Displaying items by tag: Willam Atkins

The Boeing Company has developed a space capsule that holds seven astronauts and could be used to ferry passengers and supplies back and forth to the International Space Station. Will it be chosen to partially replace the space shuttle?

Australian researchers have developed a way to inject vaccines into the skin without using a needle. They have invented the Nanopatch, which uses tiny, dissolving micro-projections. Neat, and no more "ouch".

A newly discovered meteorite that impacted in southwestern Egypt a few thousand years ago, and produced what is being called the Kamil Crater, could mean that we are all at greater risk of getting hit by one.

A British/Finnish study has concluded that people are able to better cope with changes brought about by dementia when they are better educated.

An international team of archaeologists and scientists has found a previously undiscovered wooden structure just a little ways from the stone circle that the world knows as Stonehenge.

The U.S. space agency has set up a website so that all Earthlings can also become Martians. NASA says it is an Age of Virtual Exploration and the Human-Robotic Partnership. Sign up now!

A study of over 120,000 U.S. adults by the American Cancer Society has shown that the more you sit around, the shorter your average life span. So, you better get up and do something.

NASA has announced an experiment that it wishes to run as part of its Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program. Undergraduate students will design a reduced gravity experiment and fly it on board one of NASA's microgravity ('Weightless Wonder') aircraft.

U.S. astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have conjectured that a very rare hypervelocity star (a really fast one) was flung out of our Milky Way galaxy by its supermassive black hole over one hundred million years ago.

Astronomers using the NASA Spitzer Space Telescopes have discovered buckyballs for the first time in space. These all-carbon molecules are now considered the largest molecule ever discovered in space. A single buckyball is about 1 nanometer across--about three times larger than a water molecule.

Australian/U.K. scientists have identified the molecular material that causes celiac disease in some humans. They hope the discovery will lead to a drug to control the disease that prevents such people from eating gluten-based foods.

The U.S. space agency NASA has produced the world's first map of the height of all Earth's forests. The map will help scientists learn more about the carbon cycle and its affect on our atmosphere.

Edited: Discovering a big Hollywood star these days is easy to do, but astronomers have a more difficult time when they try to locate really massive or really large stars. However, astronomers recently succeeded at finding the most massive star so far discovered in the Universe. Called R136a1, it is about 265 times more massive than our Sun.

The U.S. Navy tested its Laser Weapons System (LaWS) in May 2010, shooting down four unmanned aerial vehicles. The Raytheon video depicting one of the Star-War-like events is available for you to see.

The VSS Enterprise from Virgin Galactic made its first full-crew flight on Thursday, July 15, 2010, as it flew attached to its carrier craft VMS Eve. The entire privately owned venture is expected to be the first commercial project directed at space tourism.

A U.S. study published in July 2010 shows that the risk of stroke increases by over double in the hour after taking a drink of alcohol, even though light to moderate drinking has been shown, overall, to decrease the risk.

According to July 2010 research from Northwestern University, older women who are obese, especially around the hips, are more likely to have problems remembering than do other women. It is better to be apple-shaped than pear-shaped for women when it comes to memory.

How about a planet that acts like a comet! The Hubble Space Telescope has found planet HD 209458b. NASA says it is a gas giant that is so close to its star'”about 4 million miles away'”that its atmosphere is escaping into space so fast that the created winds look like a sweeping tail of a comet.

The Commerce Committee of the U.S. Senate has unanimously approved a $19 billion bill that basically agrees with the earlier White House plan for private space vehicles, a continuation of the International Space Station, and more shuttle flights. A few different directions have been agreed upon, though.

A U.S. study finds that impaired or incompetent physicians are not identified by their peers and colleagues about 33% of the time. How do we get rid of the 'bad apples' when the 'good apples' don't report the problems 100% of the time?