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Researchers are breeding fluorescent bacteria to uncover landmines
One of the many tragedies of war are the dangers that persist long after conflicts formally end -- dangers like abandoned minefields peppered with active, deadly ordnance. Buried landmines threaten the lives of ordinary people near former battlefields all over the world, and disarming them has always been a dangerous effort. Now, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are working on a way to make landmine identification easier and safer. No, the trick isn't to build a better metal detector, it's to cultivate bacteria that glows in the presence of deadly explosives.
Scientists use 3D scans to 'unwrap' an ancient scroll
The scientific world is developing a knack for reading texts without opening them. Researchers in Israel and the US have conducted the first "virtual unwrapping" of a heavily damaged scroll, the En-Gedi scroll, to read its contents without destroying what's left. The team used a high-resolution volumetric scan to create a 3D model of the scroll, looked for bright pixels in the model (a sign of where the ink would be) and virtually flattened the scroll to make text segments readable.
Intel research hopes to give computers human smarts, appreciate our idiosyncrasies
Intel's chief technology officer, Justin Rattner, doesn't own a smartphone. Well, not by his definition anyway. Talking in Tel Aviv, Rattner was evangelizing about the opportunities in machine learning, and outlining the goals of the firm's Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence. Working with Technion and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Intel plans to develop small, wearable computers that learn our behavioral patterns -- like where we left our keys -- and other things today's "smart" phones could never do. Intel's Israeli president, Mooly Eden, went on to claim that within five years, all five senses will be computerized, and in a decade, transistors per chip will outnumber neurons in the human brain. All that tech to stop you locking yourself out.
Coffee-like stains inspire new type of touchscreen
The magical properties of coffee stains have already spurred on some researchers to develop a better coating for TV screens, and it looks like they've now inspired a few folks to create a new type of touchscreen as well. This latest instance apparently began when Hebrew University professor Shlomo Magdassi was working to develop a touchscreen using silver nanoparticles but ran into trouble making the screen conductive while still remaining transparent. As it happens, the coffee-like stains that he and his colleagues had been trying to remove with fast-drying solvents was actually the solution to his problem, since they remained in contact with each other as they dried and preserved conductivity, but left about 95 percent of the light through the holes in the center, thereby making the screen itself almost fully transparent. Of course, there's still quite a bit more work to be done before the screens move beyond the lab, but Magdassi has apparently already found that copper nanorings can be used in similar manner, and says that the screens could even double as solar panels to give devices a bit of added juice.
