Rare split images of supernova put Johns Hopkins astronomer in the spotlight
Baltimore MD (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
A Johns Hopkins astronomer played a key role in the recent discovery of a distant exploding star whose light split into four distinct images in a display seen for the first time by scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope.
The multi-image effect occurred when light from the exploding star passed through a cluster of galaxies located between the supernova and the Earth. The gravitational ...
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Webb Conversations: James Webb Space Telescope Coming Together
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
This is the third installment in a four-part series of conversations with Paul Geithner Deputy Project Manager - Technical for Webb telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland about different aspects of the Webb.
The James Webb Space Telescope will gaze into the universe in infrared light and look farther back in time than previous telescopes, allowing scientists ...
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Solving the riddle of neutron stars
Frankfurt, Germany (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
It has not yet been possible to measure the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. They are so weak that they get lost in the noise of the measurements. But thanks to the latest simulations of the merging of binary neutron star systems, the structure of the sought-after signals is now known.
As a team of German and Japanese theoretical astrophysicists rep ...
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MMS: Studying Magnetic Reconnection Near Earth
Huntsville AL (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
The Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission is scheduled to launch into space on March 12, 2015. The mission consists of four spacecraft to observe a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection - which doesn't happen naturally on Earth all that often, but is a regular occurrence in space. At the heart of magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physics process in which magnetic field lines come tog ...
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Saturn moon's ocean may have hydrothermal activity
Boulder CO (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
A new study by a team of Cassini mission scientists led by the University of Colorado Boulder have found that microscopic grains of rock detected near Saturn imply hydrothermal activity is taking place within the moon Enceladus.
The grains are the first clear indication of an icy moon having hydrothermal activity, in which seawater infiltrates and reacts with a rocky crust, emerging as a h ...
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Liquid Metal Robots Are Almost Here
Moscow (Sputnik) Mar 13, 2015 -
The Chinese researchers hope to create a non-rigid robot resembling the fictional T-1000 from Terminator 2, however, the robot would be used mostly to observe environmental changes or to deliver materials within pipes and tiny blood vessels.
A group of Chinese researchers has invented a bizarre self-powered liquid metal motor - apparently a step towards the creation of a copy of the morphi ...
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New material captures carbon at half the energy cost
Berkeley CA (SPX) Mar 12, 2015 -
UC Berkeley chemists have made a major leap forward in carbon-capture technology with a material that can efficiently remove carbon from the ambient air of a submarine as readily as from the polluted emissions of a coal-fired power plant.
The material then releases the carbon dioxide at lower temperatures than current carbon-capture materials, potentially cutting by half or more the energy ...
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Exploring the Depths of Titan's Seas
Cleveland OH (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
In our solar system, there are only two planetary bodies with liquid lakes and seas-Earth and Titan, a moon of Saturn. But instead of water, Titan lakes are made of liquid methane with temperatures registering at almost -300 F.
So how would NASA study this interesting place? Steve Oleson of NASA Glenn's COMPASS Lab (Collaborative Modeling for Parametric Assessment of Space Systems) believ ...
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NASA launches satellites to track 'magnetosphere'
Washington (AFP) March 13, 2015 -
Four identical satellites which will study the interactions between solar winds and the Earth's magnetic fields blasted off into Space on Thursday and settled into orbit begin a two-year study, NASA said.
The Atlas V rocket of the United Launch Alliance lifted off from its launchpad from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 22:44 local time (2:44 GMT Friday) as planned at the beginning a 30-minute w ...
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Japan firm marks one small step for solar energy in space
Tokyo (AFP) March 13, 2015 -
A major Japanese machinery company said Friday that it has succeeded in transmitting energy wirelessly, marking a step toward making solar power generation in space a reality.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries said it used microwave technology to send 10 kilowatts of power - enough to run a set of conventional kitchen appliances - through the air to a receiver 500 metres (1,640 feet) away.
W ...
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British Ebola patient flown home from S. Leone
London (AFP) March 12, 2015 -
A female British military healthcare worker who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone arrived home Thursday for treatment in a London hospital isolation unit.
A Royal Air Force (RAF) plane brought the servicewoman back from the west African country to be treated in the Royal Free Hospital. She is the third Briton to contract the virus in Sierra Leone.
The condition of the patient, who on Wedn ...
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Storm kills 62 in Angola: report
Luanda (AFP) March 12, 2015 -
Torrential rains have killed 62 people, more than half of them children, in the Angolan town of Lobito, official news agency Angop said Thursday, citing firefighters.
The Bairro Novo neighbourhood of Lobito, located on the Atlantic coast some 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of the capital Luanda, was worst affected by the downpours on the night from Wednesday to Thursday, with the water up ...
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'Low risk' bird flu outbreak at Dutch farm: official
The Hague (AFP) March 12, 2015 -
Dutch authorities have identified an outbreak of avian flu in chickens at a farm in the centre of the country that is likely a "low risk" strain, officials said Thursday.
"Bird flu has been identified at an egg farm in Barneveld with around 30,000 chickens," the economics ministry said in a statement.
"It is highly likely that it is the mild H7 strain," it said, adding that tests were ex ...
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Norway whale meat dumped in Japan after pesticide finding
Tokyo (AFP) March 11, 2015 -
Whale meat imported into Japan from Norway has been dumped after tests found it contained up to twice the permitted level of harmful pesticide, the government said Wednesday.
The announcement came after Western environmentalists first exposed the issue, in the latest salvo of a battle that pits Japan against many of its usual allies, such as Australia and New Zealand.
An official at Japa ...
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Exiled Tibet leader compares China to N.Korea, apartheid S.Africa
Paris (AFP) March 12, 2015 -
The leader of Tibet's exiled government on Thursday compared China to the regimes of North Korea and apartheid South Africa when it came to Beijing's iron-fisted control over Tibetans.
Speaking on a trip to Paris aimed at putting the spotlight back onto the Tibetan cause, Lobsang Sangay told AFP in an interview that the arrival of Xi Jinping as China's president had done nothing to ease the ...
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Sierra Leone war criminal returned from Rwandan jail
Freetown (AFP) March 12, 2015 -
A Sierra Leone militia commander convicted of civil war atrocities and jailed in Rwanda was returned Thursday to serve out his sentence at home, a UN-backed court in Freetown said.
Moinina Fofana led the pro-government Civil Defence Forces (CDF), a notorious paramilitary unit which recruited traditional hunters to fight rebels during the 1991-2002 civil war in the west African state.
He ...
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Google launches virtual tour of Nepal's Everest region
Kathmandu (AFP) March 12, 2015 -
Google launched a virtual tour of Nepal's Everest region on Thursday, allowing armchair tourists a rare glimpse of life in one of the toughest and most inaccessible places on earth.
The Street View project takes viewers into the heart of the Sagarmatha national park, home to the world's highest mountain, where icy blue rivers run below snow-capped peaks, monks play traditional music and yak- ...
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Marine biodiversity isn't as great as scientists thought
Ostend, Belgium (UPI) Mar 12, 2015 -
Over the years, the literature of marine science has become a bit redundant. Recently, scholars set about to sort through the mess.
After completing a review of nearly all the marine species ever named in the scientific literature, researchers at the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) found nearly half all creatures, 45 percent, to be duplicates.
Some 200 editors of WoRMS s ...
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Asian monsoon rains drove mammal evolution
Manchester UK (SPX) Mar 12, 2015 -
New findings, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could have implications for conserving the species living in the vast area affected by monsoon rains.
A team including researchers from the University of Manchester, the University of Bristol, the Chinese Academy of Science, and Harvard University looked at the pattern of variation of the South Asian monsoon over time and co ...
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Beijing's forest coverage rate exceeds 40 percent
Beijing (XNA) Mar 13, 2015 -
Forest coverage in Beijing is 41 percent by the end of last year, authorities said ahead of China's Tree Planting Day, which is on Thursday.
According to the Beijing Greening Committee, a total of 197 million trees have been planted in the capital city following a city resolution on tree planting in 1981. Nearly 88 percent of those trees have survived.
Over the past 34 years, more th ...
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US to Deploy Chemical Brigade to Liberia to Combat Ebola
Moscow (Sputnik) Mar 13, 2015 -
The United States will deploy its Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear brigade's headquarters to Liberia to further combat the Ebola epidemic, the US Defense Department announced in a press release.
"The 48th Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Brigade's (CBRN) headquarters will deploy to Liberia to command the remaining American forces supporting the US effort to help ...
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Swine flu outbreak in India raises concern
Cambridge MA (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
Since December, an outbreak of swine flu in India has killed more than 1,200 people, and a new MIT study suggests that the strain has acquired mutations that make it more dangerous than previously circulating strains of H1N1 influenza.
The findings, which appear in the March 11 issue of Cell Host and Microbe, contradict previous reports from Indian health officials that the strain has not ...
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Ancient Mongol metallurgy an extreme polluter
Pittsburgh PA (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
The ancient Mongols have a reputation for having been fierce warriors. A new study out of the University of Pittsburgh shows them to have been unmatched polluters.
Graduate student Aubrey Hillman recently published a paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that shows copper and silver production in southwest China produced tremendous quantities of harmful heavy metals, su ...
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Tracking sea turtles across hundreds of miles of open ocean
Amherst MA (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
Scientists have long known that leatherback sea turtles travel thousands of miles each year through open ocean to get from foraging habitats to nesting beaches and tropical wintering grounds, but how the wanderers find their way has been "an enduring mystery of animal behavior," says marine biologist Kara Dodge. "Adult turtles can pinpoint specific nesting beaches even after being away many year ...
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Epoch-defining study pinpoints when humans came to dominate planet Earth
London UK (SPX) Mar 13, 2015 -
The human-dominated geological epoch known as the Anthropocene probably began around the year 1610, with an unusual drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide and the irreversible exchange of species between the New and Old Worlds, according to new research published in Nature.
Previous epochs began and ended due to factors including meteorite strikes, sustained volcanic eruptions and the shifting ...
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