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Rice U. parlays sun's saving grace into autoclave

Rice University senior engineering students are using the sun to power an autoclave that sterilizes medical instruments and help solve a long-standing health issue for developing countries.

The student's used Capteur Soleil, a device created decades ago by French inventor Jean Boubour to capture the energy of the sun in places where electricity -- or fuel of any kind -- is hard to get. In attaching an insulated box containing the autoclave, the students transform the device into a potential lifesaver.

Bin Laden's attacks among the most lethal: UMD study

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Under Osama bin Laden's leadership, al Qa'ida has been one of the most lethal terrorist organization in the world, responsible for more than 10,000 deaths and injuries in a dozen years - finds a new analysis <http://www.start.umd.edu/start/publications/br/BackgroundReport_AQAttacks.pdf> by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland (START) .

Solar-thermal flat-panels that generate electric power

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (5/1/2011) – High-performance nanotech materials arrayed on a flat panel platform demonstrated seven to eight times higher efficiency than previous solar thermoelectric generators, opening up solar-thermal electric power conversion to a broad range of residential and industrial uses, a team of researchers from Boston College and MIT report in the journal Nature Materials.

Measuring the distant universe in 3-D

The biggest 3-D map of the distant universe ever made, using light from 14,000 quasars – supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies billions of light years away – has been constructed by scientists with the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III).

Goddard building instrument to study reconnection

Whether it's a giant solar flare or a beautiful green-blue aurora, just about everything interesting in space weather happens due to a phenomenon called magnetic reconnection. Reconnection occurs when magnetic field lines cross and create a burst of energy. These bursts can be so big they're measured in megatons of TNT.

Several spacecraft have already sent back tantalizing data when they happened to witness a magnetic reconnection event in Earth's magnetosphere. However, there are no spacecraft currently dedicated to the study of this phenomenon.

Student's prediction points the way to hot, dense super-Earth

A planet that we thought we knew turns out to be rather different than first suspected. Our revised view comes from new data released today by an international team of astronomers. They made their observations of the planet "55 Cancri e" based on calculations by Harvard graduate student Rebekah Dawson (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who worked with Daniel Fabrycky (now at the University of California, Santa Cruz) to predict when the planet crosses in front of its star as seen from Earth. Such transits give crucial information about a planet's size and orbit.

Astronomers unveil portrait of 'super-exotic super-Earth:' Densest known rocky planet

An international team of astronomers today revealed details of a "super-exotic" exoplanet that would make the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar pale in comparison.

NASA's Swift and Hubble probe asteroid collision debris

Late last year, astronomers noticed an asteroid named Scheila had unexpectedly brightened, and it was sporting short-lived plumes. Data from NASA's Swift satellite and Hubble Space Telescope showed these changes likely occurred after Scheila was struck by a much smaller asteroid.

A tale of 2 lakes: One gives early warning signal for ecosystem collapse

Researchers eavesdropping on complex signals from a remote Wisconsin lake have detected what they say is an unmistakable warning--a death knell--of the impending collapse of the lake's aquatic ecosystem.

The finding, reported today in the journal Science by a team of researchers led by Stephen Carpenter, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison), is the first experimental evidence that radical change in an ecosystem can be detected in advance, possibly in time to prevent ecological catastrophe.

TRMM Satellite sees massive thunderstorms in severe weather system

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite again flew over severe thunderstorms that were spawning tornadoes over the eastern United States on April 28 and detected massive thunderstorms and very heavy rainfall.

Scientists detect early warning signal for ecosystem collapse

MADISON — Researchers eavesdropping on complex signals emanating from a remote Wisconsin lake have detected what they say is an unmistakable warning — a death knell — of the impending collapse of the lake's aquatic ecosystem.

The finding, reported today (April 29) in the journal Science by a team of researchers led by Stephen Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the first experimental evidence that radical change in an ecosystem can be detected in advance, possibly in time to prevent ecological catastrophe.

Fluctuations before the fall: Predicting and preventing environmental collapse

(Millbrook, N.Y.) By closely monitoring environmental conditions at a remote Wisconsin lake, researchers have found that models used to assess catastrophic changes in economic and medical systems can also predict environmental collapse. Stock market crashes, epileptic seizures, and ecological breakdowns are all preceded by a measurable increase in variance—be it fluctuations in brain waves, the Dow Jones index, or, in the case of the Wisconsin lake, chlorophyll.

Inverting a standard experiment sometimes produces different results

Nanoparticles will soon be used as tiny shuttles to deliver genes to cells and drugs to tumors in a more targeted way than was possible in the past.

But as the scientists prepare to use the nanoparticles in medicine, concerns have arisen about their potential toxicity.

Studies of both the applications of nanoparticles and their toxicity rely on the ability of scientists to quantify the interaction between the nanoparticles and cells, particularly the uptake (ingestion) of nanoparticles by cells.

Researchers create terahertz invisibility cloak

Researchers at Northwestern University have created a new kind of cloaking material that can render objects invisible in the terahertz range.

Though this design can't translate into an invisibility cloak for the visible spectrum, it could have implications in diagnostics, security, and communication.

What can movie stars tell us about marriage? That education matters, study finds

Movie stars: Is there anything they can't tell us?

According to a study published in the Spring issue of the Journal of Human Capital, marriages among movie stars can help unravel the reasons why people tend to marry partners of similar education levels.