The Six Parties of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) consortium have reached a decision in their negotiations, specifying the location of the world’s first energy-producing fusion reactor in Cadarache, in Southern France. The €10 billion project will generate multiple research opportunities for the Plasma Physics Research Centre at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

ITER’s future location in Cadarache will be doubly beneficial to EPFL.

A new website, biogeowarehouse.cse.psu.edu , offers a prototype for online access to an analytical toolbox that enables biomedical researchers to integrate dissimilar data from a variety of sources and extract the most useful information from it by posing queries.

Dr. Raj Acharya, professor of computer science who headed the site development project, says, “Right now, the prototype focuses on prostate cancer data but our online

Whether mapping genes, probing elemental particles or monitoring global warming, more and more scientists rely on massive data vaults located at universities and institutions around the world.

Now, researchers at 10 Florida universities have the infrastructure for a computer network that ensures that capability – one faster than any other education-based network in the Southeast and among the top in the nation in speed and capacity.

Two and a half years in the making

A research team from the Public University of Navarra has started a study of the design and development of absorbent materials that enable the storage of hydrogen, a clean fuel that can be used as an alternative to those derived from fossil fuels, such as petrol and diesel. The storage of this element is, in fact, a key process in the change over from internal combustion engines – contaminating and not very efficient, to cars with hydrogen fuel cells.

The project, entitled, De

In a dress rehearsal for the rendezvous between NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft and comet 9P/Tempel 1, the Hubble Space Telescope captured dramatic images of a new jet of dust streaming from the icy comet.

The images are a reminder that Tempel 1’s icy nucleus, roughly the size of central Paris, is dynamic and volatile. Astronomers hope the eruption of dust seen in these observations is a preview of the fireworks that may come 4 July, when a probe from the Deep Impact spacecraft w

University experts have studied one of Britain’s most prominent landmarks in a bid to discover how the latest satellite technology could make bridges last longer and remain safe for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists.

The team from The University of Nottingham’s world-leading Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy and Brunel University spent 48 hours on the Forth Road Bridge, which links the Lothians to Fife in Scotland, to find out how the bridge’s movements we

Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created the first example of a high-temperature superfluid: a new state of matter in which the atoms in a gas can move with no friction or slowing down whatsoever.

Reported in the June 23 issue of journal Nature, the work is closely related to the superconductivity of electrons in metals. According to Wolfgang Ketterle, the Nobel laureate who heads the MIT group, observations of superfluids may help solve lingering questio

For scientists who want to discern the complex chemistry at work in Earth’s atmosphere, detecting a particular gas molecule can be as hard as finding a proverbial needle in a haystack.

Frank De Lucia, professor of physics at Ohio State University , and his colleagues recently used their FAST Scan Submillimeter Spectroscopy Technique (FASSST) to make the job easier.

The technique offers a way for scientists to examine the spectrum of light given off by a molecule. E

Qualities of granular materials provide insight into both nature and industry

In separate papers appearing in this week’s Nature, researchers announce findings regarding the little-understood world of granular materials, systems of particles that can dictate the flow of avalanches, the quality of concrete and even the mixing of pharmaceuticals.

In both studies, the researchers developed new analytical tools that combine laboratory simulators with advanced computer simu

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered a tiny biological structure that is highly electrically conductive. This breakthrough helps describe how microorganisms can clean up groundwater and produce electricity from renewable resources. It may also have applications in the emerging field of nanotechnology, which develops advanced materials and devices in extremely small dimensions.

The findings of microbiologist Derek R. Lovley’s research team are pu

On 9 June, a powerful new 35-metre antenna, presently undergoing acceptance testing at Cebreros, Spain, successfully picked up signals and tracked Rosetta and SMART-1. It is ESA’s second deep-space ground station in its class and adds Ka-band reception capability and high pointing precision to the ESTRACK network.

Construction of the new ground station, located in the Spanish province of Avila, has proceeded in record time. Procurement activities started in February 2003, and

British astronomers today (June 24th) saw the first images from an ambitious new programme of discovery, the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS). The survey will scour the sky with the world’s most powerful infrared survey camera ( WFCAM) to find some of the dimmest and most distant objects in the Universe. UKIDSS will reach at least twenty times deeper than the largest current survey conducted at this wavelength. Infrared light can be used to study objects that are not hot enough to sh

The Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), together with the University of Kuopio and the Helsinki School of Economics, has developed a prototype for a service that can help consumers in their food choices. Consumers will be able to read product-specific information directly from a package’s barcode using a camera phone, or by using the service at home via the Internet. The service shows the energy and nutrition information of food and also offers the possibility to use a food diary and an

Project considered milestone for next generation of secure wireless networks

Sandia National Laboratories in cooperation with Time Domain Corporation and KoolSpan Inc. has developed a secure wireless Ultra Wideband (UWB) data communication network that can be used to help sensors monitor U.S. Air Force bases and DOE nuclear facilities and wirelessly control remotely operated weapon systems.

The new wireless technology also promises to be a gateway for a new generation of a

MARSIS, the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding on board ESA’s Mars Express orbiter, is now fully deployed, has undergone its first check-out and is ready to start operations around the Red Planet.

With this radar, the Mars Express orbiter at last has its full complement of instruments available to probe the planet’s atmosphere, surface and subsurface structure.

MARSIS consists of three antennas: two ‘dipole’ booms 20 metres long, and one 7-metre ‘mo

It is difficult to imagine modern life without plastics. Look around you, they are everywhere: pens, PC’s, lenses, furniture, etc. They are cheap, long-lasting and light and, moreover, they have good mechanical, thermal and dielectric properties, to such an extent that they have replaced wood, metal or glass in many applications. The polysulphone, phenoxyl or polycarbonate thermoplastics studied in this thesis are highly resistant (the last one being used for car fenders), ductile and flexible.