The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first-ever picture of a distant quasar lensed into five images. In addition the image holds a treasure of lensed galaxies and even a supernova.
The most unique feature in a new image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is a group of five quasar images produced by a process called gravitational lensing, in which the gravitational field of a massive object – in this case, a cluster of galaxies – bends and amplifies
Research initially aimed at helping partially sighted customers use chip & pin keypads has led to the creation of a device which will protect all customers from “Shoulder Surfing” – A method where a “criminally motivated” bystander can casually observe consumers’ secret PIN when paying for goods or services.
Neil Radford an Enterprise Fellow at the University of Warwick has worked with colleagues in the University of Warwick’s Manufacturing Group to create a special easy to
The results of a paper published in the journal Chest (1) show that alcoholic and ex-alcoholic individuals have a higher risk of suffering from community acquired pneumonia. Although mortality did not differ significantly, an increase of the severeness of the disease was shown, and consequently, an increase of the morbidity and the complications was revealed. This study was conducted by the Pneumonia Multidiscipline Group of Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, led by Dr. Antoni Torres, from the Insti
145 million years ago Scandinavia was hit by a tsunami, probably more intense than the one that hit Southeastern Asia in December 2004. Traces of this ancient tsunami are still left and these have been discovered by the geologists Vivi Vajda and Jane Wigforss-Lange at Lund University. The scientific results will soon be published in the journal Progress in Natural Science.
The site is located at Eriksdal, in the southernmost province of Sweden, Skåne. Scandinavia and the Baltic formed
Eating the right foods will make all the difference when it comes to footballing success for England during next month’s football World Cup.
Diet is an essential part of sports training today; eating the right foods and drinks at the right time can really make the difference when it comes to (any type of) sports performance.
But how do you know what to eat and what to avoid? Nutrition is a minefield at the best of times, so here are ten top diet tips(1) to help boost t
As the World Cup draws closer and football fever starts to take over, physicist Nick Linthorne has found out how players like Gary Neville can achieve the perfect long throw-in, which could be crucial in setting up a goal for the England squad. An article, A new angle on throwing, in the June edition of Physics World, describes how the physics of projectiles can be used to calculate the optimum angle at which a ball needs to be released to achieve the longest possible throw-in. The article desc
Rainforests and savannas contain 70% of the world’s plants and are critical to the health of our planet. A new £1.6m international project involving researchers from the Leeds Earth and Biosphere Institute is looking at the impact of global warming on these sensitive areas.
The researchers think we may be at the start of a vicious cycle, where global warming causes the rainforests to shrink, so increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, raising the earth’s temperature and
A team of European scientists reports that climate change estimates for the next century may have substantially underestimated the potential magnitude of global warming. They say that actual warming due to human fossil fuel emissions may be 15-to-78 percent higher than warming estimates that do not take into account the feedback mechanism involving carbon dioxide and Earth’s temperature.
In a paper to be published on 26 May in Geophysical Research Letters, Marten Scheffer of Wagening
The current decade will probably be known as the dawn of pervasive computing, when PCs were dethroned by technology to embed computers in almost everything. The hardware already exists to add features such as artificial intelligence and wireless connectivity to clothing or cars. Thanks to researchers, software is catching up fast.
“Hardware development has reached a stage where it is possible to have a fully-fledged computer with processor, memory and operating system on a board the size
When sea ice freezes, its salt separates out, and heavy salty water sinks to the bottom. However, it turns out that this process take place more slowly than we thought, which may have implications for our climate models.
Lars Henrik Smedsrud of the Bjerknes Centre at the University of Bergen and Ragnheid Skogseth of the University Course on Svalbard have been studying what happens when new ice and brash ice form at sea – a subject which they have been remarkably alone in study
An ambitious mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to make a new, high resolution map of the universe has just successfully returned its first pictures, and UK team members are delighted with the success. The AKARI (formerly ASTRO-F) infrared space telescope is making its All-Sky Survey at infrared wavelengths with sharper images and a much higher sensitivity than the first infrared astronomical sky survey satellite launched in 1983. AKARI will leave a tremendous legacy f
People who have suffered life’s hard knocks while growing up tend to be more gullible than those who have been more sheltered, startling new findings from the University of Leicester reveal.
A six-month study in the University’s School of Psychology found that rather than ’toughening up’ individuals, adverse experiences in childhood and adolescence meant that these people were vulnerable to being mislead.
The research analysing results from 60 partici
… the prevention of upper digestive tract cancers
Researchers at the University of Helsinki, Finland, suggest that cysteine containing tablets and chewing gum can be a new way for the prevention of upper digestive tract cancers.
It has been estimated that in developed countries up to 80 % of the cancers of mouth, pharynx and oesophagus are caused by smoking and alcohol drinking. According to Finnish researchers these epidemiological findings can at least in part be
Work in an MIT lab may help energy companies withdraw millions of additional barrels of oil from beneath the sea floor. Typically, companies recover only 30 percent to 40 percent of the oil in a given reservoir. Since a single reservoir may contain a billion barrels total, increasing that “recovery efficiency” by even a single percentage point would mean a lot of additional oil. Toward that end, Assistant Professor David Mohrig of earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences
MIT researchers are trying to unleash the promise of an old idea by converting light into electricity more efficiently than ever before. The research is applying new materials, new technologies and new ideas to radically improve an old concept — thermophotovoltaic (TPV) conversion of light into electricity. Rather than using the engine to turn a generator or alternator in a car, for example, the new TPV system would burn a little fuel to create super-bright light. Efficient photo
Study answers long-debated questions on fluid management in critical care
Results from the largest controlled clinical trial of fluid management methods in patients with severe lung injury provide important new information on the risks and benefits of patient care strategies currently used in the intensive care unit. The two studies that comprised the trial showed that for patients with acute lung injury or its more severe form, acute respiratory distress syndrome, less fluid
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