Researchers at Nancy University in Lorraine, France have raised concerns that disease will make it impossible to support long-term space travel such as manned missions to Mars. Space travel both weakens the immune system and promotes more virulent growth of ...
Disciplined and observational study of the natural world including, but not limited to: Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Earth Science.
Fool’s Gold in Solar Cells
Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley are developing new solar cells based on pyrite, otherwise known as fool’s gold. Fool’s gold is four or five times more plentiful than the silicon most commonly used in solar cells and ...
Herschel Crater on Mimas of Saturn
Mimas, one of the smaller round moons of Saturn, sports Herschel crater, one of the larger impact craters in the entire Solar System. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn took the above image of Herschel crater in unprecedented detail ...
Memory Encoding Methods
Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) have uncovered a process used to encode memories in the synapse layer connecting neurons of the human brain. In order to ensure memories are encoded in the synapse and retrievable ...
Disinfect Water with Light
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Sciences in China have developed a new catalyst that uses visible light to disinfect bacteria and viruses. The new process – which works in either ...
Images from SMOS Arrive
The first callibrated images from the European Space Agency’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Satellite are available less than four months from the satellite’s launch. As the mission name implies, these images provide information on global soil moisture and ...
SARA Orbiter Advances
Scientists using the European Space Agency’s Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) instrument aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 Lunar Orbiter have determined how water could be created on the lunar surface. In addition, the same discovery could lead to an entirely new mechanism ...
Using Brainpower to Control Paralyzed Limbs
Researchers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois are developing systems to translate brain activity into real time muscle movements. Combining functional electrical stimulation (FES) and a neural implant, the new system could allow people paralyzed because of spinal cord damage ...
Explaining Blue Stragglers’ Youthful Appearance
Astronomers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have recently published an article that sheds light over the ‘youthful’ appearance of stars known as blue stragglers. These shiny stars, which seem older than they are, have puzzled scientists for almost 50 years; ...
Hunting Down the Neutrino
Scientists from NOvA, a cooperative project of the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, have recently announced the construction of a huge detector that will be used to answer some of the mysteries modern physics present – including the ...