Satellite used to control unmanned aerial vehicle
Toulouse, France (UPI) Aug 28, 2014 -
A solar-powered unmanned aerial system from Airbus Defense and Space has been flown for more than 11 days non-stop.
The test of the Zephyr 7 High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite, or HAPS, was conducted for Britain's Ministry of Defense in controlled airspace, the company said.
The aircraft carried a new primary payload and for the first time satellite communications were used to contro ...
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Scientist uncovers red planet's climate history in unique meteorite
Tallahassee FL (SPX) Aug 29, 2014 -
Was Mars - now a cold, dry place - once a warm, wet planet that sustained life? And if so, how long has it been cold and dry?
Research underway at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory may one day answer those questions - and perhaps even help pave the way for future colonization of the Red Planet. By analyzing the chemical clues locked inside an ancient Martian meteorite known as Bl ...
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Orion Rocks! Pebble-Size Particles May Jump-Start Planet Formation
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 29, 2014 -
Rocky planets like Earth start out as microscopic bits of dust tinier than a grain of sand, or so theories predict. Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered that filaments of star-forming gas near the Orion Nebula may be brimming with pebble-size particles - planetary building blocks 100 to 1,000 times larger than the dust grains typic ...
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Galileo Satellites Incident Likely Result of Software Errors
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Aug 29, 2014 -
The failure of the European Union's Galileo satellites to reach their intended orbital position was likely caused by software errors in the Fregat-MT rocket's upper-stage, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported Thursday.
"The nonstandard operation of the integrated management system was likely caused by an error in the embedded software.
"As a result, the upper stage received an incorre ...
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Integral catches dead star exploding in a blaze of glory
Paris (ESA) Aug 29, 2014 -
Astronomers using ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory have demonstrated beyond doubt that dead stars known as white dwarfs can reignite and explode as supernovae. The finding came after the unique signature of gamma rays from the radioactive elements created in one of these explosions was captured for the first time.
The explosions in question are known as Type Ia supernovae, long suspect ...
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Robonaut Gets New Legs as Trio Prepares for Homecoming
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 29, 2014 -
Expedition 40 participated in health checks, Robonaut upgrades and Soyuz emergency drills Wednesday. The International Space Station also boosted its orbit setting the stage for a crew departure and arrival in September.
Commander Steve Swanson joined Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst for health checks during the morning. The trio checked each other's blood pressure and temp ...
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Russian Military plans switch to Soyuz, Angara launchers From 2016
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Aug 29, 2014 -
The Russian Defense Ministry has decided to stop using the Rokot light rocket carrier from 2016 because of its reliance on imported parts and will switch to the Soyuz and Angara carriers, Aerospace Defense Forces commander Lt. Gen. Alexander Golovko said Wednesday.
"Today the launches of the Rokot rocket carriers are used in the interests of the Defense Ministry within the framework of the ...
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Zambia lifts ban on safari hunting
Lusaka (AFP) Aug 27, 2014 -
Zambia has lifted a 20-month ban on safari hunting because it has lost too much revenue, but lions and leopards will remain protected, the government said Wednesday.
The ban was imposed in January 2013 over allegations of corruption in the awarding of government hunting concessions, and because of fears for the future of the country's population of big cats.
"We lost too much revenue fol ...
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Japan landslides death toll hits 70 one week on
Tokyo (AFP) Aug 27, 2014 -
A week after huge landslides swamped the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the confirmed death toll from the tragedy hit 70 on Wednesday, with 18 people still missing.
Few hopes remain for those unaccounted for, although the fluctuating number - which has risen and fallen sometimes independently of the number of dead - has left confusion as to the disaster's likely final cost in human lives.
...
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What can fourteenth century Venice teach us about Ebola?
New York NY (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
The way in which the Italian city of Venice dealt with the outbreak of the plague in the fourteenth century holds lessons on how to even mitigate the consequences of today's emerging threats, like climate change, terrorism and highly infectious or drug-resistant diseases.
So says Dr. Igor Linkov of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and a visiting professor of the Ca Fos ...
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DARPA Developing Novel Therapies Customized to Individual Patients
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
The body's peripheral nervous system constantly monitors the status of internal organs and helps regulate biological responses to infection, injury or other imbalances. When this regulatory process goes awry due to injury or illness, peripheral nerve signals can actually exacerbate a condition, causing pain, inflammation or immune dysfunction.
That reality raises the tantalizing prospect t ...
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'Just right' plant growth may make river deltas resilient
Bloomington IN (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
Research by Indiana University geologists suggests that an intermediate amount of vegetation - not too little and not too much - is most effective at stabilizing freshwater river deltas.
The study, "Optimum vegetation height and density for inorganic sedimentation in deltaic marshes," was published online Aug. 24 by Nature Geoscience. The findings may help guide restoration of river delt ...
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New Zealand big trees number 10 different species
Auckland, New Zealand (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
At the stroke of a pen a New Zealand endemic tree has for the last 31 years been incorrectly regarded the same as a group of 'weedy' Australian shrubs and small trees. A New Zealand botanist has completed a 15-year study to reveal some surprises and discover astonishing cryptic diversity behind what was long considered a single tree species. The study was published in the open access journal Phy ...
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Boron Facilitates Stem Cell Growth and Development in Corn
Columbia MO (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
Boron deficiency is one of the most widespread causes of reduced crop yield. Missouri and the eastern half of the United States are plagued by boron deficient soil and, often, corn and soybean farmers are required to supplement their soil with boron; however, little is known about the ways in which corn plants utilize the essential nutrient.
Now, researchers at the University of Missouri h ...
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Brazil cracks 'biggest' Amazon deforestation gang
Sao Paulo (AFP) Aug 28, 2014 -
Police in Brazil have broken up an Amazon deforestation gang considered the worst currently active, officials said Wednesday.
The gang would invade public land in northern Para state, burn down forest, divided the land into parcels and sell them, federal police said in a statement.
The group is responsible for environmental crimes to the tune of $230 million, said the Brazilian Environme ...
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Nanoplasmonic and optical resonators create laser-like light emission
Urbana IL (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
By combining plasmonics and optical microresonators, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created a new optical amplifier (or laser) design, paving the way for power-on-a-chip applications.
"We have made optical systems at the microscopic scale that amplify light and produce ultra-narrowband spectral output," explained J. Gary Eden, a professor of electrical a ...
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Photon speedway puts big data in the fast lane
Berkeley CA (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
A series of experiments conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) researchers is shedding new light on the photosynthetic process. The work also illustrates how light sources and supercomputing facilities can be linked via a "photon science speedway" as a solution to emerging challenges in massive data analysis.
Last y ...
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Yale Journal Explores Advances In Sustainable Manufacturing
New Haven CT (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
In recent years, increasing pressure from policymakers, consumers, and suppliers has prompted manufacturers to set environmental targets that go beyond reducing the pollutants they emit from their smokestacks or discharge into rivers and lakes. Today companies must also assess environmental performance at every step in their process, from the mining of primary materials to the use and recycling ...
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Competition for Graphene
Berkeley CA (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
A new argument has just been added to the growing case for graphene being bumped off its pedestal as the next big thing in the high-tech world by the two-dimensional semiconductors known as MX2 materials.
An international collaboration of researchers led by a scientist with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has reported the first exp ...
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Researchers map quantum vortices inside superfluid helium nanodroplets
Berkeley CA (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
Scientists have, for the first time, characterized so-called quantum vortices that swirl within tiny droplets of liquid helium. The research, led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University of Southern California, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, confirms that helium nanodroplets are in fact the smallest possible ...
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Scientists craft atomically seamless semiconductor junctions
Seattle WA (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
Scientists have developed what they believe is the thinnest-possible semiconductor, a new class of nanoscale materials made in sheets only three atoms thick.
The University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that two of these single-layer semiconductor materials can be connected in an atomically seamless fashion known as a heterojunction. This result could be the basis for next-ge ...
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The power of salt
Boston MA (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
Where the river meets the sea, there is the potential to harness a significant amount of renewable energy, according to a team of mechanical engineers at MIT.
The researchers evaluated an emerging method of power generation called pressure retarded osmosis (PRO), in which two streams of different salinity are mixed to produce energy. In principle, a PRO system would take in river water an ...
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Process Overcomes Obstacles To Produce Renewable Fuels And Chemicals
Golden CO (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
There's an old saying in the biofuels industry: "You can make anything from lignin except money." But now, a new study may pave the way to challenging that adage. The study from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) demonstrates a concept that provides opportunities for the successful conversion of lignin into a variety of renewable fuels, chemicals, and materials f ...
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Turning waste from rice, parsley and other foods into biodegradable plastic
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
Your chairs, synthetic rugs and plastic bags could one day be made out of cocoa, rice and vegetable waste rather than petroleum, scientists are now reporting. The novel process they developed and their results, which could help the world deal with its agricultural and plastic waste problems, appear in the ACS journal Macromolecules.
Athanassia Athanassiou, Ilker S. Bayer and colleagues at ...
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'Robo Brain' will teach robots everything from the Internet
Ithaca NY (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
Robo Brain - a large-scale computational system that learns from publicly available Internet resources - is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. The information is being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format that robots will be able to draw on when they need it.
To serve as he ...
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