GIRAFFE at VLT reveals the turbulent life of distant galaxies
Studying several tens of distant galaxies, an international team of astronomers found that galaxies had the same amount of dark matter relative to stars 6 billion years ago as they have now. If confirmed, this suggests a much closer interplay between dark and normal matter than previously believed. The scientists also found that as many as 4 out of 10 galaxies are out of balance. These results shed a new light on how
Imagine a space tool so revolutionary it can determine the impact of climate change, monitor the melting of glaciers, discover invisible waves, predict the strength of hurricanes, conserve fish stocks and measure river and lake levels worldwide, among other scientific applications. This instrument is not the subject of a science-fiction novel. In fact, four of them are already operating 800 kilometres above Earth.
Fifteen years ago this ground-breaking instrument, called a radar altimeter,
Digital vermin poses a real threat to RFID tags
Is your pet infected with a computer virus?
Has your dog or cat contracted a computer virus? It’s not impossible. These days, large numbers of pets and livestock have a small chip implanted under the skin so that they can be identified if they stray or turn out to be infected with a disease. As these chips only have a limited memory capacity, it was widely assumed that they could not become infected with a computer virus. Howe
About 1 in 10 Europeans has to contend with some form of depression during his or her life. But how people become depressed is still largely a mystery. With their recent research, scientists from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to the University of Antwerp in collaboration with scientists of the University of Umeå in Sweden, are lifting a corner of the veil. Their studies indicate that the TPH2 protein is involved in the development of depression and mani
Pity the brown dwarf. It’s too large to be a planet, but too small to be a star.
Although these “failed stars” are neither fish nor fowl, they play an important role in the cosmic scheme of things. Many astronomers think that they may actually be the most common product of the stellar formation process. So information about brown dwarfs can provide valuable new insights into the dynamic processes that produce stars out of collapsing whirlpools of interstellar dust and gas.
Nanoparticle’s shape could improve chemical sensing, biological imaging
Who better to invent “nanorice” than researchers at Rice University? But marketing and whimsy weren’t what motivated the team of engineers, physicists and chemists from Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) to make rice-shaped particles of gold and iron oxide.
“On the nanoscale, the shape of a particle plays a critical role in how it interacts with light,” said LANP Director Naomi H
The USGS and the Government of Afghanistan Ministry of Mines and Industry have completed the first-ever assessment of Afghanistan´s undiscovered petroleum resources and have determined that the resource base is significantly greater than previously understood. The assessment was conducted over the past two years, with funding provided by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.
The estimates increase the oil resources by 18 times and more than triple the natural gas resources.
Devising a nifty variation on a tested method to bind compounds useful in biological and medical research, a group of chemists at the University of Illinois at Chicago has discovered a new way to make permanent these bindings called ligation reactions.
The group, led by David Crich, distinguished professor of chemistry at UIC, reports their findings in the March 1 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Crich, graduate student Venkataramanan Krishnamurthy and post
Behavior of Scandinavian Ice Sheet at the end of the last Ice Age may preview loss of Greenland Ice Sheet due to global warming
The retreat of a massive ice sheet that once covered much of northern Europe has been described for the first time, and researchers believe it may provide a sneak preview of how present-day ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will act in the face of global warming.
The study, which appears in the current issue of the journal Science, was led
Experiment reveals layers of data missed by traditional ink fingerprints
In the future, law enforcement officials may take full-colour fingerprints using new technology developed by a University of Toronto-led team of international researchers.
Far from the basic black-and-white fingerprints collected today, the new technology would use elastic photonic crystals to capture data-rich fingerprints in multiple colours, but the fingerprinting technique is just one potent
Almost three metres of tightly-coiled DNA strands fit into a cell’s nucleus. As DNA replicates, the strands unwind and unfold and then re-package into chromosomes, the genetic blueprints of life – but what happens if this process becomes entangled?
Untangling the heaps of DNA strings during cell division is the job of special enzymes called topoisomerases. How they achieve this feat may be simpler than previously thought, says U of T research. In a study published in the current onli
In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of change and transition, often portrayed with two faces gazing in opposite directions. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Janus particles are providing insight into the movement of molecules, and serving as the basis for new materials and sensors.
“By modifying the surface of colloidal particles into a Janus chemical compound, we can measure the rotational dynamics of single colloidal particles in suspension as well as at int
Electronics based on carbon
Graphite, the material that gives pencils their marking ability, could be the basis for a new class of nanometer-scale electronic devices that have the attractive properties of carbon nanotubes – but could be produced using established microelectronics manufacturing techniques.
Using thin layers of graphite known as graphene, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States, in collaboration with the Centre National de l
NASA scientists have found that a major form of global air pollution involved in summertime “smog” has also played a significant role in warming the Arctic.
In a global assessment of the impact of ozone on climate warming, scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York, evaluated how ozone in the lowest part of the atmosphere changed temperatures over the past 100 years. Using the best available estimates of global emissions of gases that produce
Medical researchers at UNSW have shed light on a little-known mechanism involved in the thickening of arteries, a process associated with heart disease.
“Essentially we’ve uncovered a complex network of how one bad guy regulates another bad guy,” said Professor Levon Khachigian, of the Centre for Vascular Research (CVR) at UNSW. “We’ve also found a key to stopping this Mafioso network.”
Arteries thicken when tiny molecules are increased in blood vessels. Thes
A salt substitute specially formulated to be flavourful and effective has significantly reduced blood pressure among high-risk residents of northern, rural China, where home-pickled foods are a dietary mainstay and hypertension is rampant.
This simple approach announced today at the American College of Cardiology’s 55th Annual Scientific Session in Atlanta by The George Institute for International Health, offers a new low cost strategy for the prevention of stroke and other cardiova
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