This year marks the 23rd year of observing for the Hubble Space Telescope. Alongside cutting-edge science, the orbiting observatory has produced countless stunning astronomical images. Some of the most striking and beautiful subjects of Hubble's images have been nebulae -- vast interstellar clouds of gas and dust.
Heavens
Young people seeking help who are at high risk of developing psychosis could significantly reduce their chances of going on to develop a full-blown psychotic illness by getting early access to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), new research shows.
Researchers from The University of Manchester found the risk of developing psychosis was more than halved for those receiving CBT at six, 12 and 18-24 months after treatment started.
A new Swedish study published in the journal Neurology shows that the risk of developing dementia may have declined over the past 20 years, in direct contrast to what many previously assumed. The result is based on data from the SNAC-K, an ongoing study on aging and health that started in 1987.
Researchers for the first time have identified Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. Images of the star taken by Notre Dame astrophysicist Justin Crepp rule out alternative explanations of the data, confirming that five planets orbit Kepler 62, with two located in the habitable zone. The results were published in Science magazine today.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Throughout decades of research on solar cells, one formula has been considered an absolute limit to the efficiency of such devices in converting sunlight into electricity: Called the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit, it posits that the ultimate conversion efficiency can never exceed 34 percent for a single optimized semiconductor junction.
Now, researchers at MIT have shown that there is a way to blow past that limit as easily as today's jet fighters zoom through the sound barrier — which was also once seen as an ultimate limit.
A team of scientists has discovered two Earth-like planets in the habitable orbit of a sun-like star. Their work is published in Science Express. Using observations gathered by NASA's Kepler Mission, the team found five planets orbiting a sun-like star called Kepler-62. Four of these planets are so-called super-Earths, larger than our own planet, but smaller than even the smallest ice giant planet in our solar system.
(Seattle, WA, April 18, 2013) In a manuscript published today in Immunity, scientists at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) and the Baylor Institute for Immunology Research (BIIR) report the results of a comparative study of the molecular immune responses to influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. In addition, cutting-edge web technology was used to improve dissemination of data in order to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.
Blazars are the brightest of active galactic nuclei, and many emit very high-energy gamma rays. New observations of the blazar known as PKS 1424+240 show that it is the most distant known source of very high-energy gamma rays, but its emission spectrum now appears highly unusual in light of the new data.
In the Kimberley region of Western Australia, there are two distinct seasons: a wet season between December and March and a dry season between May and October. Reversals in the direction of prevailing winds are the driving force behind the seasonal shift.
PITTSBURGH—A silly telephone game that became a viral phenomenon in Pakistan has demonstrated some serious potential for teaching poorly educated people about automated voice services and provided a new tool for them to learn about jobs, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).
An Arizona State University biologist and her team have found that the Asian subspecies of great bustard, one of the heaviest birds capable of flight, covers migratory routes of more than 2,000 miles, traveling to and from its breeding grounds in northern Mongolia and wintering grounds in Shaanxi province in China.
Radio communications can be unreliable in underground tunnels and other large, complicated structures, posing a safety hazard for emergency responders. New tests of wireless emergency safety equipment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have defined the challenges more precisely and suggest how emergency communications might be improved.
Adding social gaming elements to a behavior tracking program led people to exercise more frequently and helped them decrease their body-mass index, according to new research from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the USC School of Social Work and the University at Buffalo, SUNY.
This year, astronomers around the world have been celebrating the 50th anniversary of X-ray astronomy. Few objects better illustrate the progress of the field in the past half-century than the supernova remnant known as SN 1006.
Smaller begets bigger.
Such is often the case for galaxies, at least: the first galaxies were small, then eventually merged together to form the behemoths we see in the present universe.
Those smaller galaxies produced stars at a modest rate; only later—when the universe was a couple of billion years old—did the vast majority of larger galaxies begin to form and accumulate enough gas and dust to become prolific star factories. Indeed, astronomers have observed that these star factories—called starburst galaxies—became prevalent a couple of billion years after the Big Bang.