A plaque dedicated to the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei can be seen here on NASA's Juno spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/KSC
A plaque dedicated to the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei will be carried to Jupiter aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft. The launch period for Juno opens Aug. 5, 2011, and extends through Aug. 26. For an Aug. 5 liftoff, the launch window opens at 8:34 a.m. PDT (11:34 a.m. EDT) and remains open through 9:43 a.m. PDT (12:43 p.m. EDT).
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Two new rodent fossils were discovered in the arid highlands of southern Bolivia by researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Universidad Autónoma Tomás Frías.
Scientists can make graphene out of just about anything with carbon -- even Girl Scout Cookies.
A single compound with dual function – the ability to deliver a diagnostic and therapeutic agent – may one day be used to enhance the diagnosis, imaging and treatment of brain tumors, according to findings from Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia Tech.
There is a new way to design computer chips and electronic circuitry for extreme environments: make them out of diamond.
“A nanoimprint method has already been achieved in nanopatterning with a high resolution using negative type photoresist,” Kosei Ueno tells PhysOrg.com. Ueno is a scientist at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, and associated with PRESTO. “However, some problems remain with the negative type photoresist.”
A hard-to-detect but stable form of iron helps convert subsurface plutonium from barely to very soluble, according to scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Rai Enviro-Chem, LLC. Plutonium resides underground at weapons sites around the world. In one form, abbreviated Pu(IV), it essentially stays put. But when soluble iron and a stable iron are present the plutonium becomes soluble, easily mixing with water. Soluble plutonium is a concern because it could mix with groundwater and flow into rivers and streams.
All of King County and most of the eastern portion of Kitsap County in Washington state have been closed to shellfish gathering after tests this week revealed the presence of toxins that can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning.
NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft will carry the 1.5-inch likeness of Galileo Galilei, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno to Jupiter when the spacecraft launches this Friday, Aug. 5. The inclusion of the three mini-statues, or figurines, is part of a joint outreach and educational program developed as part of the partnership between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
How is paleoseismology defined and what is its main aim? Is it concerned only with prehistoric earthquakes identified and characterized from the “geo-archives” of a particular location or fault, or can it be applied to the study of recent events? This new Special Paper from The Geological Society of America answers these questions and covers a wide spectrum paleoseismic approaches.
Early yesterday, (Aug 3, 2011) two active regions on the Sun, sunspot 1261 and 1263 unleashed solar flares, which was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The video shows an M6 class flare from 1261 in a couple of different wavelengths. SolarstormWatch, a citizen science project through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England predicts the solar storm from the larger flare to reach Earth at 15:00 UTC on August 5, 2011, and also predict direct hit on Earth.
Russia on Saturday marks 50 years since Gherman Titov became the second man in orbit, a historic achievement long eclipsed by the first space flight of his friend and rival Yuri Gagarin months earlier.
Anyone over 40 knows firsthand the effects of gravity's constant downward pull on our faces and bodies. It is an immutable force that Einstein called a “curvature of space-time” -- but the curvature caused by gravity is a little closer to home, in our very bones.
(AP) -- U.S. government forecasters say the rest of the Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be busy, with an above-average number of storms.
Today, farming often involves transporting crops long distances so consumers from Maine to California can enjoy Midwest corn, Northwest cherries and other produce when they are out of season locally. But it isn't just the fossil fuel needed to move food that contributes to agriculture's carbon footprint.
Human nitrogen additions to the soil may reinforce the greenhouse effect. Nitrogen additions tend to boost plant growth, so that terrestrial ecosystems absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But recent studies have shown that they also stimulate nitrous oxide release from the fertisilied soils – a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide...
Scientists at the University of York, using an 'amino acid time capsule', have led the largest ever programme to date the British Quaternary period, stretching back nearly three million years.
Over one-third of the world's population already lives in areas struggling to keep up with the demand for fresh water. By 2025, that number will nearly double. Some countries have met the challenge by tapping into natural sources of fresh water, but as many examples – such as the much-depleted Jordan River – have demonstrated, many of these practices are far from sustainable.
For 20 000 years, climate variability in East Africa has been following a pattern that is evidently a remote effect of the ENSO phenomenon (El Niño Southern Oscillation) known as El Niño/La Niña. During the cold phase of La Niña, there is marginal rainfall and stronger winds in East Africa, while the El Niño warm phase leads to weak wind conditions with frequent rain. Moreover, during the coldest period of the last ice age about 18 000 to 21 000 years ago, East Africa's climate was relatively stable and dry. This result was published by an international group of researchers from Potsdam, Switzerland, the United States, the Netherlands and Belgium in the latest issue of the journal "Science" (Vol. 333, No.6043, 05.08.2011).
For the last 10,000 years, summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has been far from constant. For several thousand years, there was much less sea ice in The Arctic Ocean – probably less than half of current amounts. This is indicated by new findings by the Danish National Research Foundation for Geogenetics at the University of Copenhagen. The results of the study will be published in the journal Science.
Dark, finger-like features that appear and extend down some Martian slopes during the warmest months of the Mars year may show activity of salty water on Mars. They fade in winter, then recur the next spring.
The concerted efforts of researchers from both PolyU and Peking University’s Shenzhen Graduate School have led to the first total synthesis of a natural marine product as a promising anti-cancer agent.
Newly synthesized polymer, fitted with molecular pincers of carefully tailored structure, effectively captures nicotine molecules and its analogues. The polymer can be used for fabrication of sensitive and selective chemical sensors to determine nicotine in solutions, and in the near future also in gases. Moreover, the polymer is suitable for slow, controlled release of nicotine, e.g., for therapeutic purposes.
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