One lump of rock is revealed as two in the distant Kuiper belt.
The stand-offish dance of two asteroids at the outer reaches of the Solar System is captivating astronomers. The two rocky objects, discovered locked in mutual orbit, could tell us about the properties of the far-flung Kuiper belt.
Christian Veillet and his team 1 studied an object called 1998 WW31 in the Kuiper belt, a sparsely populated region of space beyond the orbit of Neptune. The object w
Brass instrument makers could soon be using the latest technology to refine the manufacturing of trumpets and cornets. An improved way of taking internal measurements of musical instruments, published today in the Institute of Physics journal, Measurement Science and Technology, has been developed by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, the Open University and Smith-Watkins Brass.
In a trumpet or cornet the musical qualities of the instrument, for example the tone, response and intonat
Optimism about the success of heart and lung transplants at the start of the 1990s is not supported by the evidence, shows an audit of the procedure, published in Heart.
Transplants continue to be hampered by the high death rates after surgery and a shortage of suitable donors, finds the study. Almost half of those waiting for a lung transplant will not receive one, and at least a quarter will die within two years of being listed.
All nine UK units performing heart, lung, or heart
Women who work during pregnancy are almost five times as likely to develop pre-eclampsia, concludes research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
In pre-eclampsia abnormally high blood pressure, blood poisoning, and swelling develop. Pre-eclampsia can be dangerous for both mother and child.
The blood pressure of 933 women in their early to late 20s was monitored over 24 hours while they went about their daily routines. The women were all between 18 and 24 weeks of pr
The impact of heat on death rates begins at relatively low temperatures during hot weather, finds research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Researchers analysed temperature readings from the Meteorological Office and death rates from the Office of National Statistics for London between 1976 and 1996.
They found that death rates associated with heat started rising at about 19 degrees Centigrade (66 degrees Farenheit), and once above 21.5 degrees Centigrade (abou
Chemists put biological catalysts to work in clean industrial solvents.
In a move towards cleaner chemical processing, researchers in Spain and France have worked out how to use enzymes as catalysts using two ’green’ solvents: one to dissolve the enzyme, the other to dissolve the materials it transforms.
In some industrial processes chemists have replaced polluting organic solvents, such as chlorine and benzene, with supercritical carbon dioxide. This is the liquid
Random vibrations can generate rotation.
A simple top converts foghorn noise to one-way spin. The device raises the hope that useful energy could be collected from ambient sounds. Normally, random vibrations, which physicists and engineers call noise, produce useless random motion. You can’t move a cart from A to B by shoving it randomly in every direction.
But in the new device, made by Yaroslav Zolotaryuk of the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby and colleagues
P3P gives people more control over use of personal information on the Web
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language for expressing Web site privacy policies. Declaring P3P a W3C Recommendation indicates that it is a stable document, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread adoption.
Exposure to less than one part per billion of the most commonly used herbicide in the U.S. can feminize male frogs, according to a new study. The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that concentrations of chemicals considered safe for humans can have insidious effects on amphibians and could be contributing to the global decline in their populations.
Tyrone B. Hayes of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues studied the ef
Hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia and antisocial or aggressive behaviour in children can be traced back to what they eat. According to Dr Neil Ward from the University of Surrey’s Chemistry department, some children can react to the additives, preservatives and colourants in food products, causing certain behavioural problems. “Parents should identify the products which cause the reaction and eliminate it from the child’s diet,” he said.
Dr Ward monitored groups of children
A project to develop effective techniques for the ‘surface pasteurisation’ of food led by the University of Bristol is being helped by a new technique developed by scientists at the University of the West of England. Officially titled ‘BUGDEATH’ the project, which in total has eight partners, is aimed at ‘Predicting microbial death during heat treatments on foods’.
Researchers based at the University of Bristol Food Refrigeration and Process Engineering Centre, have been looking at ‘steam p
Waiting lists will not be eliminated by makeshift measures like a policy on absenteeism or recruiting people returning to work after having a family. The best way to balance supply and demand in the health care services is the application of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and in particular telemedicine. These are care innovations of the future for which government will also have to open their pockets. This was the political message brought by prof.ir. Theo de Vries in his inaugural le
A research group of the Microtechnology Centre at Chalmers, MC2, at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden, has developed an ultra-sensitive device for detecting the presence of organic molecules present in space. Organic material as far away from us as many thousands of light years can be discovered this way. The sensor, which has a world record for sensing low amounts of heat, will be a vital part in satellite systems for the Herschel Mission, a remote sensing satellite project at th
Blood vessel prostheses work best when the biochemical and mechanical properties match reality as much as possible and when they are made of biodegradable material. To this end tissue technologists grow natural vascular wall cells, endothelial cells, in a biodegradable tube made of collagen. According to Professor István Vermes tissue technologists are overly concerned with developing stem cells, necessary to build blood vessels, and not enough with the development of the vascular skeleton or scaffo
A joint ESA and UNESCO scheme to keep watch on endangered gorilla habitats from space is the subject of a two-day ESRIN workshop this week.
Representatives of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the World Wildlife Fund, the International Gorilla Conservation Fund and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International and United Nations Environment Programme are among those who will attend the meeting in Frascati near Rome to discuss possible partnership and agr
Invading insect empire stretches 6,000 kilometres.
An invading empire has conquered Europe. One super-colony of South American ants, with millions of nests and billions of individuals, stretches 6,000 kilometres around the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, researchers have found.
Every ant in the colony treats every other as its nest-mate – even though they may be quite unrelated. The nests have buried their differences to create the largest cooperative unit ever discovered
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