ALOS, Japan’s latest Earth Observation satellite, was successfully launched at 02:33 CET (10:33 Japan time) on 24 January. Environmental data and imagery from ALOS will be provided to European and African users through a cooperative agreement between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) is a four-tonne satellite dedicated to land-based Earth Observation. It was lifted-off from the Tanegashima Space Centre on an H-

Princeton scientists solve a nanotech mystery

A team of Princeton researchers has untangled the mystery behind a puzzling phenomenon first observed more than a decade ago in the ultra-small world of nanotechnology.

Why is it, researchers wondered, that tiny aggregates of soap molecules, known as surfactant micelles, congregate as long, low arches resembling Quonset huts once they are placed on a graphite surface?

To fellow scientists and engineers, this que

Less sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface has not translated into cooler temperatures, according to a team of solar physicists at New Jersey Institute of Technology

Less sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface has not translated into cooler temperatures, according to a team of solar physicists at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The scientists, who monitor the Earth’s reflectance by measuring what is known as the moon’s earthshine, have observed that the amount of ligh

Narrow debris belts, like Kuiper Belt, may herald shepherding companion star

A survey by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of 22 nearby stars has turned up two with bright debris disks that appear to be the equivalent of our own solar system’s Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy rocks outside the orbit of Neptune and the source of short-period comets.

The debris disks encircling these stars fall into two categories – wide and narrow belts – that appear to describe all ni

Mechanical engineers at Purdue University have proven that the same sort of “deterministic chaos” behind the baffling uncertainties of the stock market and long-term weather conditions also interferes with measurements taken with a commonly used scientific instrument.

“The idea that chaos interferes with measurements in atomic-force microscopy has been sort of an urban myth over the years, but we have now proven this to be a fact,” said Arvind Raman, an associate professor o

Using recent Cassini, Huygens and Earth-based observations, scientists have been able to create a computer model which explains the formation of several types of ethane and methane clouds on Titan.

Clouds have been observed recently on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, through the thick haze, using near-infrared spectroscopy and images of the south pole and temperate regions near 40° South. Recent observations from Earth-based telescopes and the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft are no

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) is to receive the world’s most powerful microscope. The gift, amounting to almost 100 million Danish kroner, from The A. P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation will make it possible for DTU, in collaboration with a world leading supplier of microscopes, to develop a so-called Environmental Transmission Electron Microscope, which is five times more powerful than similar research microscopes currently in operation.

The gift fro

A new paper examines galaxy rotation curves without exotic dark matter and seeks to describe a modified Newtonian acceleration law derived from a relativistic modification of Einstein’s gravitational theory. Details are available in the January 10th, 2006, edition of The Astrophysical Journal 636, pp. 721-741.

The study is entitled “Galaxy Rotation Curves Without Non-Baryonic Dark Matter” and is co-authored by John Moffat, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Joel Brownstein,

An unusual pool of scientific talent at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, combined with new nanofabrication and nanocharacterization instruments, is helping to open a new frontier in electronics, to be made up of very small and very fast devices.

A new discovery by this group opens a path to new computer technologies and related devices, and could drive entire industries into the future, the researchers say.

The researchers learned that

A new method for exploring the secrets of Mother Nature’s frustrations has been developed by a team of physicists lead by Penn State University professors Peter Schiffer, Vincent Crespi, and Nitin Samarth. The research, which will be published this week in the journal Nature, is is an important contribution to the study of complex interacting systems, and it also could contribute to technologies for advanced magnetic-recording devices.

“We all would prefer to have less perso

Scientists at the Johnson Space Center in Houston were excited and awed Tuesday by what they saw when the sample-return canister from the Stardust spacecraft was opened.

“It exceeds all expectations,” said Donald Brownlee, a University of Washington astronomy professor who is principal investigator, or lead scientist, for Stardust. “It’s a huge success. We can see lots of impacts. There are big ones, there are small ones.”

Stardust returned to Earth in a spectacular re-entr

New view attained of electronic orbitals of separating molecules

Imagine you are standing, John Wayne style, on the backs of two runaway horses pulling a stagecoach. You try to bring the horses to a stop but instead the harnesses break, the horses separate, and an unlucky passenger gets thrown from the stage.

You learned, first, you are not John Wayne (because he always succeeded). But because you were standing at the heart of the action, you alone of all the bystande

Snow is the source of glacial deposits found at the base of the majestic volcanoes and mountains dotting the mid-latitude and tropical regions of Mars. Based on an innovative blend of geological observations and climate modeling created by a team of American and French scientists, the finding appears in Science.

Discovery of the source of the tropical glaciers ends a 30-year Martian mystery. In 1976, cameras aboard NASA’s Viking Mission to Mars captured unprecedented views of the

Pitt researchers develop nanoscale semiconductor islands small enough to hold single electrons

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a way to create semiconductor islands smaller than 10 nanometers in scale, known as quantum dots. The islands, made from germanium and placed on the surface of silicon with two-nanometer precision, are capable of confining single electrons.

“We believe this development moves us closer to our goal of constructing a q

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have made an important theoretical breakthrough in the understanding of energy dissipation and thermal breakdown in metallic carbon nanotubes. Their discovery will help move nanotube wires from laboratory to marketplace.

The remarkable electrical and mechanical properties of metallic carbon nanotubes make them promising candidates for interconnects in future nanoscale electronic devices. But, like tiny metal wires, nan

What is the future direction for agent-based systems, one of the most important software R&D areas in recent years? Drawing from a body of some 200 industry and academic organisations, a European project has released a strategic roadmap that hopes to guide evolution of the field over the next decade.

AgentLink III, as its name suggests, was the third project in the series and author of the roadmap. Funded by the IST programme, it addressed the current state-of-the-art and postul