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House cats know what they want and how to get it from you

Anyone who has ever had cats knows how difficult it can be to get them to do anything they don't already want to do. But it seems that the house cats themselves have had distinctly less trouble getting humans to do their bidding, according to a report published in the July 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

Chemical process developed to use cotton gin residue

Virginia researchers are working on technologies that could create a new industry from a problem in the state's cotton-growing region. ''Our goal is to add a value to the cotton crop by using the residue from the cotton to make a valuable product,'' said Foster A. Agblevor, professor of biological systems engineering in Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. About 100,000 acres of cotton are grown in the Virginia counties of Southampton, Isle of Wight, Greensville, Sussex, and the City of Suffolk. After the cotton is ginned, the residue left at the processing plant contains the chemical ingredients for products that are commercially valuable. Currently, the residue piles up at the site and must be removed.

Non-invasive sensor can detect brainwaves remotely

Now I can see what you really think about meScientists have developed a sensor that can record brainwaves without the need for electrodes to be inserted into the brain or even for them to be placed on the scalp. Conventional electroencephalograms (EEGs) monitor electrical activity in the brain with electrodes placed either on the scalp (involving hair removal and skin abrasion) or inserted directly into the brain with needles. Now a non-invasive form of EEG has been devised by Professor Terry Clark and his colleagues in the Centre for Physical Electronics at the University of Sussex. Instead of measuring charge flow through an electrode (with attendant distortions, in the case of scalp electrodes) the new system measures electric fields remotely, an advance made possible by new developments in sensor technology.

Sine o' the times

Proving again that clever sloth trumps dull industriousness, a mischievous group of transistors at a British university has spontaneously converted itself into -- of all things -- a radio receiver.
No word yet if the transistors are next planning to materialize as headphones or a graphic equalizer. New Scientist reports that the recreating of century-old technology occurred at the University of Sussex in Brighton during an experiment that was unusual in its own right. Researchers took transistors, added an evolutionary computer program and were expecting to end up with an oscillator -- a repeating sign wave signal.
Instead of forming their own waves, though, the transistors utilized a part on a nearby circuit board as an antenna and began receiving the oscillations from an adjacent computer. Somewhere out in the ether, Guglielmo Marconi ought to be proud. And slackers everywhere, too.



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