Magnitude: 18.2 mag
Discoverer: Robert H. McNaught (Siding Spring)
© Aerith Net
Magnitudes Graph
Magnitudes Graph
Science & Technology
Discovery Date: May 8, 2013
Magnitude: 18.2 mag
Discoverer: Robert H. McNaught (Siding Spring)
The orbital elements are published on M.P.E.C. 2013-K38.
Magnitude: 18.2 mag
Discoverer: Robert H. McNaught (Siding Spring)
Google launches giant balloons over New Zealand's south Island, carrying computer equipment that can create a high-speed internet infrastructure. Codenamed 'project loon', the helium filled balloons carry antennae, computers, batteries and navigational equipment, collecting power from solar panels that dangle below. Each can provide internet coverage over an area of 1200 square kilometres. The project intends to help remote areas across the world access internet coverage
© Arecibo Observatory/NASA/Ellen Howell
Radar image of asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon taken on June 7, 2013, by the Arecibo Observatory. Several craters are visible on the asteroid, and the moon appears as a bright streak. Each pixel is 7.5 meters (25 feet).
Radar image of asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon taken on June 7, 2013, by the Arecibo Observatory. Several craters are visible on the asteroid, and the moon appears as a bright streak. Each pixel is 7.5 meters (25 feet).
Asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon sailed within 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) of Earth on May 31, making their closest approach to our planet for at least the next two centuries. New radar images captured by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico are revealing just how unique this binary asteroid is, researchers say.
"Asteroid QE2 is dark, red, and primitive - that is, it hasn't been heated or melted as much as other asteroids," Arecibo's Ellen Howell said in a statement. "QE2 is nothing like any asteroid we've visited with a spacecraft, or plan to, or that we have meteorites from. It's an entirely new beast in the menagerie of asteroids near Earth."
The 1000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo dish and NASA's 230-foot (70 m) Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., tracked 1998 QE2 as it approached Earth last month, then kept following the near-Earth asteroid as it receded into the depths of space.
The resulting radar images have helped researchers take 1998 QE2's measure. The dark, cratered main asteroid is 1.9 miles (3 km) wide, and it has a 2,500-foot (750 m) moon that orbits it once every 32 hours.
© Reuters / Bernadett Szabo
The FDA is warning that implanted medical devices, such as pacemakers and defibrillators, are often connected to networks that are vulnerable to cyber attacks that could shut down or manipulate the machinery.
Hackers with malicious intentions could introduce malware into the equipment, thereby gaining access to configure settings in medical devices or hospital networks, the Food and Drug Administration said in a warning sent to hospitals, medical device manufacturers, user facilities, and biomedical engineers.
"Over the past year, we've become increasingly aware of cyber security vulnerabilities in incidents that have been reported to us," William Maisel, deputy director for science at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, told Reuters. "Hundreds of medical devices have been affected, involving dozens of manufacturers."
© n/a
On Sunday we predicated that "there's one reason why the administration, James Clapper and the NSA should just keep their mouths shut as the PRISM-gate fallout escalates: with every incremental attempt to refute some previously unknown facet of the US Big Brother state, a new piece of previously unleaked information from the same intelligence organization now scrambling for damage control, emerges and exposes the brand new narrative as yet another lie, forcing even more lies, more retribution against sources, more journalist persecution and so on."
And like a hole that just gets deeper the more you dug and exposes ever more dirt, tonight's installment revealing one more facet of the conversion of a once great republic into a great fascist, "big brother" state, comes from Bloomberg which reports that "thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the process said."
© T. B. Coplen (U.S. Geological Survey)
This is how carbon looks on a revised periodic table that uses intervals for the standard atomic weights of some elements.
This is how carbon looks on a revised periodic table that uses intervals for the standard atomic weights of some elements.
But researchers have tweaked the atomic weights of five elements - magnesium, bromine, germanium, indium and mercury - in a new table published by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
To calculate standard atomic weight, scientists have traditionally averaged the weights of the stable variations of an element known as isotopes.
All atoms of an element have the same atomic number, or number of protons in their nuclei, but the number of neutrons in the nuclei can vary, leading some isotopes to be lighter or heavier. Carbon-12, for example, the most abundant carbon isotope, has six protons and six neutrons. Its slightly heavier cousin, carbon-13, has six protons and seven neutrons.
Standard atomic weight also depends on how common an element's stable isotopes are. In other words, the more plentiful an isotope, the more it will influence the average. But the abundance of an isotope can also vary from place to place on Earth, leading to differences in an element's atomic weight depending on its context.
For that reason, the atomic weights of magnesium and bromine will now be expressed as intervals with upper and lower bounds instead of single values. The atomic weight of bromine, for instance, is commonly thought to be 79.904, but it can actually range between 79.901 and 79.907, depending on where the element is found.
© Casey Reed/NASA
The star, known as WX UMa, is a so-called flare star, a class of stars which can become 100 times or more brighter within a few seconds or minutes. These flares appear to be randomly occurring, and the stars return to their normal state tens of minutes after the event.
"We recorded a strong flare of the star WX UMa, which became almost 15 times brighter in a matter of 160 seconds," said report co-author Vakhtang Tamazian, an astrophysicist at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
WX UMa is part of a binary system with a companion star that shines almost 100 times brighter, except during WX UMa flare events. The event described in the report was observed from the Byurakan Observatory in Armenia.
"During this period of less than three minutes the star underwent an abrupt change ... from a temperature of 2,800 kelvin to six or seven times more than that," Tamazian noted.
While scientists currently do not know how to predict these flares, they do know how they develop.
© University of Winchester
Leprosy causes deformities of the skull, seen in this medieval skull from Winchester, UK.
Leprosy causes deformities of the skull, seen in this medieval skull from Winchester, UK.
Researchers sequenced the surprisingly well-preserved genome of the leprosy bacterium in skeletons exhumed from medieval graves in Europe. It's the first time an ancient genome has been sequenced "from scratch" (without a reference genome), and reveals that medieval leprosy strains were nearly identical to modern leprosy strains.
Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, is due to a chronic infection of the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. The disease causes skin lesions that can permanently damage the skin, nerves, eyes and limbs.
While it doesn't cause body parts to fall off, those infected with leprosy can become deformed as a result of secondary infections. The disease often strikes during the peak reproductive years, but it develops very slowly, and can take 25 to 30 years for symptoms to appear.
The disease was extremely common in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, especially in southern Scandinavia. "It was a major public health problem," said study co-author Jesper Boldsen, a biological anthropologist at the University of Southern Denmark.
But leprosy declined precipitously during the 16th century. To understand why, Boldsen's colleagues sequenced DNA from five medieval skeletons, and from biopsies of living people with leprosy.
© JPL Small Body Database
Orbit diagram of Asteroid 2013 LR6.
Orbit diagram of Asteroid 2013 LR6.
This is similar in size to the space rock that exploded over Russia back in February of this year. The Russian asteroid was about 15 meters (50 feet) in diameter before it exploded in an airburst event about 20-25 km (12-15 miles) above Earth's surface.
Find out how you can watch the flyby live online, below.
- Animal behaviour expert Professor Con Slobodchikoff is developing technology that can translate the complex calls of prairie dogs
- He says that in 5 to 10 years, similar software could be available to have conversations with farm animals, lions and tigers and even pets
- Said that pets will be able to tell owners what they want for dinner and that being able to talk with dogs could help treat behavioural problems
Professor Con Slobodchikoff is developing new technology that interprets the calls of the prairie dog and says the technology could eventually be used to interpret other animals.
He also suggested that the technology could one day be fine-tuned to enable humans to talk back to animals and engage in conversation.
