The Mediterranean looks better in the dark – at least in the view of an ESA-led effort to use satellites to take the daily temperature of Europe’s seas. A switch to data acquired at night is one of several improvements undertaken to enhance reliability and reach of Medspiration project outputs.
With sea surface temperature (SST) an important variable for weather and ocean forecasting – and increasingly seen as a key indicator of climate change – the concept behind Medspiration
Scientists have confirmed that climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, according to an article published in the Journal of Glaciology.
Using radar altimeter data from ESA’s ERS-1 and ERS-2, Jay Zwally, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and his colleagues mapped the height of the ice sheets and found there was a net loss of ice from the combined sheets between 1992 and 2002 and a corresponding rise
The Department of Physical Sciences at the University of Helsinki has acquired a state-of-the-art polarimetric weather radar. The new radar is reserved exclusively for research. Its most important meteorological research target is the physics of rain clouds, and scientists intend to focus on snow and sleet in particular. Snowfall and its polarimetric measurements have hardly been studied anywhere else in the world, although in the Finnish conditions, for instance, snowfall is one of the key weath
Infertility is a growing problem in our society. The number of embryo transfers performed in Europe (the last human-controlled step of the in-vitro fertilisation technique) increased by 8% between 1999 and 2003. Recent studies confirm this rising trend.
Despite the advances in IVF and other assisted reproduction technologies (ART), only 25% of embryo transfer attempts will lead to a successful pregnancy. In the remaining 75% of cases, the embryo fails to implant into the mo
A natural physical process has been identified that could play a key role in secure sub-seabed storage of carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuelled power stations.
With EPSRC funding, a team at the Centre for Gas Hydrate Research, at Heriot-Watt University is investigating how, in some conditions, seawater and carbon dioxide could combine into ice-like compounds in which the water molecules form cavities that act as cages, trapping the carbon dioxide molecules.
In the
EPSRC and Philips Research have announced a £6m agreement to fund research and training in biomedical technology. The research is aimed at the development of next generation diagnostic and monitoring technologies for medical devices. Prime application examples are likely to include health monitoring while travelling in an ambulance between a medical emergency and hospital, state-of-the-art biosensors for more general diagnostics and measurement purposes within healthcare facilities, and the r
The UK’s eight Research Councils have begun an initiative to assess the efficiency and value for money of their grant peer review process.
The UK peer review system provides an international benchmark of research quality and the project is based on a continuing commitment of the Research Councils and Government to the principle of the project-based peer review system. The initiative will provide evidence that will inform possible efficiency gains while maintaining the high quali
By joining forces under the Cottonstress project, CIRAD and Evogene set out to improve cotton tree resistance to abiotic stress, ie drought and salinity. This is a major challenge that CIRAD is keen to take up in order to stimulate economic development in tropical zones with low rainfall. Breeding resistant cotton varieties would discourage African farmers from abandoning their land in the event of drought.
For ten years, now, CIRAD had been studying cotton growing in the arid land
– Combinatorial biotransformation of biologically active compounds belonging to different chemical substance classes
…
Scientists have identified a handful of microRNAs (miRNAs) that appear to play a significant role in the development of platelets – blood cells critical to the body’s ability to form clots following an injury. They also say some of these same miRNAs, when acting abnormally, may contribute to certain forms of leukemia.
“Basically, we found that a specific set of miRNA genes are turned off in normal platelet development, but turned on in certain platelet-related leukemia cells,” says lead au
The unusual spokes that appear fleetingly on the rings of Saturn only to disappear for years at a time may become visible again by July, according to a new study spearheaded by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The spokes, which are up to 6,000 miles long and 1,500 miles in width, were first spotted 26 years ago by the Voyager spacecraft, said CU-Boulder Mihaly Horanyi of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. But when the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in
There is evidence that the McGinnis Glacier, a little-known tongue of ice in the central Alaska Range, has surged. Assistant Professor of Physics Martin Truffer recently noticed the lower portion of the glacier was covered in cracks, crevasses, and pinnacles of ice–all telltale signs that the glacier has recently slid forward at higher than normal rates. It has not been determined whether the glacier continues to surge.
Truffer, of the Geophysical Institute’s Snow Ice and Perma
Botulinum neurotoxin A can be either the greatest wrinkle remover or one of the world’s most potent biological weapons. To perform either job, however, the toxin must first find a way to enter cells.
But understanding how the toxin — one of seven neurotoxins produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum — enters nerve cells has proved elusive for scientists. Despite a decade-long search for the receptor by labs around the world, researchers had come up empty handed.
Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and Stanford University Medical Center are reporting compelling new evidence that the cholesterol-lowering drug atorvastatin could prove an effective therapy for preventing the progression of, and reversing the severity of, multiple sclerosis (MS).
In the March 16 on-line edition of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, they report the results of a study that looked at the use of the drug (marketed as Lipitor) in combin
Scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues have developed new research mice to help them better understand how the body makes and uses “good” cholesterol to protect against heart attacks and strokes. Their latest findings are reported in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“Being able to develop drugs to raise levels of good cholesterol depends on knowing more about the how and where the particles are formed,” said John S. Park
Optical fiber helped bring us the Internet, and silicon/germanium devices brought us microelectronics. Now, a joint team from Penn State University and the University of Southampton has developed a new way to combine these technologies. The team has made semiconductor devices, including a transistor, inside microstructured optical fibers. The resulting ability to generate and manipulate signals inside optical fibers could have applications in fields as diverse as medicine, computing, and remot
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