Researchers at the University of Strathclyde have discovered that the greater wax moth is capable of sensing sound frequencies of up to 300kHz – the highest recorded frequency sensitivity of any animal in the natural world.
Humans are only capable of hearing sounds of 20kHz maximum, dropping to around 12-15kHz as we age, and even dolphins, known exponents of ultrasound, can't compete as their limitations are around 160kHz.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — It was a controversial move when a health insurer began requiring people who were obese to literally pay the price of not doing anything about their weight – but it worked, a new study finds.
When people had to choose between paying up to 20 percent more for health insurance or exercising more, the majority of enrollees met fitness goals one step at a time via an Internet-tracked walking program, according to a joint study by the University of Michigan Health System and Stanford University.
In 2015, NASA, for the first time, will fly a space mission utilizing a radically different propellant—one which has reduced toxicity and is environmentally benign. This energetic ionic liquid, or EIL, is quite different from the historically employed hydrazine-based propellant, which was first used as a rocket fuel during World War II for the Messerschmitt Me 163B (the first rocket-powered fighter plane).
Charlottesville, VA (May 7, 2013). Researchers at the Center for Injury Biomechanics at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia compared the relative safety afforded by two 1930-vintage leather football helmets and 10 modern football helmets during impacts to players' heads. These researchers found that all 10 modern helmets provided significantly more protection than leather helmets used in the first half of the twentieth century, and demonstrated that differences also exist between modern helmets.
"So far, magnetic vortex states have been observed only in two dimensions; in other words: Within a plane," explains Sebastian Wintz, physicist at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. These magnetic vortices typically occur in nanometer-scale magnetic disks. Wintz has now investigated three-dimensional magnetic layer systems together with his colleagues from HZDR and the Swiss Paul Scherrer Institute: The researchers stacked two magnetic disks at a time, which were separated by a thin non magnetic metal layer, on top of each other.
From its orbit around the Earth, the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite or Suomi NPP satellite, captured a night-time image of California's Springs Fire.
The Suomi NPP satellite carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night. The Day/Night band on Suomi/NPP produces Night-Time visible imagery using illumination from natural (the moon, forest fires) and man-made sources (city lights, gas flares).
On May 3, 2013, the NOAA GOES infrared and visible imagery were combined to create an animation that showed the plume of smoke from the fire. The smoke plume is seen blowing west and out over the eastern Pacific Ocean. The animation runs 17 seconds and shows the smoke plume from May 3 at 1415 to 2000 UTC (10:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. EDT) was created by the NASA GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet's famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the mound's features suggests. If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound holds evidence of a large body of water, which would have important implications for understanding Mars' past habitability.
Meticulous attention to food safety is a good thing. As consumers, we like to hear that produce growers and distributers go above and beyond food safety mandates to ensure that healthy fresh fruits and vegetables do not carry bacteria or viruses that can make us sick.
The occurrence of Hesperian age (3.7-4 billion years old) standing bodies of water at the surface of Mars is a contentious issue, often conflicting with favored climate models.
Extensive lakes are proposed to have filled parts of Valles Marineris during this period, yet evidence for their presence and temporal continuity is poorly constrained.
In a study, Nicholas Warner and colleagues test the lake hypothesis within eastern Valles Marineris using a new suite of high-resolution imagery and topography data.
A new kind of cosmic flash may reveal something never seen before: the birth of a black hole.
When a massive star exhausts its fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and produces a black hole, an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational grip. According to a new analysis by an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), just before the black hole forms, the dying star may generate a distinct burst of light that will allow astronomers to witness the birth of a new black hole for the first time.
The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 1:32 pm EDT on May 3, 2013. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing, and the radio blackout for this flare has already subsided.
Fires in eastern Russia are commonplace at this time of year. Both wildfires and those deliberately set for agricultural purposes are often seen in the Amur region of Russia. This image from the Aqua satellite shows a plethora of fires burning in eastern Russia on May 03, 2013.
Agricultural fires are deliberately set by farmers to clear fields of old debris and return nutrients to the soil in preparation for the new planting season. Since this area of Russia is responsible for 60% of soybean production in Russia, some of these fires could definitely be agricultural in nature.
In Guerrero, Oaxaca, Michoacan, Colima, and Jalisco regions (as well as others in the Yucatan Peninsula) of Mexico hundreds of fires were detected by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. The location, widespread nature, and number of fires suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants. While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality.
Southern California firefighters were battling a growing, brush-fueled wildfire early Friday that had reached the beach in Ventura County and was pushing toward the upscale city of Malibu, according to NBCnews.com.