ESA GlobSnow project led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute uses satellites to produce up-to-date information on global snow cover. The new database gives fresh information on the snow situation right after a snowfall. Gathering this information was not possible before when only land-based observations were available.
Tech
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new X-ray imaging capability has taken pictures of a critical instability at the heart of Sandia's huge Z accelerator. The effort may help remove a major impediment in the worldwide, multidecade, multibillion dollar effort to harness nuclear fusion to generate electrical power from sea water.
"These are the first controlled measurements of the growth of magneto-Rayleigh-Taylor [MRT] instabilities" in fast Z-pinches, said project lead Daniel Sinars.
(Garrison, NY) To celebrate 40 years of pioneering bioethics publication, the Hastings Center Report, the world's first bioethics journal, looked to the future, asking young scholars to write about what the next generation of bioethicists should take up. Out of 195 compelling submissions, four of the best essays were selected for publication in the November-December issue.
FRANKFURT. Many imminent problems facing the world today, such as deforestation, overfishing, or climate change, can be described as commons problems. The solution to these problems requires cooperation from hundreds and thousands of people. Such large scale cooperation, however, is plagued by the infamous cooperation dilemma. According to the standard prediction, in which each individual follows only his own interests, large-scale cooperation is impossible because free riders enjoy common benefits without bearing the cost of their provision.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Provisions of new federal health care reforms will move the country toward a primary care medical home for patients, but the nation may not have enough primary care doctors to handle the workload, according to a study by the University of Michigan Health System.
Still, the concept of shifting patients to a medical home could save time and money and allow specialists to focus on complex patient care, according to the study published online ahead of print in the journal Medical Care.
DURHAM, N.C. – Tinkering with a single gene may give perennial grasses more robust roots and speed up the timeline for creating biofuels, according to researchers at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy (IGSP).
Perennial grasses, including switchgrass and miscanthus, are important biofuels crops and can be harvested repeatedly, just like lawn grass, said Philip Benfey, director of the IGSP Center for Systems Biology. But before that can happen, the root system needs time to get established.
HOUSTON -- (Nov. 11, 2010) -- Future computers may run a little sweeter, thanks to a refinement in the manufacture of graphene at Rice University.
Electronic components are getting smaller and smaller, with microelectronic components gradually being replaced by nanoelectronic ones. On nanoscale dimensions, silicon, which is at the present stage the most commonly used material in semiconductor technology, reaches however a limit, preventing further miniaturization and technological progress.
Night-time violence among young Spaniards is becoming ever more common, according to a research study carried out by the European Institute of Studies on Prevention. The study shows that 5.2% of young people carry weapons when they go out at night, 11.6% have been attacked or threatened, and 23% have got into a fight at some time.
Obstetricians and midwives should wait a few minutes before clamping the umbilical cords of newborn infants so that babies are not harmed by the procedure, argues Dr David Hutchon in an article published on bmj.com today.
Hutchon, a retired consultant obstetrician from the Memorial Hospital in Darlington, says it's time for the UK to follow guidance from the World Health Organisation and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics and refrain from early cord clamping.
A Finnish study confirms the hypothesis that infant feeding plays a role in the initiation of the disease process leading to type 1 diabetes in children carrying increased genetic disease risk.
An estimated 26 million people, 13% of the United States population, are living with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), and this number continues to grow. If current trends continue, there will not be enough doctors to serve this expanding patient population.
COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— Underage and heavy drinking on college campuses continue to be issues for college administrators. While some campuses, such as the University of Missouri, have made strides in efforts to reduce heavy drinking on campus, administrators are continually trying to educate students about the risks of excessive drinking. Now, two MU psychologists have found that students who viewed images of beer cans packaged and displayed in university colors believed that drinking beer was less dangerous than those students who saw images of regular beer cans.