Britain has added volcanoes and solar storms to floods, flu and terrorism on a list of threats to national security.
The highest-priority risks to Britain are pandemic influenza, coastal flooding, terrorist attacks and — a new addition — volcanic eruptions in Iceland, according to the recently published 2012 edition of the government’s National Risk Register for Civil Emergencies.
Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community.”
Edward Wright, WISE principal investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles
NASA has released a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky with more than a half billion stars and galaxies many of which have never been seen before.
Scientists used the images taken by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which was launched in 2009.
A newly-discovered asteroid, roughly the size of a soccer field, is going to whiz past our planet at just 24,000 km, a mere whisker in cosmic terms.
An amateur team discovered the unusual asteroid, dubbed 2012 DA14, Feb 22. Its small size and orbit meant that it was spotted only after it had flown past Earth at about seven times the distance of the Moon. It is expected to revisit almost exactly a year later Feb 15, 2013.
Iran has stepped up its efforts to monitor, filter and block content on the Internet by forming a separate legal body to deal with online censorship.
The Supreme Council of Cyberspace, created by decree last week by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, includes heads of intelligence, militia, security and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as media chiefs.
According to state media, charged with supervising all cyberactivity, it will have the power to enact laws.
Researchers have found a way to create temporary holes in the membranes of live cells to print them onto slides using a standard inkjet printer.
Dr. Delphine Dean of Clemson University said other researchers have been using this method to print cells onto slides, but that they have only recently discovered that printing the cells causes the disruption in their membranes for a few hours.
Creating temporary pores allow researchers to put molecules inside of cells that wouldn’t otherwise fit, and study how the cells react.
Researchers have found a way to create temporary holes in the membranes of live cells to print them onto slides using a standard inkjet printer.
Dr. Delphine Dean of Clemson University said other researchers have been using this method to print cells onto slides, but that they have only recently discovered that printing the cells causes the disruption in their membranes for a few hours.
Creating temporary pores allow researchers to put molecules inside of cells that wouldn’t otherwise fit, and study how the cells react.
A growing dissatisfaction among office workers with the clunky computers their employers force them to use, in contrast to the sleek Apple devices many have at home, could yet benefit incumbent suppliers like Dell, a top Dell executive said.
As Apple’s third-generation iPad went on sale on Friday, accompanied by the now traditional scenes of fans queuing round the block, Dell’s chief commercial officer Steve Felice said the tablet market was still wide open.
Our minds are wandering half the time, a sort of mental workspace that allows us to juggle multiple thoughts.
Psychology researchers Daniel Levinson and Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Jonathan Smallwood at the Max Planck Institute, Germany, reports that a person’s working memory capacity is tied to mind wandering during a routine assignment.
China’s mission to bring back lunar soil reaches a Beijing: China’s mission to collect about two kilograms of soil from the moon’s surface and bring it back to earth has reached an advanced stage, according to a leading space official.
This mission is part of the third phase of the lunar exploration program.
Hu Hao, chief designer of the lunar exploration program’s third phase and a deputy to the National People”s Congress, which ended on Wednesday, has said engineers are expected to put down the groundwork on the mission this year.
Heavy demand expected as iPad goes on sale today New York: Let the wild rumpus start.
The customary storefront crowds are expected to gather as Apple’s latest iPad goes on sale Friday. Long lines are likely even though customers could have ordered the new tablet computer ahead of time for first-day home delivery.
The third version of Apple’s iPad will be available in the US and nine other countries beginning at 8 a.m. local time. The new model comes with a faster processor and a much sharper screen. It also boasts an improved camera, similar to that of the latest iPhone.
Australians climate scientists were concerned over the fact that the nation’s cool and wet summer could lead to confusion about whether climate change is real, according to a media report Thursday.
The last few months have seen floods in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, with river systems overflowing and dams filled to the brim, and temperatures in the 20s rather than the 30s in many parts of Australia’s south-east, the ABC reported.
Astronomers have known for quite some time that the earliest galaxies were considerably smaller than the impressive spiral and elliptical galaxies that now fill the Universe.
Over the lifetime of the cosmos galaxies have put on a great deal of weight but their food, and eating habits, are still mysterious.
A new survey of carefully selected galaxies has focussed on their teenage years — roughly the period from about 3 to 5 billion years after the Big Bang.
US this year anticipated USD 25 million towards internet freedom programming efforts in the Middle East and spent USD 76 million from 2008 to 2011.
“Through these programmes, we provide training and tools to civil society activists, in the Middle East and throughout the world, to enable them to freely and safely exercise their freedoms of expression, association, and assembly on the Internet and via other communication technologies,” the State Department said.
Scientists in Kashmir have cloned the first Pashmina goat using advanced reproductive techniques, officials at the Shere- Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences & Technology (SKUAST) said on Thursday.
The March 9 birth of female kid Noori could spark breeding programmes across the region and mass production of the highpriced wool, lead project scientist Dr Riaz Ahmad Shah said.
Shah and six other scientists took two years to clone Noori, using the relatively new “ handmade” cloning technique involving only a microscope and a steady hand.
Cupertino, California: After the new iPad goes on sale Friday in the US and nine other countries, Apple will make the tablet computer available in 25 additional countries a week later, mostly in Europe.
The new iPad is Apple’s third version and sports a faster processing chip and a sharper screen. It works with a faster cellular network called 4G.
Now you definitely won’t miss your connection on London’s famous Tube network.
Visitors to London for the Olympics need not worry about being out of touch on the Underground after London Mayor Boris Johnson selected Virgin media on Wednesday to provide WiFi for the city’s subway system during the Olympics.
Johnson’s office said in a statement that WiFi will be introduced at 80 stations before summer. By the end of the year, 120 Tube stations, many of them deep-level, will be connected.
An orbiting NASA space telescope has captured the footage of a planet-sized object flying close to the sun, and extending a “refuelling tube” into the sun’s surface.
The black orb later flies off into space, the Daily Mail reported.
The video captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and put on YouTube has inspired a wave of speculation.
A YouTube user has challenged experts to explain the strange object.
However, the US space agency had an ordinary explanation.
It said it was not a visitor from another solar system, or a planet being born out of the surface of the sun.
In yet another sign of the growing dominance of the digital publishing market, the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print is moving solely into the digital age.
The Encyclopedia Britannica, which has been in continuous print since it was first published in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1768, said on Wednesday it will end publication of its printed editions and continue with digital versions available online.
The Greenland icesheet is more sensitive to global warming than thought, for just a relatively small–but very long term -temperature rise would melt it completely, according to a latest study.
Previous research has suggested it would need warming of at least 3.1 degrees Celsius (5.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, in a range of 1.9-5.1 c (3.4-9.1 F), to totally melt the icesheet.
Scientists are now looking forward to recreate a woolly mammoth, which walked on Earth 10,000 years ago.
Russian academics have signed a deal with a controversial Korean scientist to clone a woolly mammoth preserved in permafrost in Siberia.
Hwang Woo-Suk – who created the world’s first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005 – will implant the nucleus from a mammoth cell into an elephant egg to create a mammoth embryo.
The embryo will then be implanted into an elephant’s womb. The Koreans say research could begin this year.
Scientists have for the first time identified direct wave motion in one of Jupiter’s jet streams.
New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up one of the giant planet’s jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth’s atmosphere and influences the weather.
The movies, made from images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft when it flew by Jupiter in 2000, are part of an in-depth study conducted by a team of scientists and amateur astronomers led by Amy Simon-Miller at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Providing doctors with iPads multiplies their efficiency, cuts down delays in patient care and enhances continuity of care, says a new study.
In November 2010, the University of Chicago Medicine became the first hospital in the US to provide all its 115 resident doctors in internal medicine with iPad tablet.
When surveyed in 2011, more than three out of four of the residents reported that portable computers allowed them to complete tasks quicker, permitting them to spend more time on direct patient care and update their medical knowledge, the Archives of Internal Medicine reported.
The BBC has suffered a sophisticated cyber-attack following a campaign by Iranian authorities against its Persian service, director-general Mark Thompson said on Wednesday.
Thompson also reported attempts to jam satellite feeds of the British Broadcasting Corporation services into Iran and to swamp its London phone lines with automated calls.
In extracts from a speech he will make later on Wednesday, Thompson stopped short of explicitly accusing Tehran of being behind the cyber-attack, but he described the coincidence of the attacks as “self-evidently suspicious”.
Researchers have come up with a new device that could breathe new life into your mobile phone by using air from your lungs to charge it.
The kit, dubbed the AIRE mask, harnesses the wind power generated by breathing and converts it into electricity to run anything ranging from an iPod to a mobile.
The electronic mask consists tiny wind turbines and the energy created is transferred through a cable to the electronic device.
Inventor Joco Paulo Lammoglia, from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, revealed that the device could be used in all situations from running to sleeping.
Amateur cyber sleuths have been hunting malware, raising firewalls and fending off mock hack attacks in a series of simulations supported in part by Britain’s eavesdropping agency.
The games are intended to pull badly-needed talent into the country’s burgeoning cyber security sector, according to former security minister Pauline Neville-Jones, who spoke at a closing ceremony held Sunday at the Science Museum in the English port city of Bristol.