A small autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, named Spray was launched yesterday about 12 miles southeast of Bermuda. The two-meter-(6-foot)-long orange glider with a four-foot wingspan will slowly make its way northwest, crossing the Gulf Stream and reaching the continental shelf on the other side before turning around and heading back to Bermuda, where it will be recovered in July.
The voyage will be the vehicle’s second trip across the Gulf Stream.Spray made history last
Clearstream has been rated as the leading global provider of Tri-Partite Repo services to the international securities market for 2005 by the closely-watched annual survey undertaken by the respected Global Custodian magazine. The survey conducts a detailed review of a wide range of service elements ranging from collateral optimization through to reporting and communications.
For the fourth time in the last five years, Clearstream has achieved the highest overall scores and has increased
Join birds, bats and dolphins as vocal learners
Elephants learn to imitate sounds that are not typical of their species, the first known example after humans of vocal learning in a non-primate terrestrial mammal. The discovery, reported in today’s Nature, further supports the idea that vocal learning is important for maintaining individual social relationships among animals that separate and reunite over time, like dolphins and whales, some birds, and bats.
Researchers f
By studying a little-known yeast too primitive to get diseases, Johns Hopkins researchers have uncovered a surprising link between two processes at play in heart disease and cancer in people.
In experiments with yeast known as S. pombe, the researchers discovered that a gene that helps the organism make cholesterol also helps it survive when oxygen is scarce. The finding, described in the March 25 issue of Cell, offers a new strategy for killing infectious yeast, but it also su
Firefighters face a high chance of injury or death whether on the scene of a fire, on the way to a fire or even during training–with an estimated 81,000 injuries and 100 deaths in 2002 alone. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently released a study* that estimates the cost in 2002 of addressing firefighter injuries and of efforts to prevent them to be $2.8 billion to $7.8 billion per year.
The study, conducted by the TriData Division of System Plannin
A new reference standard from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may help genetics labs develop improved methods of searching for a mutant needle in a DNA haystack.
A single DNA molecule carrying part of a person’s genetic code is a chain of basic chemical units called nucleotides. The number of nucleotides can range from about 16,500 in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to several million in nuclear DNA. A key mutation in a DNA strand may involve only a singl
Patterns of noise–normally considered flaws–in images of an ultracold cloud of potassium provide the first-ever visual evidence of correlated ultracold atoms, a potentially useful tool for many applications, according to physicists at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Described in the March 21 online issue of Physical Review Letters,* the noise analysis method could, in principle, be use
A pair of leading scientists who study songbirds as models for understanding the human brain and how humans acquire language say it’s time for the burgeoning field to begin singing a different tune and study a wider variety of species.
Michael Beecher and Eliot Brenowitz, University of Washington professors of psychology and biology, say that while a great deal of knowledge has been gleaned by studying songbirds over the past three decades, a narrow focus on just a few spe
Responses to the following questions: “How legitimate are in citizens’ opinion the methods of income distribution in the society? To what extent is the existing disparity justified in public opinion?” are given by recently published findings of the international surveys conducted in 25 countries of the world.
The first group of questions related to income differences, hostility between the rich and the poor, and the concept that big income differences are needed for the countr
Researchers from St. Petersburg have ascertained that formation of a child’s sex depends, among other things, on the geomagnetic field status at the time of conception.
Who will be born – a boy or a girl? The answer to this question that worries all parents is determined by a lot of conditions, including external ones. The scientists of the Central Scientific-Research Institute of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Ministry of Health Care of the Russian Federation (St. Petersburg)
Siberian researchers have developed a biologically active sorbent of a new generation. The sorbent provides for the 100-percent efficient water purification from microorganisms and bacteriophages. Microbiological researches were performed with partial support of the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) grant.
Specialists of the Tomsk Polytechnical University and Scientific Research Institute “Microorganism Culture Collection” (VECTOR State Research Center
If you speak only one language, do not feel upset. Simultaneously with your native language or perhaps even earlier, you have learned one more language – a visual one. A person perceives everything around through the eyes. The eyes “speak” their own special language. This language has letters, words and even grammar rules. Psychologists from Moscow State University have come to this conclusion. Their effort has been supported by the Russian Humanitarian Research Foundation.
Human v
The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board welcomes the peer reviewed study published in the April issue of Nature Biotechnology detailing the development of a new variety of Golden Rice that contains approximately 23 times more beta-carotene or “pro-vitamin A” than the original Golden Rice variety.The human body converts beta-carotene to Vitamin A.
The Board encourages further research to determine how the new variety may play a part in the ongoing global effort to fight vitamin A d
In orbit for three and a half years now, ESA’s smallest Earth Observation satellite is making a big contribution to science, a workshop heard this week. Proba applications range from studying land vegetation to water quality monitoring, assessing productivity of Italian vineyards, even helping hunt for meteorite impact craters.
ESA’s Proba microsatellite is about the same size and shape as a washing machine. It was launched on 22 October 2001 as a one-year technology de
The first nationally accredited training course aimed at improving the lives of people with dementia is being launched at the University of Sunderland.
The distance learning course for professionals will help further raise the level of care offered to thousands of people across the country living with dementia. Sunderland has teamed up with the Alzheimer’s society, BUPA care homes and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to provide the new course, ‘an introduction to dementia care’
In the March 25th 2005 issue of Science Magazine, the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) team of international astrophysicists, including UK astronomers from the University of Durham, report results of a first sensitive survey of the central part of our galaxy in very high energy (VHE) gamma-rays. Included among the new objects discovered are two ‘dark accelerators’ – mysterious objects that are emitting energetic particles, yet apparently have no optical or x-ray counterpart.
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