Peshmerga 2.0: New generation of Kurd fighters in Iraq
Arbil, Iraq (AFP) Oct 24, 2014 -
After a tough day battling jihadists in northern Iraq, a group of young peshmerga fighters discuss English football results around a table littered with smartphones and vodka Red Bulls.
The peshmerga of old were instantly recognisable, usually sporting a thick moustache, wearing a headdress and baggy "sherwal" trousers with rifle magazines tucked in a traditional Kurdish sash.
But the ne ...
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Iraqi army months away from major offensive: US officials
Macdill Air Force Base, United States (AFP) Oct 24, 2014 -
The Iraqi army is still months away from staging a major offensive to retake ground lost to the Islamist State group and is regrouping after suffering battlefield defeats this year, US military officials said Thursday.
Iraqi security forces were now able to stage small-scale attacks against the Islamic State group but needed time to plan and train for a larger operation, even with the aid of ...
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Iraqi Kurdish forces retake town from jihadists
Arbil, Iraq (AFP) Oct 25, 2014 -
Iraqi Kurdish forces on Saturday retook the northern town of Zumar from Islamic State (IS) group jihadists after weeks of fighting, a senior officer said.
"After clashes that began this morning and with American air support, we were able to force (IS) militants from the centre" of Zumar and 11 surrounding villages, Major General Karim Atuti of the peshmerga security forces told AFP.
Zuma ...
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Goldilocks principle wrong for particle assembly
New York NY (SPX) Oct 21, 2014 -
Microscopic particles that bind under low temperatures will melt as temperatures rise to moderate levels, but re-connect under hotter conditions, a team of New York University scientists has found. Their discovery points to new ways to create "smart materials," cutting-edge materials that adapt to their environment by taking new forms, and to sharpen the detail of 3D printing.
"These findi ...
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Catalysts for hydrogen fuel cells cab be synthesized in microwave oven
Umea, Sweden (SPX) Oct 17, 2014 -
Swedish and Chinese researchers show how a unique nano-alloy composed of palladium nano-islands embedded in tungsten nanoparticles creates a new type of catalysts for highly efficient oxygen reduction, the most important reaction in hydrogen fuel cells.
Their results are published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
The world's rapidly growing demand for energy and the r ...
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Seeking 'absolute zero', copper cube gets chillingly close
Rome (AFP) Oct 21, 2014 -
An Italian lab has cooled a cubic metre of copper to within a tiny fraction of "absolute zero", setting a world record, the National Nuclear Physics Institute said Tuesday.
"The cooled copper mass... was the coldest cubic meter in the universe for over 15 days," the INFN said on its website.
"It is the first experiment ever to cool a mass and a volume of this size to a temperature this c ...
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Brighter energy-saving flat panels using carbon nanotubes
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 17, 2014 -
Even as the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has enshrined light emitting diodes (LEDs) as the single most significant and disruptive energy-efficient lighting solution of today, scientists around the world continue unabated to search for the even-better-bulbs of tomorrow.
Enter carbon electronics.
Electronics based on carbon, especially carbon nanotubes (CNTs), are emerging as successors ...
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A simple and versatile way to build 3-dimensional materials of the future
Kyoto, Japan (SPX) Oct 20, 2014 -
Researchers in Japan have developed a novel yet simple technique, called "diffusion driven layer-by-layer assembly," to construct graphene into porous three-dimensional (3D) structures for applications in devices such as batteries and supercapacitors. Their study was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Graphene is essentially an ultra-thin sheet of carbon and possesses ...
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Google teams with Oxford to teach machines to think
San Francisco (AFP) Oct 23, 2014 -
Google on Thursday announced a partnership with artificial intelligence teams at Oxford University to teach machines to think like people.
Oxford professors behind spinoff startups Dark Blue Labs and Vision Factory will work with DeepMind, a London-based startup that Google bought early this year.
Financial terms of the alliance were not disclosed, but DeepMind co-founder and Google vice ...
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Largest sunspot in 20 years facing planet Earth
Washington (UPI) Oct 24, 2014 -
Sunspot region AR2192 on the solar surface is currently both massive and active, scientists with NASA say. So big, in fact, that the sunspot is visible - with a properly protected eye - from the Earth's surface.
Though the sunspot is active, regularly shooting out significantly sized solar flares, it has yet produce a coronal mass ejection, the high-energy burst of plasma that can int ...
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SpaceX returns to Earth loaded with lab results
Washington (AFP) Oct 25, 2014 -
SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Saturday carrying a heavy load of NASA cargo and scientific samples from the International Space Station that experts hope could yield significant results.
A boat was ferrying the spacecraft to a port near Los Angeles, where NASA said the haul of 1.5 tonnes of experiment results and other materials will be removed and ...
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NASA opens library of cosmic audio to the public
Houston (UPI) Oct 23, 2014 -
American space agency NASA has made available to the public over 60 audio samples recorded on various manned and unmanned space missions.
Uploaded to SoundCloud, the 62 files cover everything from cosmic weather on Jupiter, to the moon landing and other Apollo missions, to Kennedy promising a generation of people in the twentieth century they would live in the space age.
All of t ...
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Russian cosmonauts finish all planned work outside ISS
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Oct 24, 2014 -
Two Russian cosmonauts have finished their spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS), completing all the necessary work earlier than planned, the Russian Mission Control told RIA Novosti Wednesday.
"In accordance with the ISS flight program, Commander Maxim Suraev and Flight Engineer Alexander Samokutyaev have finished their work in the open space," a Mission Control spokesma ...
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New window on the early universe
Bonn, Germany (SPX) Oct 24, 2014 -
Using two world-class supercomputers, the researchers were able to demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach by simulating the formation of a massive galaxy at the dawn of cosmic time. The ALMA radio telescope - which stands at an elevation of 5,000 meters in the Atacama Desert of Chile, one of the driest places on earth - was then used to forge observations of the galaxy, showing how thei ...
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Galactic wheel of life shines in infrared
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 24, 2014 -
It might look like a spoked wheel or even a "Chakram" weapon wielded by warriors like "Xena," from the fictional TV show, but this ringed galaxy is actually a vast place of stellar life. A newly released image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the galaxy NGC 1291. Though the galaxy is quite old, roughly 12 billion years, it is marked by an unusual ring where newborn stars are igniting. ...
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China's lunar orbiter modifies orbit
Beijing (XNA) Oct 26, 2014 -
China's spacecraft testing technology for the Chang'e-5 return lunar mission, trimmed its orbit on Friday afternoon.
This was the first modification during a journey scheduled to take about eight days, according to a statement from the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.
The modification was necessary because the unmanned spacecraft is affec ...
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3rd X-37B test vehicle lands at Vandenberg
Vandenberg CA (SPX) Oct 21, 2014 -
The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle mission 3 (OTV-3), the Air Force's unmanned, reusable space plane, landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:24 a.m. Oct. 17 .
"The 30th Space Wing and our mission partners, Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, Boeing, and our base support contractors, have put countless hours of hard work into preparing for this landing and we were able to see the culmination ...
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Rare 'baby rattle' molecules reveal new quantum properties of H2O and H2
Paris (SPX) Oct 15, 2014 -
The experiments were carried out on endofullerenes, molecules of C60 into which smaller molecules of Hydrogen (H2) had been inserted. The results, published in Physical Review Letters, represent the first known example of a quantum selection rule found in a molecule.
Similar techniques were also used by the same team to uncover an exciting new symmetry-breaking interaction of water molecul ...
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Molten metals in spin cycle on ESA's centrifuge
Paris (ESA) Oct 20, 2014 -
The experimenters stared through bulletproof glass at the whirling 8 m-diameter centrifuge. Never mind the shaking or stirring of drink cocktails - what happens when you spin a cocktail of molten metal?
ESA's Large Diameter Centrifuge provides research teams with easy access to hypergravity. Based at ESA's technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, it can spin at up to 67 revolutions ...
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LockMart Team Delivers Lightning Mapper Instrument For Weather Satellite
Palo Alto CA (SPX) Oct 20, 2014 -
A Lockheed Martin team delivered the first Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) instrument that will provide earlier alerts of severe storms and contribute to more accurate tornado warnings.
The sensor will fly on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) next-generation Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) missions, known as the GOES-R Series.
...
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Khamenei says Iraq can battle IS without foreigners
Tehran Oct 21, 2014 -
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday told Iraq's visiting premier that the Baghdad government is capable of defeating Islamic State jihadists without foreign troops being deployed.
"We stand beside you and will seriously defend your government like the previous government," Khamenei said in a meeting in Tehran with Iraq's Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.
"Iran recognise ...
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CASIS Issues RFP For EO Ideas Using ISS Technology
Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Oct 17, 2014 -
The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) has issued a solicitation for flight proposals seeking access to remote sensing capabilities on the International Space Station (ISS) for Earth-based energy applications. CASIS is the nonprofit organization responsible for managing research onboard the ISS U.S. National Laboratory.
The Request for Proposals (RFP) seeks applications ...
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ADS signs MetOp-SG prime contract with ESA
Paris (SPX) Oct 20, 2014 -
Airbus Defence and Space has signed the formal contracts with the European Space Agency (ESA) to design and build the second generation of Meteorological Operational (MetOp-SG) satellites. Covering the design and build of six spacecraft, these contracts are worth a total of 1.3 billion euros.
The contracts, today inked in Paris in the presence of Genevieve Fioraso, French Secretary of Stat ...
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Syria Kurds weather IS assault as they await reinforcements
Mursitpinar, Turkey (AFP) Oct 21, 2014 -
Kurdish defenders of the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane awaited reinforcements Tuesday after weathering another onslaught by Islamic State jihadists.
Fighting appeared to have diminished after a fierce attack late Monday by IS fighters, including suicide bombers, witnesses and monitors said.
IS jihadists in east Kobane were exchanging fire with Kurdish militia in the west and the ...
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New Zealand updating Super Seasprite helicopter training systems
Wellington, New Zealand (UPI) Oct 21, 2014 -
Simulation systems company CAE is to update and maintain synthetic helicopter training systems for the New Zealand Defense Force.
The systems are the SH-2G(I) Super Seasprite helicopter full mission flight simulator and part task trainer, which the air force is obtaining as part of a deal for the purchase of 10 SH-2G(I) aircraft from Kaman Corporation.
Once the systems are delive ...
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