This week on radio, Tim Thwaites is talking about protecting medical implants from hacking; restoring memories; rocking adults to sleep; preventing heart attacks; and more
Planting forests won’t stop global warming—The results of a study by two Canadian researchers do not look good for Tony Abbott’s direct action program on global warming. The researchers have shown that the overall impact of reafforestation programs on global warming is not likely to be significant. And the effect should be greater in the tropics than at higher latitudes.—Nature Geoscience
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20587-planting-forests-wont-stop-global-warming.html
Spying on a silent killer—Physicists in the US have devised a way to spot the fatty deposits which build up on the walls of major arteries before they can cause serious harm through triggering a stroke or heart attack. The monitoring method is non-invasive and uses a combination of infrared light and ultrasound.—Physical Review Letters
A Science story on this topic can be found at http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/spying-on-a-silent-killer.html?ref=hp
Rat memory restored by installing replay electronics—With a flick of a switch and a burst of electrical activity which replays recorded patterns of brain activity, rats have been given access to lost memories. The concept might one day help people with brain damage remember how to perform everyday tasks.—Journal of Neural Engineering
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20590-rat-memory-restored-by-installing-replay-electronics.html
Rock yourself to sleep for a better nap—It’s not just babies who like being rocked to sleep, Swiss researchers have found. Adults that are gently rocked fall asleep quicker and have a higher quality nap.—Current Biology
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20586-rock-yourself-to-sleep-for-a-better-nap.html
Police dogs can distinguish identical twins—Police dogs can accomplish one task that DNA fingerprinting cannot, they can tell apart identical twins. Working with ten German Shepherds and their Czech police handlers, researchers ran a mock crime scene. In 12 trials with each dog, none of them made a single mistake.—PLoS ONE
A Science story on this topic can be found at http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/scienceshot-police-dogs-can-distinguish.html?ref=hp
Wear a jammer to stop your pacemaker being hacked—What if someone tried to retrieve data from your pacemaker? Or even tried to take it over? A team of computer scientists in Massachusetts is taking the issue seriously, and has come up with a jammer which can be worn to prevent people hacking implanted medical devices.—New Scientist
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/06/jesse-emspak-contributorhackin.html
Balancing act—Two Canberra researchers have been using an earthquake simulator at Questacon, the National Science and Technology Centre to look at how we maintain our balance by putting together information from our eyes and our ear canals. And they are finding clues to the cause of motion sickness.—Australasian Science
An Australasian Science story on this topic can be found in the June 2011 issue.
Wing hairs keep bats in the air—Instead of several of the dials which confront airline pilots in the cockpit, bats use tiny hairs to sense the speed and direction of the air flowing over their wings. This may alert them to the danger of stalling, and enable them to perform impressive aerobatic feats, American researchers say.—Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
A Nature story on this topic can be found at http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110620/full/news.2011.376.html
Gender-spotting tool could have rumbled fake blogger—Software which estimates a writer’s gender could have prevented the world from being duped into believing a blog opposing the Syrian government was written by a young lesbian in Damascus—New Scientist
A New Scientist story on this topic can be found at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20581-genderspotting-tool-could-have-rumbled-fake-blogger.html