’t mean they can’t be used as a source of energy though, Gizmag wrote.
One student in Germany recently built the Electromagnetic Harvester, a small box that allegedly charges an AA battery using just the electromagnetic fields given off by the likes of power lines, vehicles and electronic gadgets.
Dennis Siegel, a digital media student at the University of the Arts in Bremen, designed the handheld charger as a way to recover some of the energy from these electromagnetic fields. It may sound a little sketchy, but it’s an idea that many researchers, including a team at Georgia Tech, have been exploring for years.
The main issue with this form of energy collection is the amount of power it generates tends to be incredibly small, which might explain why it takes a full day for the Electromagnetic Harvester to charge a single AA battery.

Iranians Unveil UAV, Solar Car

Iranian researchers have produced an indigenous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which can be used for reconnaissance mission together with a domestically-designed solar car.
The aircraft, named ‘Afar’ and developed by Iranian technicians at the Qazvin Branch of the Islamic Azad University, has a wingspan of three meters (about 10 feet) and a length of 1.5 meters (about 5 feet), Press TV reported.
The UAV is capable of taking photos while flying and can be used to perform geophysical surveys and generate digital topographic maps of target sites.
The drone has a flight ceiling of 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) above ground and a flight range of 4,000 kilometers (2,486 miles).
The Iranian solar car, named Haavin-2, depends on photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity, and run its two motors.
Haavin-2 has an average speed of 90 kilometers (55 miles) per hour and can reach a maximum speed of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour.

Tecvision Lets Boots Do Double Duty

German footwear manufacturer Meindl recently added an innovative solution for winter traction to its line.
The metal spikes in the Tecvision Spike System provide traction during the slipperiest winter conditions and quickly retract back into the rubber sole when they’re not needed, IdeaConnection said.
You can tackle all winter conditions with one pair of boots.
Most other traction systems we’ve seen, like Korkers interchangeable soles, require carrying around a set of spiked or chained soles or accessories.
Swedish shoe manufacturer Icebug specializes in traction footwear, including shoes with built-in carbide-tip studs. The company has designed the studs to automatically retract on hard, dry ground, but we’re guessing they might have trouble with certain types of ground materials, like carpeting.
The Tecvision system gives you integrated traction while ensuring that the boots are strictly rubber on ground when walking on dry asphalt, dirt, carpet and other surfaces where spikes aren’t required.
Since situations, where you’ll need full-on spikes, tend to be rare for most of us, being able to retract them completely should prove an advantage over systems like Icebug’s.
A simple gear system is built inside the boots, allowing the spikes to move in and out. A dial on the heel flips out and turns to discharge the six spikes. It then flips back into place flush with the back of the boot. The spikes are spread evenly across the sole to provide sure, steady traction on extra slick surfaces.
Once the land turns dry again, simply turn the dial to send the spikes back into the sole. When the spikes are retracted, the sole is as versatile as any other boot and can be worn in the car and house.
Given that you won’t need traction spikes during moderate weather or casual walks, Meindl is limiting the Tecvision system to a few of its beefiest winter boots. It will be available on next year’s Gastein Spike GTX, Island Spike MFS and Arctic Spike GTX, all of which use GORE-TEX construction.

Converting Waste Cooking Oil Into Biodiesel

One difficult aspect of a greener lifestyle involves disposal of used cooking fats.
Most people either pour it down the drain, where it can lurk for years while conspiring to clog your pipes, or pour it in the yard, where it attracts pests of various sorts looking for a free meal, Biobot wrote.
Recycling is obviously a better option, and to this end the BioBot 20 tabletop diesel processor--a (relatively) simple chemical reactor for converting used kitchen oils into biodiesel fuel at home--as been introduced by UK-based company Biobot.
Widely used for a host of purposes, highly-efficient diesel engines power a good fraction of the world’s transportation, industry and power generation needs.

Greener Alternative
Diesel fuel is denser than gasoline, and has 11 percent larger energy content per liter. Nearly a trillion liters of diesel fuel are used each year worldwide, which releases about 10 percent of the world’s anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.
Biodiesel fuels offer a greener alternative to the use of petroleum-derived fuels. Otherwise known as fatty-acid methyl ester (FAME), biodiesel is derived from waste vegetable oils, and is close to carbon-neutral in use.
Worldwide, about 20 billion liters of biodiesel are made yearly, with the potential of a fivefold increase without diverting oil away from food uses.
Compared to petro diesel, biodiesel has better lubrication ability, higher cetane rating (less diesel knock), and essentially no sulfur, making it a desirable replacement fuel.
The process of making biodiesel is called transesterification. Vegetable oil is largely made of triglycerides, which contain three fatty acid esters bound to a single glycerine molecule. In the transesterification process, triglycerides are reacted with a mixture of methyl alcohol and sodium hydroxide so that the fatty acid esters break off from the glycerine molecule, and are capped with the methyl group from the methyl alcohol. Potassium hydroxide can also be used, and is preferred by many biodiesel producers.
Tabletop Diesel Processor
Perhaps as much an educational tool as a practical way to produce biodiesel, the BioBot 20 tabletop diesel processor has a capacity of 20 liters per batch.
You fill the reaction chamber with used vegetable oil, then heat the oil to a designated temperature while agitating the oil with a built-in hand-operated mixer. When the oil comes to temperature, a small amount is tested to determine the amount of free fatty acids it contains. This determines the amount of sodium hydroxide catalyst is required to process the batch.
The desired amount of catalyst is added to four liters of pure, dry methanol, and the combination is mixed until the catalyst dissolves in the methanol, forming sodium methoxide. The sodium methoxide is stored in a special tank which pumps it into the reaction chamber so that it need not be handled any more than necessary (it is very corrosive).
The pumping takes place while the oil is hot and being agitated. The reaction proceeds slowly, often taking 12-24 hours to finish. At that point the glycerin has accumulated at the bottom of the reaction chamber, from which it is drained using a tap at the bottom of the reaction chamber. The remainder is biodiesel.
The raw biodiesel must be washed before use to remove soaps, excess methanol, residual sodium hydroxide, free glycerine and other contaminants. This is accomplished by washing it with water.
In the BioBot 20, water is pumped to a spray mister at the top of the reaction chamber. Agitation during washing is not recommended, lest soap result from a batch having free fatty acids.
The water does not dissolve in the biodiesel, but as it passes through it will pull out contaminants. The water wash process is repeated until the biodiesel is clear, at which point in time it is reheated to remove residual traces of water.

How Salmon Make Long Journey Home

Salmon use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate across the ocean as they return to their home rivers to breed, research suggests.
Each year millions of fish make the journey home in one of the toughest migrations of the animal kingdom, BBC said.
The memory of the magnetic field where they first entered the sea helps them find their way back, say US scientists.
The data, in Current Biology, provide the first direct evidence that salmon use geomagnetic cues in migration.
Other marine animals, including turtles and seals, may also use the same homing mechanism, say researchers.
The journey of adult sockeye salmon from the northern Pacific Ocean back to the individual freshwater rivers of their birth is one of the toughest migrations of all animals.
There are several theories for how salmon locate their nurseries after spending years out at sea.
One hypothesis, known as natal homing, is that salmon use both chemical and geomagnetic cues to find their way home.
In order to test the theory, researchers studied fisheries data spanning 56 years charting the return of salmon to the Fraser River in British Columbia.
The route the fish chose to swim around Vancouver Island matched the intensity of the geomagnetic field near their home rivers.
Nathan Putman, a researcher at Oregon State University, told BBC News, “For salmon to find their way back home, they remember the magnetic field that exists where they first enter the sea as juveniles, and once they reach maturity, they seek that same coastal location, with the same magnetic field.
“In other words, salmon remember the magnetic field where they enter the ocean and come back to that same spot once they reach maturity.

Fruits, Veggies Protect Kidneys

Adding fruits and vegetables to the diet may help protect the kidneys of patients with chronic kidney disease with too much acid build-up, according to a new study.