Of the billions of stars in the universe, the most massive play a crucial role but are the least understood. A major Leeds-led project is searching the skies to locate these elusive stars, and help us understand more about how the galaxies work.

“We know how big stars end – they explode as supernova and can form black holes – but we know little about how they’re formed,” explains Dr René Oudmaijer in physics and astronomy. “These stars play an important role in the evolution

The sequencing of the human genome was only the beginning of a much more complex task – deciphering the secrets of cellular chemistry and the mechanisms of disease. While the genome serves as a blueprint to understanding the body, proteins represent the materials that carry out these plans.

There are about 2 million distinct proteins in the human body. That’s a lot of proteins – and the future of personalized medicine depends on a better understanding of proteins, including their

Just as the printing press revolutionized the creation of reading matter, a “nano-printing” technique developed at MIT could enable the mass production of nano-devices currently built one at a time.

The most immediate candidate for this innovation is the DNA microarray, a nano-device used to diagnose and understand genetic illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, viral illnesses such as AIDS, and certain types of cancer. The ability to mass produce these complex devices would make D

The office that astronomer Lei Hao shares with her fellow research associates on the first floor of the Space Sciences Building at Cornell University is tidy and organized. But Hao has been thinking a lot lately about dust.

Actually, she’s recently found a great deal of it. And she’s thrilled.

The dust in question is between 0.88 billion and 2.4 billion light years away from Hao’s office, in galaxies scientists classify as active galactic nuclei (AGNs

Giant red blobs, picket fences, upward branching carrots, and tentacled octopi — these are just a few of the phrases used to describe sprites — spectacular, eerie flashes of colored light high above the tops of powerful thunderstorms that can travel up to 50 miles high in the atmosphere.

Most researchers have long supported the theory that sprites are linked to major lightning charges. Still, some scientists believe that conditions high in the atmosphere, like meteoritic dust

New radiofrequency device

The prestigious North American scientific publication, Physical Review Letters, has recently published an article about a radiofrequency device that was designed by a team of researchers at the Public University of Navarra, together with teams from the University of Seville and the Barcelona Universidad Autónoma.

The article is entitled, “Babinet Principle Applied to the Design of Metasurfaces and Metamaterials”.

The article is a r

Sometimes seeing a shadow can be as good or better than seeing the real thing. A new measurement method* developed by researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a case in point. The method uses the shadow cast by a small glass probe to infer the dimensions of tiny, microscale holes or other micrometer-sized components. The technique may provide an improved quality control method for measuring the interior dimensions of fuel nozzles, fiber optic connecto

GeoConcept of France, a leader in mapping and optimisation applications for businesses, has launched GeoScheduling Suite(tm) V2. This new version of the specialist software combines real-time and deferred optimisation of mobile resource timetables and provides productivity gains of 20% to 70% depending on the organisation. These optimised schedules guarantee perfect efficiency with better targeted operations, which are more pertinent, faster and less costly.

Travelling personnel sp

An international team of scientists has performed the most detailed ever study of the evolution of the Universe.

They have traced the evolution of the cosmos from the ’Big Bang’ 13.7 billion years ago to the present day — in a project similar in complexity to tracking the movement of every single person on Earth.

But instead of tracking people, the team — which includes University of Nottingham scientists — has modelled the paths of 10 billion particles of elusive

Sensors that detect and count single photons, the smallest quantities of light, with 88 percent efficiency have been demonstrated by physicists at the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST). This record efficiency is an important step toward making reliable single photon detectors for use in practical quantum cryptography systems, the most secure method known for ensuring the privacy of a communications channel.

Described in the June issue of Physical Review A, Rapid Commun

New images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show a large depression called Iani Chaos and the upper reaches of a large outflow channel called Ares Vallis.

To see images go to: www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/SEMIKO0DU8E_0.html

Image strips were taken in October 2004, during three orbits from a 350-kilometre altitude, with a

The Virgo consortium, an international group of astrophysicists from the UK, Germany, Japan, Canada and the USA has today (June 2nd) released first results from the largest and most realistic simulation ever of the growth of cosmic structure and the formation of galaxies and quasars. In a paper published in Nature, the Virgo Consortium shows how comparing such simulated data to large observational surveys can reveal the physical processes underlying the build-up of real galaxies and black hol

The ESTEC Test Centre is one of the four major test centres in Europe for the verification of spacecraft at system level, the others being Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft (IABG), INTESPACE (ITS), and the Alcatel Test Centre in Cannes. In general there is good visibility for these large test centres, and also for the Centre Spatial de Liège (CSL) centre of excellence for optics testing.

However, visibility for smaller facility providers is less evident. In fact there have

An unmanned Foton-M spacecraft carrying a mainly European payload was put into orbit by a Russian Soyuz-U launcher today at 14:00 Central European Time (18:00 local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Following the launch and nine minutes of propelled flight, the Foton-M2 spacecraft is now in low-earth orbit where it will remain for 16 days before its reentry module lands close to the Russian/Kazakh border.

During the mission European experiments and equipment

Satellite that could help solve mystery to be deactivated in September

Observations of a cosmic explosion detected on Feb. 15 by two NASA satellites have thrown into doubt one popular explanation for such explosions and have also seriously weakened the argument for yet another, according to University of Chicago astrophysicist Don Lamb. But solving the mystery any time soon may be forestalled by plans to shut down one of the satellites in September.

The explosion in que

Fifty years after his death, Albert Einstein’s work still provides new tools for understanding our universe. An international team of astronomers has now used a phenomenon first predicted by Einstein in 1936, called gravitational lensing, to determine the shape of stars. This phenomenon, due to the effect of gravity on light rays, led to the development of gravitational optics techniques, among them gravitational microlensing. It is the first time that this well-known technique has b