Did the Earth form with water locked into its rocks, which then gradually leaked out over millions of years? Or did the occasional impacting comet provide the Earth’s oceans? The Ptolemy experiment on Rosetta may just find out…
The Earth needed a supply of water for its oceans, and the comets are large celestial icebergs – frozen reservoirs of water orbiting the Sun.
Did the impact of a number of comets, thousands of millions of years ago, provide the Earth with its supply of water
Microfirms, companies with less than 10 employees, are essential to creative, expanding and healthy economies. Yet such tiny companies often lack the time and know-how to employ the latest broadband tools and communication techniques. The IST project NEWTIME aimed to address this problem.
Bedrock of the new economy
Microfirms are said to be the bedrock of the new economy. Micro-enterprises with less than 10 employees account for 93 per cent of Europe’s 20 million-plus comp
According to a new report, Asian/Pacific Islanders living in the United States earn more science or engineering (S&E) bachelor’s degrees than whites earn, relative to their college-age (20-24 year old) peers. Meanwhile, data on blacks, Hispanics, and American Indian/Alaska Natives show steady, although small, increases in the number of S&E bachelor’s degrees earned during the same period. The new, online report, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engine
The European Commission has today proposed increasing the European Union’s research funding to an average of €10 billion a year for the duration of the next framework programme, i.e. twice as much as today, and to devote it to six major objectives, including the creation of European centres of excellence, the launching of technology initiatives in industrial fields of growth and the creation of a European “agency” to support European basic research teams. In its strategy document entitled “Science a
It is now possible to copy gigabytes of information from Internet
Coinciding with the start of 2004 the Gipuzkoa-based company, Diana Teknologia, launched a new product within its GAMA DIB range of products dedicated to communication through Internet of data with a minimum channel consumption: DIB BACKUP REMOTO – enabling back-up copies of all the company’s data (PCs, laptops and servers) to be made on the Internet.
The rise in security audit and adaptation to LOPD has crea
CSIRO is breeding new ’high-vigour’ wheats so fast-growing they can out-compete weeds while maintaining high yields.
Weeds cost Australian farmers over $4 billion annually in chemical and mechanical control and yield losses.
“High-vigour wheats have the potential to provide significant economic savings and environmental benefits for Australian agriculture,” says Dr Greg Rebetzke, CSIRO Plant Industry.
“In field trials where wheat crops have to compete with weeds, the hig
A discovery by a University of California, San Diego biologist that some species of bees exploit chemical clues left by other bee species to guide their kin to food provides evidence that eavesdropping may be an evolutionary driving force behind some bees’ ability to conceal communication inside the hive, using a form of animal language to encode food location.
Bees can use two main forms of communication to tell their hive mates where to find food: abstract representations such as sounds o
A new study has found a possible mechanism for tamoxifen resistance in breast cancer and provides evidence that another cancer drug–gefitinib (Iressa)–may be able to restore tamoxifen’s anticancer activity. The study appears in the June 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Although adjuvant tamoxifen can reduce the risk of death for women with invasive breast cancer by about 15% over 10 to 15 years, many women do not receive any benefit from the drug. Even among
UCSF scientists have identified a protein on T cells of the immune system that triggers type 1 diabetes in mice when it interacts with another protein in the pancreas. They have shown that blocking the interaction prevents development of diabetes without weakening normal immune defenses or causing measurable side effects. The success provides a promising strategy against human type 1 diabetes, since the T cell protein has a counterpart in the human immune system, the scientists say.
The rese
’Big Bonanza’ and the Comstock Lode
Remember the burning Ponderosa map at the beginning of the long-running TV show “Bonanza”? It’s up in flames before you can read all the place names.
Now a geologist at Washington University in St. Louis has replaced that map with one of the famous ore site known as the Comstock Lode, a part of which is the “Big Bonanza.”
While it’s doubtful that Hoss, Adam and Little Joe – not to mention the sages, Pa and Hop Sing
Penn State environmental engineers have removed and replaced one of the most expensive parts of their prototype microbial fuel cell and the device now costs two-thirds less and produces nearly six times more electricity from domestic wastewater.
Earlier this year, the Penn State team was the first to develop a microbial fuel cell (MFC) that can generate electricity while simultaneously cleaning domestic wastewater skimmed from the settling pond of a sewage treatment plant. Now, they’ve
Hottest body outside the sun
The hottest spot in the solar system is neither Mercury, Venus, nor St. Louis in the summer. Io, one of the four satellites that the Italian astronomer Galileo discovered orbiting Jupiter almost 400 years ago, takes that prize. The Voyager spacecraft discovered volcanic activity on Io over 20 years ago and subsequent observations show that Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. The Galileo spacecraft, named in honor of the astronomer
’It’s a war inside a tree hole’
If you think your place is a dump, try living in a tree hole: a dark flooded crevice with years of accumulated decomposing leaves and bugs, infested with bacteria, other microbes, and crawling with insect larvae.
A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has studied the ecosystem of the tree hole and the impact that three factors – predation, resources and disturbance — have on species diversity.
Jamie Kneite
Researchers have shown that Darwin’s finches on smaller islands in the Galapagos archipelago have weaker immune responses to disease and foreign pathogens—findings that could help explain why island populations worldwide are particularly susceptible to disease.
A paper, written by University of Michigan researcher Johannes Foufopoulos, an assistant professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment who specializes in disease ecology, and collaborators from Princeton Univers
New research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provides insights into the fundamental mechanisms controlling blood vessel formation and may have implications for therapies such as non-surgical restoration of circulation.
The study findings appear in the June 15 issue of the journal Blood.
Blood vessel formation, or angiogenesis, is an integral part of normal organ development and function. It also contributes to abnormal conditions, particularly tumor formation an
Even after a century of research, the workings of brain cells remain somewhat mysterious. But USC scientists have uncovered new clues into how neurons process information
Researchers from USC and the Technion Medical School in Israel have uncovered new clues into the mystery of the brain’s ultra-complicated cells known as neurons.
Their findings — appearing in this month’s issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience — contradict a widely accepted idea regarding the “arithmetic”
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