GamerBeef: Science News

ESA’s orbiting X-ray observatory XMM-Newton has discovered the most massive cluster of galaxies seen in the distant Universe until now. The galaxy cluster is so big that there can only be a handful of them at that distance, making this a rare catch indeed. The discovery confirms the existence of dark energy.

ESA PR 35-2008. ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft will make a historic encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on 5 September 2008. The doors of ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, will be open to the media as of 18:00 on 5 September to follow the fly-by events.

Oxygen is constantly leaking out of Earth’s atmosphere and into space. Now, ESA’s formation-flying quartet of satellites, Cluster, has discovered the physical mechanism that is driving the escape. It turns out that the Earth’s own magnetic field is accelerating the oxygen away.

Thanks to data from ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory, scientists have been able to locate where particles in the vicinity of the rotating neutron-star in the Crab Nebula are accelerated to immense energies.

On 14 August, Rosetta conducted a successful trajectory correction manoeuvre using data obtained from ESA’s first-ever optical tracking of an asteroid target, (2867) Steins. Images from the spacecraft’s cameras were used to calculate the asteroid’s location and optimise its trajectory for fly-by next month.

The Hubble Space Telescope has found the answer to a long-standing puzzle by seeing the details of giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275.

The Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) mounted on Mars Express was dormant after its first and only operational use in 2003. It is now back in action as the ‘Mars Webcam’, providing views of the Red Planet that are not obtainable from Earth.

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Spacecraft controllers have just awoken Rosetta from hibernation to prepare for its encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on 5 September. ESA’s comet chaser will study the relatively rare asteroid as it flies by on its way to comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The Cassini mission is new two-year mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intriguing targets: Titan and Enceladus. On 30 June, Cassini completed its four-year prime mission and began its extended mission, which was approved in April this year.

The High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express has returned images of Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on the Red Planet.

Scientists and engineers are preparing ESA’s Mars Express for several close fly-bys of the Martian moon Phobos. Passing within 100 km of the surface, Mars Express will conduct some of the most detailed investigations of the moon to date.

Starting this week, spacecraft controllers have been executing a series of manoeuvres to gradually bring Venus Express closer to its host planet. In its modified orbit, the spacecraft will be able to observe unexplored regions and investigate phenomena that were not within its reach before.

A team of European scientists working with COROT have discovered an exoplanet orbiting a star slightly more massive than the Sun. After just 555 days in orbit, the mission has now observed more than 50 000 stars and is adding significantly to our knowledge of the fundamental workings of stars.

Mars Express closed in on the intriguing martian moon Phobos at 6:50 CEST on 23 July, flying past at 2.96 km/s, only 100 km from the centre of the moon. The ESA spacecraft’s fly-bys of the moon have returned its most detailed full-disc images ever, also in 3-D, using the High Resolution Stereo Camera on board.

Heading toward its first target-asteroid, (2867) Steins, ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft has started using its cameras to visually track the asteroid and eventually determine its orbit with more accuracy.

Scientists and engineers are preparing ESA’s Mars Express for several close fly-bys of the Martian moon Phobos. Passing within 100 km of the surface, Mars Express will conduct some of the most detailed investigations of the moon to date.

Starting this week, spacecraft controllers have been executing a series of manoeuvres to gradually bring Venus Express closer to its host planet. In its modified orbit, the spacecraft will be able to observe unexplored regions and investigate phenomena that were not within its reach before.

XMM-Newton has discovered an exploding star in the Milky Way. Usually that would be important in itself, but this time there is a special twist. Calculations show that the explosion must have been clearly visible to the unaided eye but was missed by the legions of star watchers around the planet.

The High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express has returned images of Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on the Red Planet.

The Ulysses spacecraft, whose mission was expected to end on 1 July 2008, is hanging on valiantly as spacecraft controllers wait for a sign of the fuel freeze that would end the mission. This could happen any time now.

The Cassini mission is new two-year mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intriguing targets: Titan and Enceladus. On 30 June, Cassini completed its four-year prime mission and began its extended mission, which was approved in April this year.

Spacecraft controllers have just awoken Rosetta from hibernation to prepare for its encounter with asteroid (2867) Steins on 5 September. ESA’s comet chaser will study the relatively rare asteroid as it flies by on its way to comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The ESA/NASA SOHO spacecraft has just discovered its 1500th comet, making it more successful than all other comet discoverers throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission.

The first thing an alien race is likely to hear from Earth is chirps and whistles, a bit like R2-D2, the robot from Star Wars. In reality, they are the sounds that accompany the aurora. Now ESA’s Cluster mission is showing scientists how to understand this emission and, in the future, search for alien worlds by listening for their sounds.

The Herschel spacecraft is now undergoing a series of mechanical tests at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre, ESTEC. The tests are carried out to ensure that the spacecraft can withstand the acoustic and vibration loads that it will encounter during launch.

Pregnancy seems to confer some protection against bladder cancer in mice, scientists have found. Female mice that had never become pregnant had approximately 15 times as much cancer in their bladders as their counterparts that had become pregnant, according to new findings by investigators at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Their work appears online as a rapid communication in the journal Urology.

The rest of the article can be read here.

A small study in 18 patients assessing the effectiveness of the drug losartan for treating Marfan syndrome in children has yielded encouraging results. Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers showed that losartan — a compound used for years to treat high blood pressure — slowed the enlargement of the aorta, the most life-threatening defect associated with Marfan syndrome.

The rest of the article can be read here.

A groundbreaking new study finds that genes significantly affect variation in voter turnout, shedding new light on the reasons why people vote and participate in the political system. The researchers suggest that, contrary to decades of conventional wisdom, family upbringing may have little or no effect on children’s future participatory behavior.

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New software lets blind and visually impaired people surf the Internet on the go. The computer science student who created the software, called WebAnywhere, says more accessibility tools must move from desktop machines to the Web.

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Industrial pipe systems are inaccessible and narrow. The pipes can be vertical and have junctions. Just as challenging, leakage points in the water system must be located, the condition of oil and gas pipelines must be checked and ventilation systems need to be cleaned.

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A new study shows that by adding an invisible layer of the nanomaterials to the bottom of a metal vessel, an order of magnitude less energy is required to bring water to boil. This increase in efficiency could have a big impact on cooling computer chips, improving heat transfer systems, and reducing costs for industrial boiling applications.

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A novel electronic device designed to “zap” away migraine pain before it starts has proven to be the next form of relief for those suffering from the debilitating disease, according to a study conducted at the Ohio State University Medical Center.

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Lack of both the fragile X syndrome gene and one that is related could account for sleep problems associated with the disorder, which is the common cause of inherited mental impairment.

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Strange coral-like growths at the bottom of Pavilion Lake in British Columbia have been out of the reach of scientists until now with the addition of new submersible technology. The growths might hold the key to life beyond Earth.

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NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander performed its first wet chemistry experiment on Martian soil flawlessly yesterday, returning a wealth of data that for Phoenix scientists was like winning the lottery.

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Adults with type 2 diabetes who eat unhealthy, high-fat meals may experience memory declines immediately afterward, but this can be offset by taking antioxidant vitamins with the meal, according to new research from Baycrest.

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A new study uncovers a mechanism that directly links mutations that cause early onset Alzheimer’s disease with aberrant calcium signaling. The research, published by Cell Press in the June 26 issue of the journal Neuron, provides exciting molecular insights into the pathology of AD and may lead to new treatment strategies.

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Every day we’re faced with decisions that involve spatial judgments. Which line should we choose at the supermarket? Which route should we take to work? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that thinking styles affect spatial judgment.

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Dr. Sarah Hake and her colleagues, George Chuck, Hector Candela-Anton, Nathalie Bolduc, Jihyun Moon, Devin O’Connor, China Lunde, and Beth Thompson, have taken advantage of the information from sequenced grass genomes to study how the reproductive structures of maize are formed.

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Fluorescent nanoparticles, called quantum dots, are dramatically better than existing methods for delivering a gene-silencing tool into cells. The quantum-dot chaperones help impede the cell’s production of a given protein.

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The largest ever study of bird genetics redraws the avian evolutionary tree, challenges current classifications, alters our understanding of avian evolution, and provides a resource for future studies. Early Bird, centered at the Field Museum, examined DNA from all major living bird groups. Scientists built and analyzed a dataset of more than 32 kilobases of nuclear DNA sequences from 19 locations on the DNA of each of 169 species — equivalent to a small genome project.

The rest of the article can be read here.

A new study helps bring scientists closer to a safe and efficient gene delivery method that doesn’t involve viruses. Researchers have created a novel synthetic gene vector that packages DNA into well-defined nanostructures that allow it to efficiently deliver genes without triggering immune responses.

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People who have never smoked but whose cells cannot efficiently repair environmental insults to DNA are at higher risk of developing lung cancer than those with effective genomic repair capability.

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Imagine you’re about to step onto a rollercoaster at an amusement park. You are filled with apprehension and joy, mixed emotions that last beyond the dizzying ride. How will you remember the experience? New research shows people tend to underestimate the intensity of their recalled feelings if those feelings were mixed, as opposed to purely happy or sad.

The rest of the article can be read here.

The powerful advantages of using gene catalogs to infer biological function in marine animals are highlighted in a virtual symposium in the June issue of the Biological Bulletin, published by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.

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Researchers have long known that acid rain can severely decrease the diversity of plant and animal communities in fresh water lakes and ponds. However, little is known about how microscopic bacteria, which form the foundation of freshwater ecosystems, respond to acidification.

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New exquisitely preserved fossils from Latvia cast light on a key event in our own evolutionary history, when our ancestors left the water and ventured onto land. Scientists have reconstructed parts of the animal and explain the transformation in the new issue of Nature.

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People who are bicultural and speak two languages may actually shift their personalities when they switch from one language to another, according to new research.

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A major review shows that the world is losing the battle over tropical habitat loss with potentially disastrous implications for biodiversity and human well-being. Tropical forests support more than 60% of all known species. But up to 15 million hectares of tropical rainforest are being lost every year and species are being lost at a rate of up to 10,000 times higher than would happen randomly without humans present.

The rest of the article can be read here.

Having a good nose is essential to a Japanese beetle’s survival. The beetle’s sense of smell helps it avoid enemies and zero in on a mate. Meanwhile, the potential mate is programmed to release sex pheromones in exactly the right proportions. Like cheap perfume, there is such a thing as too much: Excessive pheromones can get the attention of a passing fly, leading her to the beetle.

The rest of the article can be read here.