NATO set to invite Montenegro to join alliance: sources
Brussels (AFP) Nov 30, 2015 -
The Balkan state of Montenegro will on Wednesday be formally invited to join the NATO military alliance, diplomatic sources said, a move which could further strain already difficult ties with Moscow.
The offer is expected to come after a meeting of foreign ministers from the 28-nation alliance in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday.
"The proposed text has been approved at (NATO) ambassador ...
more
Australian-first safety guide and study show what's in store for our energy future
Melbourne, Australia (SPX) Nov 30, 2015 -
The Clean Energy Council is launching an Australian-first home energy storage safety guide in collaboration with CSIRO at an event in Sydney today, along with the most comprehensive national study of storage safety to date.
Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton said while many people had been captivated by the future possibilities of solar and storage technology, very little i ...
more
Pentagon Slush Funds
Moscow (Sputnik) Dec 01, 2015 -
US has set ambitious plans to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad over the next thirty years, already awarding contracts to various defense contractors. However here's the rub - where can it get the money for weapons it can barely afford? It turns out that Washington has a few tricks up its sleeve to secure its precious treasure.
There are certain "budget gimmickries" that the US ...
more
Stanford technology makes metal wires on solar cells nearly invisible to light
Stanford CA (SPX) Nov 30, 2015 -
A solar cell is basically a semiconductor, which converts sunlight into electricity, sandwiched between metal contacts that carry the electrical current. But this widely used design has a flaw: The shiny metal on top of the cell actually reflects sunlight away from the semiconductor where electricity is produced, reducing the cell's efficiency.
Now, Stanford University scientists have disc ...
more
"Impenetrable Shield" protects Moscow from Ballistic Missile threats
Moscow (Sputnik) Dec 01, 2015 -
Moscow's missile defense system can protect the city against any kind of ballistic missile, according to Colonel Andrei Cheburin, commander of the missile defense division of the 1st Air Defense Army of the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces.
"Right now it is the only system in the world capable of intercepting any kind of ballistic missile coming from any direction, including missiles speci ...
more
Researchers find new, inexpensive way to clean water from oil sands production
Waterloo, Canada (SPX) Nov 30, 2015 -
Researchers have developed a process to remove contaminants from oil sands wastewater using only sunlight and nanoparticles that is more effective and inexpensive than conventional treatment methods.
Frank Gu, a professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo and Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology Engineering, is the senior researcher on the team that was the fir ...
more
China, Taiwan in first-ever spy swap as ties improve
Taipei (AFP) Nov 30, 2015 -
Taiwan said Monday it has for the first time exchanged jailed spies with China, in another sign of closer relations between the two sides which recently held a historic summit.
The swap took place last month ahead of Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's November 7 meeting with China's leader Xi Jinping - the first encounter since the rivals split in 1949 at the end of a civil war.
Beijing fr ...
more
NATO chief on European security: 'This is not a new Cold War'
Washington (UPI) Nov 30, 2015 -
NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg is calling for European powers to "modernize" security protocols in the region as tensions grow between the alliance and Russia.
Stoltenberg, the top official of the alliance said the continent's security atmosphere has destabilized in the face of Russian militarism in a recent editorial, adding issues like the tensions between Moscow and the Turkish gove ...
more
Manila attacks Beijing South China Sea claims in court case
The Hague (AFP) Nov 30, 2015 -
The Philippines has sought to debunk China's claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea, court officials said Monday as an international tribunal wrapped up a five-day hearing.
Although Beijing has refused to take part in the hearing before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, judges have now given China until January 1 to write a rebuttal to the case laid out by Manila in the Hague. ...
more
Putin snubs Erdogan in Paris as pilot's body returns to Russia
Moscow (AFP) Nov 30, 2015 -
Russian President Vladimir Putin snubbed a meeting with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in France on Monday as the body of a pilot killed when Ankara downed one of Moscow's warplanes returned home.
Turkish authorities meanwhile again pledged not to apologise over last Tuesday's downing of the Russian jet on the Syrian border as Moscow rolled out its sanctions aimed at exacting econ ...
more
US has not lost Thailand to China: ambassador
Bangkok (AFP) Nov 30, 2015 -
The United States has not lost Thailand to China, Washington's envoy to Bangkok said Monday, despite acrimony between the two allies and a palpable shift by the kingdom's junta towards its giant northern neighbour.
"I don't spend a lot of time, I don't spend any time, saying to Washington here's how we get Thailand back. We haven't lost Thailand," ambassador Glyn T. Davies told reporters in ...
more
China to set up BDS international maritime surveillance center
Tianjin (XNA) Nov 26, 2015 -
China is planning to build an international maritime surveillance center for the Beidou Navigation Satellite System(BDS), an alternative to U.S.-operated GPS, authorities with the Ministry of Transport said on Tuesday.
The surveillance center, located in Tianjin Municipality, will monitor and assess the accuracy, operating situation, and signal quality of the system and report to users on ...
more
Satellite Spectrum Is Central To Future Vision For Global Connectivity
Geneva, Switzerland (SPX) Dec 01, 2015 -
The world's governments resoundingly affirmed a clear vision for the importance of many vital and irreplaceable services provided today over satellite. They also agreed on a clear framework for future access to satellite spectrum for innovative satellite communications.
This was accomplished by agreeing to preserve and create new additional valuable spectrum for fixed and mobile solutions ...
more
Inkjet hologram printing now possible
St Petersburg, Russia (SPX) Dec 01, 2015 -
Vivid holographic images and text can now be produced by means of an ordinary inkjet printer. This new method, developed by a team of scientists from ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, is expected to significantly reduce the cost and time needed to create the so-called rainbow holograms, commonly used for security purposes - to protect valuable items, such as credit cards and paper currency, f ...
more
Creating a new vision for multifunctional materials
Boston MA (SPX) Nov 26, 2015 -
Multifunctional materials with sensory capabilities like those of vision, touch or even smell could profoundly expand the possibilities of industrial design in many areas. Taking a cue from nature, a cross-institutional collaboration involving researchers from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and MIT has deciphered how the biomineral making up the bo ...
more
Identifying new sources of turbulence in spherical tokamaks
Plainsboro NJ (SPX) Nov 30, 2015 -
For fusion reactions to take place efficiently, the atomic nuclei that fuse together in plasma must be kept sufficiently hot. But turbulence in the plasma that flows in facilities called tokamaks can cause heat to leak from the core of the plasma to its outer edge, causing reactions to fizzle out.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPP ...
more
ORNL microscopy captures real-time view of evolving fuel cell catalysts
Oak Ridge TN (SPX) Nov 26, 2015 -
Atomic-level imaging of catalysts by scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could help manufacturers lower the cost and improve the performance of emission-free fuel cell technologies.
Fuel cells rely on costly platinum catalysts to enable the reactions that convert chemical energy into electricity. Alloying platinum with noble metals such as cobalt reduces ...
more
Semiconductor wafers exhibit strange quantum phenomenon at room temps
Chicago IL (SPX) Nov 26, 2015 -
Entanglement is one of the strangest phenomena predicted by quantum mechanics, the theory that underlies most of modern physics. It says that two particles can be so inextricably connected that the state of one particle can instantly influence the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are.
Just one century ago, entanglement was at the center of intense theoretical debate, leavin ...
more
Using light-force to study single molecules
Lausanne, Switzerland (SPX) Dec 01, 2015 -
Scientists at EPFL show how a light-induced force can amplify the sensitivity and resolution of a technique used to study single molecules. When it comes to studying single molecules, scientists use a powerful technique called "surface-enhanced Raman scattering" (SERS). An extremely sensitive tool, SERS detects the vibrations within the atoms of the illuminated molecule as a change in light colo ...
more
Material universe yields surprising new particle
Princeton NJ (SPX) Dec 01, 2015 -
An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of a new type of particle called the type-II Weyl fermion in metallic materials. When subjected to a magnetic field, the materials containing the particle act as insulators for current applied in some directions and as conductors for current applied in other directions. This behavior suggests a range of potential applications, from ...
more
Cryogenic testing from 1964 to the James Webb Space Telescope
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Dec 01, 2015 -
The men in this photo from 1964 are not on a trip through the Arctic wilderness - in fact, they're inside a facility at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
They bundled up in furs and ski masks to work in a small cryogenic chamber called the Low Temperature Optical Facility (LTOF). The chamber was built at Goddard in the 1960s to test the optics of the Orbiting Astro ...
more
European payload selected for ExoMars 2018 surface platform
Paris (ESA) Dec 01, 2015 -
Two European instruments and four European contributions on two Russian instruments have been selected for the Russian-led science platform that will land on Mars as part of the ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2018 mission.
The first of the two ExoMars mission is in final preparation for launch next March. It consists of the Trace Gas Orbiter, which will investigate the possible biological or geolog ...
more
Laser Power: Russia develops energy beam for satellite refueling
Moscow (Sputnik) Dec 01, 2015 -
Russian scientists have developed a unique system for the transmission of electricity between spacecraft using lasers and photoelectric converters, according to the Russian daily Izvestia.
Federal Space Agency Roscosmos plans to perform a unique experiment where it hopes to transmit energy wirelessly in space, RIA Novosti quoted the Russian newspaper Izvestia as saying.
The new techn ...
more
Many Worlds, Subterranean Edition
Moffett Field CA (SPX) Dec 01, 2015 -
One of the richest lines of research for those thinking about life beyond Earth has been the world of microscopic creatures that live in especially extreme and hostile environments here. The realm of extremophiles has exploded in roughly the period that exoplanet discoveries have exploded, and both serve to significantly change our view of what's possible in nature writ large.
I was remind ...
more
LISA Pathfinder - the countdown is running
Hannover, Germany (SPX) Dec 01, 2015 -
At 5:15 CET on December 2, a Vega rocket is scheduled for launch from the European spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana) to lift a "pathfinder" into space: LISA Pathfinder will demonstrate novel technologies for the planned gravitational-wave observatory eLISA that will one day capture the sound of the Universe. The LISA Pathfinder project is based on more than ten years of scientific development ...
more
