Plus: Factory-Destroying Malware, Passing Through the LHC Beam and Spicy/Cold Food Science.

Scientists Develop Artificial Skin
In a major leap forward for advanced robotics and artificial limb technology, scientists recently developed a type of electronic skin that can actually touch and feel to a degree that approaches the capabilities of real human skin.

Biotech researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University created the artificial skin using flexible semiconductor materials bonded to thin layers of plastic or rubber and arranged in micropatterns that retain the skin’s elasticity while transmitting strong electronic signals. The teams also employed specialized nanowires, which they compared to microscopic hairs, on the skin film to enhance sensitivity.

“The density and sensitivity of the electrical transmitters allows the skin to detect and transmit extremely precise patterns and delicate pressure — essential for activities such as typing, handling coins, cracking an egg, loading and unloading dishes, or anything that requires a gentle touch rather than sheer mechanical force,” Reuters explains.

The artificial flesh is able to sense pressure changes and respond to touch, meaning it could revolutionize the way artificially intelligent robots interact with the world, as well as provide more lifelike and sophisticated artificial limbs for human beings, but also.

“Our response time is comparable with human skin; it’s very, very fast, within milliseconds, or thousandths of a second,” Zhenan Bao, a Stanford University professor and one of the team members, told Agence France-Presse. “That means in real terms that we can feel the pressure instantaneously.”

The skin’s developers expect that it could prove useful for sending robots into dangerous environments — including outer space — to perform complex tasks traditionally reserved for humans. Eventually, it might also be possible to expand the skin’s abilities and use it to restore touch for people with prosthetic limbs, but Bao warned, “connecting the artificial skin with the human nerve system will be a very challenging task.”

Most Advanced Malware Ever Targets Manufacturing
Security experts recently identified the world’s first cyber super weapon, an extremely sophisticated piece of computer malware designed to attack programs used in critical infrastructure systems and production facilities.

“The cyber worm, called Stuxnet, has been the object of intense study since its detection in June. As more has become known about it, alarm about its capabilities and purpose have grown,” the Christian Science Monitor reports. “Some top cyber-security experts now say Stuxnet’s arrival heralds something blindingly new: a cyber weapon created to cross from the digital realm to the physical world — to destroy something.”

Specifically, Stuxnet’s targets include factories, refineries and power plants. The worm has already infected roughly 100,000 computer networks worldwide, attacking supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems from Siemens, which are critical for operating pipelines, utilities, nuclear plants and manufacturing facilities.

“It’s the most complex piece of malware we’ve seen in the last five years or more,” Nicolas Falliere, a code analyst at security firm Symantec, said at Wired.com’s Threat Level blog. “It’s the first known time that malware is not targeting credit card [data], is not trying to steal personal user data, but is attacking real-world processing systems. That’s why it’s unique and is not over-hyped.”

In fact, the Stuxnet worm is so large and advanced, many believe it could only have been developed by a nation-state, considering the amount of resources that must have gone into it. Speculation continues to swarm around the malware as experts uncover more of its characteristics, some of which raise further questions about Stuxnet’s intended purpose.

According to the Economist’s Babbage science and tech blog, “the possibility that it might have been aimed at one set of industrial-control systems in particular — those inside Iranian nuclear facilities — has prompted one security expert to describe Stuxnet as a ‘cyber-missile,’ designed to seek out and destroy a particular target.”

What Happens if You Put Your Hand Through the LHC Beam?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator and most expensive instrument ever, sets records for high-energy collisions, shooting protons at 99 percent the speed of light and producing trillions of electron volts around a 17-mile magnetic track. Naturally, it doesn’t seem like a great idea to stick one of your body parts inside.

But the folks at astronomy resource Sixty Symbols went ahead and asked some of the world’s leading scientists what they think would happen if you passed your hand through the beam. Their answers are surprisingly diverse, and sometimes weird:

Why Do We Eat Spicy Food?
Are you a fan of peppers, hot sauce and chilies? Ever ask yourself why you are and others aren’t? Spiciness itself is not a flavor, like sweet or salty, but a sensation that activates the pain receptors in the tongue. So, why we do continue to consume spicy food?

New research reveals the answer may be surprisingly simple: humans like pain.

At a recent symposium on “gastro-psychology” — the science of why we eat what we eat — psychologist Paul Rozin at the University of Pennsylvania explained that human beings are the only species we know of that specifically seeks out what should be considered negative effects. But spicy foods are unique in that category because, unlike other substances to which we have a natural aversion, such as coffee or tobacco, spicy foods have no addictive qualities to explain our continued consumption.

“While most scientists still do not quite have a handle on the human preference for spicy foods, the best explanation comes from a mechanism called ‘hedonic reversal,’ or ‘benign masochism,’” the Guardian’s Science blog explains. “Something happens, in millions of humans each year, which changes a negative evaluation into a positive evaluation, like flipping a light switch.”

Basically, humans like to hurt themselves. While positive reinforcement can be used to train animals to endure self-harm, humans seem to be able to derive pleasure from the negative sensation itself, meaning that the enjoyment of spicy foods originates from the discomfort of eating it.

“Humans and only humans get to enjoy events that are innately negative, that produce emotions or feelings that we are programmed to avoid when we come to realize that they are actually not threats,” Rozin told the New York Times. “Mind over body. My body thinks I’m in trouble, but I know I’m not.”

Brain Freeze Science
Spicy foods are at one end of the painful snack spectrum. At the other end, we have cold treats that can induce a state of “brain freeze,” familiar to any ice cream fan. Brain freeze occurs when a cold food or beverage is consumed so quickly it causes a sudden headache. But what’s the physiological cause of brain freeze, and can it have permanent effects?

“There are two schools of thought on what causes the ice-cream headache,” Popular Science explains. “The drink may chill the air in your sinuses and cause the blood vessels in the nasal cavity near your forehead to constrict, creating pain similar to a migraine. Or perhaps it touches off a branch of the trigeminal nerve in your mouth, triggering a pain response in the nerve that’s responsible for facial sensation.”

Even if a cold food were able to chill the brain’s temperature by a few degrees, it probably wouldn’t be harmful enough to cause permanent damage. In fact, neurosurgeons often drop patients’ brain temperatures by many degrees in order to alter blood circulation.

Although brain freeze can’t hurt you, it is uncomfortable. Luckily, there are some ways to help mitigate the pain and go back to enjoying your Slurpee. According to Wired, pressing your tongue hard against the roof of your mouth can help to thaw the palate more quickly, as well as breathing into your hands to heat your mouth. Of course, you could also just eat more slowly.

Have a great weekend, folks.