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© NASAA 750-mile (1,200-km) -long feature spotted on Saturn’s A ring by Cassini on April 15, 2013.
"We have not seen anything like this before," said Carl Murray of Queen Mary University in London, lead author of the paper. "We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right."
In images acquired with Cassini's narrow-angle camera in 2013, a 1,200-kilometer-long, 10-kilometer-wide arc of icy material was observed traveling along the edge of the A ring. The arc is thought to be the result of gravitational perturbations caused by an as-yet unseen embedded object about a kilometer wide - possibly a miniature moon in the process of formation.
© Pat Corkery, United Launch Alliance
The 20-story tall rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, blasted off its seaside launch pad at 1:45 p.m. ET (1745 GMT). United Launch Alliance is a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
No information about the rocket's payload was released. The secretive National Reconnaissance Office designs, builds and operates the nation's fleet of spy satellites.
The rocket was outfitted with a single upper-stage Centaur engine and four strap-on solid rocket motors, all built by Aerojet Rocketdyne. In that configuration, the Atlas 5 can deliver up to about 7,800 pounds (3,500 kg) into an orbit 22,300 miles above Earth, United Launch Alliance documents show.
Launch originally was slated for March 25, but a radar system needed to track the rocket during flight short-circuited, prompting a delay. The Air Force reactivated a spare radar while repairs to the damaged system are under way.
© Alamy
Production of blood on an industrial scale could become a reality,
Production of blood on an industrial scale could become a reality,
It is the stuff of gothic science fiction: men in white coats in factories of blood and bones.
But the production of blood on an industrial scale could become a reality once a trial is conducted in which artificial blood made from human stem cells is tested in patients for the first time.
It is the latest breakthrough in scientists' efforts to re-engineer the body, which have already resulted in the likes of 3d-printed bones and bionic limbs.
Marc Turner, the principal researcher in the £5 million programme funded by the Wellcome Trust, told The Telegraph that his team had made red blood cells fit for clinical transfusion.
Prof Turner has devised a technique to culture red blood cells from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells - cells that have been taken from humans and 'rewound' into stem cells. Biochemical conditions similar to those in the human body are then recreated to induce the iPS cells to mature into red blood cells - of the rare universal blood type O.
"Although similar research has been conducted elsewhere, this is the first time anybody has manufactured blood to the appropriate quality and safety standards for transfusion into a human being," said Prof Turner.
A new report from Climate Central has found that major power outages have increased ten times over since the early 1980s - and extreme weather is by far the biggest culprit.
The analysis defined a "major power outage" as a loss of electrical power for at least 50,000 people for at least an hour, or where the power supply interruption reached at least 300 megawatts, or where demand exceeded supply by at least 100 megawatts. It found the big upswing in such events occurred in the 2000s. Weather drove 80 percent of all outages between 2003 and 2012, and only three years in that time period saw non-weather related events account for more than 10 percent of all outages.
The analysis defined a "major power outage" as a loss of electrical power for at least 50,000 people for at least an hour, or where the power supply interruption reached at least 300 megawatts, or where demand exceeded supply by at least 100 megawatts. It found the big upswing in such events occurred in the 2000s. Weather drove 80 percent of all outages between 2003 and 2012, and only three years in that time period saw non-weather related events account for more than 10 percent of all outages.
© University of Missouri
"Before the Ediacaran and Cambrian Periods, organisms were unicellular and simple," said James Schiffbauer, assistant professor of geological sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science. "The Cambrian Period, which occurred between 540 million and 485 million years ago, ushered in the advent of shells. Over time, shells and exoskeletons can be fossilized, giving scientists clues into how organisms existed millions of years ago. This adaptation provided protection and structural integrity for organisms. My work focuses on those harder-to-find, soft-tissue organisms that weren't preserved quite as easily and aren't quite as plentiful."
© Successfulworkplace.com
Five years ago, a team of researchers from Google announced a remarkable achievement in one of the world's top scientific journals, Nature. Without needing the results of a single medical check-up, they were nevertheless able to track the spread of influenza across the US. What's more, they could do it more quickly than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Google's tracking had only a day's delay, compared with the week or more it took for the CDC to assemble a picture based on reports from doctors' surgeries. Google was faster because it was tracking the outbreak by finding a correlation between what people searched for online and whether they had flu symptoms.
Not only was "Google Flu Trends" quick, accurate and cheap, it was theory-free. Google's engineers didn't bother to develop a hypothesis about what search terms - "flu symptoms" or "pharmacies near me" - might be correlated with the spread of the disease itself. The Google team just took their top 50 million search terms and let the algorithms do the work.
Russian investors poured an estimated $2 billion into U.S. tech firms including Facebook and Twitter
© AP Photo/Marcio Jose SanchezDmitry Akhanov, president of the U.S. subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned venture fund RUSNANO, works in his office on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in Menlo Park, Calif. Entrepreneurs and investors say Silicon Valley’s fast growing ties with Russia’s tech sector are being slowed down by current political tensions between the White House and the Kremlin
"It's safe to say a lot of investors here are taking a step back to see how the situation will unfold," said Alexandra Johnson, who manages a $100 million venture fund called DFJ VTP Aurora, a Menlo Park, Calif., branch of Russian bank VTB.
© AP/Eric Gay
Mr. Moore gave Business Insider a demonstration of the technology he's perfecting by using a glider as proof of concept.
In short, if a drone is equipped with the a magnetometer it should be possible to make the aircraft capable of identifying magnetic fields given off by power lines, home in on the signal they emit, and then maneuver in such a way that would allow the drone to perch until fully charged.
Discovery Date: April 5, 2014
Magnitude: 20.5 mag
Discoverer: Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala)
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2014-G42.
Magnitude: 20.5 mag
Discoverer: Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (Haleakala)
© Aerith NetMagnitudes Graph
