Pay farmers to help the environment, but perverse subsidies not
Cambridge, UK (SPX) Sep 14, 2015 -
New research suggests that offering financial incentives for farming industries to mitigate the impact agriculture has on the environment, by reducing fertiliser use and 'sparing' land for conservation, for example, actually has a positive effect on critical areas such as greenhouse gas reduction and increased biodiversity.
It has been a point of contention whether such 'cash for conservat ...
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A close-up view of materials as they stretch or compress
Washington DC (SPX) Sep 09, 2015 -
Materials scientists are busy developing advanced materials, while also working to squeeze every bit of performance out of existing materials. This is particularly true in the aerospace industry, where small advantages in weight or extreme temperature tolerance quickly translate into tremendous performance benefits.
The potential pay-offs motivated a team of researchers from the Air Force ...
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Hyperloop: Transport into the Future
Cologne, Germany (SPX) Sep 09, 2015 -
Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum imparts extensive expertise in vacuum technology to one of the most challenging transportation projects of the future. The German-American visionary Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, has set the goal of making the seemingly utopian idea of Tesla founder Elon Musk become reality: From 2018 onward, people shall travel with aircraft speed through a ...
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Untangling the mechanics of knots
Boston MA (SPX) Sep 09, 2015 -
Got rope? Then try this experiment: Cross both ends, left over right, then bring the left end under and out, as if tying a pair of shoelaces. If you repeat this sequence, you get what's called a "granny" knot. If, instead, you cross both ends again, this time right over left, you've created a sturdier "reef" knot.
The configuration, or "topology," of a knot determines its stiffness. For ex ...
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Researchers in Basel develop ideal single-photon source
Basel, Switzerland (SPX) Sep 09, 2015 -
With the help of a semiconductor quantum dot, physicists at the University of Basel have developed a new type of light source that emits single photons. For the first time, the researchers have managed to create a stream of identical photons. They have reported their findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications together with colleagues from the University of Bochum.
A single-ph ...
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Super-stretchable metallic conductors for flexible electronics
Pullman WA (SPX) Sep 09, 2015 -
Washington State University researchers have discovered how to stretch metal films used in flexible electronics to twice their size without breaking.
The discovery could lead to dramatic improvements and addresses one of the biggest challenges in flexible electronics, an industry still in its infancy with applications such as bendable batteries, robotic skins, wearable monitoring devices a ...
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Advanced alien civilizations rare or absent in the local Universe
Dwingeloo, The Netherlands (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
Advanced civilisations harnessing energies on galactic scales (so-called Kardashev Type III civilisations) are expected to be detectable in the mid-Infrared part of the spectrum via the emission of significant waste heat products.
A team of astronomers led by Dr. Jason Wright (Penn State University, USA) has already drawn up a list of several hundred candidate galaxies (culled from a total ...
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Stellar discovery by Queen's researcher
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Sep 13, 2015 -
PhD candidate Matt Shultz has discovered the first massive binary star, epsilon Lupi, in which both stars have magnetic fields. A binary star is a star system consisting of two or more stars, orbiting around their common centre of mass.
For the past few years, the BinaMIcS (Binarity and Magnetic Interactions in various classes of Stars) collaboration, formed to study the magnetic propertie ...
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Nearby Red Dwarfs Could Reveal Planet Secrets
Canberra, Australia (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
An accidental find of a collection of young red dwarf stars close to our solar system could give us a rare glimpse of slow-motion planet formation.
Astronomers from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW Canberra found large discs of dust around two of the stars, telltale signs of planets in the process of forming.
"We think the Earth and all the other planets formed from ...
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Battery-free smart camera nodes determine own pose and location
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 14, 2015 -
Scientists at Disney Research and the University of Washington (UW) have shown that a network of energy-harvesting sensor nodes equipped with onboard cameras can automatically determine each camera's pose and location using optical cues.
This capability could help to enable networks of hundreds or thousands of sensors that could operate without batteries or external power and require minim ...
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NASA's LRO discovers Earth's pull is 'massaging' our moon
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
Earth's gravity has influenced the orientation of thousands of faults that form in the lunar surface as the moon shrinks, according to new results from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft.
In August, 2010, researchers using images from LRO's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) reported the discovery of 14 cliffs known as "lobate scarps" on the moon's surface, in addition to about 70 ...
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KVH extends marine satcom choices with TracPhone Fleet One
Middletown RI (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
KVH Industries has introduced the TracPhone Fleet One marine satellite communications antenna system, a 28 cm (11 in) diameter unit designed for vessels needing global satellite phone service and basic satellite Internet access.
The TracPhone Fleet One complements KVH's other Inmarsat-based offerings in the FleetBroadband family and its own extensive TracPhone product line for mini-VSAT Br ...
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Europlanet 2020 launches new era of planetary collaboration in Europe
Milton Keynes, UK (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
A 9.95 million euro project to integrate and support planetary science activities across Europe has been launched. The Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure (RI) is funded under the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme and will run for four years until August 2019. The project is led by the Open University, UK, and has 34 beneficiary institutions from 19 European countries. Europlanet ...
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Making a difference with open source science equipment
Houghton, MI (SPX) Sep 13, 2015 -
Open source lab equipment is the focus of a new study, published in Science and Public Policy. Joshua Pearce, an associate professor of materials science and engineering as well as electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Tech, led the research.
Pearce proposes that instead of spending millions of dollars every year replacing quickly obsolescent equipment, that money could be redire ...
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Russia Puts Telecoms Satellite Into Orbit
Moscow (Sputnik) Sep 16, 2015 -
Russia's Express-AM8 communications satellite, which lifted off on Monday from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on a Proton-M space rocket, separated from the DM-03 booster and was put into orbit.
"Express-AM8 was delivered into the proper orbit, and later will be gradually transferred to the calculated point of standing on the geostationary," a spokesman for the Russian Federal Spa ...
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Solar Observatory discovers its 3,000th comet
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
On Sept. 13, 2015, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory - a joint project of the European Space Agency and NASA - discovered its 3,000th comet, cementing its standing as the greatest comet finder of all time. Prior to the 1995 launch of the observatory, commonly known as SOHO, only a dozen or so comets had ever even been discovered from space, while some 900 had been discovered from the ground ...
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Under Saturnian moon's icy crust lies a 'global' ocean
Ithaca NY (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
Cornell University researchers have learned that a global ocean lies beneath the moon's thick icy crust by measuring with precision the tiny wobbles of Saturn's moon Enceladus - whose cosmic quavers are detectable only in high-resolution images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Cornell planetary scientists have analyzed more than seven years worth of Enceladus images taken by the spacecr ...
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NASA's SDO catches a double photobomb
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Sep 16, 2015 -
On Sept. 13, 2015, as NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, kept up its constant watch on the sun, its view was photobombed not once, but twice. Just as the moon came into SDO's field of view on a path to cross the sun, Earth entered the picture, blocking SDO's view completely. When SDO's view of the sun emerged from Earth's shadow, the moon was just completing its journey across the sun's ...
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US astronaut misses fresh air halfway through year-long mission
Washington (AFP) Sept 14, 2015 -
Halfway into a year in space - the longest ever attempted at the International Space Station - American astronaut Scott Kelly said Monday he misses fresh air but is adapting well.
Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko agreed to double the length of a typical astronaut's mission at the ISS in order to help the world's space agencies study how long-term space travel affects the human ...
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Scientists conduct most precise test of light speed
Berlin (UPI) Sep 15, 2015 -
The speed of light is a constant. A new test - the most precise test of a photon's speed - confirms it.
The results of the test support the concept of Lorentz symmetry, the idea that the laws of physics are constant in all directions.
Researchers from the University of Western Australia and Humboldt University of Berlin measured the spatial consistency of the speed of light usi ...
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Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to launch from Cape Canaveral this decade
Miami (AFP) Sept 15, 2015 -
The commercial space race got a little more crowded Tuesday when the aerospace company Blue Origin, headed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, said it will begin launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, later this decade.
After losing a bid in 2013 to lease a historic launch pad - where US moon missions lifted off in the 1960s and 1970s - to rival SpaceX, Blue Origin announced it would make i ...
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