Knowing the art of picking one’s brain
Reading Time: 2 minutesBY MAZLAN HANAFI BASHARUDIN FANCY forecasting the trends or customers’ behaviour in the future? Knowing how people think would be helpful in predicting and understanding their choices and actions. By learning the art (and the science behind it) of picking one’s brain, there is a way to do so now. Studying how the brain works, or neuroscience, is what’s currently offered at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Neuroscience looks […]
SELF-REPAIRED SHOES
Reading Time: < 1 minuteInstead of throwing away your broken boots or cracked toys, why not let them fix themselves? Researchers at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering have developed 3D-printed rubber materials that can do just that. Assistant Professor Qiming Wang works in the world of 3D printed materials, creating new functions for a variety of purposes, from flexible electronics to sound control. […]
Engineers turn seawater into drinking water, thanks to the use of solar energy
Reading Time: < 1 minuteACCORDING to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates, by 2025 nearly 2 billion people may not have enough drinking water to satisfy their daily needs. One of the possible solutions to this problem is desalination, namely treating seawater to make it drinkable. However, removing salt from seawater requires 10 to 1000 times more energy than traditional methods of freshwater supply, namely pumping water from rivers or wells. […]
Robot learns to play jenga
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIN the basement of MIT’s Building 3, a robot is carefully contemplating its next move. It gently pokes at a tower of blocks, looking for the best block to extract without toppling the tower, in a solitary, slow-moving, yet surprisingly agile game of Jenga. The robot, developed by MIT engineers, is equipped with a softpronged gripper, a force-sensing wrist cuff, and an external camera, all of […]
Wanted – An optimal governance system for STI
Reading Time: 3 minutesTHERE is a lively renewed discussion among the scientific community in Malaysia for the establishment of a Parliamentary Select or Standing Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI). The idea is not new, of course. We have been discussing this at Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) and other fora for a good many years now. Lengthy discussions took place during recent ASM’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Committee (STIPAC) […]
MONA LISA’S MAGICAL GAZE
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn science, the “Mona Lisa Effect” refers to the impression that the eyes of the person portrayed in an image seem to follow the viewer as they move in front of the picture. Two researchers from the Cluster of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University demonstrate that, ironically enough, this effect does not occur with Leonardo da Vinci’s world-famous […]
Urgent attention needed for global tiger recovery efforts
Reading Time: 2 minutesNEW DELHI: “Tiger-range governments agreed on the urgent need to address critical management gaps across the tiger’s range at the 3rd Stocktaking Conference on the Global Tiger Recovery Programme. The conference is the latest collective step in the process that began at the 2010 St Petersburg Tiger Summit – where 13 tiger-range governments committed to Tx2 – an ambitious goal to double the global wild tiger […]
Better tasting coffee with microbe aid
Reading Time: 2 minutesWHEN it comes to processing coffee beans, longer fermentation times can result in better taste, contrary to conventional wisdom. Lactic acid bacteria play an important, positive role in this process. Other species of microbes may play a role in this process as well, but more research is needed to better understand their role. The research […]
Medical scanner unlocks the mysteries of a giant prehistoric marine reptile
Reading Time: 2 minutesA NEARLY metre-long skull of a giant fossil marine ichthyosaur found in a farmer’s field more than 60 years ago has been studied for the first time. Using cutting-edge computerised tomography (CT) scanning technology, the research reveals new information including details of the rarely preserved braincase. The almost 200 million year old fossil, which was found in 1955 at Fell Mill Farm in Warwickshire, had never […]
Genome of the small hive beetle sequenced
Reading Time: < 1 minuteBEEKEEPERS and researchers will welcome the unveiling of the small hive beetle’s genome by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their colleagues. The small hive beetle (SHB) is a major parasite problem of honey bees for which there are few effective treatments. The SHB (Aethina tumida Murray) genome — a genome is the sum total of all an organism’s DNA; a gene codes for a […]