A team of scientists has found that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) growth has increased 35 percent faster than expected since 2000. The findings are published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The study found that inefficiency in the use of fossil fuels increased levels of CO₂ by 17 percent, while the other 18 percent came from the decline in the efficiency of natural land and ocean sinks which soak up CO₂ from the atmosphere.

The research by the Global Carbon Project, the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) shows that improvements in the carbon intensity of the global economy have stalled since 2000 after improving for 30 years, leading to the unexpected growth of atmospheric CO₂.

Continue reading, and let the car stay home during the week…

Besides running your computer Microsoft now wants to read your mind too.

According to Microsoft it is hard to properly evaluate the way people interact with computers since questioning them at the time is distracting and asking questions later may not produce reliable answers. “Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions,” they say.

Instead, Microsoft wants to read the data straight from the user’s brain as he or she works away. They plan to do this using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to record electrical signals within the brain. The trouble is that EEG data is filled with artefacts caused, for example, by blinking or involuntary actions, and this is hard to tease apart from the cognitive data that Microsoft would like to study.

So the company has come up with a method for filtering EEG data in such a way that it separates useful cognitive information from the not-so-useful non-cognitive stuff. The company hopes that the data will better enable to them to design user interfaces that people find easy to use. Whether users will want Microsoft reading their brain waves is another matter altogether.

Read the full Microsoft mind reading patent application

Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) was independently discovered in 1988 in Fe/Cr/Fe trilayers by a research team led by Peter Grünberg of the Jülich Research Centre, who owns the patent, and in Fe/Cr multilayers by the group of Albert Fert of the University of Paris-Sud, who first saw the large effect in multilayers that led to its naming, and first correctly explained the underlying physics.

Very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance in a GMR system. A system of this kind is the perfect tool for reading data from hard disks when information registered magnetically has to be converted to electric current.

Soon researchers and engineers began work to enable use of the effect in read-out heads. In 1997 the first read-out head based on the GMR effect was launched and this soon became the standard technology. Even the most recent read-out techniques of today are further developments of GMR.

Grünberg and Fert have received a number of prestigious prizes and awards for their discovery and contributions to the field of spintronics, including the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2007.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to ALBERT FERT and PETER GRÜNBERG for their discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance. Applications of this phenomenon have revolutionized techniques for retrieving data from hard disks. The discovery also plays a major role in various magnetic sensors as well as for the development of a new generation of electronics. The use of Giant Magnetoresistance can be regarded as one of the first major applications of nanotechnology.

The two scientists are awarded 10 million Swedish kronor (€1.1 million) which is to be split equally amongst them.

Source: Nobelprize.org , Kva.se

Troy, N.Y. – Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new energy storage device that easily could be mistaken for a simple sheet of black paper.

The nano engineered battery is lightweight, ultra thin, completely flexible, and geared toward meeting the trickiest design and energy requirements of tomorrow’s gadgets, implantable medical equipment, and transportation vehicles.

Along with its ability to function in temperatures up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and down to 100 below zero, the device is completely integrated and can be printed like paper. The device is also unique in that it can function as both a high-energy battery and a high-power super capacitor, which are generally separate components in most electrical systems. Another key feature is the capability to use human blood or sweat to help power the battery.

Details of the project are outlined in the paper “Flexible Energy Storage Devices Based on Nanocomposite Paper” published Aug. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Venezuelan scientists recently sent and received data over a distance close to 400 km through WLAN. The distance probably qualifies as a world record for wireless (WLAN) data networks, beating the record previously held by some Swedish scientists who managed to transfer data 310km between a balloon and a ground station.