The fins of the heating head of a stirling-engine will be strongly contaminated by the combustion with biomass with dust and smoke particles so that the heat…

Previously unknown nickel complexes with new amino-substituted and hydroxy-substituted phosphino-acetic acid ligands are suitable as catalysts for ethylene…

ESA’s Venus Express has returned the first-ever images of the hothouse planet’s south pole from a distance of 206 452 kilometres, showing surprisingly clear structures and unexpected detail. The images were taken 12 April during the spacecraft’s initial capture orbit after successful arrival on 11 April 2006.

Engineers have lost no time in switching on several of the instruments and yesterday the VMC (Venus Monitoring Camera) and VIRTIS (Visible and Infrared Thermal Imagin

Huge Astronomical Image of ’Empty Space’ Obtained with ESO Telescope

An image made of about 300 million pixels is being released by ESO, based on more than 64 hours of observations with the Wide-Field Camera on the 2.2m telescope at La Silla (Chile). The image covers an ’empty’ region of the sky five times the size of the full moon, opening an exceptionally clear view towards the most distant part of our universe. It reveals objects that are 100 million time

The research group GMBM (Biomimetic and multifunctional materials) of the University of Seville is working on the creation of fuel batteries with protonic conductor membranes. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is funding this line of research.

The director of GMBM, Julián Martínez Fernández, has been collaborating with the NASA-Glenn Research Center (in Cleveland, Ohio) for thirteen years. The University of Seville’s project, funded with 200,000 €Euros, consi

High-tech systems that will aid CCTV cameras in the identification of people carrying concealed guns are being developed at Loughborough University.

Gun crime is a growing problem in the UK, with almost 11,000 firearm offences recorded in England and Wales in 2004/2005 – an increase of six per cent from the previous year.

The aim of the MEDUSA (Multi Environment Deployable Universal Software Application) project is to try and reduce the occurrence of gun crime by developing

ESF Forward Look launched in order to keep Europe at the forefront of computational science.

Computational science in Europe is set to receive a boost from a new Forward Look to be launched this year by the European Science Foundation.

Europe still plays a leading role in the development of computational techniques and programs, particularly for the simulation of materials at the atomic scale, and researchers continuously utilise these programs and codes as tools. As

Anyone who has ever been told by their doctor to steer clear of certain foods, lower their calorie intake or cut down on salt knows just how hard it can be to avoid temptation and stay motivated. A virtual healthcare assistant is being developed to offer a guiding hand.

The personalised information system being created by the PIPS project will give users access to real-time healthcare advice anywhere at anytime over mobile and fixed-line devices, helping them to consistently make

Yesterday, at the end of a 153-day and 400-million km cruise into the inner Solar System beginning with its launch on 9 November 2005, ESA’s Venus Express space probe fired its main engine at 09:17 CEST for a 50-minute burn, which brought it into orbit around Venus.

With this firing, the probe reduced its relative velocity toward the planet from 29,000 to about 25,000 km/h and was captured by its gravity field. This orbit insertion manoeuvre was a complete success.

Du

Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (April 11, 2006) the precision measurement of extremely rapid transitions between matter and antimatter. As amazing as it may seem, it has been known for 50 years that very special species of subatomic particles can make spontaneous transitions between matter and antimatter. In this exciting new result, CDF physicists measured the rate of the matter-antimatter transitions f

Anyone who has ever been told by their doctor to steer clear of certain foods, lower their calorie intake or cut down on salt knows just how hard it can be to avoid temptation and stay motivated. A virtual healthcare assistant is being developed to offer a guiding hand.

The personalised information system being created by the PIPS project will give users access to real-time healthcare advice anywhere at anytime over mobile and fixed-line devices, helping them to consistently make the best

Timeline of events during the Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) manoeuvre, marking arrival of ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft at its destination on 11 April.

VOI is a series of telecommands, engine burns and manoeuvres designed to slow the spacecraft from a velocity of 29 000 kilometres per hour relative to Venus to an entry velocity some 15 percent slower, allowing it to be captured into orbit around the planet.

Time (CEST) Event
09:17 VEX main engine burn starts

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the Galle Crater, an impact crater located on the eastern rim of the Argyre Planitia impact basin on Mars.

The HRSC obtained these images during orbits 445, 2383, 2438, 2460 and 2493 with a ground resolution ranging between 10-20 metres per pixel, depending on location within the image strip.

The images show Crater Galle lying to the east of the Argyre Planitia impact basi

A researcher at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech is developing a database and computational tools to help scientists learn more about how certain genes in tomatoes affect the crop’s flavor and nutritional value.

The Tomato Metabolite Database, which is being implemented by Zhangjun Fei, a senior bioinformatics scientist in VBI’s Cyberinfrastructure Group, will be used to store a wide range of information and data about tomato, including microarray and

VLT FORS Image of the Inner Parts of the Tarantula Nebula

Hanging above the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – one of our closest galaxies – in what some describe as a frightening sight, the Tarantula nebula is worth looking at in detail. Also designated 30 Doradus or NGC 2070, the nebula owes its name to the arrangement of its brightest patches of nebulosity that somewhat resemble the legs of a spider. This name, of the biggest spiders on the Earth, is also very fitting in view of the

An international team of astronomers today is reporting on a discovery of a star exploding inside another star. The discovery is helping astronomers learn more about the structure of a red giant star, how shock waves move through a star and revealing how one type of binary star system goes through the end stages of its life, the astronomers report.

Speaking at the National Astronomy Meeting in Leicester, U.K., the international team of 14 astronomers described what they saw