Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have combined two worlds – quantum physics and nano physics, and this has led to the discovery of a new method for laser cooling semiconductor membranes. Semiconductors are vital components in solar cells, LEDs and many other electronics, and the efficient cooling of components is important for future quantum computers and ultrasensitive sensors. The new cooling method works quite paradoxically by heating the material! Using lasers, researchers cooled membrane fluctuations to minus 269 degrees C. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature Physics.

Turns out, when a one millimeter square membrane of gallium arsenide is placed parallel to a mirror in a vacuum chamber and bombarded with a laser beam, an optical resonator is created between them that oscillates the membrane. As the distance between the gallium arsenide and the mirror changes, so do the membrane's oscillations. And, at a certain frequency, the membrane is cooled to minus 269 degrees Celsius -- despite the fact that the membrane itself is being heated by the laser. So, lasers can both heat things up and cool them down simultaneously, and if that confuses you as much as it does us, feel free to dig into the science behind this paradoxical bit of research at the source below. In other news, left is right, up is down, and Eli Manning is a beloved folk hero to all Bostonians.

Thus, laser light not only produces heat, it also aids in cooling.

Optogenetics might be a relatively unknown area of neuroscience, but it's one that, thanks to some new research, could soon find itself (and its rodental subjects) in the spotlight. For the uninitiated, it's the practice of manipulating animal cells using light (with a little help from gene therapy).  At the moment, the only real way to investigate animal cells is to knock out a function, usually by breeding a genetically engineered mutant. We can breed a fearless rat, for example. Obviously this takes a matter of weeks or months — and even then, we don’t have a way of interacting with cells in real time; a particular function is either on or off. That’s where optogenetics comes in. The first step is to make cells sensitive to light — neurons, for example — usually using a virus (a fairly standard technique for gene therapy). Then, lasers are used to control those cells. Using the rat example, first you would use a virus to make all of its brain cells optically-sensitive; then, in real time, you can test whichever part of the brain you like using lasers — or perhaps multiple parts of the brain at once.

Optogenetics has been hailed as a breakthrough in biomedical science—it promises to use light to precisely control cells in the brain to manipulate behavior, model disease processes, or even someday to deliver treatments.

A new era has begun with Operation MegaUpload.

"We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn’t think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us." Anonymous brought down the DoJ’s website, and a number of other sites including: justice.gov, universalmusic.com, riaa.org, mpaa.org, copyright.gov, hadopi.fr, wmg.com, bmi.com and fbi.gov and plan to raid on Sony.

The fact that the government and other firms were so easily breeched is likely to set alarm bells out across the world, particularly amongst corporate companies that supported SOPA publicly at any point.

A video published to YouTube — “Don’t Mess With Us” — heralds the action as the beginning of “a new era”, explaining that “this is a time of action, as a nation we might come together and fight the tyrants”.

An attempt to win a small court battle this week has put Mountain Dew in peril of losing a much larger war. PepsiCo, the soft drink's parent company, defended itself against a man who claimed he found a dead mouse in a can of the citrus soda. Experts called in by PepsiCo's lawyers offered a stomach-churning explanation for why it couldn't be true: the Mountain Dew would have dissolved the mouse, turning it into a "jelly-like substance," had it been in the can of fluid from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff opened it, 15 months later.

Key to Pepsi's legal argument is that there's no chance a mouse's corpse could survive, intact, for 15 months swimming in Mountain Dew.  While published studies have not been conducted on how rapidly Mountain Dew would dissolve a mouse, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the neon green soda can eat away teeth and bones in a matter of months, and would likely do quite a number on a rodent.

"I think it is plausible that it could dissolve a mouse in a few months," said Yan-Fang Ren of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, who has studied the effects of citric acid on bones and teeth. "But dissolving [the mouse] does not mean it will disappear, because you'll still have the collagen and the soft tissue part. It will be like rubber."

Read more at Scientific American

In the future, Apple might be using hydrogen to power its iPhones and iPods. Batteries as you know them may become a thing of the past for your Apple products as the company hopes to use hydrogen cells to produce lighter batteries that could last for weeks. The company is staying on the cutting edge as they have recently submitted applications for patents to create new energy sources for their products. The filings that the company submitted seem to have rather bold promises of allowing electronics to run for days or weeks without having to be recharged.

If they are successful, Apple’s new hydrogen battery would be lighter than today’s technology and could last up to weeks between charges, revolutionizing how society uses their gadgets. Admittedly, this feat will not be successful – even Apple acknowledges that “[i]t is extremely challenging to design hydrogen fuel cell systems which are sufficiently portable and cost-effective to be used with portable electronic devices.” At first glance, it’s hard to not wonder at the advisability of using a process that produces water as a byproduct when charging an electronic device. But, perhaps Apple already has something up their sleeve on that one.

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The garfish (Belone belone), or sea needle, is a pelagic, oceanodromous needlefish found in brackish and marine waters of the Eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea, etc. The fish lives close to the surface and has a migratory pattern similar to that of the mackerel, arriving a short time before the latter to spawn. It is long and slender, sometimes 2 or 3 feet (0.91 m) in length. From the North Sea, garfish migrate to shallow waters in April and May. They spawn in areas with eel grass in May and June. In the autumn they return to the open sea, including the Atlantic west of the British Isles.

Garfish are pelagic. They feed on small fish and leap out of the water when hooked. The garfish are oviparous and the eggs are often found attached to objects in the water by tendrils on the egg's surface. Garfish have unusually green bones (due to biliverdin) which discourages many people from eating them, but the green color is harmless. They are caught mainly in fixed nets along the coast in shallow waters. Garfish are eaten fried, baked, barbecued or smoked.

Photo credit: anka.anka28

Its pelvic fins are located in a posterior position as are its dorsal and anal fins. They are positioned for posterior flexing of the body.

Biliverdin is a green tetrapyrrolic bile pigment, and is a product of heme catabolism. It is the pigment responsible for a greenish color sometimes seen in bruises. Biliverdin results from the breakdown of the heme moiety of hemoglobin in erythrocytes. Macrophages break down senescent erythrocytes and break the heme down into biliverdin, which normally rapidly reduces to free bilirubin. Biliverdin is seen briefly in some bruises as a green color. Its breakdown into bilirubin in bruises, leads to a yellowish color.

Role in disease: Biliverdin has been found in excess in the blood of humans suffering from hepatic diseases. Jaundice is caused by the accumulation of biliverdin or bilirubin (or both) in the circulatory system and tissues. Jaundiced skin and sclera (whites of the eyes) are characteristic of liver failure.