MIT research on the most exciting questions in astrophysics and space science has been recognized by a $7.5 million gift from the Kavli Foundation that will jumpstart new studies of the cosmos.

“The Kavli gift allows us to invest in new scientific areas and new technologies at the forefront of these fields,” said Professor of Physics Jacqueline N. Hewitt. “We can bring new tools to bear on some of the most interesting questions before us: What is the dark energy that appears to

New in town and don’t know a soul! An evening free, but no idea where to go. What do you do? According to CATCH-2004, you consult one of their interactive systems for the information you need in your native language, and go straight to your preferred venue!

Working prototypes in Athens, Cologne and Helsinki

The CATCH 2004 IST project aimed to provide EU citizens with interactive, multilingual and multimode access to a wide range of information services and systems, offered

Yesterday, August 2nd 2004, particle physicists from the UK and around the world working on the BABAR experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the USA, announced exciting new results demonstrating a dramatic difference in the behaviour of matter and antimatter. Their discovery may help to explain why the Universe we live in is dominated by matter, rather than containing equal parts matter and anti-matter.

SLAC’s PEP-II accelerator collides electrons and their ant

On the evidence to date, our solar system could be fundamentally different from the majority of planetary systems around stars because it formed in a different way. If that is the case, Earth-like planets will be very rare. After examining the properties of the 100 or so known extrasolar planetary systems and assessing two ways in which planets could form, Dr Martin Beer and Professor Andrew King of the University of Leicester, Dr Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Dr Jim Prin

The weird behavior of electrons tunneling across an atomically flat interface within a cuprate superconductor has defied explanation by theories of high-temperature superconductivity.

As will be reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, a team of scientists led by physics professor James Eckstein at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has found a large particle-hole asymmetry in the density of states of excitations in high-temperature superconducting tunnel junctio

IBM and TotalStorage®-based Systems Improve Patient Care and Efficiency for Customers Worldwide, Including Brno University Hospital and St Michael’s Hospital

White Plains, NY and Erlangen, Germany, July 29, 2004 — IBM and Siemens AG (XETRA: SIE) today announced that they have signed a global agreement to deliver medical imaging management systems for the healthcare industry.

The IBM-Siemens relationship addresses management of the rapidly growing volume of digital medica

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Obtains Unique Spectrum of a Meteor
While observing a supernova in a distant galaxy with the FORS instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory (Chile), astronomers were incredibly lucky to obtain serendipitously a high quality spectrum of a very large meteor in the terrestrial atmosphere.

The VLT spectrograph provided a well calibrated spectrum, making it a reference in this field of research. From this spectrum, the temperatu

A prototype microscope that uses neutrons instead of light to “see” magnified images has been demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Neutron microscopes might eventually offer certain advantages over optical, X-ray and electron imaging techniques such as better contrast for biological samples.

Described in the July 19 issue of Applied Physics Letters, the imaging process involves hitting a sample with an intense neutron beam. The neutrons tha

The NASA Swift satellite, which will pinpoint the location of distant yet fleeting explosions that appear to signal the births of black holes, is due to arrive at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida today in preparation for an October launch. UK scientists, from the University of Leicester and University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, have provided key technology for two of the instruments on Swift.

Professor Alan Wells from the University of Leicester, UK Lead Investi

Last week in Washington, David Brailer — the national health information technology coordinator– told a conference of over 1,000 attendees that the United States Department of Health and Human Services will form a technology leadership panel to explore what immediate steps the public and private sectors should take to spur the federal government’s plan to advance health information technology. Over two months ago, President Bush announced the plan, which includes helping the private sector org

The Internet as we know it may soon be out of date but Europe will be playing a vital role in setting the standards for future communication, thanks to a €1.45 million project funded by the Information Society Technology (IST) Programme of the European Union’s Framework Programme.

The GRID is widely seen as a step beyond the Internet, incorporating pervasive high bandwidth, high-speed computing, intelligent sensors and large-scale databases into a seamless pool of managed and brokere

Scientists at the University of Sheffield and Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab have solved a 127-year-old problem about the origin of supersonic plasma jets (spicules) which continuously shoot up from the Sun. Their findings are published in today’s edition of Nature.

Spicules, are jets of gas or plasma that are propelled upwards from the surface of the Sun at speeds of about 90,000 kilometres per hour. They are fairly short lived, with each jet lasting only about 5 minutes, but r

Red Storm to be assembled in New Mexico

Red Storm will be faster, yet smaller and less expensive, than previous supercomputers, say researchers at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Sandia National Laboratories, where the machine will be assembled.
The first quarter of the $90 million, 41.5 teraflops (trillion operations/second) machine should be installed at Sandia by the end of September and fully up and running by January, says Bill Camp (Sandia’s Director of Co

Two of the biggest physics breakthroughs during the last decade are the discovery that wispy subatomic particles called neutrinos actually have a small amount of mass and the detection that the expansion of the universe is actually picking up speed.

Now three University of Washington physicists are suggesting the two discoveries are integrally linked through one of the strangest features of the universe, dark energy, a linkage they say could be caused by a previously unrecognized subatomic

IBM Clinical Genomics Solution Provides the Technology Infrastructure to Help Accelerate Information-Based Medicine

IBM today announced a new information technology (IT) solution designed to assist medical researchers and physicians bridge the gap between clinical research and patient care. By offering services and technology to identify the molecular mechanisms of disease and ultimately develop more personalized medicine, the IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences Clinical Genomics Solu

Grace and George, a pair of socially skilled robots developed by a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the Naval Research Laboratory and Swarthmore College, will participate in the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) annual Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition July 27-29, at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, Calif.

Grace and George are six-foot-tall, socially adept, autonomous talking robots with digitally animated faces. The robots will wor