Latest News

World’s Largest Switchboard for Climate Monitoring

Europe’s showpiece in climate monitoring is called Envisat. Fully equipped, the largest, most complex, and most powerful Earth observation satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA) is 25 meters high, ten meters wide and weighs over eight tons, scheduled for launch in the night of 28 February /1st March on an Ariane 5 launcher.

Europe’s flying behemoth is on the trail of climate change. It will deliver data about global warming, ozone depletion and climate change for at least five

South Pole re-routed

Satellites see through snow to steer safely across Antarctica.

Satellite images that expose perilous crevasses now reveal safe overland routes to the South Pole. Carolyn Merry of Ohio State University in Columbus has pieced together high-resolution satellite pictures that see through the snow, to map the passable Pole 1 .

Since a snow tractor, floundered into a hidden fissure in 1991, all supplies have been flown into the US South Pole research station. Safe t

Top class images help ESA’s Rosetta prepare to ride on a cosmic bullet

Chase a fast-moving comet, land on it and ’ride’ it while it speeds up towards the Sun: not the script of a science-fiction movie, but the very real task of ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft.

New observations with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) provide vital information about Comet Wirtanen – Rosetta’s target – to help ESA reduce uncertainties in the mission, one of the most difficult ever to be performed.

Every 5.5 years Comet Wirtanen completes an o

European corals hit hard by fishing

Coral reefs older than the Pyramids are being smashed to bits by fishing boats trawling deep water off the UK coast

European countries are constantly pleading with developing nations to protect coral reefs in tropical countries. But it turns out that their own fishing boats are trashing equally important reefs in their own waters.

Jason Hall-Spencer of the University of Glasgow has found pieces of coral at least 4,500 years old in the nets of trawlers operating off Ireland and Sco

Colorado State leads researchers on quest to produce rubber from sunflowers and guayule

Colorado State University is leading a team of researchers who plan to develop sunflowers into a rubber-producing crop, alleviating the harvest of rubber trees in Southeast Asia and Brazil – currently the only natural source of rubber in the world.

The United States is currently totally dependent upon imports for its rubber supply, importing nearly 1.3 million tons a year at a cost of $2 billion. Almost all natural rubber comes from rubber trees including those grown on plantations in Malays

UAB Researchers Discover a New Mechanism Involved in Predisposition to Cancer

A team of researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered a new mechanism that accelerates the shortening of telomeres (structures that protect the ends of chromosomes) involved in genetic instability and a predisposition to cancer. The research has been published in the journal Human Molecular Genetics.

DNA in higher organisms is organised into individual chromosomes, the ends of which are protected by structures called telomeres. Telomeres are very important in ma

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Physics and Astronomy

Imaging nuclear shapes by smashing them to smithereens

Scientists use high-energy heavy ion collisions as a new tool to reveal subtleties of nuclear structure with implications for many areas of physics. Scientists have demonstrated a new way to…

She uses light to modify matter

Part chemist, part physicist and 100% researcher, Niéli Daffé is interested in materials that change colour or magnetism when illuminated. She studies them using X-rays in her SNSF-supported research. From…

Kagome breaks the rules at record breaking temperatures

In case you’re scratching your head, we help break it down. Using muon spin rotation at the Swiss Muon Source SmS, researchers at PSI have discovered that a quantum phenomenon…

Life Sciences and Chemistry

Cracking the code of DNA circles in cancer

Stanford Medicine-led team uncovers potential therapy. ecDNA catapults into spotlight. A trio of research papers from Stanford Medicine researchers and their international collaborators transforms scientists’ understanding of how small DNA…

The heaviest element ever chemically studied

Experiments at GSI/FAIR determine properties of moscovium an. An international team led by scientists of GSI/FAIR in Darmstadt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz, succeeded in determining…

Reconstructing plesiosaur swimming styles with bio-mimetic control

A research group may have unraveled the mystery behind the locomotion of the ancient marine reptile, the plesiosaur, by recreating a bio-inspired control system that accounts for motion adjustment. Extinct…

Materials Sciences

Polypropylene recyclates

… best quality at minimum cost thanks to precise stabilisation. Online characterisation, plastic formulations, more profitable. All organic substances, including plastics such as polypropylene (PP), undergo auto-oxidation in the presence…

BESSY II: New procedure for better thermoplastics

Thermoplastic blends, produced by a new process, have better resilience. Now, experiments at the IRIS beamline show, why: nanocrystalline layers increase their performance. Bio-based thermoplastics are produced from renewable organic…

Off the clothesline, on the grid

MXene nanomaterials enable wireless charging in textiles. Researchers demonstrate printed textile-based energy grid using MXene ink. The next step for fully integrated textile-based electronics to make their way from the…

Information Technology

Expert for Distributed Satellite Systems

Small satellites that find and collect space debris: Mohamed Khalil Ben-Larbi is working towards this goal. He is the new Professor of Space Informatics and Satellite Systems at the University…

Hard in theory, easy in practice

ISTA researchers investigate why graph isomorphism algorithms seem to be so effective. Graphs are everywhere. In discrete mathematics, they are structures that show the connections between points, much like a…

Ensuring a bright future for diamond electronics and sensors

Researchers are perfecting processes to grow high-quality diamond material reliably and efficiently. Researchers are developing new ideas about the best ways to make lab-grown diamonds while minimizing other forms of…