TEMPE (May 24, 2011) - Schools were closed, restaurants shuttered and large public gatherings cancelled.
The H1N1 virus was new, and most of the cases occurred among young people. Health professionals and scientists weren't sure at the onset what the world would encounter with the virus.
NASA's Kepler spacecraft is proving itself to be a prolific planet hunter. Within just the first four months of data, astronomers have found evidence for more than 1,200 planetary candidates. Of those, 408 reside in systems containing two or more planets, and most of those look very different than our solar system.
For many movie stars, their age is a well-kept secret. In space, the same is true of the actual stars. Like our Sun, most stars look almost the same for most of their lives. So how can we tell if a star is one billion or 10 billion years old? Astronomers may have found a solution - measuring the star's spin.
"A star's rotation slows down steadily with time, like a top spinning on a table, and can be used as a clock to determine its age," says astronomer Soren Meibom of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
In a world where everything from placement in a Google search result to World Cup eligibility depends on ranking and numerical ratings of some kind, it is becoming increasingly important to analyze the algorithms and techniques that underlie such ranking methods in order to ensure fairness, eliminate bias, and tailor them to specific applications.
A new and uniquely powerful tool for cutting-edge science is emerging on the crisp, high desert of western New Mexico. Outwardly, it looks much the same as the famed Very Large Array (VLA), a radio telescope that has spent more than three decades on the frontiers of astronomical research. The 27 white, 230-ton dish antennas still peer skyward, the 72 miles of railroad track still wait to transport the antennas across the arid plains, the familiar buildings remain, and crews still fan out across the desert to service the antennas.
Researchers at the University of Warwick have found a unique feuding double white dwarf star system where each star appears to have been stripped down to just its helium.
We know of just over 50 close double white dwarfs but this was only the second ever eclipsing close white dwarf pair to be found. The University of Warwick astronomers Steven Parsons and Professor Tom Marsh were able to use the fact that the stars eclipse each other when seen from Earth to make particularly detailed observations of the system.
Computer simulation studies by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) suggests that a dairy cow living year-round in the great outdoors may leave a markedly smaller ecological hoofprint than its more sheltered sisters.
A local supernova factory has recently started production, according to a wealth of new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory on the Carina Nebula. This discovery may help astronomers better understand how some of the Galaxy's heaviest and youngest stars race through their lives and release newly-forged elements into their surroundings.
U.S. doctors might find that their incomes start to rise – not decline – when Barack Obama's healthcare reforms are put in place says a Queen's University School of Medicine professor.
"The medical-income argument in the United States against moving toward a Canadian-style system is feeble," says Jacalyn Duffin, a medical doctor who specializes in the history of medicine. "Physicians' incomes grew more quickly than those of other Canadian professions following Medicare. The universal, single-payer system has been good not only for Canadians but also for Canada's doctors."
A Monash student has made a breakthrough in the field of astrophysics, discovering what has until now been described as the Universe's 'missing mass'. Amelia Fraser-McKelvie, working within a team at the Monash School of Physics, conducted a targeted X-ray search for the matter and within just three months found it – or at least some of it.
"Rainy days and Mondays" is the song that the residents of the northern Philippines do not want to hear if it involves the approaching Tropical Storm Songda. The Carpenters song was a hit, but a hit from Songda is making residents of the Philippines nervous as NASA's Aqua satellite has been watching the progression and intensification of the storm over the last several days.
Though the universe is filled with billions upon billions of stars, the discovery of a single variable star in 1923 altered the course of modern astronomy. And, at least one famous astronomer of the time lamented that the discovery had shattered his world view.
NEW ORLEANS, LA – May 23, 2011 -- Globalization was once regarded as a solution to poor country exploitation - as the economy became a worldwide one, costs and incomes would normalize more evenly.
DURHAM, N.C. – Electrical engineers at Duke University have determined that unique man-made materials should theoretically make it possible to improve the power transfer to small devices, such as laptops or cell phones, or ultimately to larger ones, such as cars or elevators, without wires.
How unique is the Milky Way?
To find out, a group of researchers compared the Milky Way to similar galaxies and found that just four percent are like the galaxy Earth calls home.
The research team compared the Milky Way to similar galaxies in terms of luminosity--a measure of how much light is emitted--and distance to other bright galaxies. They found galaxies that have two satellites that are as bright and close by as the Milky Way's two closest satellites, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, are rare.