Building of new Coast Guard cutter officially begins
Pascagoula, Miss. (UPI) Jan 21, 2015 -
Fabrication of the seventh U.S. Coast Guard National Security Cutter officially began this week.
Huntington Ingalls Industries said the steel was cut at its Ingalls Shipbuilding division facility in Mississippi and that the build of the Kimball (WMSL 756) is expected to take three years to complete.
"We continue to increase our learning on this shipbuilding program, fully capturi ...
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EU official proposes widening Mideast peace talks body
Washington (AFP) Jan 20, 2015 -
Diplomats must take a fresh look at the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the hopes of reviving the negotiations after March elections in Israel, the EU's foreign policy chief said Tuesday.
"What I'm afraid of is that on one side the lack of process is in itself something that is deteriorating the situation," the EU's Federica Mogherini said.
"But on the other side, I'm also wo ...
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Pope Francis leaves door open to Dalai Lama meeting
Rome (AFP) Jan 20, 2015 -
Pope Francis left the door open on Monday to a meeting with the Dalai Lama, denying that he refused to receive the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in December over fears of upsetting China.
"The usual protocol of the secretary of state is not to receive heads of state and high ranking personalities when they are in Rome for an international meeting," he told journalists as he flew back from ...
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Upgraded Atlas ready to go wireless at next DARPA Robotics Challenge
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 22, 2015 -
A total of $3.5 million in prizes will now be awarded to the top three finishers in the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), the final event of which will be held June 5-6, 2015, at Fairplex in Pomona, Calif.
The new prize structure was created in recognition of both the significant progress already demonstrated by teams toward development of human-supervised robot technology for disaster respo ...
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European spaceplane is "powered up" for its Feb 11 launch
Paris (SPX) Jan 22, 2015 -
Next month's flight of the light-lift Vega vehicle in Arianespace's launcher family will involve a highly unusual mission profile: a suborbital trajectory with an unmanned European spaceplane that begins in French Guiana and ends with the payload's Pacific Ocean splashdown.
Scheduled for liftoff on February 11, Vega will loft the European Space Agency's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (I ...
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Google aboard as Musk's SpaceX gets $1 bn in funding
New York (AFP) Jan 20, 2015 -
The private space exploration firm SpaceX said Tuesday it had secured a $1 billion investment that could help founder Elon Musk's plan to build a satellite Internet network.
The latest round of funding comes from Google and the financial firm Fidelity, which will own some 10 percent of the company.
The statement offered no details on plans for the funds, but Musk has said he wants to bui ...
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US Navy uses Russian rocket engines to launch comsat
Washington DC (Sputnik) Jan 22, 2015 -
The United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched an Atlas V rocket, carrying the US Navy's heaviest national security payload on Tuesday evening, according to live video footage from the launch site in Cape Canaveral Florida.
The rocket carried the Navy's third Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) satellite, which the Navy said "operates like a smartphone network from space, vastly im ...
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Russia to Test Strategic Missile Forces in Unscheduled Drills
Moscow, Russia (Sputnik) Jan 22, 2015 -
Russia has kicked off its first unannounced drills of the year for the country's Strategic Missile Forces with over 1,200 active duty servicemen in western Siberia, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Igor Egorov said Tuesday.
"During the unannounced exercises of the missile forces, a committee will study the current condition in organizing activities by the commanders in completing dr ...
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SKorea to develop new arms in response to NKorean nuclear program
Tokyo (Sputnik) Jan 22, 2015 -
South Korea plans to modernize its armed forces and to develop new arms in response to the growing nuclear potential of North Korea, Yonhap news agency reported Monday. Defense minister Han Min-koo presented the plan on the armed forces' modernization to President Park Geun-hye on Monday.
According to the plan, by 2020s, South Korea will develop a laser weapons system, high-power microwave ...
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Moscow, US End Nuclear Cooperation Program
Moscow, Russia (Sputnik) Jan 22, 2015 -
Moscow has decided to end its nuclear cooperation program with the US, saying that it no longer needs assistance in safeguarding nuclear sites located in Russia, the Boston Globe reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation.
The decision was made late last year, the newspaper says, citing a three-page agreement signed at the meeting held on December 16. According to the new ...
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Giant atmospheric rivers add mass to Antarctica's ice sheet
Leuven, Belgium (SPX) Jan 21, 2015 -
Extreme weather phenomena called atmospheric rivers were behind intense snowstorms recorded in 2009 and 2011 in East Antarctica. The resulting snow accumulation partly offset recent ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet, report researchers from KU Leuven.
Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow water vapour plumes stretching thousands of kilometres across the sky over vast ocean areas. They ar ...
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This robot has the mind of a worm
Washington (UPI) Jan 21, 2015 -
Scientists working on the ragtag research operation known as Open Worm are blazing the path toward real artificial intelligence - artificial worm intelligence, that is. Everyone's got to start somewhere.
Recently, the collaborative project, which involves scientists from all over the world, enjoyed a major breakthrough when their software spurred a robot made of Lego bricks to act enti ...
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Graphene enables all-electrical control of energy flow from light emitters
Barcelona, Spain (SPX) Jan 21, 2015 -
At the heart of lasers, displays and other light-emitting devices lies the emission of photons. Electrically controlled modulation of this emission is of great importance in applications such as optical communication, sensors and displays. Moreover, electrical control of the light emission pathways opens up the possibility of novel types of nano-photonics devices, based on active plasmonics.
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Laser-generated surface structures create extremely water-repellent metals
Rochester NY (SPX) Jan 21, 2015 -
Scientists at the University of Rochester have used lasers to transform metals into extremely water repellent, or super-hydrophobic, materials without the need for temporary coatings.
Super-hydrophobic materials are desirable for a number of applications such as rust prevention, anti-icing, or even in sanitation uses. However, as Rochester's Chunlei Guo explains, most current hydrophobic m ...
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Solving an organic semiconductor mystery
Berkeley CA (SPX) Jan 21, 2015 -
Organic semiconductors are prized for light emitting diodes (LEDs), field effect transistors (FETs) and photovoltaic cells. As they can be printed from solution, they provide a highly scalable, cost-effective alternative to silicon-based devices. Uneven performances, however, have been a persistent problem.
Scientists have known that the performance issues originate in the domain interface ...
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Scottish MPs lay down gauntlet over UK nuclear fleet
London (AFP) Jan 20, 2015 -
The Scottish National Party, which could play a key role in British politics following elections in May, called on the main political parties to scrap Britain's nuclear deterrent on Tuesday.
The SNP's leader in parliament, Angus Robertson, told MPs that the Trident nuclear-armed submarines, which are currently at the Faslane base near Glasgow in Scotland, should not be replaced.
"The tim ...
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China planning naval base in Namibia: report
Windhoek (AFP) Jan 20, 2015 -
Namibia and China are discussing plans for a Chinese naval base in the southwest African country, the Namibian newspaper reported Tuesday, prompting an immediate denial from Beijing.
The Namibian quoted a confidential letter from Namibia's Beijing ambassador to his foreign ministry stating that a Chinese delegation would visit Windhoek for discussions "on the way forward regarding plans for ...
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A voyage from the Earth's crust to its mantle and back again
Zurich, Switzerland (SPX) Jan 21, 2015 -
From the beginning of time, uranium has been part of the Earth and, thanks to its long-lived radioactivity, it has proven ideal to date geological processes and deduce Earth's evolution. Natural uranium consists of two long-lived isotopes uranium-238 and the lighter uranium-235.
A new study of the global cycle of these uranium isotopes brings additional perspectives to the debate on how th ...
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Paleontologist names 9-foot-long 'predator croc' that preceded dinosaurs
Blacksburg VA (SPX) Jan 21, 2015 -
Finding a new species of dinosaur is pretty rare. Getting a hand in the discovery and naming of one - that's rarer still. Or it would be for anyone other than 32-year-old Sterling Nesbitt, an assistant professor of geological sciences in the College of Science and the newest addition to Virginia Tech's paleontology team.
Nesbitt has been responsible for naming more than half a dozen reptil ...
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Tech barons paint rosy future at Davos despite security fears
Davos, Switzerland (AFP) Jan 21, 2015 -
Technological advances are to explode 10 times faster than even the Internet boom in the 1990s, top tech tycoons told the global Davos elite Wednesday, but also warned that security threats would be worse this year than ever.
As the world's political and business movers-and-shakers opened their annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, one of the hot-button issues was the impact of te ...
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Atoms can be in 2 places at the same time
Bonn, Germany (SPX) Jan 21, 2015 -
Can a penalty kick simultaneously score a goal and miss? For very small objects, at least, this is possible: according to the predictions of quantum mechanics, microscopic objects can take different paths at the same time. The world of macroscopic objects follows other rules: the football always moves in a definite direction. But is this always correct?
Physicists of the University of Bonn ...
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Rejigging the Cluster quartet
Paris (ESA) Jan 22, 2015 -
Aiming to study Earth's 'bow shock' in the solar wind, the constellation of Cluster satellites is being rejigged to bring two of the four to within almost touching distance. ESA's Cluster quartet, in orbit since 2000, is studying the detailed structures of Earth's magnetosphere - our protective magnetic bubble - and its environment in 3D.
The four identical satellites fly in highly ellipti ...
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NASA Spinoff 2015 features space tech to make life better on Earth
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 22, 2015 -
NASA technologies are being used to locate underground water in some of the driest places on the Earth, build quieter and more fuel-efficient airplanes, and create shock absorbers that brace buildings in earthquakes.
The 2015 edition of NASA's annual Spinoff publication highlights these and other technologies whose origins lie in space exploration, but now have broader applications.
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Subglacial Lakes Seen Refilling in Greenland
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jan 22, 2015 -
Scientists using satellite images and data from NASA's Operation IceBridge have found evidence of a drained and refilled subglacial lake beneath northeastern Greenland's Flade Ice Cap. This sub-ice body of water is only one of a handful that have been detected in Greenland and its presence sheds new light on how the Greenland Ice Sheet reacts to warming temperatures.
Subglacial lakes are r ...
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Messages from space -- hidden magnetic messages uncovered
Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 22, 2015 -
Geologists from the University of Cambridge uncover hidden magnetic messages from the early solar system in meteorites measured at BESSY II. A team of scientists led by Dr. Richard Harrison from the University of Cambridge, has captured information stored inside tiny magnetic regions in meteorite samples using the PEEM-Beamline at BESSY II.
This information captures the dying moments of th ...
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