Jubilant astronomers today unveiled humankind`s most spectacular views of the Universe as captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope`s new Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). They also reported that Hubble is operating superbly since the March servicing mission and are looking forward to more pictures from the newly revived NICMOS camera.
“The ACS is opening a wide new window onto the Universe. These are among the best images of the distant Universe humans have ever seen,” says Johns Hop
Dark-matter detector could pin down the Universe’s missing mass.
Researchers in London are building a cheap dark-matter detector that should be able to spot the exotic particles called WIMPs that are suspected of hiding most of the Universe’s missing mass 1 .
A prototype of the detector has just shown, for the first time, that it can spot something as close to a WIMP as it’s possible to produce in the lab.
WIMP stands for ’weakly interacting massiv
Desire drives remote-controlled rodents.
Remote-controlled rats could soon be detecting earthquake survivors or leading bomb-disposal teams to buried land mines.
Signals from a laptop up to 500 metres away make the rats run, climb, jump and even cross brightly lit open spaces, contrary to their instincts. The rodents carry a backpack containing a radio receiver and a power source that transmits the signals into their brains through electrical probes the breadth of a hair.
Walls and curtains could sport liquid-crystal digital displays.
Homes of the future could change their wallpaper from cream to cornflower blue at the touch of a button, says Dirk Broer. His team has developed paint-on liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that offer the technology.
Liquid crystals are peculiar liquids: their molecules spontaneously line up, rather than being randomly orientated as in a normal liquid. Passing a voltage across the molecules switches their alignment, b
An article in the May issue of Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine suggests that much of the medical inspiration for Mary Shelley’s legendary novel Frankenstein came not from central Europe, but from a retired Scots physician living in Windsor. Christopher Goulding, a postgraduate student at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, bases his claims on his PhD research into the scientific interests of the novelist’s husband, the poet Percy Shelley.
Most criticism of Mary Shelley’s much-in
Fatty diets or high alcohol intake during pregnancy may lead to diabetes in children
Women who consume a high fat diet or who drink significant amounts of alcohol during pregnancy may increase the risk of their child developing diabetes as an adult according to a study in the current edition of the Journal of Endocrinology.
A team led by Dr Sam Pennington of the Department of Biochemistry, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University has found that insulin resistance,
Spin-off company offers a tiny solution for a big problem. The first sign of spoilage in many food products is the formation of free radicals, which reduces the shelf-life and…
MPI-M researchers and their partner institutions are currently performing atmospheric measurements over the equatorial Atlantic with eight coordinated measurement campaigns. They want to find out what controls the structure of…
Atomic clocks have been used for decades – but now, even greater precision has become possible: TU Wien (Vienna) and JILA/NIST are presenting the w For many years, scientists all…
The sensor could serve as a low-cost and efficient tool for early detection of neurological disorders and conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and depression. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter in our…
Nuclear parasites in deep-sea mussels. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology reveal how a bacterial parasite thrives inside the nuclei of deep-sea mussels. Most animals live in…
Bonn researchers find causative mutations in the keratin 31 gene for the dominantly-inherited form of monilethrix – From infancy and usually for life, some families suffer from broken hair due…
Energy storage systems of the future must be cost-effective and sustainable. To achieve this, it is crucial that the materials used are both readily available and recyclable. A research team…
Researchers at Tohoku University have successfully increased the capacity, lifetime durability, and cost-effectiveness of a capacitor in their pursuit of a more power-efficient future. A capacitor is a device used…
Fungi have more to offer than meets the eye. Their thread-like cells, which grow extensively and out of sight underground like a network of roots, offer huge potential for producing…
A new Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and led by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, was awarded $14.4 million over four years to advance manufacturing…
Together with 24 German research institutions and companies under the coordination of Forschungszentrum (FZ) Jülich, Fraunhofer IPMS is working on an integrated German quantum computer based on superconducting quantum chips…
Automatic image recognition to identify types of wood. The new European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is intended to prevent goods marketed in the EU from contributing to the spread of deforestation….