LatechFri, 15 Jun 2007 11:16 UTC
Six Louisiana Tech researchers in the physics department played a role in discovering a new sub-atomic particle whose existence was announced this week.
The discovery was made by physicists of the DZero experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.
Discovery and measurement of the particle's mass will provide new understanding about the basic building blocks of matter.
Local participants in the experiment were physics faculty members Z.D. Greenwood, Lee Sawyer and Markus Wobisch; former post-doctoral researcher Julie Kalk; and current post-doctoral researchers Mike Arov and Joe Steele.
Gusting winds and the pulsating exhaust plumes from the Phoenix spacecraft's landing engines could complicate NASA's efforts to sample frozen soil from the surface of Mars, according to University of Michigan atmospheric scientist Nilton Renno.
Set to launch Aug. 3 from Florida, the $414 million Phoenix Mars Lander will use descent engines to touch down on the northern plains, where vast stores of ice have been detected just below the surface. A robotic arm will scoop frozen soil and dump it into science instruments that will analyze its chemical content to see if it has the potential to sustain microbial life.
With funding from NASA and the spacecraft's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, Renno and his students are conducting a series of experiments to determine how much dust the 12 descent engines will kick up and whether martian winds could interfere with efforts to deliver soil to the onboard mini-lab.
Renno, an associate professor in the College of Engineering's Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, is a member of the Phoenix science team.
"I proposed that my engineering students look into some of the challenges that the Phoenix team will face when the spacecraft arrives at Mars," Renno said. "I wanted the students to contribute to the success of the mission in a meaningful way."
The Chinese military possesses dangerous first-strike cyberwar capabilities that include special units charged with developing viruses to attack enemy computer networks, a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) report has warned.
"The PLA [People's Liberation Army] has established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, and tactics and measures to protect friendly computer systems and networks," the Pentagon's annual report to Congress on China's military power said.
"In 2005, the PLA began to incorporate offensive CNO [computer network operations] into its exercises, primarily in first strikes against enemy networks."
The report shows how the Chinese military's thinking on information warfare has changed in recent years, says Andrew Macpherson, director of the technical analysis group at the University of New Hampshire's Justiceworks and a research assistant professor of Justice Studies.
On average the Venetians who lived during the glory days of the Republic were rather small, just five feet five inches in height; they were well nourished, and if they lacked sugar and fat the result was excellent teeth with no cavities.
These are among the first findings of a group of archaeologists exploring a treasure trove of Venetian history that has been locked away and forgotten for centuries: the graves of Lazzaretto, an island in the Venetian lagoon whichbecame the world's first isolation hospital.
Following an outbreak of the plague in 1348, the Doge and his advisers put their minds to thinking up a way to prevent a recurrence. The upshot, at the beginning of the 15th century, was the world's first isolation hospital occupying the entire small island.
In 1630 the hospital was dissolved and the island taken over by a military garrison; later it was used to hold stray dogs. In the 1960s it was abandoned altogether.
A problem with Russian computers on board the International Space Station has been caused by a solar panel installed by American astronauts.
There are intriguing new clues in the mystery of how the woolly mammoth met its demise in North America more than 10,000 years ago.
For decades, scientists have debated whether the giant, elephant-like beasts were driven to extinction by the arrival of overzealous human hunters or by global warming at the end of the Pleistocene era, the last great Ice Age. Some say it was a combination of the two.
Recently, a group of more than two dozen scientists offered a new explanation. They have found signs that a comet -- or multiple fragments of one -- exploded over Canada about 12,900 years ago with the force equivalent to millions of nuclear weapons. That unleashed, they said, a tremendous shock wave that destroyed much of what was in its path and ignited wildfires across North America.
SETH BORENSTEIN
APFri, 15 Jun 2007 02:51 UTC
The populations of 20 common American birds - from the fence-sitting meadowlark to the whippoorwill with its haunting call - are half what they were 40 years ago, according to an analysis released Thursday.
Astronomers have announced yet more bad news for the much-lamented former planet Pluto. Kicked out of the club of planets last year into a new category of dwarf planet, it is not even the biggest of those, scientists have found.
Ed Stoddard
ReutersThu, 14 Jun 2007 23:52 UTC
HOUSTON - NASA said on Thursday that a new power feed could be the source of potentially catastrophic computer glitches aboard the $100 billion International Space Station but it hoped the problem would be resolved.
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| ©AP Photo/Current Anthropology, Bohuslav Klima
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| A triple burial site in Dolni Vestonice, in the Moravian region of Czech Republic, thought to be approximately 27,000 years old.
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NEW YORK - Investigations of prehistoric burial sites in Europe indicate that the region's population may have practiced ritual human sacrifice, according to a new study.
