UN emergency fund releases $15mn for quake-hit Nepal
Geneva April 28, 2015 -
The United Nations said Tuesday it would draw $15 million (13.7 million euros) from its emergency fund to help kickstart relief operations in earthquake-ravaged Nepal, where thousands have already perished.
"This will go to support to UN agencies to meet emergency needs that include... food, water, medication, but also logistical support," said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian ...
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Could Earth host another supercontinent?
Bentley, Australia (UPI) Apr 28, 2015 -
Researchers in Australia, Canada and the United States are looking into the possibility of a supercontinent once again amalgamating amid the world's oceans.
Some 300 million years ago, the planet's continents came together to form one giant island called Pangea. About 100 million years later, Pangea began breaking apart - each continent drifting toward their current positions.
C ...
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Britain's Gurkhas battle to help families after Nepal quake
London (AFP) April 28, 2015 -
Separated by thousands of miles from their devastated homeland, Britain's community of Gurkha soldiers past and present is rallying to help victims of the earthquake in Nepal.
The 2,500-strong Gurkha brigade, soldiers recruited in Nepal, has been part of the British army for 200 years including on the frontlines in Afghanistan and Iraq.
They are famed for their ferocity and tenacity, and ...
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Pope, UN chief in shock over Med disasters, back action on global warming
Rome (AFP) April 28, 2015 -
Pope Francis and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday voiced shock over migrant deaths in the Mediterranean and agreed on the need for tackling global warming, just weeks before the Vatican issues an official opinion on the controversy.
Talks on the sidelines of a Vatican seminar on environmental issues were largely taken up by the migrant crisis, an issue on which both leaders have c ...
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Aid reaches quake-hit Nepal villagers as death toll passes 5,000
Gorkha, Nepal (AFP) April 28, 2015 -
Hungry and desperate villagers rushed towards relief helicopters in remote areas of Nepal Tuesday, begging to be airlifted to safety, four days after a monster earthquake killed more than 5,000 people.
"The ground keeps shaking, even this morning it did. Every time it feels like we will be swallowed, that we will die now. I want to get out of here!" said Sita Gurung, 24, whose home had been ...
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Evolution makes invading species spread even faster
Zurich, Switzerland (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Today, invasive animals and plants spread all around the globe. Predicting the dynamics of these invasions is of great ecological and socioeconomical interest. Yet studying them is fundamentally challenging because of the large spatial and temporal scales involved. Scientists at Eawag and University of Zurich are now using computer simulations and small artificial laboratory worlds, to study how ...
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Enhancing earthquake early warning in the Pacific Northwest
San Francisco CA (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems depend on speed and accuracy in delivering seismic monitoring data to areas at risk from a quake or volcanic eruption.
Paul Bodin of the University of Washington and colleagues have been testing models of EEW systems within the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) in Washington State and Oregon to learn more about what factors could be improved to ...
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Spread of pathogens between species is predictable
Santa Cruz CA (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
A study of disease dynamics in a California grassland has revealed fundamental principles underlying the spread of pathogens among species, with broad implications for the maintenance of biodiversity and for addressing practical problems related to plant diseases.
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, measured the amount of disease on the leaves of plants in a meadow on ...
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Neuronal positioning system: A GPS to navigate the brain
Jerusalem, Israel (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
In new research published by Nature Methods, scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Harvard University have announced a "Neuronal Positioning System" (NPS) that maps the circuitry of the brain, similar to how a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver triangulates one's location on the planet.
For more than a century, neuroscientists have tried to uncover the structure of t ...
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DNA of bacteria crucial to ecosystem defies explanation
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Scientists have found something they can't quite explain in one of the most barren environments on Earth: a bacterium whose DNA sequence contains elements usually only found in a much higher organism.
Trichodesmium is a type of bacteria known as an oligotroph, meaning that it can survive in incredibly nutrient-poor regions of the ocean. In fact, it thrives there - to the point that great b ...
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Obama, Abe say not opposed to China infrastructure bank
Washington (AFP) April 28, 2015 -
US President Barack Obama and Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe said Tuesday that they were not opposed to China's Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, but stressed it needs high standards and transparency.
Neither said their country would join the new AIIB - which many European and Asian allies have signed onto already - but both said they would work with it if its project and loan standard ...
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Study: Electricity usage can predict stock market
South Bend, Ind. (UPI) Apr 27, 2015 -
For many, predicting future stock prices seems like little more than rolling the dice. But it turns out, something as simple as electricity use can anticipate next year's returns.
According to researchers at the University of Notre Dame, industrial electricity use is negatively correlated with the following year's stock returns.
"For example, if the industrial electricity usage t ...
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Iran seizes cargo ship in Strait of Hormuz
Tehran (AFP) April 28, 2015 -
Iran's Revolutionary Guards seized control of a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo vessel in the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, prompting the US Navy to dispatch a destroyer to "monitor" the situation, officials said.
Iranian military ships fired across the bow of the Maersk Tigris when the captain initially refused a demand to head towards Iranian territory, US government and cargo comp ...
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Sweden speeds up closure of two nuclear reactors
Stockholm April 28, 2015 -
Sweden's state-owned energy group Vattenfall on Tuesday said it planned to speed up the shutdown of two nuclear reactors by up to seven years, to 2018 and 2020.
Vattenfall said reactors 1 and 2 at the Ringhals plant in southwestern Sweden were too costly to keep in production until 2015 as previously planned.
"Ringhals 1 and 2 may be closed down between the years 2018 and 2020 instead of ...
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DuPont introduces new generation of PV metallization pastes
Shanghai, China (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
DuPont Microcircuit Materials (DuPont) has introduced DuPont Solamet PV19x photovoltaic metallization pastes as the newest family of advanced materials designed to help increase the power output of solar panels.
Solamet PV19x pastes offer solar cell and panel manufacturers significant efficiency gains up to and exceeding 0.15 percent when compared to Solamet PV18x paste, the current indust ...
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Four New Community-Shared Solar Projects Launch in Massachusetts
Worcester MA (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
As part of its mission to bring equal access to the benefits of solar to all ratepayers across the state, community solar pioneer Clean Energy Collective (CEC) celebrated four new community solar facilities in Massachusetts with ceremonial groundbreaking events this week. Representatives from CEC were joined by state and local officials to commemorate the beginning of construction of a 1 MW (AC) ...
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Heat makes electrons' spin in magnetic superconductors
Helsinki, Finland (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Physicists have shown how heat can be exploited for controlling magnetic properties of matter. The finding helps in the development of more efficient mass memories. The result was published yesterday in Physical Review Letters. The international research group behind the breakthrough included Finnish researchers from the University of Jyvaskyla and Aalto University.
The ability to control ...
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Indo-French Nuclear Coop eration Strengthened
New Delhi, India (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Prime Minister Modi's recent visit to France proved fruitful for the much delayed Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant (JNPP) in Maharashtra. The France visit resulted in a break-through signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the French Areva and India's Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL). Areva is supposed to set up six nuclear power plants in Jaitapur.
As India ...
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Advances in molecular electronics: Lights on - molecule on
Dresden, Germany (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of Konstanz are working on storing and processing information on the level of single molecules to create the smallest possible components that will combine autonomously to form a circuit. As recently reported in the academic journal Advanced Science, the researchers can switch on the current flow through a single mo ...
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Generating broadband terahertz radiation from a microplasma in air
Rochester NY (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Researchers at the University of Rochester's Institute of Optics have shown that a laser-generated microplasma in air can be used as a source of broadband terahertz radiation.
In a paper published this week in Optica, Fabrizio Buccheri and Xi-Cheng Zhang demonstrate that an approach for generating terahertz waves using intense laser pulses in air - first pioneered in 1993 - can be done wit ...
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Rosatom Considers Tripling Iran's Nuclear Power Production
Moscow (Sputnik) Apr 29, 2015 -
The deputy head of Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom met with the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization to discuss power plant expansion and eventual handover of the plants to Iran.
Russia and Iran discussed the construction of the second and third units of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, as well as the handover of control of the plant to Iran when limits on the country's ...
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Thumbnail track pad
Boston MA (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are developing a new wearable device that turns the user's thumbnail into a miniature wireless track pad.
They envision that the technology could let users control wireless devices when their hands are full - answering the phone while cooking, for instance. It could also augment other interfaces, allowing someone texting on a cellphone, say, to toggle betwe ...
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Climate change: How Brits feel about 'smart' energy
Nottingham, UK (SPX) Apr 29, 2015 -
Reluctance to share data about personal energy use is likely to be a major obstacle when implementing 'smart' technologies designed to monitor use and support energy efficient behaviours, according to new research led by academics at The University of Nottingham.
The study, published online by the journal Nature Climate Change, found that while more than half of people quizzed would be wil ...
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Fire shuts down Taiwan nuclear power reactor
Taipei (XNA) Apr 29, 2015 -
A fire broke out at a nuclear power station in southern Taiwan shortly before midnight on Sunday, forcing the shutdown of one of its two reactors.
The fire began inside an auxiliary electrical transformer at the Third Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County, setting off an alarm at 11:58 p.m., the Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) said.
It was put out by the plant's own firefighters 17 ...
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IAEA chief stresses commitment to "safety first" in nuclear energy use
United Nations (XNA) Apr 29, 2015 -
Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on Monday highlighted the importance of putting safety first in the development of nuclear energy.
"The Fukushima Daiichi accident was a painful reminder that a terrible accident can happen anywhere. Plant operators, nuclear regulators and governments must demonstrate total commitment to the principle of 'safe ...
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