SAN FRANCISCO, March 21, 2010 — What better venue than San Francisco –– sourdough capital of the world –– to unveil a new natural sourdough ingredient that could replace conventional additives in a variety of other breads, while making them tastier and more healthful? And that's what scientists described today at the American Chemical Society's 239th National Meeting, being held here.
Heavens
Astronomers have combined a natural gravitational lens and a sophisticated telescope array to get the sharpest view ever of "star factories" in a galaxy over 10 billion light-years from Earth. They found that the distant galaxy, known as SMM J2135-0102, is making new stars 250 times faster than our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
Scientists have found a massive galaxy in the early Universe creating stars like our sun up to 100 times faster than the modern-day Milky Way.
The team of international researchers, led by Durham University, described the finding as like seeing "a teenager going through a growth spurt".
Due to the amount of time it takes light to reach Earth the scientists observed the galaxy as it would have appeared 10 billion years ago – just three billion years after the Big Bang.
GREENBELT, Md. -- Twelve days after a flawless launch, NASA and NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-P (GOES-P) reached its proper orbit and was renamed GOES-15. The latest weather satellite will complete its checkout in mid August 2010 and be stored in-orbit, ready for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust their fuel.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is the one of the leading pathogens causing hospital-acquired infection in the United States. It may cause diarrhea, colitis, sepsis and lead to prolonged hospitalization and death. Mayo Clinic researchers say they've found a way to reduce the acquisition of this infection and drop its frequency to a fraction of what it had been.
Astronomers have come across what appear to be two of the earliest and most primitive supermassive black holes known. The discovery, based largely on observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, will provide a better understanding of the roots of our universe, and how the very first black holes, galaxies and stars all came to be.
INDIANAPOLIS – Patients seen at private facilities reimbursed by Medicare were more than 550 percent more likely to have routine cataract surgery than those who received their care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a strong indication that the frequency of cataract surgery may be responsive to financial incentives to either or both the medical facility and the physicians who perform the procedure.
These findings from a large eight-year study are reported in the March 2010 issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality.
The seemingly serene orb of Saturn is in fact a gas giant with extraordinary patterns of charged particles and rough and tumble roller derbies for rings. Such are the findings of NASA's Cassini spacecraft since its arrival at Saturn in 2004 – they are combined in two review papers to be published in the March 19 issue of the journal Science.
FAIRFAX, Va., March 18, 2010—When you think of people suffering from social anxiety, you probably characterize them as shy, inhibitive and submissive. However, new research from psychologists Todd Kashdan and Patrick McKnight at George Mason University suggests that there is a subset of socially anxious people who act out in aggressive, risky ways—and that their behavior patterns are often misunderstood.
The Corot satellite strikes again with another fascinating planet discovery, this time the newly discovered gas giant Corot-9b may have an interior that closely resembles those of Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System.
Very few planets are temperate enough to allow the presence of liquid water, but the newly discovered Corot-9b is one of them. It was found on 16 May 2008 and orbits its star every 95.274 days, a little longer than Mercury takes to go round the Sun.
Quasars are active and very powerful black holes at the centre of distant galaxies. The black holes are extremely massive weighing between 100 million and 10 billion solar masses and rotating around the super massive black hole is a disc of gas and dust. The inner ring of the disc moves faster than the outer rings. The movement causes the material in the rings to rub against each other, heating it and causing it to emit light.
"This is a normal, temperate exoplanet just like dozens we already know, but this is the first whose properties we can study in depth," says Claire Moutou, who is part of the international team of 60 astronomers that made the discovery. "It is bound to become a Rosetta stone in exoplanet research."
"Corot-9b is the first exoplanet that really does resemble planets in our solar system," adds lead author Hans Deeg. "It has the size of Jupiter and an orbit similar to that of Mercury."
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– An international team of scientists, including several who are affiliated with UC Santa Barbara, has discovered a new planet the size of Jupiter. The finding is published in the March 18 issue of the journal Nature.
The planet, called CoRoT-9b, was discovered by using the CoRoT space telescope satellite, operated by the French space agency, The Centre National d'Études Spatiales, or CNES. The newly discovered planet orbits a star similar to our sun and is located in the constellation Serpens Cauda, at a distance of 1500 light-years from Earth.
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Engineers at Rutgers University have modified a popular home video game system to help teenagers with cerebral palsy improve hand functions. In a pilot trial with three participants, the system improved the teens' abilities to perform a range of daily personal and household activities.
The modified system combined a Sony PlayStation 3 console and a commercial gaming glove with custom-developed software and games to provide exercise routines aimed at improving hand speed and range of finger motion.
Cyclone Tomas hit the north and east areas of Fiji as a Category 4 Cyclone on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, and has now moved south of them. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite captured an image of the heavy rains that were falling in Tomas during his swath of destruction in the Fiji Islands.