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Microscopic origami boxes build themselves
Ian Berry/Magnum
IN BRIEF Telescope detects distant heartbeat
Move around to learn a language faster LANGUAGE classes of the future might come with a physical workout. People learn a new language more easily when words are accompanied by movement. Manuela Macedonia and Thomas Knösche at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, enrolled 20 volunteers on a six-day course to learn “Vimmi”, an artificial language designed to make study results easier to interpret. Half of the material was taught using spoken and written instructions and exercises, while the other half was taught with body movements to accompany
each word, which the students were asked to act out. Students remembered significantly more of the words taught with movement, and used them more readily when creating new sentences (Mind, Brain and Education, DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2011.01129.x). Whilst this may seem intuitive for words that have a physical counterpart, like “cut”, the pair were surprised to find the trick also worked for abstract words like “rather” that have no obvious gestural equivalent. Based on fMRI scans, the pair argue that enactment helps memory by creating a more complex representation of the word that makes it more easily retrieved. Unpublished results from tests in real language classes suggest that the method “could really speed up foreign language learning in schools”, says Macedonia.
Trees do bear some blame for acid rain RONALD REAGAN was right. Well, nearly. One of the former US president’s most ridiculed statements was that acid rain came from trees. Up to half the acidity in rainfall over the US in summer does indeed come from volatile compounds given off by plants – just not the compounds Reagan was thinking of. Formic acid is produced when we burn fossil fuels and biomass,
and when plant compounds called terpenoids are oxidised by sunlight. It contributes to acid rain in remote regions, but more of it ends up in the atmosphere than we could trace back to a source. Until now. New satellite data shows more than 100 million tonnes of formic acid is produced naturally each year – far more than thought and 10 times the total from all known
sources (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1354). Trissevgeni Stavrakou of the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy found the highest densities above tropical and northern boreal forests during the spring growing season. Lab studies and modelling pin the blame on terpenoids. A posthumous laureate for Reagan? Sadly not. He thought most air pollution was due to oxides of nitrogen.
TELESCOPE or stethoscope? While planet-hunting, the Kepler space mission has stumbled upon binary stars emitting pulses. KOI-54 was identified in January. Its brightness pulses every 42 days, when its two stars pass especially close to one another and the gravity of each deforms the other. The sides of the stars bulge, increasing the surface area observed by the Kepler telescope and contributing to the brightness spike. Although KOI-54 is some 1000 light years away from Earth, the Kepler telescope has now begun to pick up even smaller pulses in its brightness, beating 90 times faster than the main pulse. Jim Fuller and Dong Lai of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told the Kepler Science Conference at Moffett Field, California, that these microoscillations may bring more data on each star’s internal structure.
Tiny fold-up boxes build themselves ORIGAMI just got autonomous. It’s now possible to select the best flat starting shapes for making tiny boxes that build themselves. This is tough as the number of possible 2D cut-outs is overwhelming. For a simple cube, there are just 11 different options, but a dodecahedron of 12 pentagon faces has 43,380. A team led by David Gracias of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, made hinged nickel cut-outs, edged with alloy, using algorithms to choose the fastest-folding starting shape. Melting the alloy made the shapes fold into boxes less than a millimetre wide. The least spreadout folded fastest (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1110857108). 24/31 December 2011 | NewScientist | 11
IN BRIEF Telescope detects distant heartbeat
Move around to learn a language faster LANGUAGE classes of the future might come with a physical workout. People learn a new language more easily when words are accompanied by movement. Manuela Macedonia and Thomas Knösche at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, enrolled 20 volunteers on a six-day course to learn “Vimmi”, an artificial language designed to make study results easier to interpret. Half of the material was taught using spoken and written instructions and exercises, while the other half was taught with body movements to accompany
each word, which the students were asked to act out. Students remembered significantly more of the words taught with movement, and used them more readily when creating new sentences (Mind, Brain and Education, DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-228X.2011.01129.x). Whilst this may seem intuitive for words that have a physical counterpart, like “cut”, the pair were surprised to find the trick also worked for abstract words like “rather” that have no obvious gestural equivalent. Based on fMRI scans, the pair argue that enactment helps memory by creating a more complex representation of the word that makes it more easily retrieved. Unpublished results from tests in real language classes suggest that the method “could really speed up foreign language learning in schools”, says Macedonia.
Trees do bear some blame for acid rain RONALD REAGAN was right. Well, nearly. One of the former US president’s most ridiculed statements was that acid rain came from trees. Up to half the acidity in rainfall over the US in summer does indeed come from volatile compounds given off by plants – just not the compounds Reagan was thinking of. Formic acid is produced when we burn fossil fuels and biomass,
and when plant compounds called terpenoids are oxidised by sunlight. It contributes to acid rain in remote regions, but more of it ends up in the atmosphere than we could trace back to a source. Until now. New satellite data shows more than 100 million tonnes of formic acid is produced naturally each year – far more than thought and 10 times the total from all known
sources (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1354). Trissevgeni Stavrakou of the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy found the highest densities above tropical and northern boreal forests during the spring growing season. Lab studies and modelling pin the blame on terpenoids. A posthumous laureate for Reagan? Sadly not. He thought most air pollution was due to oxides of nitrogen.
TELESCOPE or stethoscope? While planet-hunting, the Kepler space mission has stumbled upon binary stars emitting pulses. KOI-54 was identified in January. Its brightness pulses every 42 days, when its two stars pass especially close to one another and the gravity of each deforms the other. The sides of the stars bulge, increasing the surface area observed by the Kepler telescope and contributing to the brightness spike. Although KOI-54 is some 1000 light years away from Earth, the Kepler telescope has now begun to pick up even smaller pulses in its brightness, beating 90 times faster than the main pulse. Jim Fuller and Dong Lai of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, told the Kepler Science Conference at Moffett Field, California, that these microoscillations may bring more data on each star’s internal structure.
Tiny fold-up boxes build themselves ORIGAMI just got autonomous. It’s now possible to select the best flat starting shapes for making tiny boxes that build themselves. This is tough as the number of possible 2D cut-outs is overwhelming. For a simple cube, there are just 11 different options, but a dodecahedron of 12 pentagon faces has 43,380. A team led by David Gracias of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, made hinged nickel cut-outs, edged with alloy, using algorithms to choose the fastest-folding starting shape. Melting the alloy made the shapes fold into boxes less than a millimetre wide. The least spreadout folded fastest (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1110857108). 24/31 December 2011 | NewScientist | 11