Google Balloons Send Internet Soaring Through the Clouds

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<p>
  Jon Brodkin, writing for ArsTechnica:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   Google this week launched 30 balloons into the stratosphere in the first step toward creating what it calls a “network in the sky” that could eventually bring “balloon-powered Internet [to] everyone.”
  </p>
<p>
   Dubbed “Project Loon,” Google’s balloon-based wireless networks aim to bring 3G-like speed to what Google says are the “2 out of every 3 people on Earth” who lack a fast, affordable Internet connection. Google’s plan has been rumored for weeks. As we
   <a href="http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/googles-balloon-based-wireless-networks-may-not-be-a-crazy-idea/">
    wrote earlier this month
   </a>
   , balloon-based communications are well established for military communications and have been proposed for public safety use in disaster areas. Google could be the first to make balloon-based networks widely used for commercial Internet access.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  One of the key hurdles Google had to surmount was how to maintain coverage with a fleet of balloons that is, at least partially, at the mercy of the winds. They solved it like they have many other problems—by throwing massive amounts of computing power at it. That way each balloon can piggyback on air currents, and when the winds aren’t in its favor, nudge the craft onto a favorable course.
 </p>
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<img alt="Project Loon" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/google-balloons.width-990_MOc45IA.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Google is not the first to pursue balloons as vehicles for commercial Internet access, but its use of wind and solar power to direct their paths is innovative.
        
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</figure>
<p>
  Discover how Google dreamt up this way to access the cloud through technology held aloft
  <em>
   in
  </em>
  the clouds:
 </p>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="439" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mcw6j-QWGMo?feature=oembed" width="780">
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 Photo credit:
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilitephoto/9052643301/sizes/l/in/photolist-eMXasV-8367w1-8369Jd-81JAH3-81JzpW-81JA6w-81FrFK-81FtLe-81JCL1-81JzLb-81EsMc-83zxqq/">
  iLighter/Flickr
 </a>
</p>

Why Naked Mole Rats Don't Get Cancer

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  When a group of researchers at the University of Rochester in New York tried growing skin cells from naked mole rats in lab flasks, they noticed that the fluid the cells were growing in became thick and syrupy. After some investigation, they discovered that the cells, like other cells of mammalian connective tissue, were secreting a sugar called hyaluronan, except the naked mole version was five times bigger. Andrei Seluanov, who led the study, believes that larger hyaluronan can trap potential cancer cells and prevent them from growing into tumors. Writes Ed Yong for Not Exactly Rocket Science:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   But it also allows cells to stop each other from growing if they become too crowded. This is called ‘
   <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19858485">
    contact inhibition
   </a>
   ’—it’s why healthy cells form a flat layer if they’re grown in a dish but cancerous ones pile on top of each other.
  </p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.nature.com/news/blind-mole-rats-may-hold-key-to-cancer-1.11741">
    Based on an earlier study
   </a>
   , Seluanov’s team suspected that naked mole rat cells are protected against cancer because they’re especially sensitive to contact inhibition. Now, they’ve shown that large hyaluronan is responsible. The rodents’ cells are very receptive to the sugar; as they get close, hyaluronan sticks to their surface and triggers a genetic programme that stops them from growing.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  The team switched on cancer genes in naked mole rat cells and transplanted them into mice. No cancer. But when they reduced the amount of hyaluronan created by the naked mole rat cells in the mice, tumors formed.
 </p>
</section>

Nearing Certainty About Heisenberg's Uncertainty... Or Not

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  One of the basic tenets of quantum mechanics is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which states that the more precisely one measures a particle’s momentum, the more uncertain its position becomes. The reverse is also true, which means that in theory, it’s impossible to know the exact position and momentum of a subatomic particle at the same time.
 </p>
<p>
  Heisenberg originally used the principle to show that there is a limit to the accuracy of particle detectors, but he never offered direct evidence to support his ideas. Now, UK physicist Paul Busch and his colleagues believe they have a proof. Here’s Ron Cowen, writing for Nature:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   In their theoretical work, Busch and his colleagues imagined making simultaneous measurements of a particle’s position and momentum in an arbitrary quantum state. They compared the errors in such measurements to two special cases — in which either the position or the momentum of the particle is well known. They found that the combined errors in measurements of the position or momentum in these two cases obeyed Heisenberg’s principle and was always smaller than for cases in which the two properties were measured simultaneously. This step allowed them to prove Heisenberg’s original conjecture.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Scientists remain skeptical, though. Read the
  <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/proof-mooted-for-quantum-uncertainty-1.13270" title="full article">
   full article
  </a>
  to learn more about one physicist’s objection to Busch’s proof, as well as what those doubts mean for quantum computing. For some background on quantum computing, hear from
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/quantum-computing.html" title="MIT's Seth Lloyd">
   MIT’s Seth Lloyd
  </a>
  . And for some comic relief, watch this video:
 </p>
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  Quantum mechanics is nothing to laugh at. Well, sometimes it is.
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Scientists Take Global Warming's Temperature

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  By how many degrees would the average temperature of the Earth rise if carbon dioxide levels doubled? Scientists have been pursuing an accurate estimate of this figure since the late 19th century—it’s the “holy grail of climate science,” writes Justin Gillis in
  <em>
   The New York Times.
  </em>
  Most experts believe that this “climate sensitivity” figure lies somewhere just above five degrees Fahrenheit.
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
   That may not sound like a particularly scary number to many people — after all, we experience temperature variations of 20 or 30 degrees in a single day. But as an average for the entire planet, five degrees is a huge number.
  </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
   The ocean, covering 70 percent of the surface, helps bring down the average, but the warming is expected to be higher over land, causing weather extremes like heat waves and torrential rains. And the poles will warm even more, so that the increase in the Arctic could exceed 10 or 15 degrees Fahrenheit. That could cause substantial melting of the polar ice sheets, ultimately flooding the world’s major coastal cities.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
  Some recent studies, though, have proposed estimates below four degrees, stirring climate change skeptics and making some wonder if the future might look better than expected. But the well-regarded climate scientist James Annan warns against dismissing the threat of global warming. Gillis concludes:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
   Even if climate sensitivity turns out to be on the low end of the range, total emissions may wind up being so excessive as to drive the earth toward dangerous temperature increases.
  </p>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
   So if the recent science stands up to critical examination, it could indeed turn into a ray of hope — but only if it is then followed by a broad new push to get the combustion of fossil fuels under control.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p itemprop="articleBody">
  Alternatively, we might be able to put excessive carbon dioxide
  <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/carbon-sink.html" title="into storage.">
   into storage
  </a>
  .
 </p>
</section>

An Icy Neutrino Observatory

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  Usually, astrophysicists have their minds fixed on the heavens. But now, they’re are keeping a watchful eye on the icy shield that covers one of the most frigid, remote places on Earth—the South Pole.
 </p>
<p>
  There, they’ve built an outpost packed with 5,000 sensors designed to detect neutrinos, the fleeting subatomic particles that fly through our bodies at a rate of a trillion times a second. Neutrinos rarely interact with normal matter, which makes them extremely difficult for physicists to identify. One option is to build a big detector to increase the likelihood of collisions, and the IceCube Observatory—a $271 million endeavor—appears large enough to do the trick. So why Antarctica? Here’s Kenneth Chang, writing for the New York Times:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   Once in a great while, a neutrino does collide with something, setting off a cascade of electrons and other subatomic debris. Charged particles in a transparent material like ice give off blue light. Phototubes record the bursts of light, and from the patterns, scientists can determine the direction and energy of the incoming neutrinos.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="richtext-image full-width">
<img alt="IceCube Observatory" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/icecube-observatory.width-990_U0kahwJ.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Antarctica's IceCube Observatory is searching for neutrinos from the outer reaches of space.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
  IceCube’s mission is to catch neutrinos from the outer reaches of space as they pass through the Earth. This type of neutrino—as opposed to the kind cooked up by our sun during fusion—can provide astronomers with information about the calamitous events that happen thousands of light-years away. But separating these from more prosaic solar neutrinos is anything but easy.
 </p>
<p>
  Here’s John Timmer,
  <a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/11/south-pole-detector-spots-28-out-of-this-world-neutrinos/">
   writing for ArsTechnica
  </a>
  :
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   Cosmic rays slam into the atmosphere all the time, and these can produce neutrinos that then enter the ice cap. They can also produce other exotic particles that produce light as they pass through the ice. Muons, for example, only live about 10
   <sup>
    -6
   </sup>
   seconds, but they’re moving so fast that time dilation means they live longer from the Earth’s frame of reference. As a result, they may travel several kilometers through the ice before decaying.
  </p>
<p>
   To handle these cases of background, the authors eliminated any signals that were present in the outermost edges of the detector. Cosmic rays are especially easy to spot given that they tend to produce a spray of particles, many of which will be found at the detectors closest to the surface. You might still get a few neutrinos created above the North Pole and passing through on their way out of Earth, but the authors found that the majority of their signals came from the south, suggesting that these neutrinos aren’t a major problem for this detector.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  Francis Halzen, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin, reported in the journal Science that he and his team had discovered 26 new neutrinos that hadn’t originated from the sun in addition to the two announced earlier this year, named Bert and Ernie. (All 28 were named after Sesame Street characters; Bert and Ernie were the most energetic.)
 </p>
<p>
  The first and only other successful neutrino detection occurred in 1987, when detectors in the U.S., Japan, and Russia found two dozen of them originating from a supernova about 165,000 light-years away. Now that IceCube is up and running, though, scientists hope an avalanche of data awaits them.
 </p>
</section>
<p>
 Photo Credit: © Sven Lindstrom, IceCube/NSF
</p>

Thank the Microbes, This Is a Good Malbec

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  What do wine, coffee, and chocolate have in common?
 </p>
<p>
  Besides delectability, their flavors are derived in part from terroir, a loanword from French which roughly means “a sense of place.” From a scientific standpoint, terroir refers to the combined effects of geography, soil, local climate, and plant genetics on certain agricultural products. French winemakers put great stock in terroir, though not all of their American peers have been sold on the idea. There’s little data to define what terroir is. Testing the concept is incredibly difficult—there are almost too many potential variables.
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<img alt="" class="richtext-image full-width" src="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/media/images/malbec-grapes.width-990_tsrHuw3.jpg"/>
<figcaption>Wines are said to get some of their flavor from terroir, or the peculiarities of the region in which its grapes are grown.
        
    </figcaption>
</figure>
<p>
  But now, DNA analysis appears to have nailed down at least one part of the terroir equation. A research team led by David A. Mills and Nicholas A. Bokulich of the University of California, Davis sampled grape musts—the mashed grapes that are the starting point for making wine—and
  <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/20/1317377110.abstract?sid=8f8cd724-4105-404f-ac6b-b1f4716426de" title="discovered">
   discovered
  </a>
  that different grape varieties carry distinct patterns of fungi and bacteria.
 </p>
<p>
  Here’s Nicholas Wade, writing for The New York Times:
 </p>
<blockquote>
<p>
   They found, for instance, that one set of microbes is associated with chardonnay musts from the Napa Valley, another set with those of a must in Central Valley and a third grouping with musts from Sonoma. They noticed a similarly distinctive pattern of microbes in cabernet sauvignon musts from the north San Joaquin Valley, the Central Coast, Sonoma and Napa.
  </p>
<p>
   The discovery of stable but differing patterns of microbial communities from one region’s vineyards to another means that microbes could explain, at least in part, why one region’s zinfandel, say, tastes different from another’s. The links between microbes and wine-growing regions “provide compelling support for the role of grape-surface microbial communities in regional wine characteristics,” the researchers conclude.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
  The scientists still need to prove whether or not these microbes influence the quality of the wine. Scientists are excited to continue this research, though even Mills admits that there’s an argument for holding off. “Many people don’t want this figured out,” he tells Wade, “because it demystifies the wonderful mystery of wine.”
 </p>
</section>
<p>
 Photo credit:
 <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ccourtenay/9733201327/">
  ccourtenay/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
 </a>
</p>

This Insect Jumps Using Built-In Gears

<p>
</p>
<p>
 Biomimicry—the use of nature to inspire design—is
 <a href="http://mentalfloss.com/article/22702/10-technologies-we-stole-animal-kingdom">
  widely used by cutting-edge technologists
 </a>
 to design everything from bullet train noses, new X-ray machines, and lighter and safer cars. But let’s take a moment to flip that idea on its head. Are there things we thought humans invented that have been later discovered in nature?
</p>
<div class="newsletter"></div>
<p>
 As a matter of fact, yes. Nymphs of a common insect found in Britain—
 <i>
  Issus coeleoptratus
 </i>
 , a species of planthopper—has what were presumably a very human creation—gears. While working at the University of Cambridge, Greg Sutton noticed a strange mechanism on the insect’s back legs. Here’s Adam Cole
 <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/09/13/219739500/living-gears-help-this-bug-jump">
  reporting
 </a>
 for NPR’s Morning Edition:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
 There was a tiny row of bumps on the inside of each leg where it met the insect’s body. The bumps looked just like the teeth of gears. And when the planthopper jumped, they acted like gears too — as teeth meshed, the legs turned in synchrony. Sutton says his finding,
 <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6151/1254">
  published
 </a>
 this week in
 <i>
  Science
 </i>
 , is the first mechanical gear system ever observed in nature.
</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="ad"></div>
<p>
 The small bumps—called trochanters—are incredibly well suited to the planthopper, which springs away from danger in the blink of an eye. Sutton filmed the bugs hopping with a high-speed camera and noticed that both leaping legs moved almost simultaneously—the difference between the two was as short as 30 millionths of a second. That’s much shorter than the time it takes for a neuron to execute even the smallest, most rudimentary task. The synchrony propels the insect faster, farther, and straighter.
</p>
<p>
 Ed Yong,
 <a href="http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/12/this-insect-has-gears-in-its-legs/">
  writing
 </a>
 for Not Exactly Rocket Science, has more background on Sutton’s research:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
 The planthopper nymphs lose them when they become adults. But the adults don’t shoot off in uncoordinated spins—if anything, they’re better jumpers than the youngsters. Their hind trochanters make much closer contact with each other, and Sutton thinks that
 <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20086132">
  the friction between them helps to keep them in time
 </a>
 . “We’re kind of sure about that, but not entirely sure,” he says.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
<i>
  Issus coeleoptratus
 </i>
 ‘s gears work similarly to their human-designed counterparts, but they have a leg up at smaller scales. Sutton—a mechanical engineer—thinks the trochanters could help us build more efficient machines:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
 Modern machines, such as 3-D printers, could easily create gears with these shark-fin teeth. Sutton is really excited by the prospect, and suspects that they may perform better in very small machines. “Modern machinery often doesn’t work at very small scales,” he says. “Friction doesn’t matter so much when you have two big gears next to each other but when you get small, friction starts killing you.”
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
 The planthoppers might help to solve that problem. “We’re still being impressed and shocked by what we find in the back garden,” says Sutton.
</p>
<p>
<i>
  For more bioinspired technologies, watch “Making Stuff Wilder”, airing October 23 at 9/8 central on PBS.
 </i>
</p>
<div class="related"></div>
<p>
 Photo by Burrows/Sutton
</p>

<p>Are there things we thought humans invented that have been later discovered in nature?</p>

Allison Eck

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