Observations of the bright side of the Moon with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected oxygen, magnesium, aluminum and silicon over a large area of the lunar surface. The abundance and distribution of those elements will help to determine how the Moon was formed.
“We see X-rays from these elements directly, independent of assumptions about the mineralogy and other complications,” said Jeremy Drake of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass, at a
Measurements of 11 exploding stars spread throughout the visible universe made by the Hubble Space Telescope confirm an earlier, ground-based study which produced the first evidence that the universe is not only expanding, but expanding at an increasing rate.
The new study, which has been posted online [http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309368] and will soon appear in the Astrophysical Journal, also provides some tantalizing new insights into the nature of the mysterious repulsive force, d
A team of scientists, led by Toshihiro Nakajima at the St Marianna University School of Medicine in Japan, has identified an exciting therapeutic target that may lead to the development of new treatments for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).
As published in the latest edition of Genes and Development, the scientists report the discovery of ’synoviolin’, an enzyme that is found in abnormally high levels in diseased joints. High levels of synoviolin are found to cause an overgrowth of join
The universe may have been created by an explosion within a black hole, according to a new theory by two mathematicians recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A..
“It’s a mathematically plausible model which refines the standard model of the Big Bang,” said Blake Temple, professor of mathematics at UC Davis and co-author of the paper with Joel Smoller, professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan.
In the standard model o
A ceramic material reinforced with carbon nanotubes has been made by materials scientists at UC Davis. The new material is far tougher than conventional ceramics, conducts electricity and can both conduct heat and act as a thermal barrier, depending on the orientation of the nanotubes.
Ceramic materials are very hard and resistant to heat and chemical attack, making them useful for applications such as coating turbine blades, said Amiya Mukherjee, professor of chemical engineering and mater
Philosophical transactions a November issue
Organised and edited by Carlos Frenk, George Kalmus, Nigel Smith and Simon White
What is the universe made of? How is it expanding? What is the origin of galaxies and other cosmic large-scale structures? These questions and some tentative answers were the focus of the discussion meeting on The search for dark matter and dark energy in the Universe, held at The Royal Society on 22-23 January 2003.
Astronomers have known fo
Teams of radiologists, scientists and radiographers from The University of Aberdeen, The University of Manchester and The South Manchester University Hospitals Trust will be using the R2 Technology ImageChecker to help detect potentially cancerous areas on mammograms.
The ImageChecker helps radiologists & radiographers in a similar manner to a PC spellchecker by automatically detecting and prompting suspicious areas on mammograms. It acts as a second pair of eyes and therefore could help to
Fabric has been dyed by the same wasteful method for over 100 years. This involves chemical agents being added to a dye bath and thrown away afterwards. A new process developed by EUREKA project E! 2625 EUROENVIRON ECDVAT (ElectroChemical Dyeing with Vat dyes) replaces environmentally damaging chemical reducing agents with electrons.
According to Prof. Dr. Thomas Bechtold of the University of Innsbruck’s Textiles Department, the new process can be more easily controlled. Using the conventio
During its growth, an embryo changes shape under the control of the so-called developmental genes. Emmanuel Farge, a researcher at the Institut Curie, lecturer at the Paris VII University, and member of the Institut Universitaire de France, has just shown that mechanical pressure applied to a fly embryo influences the expression of its developmental genes. So not everything is purely genetic and some features of the living cell are also mechano-sensitive.
It remains to be seen whether this
Three “Doppler On Wheels” (DOW) mobile radars developed partly at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are heading toward the mid-Atlantic coast to intercept the eye of Hurricane Isabel as the powerful storm hits land. Meanwhile, the nation’s next-generation weather model, developed at NCAR and other labs, is training its electronic “eyes” on a virtual Isabel at NCAR’s supercomputing center in Boulder. The DOWs will deploy at or near the coast in the direct path of t
Plant life in the world’s oceans has become less productive since the early 1980s, absorbing less carbon, which may in turn impact the Earth’s carbon cycle, according to a study that combines NASA satellite data with NOAA surface observations of marine plants. Microscopic ocean plants called phytoplankton account for about half the transfer of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the environment into plant cells by photosynthesis. Land plants pull in the other half. In the atmosphere, CO2 is
Galileo, the NASA space probe in which UK scientists have played a key role, will dramatically end its 14-year mission when it plunges into Jupiter’s dense atmosphere on the 21st September. The spacecraft, which has revealed a wealth of scientific data on Jupiter and its moons, with fuel and power exhausted, will vaporize like a meteor as its descends through the giant planet’s turbulent atmosphere (an artist’s impression of what this might look like is available – please see notes to
One of the nation’s most respected treatment centers for thoracic aortic disorders has launched a Web site that provides information on virtually every aspect of the subject, including aortic aneurysm and aortic dissection, the catastrophic bleeding that reportedly took the life of actor John Ritter last week. “I have been told by patients that this is the most helpful site on the Web. I hope we will be able to help many patients who have been unable to find reliable information on the
Neurobiologists at Duke University Medical Center have found the strongest evidence yet that monkeys show the same keen “social reflexes” that humans do — shifting their attention in response to the direction of gaze of another individual. The researchers said their findings mean that monkeys can provide a critically important animal model of how the brain controls what humans pay attention to in social situations.
Such a model would enable scientists to better understand how processing of
A team of researchers, led by Serge Przedborski, at Columbia University in New York, have demonstrated that infusion of D-beta-hydroxybutyrate (D-beta-HB) to mice suffering from Parkinson disease restored impaired brain function and protected against neurodegeneration and motor skill abnormalities. D-beta-HB, already utilized in the treatment of epilepsy, may represent a cheap and easy way to treat Parkinson disease.
Parkinson disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder afte
How do people subjected to the endless dark days of winter in the far northern latitudes maintain normal daily rhythms? Though many might feel like hibernating, a highly regulated internal system keeps such impractical yearnings in check. From fruit flies to humans, nearly every living organism depends on an internal clock to regulate basic biological cycles such as sleep patterns, metabolism, and body temperature. And that clock runs on similar molecular mechanisms.
Specific clusters of ne
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