Weather forecasters would now be able to predict in advance with more precision that when and where heavy rainfalls are expected. This development was made during the research work which started after heavy destruction of floods in the last summer which affected large parts of England.

Met Office gave the statement and claimed that this scientific development would now make it possible to predict floods one day more before. Not only this but additionally it would tell about the areas to be affected by flood; it would also be predicted with greater geographical precision, better than before.

National weather service of UK is trying to make a team which would be comprised of specialist forecasters. This team will make use of this new technology and warn the organizations earlier and inform them about the upcoming disastrous flood. This information would be useful for the emergency responders and other professionals relating the flood monitoring agencies.

Paul Davies who is the extreme rainfall service manager of the Met Office says that the weather forecasts and alerts which were provided to the emergency responders in the last summer were very accurate and timely.

The destruction in the last summer flood directed the attention of the agencies more towards providing better forecasting updates. Met Office started transferring the science and technology more quickly so that the future challenges could be faced in a better way.

Pamel Taylor who is the chief executive of Water UK says that his organization welcomes the new developments presented by Met Office. He said that such type of disastrous incidents affects the water industry and customers very seriously and it is the need of time to advance quickly in this technology.

The second major component is its internal combustion generator. The function of this generator is to convert the gas into electric power. This electric power could be used for any domestic need.

This station is being publically demonstrated heating, cooking and operating a fridge in Sheffield.

The critical element of this is how much it would cost to put such a refueling station in your home. The technology is very plausible but there are some issues about public acceptance.

The technology is very impressive but the thing to think about is that it would cost much to install it in home and could it be affordable to people.

The fact that the refueling station uses electricity meant it would not be a much-sought after zero emissions system unless the electricity itself is produced in a more green way, he added.

The fact that the refueling station uses electricity meant it would not be a much-sought after zero emissions system

As we discussed earlier that water and electricity are the source items to produce hydrogen gas. It would not lead to desired results as claimed for zero emissions unless electricity is produced without polluting the environment.

A new hydrogen refueling station has been introduced by the ITM - British company. The company is leading innovator within the alternative energy source industries. This station could be installed in the home and would be a best alternative to visiting a petrol station.

To comply with this new technology hydrogen-powered cars are also going to set in production. The interesting thing about this is that this could also be used for heating and cooking purposes.

It is always said and proved by scientists that Hydrogen could be used as an alternative energy source to other fossil fuels originated from carbon.

The question is that why not fuel-cell vehicles became so popular and highly used so far. The answer is due to the lack of hydrogen fuelling stations. Now with the release of this station it would get much better in the future.

Hydrogen could not be used directly as a fuel in this system. It needs some processes and other energy sources to get it in useable form.

While some scientists are hopeful of the fuel uses of hydrogen, many others are skeptical because it is inefficient to produce, expensive to transport and to convert into electricity.

When we ask the scientists about this new hydrogen-station they give two views over it. one group says we are hopeful and expecting good results by the fuel uses of hydrogen. Whereas other group shows some doubts about the feasibility of the project. They say that it would be inefficient to produce and cost much on transportation and its conversion into electric power.

The most important functioning part of the station is an electrolyser. This electrolyser works to produce hydrogen gas from water and electricity.

The working schedules are extremely heavy in space as they remain in touch with the earth centers with the video connections and astronauts have a little time to enjoy their private time. The situation is very tense in space strong mental health is needed there.

In a near future, doctors would be able to look into an astronaut space life through portable brain scanner. This could be highly helpful in examining the mental health of the astronauts. This device would provide information and help in monitoring the astronauts for signs of any kind of brain injury or depression or mental tiredness.

In these conditions the astronauts would loose their ability to make critical repair work of space equipment.This scanner is not finally released. The research work is going on at Massachusetts General Hospital in US state of Boston. This will be finally evaluated for its performance and safety perspectives. After then it will be handed over to NASA which will think to send it into orbit.

The temperature was lowered down to 25 C. At that temperature hydrogel started absorbing water and swelling and then it was again raised up to 37 C.

By doing in this way, researchers saw that around 80% of the attached cells dropped by. The fellow researchers of Giant repeated the temperature change procedure every 60 minute, and continued to do it for four hours. After the experiment the researchers said that a sensor coated fully with the gel keeps it free from fibrous growth around it and it demonstrated well.

In a second test membrane was made porous. It was observed that analytes like glucose move through to the sensor without making its ability ineffective to monitor the conditions such as diabetes and providing read-out.

To prevent the sensors from immune defence and to attain the desired changes and results the sensors are coated with membrane and placed under the surface of the skin. These sensors are then regulated through an external mean; which is a device integrated with a heating and cooling element to change the temperature.

Megan Frost is a researcher working at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, US. She is fascinated by these findings. She says,

“The idea of shrinking and swelling is novel to the best of my knowledge”

Earlier the researchers made much research work on creating such substances which could prevent the fibroblasts from getting attention. These substances don’t behave to cause the immune response.

Frosts says that by using a membrane which possesses both chemical properties and physical properties - shrinking and swelling - could successfully keep the implanted sensors clean than any other material. She says that

We would be waiting to see how it results in the real body, because there is a very little correlation in the lab experiments and actual happening. Despite of seeing the astonishing and positive results by experimenting on cell cultures in test tubes, she is suspicious about its behavior in real body. She thinks that it is more likely that we see the shrinking and growing membrane creating new problems when used in the body.

She says.

“Physical movement sometimes increases the inflammatory response to implanted devices”

Danny O’Hare is working at Imperial College London, UK since many years. He feels that the movements caused by the physical properties could create complications. He thinks that it would probably affect the performance of the sensor.

He says,

“It’s hard to see how the optical or spectroscopic properties of the tissue-sensor interface won’t be adversely affected by the swelling/shrinking membrane,”

The surface which could clean it by itself and combat with the immune response of the body could increase the life of biosensors inside the human body.

The sensors implanted beneath the skin give continuous information therefore this technique is considered as the easiest and simplest way to get reports on chronic diseases like diabetes.

The implanted sensors continue working in the right manner as long as its surface remains clean. But as it is not the part of the body and the body treats it as it is and produces antibodies against this outsider. This is actually called as the immune response; which is actually defence reaction against an invading substance.

This immune system usually fails to destroy the sensors, if it happened body reacts in other way. In this way, specialist cells fibroblasts move in and start developing a tissue layer to form a capsule shaped body around the sensor; this layer effects the sensor greatly and makes its sensitivity less effective.

Rebecca Gant working at Texas A&M University in College Station made a research with his colleagues and succeeded in developing a new thing called self-cleaning membrane. She positively thinks that she can cope with the problem and this invention would help in combating the growth of fibrous tissue. This will be achieved by coating the implanted sensor with this newly invented self-cleaning membrane.

This membrane is actually a hydrogel. Its properties depend on the temperature. When the temperature is below 34 °C it switches to hydrophilic state having the characteristics of absorbing water and swelling whereas in the temperature above 34 °C it behaves and shifts to hydrophobic state with totally opposite behavior in which it releases water and shrinks.

The researchers say that this behavior of the membrane with the temperature in its properties of swelling and shrinking is would move away and get rid of the cells that have become attached to the surface.

This was a just claim it needed practical demonstration for that they placed it in a mouse fibroblast cell culture. This experiment was given a time of full night keeping it at 37 C; which is the normal body temperature. In the morning the researchers saw that it started working; the fibroblast was forming a layer around the hydrogel and was going to encapsulate it.

The imaging results of the semiconductor-based detectors are much better than the conventional detectors. The reason is that these semiconductor-based detectors are smaller and thinner in size and could be easily adjusted and arranged than others. This advancement in technology renders higher spatial resolution and images with less noise and without irrelevant information. This device also carries depth of interaction (DOI) which is a detecting system. The advantage of this system is that it reduces possible errors at the periphery of the examining body area.

Scientists made a research on the physical functioning capacity of the scanner. This scanner has been used in the treatment of the patients suffering from epilepsy and nasopharyngeal cancer. The clinical significance of this device has also been examined in the bodies of these patients. The research findings show that PET scanner can be used for clinical use; it is feasible for clinical use. The device is result oriented and provides higher spatial resolution and quantitative imaging which is essentially required in nuclear medicine. This device is currently being installed in Hokkaido University Hospital. The staff from the Department of Nuclear Medicine a Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan is present there helping to operate this device.

The study on PET brain scanner showed that this technology could be advanced more in quality and spatial resolution of PET imaging. This is said by the team of medical researchers. PET stands for positron emission tomography. This is a prototype scanner in which semiconductor detectors are used.

This prototype has already been used for characterizing the brain disorder disease – epilepsy – and nasopharyngeal cancer. It proved successful. This technology could help better in the early diagnoses of other cancers, nervous disorder diseases and heart diseases especially cardiovascular disease. This also helps in assessing patient’s responses to therapies. Third benefit which is achieved through this scanner is it determines how efficiently the new drug is working in the patient’s body.

Yuichi Morimoto is the leading person in the team researching on this technology. This research work has been given the name of Performance of a Prototype Brain PET Scanner Based on Semiconductor Detectors. He is the senior researcher for Central Research Laboratory of Hitachi Ltd., Tokyo, Japan. He considered it the exciting development in the field of nuclear medicine. These semiconductor scanners possess great potential. They are having high energy resolution and flexibility to good extent in size and fine arrangement of detectors. These characteristics of scanners provide better PET images.

PET scan procedure is the molecular imaging procedure. All treatment procedures in this category are noninvasive and painless tests. Physicians feel much comfortable in diagnosing medical conditions and conducting research. Radioactive materials like radiopharmaceuticals or radiotracers are used in PET scanning procedure. These radioactive materials gather on the area of the body surface which is being examined. In the next process it emits gamma rays which enter into the body.

PET scanner detects this emitted form of energy. These devices are integrated with the computer. The absorbed amount of radiotracer is measured on the computer on the basis of information sent by the device. The computer produces images providing the information on the functioning of organs and other internal body parts to the cellular and molecular levels.

American scientists say that it could be very useful to use animal faeces as a fuel source. Through this fuel-source energy could be produced especially in the form of electric power. It is also being claimed that if it be done this would generate three percent of the energy needs of the whole North America.

A research work is going on in the Institute of Physics journal Environmental Research Letters. It is reported that this process would also have many additional benefits especially relating environmental concerns. The animal excreta would also reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

This study is first of its own type. In this research study is being made to check it out that how much electric power could be produced by taking animal excreta as a fuel source.
If this animal waste is left to decompose in a natural way, nitrous oxide and methane are the two gases which are omitted from this substance.The scientists carried out their research in two ways and then compared both of them for their energy savings and GHG reducing benefits.In the first way they burn the coal to generate energy. In these way animal excreta is left to decompose naturally. This is the process commonly adopted and happening around the world.

The second way is to pass the animal manure through anaerobic digestion process. Through this biogas is produced. And this gas is burnt to make up coal.This anaerobic digestion process is same to the process adopted to create compost which is used as a fertilizer. By these process animal excreta is converted into biogas. This biogas is full with energy. And then micro turbines are used to generate electric power.

The researchers also fully calculated the amount of energy that could be generated in America through this process. They said that there is a big number of livestock inhabiting the United States of America. This is enough to generated approximately 100 billion KWH of electric power. This is sufficient to fulfill the electric requirements of homes and offices.

Dr. Michael Webber and Amanda Cuellar are the two senior researchers in the University of Texas at Austin. They said that the research going on biofuels received much criticism due to many reasons especially regarding environmental concerns. Contrary to biofuels, biogas provides less controversial benefits. The reason is that an existing waste substance is used in it rendering the positive effect on environment and helping in improving it.

The young students and professors who are doing research work in Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology made a discovery on natural vegetable oils. They said that these oils are having the capacity to be a substitute for motor oil mixtures generally used as lubricants for two-stroke engines.

They succeeded on developing and examining the various methods to make cost-effective bio-fuels derived from different origins. They remained busy on conducting research projects previous year in their campus.

The research in bio-fuels and bio-lubricants will limit the consumption of foreign oil in the near future. The research work is being conducted by undergraduate students. They are making use of high-level developed chemical instrumentation and engine testing on a power measuring tool - dynamometer.

Matt Colchin and Doug Hale is a senior mechanical engineer from Decatur, Ind. and Indianapolis accompanied with Liz Malolawho (second year graduate) chemical engineer from Rochester, Ind. and Collins from Claremont (California) are working on this project. These are the young people but the significance of project demands the expert persons from mechanical, chemical and chemistry field.

This research team is already well-known for developing different types of two-cycle engine oils derived from bio-origins. These oils were proved to having highly good lubricating properties as compared to the synthetic oils available in the market and being commercially used. Now this team is moving towards the development of bio-fuels; which are having origin of canola oil, animal fat and waste frying oils. They are also looking into the results and effects of these bio-fuels sources in power production in an automobile engine. This analysis is being made by extensive engine tests.

The team of Rose-Hulman is working on the use of butanol in addition to ethanol use. Butanol can derived from corn grains. Butanol is having more energy than ethanol. Butanol has same properties as gasoline has which is widely being used and available at the gas station.

In the second phase of this project they are working on the manufacturing of biodiesel from different origins and examining their properties. They are trying to produce bio-diesel without generating waste by-products. Glycerin is the by-product released by the current method. This waste is discarded in a landfill. Collins said that this is an era which would revolutionize the automotive industry.

Scientists succeeded to develop a technology which would be very useful in the research work being made on penguin lives. According to the news this new technology will monitor the movement of the endangered penguins without disturbing their private lives.

The researchers working in the University of Bristol have done that job. By adopting this new technology scientists would be able to get all the information they needed from far away. They will receive the information about population sizes and species. This data will be collected without chasing the animals.

The scientists were researching on the African penguins of South Africa’s Robben Island for previous some period. The new system was the result of that research work.

The system basically works through cameras. These technological cameras automatically locate the penguins, trace them out and follow them. The black spots on the chests of the penguins have a key role in this whole system. Cameras actually follow these spots and differentiate between different penguins through these black spots.

The new and latest biometrical identifying system works behind to locate and recognize penguins through the different shapes and arrangements of the black spots on the chests of the African penguins. This biometrical identifying system is the same as used on passports having biometric bands.

Researchers working on this system also told that they tested this system on other species and found it successful. They tested it on zebras and sharks as we all know that zebras have lines on his body and each zebra differ in his pattern with other zebra. This system can be used and extended to monitor all other animal creatures.

Dr. Tilo Burghardt who is the scientist working in Bristol University said that their team strongly believe and expect that this newly invented technology will help much the biologists to locate, identify and monitor big number of species through amazingly cheap, easy and automatic mean which was not possible before.

Professor Peter Bartham, who is the founder and main player in the research work made on this technology, said that once this system is taken into practice you will see that the ecologists and conservationists would get amazing results. This would be the revolution in getting population data in good precision, quantity and quality.

The animals will also get benefit from this new system. Because in this system neither the animals are disturbed nor chased; they are also neither captured nor marked by which they often get side effects.

In space there would be more robots and fewer astronauts in the coming time. This is the idea given by three European aerospace engineers who believe that the crewed satellites sent to repair missions are much expensive and wasteful as we saw recently astronauts flown by NASA to repair the Hubble Space Telescope which cost much high.

These three scientists are Alex Ellery, Joerg Kreidsel and Bernd Sommer. The statement was given in the journal Acta Astronautica in which they said that though such types of missions are spectacular but quite unsustainable.

Space agencies and satellite operators should seriously move faster making effort to make robotic mechanics. These mechanics would be able to provide robotic mechanics complying with different Earth orbits which would help in fixing errant satellites when required.

The practical demonstration of in-orbit repair by a robot has already been performed last summer. The work was carried out by pentagon. They coaxed a robot – Astro into dockling having no external control with NextSat; NextSat is a prototype serviceable craft. They replaced a dead battery through it.

However the researchers are not satisfied by the speed of scientific research progress, they feel it much slow despite of its importance and need.

Satellites are not much reliable, as you see problem with navigation and thruster failures often. It is a big loss and cost very much when thruster fails; on the other side insurance is also expensive.

These factors provide the industry a big reason to go in search of cheaper and safer alternative ways to human mechanics. The three engineers said;

“Scepticism of robotic in-orbit servicing is wasting the space sector vast amounts of money,”

They further said;

“There are few industries which would willingly spend $100 million on highly designed, long-lived hardware without the provision for repair and upgrade.”

Single click would add up new data to the GIS map and the latest information is on the desktop. Before the creation of this new GIS maps, Kaye has to adopt a difficult task of searching different sites to get the required weather updates. She says;

“To be able to access all that data at once would really be useful — make things much smoother”

That becomes more critical when it is a matter of lives.

The new method will enable the user to see National Weather Service (NWS) data on maps. In this method, GIS – Geographic Information System – software is used, which is customized to provide the vital information to firefighters, emergency planners and farmers. The information coming from different resources can be layered up; this will be at the top of the map showing a comprehensive picture of the whole matter. In any disaster situation, the affected and relating people must have immediate access to the updates; that would be possible by that software. This software is integrated with programs named by intelligent agents. These programs are helpful to the mobile devices in working swiftly even if they cannot get at wireless information. These agents fully monitor the network connections, and retrieve and save information all the time especially if any interruption occurs in connection; this saves the loss of information. Such programs are not dependant of any specific arrangement; they can be run on any mobile device, any network can be used for it. Moreover the specific network designed for it can be created for this system during the disaster when all other arrangement fails to work.

Weather is the basic factor in wild fires; especially drought which dries out all the vegetation. Dry leaves, trees, underwoods and grassy fields can cause and spread the fire more easily than anything else. The more fuel the more wildly the fire would spread. Long drought dry the vegetation very much, in such case the fire eats up swiftly and it became difficult to contain it. This big fire also evaporates the moisture in the surrounding green trees, which causes them to burn also. Wind also causes the fire to spread swiftly; not only spreads but also provide the fresh air filled with oxygen to the fire to burn.

Scientists have now achieved the task of integrating GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and weather reports together; this would be appeared as a visual display on the desktop. They created a new map having the features of collecting, layering and analyzing information from different origins. Individual manager would be able to integrate weather information scattered on different resource websites with this software.

Every common person is having interest nowadays in the changing weather and he wants to know about the daily forecast so that he could dress up accordingly while going to office, school or journey. But especially, the professionals who totally rely on weather conditions because of their job types such as emergency responders and researchers they solved the problem by bringing the updated information on their desktops by using updated and customized weather maps.

Margot Kaye is working as a wildfire manager and also a forestry expert and currently working in Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Everyday she needs to know wind speed and direction, precipitation and humidity in the atmosphere. While talking to Ivanhoe she said;

“We use that data to get a sense of how fire might behave given those weather conditions,”

This new technique has made it possible to get information not to one to two levels but in several ways. Specialized mapping options operating with GIS – geographic Information Systems – is the technique developed by the researchers working at Pennsylvania.

Bernd Haupt, who is a senior researcher at Pennsylvania State University’s Earth and Environment Systems Institute, says about the advantages of this new system;

“We have several maps or data sets and you can overlay them over each other,”

The user can view the live video display of weather condition information directly coming from national weather service on his desktop. Besides this he can also customize this program and run it with Google Earth’ satellite imagery. The user can see weather condition in seventeen different ways such as temperature, rainfall and wind directions. This program also covers the wildfires and displays vertical column or surface level smoke depicting the true picture of the situation.

Maurie Kelly who is a senior person in the research team working at Pennsylvania State University’s Institutes for Environment tells how effective this system would be for different communities working in their own positions. In his words;

“It not only impacts the people who are living near the fire, but it also would impact where the firefighters would be or where they would want to locate themselves in the potential for the fire to spread”

Wireless communication is difficult in the ocean. The reason for that is water molecules absorbs radio waves efficiently. An acoustic signal travel well but reduces in quality due to echoes, ambient noise, swirling currents and water absorbing the signals.

The technique named by acoustic time reversal can cover up the above mentioned problems. It transmits and cleans up the underwater signals and thus increases the range and capacity of signals.

William Kuperman and his co-researchers (Scripps Institute of Oceanography, La Jolla, California, US) with the researchers of NATO Undersea Research Centre, La Spezia, Italy, are testing this technique in Mediterranean.

Timer reversal technique changes the way of acoustic signals to enter undersea as the sound is clouded by echoes and move with different speeds. For example the sound of “ping” travels and arrives with three different sounds. One travels directly, second that travels with surface and the third which travels with ocean floor.

If the receiver sends the same sound back to the sender the route will be the same from where it came. The sound with long route will be sent first, second-slowest will go after that and the fastest will go at the end, in this way the sound will reach the destination at the same time.

To use this technique for communication, the person wanting to receive message sends carrier signal first.  Sender reverse the received message but before sending it back he make changes in it and adds up the message he wanted to send. The receiver gets the message which is so clear that he decodes easily the added message.

Kuperman and his colleague researches started using this technique to send message at the rate of 15-kilobites/second for 4 kilometer range and 5-kilobites/second for 20-kilometers. This can also work for 3500-km range which is the distance equivalent to in which whales communicate each other with song. However for that long distance rate will decrease and would be 100 bits per second. The conventional underwater acoustic modems receives rate of few kilobits per second for 5-km in the shallow water.

Geoffrey Edelmann, who is physicist in US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, said that this time reversal method is regarded as the best way to improve the acoustic communication. He further said that Kupermann with his fellow researchers have achieved splendid results.

In his words;

“Their work is the best. I think they are leading the charge at the moment,”

Previous tests could not attain this long distance and high bandwidth links as achieved this time. Kupermann and his colleagues will present this technique in the coming Acoustics 08 meeting which will held in Paris on the 1st of July.