The sun´s big, bright, explosive flares are the attention grabbers, but tiny, more numerous microflares may have nearly as much influence on the solar atmosphere, according to new data from the University of California, Berkeley´s RHESSI satellite.

Solar flares, the largest explosions in the solar system, propel energetic particles into space and are thought to be the main source of heat pumping the sun´s outer atmosphere to a few million degrees Celsius — hotter than the surface i

On 27th August, Mars will be at its closest to Earth for almost 60,000 years. On that date, the Red Planet will approach to within 34,646,418 miles (55,758,006 km) – 145 times the distance of the Moon.

The last time the two planets were so close our ancestors were living in caves and struggling to survive the extreme conditions of the Ice Age. Who knows what will have happened by the time they are as near again – 284 years into the future?

When and were to see Mars

Hand held metal detectors (HHMDs), such as those used for security checks in airports, do not cause harmful heating or nerve stimulation in pregnant women, according to research published today (22 July 2003) in the Institute of Physics journal Physics in Medicine and Biology. The role of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), Maryland, is to ensure the safety of radiological products, so electromagnetic wave emitting HHMDs were an obvious choice for them to investigate, especially fo

A revolutionary breakthrough in heat transfer technology that could improve process productivity and reduce energy consumption and waste, is being developed by Ashe Morris Ltd thanks to a £100,000 investment from NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts), the largest source of early stage funding in the UK.

Heat exchangers are used in many industrial, commercial and domestic applications and can be used to add or remove heat during chemical and biological manu

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) lower the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, claim researchers in this week’s BMJ.

The authors identified 15 studies published between 1996 and October 2002 that examined the role of NSAID use in preventing Alzheimer’’s disease. They carried out three separate analyses to quantify the risk of Alzheimer’’s disease in NSAID users and in aspirin users and to determine any influence on duration of use.

Their results show that N

A group of nuclear-envelope-associated proteins have been found in a plant for the very first time by a team of researchers at Ohio State University. Led by Professor Iris Meier, this new finding show that these proteins (Plant RanGAP and MAF) have in common a nuclear envelope-targeting domain which is unique to plants and distinctly different from sequences found in known animal nuclear envelope proteins.

This finding is significant because it implies that a funadamentally different nuclea