Daily Briefing: Thur

ALL I NEED IS THE AIR THAT I BREATHE AND A SIM CARD: Nokia researchers in England say they’ve developed a prototype power system capable of charging a mobile phone with air. No, the phone doesn’t breathe. Instead, it collects ambient electro-magnetic waves and converts them into electricity. The system doesn’t generate enough electricity to power a phone by itself. It can, however, keep enough juice trickling into a phone’s battery to keep it from losing its charge while in standby mode. Using radio waves to power portable electronics is not a new concept. Crystal radio sets used in the early 20 century worked similarly. More recently, radio frequency identification devices (RFID) such as the fare cards used on London’s subway system are also powered by radio waves present in the air. Nokia’s prototype is a technological leap-forward, explains Britain’s Guardian newspaper, because its device is able to harvest roughly 1,000 times as much power from the air as RFID or crystal radio systems. (Sources: The Guardian, Technology Review)

 

AFGHANI BAN: For the first time its history, Afghanistan’s government has issued an official list of protected endangered species. The list includes 31 animals and plants including the paghman salamander, goitered gazelle and most notably, snow leopards. Afghanistan’s snow leopard population has dwindled in large part because of the country’s decades of war and extreme poverty. Fewer than 5,000 of these big cats likely remain. Like humans, snow leopards are regularly maimed or killed by Afghanistan’s land mines – millions of which litter the countryside. After the Taliban was overthrown by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001, commercial hunting took off. Foreigners will pay up to $1,500 for a snow leopard pelt, a fortune for residents of one of the world’s poorest countries. Whether the ban evolves into anything more than symbolism remains to be seen. Afghanistan’s police and army have trouble projecting power outside the country’s capital, Kabul. It seems wishful thinking to assume Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency is going to have any better luck. (Sources: Live Science, Afghan-Network,BBC)

 

MARS ATTACKS: Before you splurge on that lifetime gym membership, you may want to read this. A study of future planetary orbits by French astronomers Jacques Laskar and Mickaël Gastineau suggests the habitability of our solar system could be fatally undermined by slight variations of planetary orbits. The planet most likely to cause trouble ‘round these parts, according to the study, is Mercury. In 2,501 computer-generated test scenarios predicting planetary orbits for the next five billion years, Mercury collided with Venus or the Sun 25 times. In one scenario, gravitational shifts triggered by a wobbly Mercury caused Mars to orbit within 500 miles of Earth. In another test model, Mercury dispenses with all this fancy orbital path business and just straight-up collides with Earth. How mercurial! The good news: there’s only a 1-percent chance the planets will go majorly out of alignment. And if we do collide with Mercury or rendezvous with Mars, it won’t happen for at least 3 billion years. That’s plenty of time to dig some bunkers or learn to speak Martian. (Sources: Discover, Newsweek)

 

KEEP YOUR ION THIS: Speaking of mercury ... If you’ve got a periodic table of elements handy, you’ll notice an empty spot directly below mercury (the atomic symbol for which is Hg). That spot’s about to be filled by a volatile, heavy element discovered in 1996 by a team of international scientists working at Germany’s Centre for Heavy Ion Research. The team, lead by professor Sigurd Hoffman, created the new element by using a particle accelerator to fire charged zinc atoms at lead atoms. The nuclei of the zinc and lead atoms merged to create a new atom. Why has it taken 13 years for this new atom to take its rightful place below mercury on the walls of science classes around the world? Well, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has to independently verify an elements existence before it can go on the periodic table. But that’s not easy. This new element is very unstable – disappearing within milliseconds of its creation. It’s also difficult to make. In 13 years, it’s been observed only four times. With verification now complete, the final step before it’s official appearance on the table is the selection of a name. For the moment, it’s called ununbium. Un-un-bi is latin for 1-1-2, the element’s atomic number. (Source: BBC)

 

BAT’S ENTERTAINMENT: Turns out Bruce Wayne isn’t the only bat who’ll go all gangsta on you if you cross him. American scientists studying greater spear-nosed bats in the Caribbean say the bats organize themselves into warring maternal tribes. These tribes, which consist of up to 25 unrelated female bats, go to war with one another over food and living spaces. In addition, adults in a bat tribe fiercely protect baby bats in their tribe – even if they are not related to the babies. Looking after unrelated children is a common trait in humans, the scientists say, but very rare in nature. The scientists believe cooperative living might explain why bats live so much longer than similarly sized mammals. Bats live up to 20 years. Mice live for one or two. There is a flip-side to all this nurturing and cooperation, however. Warring spear-nosed bats regularly kidnap and kill the babies from rival tribes. Haven’t they ever heard of the Geneva convention? (Sources: BBC, Smithsonian)

 

SOUND ENGINEERING: When GM’s engineers designed the 2010 Chevy Equinox SUV’s four-cylinder engine, they noticed they could squeeze an extra mile-per-gallon out of the vehicle if they lowered the engine’s idle-speed and fiddled with its torque converter. Unfortunately, those same adjustments create a low-frequency engine noise that would have sounded as annoying to people inside the vehicle as the White House’s bailout GM sounds to Congressional Republicans. Instead of sacrificing efficiency for comfort, however, Chevy thought of a clever work-around. Using the same technology employed by Bose for its pricey noise-canceling headphones, the car’s stereo system emits sound waves that render the offending engine noise inaudible to people inside the car. Automobile magazine said the noise-canceling works so well, in fact, that one of its test drivers tried to start an already-running car. And get this: starting at $22,440, the Equinox is much more much reasonably priced than Bose headphones. (Sources: Automobile magazine, Autobloggreen)

 

Editor's note: Guest blogger Andisheh Nouraee is filling in for Russell McLendon today, scanning the Web for interesting news. You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/andishehnouraee