2012 Venus Transit - The Countdown Is On! - 0 views
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On June 5 (June 6 in Australia and Asia), it will pass between the Earth and Sun… an event which only happens about twice and century and won’t happen again until the year 2117!
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now is the time to begin your preparations to view the transit of Venus.
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Because the transit of Venus is such a rare event, many retailers are carrying special eclipse/transit viewing glasses
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Mars methane linked to meteorites - 0 views
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Until now no-one had thought to check whether exposing meteorites to sunlight would create methane.
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work on ultraviolet radiation's role in releasing methane from vegetation on Earth led them naturally to question its source in Mars' atmosphere
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Methane doesn't persist in the atmosphere, which means there must be some sort of process that continuously produces it
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DNA strands create tiniest Smileys - 0 views
Researchers develop nanodevice manufacturing strategy using DNA 'building blocks' - 0 views
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Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a method for building complex nanostructures out of short synthetic strands of DNA
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interlocking DNA "building blocks," akin to Legos, can be programmed to assemble themselves into precisely designed shapes, such as letters and emoticons
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Further development of the technology could enable the creation of new nanoscale devices, such as those that deliver drugs directly to disease sites.
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Rare meteorite fragment donated to UC Davis geologist - 0 views
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UC Davis alumnus Gregory Jorgensen ’90, Ph.D. ’95, presented UC Davis geologist Qing-Zhu Yin with a donation today, May 30, of a meteorite piece that fell beside his driveway in Coloma, Calif.
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invaluable” to science and has asked others to come forth with donations
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donation is one of two meteorite pieces he stumbled
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FAA Clears Virgin Galactic to Begin Rocket-Powered Test Flights | Space.com - 0 views
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Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo suborbital space tourism vehicle has won U.S. regulatory approval to begin powered flight testing of the rocket-propelled craft later this year
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May 30 announcement that the experimental launch permit from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorizes the Scaled Composites development team "to progress to the rocket-powered phase of test flight
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flight system consists of two vehicles, SpaceShipTwo and its WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft
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Sun-powered plane waits for better weather to continue trip - 0 views
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Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse is waiting for weather conditions to improve before continuing on its first transcontinental flight, organisers said Wednesday
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experimental plane, which is not designed to fly into clouds
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landed in Madrid on Friday
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Mars missions may learn from meteor Down Under - 0 views
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Scientists have tried to find out how the planet's environment came to contain methane gas, which contains carbon – a substance found in all living things
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meteorites, which continually bombard the surface of Mars, contain enough carbon compounds to generate methane when they are exposed to sunlight.
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Scientists planning future missions to Mars could use the findings to fine-tune their experiments, potentially making their trips more valuable.
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Stunning Visualization of 56 Years of Tornadoes in the US - 0 views
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Using information from data.gov, tech blogger John Nelson has created this spectacular image of tornado paths in the US over a 56 year period
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categorizes the storms by F-scale with the brighter neon lines representing more violent storms
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Nelson also provided some stats on all the storms in the different categories
Dragon's Ocean Splashdown Caps Historic Opening of New Space Era - 0 views
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dual drogue parachutes deploy at 45,000 feet to stabilize and slow the spacecraft
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Full deployment of the drogues triggers the release of the main parachutes, each 116 feet in diameter, at about 10,000 feet
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picture perfect splashdown at 11:42 a.m. EDT today, May 31, in the Pacific Ocean, off the west coast of Baja, California, some 560 miles southwest of Los Angeles
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SpaceX Dragon Capsule Splashes Down in Pacific, Ending Historic Test Flight | Space.com - 0 views
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SpaceX Dragon capsule made a water landing off the coast of Baja California, Mexico at 11:42 a.m. EDT (1542 GMT)
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began its return to Earth in earnest at 10:51 a.m. EDT (1451 GMT) with a nine minute, 50 second de-orbit engine burn.
Tomato genome fully sequenced - 0 views
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the genome was sequenced from the "Heinz 1706" tomato
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the genome of the tomato
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has been decoded, and it becomes an important step toward improving yield, nutrition, disease resistance, taste and color of the tomato and other crops
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Nanotechnology breakthrough could dramatically improve medical tests - 0 views
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The material consists of a series of glass pillars in a layer of gold. Each pillar is speckled on its sides with gold dots and capped with a gold disk. Each pillar is just 60 nanometers in diameter, 1/1,000th the width of a human hair
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laboratory test used to detect disease and perform biological research could be made more than 3 million times more sensitive
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increased performance could greatly improve the early detection of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other disorders by allowing doctors to detect far lower concentrations of telltale markers than was previously practical.
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Robotic Rehab Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again - ScienceNOW - 0 views
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employing a combination of drugs, electrical stimulation, and robot-assisted rehabilitation, researchers have restored a remarkable degree of voluntary movement in rats paralyzed by a spinal cord injury
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After several weeks of treatment, the rodents were able to walk—with some assistance—to retrieve a piece of food, even going up stairs or climbing over a small barrier to get it
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Spinal injuries cause paralysis because they sever or crush nerve fibers that connect the brain to neurons in the spinal cord that move muscles throughout the body
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Missing 'Big Bang' Antarctic Telescope Found - 0 views
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Astronomers and students from the University of Minnesota hoping to search for radiation left over from the Big Bang instead spent the past few days looking for their telescope
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6,000 lb (2729 kg)
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the truck driver who was supposed to deliver it to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas
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Discovery of historical photos sheds light on Greenland ice loss - 0 views
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Researchers at the National Survey and Cadastre of Denmark
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had been storing the glass plates since explorer Knud Rasmussen's expedition to the southeast coast of Greenland in the early 1930s.
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Ohio State University researchers and colleagues in Denmark describe how they analyzed ice loss in the region by comparing the images on the plates to aerial photographs and satellite images taken from World War II to today.
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Irish mathematicians explain why Guinness bubbles sink (w/ video) - 0 views
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Simulations of the elongated vortices in (left) a pint glass, where bubbles sink near the glass wall, and (right) an anti-pint glass, where bubbles rise near the wal
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Why do the bubbles in a glass of stout beer such as Guinness sink while the beer is settling, even though the bubbles are lighter than the surrounding liquid?
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a team of mathematicians from the University of Limerick has shown that the sinking bubbles result from the shape of a pint glas
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