Heavens

Researchers from the University of Castilla-La Mancha have developed a measurement system which permits the prediction of atmospheric pollution due to nitrogen oxides in a specific location and at a particular time. The study is supported by a massive database from urban areas in the Community of Madrid.

A newly developed membrane used to separate waste from water could become key in the treatment of pollutants ranging from acid mine drainage to oil-containing wastewater, as well as in processes ranging from desalination to kidney dialysis.

The research was published in Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) on Friday, 22 March, coinciding with World Water Day and falling within South Africa's National Water Week.

The astronomers in the UPV/EHU's Planetary Science Group have published, on-line in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience, a study of the atmospheric vortex of the south pole of Venus, a huge whirlwind the size of Europe. In the atmosphere there are two main cloud layers separated by a distance of 20km. The UPV/EHU astronomers have been closely monitoring the movement of the vortex on both levels, and have been able to confirm the erratic nature of this movement.

Alexandria, VA – When Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Dec. 19, 1972, it ended an era of manned spaceflight to the moon. The science, however, continues.

Armed with analytical techniques not available in the 1970s, researchers around the country have been re-examining the more than 380 kilograms of lunar rocks collected four decades ago during the Apollo missions.

Scientists from the Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institut, Denmark and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, have shown that a single nanowire can concentrate the sunlight up to 15 times of the normal sun light intensity. The results are surprising and the potential for developing a new type of highly efficient solar cells is great.

A team of scientists from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has developed a novel method to accurately predict dengue fever outbreaks several weeks before they occur.

The new method, known as PRedicting Infectious Disease Scalable Model (PRISM), extracts relationships between clinical, meteorological, climatic and socio-political data in Peru and in the Philippines. It can be used in any geographical region and extended to other environmentally influenced infections affecting public health and military forces worldwide.

Resilience, safety and security of UK food imports highlighted in new Global Food Security report and public exhibition.

Global Aerospace Corporation (GAC) announced today that the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is publishing an article entitled "Removing Orbital Debris With Less Risk" in the March/April edition of the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets (JSR) authored by Kerry Nock and Dr. Kim Aaron, of GAC, and Dr. Darren McKnight, of Integrity Applications Incorporated, Chantilly, VA. This article compares in-orbit debris removal options regarding their potential risk of creating new orbital debris or disabling working satellites during deorbit operation.

Turning on new satellite instruments is like opening new eyes. This week, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) released its first images of Earth, collected at 1:40 p.m. EDT on March 18. The first image shows the meeting of the Great Plains with the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado. The natural-color image shows the green coniferous forest of the mountains coming down to the dormant brown plains. The cities of Cheyenne, Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Boulder and Denver string out from north to south.

The Planck space mission has today (March 21) released the most accurate and detailed map ever made of the oldest light in the universe. The universe according to Planck is expanding a bit more slowly than thought, and at 13.8 billion is 100 million years older than previously estimated. There is a bit less dark energy and a bit more of both normal and dark matter in the universe — although the nature of dark energy and dark matter remain mysterious.

Thanks to a supersensitive space telescope and some sophisticated supercomputing, scientists from the international Planck collaboration have made the closest reading yet of the most ancient story in our universe: the cosmic microwave background (CMB).

URBANA – As escalating corn prices have encouraged many farmers to switch to growing corn continuously, they wonder why they have been seeing unusually high yield reductions over the past several years. The University of Illinois conducted a six-year study that identified three key factors affecting yield in continuous corn (CC) systems.

University of Colorado Boulder astronomers targeting one of the brightest quasars glowing in the universe some 11 billion years ago say "sideline quasars" likely teamed up with it to heat abundant helium gas billions of years ago, preventing small galaxy formation.

  • Planck refines our knowledge of the Universe's composition and evolution
  • New maps provide excellent evidence for our standard model of cosmology
  • Planck dates Universe at 13.82 billion years old
  • Anomalies suggest that Universe may be different on scales larger than those we can directly observe
  • Most accurate values yet for the ingredients of the Universe, with normal matter contributing just 4.9% of the mass/energy density of the Universe and dark matter making up 26.8% - nearly a fifth more than the previous estimate.

"We are very excited, we are finally seeing the concrete results of so many years of hard work". This is how the scientists of the Planck project have commented the first data resulting from the observations carried out by Planck. The mission of the ESA satellite is to observe the past of our Universe, going back in time and reaching the very first instant right after the Big Bang.