To celebrate the NASA-ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 16 years of success, the two space agencies are releasing the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of Messier 82 (M82), a galaxy remarkable for its webs of shredded clouds and flame-like plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out from its central regions.
Located 12 million light-years away, M82 appears high in the northern spring sky in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. It is also called the ’Cigar Galax
Norrbottnian congenital insensitivity to pain, a disease that brings complete insensitivity even to injuries that cause severe pain in healthy people, is caused by a mutation in a gene on chromosome 1. This has been shown in a dissertation by Jan Minde at Umeå University in Sweden.
A life without pain may be thought to be desirable and is no doubt seen by many as an ideal existence. But pain is the body’s way of warning us of impending injury and is thus an important defense mechanism in dai
The Columbus laboratory is Europe’s cornerstone contribution to the International Space Station. Final integration has been successfully completed in Bremen. Columbus will be shipped to Cape Canaveral at the end of May, from where it will be flown on a Space Shuttle to the ISS in the second half of 2007.
During its planned 10-year operational lifetime, scientific researchers in Europe, with the help of the astronauts onboard and a Europe-wide support infrastructure on the ground, will
Until now, little was known about the physiochemical processes that determine the protective qualities of military uniforms (for example, for protection against poisonous gases). TU Delft researcher Michal Sobera has changed all this however through the use of computer modeling. He believes that within a few years it will be possible to calculate this by means of a realistic model of the human body with protective clothing. On April 25, Sobera will receive his PhD based on this research subject
Scientists have created a molecular switch that could play a key role in thousands of nanotech applications. The Mol-Switch project successfully developed a demonstrator to prove the principle, despite deep scepticism from specialist colleagues in biotechnology and biophysics.
“Frankly, some researchers didn’t think what we were attempting was possible,” says Dr Keith Firman, at Portsmouth University and Mol-Switch project coordinator, funded under the European Commission’s Future a
People, as they belong to the mammals, should be particularly interested in the problem of origin of this class in the animal kingdom that has conquered the entire world through evolution: not only the land, but, partly the ocean and the air. We have already known our ancient ancestors for long – these are medium-sized animals – eutherapsida (which means “real Synapsida”), they appeared at the end of the palaeozoic, approximately 270 million years ago, and continued to develop in the Age of
Micro-RNA, a special type of RNA found in brain cells, plays an important role in the mechanisms of human brain development and in the emergence of certain mental diseases. This hypothesis was put forward by Evgeny Rogaev, a Russian neuroscientist. It is based on the data from publications and his own research conducted in Russia and the USA.
Micro-RNA is a special class of regulatory RNA just 19-22 nucleotides in length. Such micro-RNAs are the products of operation of short genes that
A small but surprisingly efficient and multi-purpose thermograph has been developed by Russian scientists. It helps to measure within seconds the temperature of surface in the most detailed way. It also assists in diagnosing – be it a pipeline or a human being. It is able of diagnosing any object if the processes taking place in it somehow affect the temperature of its different parts.
“Naturally, there are a lot of various thermovisors now in general, i.e. the devices which allow to vis
Men become more jealous of dominant males when their female partner is near ovulation, researchers at the University of Liverpool have found.
Previous studies have found that women’s preferences for male physical appearance vary according to their fertility status. During ovulation women tend to find masculine looking men more attractive and prefer their voices and odour. During this fertile phase women are more likely to have an affair with a masculine-looking man, as their features ar
The School of Engineering at Bayonne (ESTIA) is working on a research project on control optimisation for the latest-generation wind generators using intelligent microsensors.
The latest-generation wind generators work at variable speed and with pitch regulation based on the pitch angle of the rotor blades. These degrees of freedom (the rotation speed and the pitch angle of each blade) enable an increase in energy yield, a decrease in fatigue due to mechanical loads and an enhanc
HEBE is an EU-funded joint research project involving Com&Media Projects and Services S.L., Fatronik, Ingema (the Matía Gerontological Institute) and Icavi – Bikain from within Spain; i know how, Zenon and Net Technologies from Greece; and the French companies, Wany Robotics and Lirmm.
By means of this biannual project a mechanism for the detection of falls and the monitoring of the activity of the elderly has been developed.
According to the statistics, 30% of elderly
The disadvantages of locking the front doors of psychiatric units outnumber the advantages by more than two to one according to a study published in the latest Journal of Clinical Nursing.
Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden interviewed 40 mental health nurses and nursing assistants working on seven Swedish psychiatric inpatient wards with locked entrance doors.
The majority of patients in their care (45 per cent) had been diagnosed with mood disorders, 33 per
To celebrate the NASA-ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s 16 years of success, the two space agencies are releasing this mosaic image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). It is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of M82, a galaxy remarkable for its webs of shredded clouds and flame-like plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out from its central regions.
Throughout the central region of Messier 82, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside in our Mil
It seems intuitive that genes are affected by selection as a result of environment. In fact there is little evidence thus far that such genetic effects impact year-to-year population dynamics. Of course to provide such evidence the right gene (that causes a specific genetic effect) needs to be studied and a detailed knowledge of the complex and powerful environmental factors against which this effect plays out is necessary.
In a new study published online in the open-access journal PLoS Bi
Coding for arthropods—what’s so special about insects and spiders?
The central dogma of molecular biology is that DNA makes RNA makes protein. This relies on a specific underlying code which relates given triplets of RNA nucleotides into specific amino acids. Each of the 20 amino acids is represented by one or more RNA triplets, or codons: UAC is decoded as tyrosine, for example, and UGC as cysteine. (U is the RNA nucleotide containing uracil, A is adenine, C is cytosine, and G is g
MIT bioengineers have devised a new technique that makes it possible to learn more about how cells are organized in tissues and potentially even to regrow cells for repairing areas of the body damaged by disease, accidents or aging. The method gives them unprecedented control over organizing cells outside the body in three dimensions, which is how they exist inside the body. It uses electricity to move cells into a desired position, followed by light to lock them into place within a gel th
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