WASHINGTON, Sept. 25, 2013—To capture all the details of a crime scene, you might take many photos at close range. To get the whole scene at once, you could use a wide-angle or fisheye lens; but without an especially large lens you would be sacrificing the fine resolution that would help you catch that partial footprint you might otherwise have missed. Now a new type of miniature camera system promises to give users a big picture view without sacrificing high-resolution.
Heavens
In the already complicated science of what creates – and causes constant change in – two giant doughnuts of radiation surrounding Earth, researchers have added a new piece of information: some of the electrons reach such enormous energies that they are driven by an entirely different set of physical processes. These results were published in a paper in Nature Physics on Sept. 22, 2013.
Imagine the distance between the sun and the star nearest to it – a star called Alpha Centauri. That's a distance of about 4 light years. Now, imagine as many as 10,000 of our suns crammed into that relatively small space.
That is about the density of a galaxy that was recently discovered by an international team of astronomers led by a Michigan State University faculty member.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory and telescopes on the ground may have found the most crowded galaxy in our part of the universe.
The ultra-compact dwarf galaxy, known as M60-UCD1, may be the densest galaxy near to Earth, packed with an extraordinary number of stars. This galaxy is providing astronomers with clues to its intriguing past and its role in the galactic evolutionary chain.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Researchers at Purdue University have shown how to reduce fuel consumption while improving the efficiency of hydraulic steering systems in heavy construction equipment.
The new approach incorporates several innovations: It eliminates valves now needed to direct the flow of hydraulic fluid in steering systems and uses advanced algorithms and models to precisely control hydraulic pumps. New designs might also incorporate textured "microstructured" surfaces inside pumps to improve performance.
New research from Western University (London, Canada) is leading to a better understanding of what happens during heart failure; knowledge that could lead to better therapeutics or a more accurate predictor of risk. The research led by Robarts Research Institute scientists Robert Gros, PhD, and Marco Prado, PhD, along with graduate student Ashbeel Roy found the heart is regulated not only by nervous systems but also by heart cells sending messages to each other through the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh).
NASA's Aqua satellite orbit around the Earth took it right over Typhoon Pabuk and the image showed an eye veiled with some high clouds.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Typhoon Pabuk on Sept. 24 at 04:05 UTC as it was nearing Japan. In the image, high clouds draped over Pabuk's eye. Pabuk's eye is about 30 nautical miles/34.5 miles/55.5 km wide, about three times larger than Typhoon Usagi's eye before it made landfall in China earlier in the week.
Leipzig. Noise from traffic and artificial night lighting cause birds in the city centre to become active up to five hours earlier in the morning than birds in more natural areas. These were the findings from an investigation conducted on 400 blackbirds in Leipzig by the interdisciplinary research group "Loss of the Night".
The radar on NASA and JAXA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite saw Typhoon Usagi maintaining some of its inner-core structure an hour before landfall on Sept. 22, 2013. The data was used to create an image that showed the 3-D regions of heavy precipitation hiding under the circular cloud cover near Usagi's center of rotation.
In the U.S., there are nearly 300,000 children with juvenile arthritis and other rheumatic illnesses according to estimates from the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). For pediatric patients with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), effective treatment for this disabling disease is imperative. New treatment recommendations that guide physicians caring for children with systemic JIA are now published in the ACR journals, Arthritis & Rheumatism and Arthritis Care & Research.
More than 83,000 volunteer citizen scientists. Over 16 million galaxy classifications. Information on more than 300,000 galaxies. This is what you get when you ask the public for help in learning more about our universe.
The project, named Galaxy Zoo 2, is the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to categorize galaxies in our universe. Researchers say computers are good at automatically measuring properties such as size and color of galaxies, but more challenging characteristics, such as shape and structure, can currently only be determined by the human eye.
HOUSTON – (Sept. 23, 2013) – Pacemakers, insulin pumps, defibrillators and other implantable medical devices often have wireless capabilities that allow emergency workers to monitor patients. But these devices have a potential downside: They can be hacked.
Researchers at Rice University have come up with a secure way to dramatically cut the risk that an implanted medical device (IMD) could be altered remotely without authorization.
Their technology would use the patient's own heartbeat as a kind of password that could only be accessed through touch.
Typhoon Pabuk continued to strengthen as it moved north through the northwestern Pacific Ocean on Sept. 23, and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of the storm. The NASA image showed powerful thunderstorms east of the storm's center.
Although the Rim Fire doesn't show any signs of smoke billowing like it has in the past satellite images, the fire still continues on. The blaze, which started on August 17, 2013, more than a month ago, is currenty 84% contained. Fire officials are currently estimating that complete containment will be achieved around October 1, 2013.
The statistics on the fire to date:
Acres Burned: 257 126 (402 square miles)
Structures Threatened: 0
Containment: 84%
Residences Destroyed: 11
Southeastern China was hit by the most powerful typhoon of 2013 on Sept. 22, when Typhoon Usagi came ashore landfall in the Guangdong Province during the evening. NASA's TRMM satellite observed very heavy rainfall just south of the eye as the center was landfalling.