Technology

A PORTABLE scanner could raise the alarm when ancient manuscripts deteriorate and need to be restored.

Normally, chemical tests are used to estimate the quality of paper and determine what treatment it needs. But this process destroys up to half a page of the work – and the tests are time-consuming.

A near-infrared scanner would provide the same information in 1 second, and without damaging the document, says restoration expert Jan Wouters of the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles . Scanners have recently been developed capable of shining light onto a document and recording and interpreting what wavelengths it absorbs to reveal details such as acidity and the length of cellulose molecules – indicators of fragility (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1164991).

A ROBOTIC lizard has enticed real anolis lizards into revealing why they perform press-ups before attempting to impress their rivals with threatening displays.

Terry Ord from Harvard University and colleagues built a robot that mimicked the lizard’s competitive displays and placed it in a forest in Puerto Rico, where they filmed the

32million kilometres. The distance to the Epoxi spacecraft, to which NASA sent images to test its “interplanetary internet”

Implants that deliver a drug to just the

right place in the body could become

“biobatteries” that release the drug at

exactly the right rate.

At present, it is difficult to control

how quickly implants release their

payload. The biobattery produces a

current of a known strength, and it is

this that controls the drug’s release.

The smart implant is based on

magnesium alloy stents that are being

developed for surgeons to use as

temporary splints to keep damaged

blood vessels in shape while they heal.

Magnesium is used because it will

corrode away inside the body safely

when the stent’s job is done.

A team led by Gordon Wallace of the

University of Wollongong in New South

Wales, Australia, made use of this to

make a biobattery from a magnesium

alloy anode and a conducting

polymer cathode that carried an anti-

inflammatory drug. They immersed the

device in an electrolyte to simulate the

body fluids around a real implant.

As the magnesium oxidised and

the polymer reduced, a current was

generated in the device that reversed

the electrostatic charges holding the

drug molecules to the polymer.

To fine-tune the rate of drug

delivery , the team coated the

magnesium alloy with a biodegradable

polymer that slowed its corrosion. The

drug release rate is engineered into

the device’s structure, Wallace told the

Medical Bionics meeting in Lorne near

Melbourne last week. The devices could

be used in any implant that corrodes,

such as titanium hip joints, which form

titanium oxide on their surface.

BATTERIES NOW IMPLANTED

behaviour of real lizards nearby. The resulting footage revealed

that when the robot did its press-ups, the neighbouring lizards turned to watch within a few seconds. Without the preliminaries, the rivals rarely watched the robot’s full threat display, particularly when the light was poor (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0807657105) . “It’s the equivalent of someone waving to attract your attention,” says Ord.

Keeping track of how quickly deep wounds heal usually involves nothing more high-tech

than a ruler. If the wound hasn’t halved in volume in four weeks then there’s a 95 per cent

chance it won’t heal, indicating the need for a change in treatment. But such methods

carry a risk of infection, so Aranz Medical in Christchurch, New Zealand, has developed

a contactless, hand-held scanner to do the job. The device, called Silhouette, uses lasers

and a digital camera to accurately record the length, width and depth of a wound.

IBM is bringing together computer scientists, neurobiologists and materials scientists

in a bid to produce nanoscale devices that act like synapses and neurons, and then

put them together to make computers that mimic the way brains work. The idea is to

use them for tasks traditional computers struggle with, such as pattern recognition.

GIZMO

Germany

Canada

Japan

France

US

UK

Italy

Switch-over date:

70%

32%

2009

53%

65%

66%

56%

86%

2010 2011 2012

GOODBYE ANALOGUE TV

The UK and US have the highest percentage of households with digital sets

Nick Davies of UK firm Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions, on an acoustic device being used to repel pirates in the Gulf of Aden and off Africa’s east coast. The device consists of an MP3 player attached to loudhailers (bullhorns) which blast out noise and a warning message (AFP, 21 November)

“It’s effective up to 1000 metres and excruciating within 100 metres”

–Electrifying–

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When to restore the Magna Carta

Look at me, I’m really scary

www.newscientist.com 29 November 2008 | NewScientist | 27