Technology

NASA has launched a new software that can help amateur astronomers detect new asteroids in an efficient way.

Developed in partnership with Planetary Resources Inc of Redmond, Washington, D.C., the desktop software application showed a 15-percent increase in positive identification of new asteroids in our solar system’s main belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.

The application is based on an Asteroid Data Hunter-derived algorithm that analyses images for potential asteroids.

It is a tool that can be used by amateur astronomers and citizen scientists.

A new study has indicated that modest consumption of nuts every day is associated with an improved cardiovascular risk profile among adolescents.

According to the study, adolescents who ate at least 12.9 grams per day of nuts which is the equivalent of eating a small handful three times per week had less than half the odds of non-eaters for developing metabolic syndrome and this syndrome is a cluster of clinical features that heightens the risk of early heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

A new study has provided a deeper insight into how geckos manage to stay clean, even in the dusty deserts.

In a world first, the discovery done by a research team including James Cook University scientists might also turn out to have important human applications.

JCU’s Professor Lin Schwarzkopf said the group found that tiny droplets of water on geckos, for instance from condensing dew, comes into contact with hundreds of thousands of extremely small hair-like spines that cover the animals’ bodies.

A new software created by a NASA challenge, which has now been made public, can help amateur astronomers to detect possible asteroid threats in future.

Analysis of images taken of our solar system’s main belt asteroids between Mars and Jupiter using the algorithm showed a 15 percent increase in positive identification of new asteroids.

Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus exhibits signs of life-supporting hydrothermal activity which may resemble that seen in the deep oceans on Earth, scientists say.

Hydrothermal activity occurs when seawater infiltrates and reacts with a rocky crust and emerges as a heated, mineral-laden solution, a natural occurrence in Earth’s oceans.

The Milky Way galaxy is at least 50 percent larger than is commonly estimated, according to new findings which reveal that the galactic disk is contoured into several concentric ripples.

The research, conducted by an international team led by physics professor Heidi Jo Newberg from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, revisited astronomical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

“In essence, what we found is that the disk of the Milky Way is not just a disk of stars in a flat plane – it is corrugated,” Newberg said.

Several outer space tasks like doing repairs and conducting experiments may become a lot easier for astronauts now as NASA is developing augmented reality glasses like Google Glass for them.

These specially developed glasses can project any information needed by its user right into the glasses’ lenses.

NASA has recently teamed up with the San Francisco-based company Osterhout Design Group to develop such computerised glasses.

A new study has provided a deeper insight into human brains which ages less than previously thought.

BBSRC-funded researchers at the University of Cambridge and Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit demonstrated that previously reported changes in the ageing brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) may be due to vascular (or blood vessels) changes, rather than changes in neuronal activity itself.

Contrary to the previous assumption that female mice are attracted more strongly to the odour of healthy males, a new study reveals that mice mate with unhealthy males as well.

“Until now, scientists generally assumed that females choose their mates depending on their males’ scent or other secondary sexual traits. Our study shows that this isn’t necessarily the case,” said first author of the study Sarah Zala of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna.

The females were allowed to freely choose between two males, one healthy and another challenged with a mild infection.

Engineers have created an incredibly thin, chameleon-like material that can change colour – on demand – by simply applying a minute amount of force.

The material paves the way for an entirely new class of display technologies, colour-shifting camouflage, and sensors that can detect otherwise imperceptible defects in buildings, bridges, and aircraft.

“This is the first time anybody has made a flexible chameleon-like skin that can change colour simply by flexing it,” said Connie J Chang-Hasnain from the University of California at Berkeley.

A new study has revealed that elephants have the ability to sniff out explosives using their keen sense of smell.

It was first noticed that elephants can detect explosives in Angola, when the creatures returned following a war in 2002, which left the ground littered with mines, the Independent reported.

Researcher Ashadee Kay Miller at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg said that the giant animals were able pick up TNT samples 73 out of the 74 times in a line of buckets.

A new study has provided maps of Mercury’s surface chemistry that illuminate the planet’s history.

MESSENGER Science Team’s maps reveal previously unrecognized geochemical terranes, large regions that have compositions distinct from their surroundings, and the presence of these large terranes has important implications for the history of the planet.

Medical experts from around the world have stressed on the issue to avoid preventable deaths caused by acute kidney injury (AKI), by coming up with lifesaving treatments by 2025.

The scientists said that such deaths caused by acute kidney injury, which affects around 13 million people every year and contributes to 1.7 million deaths annually, could be treated for as little as 150 dollars per patient and eliminated in just 10 years.

Solar-powered aircraft ‘Solar Impulse-2’, which has made a stop-over here during its round-the-world trip, is likely to stay here until Tuesday due to bad climatic conditions, officials said here on Friday.

“The aircraft will remain at the city airport until Tuesday due to bad weather conditions,” Sardar Vallabhbhai International Airport director RK Singh said.

The Solar Impulse-2 project team also tweeted that departure of the aircraft has been postponed for two more days later than its scheduled departure on Sunday.