Semantic Web emerges as commercial-grade infrastructure for sharing data on the Web

Today, the World Wide Web Consortium announced final approval of two key Semantic Web technologies, the revised Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). RDF and OWL are Semantic Web standards that provide a framework for asset management, enterprise integration and the sharing and reuse of data on the Web. These standard formats for data sharing span application, enterp

’Smart vivarium’ could enable better care of laboratory animals

Computer scientists and animal care experts at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have come up with a new way to automate the monitoring of mice and other animals in laboratory research. Combining cameras and distributed, non-invasive sensors with elements of computer vision, information technology and artificial intelligence, the Smart Vivarium project aims to enhance the quality of animal research, while at

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found a way to significantly improve the performance of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers by drilling holes in their surfaces. Faster and cheaper long-haul optical communication systems, as well as photonic integrated circuits, could be the result.

Low-cost VCSELs are currently used in data communication applications where beam quality is of little importance. To operate at higher speeds and over longer distances, the

If comets hitting the Earth could cause ecological disasters, including extinctions of species and climate change, they could also disperse Earth-life to the most distant parts of the Galaxy.

The “splash-back” from a large comet impact could throw material containing micro-organisms out of the planet’s atmosphere, suggest scientists from Cardiff University Centre for Astrobiology.

Although some of this outflowing material might become sterilised by heat and radiation, they believ

View from overhead of the the complex caldera (summit crater) at the summit of Olympus Mons on Mars, the highest volcano in our Solar System.

Olympus Mons has an average elevation of 22 km and the caldera has a depth of about 3 km. This is the first high-resolution colour image of the complete caldera of Olympus Mons.

The image was taken from a height of 273 km during orbit 37 by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express on 21 January 2004. The view is centred

The convergence of information and communication technologies into a national “cyberinfrastructure” is poised to revolutionize the environmental sciences and many other disciplines in the coming years, according to researchers presenting at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Seattle. The two Feb. 13 sessions on cyberinfrastructure were organized by the heads of two National Science Foundation (NSF) directorates.

The speakers will describe a very near future in which computing capabilities will pr

Lead sulfide — also known by its mineral name, galena — is a naturally occurring mineral found in Missouri, other parts of the world, and now … other parts of the solar system.

That’s because recent thermodynamic calculations by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis provide plausible evidence that “heavy metal snow,” which blankets the surface of upper altitude Venusian rocks, is composed of both lead and bismuth sulfides.

The findings — by Laura Schaefer, resea

Dartmouth researchers have developed an algorithm that might someday be used to analyze blood for diagnostic purposes. Using data from a mass spectrometer, a device that generates a molecular fingerprint of biological samples, the Dartmouth team’s calculations can distinguish healthy blood from diseased blood.

This study by Ryan Lilien, a Dartmouth M.D./Ph.D. student, Hany Farid, Assistant Professor of Computer Science , and Bruce Donald, the Foley Professor of Computer Science, appeare

Although there are numerous telescopes – both large and small – examining the night sky at any one time, the heavens are so vast and so densely populated with all manner of exotic objects that it is extremely easy to overlook a significant random event. Fortunately, a new generation of scientific instruments is now enabling UK astronomers to prepare for the unexpected and become leaders in so-called “Time Domain Astrophysics”.

Exciting new observations of many different, time-variable celest

ESA PR 08-2004. With just 21 days to the launch of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta comet mission, the spacecraft’s lander has been named “Philae”. Rosetta embarks on a 10-year journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from Kourou, French Guiana, on 26 February.

Philae is the island in the river Nile on which an obelisk was found that had a bilingual inscription including the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs. This provided the French historian Jean-Franço

Dutch researcher Arjan Lock has investigated the behaviour of vibrating water molecules. Using ultra-short laser pulses, he found that hydrogen atoms in water molecules vibrate for longer at higher temperatures. This is abnormal because in the majority of substances a vibration lives shorter at higher temperatures.

Lock studied the OH-stretch vibration in water. He found that the lifetime of the OH-stretch vibration, a vibration of a hydrogen atom with respect to the oxygen atom, is extremel

Cornerstone to the W3C Speech Interface Framework is Nearly Complete

Giving voice to the Web, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has published VoiceXML 2.0 as a W3C Proposed Recommendation. The goal of VoiceXML 2.0 is to bring the advantages of Web-based development and content delivery to interactive voice response applications.

Advancement of a W3C technical report to Proposed Recommendation indicates that the Working Group has successfully completed both public and W3C Wo

RIT professor researches black-hole mergers

When black holes collide, look out! An enormous burst of gravitational radiation results as they violently merge into one massive black hole. The “kick” that occurs during the collision could knock the black hole clear out of its galaxy.

A new study describes the consequences of such an intergalactic collision.

Astrophysicist David Merritt, professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, and co-authors Milos Milosavljevic

Undergraduates’ work blames comet for 6th-century ’nuclear winter’

Scientists at Cardiff University, UK, believe they have discovered the cause of crop failures and summer frosts some 1,500 years ago – a comet colliding with Earth.

The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter.

The scientists in the School of Physics and

Are Galaxy Clusters Corrupting the Echoes from the Big Bang?

In recent years, astronomers have obtained detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation – the ‘echo’ from the birth of the Universe during the Big Bang.

These results appear to indicate with remarkable precision that our Universe is dominated by mysterious ‘cold dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’. But now a group of UK astronomers has found evidence that the primordial microwave echoes may have be

The well-known extrasolar planet HD 209458b, provisionally nicknamed ’Osiris’, has surprised astronomers again. Oxygen and carbon have been found in its atmosphere, evaporating at such an immense rate that the existence of a new class of extrasolar planets – ‘the chthonian planets’ or ‘dead’ cores of completely evaporated gas giants – has been proposed.

Oxygen and carbon have been detected in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our Solar System for the first time. Scientists using th