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Heavens
The Ophel excavations at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount, conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Archaeology under the direction of Dr. Eilat Mazar, have unearthed an impression of the royal seal of King Hezekiah (727-698 BCE).
Measuring 9.7 X 8.6 mm, the oval impression was imprinted on a 3 mm thick soft bulla (piece of inscribed clay) measuring 13 X 12 mm. Around the impression is the depression left by the frame of the ring in which the seal was set.
A planet discovered last year sitting at an unusually large distance from its star - 16 times farther than Pluto is from the sun - may have been kicked out of its birthplace close to the star in a process similar to what may have happened early in our own solar system's history.
MIT researchers have shown that by exploiting the polarization of light -- the physical phenomenon behind polarized sunglasses and most 3-D movie systems -- they can increase the resolution of conventional 3-D imaging devices as much as 1,000 times.
The technique could lead to high-quality 3-D cameras built into cellphones, and perhaps to the ability to snap a photo of an object and then use a 3-D printer to produce a replica.
Further out, the work could also abet the development of driverless cars.
Hurricane Sandra fizzled in the southern Gulf of California before moving ashore but on its journey north it was close enough to drop more than 2 feet of rainfall along part of the coast of western Mexico. Data from NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) were used to estimate the amount of rainfall that hurricane Sandra produced during the period from November 23-29, 2015.
What is the climate waiting for Russia and Europe in 15-20 years? Will be there weather abnormalities in the coming decades? Will some areas experience more severe winter, while the others will have hot summer? It all depends on how much the climate will be affected by the dynamics of the possible onset of minimum solar magnetic activity. The Sun's behaviour in future cycles is the main theme of a publication on the forecast and explanation of the minima of solar activity.
CHICAGO - Research presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) tackles one of life's great mysteries: what causes a knuckle to "crack" out loud?
"It's extremely common for joints to crack, pop and snap," said Robert D. Boutin, M.D., professor of radiology at University of California, Davis (UC Davis) Health System. "We were interested in pursuing this study because there's a raging debate about whether the knuckle-cracking sound results from a bubble popping in the joint or from a bubble being created in the joint."
Science has a new weapon in the global war against parasitic worms that kill hundreds of thousands or people annually: xWORM.
While testing various drugs, parasitologists spend interminable hours staring down microscopes, checking whether the worms are dead or alive after being exposed to the drug.
xWORM is the result of collaboration between researchers at James Cook University (JCU) in Australia, ACEA Biosciences and George Washington University.
When certain massive stars use up all of their fuel and collapse onto their cores, explosions 10 to 100 times brighter than the average supernova occur. Exactly how this happens is not well understood. Astrophysicists from Caltech, UC Berkeley, the Albert Einstein Institute, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have used the National Science Foundation's Blue Waters supercomputer to perform three-dimensional computer simulations to fill in an important missing piece of our understanding of what drives these blasts.
All the stars in the sky will eventually die - and some will really go out with a bang.
When a dying star goes supernova, it explodes with such ferocity that it outshines the entire galaxy in which it lived, spewing material and energy across unimaginable distances at near-light speed.
In some cases, these cosmic cataclysms defy expectations, blasting not symmetrically in all directions - as an exploding firework might - but instead launching two narrow beams, known as jets, in opposite directions.
Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a new, more precise way to control the differentiation of stem cells into bone cells. This new technique has promising applications in the realm of bone regeneration, growth and healing. The research, led by David Mooney, the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS, was published in Nature Materials.
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Recent conversations in the United States have centered on discrimination issues; yet, little is known about how discrimination affects youths' mental health and their willingness to help others. Now, University of Missouri researchers found Latino immigrant youth who reported feeling discriminated against had more depressive symptoms and were less likely to perform altruistic behaviors six months and a year after experiencing discrimination.
Using a combination of two blood sugar tests rather than a single test would improve detection of prediabetes in American children and adults, according to a new study by researchers at the School of Public Health at Georgia State University.
It had been planned for several months, but as fate would have it, the University of Montreal hosted the Conférences de la montagne "Challenges of democracy" symposium less than a week after the attacks on Paris. No fewer than 1,000 people arrived at the University of Montreal's Ernest-Cormier Amphitheatre on November 19, 2015 to hear two great voices of political philosophy - Charles Taylor, Professor Emeritus of McGill University, and Michael J. Sandel, professor at Harvard University, exchange their views on the issues facing the contemporary world with regard to the rise of terrorism.