Science & Technology
By working in synergy with a ground-based telescope array, the joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/NASA Suzaku X-ray observatory is shedding new light on some of the most energetic objects in our galaxy, but objects that remain shrouded in mystery.
These cosmic powerhouses pour out vast amounts of energy, and they accelerate particles to almost the speed of light. But very little is known about these sources because they were discovered only recently. "Understanding these objects is one of the most intriguing problems in astrophysics," says Takayasu Anada of the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science in Kanagawa, Japan. Anada is lead author of a paper presented last week at a Suzaku science conference in San Diego, Calif.
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| Suzaku resolved an X-ray source (left) that was also seen in gamma rays by the H.E.S.S. array (right). The object, HESS J1614-518, is accelerating protons to nearly the speed of light (Credit: JAXA/H.E.S.S.)
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Animals and insects communicate through an invisible world of scents. By exploiting infrared technology, researchers at Rockefeller University just made that world visible. With the ability to see smells, these scientists now show that when fly larvae detect smells with both olfactory organs they find their way toward a scented target more accurately than when they detect them with one.
Fifty years after the Nobel-prize winning explanation of how superconductors work, a research team from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Edinburgh, and Cambridge University are suggesting another mechanism for the still-mysterious phenomenon.
Mark your calendar: On Jan. 29, 2008, one night before a Tunguska-class (50m-wide) asteroid threatens to strike Mars, an even larger asteroid will fly past our own planet.
BALI, Indonesia - While great nations fretted over coal, oil and global warming, one of the smallest at the U.N. climate conference was looking toward the heavens for its energy.
The annual meeting's corridors can be a sounding board for unlikely "solutions" to climate change - from filling the skies with soot to block the sun, to cultivating oceans of seaweed to absorb the atmosphere's heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Unlike other ideas, however, one this year had an influential backer, the Pentagon, which is investigating whether space-based solar power - beaming energy down from satellites - will provide "affordable, clean, safe, reliable, sustainable and expandable energy for mankind."
Archaeological evidence shows that bone skates (skates made of animal bones) are the oldest human powered means of transport, dating back to 3000 BC. Why people started skating on ice and where is not as clear, since ancient remains were found in several locations spread across Central and North Europe.
In a recent paper, published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Dr Formenti and Professor Minetti show substantial evidence supporting the hypothesis that the birth of ice skating took place in Southern Finland, where the number of lakes within 100 square kilometres is the highest in the world.
A brain chemical that makes us sleepy also appears to play a central role in the success of deep brain stimulation to ease symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease and other brain disorders. The surprising finding is outlined in a paper published online Dec. 23 in Nature Medicine.
The work shows that adenosine, a brain chemical most widely known as the cause of drowsiness, is central to the effect of deep brain stimulation, or DBS. The technique is used to treat people affected by Parkinson's disease and who have severe tremor, and it's also being tested in people who have severe depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Maggie Fox
ReutersTue, 25 Dec 2007 02:04 UTC
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| ©REUTERS/Junying Yu/University of Wisconsin-Madison/Handout
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| A scientific team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison created genetic modifications in skin cells, pictured here in this undated handout, to induce the cells into what scientists call a pluripotent state - a condition that is essentially the same as that of embryonic stem cells.
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A third team of researchers has found a way to convert an ordinary skin cell into valued embryonic-like stem cells, with the potential to grow batches of cells that can be directed to form any kind of tissue.
This is an important book about a vast and important subject - economics - which, except for hermits and recluses living in the wilderness, affects just about everyone, every single day, in more ways than most people realize. Understanding economics - or rather, to be more precise, the political economy, a term I amplify later - is critical to any person wishing to make sense of the world, and essential to choosing rationally how to position oneself on the political map.
In a new study in Nature, Brandeis University Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Dr. Dorothee Kern and collaborators pull back the curtain on the secret lives of enzymes, the ubiquitous proteins that catalyze chemical reactions in the cell.
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| ©Howard Hughes Medical Institute
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| Dr. Dorothee Kern Ph.D. Professor of Biochemistry
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