Lesley Cowling : Material World
Defence scientists in the United States are working on the ultimate smokescreen. They have developed an artificial fog that will keep the enemy in the dark but not the soldiers advancing under its cover. The new stealth camouflage, called Magic Vision, will not just confuse the gunners on the other side, it will also baffle their infrared detectors.
The details of the technology are hazy. According to New Scientist, it is still in early development and scientists are reluctant to discuss it. But the idea is that smoke cover will absorb or scatter radiation in the visible and short wavelength infrared. The smoke generator will be light enough for one person to carry. It will generate a cloud big enough to mask a small group of soldiers, who will be equipped with smokescreen-penetrating goggles.
It’s in the blood
A new computer test for cervical cancer could replace scientists peering down microscopes and remove the possibility of human error in checking smear tests, the United Kingdom-based Cancer Research Campaign said last month. The test, which measures the density of blood vessels, could help identify women in the early stages of cervical cancer. It has been known for some time that extra blood vessels are produced to feed growing tumours, but until now there has been no proof this process was seen in the very early development of cervical cancers. Now scientists have found that the development of new blood vessels is a good indicator of whether or not pre-cancerous changes are taking places.
Goodbye to the little green men
There may not be life on Mars after all. Last year a Nasa team shook the world by identifying ultra-small bacteria fossils in a lump of meteorite known to have been chipped off the Red Planet. Now a second team using the same techniques has come up with a different explanation. The things that looked like worms a billionth of a metre long are in fact accidents of geology, according to an article in Nature. The writers think that these worms are lamallae, or whiskers of magnetite on the surfaces of carbonate in the meteorite; fractures in the surfaces of crystals. The original discoverers are not convinced – they say elongated grains of magnetite can also be made by bacteria.
Manic-depressive gene
Researchers have confirmed that a gene related to bipolar disorder in families is located in the “long arm” of human chromosome 18. “If you think of all the human chromosomes as a city, we’ve clearly found the block where a gene that helps cause some forms of bipolar disorder resides,” says a researcher in the American Journal of Human Genetics. Finding the gene should help scientists make sense of bipolar disorder’s physical effects on the brain, and lead to tests and better treatments.