Program speeds drug discovery

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today announced the release of a software program capable of quickly identifying molecules that show promise for future medicines. The software program enables drug makers to comb through enormous databases of potential molecules and identify the ones that have sound medicinal properties.

Rensselaer researchers with skills in computer science, chemistry, and math allied to create the software pro

An innovative set of tools that enable the use of component-based software engineering (CBSE) in the full lifecycle of applications will soon be at the disposal of small and big business.

Completed in October 2003, the ’software toolbox’ that resulted from the IST project, ECO-ADM, is now in its ’pre-commercial phase’ with the finished product expected to go on sale before the end of this year, according to project coordinator Joan Canal at Centro de Calculo de Sabadell

Cornell University researchers already have been able to detect the mass of a single cell using submicroscopic devices. Now they’re zeroing in on viruses. And the scale of their work is becoming so indescribably small that they have moved beyond the prefixes “nano” “pico” and “femto” to “atto.” And just in sight is “zepto.”

Members of the Cornell research group headed by engineering professor Harold Craighead report they have used tiny oscillating cantilevers to detect masses as small

The planet Mars possesses two small moons named Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror). Although their existence has been known since their discovery in 1877 and a number of long-range observations have been made by Earth-based telescopes and spacecraft that have visited Mars, the satellites remain only partially studied, particularly Deimos.

Consequently, a number of outstanding scientific questions remain concerning their origins, evolution, physical nature and composition. A recent study fund

UK plans for Grid computing changed gear this week. The pioneering European DataGrid (EDG) project came to a successful conclusion at the end of March, and on 1 April a new project, known as Enabling Grids for E-Science in Europe (EGEE), begins. The UK is a major player in both projects, providing key staff and developing crucial areas of the technology. While EDG tested the concept of large-scale Grid computing, EGEE aims to create a permanent, reliable Grid infrastructure across Europe.

Gr

Patterns in nature can be seen every day, yet in many cases, little is understood about how and why they form. Now University of Arizona mathematicians have found a way to predict natural patterns, including fingerprints and the spirals seen in cacti.

UA graduate student Michael Kuecken developed a mathematical model that can reproduce fingerprint patterns, while UA graduate student Patrick Shipman created a mathematical model to explain the arrangement of repeated units in various plants.

Black hole fits inside Earth’s orbit

Thirty years after astronomers discovered the mysterious object at the exact center of our Milky Way Galaxy, an international team of scientists has finally succeeded in directly measuring the size of that object, which surrounds a black hole nearly four million times more massive than the Sun. This is the closest telescopic approach to a black hole so far and puts a major frontier of astrophysics within reach of future observations. The scien

In this week’s issue of Science, a Dartmouth researcher comments about a new experiment that brings us closer to connecting the macroscopic and the microscopic worlds.

Miles Blencowe, a quantum theorist with the Physics and Astronomy Department at Dartmouth, wrote the article “Nanomechanical Quantum Limits” for the “Perspectives” section of the April 2 issue of Science. In it, he explains the problem of reconciling the inherent contradiction between the quantum or atomic world and the

These are exciting times for space exploration. For the first time in a generation, human missions beyond Earth orbit are being seriously considered by space agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Europe has initiated the Aurora programme, with the ultimate aim of landing people on Mars by 2033, while the U.S. has recently redirected its human space activities towards a return to the Moon.

On Friday 2 April, Dr. Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist based at Birkbeck College, London, will be

At present, we know of no worlds beyond our Earth where life exists. However, primitive organisms on our planet have evolved and adapted over billions of years, colonising the most inhospitable places.

Since life seems to gain a foothold in the most hostile environments, it seems distinctly possible that living organisms could exist in ice-covered oceans on worlds far from the Sun, according to Dr. David Rothery (Open University), who will be speaking today at the RAS National Astronomy Mee

A new survey made with the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) has revealed dozens of previously unsuspected miniature galaxies in the nearby Fornax galaxy cluster. They belong to a class of galaxies dubbed “ultra-compact dwarfs” (UCDs), which was unknown before the same team of astronomers discovered 6 of them in the Fornax cluster in 2000. Now they say the UCDs outnumber the “conventional” elliptical and spiral galaxies in the central region of the Fornax cluster and they have found some in the Virgo

An international group of astronomers led by Dr Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris) and Dr Martin Dominik (University of St Andrews) are about to continue their hunt for extrasolar planets with an enhanced world-wide telescope network in May this year. They are hoping to secure the firm evidence for the existence of Earth-mass planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, which has so far eluded astronomers. Dr Dominik will describe the project, known as PLANET (Probing Lensi

Genetic mutations – sudden, random and usually harmful changes to the structure of a gene – are only one factor that determines the ultimate fate of a cell. Chicago scientists have discovered that a non-genetic molecular process also can play a role, and that experimenters can influence this process in bacteria, they report in the April 1 issue of the journal Nature.

The research team, led by Philippe Cluzel, Assistant Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago, arrived at its finding

Optimizing space missions

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn was discovered by Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens in 1655 and certainly deserves its name. With a diameter of no less than 5,150 km, it is larger than Mercury and twice as large as Pluto. It is unique in having a hazy atmosphere of nitrogen, methane and oily hydrocarbons. Although it was explored in some detail by the NASA Voyager missions, many aspects of the atmosphere and surface still remain unknown. Thus, the existenc

Engineers at Purdue University are developing a system that will enable people to search huge industry databases by sketching a part from memory, penciling in modifications to an existing part or selecting a part that has a similar shape.

“It’s like a special kind of Google that lets you search for parts based on their three-dimensional shapes,” said Karthik Ramani, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Purdue Research and Education Center for Information Systems in

When the European Huygens probe on the Cassini space mission parachutes down through the opaque smoggy atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan early next year, it may find itself splashing into a sea of liquid hydrocarbons. In what is probably the first piece of “extraterrestrial oceanography” ever carried out, Dr Nadeem Ghafoor of Surrey Satellite Technology and Professor John Zarnecki of the Open University, with Drs Meric Srokecz and Peter Challenor of the Southampton Oceanography Centre, calculate