New search engine ranks papers by importance, and finds the free versions.

Imagine searching the Internet and being able to restrict your results to academic texts. Today Google launched a free search engine that aims to do just that. Google Scholar searches only journal articles, theses,books, preprints, and technical reports across any area of research.

A test version of the search engine is available at scholar.google.com, so you can try it out. In a search for the phrase “human genome”, for example, a normal Google web search throws back 450,000 or so hits, with genome centres and databases and other websites ranked top.

news @ nature.com – Scientists get their own Google

It is an idea that was popularised by Princess Leia’s plea for help in Star Wars: sending a 3-D hologram.

Now, two Japanese scientists have developed technology they hope will one day turn the humble telephone booth into a high-tech chamber for beaming holographic images.

At a Tokyo University laboratory, a woman stands inside a booth where a 360-degree digital camera surrounding her face sends data to a cylindrical tube. Soon, she appears to be staring out from the tube. Viewed from the side, only the side of her head is visible. Go round to the back, and only her hair can be seen.

Read the full article:
NEWS.com.au | Japan develops 3D phone

The amazing world of quantum computing has made a, well, quantum leap forwards, thanks to European scientists who have fashioned a practical “quantum memory” for the hypothetical devices.

Without a working memory no computer can process data, whether it’s the binary bits of today’s machines or the quantum bits, “qubits”, of tomorrow’s quantum computers.

But Danish, Dutch and Czech physicists report in the journal Nature that they successfully used a faint pulse of laser light to carry and trap “quantum information” into a gas of atoms – the quantum equivalent of an ordinary random-access memory. (more…)

It’s official: homing pigeons really can sense Earth’s magnetic field. An investigation of their ability to detect different magnetic fields shows that their impressive navigation skills almost certainly relies on tiny magnetic particles in their beaks.

news @ nature.com: Homing pigeons reveal true magnetism