Thursday 23 April 2015

Basic research centre to improve efficiency of oral drug delivery

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The inauguration of the IDUN basic research centre marks the start of new research into drug delivery involving

The post Basic research centre to improve efficiency of oral drug delivery has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Can sound help us detect 'earthquakes' on Venus?

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Detecting an 'earthquake' on Venus would seem to be an impossible task. But conditions in Venus' atmosphere are much more hospitable, and it is here that researchers hope to deploy an array of balloons or satellites that could detect Venusian seismic activity -- using sound.
via Science Daily
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Vintage Astronomy, Map of Christian Constellations Poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: antique, constellations, retro, vintage, americana, nostalgic, zodiac, celestial map, star chart, universe, antique celestial

Vintage illustration Renaissance era astronomy and celestial image featuring an antique star chart of the sky, Map of the Christian Constellations of the northern skies as depicted by Julius Schiller (c. 1580-1627), from The Celestial Atlas, or The Harmony of the Universe by Andreas Cellarius. Andreas Cellarius (c.1596-1665) was a Dutch-German cartographer, best known for his Harmonia Macrocosmica of 1660, a major star atlas, published by Johannes Janssonius in Amsterdam.

Julius Schiller was a lawyer from Augsburg, Germany, who like his fellow citizen and colleague Johann Bayer published a star atlas in celestial cartography.

In the year of his death, Schiller, with Bayer's assistance, published the star atlas Coelum Stellatum Christianum which replaced pagan constellations with biblical and early Christian figures. Specifically, Schiller replaced the zodiacal constellations with the twelve apostles, the northern constellations by figures from the New Testament and the southern constellations by figures from the Old Testament.

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Celestial fireworks celebrate Hubble's 25th anniversary

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The glittering tapestry of young stars flaring to life in this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image aptly resembles an exploding shell in a fireworks display. This vibrant image of the star cluster Westerlund 2 has been released to celebrate Hubble's 25th year in orbit and a quarter of a century of new discoveries, stunning images and outstanding science.
via Science Daily
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Baked Alaska

Science Focus

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EARLIER THIS WINTER, Monica Zappa packed up her crew of Alaskan sled dogs and headed south, in search of snow. "We haven't been able to train where we live for two months," she told me.

Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, which Zappa calls home, was practically tropical this winter. Rick Thoman, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Alaska, has been dumbfounded. "Homer, Alaska, keeps setting record after record, and I keep looking at the data like, Has the temperature sensor gone out or something?"

Something does seem to be going on in Alaska. Last fall, a skipjack tuna, which is more likely to be found in the Galápagos than near a glacier, was caught about 150 miles southeast of Anchorage, not far from the Kenai. A few weeks ago, race organizers had to truck in snow to the ceremonial Iditarod start line in Anchorage.

Alaska is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the country — a canary in our climate coal mine. A new report shows that warming in Alaska, along with the rest of the Arctic, is accelerating as the loss of snow and ice cover begins to set off a feedback loop of further warming. Warming in wintertime has been the most dramatic — more than 6 degrees in the past 50 years. And this is just a fraction of the warming that's expected to come over just the next few decades.

Of course, it's not just Alaska. This February was the most extreme on record in the Lower 48, and it marked the first time that two large sections of territory (each more than 30 percent of the country) experienced both exceptional cold and exceptional warmth in the same month, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. All-time records were set for the coldest month in dozens of Eastern cities, with Boston racking up more snow than the peaks of California's Sierra Nevada. A single January storm in Boston produced more snow than Anchorage saw all winter.

ALASKA IS ON the front lines of climate change. This year's Iditarod was rerouted — twice — because of the warm weather. The race traditionally starts in Anchorage, which had near-record-low snowfall this winter. The city was without a single significant snowstorm between October and late January, so race organizers decided to move the start from the Anchorage area 360 miles north to Fairbanks. But when the Chena River, which was supposed to be part of the new route's first few miles, failed to sufficiently freeze, the starting point had to move again, to another location in Fairbanks.

On March 9, Zappa set out with her dogs on the 1,000-mile race across Alaska as one of 78 mushers in this year's Iditarod. For most of the winter, the weather across the interior of the state had been abnormally warm. To train, many teams of dogs and their owners had to travel, often "outside" — away from Alaska. Zappa ended up going to the mountains of Wyoming.

"I mean, what's living in Alaska if it's not cold and snowy?"

A recent study said that Alaska's rivers and melting glaciers are now outputting more water than the Mississippi River. Last year was Alaska's warmest on record, and the warm weather has continued right on into 2015. This winter, Anchorage essentially transformed into a less sunny version of Seattle. As of March 9, the city had received less than one-third of its normal amount of snow. In its place? Rain. Lots of rain. In fact, schools in the Anchorage area are now more likely to cancel school because of rain and street flooding than because of cold and snow.

Of course, it wasn't always this way. Alaska's recent surge of back-to-back warm winters comes after a record-snowy 2012, when the National Guard was employed to help dig out buried towns. Then, about two years ago, something in the climate system switched. The state's recent brush with extreme weather is more than just year-to-year weather variability. Alaska is at the point where the long-term trend of warming has begun to trump seasonal weather fluctuations. A recent shift toward warmer offshore ocean temperatures is essentially adding more fuel to the fire, moving the state toward profound tipping points like the irreversible loss of permafrost and increasingly violent weather. If the current warm ocean phase (which began in 2014) holds for a decade or so, as is typical, Alaska will quickly become a different place.

The Pacific Ocean near Alaska has been record-warm for months now. This year is off to a record-wet start in Juneau. Kodiak experienced its warmest winter on record. A sudden burst of ocean warmth has affected statewide weather before, but this time feels different, residents say. In late February, National Weather Service employees spotted thundersnow in Nome — a city just 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. "As far as I know, that's unprecedented," Thoman told me. Thunderstorms of any kind require a level of atmospheric energy that's rarely present in cold climates. To get that outside of the summer is incredibly rare everywhere, let alone in Alaska.

Climate scientists are starting to link the combination of melting sea ice and warm ocean temperatures to shifts in the jet stream. For the past few winters, those shifts have brought surges of tropical moisture toward southern Alaska via potent atmospheric rivers. This weather pattern has endured so long, it's even earned its own name: the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge. The persistent area of high pressure stretching from Alaska to California has shunted wintertime warmth and moisture northward into the Arctic while the eastern half of the continent is plunged into a deep freeze, polar-vortex style.

The warm water is making its way north into the Arctic Ocean, too, where as of early March, sea ice levels were at their record lowest for the date. The resurgent heating of the Pacific (we're officially in an El Niño year now) is also expected to give a boost to global warming over the next few years by releasing years of pent-up oceanic energy into the atmosphere, pushing even more warm water toward the north, melting Alaska from all sides.

That means Alaska's weather, according to one Alaska meteorologist, is "broken." Dave Snider, who reports statewide weather daily for the National Weather Service's Alaska office in Anchorage, tweeted the sentiment back in mid-January. Snider emphasized that this isn't the official view of the National Weather Service, "of course." Snider told me he made the comment "sort of in jest" but pointed to the nearly snow-free Iditarod start as evidence.

Here's another example he could have used: In early November, Super Typhoon Nuri morphed into a huge post-tropical cyclone, passing through the Aleutians very near Shemya Island on its way to becoming Alaska's strongest storm on record. Despite winds near 100 mph, Shemya emerged relatively unscathed. A few days later, the remnants of that storm actually altered the jet stream over much of the continent, ushering in a highly amplified "omega block" pattern that dramatically boosted temperatures across the state and sent wave after wave of Arctic cold toward the East Coast. Barrow was briefly warmer than Dallas or Atlanta.

THE WARM WEATHER isn't all bad news. The city of Anchorage has saved an estimated \$1 million on snow removal this year and is instead pouring the money into fixing potholes and other backlogged maintenance issues. But getting around the rest of the state hasn't been so easy.

There are few roads in rural Alaska, so winter travel is often done by snowmobiles over frozen rivers. Not this year. Warm temperatures in February led to thin ice and open water in the southwest part of the state near Galena and Bethel. David Hulen, managing editor for the Alaska Dispatch News in Anchorage, has spent nearly 30 years in the state. He says the freeze-thaw cycle is out of whack, "changing the nature of the place." Usually, things freeze in the fall and unfreeze in the spring; this winter, they've seen a nearly constant back and forth between freezing and thawing.

That's made it difficult for skiers and those enjoying other outdoor activities, like riding fat-tire bikes attuned to the snow. Julie Saddoris, of the Bike Me Anchorage Meetup, says attendance in her group was down this winter. Hulen agrees that it's been frustrating. "I mean, what's living in Alaska if it's not cold and snowy?"

Those are city problems. Along the state's west coast, some native coastal villages are facing an existential threat, as sea levels rise in response to the warm water. Earlier this winter, Washington Post climate reporter Chris Mooney visited Kivalina, one of the six villages considering plans to relocate because of climate change. "Here, climate change is less a future threat and more a daily force, felt in drastic changes to weather, loss of traditional means of sustenance like whale hunting, and the literal vanishing of land," Mooney wrote. Another village, Newtok, is a bit further along in the relocation process, with construction on their new village — Mertarvik — already underway.

For now, the most visible change is still in the shifting habitats of the fish, birds, trees, and animals. Permafrost still covers 85 percent of the state, but "almost everywhere, the depth of the active layer is increasing over the last few decades," said Thoman. Since the active layer — the zone of soil above the permafrost that thaws out each summer — now penetrates deeper down, that means landforms are shifting, lakes are draining, and new forests are springing up.

Patricia Owen is a biologist at Denali National Park and Preserve who studies grizzly bears. Last winter, warm weather brought blueberry blossoms earlier than normal. The blossoms then froze, making foraging for food more challenging for bears. Mother bears need to have good health in the fall to support their cubs during the long winter months of hibernation. Owen is seeing evidence of other changes within Denali: More episodes of freezing rain are having a big impact on sheep, which have to scrape through ice to eat. In low-snow years like this one, wolves seem to suffer, since caribou and moose can escape more quickly.

Recent warming also appears to have pushed Denali's poplar forests across a threshold toward rapid expansion. Carl Roland, a Denali plant ecologist who has compiled a trove of repeat photographs around the park spanning decades of environmental change, says that what he's seeing is "dramatic."

Once the permafrost goes, Roland says, we can expect a "regime shift" in the park and across the state. The northward spread of tree-killing insects is also a "really big unknown" in interior Alaska. Last spring, a huge forest fire in a beetle kill area of the Kenai Peninsula sent smoke plumes hundreds of miles northward toward Fairbanks.

For southern Alaska, fire season has been coming earlier in recent years, and 2015 looks to be no exception. A few years ago, the Alaska Division of Forestry statutorily moved the start of the fire season up from May 1 to April 1 "as a result of climate change," Tim Mowry, a division spokesman, told me. The change, Mowry says, was intended to elicit "a sense of urgency."

Excerpted from an article that originally appeared on Slate.com. Reprinted with permission.

 
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 » see original post http://theweek.com/articles/546496/baked-alaska
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Floating through the abyss

Science Focus

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On March 18, 1965, Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov stepped out of the Voskhod 2 spacecraft and into the unknown.


Leonov floats through space at the end of a lifeline during the first spacewalk. (AP Photo)



The Soviets had practiced the entire operation countless times on Earth. But actually opening the hatch hundreds of miles above our planet's surface must have been unimaginably nerve-wracking for Leonov. The astronaut told TIME photographer Marco Grob that one facet of the first spacewalk still stands out sharply in his memory.

"I remember the sound, this remarkable silence," he said. "You can hear your heart beat and you can hear yourself breathe. Nothing else can accurately represent what it sounds like when a human being is in the middle of this abyss."

Below, stunning images of other astronauts who, in the five decades since Leonov opened the Voskhod hatch, have ventured into that same silent chasm in the name of science.


June 3, 1965: Edward H. White completes the first U.S. spacewalk during the Gemini 4 mission. | (NASA/Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS)



August 6, 1973: Jack Lousma, Skylab 3 pilot, deploys the twin-pole solar shield to help shade the Orbital Workshop. | (NASA)



February 9, 1984: Bruce McCandless fires the nitrogen-gas jets from his Manned Maneuvering Unit to venture some 300 feet from the Challenger shuttle without a tether. | (AP Photo/NASA)



September 3, 2009: John "Danny" Olivas smiles for the camera while he works on construction and maintenance of the International Space Station. | (NASA/Reuters/Corbis)



April 6, 1984: Two astronauts work on a satellite in the cargo bay of the Challenger space shuttle. | (NASA/Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS)



October 22, 1993: Kathryn Thornton hovers over equipment on the Hubble Space Telescope, guided by the Remote Manipulator System. | (CORBIS)



December 2006: Astronauts Robert L. Curbeam and Christer Fugelsang work to attach a new truss segment to the ISS and upgrade the power grid. | (STS-116 Shuttle Crew/NASA.gov)



November 2007: Scott Parazynski assesses his repair work during a 7-hour, 19-minute spacewalk. | (NASA)



November 15, 2010: Oleg Skripochka helps install a multipurpose workstation on the ISS. | (NASA)



November 9, 2013: Oleg Kotov smiles while working on the ISS. | (NASA)

 
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 » see original post http://theweek.com/captured/545360/floating-through-abyss
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An unpowered exoskeleton decreases the energy required for walking

Science Focus

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The ability to walk upright is a defining characteristic of humans, one that emerged through a long evolutionary history. It's not just a matter of the right bones; our muscular, skeletal, and neural systems have evolved to enable our coordinated movements. The nerves allow us to develop a gait that is optimized to minimize the amount of energy necessary by modulating aspects of our movement such as our step length or arm motions.

Even with all that optimization, walking can be tiring; in fact, people expend more energy walking than any other daily activity. As we age, walking often becomes even more difficult. For decades researchers have explored ways to mitigate the energy cost associated with walking—studies that are typically aimed at helping those who are weaker or disabled.

Recently, scientists and engineers started to look at this issue from a new perspective; they questioned whether the human gait is as efficient as it can be. This interdisciplinary research team developed a device that behaves as an unpowered exoskeleton.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/HX6FYgTEkNk/
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Mystic Mountains - Carina Nebula Rectangular Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: mystic mountain, billowing interstellar gas clouds, cnbigc, star forming activity, carina nebula, amazing space sculpture, star nurseries, stellar winds, young hot stars, gas cloud sculpture

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A beautiful space photograph featuring the 7500 light year distant Carina Nebula. This Hubble image shows rich, interstellar gas clouds feeding the formation of new stars. As a proto star forms, the gas clouds get dragged to its surface and some gets emitted as tight jets of material travelling at hundreds of miles per second. These in turn help sculpt the gas clouds into weird and grotesque shapes, some looking like strange worms, swimming through space.

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Image credit: NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA

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Hubble 25

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Celebrating 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope, this montage presents the incredible range of images that have helped to shape our view of the Universe
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2015/04/Hubble_25_without_title

Hubble Space Telescope Celebrates 25 Years of Unveiling the Universe


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NASA and ESA are celebrating the Hubble Space Telescope's silver anniversary of 25 years in space by unveiling some of nature's own fireworks a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars called Westerlund 2. The cluster resides inside a vibrant stellar breeding ground known as Gum 29, located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina. The comparatively young, 2-million-year-old star cluster contains some of our galaxy's hottest, brightest, and most massive stars. The largest stars are unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light and hurricane-force winds that etch away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud. This creates a fantasy celestial landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys.


via HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2015/12/

Celestial fireworks celebrate Hubble’s 25th anniversary

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This glittering tapestry of young stars exploding into life in a dramatic fireworks display has been released today to celebrate 25 incredible years of the Hubble Space Telescope.


via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Celestial_fireworks_celebrate_Hubble_s_25th_anniversary

Meteor in the Milky Way

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Earth's April showers include the Lyrid Meteor Shower, observed for more than 2,000 years when the planet makes its annual passage through the dust stream of long-period Comet Thatcher. A grain of that comet's dust, moving 48 kilometers per second at an altitude of 100 kilometers or so, is swept up in this night sky view from the early hours of April 21. Flashing toward the southeastern horizon, the meteor's brilliant streak crosses the central region of the rising Milky Way. Its trail points back toward the shower's radiant in the constellation Lyra, high in the northern springtime sky and off the top of the frame. The yellowish hue of giant star Antares shines to the right of the Milky Way's bulge. Higher still is bright planet Saturn, near the right edge. Seen from Istra, Croatia, the Lyrid meteor's greenish glow reflects in the waters of the Adriatic Sea.
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Tarantula Nebula Hubble Space iPad Folio Case

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: tarantula nebula, nebula photo, star formation, astronomy, nasa photo, hubble telescope, universe, stars, astronomy products, cool space, 30 doradus nebula, european space agency, hubble photo, outer space, glowing, cosmos, cosmic, astronomical, astrophotography, cosmology, deep space, space, nature, natural, science, abstract, space photo, star birth, astronomy gifts, space gifts, space products, bright, light, sparkling, sparkly, starry sky, twinking, stellar, cool astronomy, cloudy

Cool space / astronomy photograph from NASA. This is a Hubble Space Telescope photograph showing a detailed area of the Tarantula nebula. This nebula is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, about 170,000 million light years away. This photo has shades of blue, green and orange, with sparkling stars.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA

You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize it' to see all the options. IMPORTANT: If you choose a different sized version of the product, it's important to click Customize and check the image in the Design view to ensure it fills the area to the edge of the product, otherwise white edges may be visible.

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If you like this product, you can find more like it in my store:

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Tiko – affordable, safe and advanced 3D printer for hobbyist inventor

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3D printing these days is one of those technologies that is developing the fastest and is dragging a

The post Tiko – affordable, safe and advanced 3D printer for hobbyist inventor has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Vintage Astronomy, Phases of the Moon with Sun Print

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: vintage, moon, sun, celestial, sky, nostalgic, retro, earth, nostalgia, americana, antique celestial

Vintage illustration astronomy and celestial design featuring the different phases of the moon around the earth and the sun in a dark night sky.

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Tarantula Nebula Star Forming Gas Cloud Sculpture Rectangle Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, tnlmcsfr, billowing interstellar gas clouds, awesome hubble images, tarantula nebula, large magellanic cloud, star forming activity, young hot stars, star nurseries, outer space photographs, triggering star formation

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome mobile phone shell featuring the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way, our galactic home. This Hubble image shows old stars from the distant past and rich, interstellar gas clouds feeding the formation of new ones. The most massive and hottest stars are intense, high-energy radiation sources and this pushes away what remains of the gas and dust, compressing and sculpting it. As the whorls and eddies clump and stretch it, gravity takes over and the birth of the next generation of new stars is triggered.

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Image credit: NASA, the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI) and ESA

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Space scientists pay homage to 25 years of the Hubble Space Telescope

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It was launched 25 years ago and has given humankind a glimpse at some of the farthest and earliest cosmic phenomenon in the observable Universe. On Friday, 24 April, the HST will celebrate exactly 25 years since it was launched.
via Science Daily
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Orion Nebula Acoustic Guitar Wall Sticker

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: orion, nebula, shape, cosmic, astronomy, green, space image, pretty, acoustic, guitar, space, image, aqua

Space image of the Orion Nebula on the shape of an acoustic guitar.

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New class of 3-D-printed aerogels improve energy storage

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Researchers have made graphene aerogel microlattices with an engineered architecture via a 3-D printing technique known as direct ink writing.
via Science Daily

Star birth in Carina Nebula from Hubble's WFC3 det iPad Case

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


tagged with: argo navis, astronomy, carina, celestial bodies, exploration, milky way, natural sciences, natural world, nebula, ngc 3372, nobody, outer space, physical science, sciences, space exploration and research, stars

ImageID: 42-23286264 / STScI / NASA/Corbis / Star birth in Carina Nebula from Hubble's WFC3 detector

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