WESTMINSTER, CO (October 10, 2012)—Time spent in the drudgery of strenuous exercise is a well-documented turn-off for many people who want to get in better shape. In a new study, researchers show that exercisers can burn as many as 200 extra calories in as little as 2.5 minutes of concentrated effort a day—as long as they intersperse longer periods of easy recovery in a practice known as sprint interval training. The finding could make exercise more manageable for would-be fitness buffs by cramming truly intense efforts into as little as 25 minutes.
Heavens
Space debris came into focus last week at the International Astronautical Congress in Naples, Italy. Envisat, ESA's largest Earth observation satellite, ended its mission last spring and was a subject of major interest in the Space Debris and Legal session.
ESA's Huygens probe bounced, slid and wobbled its way to rest in the 10 seconds after touching down on Saturn's moon, Titan, in January 2005, a new analysis reveals. The findings provide novel insight into the nature of the moon's surface.
Scientists reconstructed the chain of events by analysing data from a variety of instruments that were active during the impact, in particular changes in the acceleration experienced by the probe.
NEW YORK (October 11, 2012)— A new study by the Wildlife Conservation Society and James Cook University says that coral reefs in Aceh, Indonesia are benefiting from a decidedly low-tech, traditional management system that dates back to the 17th century.
Montréal, Québec, Oct. 11, 2012 -- Over half (52 percent) of supplement users are concerned about their heart health and 73 percent express an interest in natural, clinically proven solutions for cholesterol reduction, according to market research conducted by Micropharma Limited, a pioneer in the development of innovative and effective probiotics.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Contrary to past research, private school students in India do not outperform their counterparts in public schools, finds a new study by a Michigan State University education researcher.
The study challenges the claim that private schools are superior – a hot issue in India and other developing countries that are expanding K-12 educational offerings. During the past decade, some 40 million children have entered India's education system, giving rise to a growth in privately run schools.
New Haven, Conn. — New research led by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth's size orbiting a nearby star is a diamond planet.
"This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth," said lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan, a Yale postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy. "The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite."
The paper reporting the findings has been accepted for publication in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.
For the past four decades, the "marshmallow test" has served as a classic experimental measure of children's self-control: will a preschooler eat one of the fluffy white confections now or hold out for two later?
Now a new study demonstrates that being able to delay gratification is influenced as much by the environment as by innate ability. Children who experienced reliable interactions immediately before the marshmallow task waited on average four times longer—12 versus three minutes—than youngsters in similar but unreliable situations.
Typhoon Prapiroon is making a U-turn in the Philippine Sea, changing direction from northwest to northeast. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of the typhoon as it began turning. Visible satellite imagery revealed its most powerful thunderstorms south and east of the center.
Overnight on October 4-5, 2012, a mass of energetic particles from the atmosphere of the Sun were flung out into space, a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection. Three days later, the storm from the Sun stirred up the magnetic field around Earth and produced gorgeous displays of northern lights. NASA satellites track such storms from their origin to their crossing of interplanetary space to their arrival in the atmosphere of Earth.
The death throes of dying stars are the focus of a sweeping new survey using NASA's Chandra X-ray satellite observatory.
More than two dozen astronomers have aligned their research goals to use Chandra to image a set of dying stars in the neighborhood of the Sun. The resulting X-ray images of these dying stars—called planetary nebulae—are shedding light on the violent "end game" of a Sun-like star's life.
A team using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the most powerful millimetre/submillimetre telescope in the world, has discovered a surprising spiral structure in the gas around the red giant star R Sculptoris [1][2][3]. This means that there is probably a previously unseen companion star orbiting the star [4]. The astronomers were also surprised to find that far more material than expected had been ejected by the red giant.
A shipboard-capable system designed to support both the launch and recovery of the Scan Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) successfully completed final demonstration flight testing Sept. 27 at a testing range in eastern Oregon.
Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Compact Launch and Recovery System (CLRE) will provide a small-scale solution for the unmanned surveillance craft's operations.
This gallery shows four planetary nebulas from the first systematic survey of such objects in the solar neighborhood made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The planetary nebulas shown here are NGC 6543, also known as the Cat's Eye, NGC 7662, NGC 7009 and NGC 6826. In each case, X-ray emission from Chandra is colored purple and optical emission from the Hubble Space Telescope is colored red, green and blue.
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Liberal arts colleges continue redefining their historical missions or flat-out disappearing – a trend that threatens to diminish America's renowned higher education system, argues a study co-authored by a Michigan State University scholar.
Of the 212 liberal arts colleges identified in a landmark 1990 study, only 130 remain in their traditional form – a 39 percent reduction, according to the new research.