Underwater Nano-Mirage Effect Enables On-Demand Invisibility

By Clay Dillow

Cloaking via Mirage

Get ready to witness some James Bond-esque, HALO-style active camouflage action. Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have cleverly tapped the unique characteristics of carbon nanotubes and the light-bending weirdness of the mirage effect to create a kind of invisibility cloak that can be turned on and off at the flip of a switch.

Though not quite ready to be integrated into an Aston Martin (it works best underwater actually), it is a pretty neat trick, and it could someday have a range of applications outside the lab. The cloaking capability is rooted in the mirage effect, the same phenomenon that occurs when temperatures vary greatly over a short distance. That variation in temperature causes light rays to bend toward the viewer’s eye rather than bounce off of objects normally.

That’s why people tend to see false pools of water in the desert. They are actually seeing the sky on the desert floor--light from the sky bends as it nears the heated ground and heads directly toward the viewer, therefore appearing as a sheen of blue coming from the ground. From there, the brain does the rest, seeing water rather than sky because that makes a lot more sense.

The same effect is happening in the video below. Using highly conductive carbon nanotubes--one-atom-thick layers of carbon wrapped into cylinders--pressed into a transparent sheet, the device you see is able to quickly heat the fluid around it (in this case, water), causing the mirage effect to conceal the object on the other side. And it does so nearly instantaneously.

Yeah. That’s cool.

Tiny Cilia Inside Corpse' Noses Could Be a More Reliable Indicator of Time of Death

By Clay Dillow

The Body May Expire, But the Nasal Cilia Continue On Wikimedia

Despite how easy they make it look on TV dramas, determining time of death for a body requires a lot of difficult guesswork (unless someone is there when the person passes, of course). A range of environmental factors and other mitigating circumstances make any declaration of time of death an estimation at best. But a team of Italian scientists think they’ve found a built-in clock in the human nasal cavity that ticks off the minutes after a body expires, and it could make estimating the time of death a more precise exercise.

There are several ways for forensic examiners to roughly gauge time of death--decomposition rate, the state of rigor mortis, body temperature--but the specific circumstances of death can often influence those indicators, introducing variables that are difficult to account for.

But researchers at the University of Bari in Italy theorized that nasal cilia--small finger-like projections in the nose that help direct mucous, bacteria, and dust out of the nose--continue to pulsate after death. To test their hypothesis, the team took samples from 100 recently deceased cadavers to examine the characteristics of the cilia postmortem.

They found that the cilia do indeed continue beating up to 20 hours after death and that the beating slows at a predictable and consistent rate during that time, regardless of environmental factors. That means forensics teams and doctors could use the rate at which a person’s cilia are beating to make determining the time of death less of an art, and more of a science.

[New Scientist]

Apple's iPhone 4S: Faster, and a Better Listener, But the Same iPhone You Know and Love

By Dan Nosowitz

The New iPhone Family This Is My Next

Today in Cupertino, Apple announced the newest version of its bajillion-selling iPhone, to be named the iPhone 4S. Like the iPhone 3GS, this is a small, mostly internal upgrade over its predecessor--a new dual-core processor here, an improved camera there--though there is a major addition in the form of Siri, a voice-command service Apple bought awhile back that allows you to ask your phone questions, or tell it to do things, in natural language. Lots of things.

So, what's new in the iPhone world? The new iPhone 4S is in the same case as last year's iPhone 4, so it's the same size and weight. There's no external change that we know of--all of the new goodies are on the inside. Hardware-wise, it'll be using the A5 dual-core processor that serves the iPad 2 so ably, and it's also getting a brand-new sensor. The old iPhone 4 camera was actually quite good, but the new one seems even better--it's getting a size bump to 8MP, but the new sensor is backside illuminated, which Apple claims will allow it to get 73% more light than the iPhone 4's sensor. It'll also have an f/2.4 lens, and will take pictures 33% faster.

Otherwise, not too much going on in the hardware--Apple's implemented a new sensor design that'll hopefully eliminate that whole "grip of death" problem the iPhone 4 has, and it'll also be a world phone, meaning it has the antennae to work on just about any international band. Oh, and there'll be a 64GB version, in addition to the expected 16GB and 32GB versions.

Software-wise, it'll be rocking iOS5, which brings some much-needed improvements in the notifications and multitasking departments, as well as some nice new features. There'll be more intense Twitter integration; you can tweet your location from the Maps app, for example. Apple also introduced an app called Friends and Family that works sort of like Foursquare, locating your, well, friends and family. There's iCloud, which will sync your contacts, calendars, mail, that kind of thing--a feature Google mastered several versions of Android ago, but still nice.

The big news is integration of Siri, a voice-command software that's previously been available as an app but is now deeply embedded within iOS 5. It lets you give commands in normal phrasing--"Find me a Greek restaurant in North Beach," say, or "define mitosis." It'll work with lots of apps, including calendar, email, maps, and services like Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha.

Oh, right, pricing and availability. Well, the iPhone 4S will be available for pre-order on October 7th, releasing on the 14th. It'll sell for $200, $300, and $400 for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions, respectively. The iPhone 4 is still around, with an 8GB version selling for $100. Oh, and the old 3GS is still here, with its non-Retina Display and shameful curved body. It'll be free, on contract. Those will all be available on AT&T, Verizon, and now, for the first time, Sprint. Sorry, T-Mobile--not sure why you're left out, but we sympathize.