Technology

AMOEBAS are smarter than they look: their bodies can store rudimentary memories. Now a team of physicists has built a simple electronic circuit that behaves in a similar way.

When amoebas are exposed to temperatures fluctuating regularly between cold and warm, their metabolism learns to slow down in anticipation of cold snaps. The memory-resistor, or “ memristor ”, devised by Massimiliano Di Ventra and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, alters the current of a circuit depending on an applied voltage, and when the circuit switches regularly between two applied voltages, it learns to alter the current of the circuit in anticipation.

The researchers suggest linking several such devices to build simple neural networks.

THE European Aviation Safety Agency is developing safety rules for civilian space flight – but they will only apply while craft are in the Earth’s atmosphere.

With Sweden already building a spaceport from which Virgin Galactic may offer flights into the aurora borealis, EASA has decided to act. “Both [Virgin’s] carrier aircraft and the rocket-powered

49per cent of students admit to cheating, in a poll at the University of Cambridge; 82 per cent of the cheaters had plagiarised Wikipedia

In August, 34-year-old Grant Wilkinson of Reading in the UK was jailed for life for converting replica handguns into working firearms that were used in 50 shootings, including eight murders.

Sales of imitations that can be converted into weapons are banned in the UK, but it can be extremely difficult for police to spot which are capable of conversion into working firearms. An X-ray technique being developed by engineers at Keele University in Staffordshire and the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham, UK, could help.

There are two kinds of replica weapon, says Keele’s Jim Austin: non-firing imitations and blank-firing replicas. Non-firing imitations look like the weapon they model but are mostly unconvertible. But firing blanks – shells with enough explosive to mimic a

gunshot but which release no projectile – demands a barrel made of strong alloys of uniform density. These can be converted by drilling out obstructions in the barrel.

To spot the difference, the team used an X-ray source to fire a beam through the barrels of two unconvertible imitations of Beretta and Colt automatics, and two conversion-capable blank-firing Glock and Magnum imitations (Forensic Science International, vol 181, p 26). They then plotted the X-rays absorbed by the metal as the X-ray energy was increased.

With a tough barrel suitable for conversion, the plot is more or less linear, “but with the unconvertible imitations the plots are all over the place”, says Austin. “It was easy to see which barrels had the quality for conversion.”

HANDS UP, CONVERTIBLE GUNS

aeroplane/glider would meet the definition of an aircraft, and therefore fall under EASA’s scope,” says a spokesman.

But the agency admits it cannot legislate for flights beyond the atmosphere: “EASA has no competency nor mandate for outer space, where international law applies.” The International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety wants a United Nations-backed global agreement that mandates safety measures in space.

Crewed space capsules like those of Apollo and Soyuz have an abort thruster on top that lifts the crew clear if the rocket explodes on the launch pad. To take the weight of the thruster, the capsules have to be super-strong – and therefore extremely heavy – so NASA has come up with an alternative. In patent application US 2008/0265099 it describes a carbon fibre cone entirely covering the capsule, with the thruster on top, that carries the weight of the thruster down to the rim of the main rocket.

If anyone gets out their digital camera, hide your house keys. So say engineers at the University of California, San Diego, who have written software (tinyurl.com/sneakey) that can reproduce keys from cellphone photos. No special expertise is needed: computer vision systems can extract the necessary information, says team leader Stefan Savage.

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Belinda Stewart-Cox of the Zoological Society of London, on a project to reduce the number of attacks on elephants by keeping them away from crops.

Compact discs have been hung around two farming sites in the Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand, acting as light reflectors to repel the animals

“The CDs twisted and shone, mimicking a person with a torch”

–Ring any alarm bells?–

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Basic bugs inspire amoebic circuitry

Europe to certify civil spaceplanes

www.newscientist.com 8 November 2008 | NewScientist | 23