Technology

SOLAR flares can drown out GPS

signals with potentially serious

consequences for airlines,

emergency services, and anyone

relying on satellite navigation.

It turns out these bursts of

charged particles, which produce

auroras and geomagnetic storms,

also generate radio waves in the

1.2 and 1.6-gigahertz bands used

by GPS.

How was such a clash missed?

Because GPS receivers only

became common during a period

of low solar activity. By 2011 solar

flares will reach the peak of their

cycle and receivers will likely fail.

Or so Alessandro Cerruti of

Cornell University, New York, told

a meeting of the Institute of

Navigation in Fort Worth, Texas,

last week. The only solution

would be to redesign GPS

receivers or satellites, which may

not be practical, says Cerruti.

POTENTIALLY dangerous

nanomaterials could appear in

medical devices and food

packaging because the US Food

and Drug Administration lacks the

resources to assess their safety.

So says a study published on

5 October by Washington think

tank the Woodrow Wilson Center

for Scholars. The report by former

FDA deputy commissioner

10The number of kilometres a Boeing 747 will have to fly behind an Airbus A380 to avoid its wake, up from 6.5 km for existing planes

Steel whiskers that mimic the way seals

and rats sense prey could one day give

planetary rovers the sensitivity they

need to explore the shape of strange

objects they encounter on their travels.

That’s the suggestion of Joe Solomon

and Mitra Hartmann at Northwestern

University in Evanston, Illinois, who

have developed delicate whiskers in

both steel and plastic that can accurately

sense shapes and textures.

Other whisker-like shape sensors

have relied on complex software to

crunch information on the position of

each whisker tip and its movement

over time. But Solomon and Hartmann

wondered if it would be simpler to use

the “bending moment” at the base

of each whisker. They think that this

might be closer to the way rats combine

information from different whiskers to

sense shapes, and how seals detect

the changes in water flow that lead

them to their prey.

The team built an array of four

springy stainless steel whiskers and

fitted each with four strain gauges

around their base to measure the

bending moments. Like rats assessing

a texture, they rotated the whiskers

against a small sculpted head.

The variety of bending moments

they captured allowed them to

“faithfully extract the sculpture’s

original smooth surface shape” and

reproduce it on a computer, the pair

report in Nature (vol 443, p 525).

They had similar success using

plastic whiskers to profile flow patterns

under water. Such whiskers could allow

autonomous underwater vehicles to

track moving objects by their wake.

MAKE LIKE A RAT

Michael Taylor warns that the

agency’s $1.9 billion budget for

2007 is less than half what it

needs to regulate conventional

foods, drugs and medical devices,

let alone nanotech.

As a result, he says, the FDA

cannot afford to acquire the

nanotech expertise it needs, so it

may not spot problems, or may

discover them too late. For

instance, researchers are pushing

for carbon nanotubes in medical

treatments, but the jury is still out

on whether they affect DNA.

Plummeting PC prices have not been matched by a drop in the cost of software. Now

UK supermarket Tesco is planning to change that by launching Ability Office, a dirt

cheap software package that does a similar job to Microsoft Office. Ability’s software

tools such as Write are compatible with its rival’s – and all for £20 rather than £300.

It looks like a dimpled basketball on a stick, but in fact the “pulsating sphere”

is a speaker which reputedly produces a more natural sound than conventional

box shape. Developed by JVC of Yokohama, Japan, the speaker has 12 pentagon-

shaped plastic panels and with the exception of the base, each panel acts as a

diaphragm, pulsating in unison to emit sound in all directions. The speaker will

be launched next year.

GIZMO

2005

November 2006

2010

0Number of processors

20 40 60 80

PACKING ’EM INHaving just unveiled a “quad-core” chip, Intel

plans to put 80 processors on a chip by 2010

Steve Cole of California-based HopeLab, which has developed “Re-Mission”, a game in which the player travels through the bodies of people with cancer,

zapping cancer cells. A study of 400 young patients in the US, Europe and Canada showed the game helped them cope with the disease (AFP, 30 September).

“Recognising a symptom, fighting for control, all makes a difference”

–I sense food–

TOM

MCH

UGH/

SPL

www.newscientist.com 7 October 2006 | NewScientist | 27

SOUR

CE: A

IRBU

SSO

URCE

: AFP

Stormy times ahead for GPS

Too poor to test nano safety

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