Science & TechnologyS


Bulb

Can Genetic Information Be Controlled By Light?

DNA, the molecule that acts as the carrier of genetic information in all forms of life, is highly resistant against alteration by ultraviolet light, but understanding the mechanism for its photostability presents some puzzling problems. A key aspect is the interaction between the four chemical bases that make up the DNA molecule. Researchers at Kiel University have succeeded in showing that DNA strands differ in their light sensitivity depending on their base sequences.
Nina Schwalb
© J. Haacks, CAUNina Schwalb adjusting the femtosecond laser spectroscope.

Bulb

Clue To Genetic Cause Of Fatal Birth Defect

A novel enzyme may play a major role in anencephaly, offering hope for a genetic test or even therapy for the rare fatal birth defect in which the brain fails to develop, according to a study from researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.

Saturn

Flashback Astronomers decide on three new planets

An influential group of Astronomers meeting in Prague are deciding whether our solar system has 12 planets, not nine.

They have agreed on a draft proposal for redefining what constitutes a planet.

A new kind of planet, the pluton, differs from classical planets in that they have orbits round the Sun that take longer than 200 years to complete, and their orbits are highly tilted and non-circular.

All these characteristics suggest that they have an origin different from that of classical planets.

If plutons are approved at the meeting in the Czech capital, it would mean there are 12, not nine planets, and more could be added to the list in the future.

Telescope

Meteosat-8 Rapid Scan Shoots Asteroid on Impact Over Sudan

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A rare series of events occurred early Tuesday morning, October 7, as asteroid 2008 TC3 hit Earth releasing a huge amount of light and energy before exploding in the atmosphere over northern Sudan. Even better is that amazingly, the Meteosat-8 Rapid Scanning Service managed to capture the impact.

Fish

Virgin shark got pregnant in Virginia aquarium

Scientists using DNA testing have confirmed the second-known instance of "virgin birth" in a shark -- a female Atlantic blacktip shark named Tidbit that produced a baby without a male shark.

Magnify

Liquid Mirror Telescopes on the Moon

A team of internationally renowned astronomers and opticians may have found a way to make "unbelievably large" telescopes on the Moon.

"It's so simple," says Ermanno F. Borra, physics professor at the Optics Laboratory of Laval University in Quebec, Canada. "Isaac Newton knew that any liquid, if put into a shallow container and set spinning, naturally assumes a parabolic shape - the same shape needed by a telescope mirror to bring starlight to a focus. This could be the key to making a giant lunar observatory."

Display

'Unbreakable' encryption unveiled

laser cryptography
Quantum cryptography is inherently unbreakable
Perfect secrecy has come a step closer with the launch of the world's first computer network protected by unbreakable quantum encryption at a scientific conference in Vienna.

The network connects six locations across Vienna and in the nearby town of St Poelten, using 200 km of standard commercial fibre optic cables.

Display

Computers 'Taught' To Search For Photos Based On Their Contents

A pair of Penn State researchers has developed a statistical approach, called Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Pictures in Real-Time (ALIPR), that one day could make it easier to search the Internet for photographs.

The public can participate in improving ALIPR's accuracy by visiting a designated Web site , uploading photographs, and evaluating whether the keywords that ALIPR uses to describe the photographs are appropriate.

ALIPR works by teaching computers to recognize the contents of photographs, such as buildings, people, or landscapes, rather than by searching for keywords in the surrounding text, as is done with most current image-retrieval systems. The team recently received a patent for an earlier version of the approach, called ALIP, and is in the process of obtaining another patent for the more sophisticated ALIPR. They hope that eventually ALIPR can be used in industry for automatic tagging or as part of Internet search engines.

Telescope

When It Comes To Galaxies, Diversity Is Everywhere

A group of galaxies in our cosmic backyard has given astronomers clues about how stars form. A thorough survey using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed around 14 million stars in 69 galaxies. Some galaxies were found to be full of ancient stars, while others are like sun-making factories.
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© NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton & B. Williams (University of Washington)These images taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are close-up views of four galaxies from a large survey of nearby galaxies. In the composite image at the top, NGC 253 is ablaze with the light from thousands of young, blue stars. The spiral galaxy is undergoing intense star formation. The image demonstrates the sharp "eye" of the Advanced Camera, which resolved individual stars. The dark filaments are clouds of dust and gas. NGC 253 is the dominant galaxy in the Sculptor Group of galaxies and it resides about 13 million light-years from Earth. In the view of the spiral galaxy NGC 300, second from top, young, blue stars are concentrated in spiral arms that sweep diagonally through the image. The yellow blobs are glowing hot gas that has been heated by radiation from the nearest young, blue stars. NGC 300 is a member of the Sculptor Group of galaxies and it is located 7 million light-years away. The dark clumps of material scattered around the bright nucleus of NGC 3077, the small, dense galaxy at bottom, left, are pieces of wreckage from the galaxy's interactions with its larger neighbours. NGC 3077 is a member of the M81 group of galaxies and it resides 12.5 million light-years from Earth. The image at bottom, right, shows a swarm of young, blue stars in the diffuse dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 4163. NGC 4163 is a member of a group of dwarf galaxies near our Milky Way and is located roughly 10 million light-years away.

The detailed study, called the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST) program, explored a region called the Local Volume, where galaxy distances range from 6.5 million light-years to 13 million light-years from Earth.

A typical galaxy contains billions of stars but looks smooth when viewed through a conventional telescope because the stars appear blurred together. In contrast, the galaxies observed in this new survey are close enough to Earth that the sharp view provided by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 can resolve the brightness and colour of some individual stars. This allows scientists to determine the history of star formation within a galaxy and tease out subtle features in a galaxy's shape.

Robot

Robots: The Bizarre And The Beautiful

The future is a foreign country, and nowhere is it more foreign that the designs thrown up by a surge in robotics research. The feverish imagination and creativity of European robot scientists has led to dozens of robot designs, some bizarre, some beautiful, but all are inspired.