Science Letter articles from August 2003

Science Letter archives from August 2003

Smoking supernovae solve a 10-billion year-old mystery.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A team of U.K. astronomers have announced the discovery that some supernovae have bad habits: they belch out huge quantities of "smoke" known as cosmic dust. This solves a mystery more than 10...

Scientists break the hard-drive miniaturization limit.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Magnetic memory-based information storage systems are getting smaller and smaller, while their capacities are getting larger. However, there is a limit to how small they can get. If the tiny...

Thermal paste to help minimize overheating in electronic devices.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A materials engineer at the University at Buffalo, New York, has invented a new thermal paste that will help solve the problem of overheating in high-performance personal computers and other...

New form of matter - the pentaquark - discovered.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A 5-quark state has been discovered, first reported by a group of physicists working at the Spring-8 physics lab in Japan. All confirmed particles known previously have been either combinations of...

Fewer Earthbound asteroids will hit home than previously estimated.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Scientists reported in the July 17, 2003, issue of Nature that significantly fewer asteroids could hit the Earth's surface than previously reckoned. Researchers from Imperial College London, U.K.,...

Icebound Antarctic telescope delivers first neutrino sky map.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A novel telescope that uses the Antarctic ice sheet as its window to the cosmos has produced the first map of the high-energy neutrino sky. The map, unveiled for astronomers in Sydney, Australia, on...

African dust brings drought, rain across Atlantic.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa may modify clouds and rainfall both in Africa and across the tropical North Atlantic as far away as Barbados, according to a study that uses data from NASA...

Satellites see lightning strikes in ozone's origins.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- During summertime, ozone near the Earth's surface forms in most major U.S. cities when sunlight and heat mix with car exhaust and other pollution, causing health officials to issue "ozone alerts." But...

Researchers use quantum dots as a new approach to solid-state lighting.
August 4, 2003... 2003 AUG 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- In a different approach to creating white light, several researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Sandia National Laboratories have developed the first solid-state white light-emitting...

Small galaxy springs 'dark matter' surprises.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Astronomers from the University of Cambridge, U.K., have found for the first time the true outer limits of a galaxy. They have also shown that the dark matter in this galaxy is not distributed in...

Paper: Hydrogen-fueled cars not best solution.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- As politicians and the public leap aboard the hydrogen fuel bandwagon, two energy experts suggest we all step back and take a critical look at the technology and consider simpler, cheaper options. ...

Black holes and galaxies: Missing link discovered in our own cosmic backyard.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A team of Sloan Digital Sky Survey astronomers from Germany and the United States announced the discovery that galaxies and extremely massive black holes seem to grow together. A team led by Dr....

Scientists count how many stars there are in the Universe.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- There are more stars in the sky than all the grains of sand on every beach and in every desert on earth, according to an Australian National University (ANU) astronomer who has made the most accurate...

Stars rich in heavy metals tend to harbor planets.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A comparison of 754 nearby stars like our Sun - some with planets and some without - shows definitively that the more iron and other metals there are in a star, the greater the chance it has a...

Short, carbon nanotubes created by chemical 'scissors' have many applications.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Chemists at Rice University have identified a chemical process for cutting carbon nanotubes into short segments. The new process yields nanotubes that are suitable for a variety of applications,...

Possible new location of deep convection in North Atlantic found.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- An international team of scientists has reported in Nature that convection, a process that forms deep waters of the world's oceans and plays a major role in the climate system, may also be occurring in...

New technology seeks to streamline oil production.
August 11, 2003... 2003 AUG 11 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Mississippi State University has successfully tested an environmentally friendly, oil-water separation system that could increase petroleum production and save millions of dollars in recovery costs....

Report tries to be neutral point in noisy debate.
August 18, 2003... 2003 AUG 18 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Nanotechnology is an emerging range of technologies in which medicine and engineering meet physics and chemistry. Nanotechnology supporters claim that the machines and materials it may produce...

Ground-breaking work in understanding of time is published.
August 18, 2003... 2003 AUG 18 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A bold paper that has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum...

Destruction of ozone layer is slowing after worldwide ban on CFC release.
August 18, 2003... 2003 AUG 18 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The rate at which ozone is being destroyed in the upper stratosphere is slowing, and the levels of ozone-destroying chlorine in that layer of the atmosphere have peaked and are going down. This is...

Revolutionary processor can do a billion and a half operations per second.
August 18, 2003... 2003 AUG 18 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- MAgic VLIW is being introduced at the Hot Chips 15 conference, August 18-19, 2003, in Stanford, California. MAgic VLIW is a revolutionary electronic component derived by technologies developed by...

Hackers turn to search engine's cached pages to break into websites.
August 18, 2003... 2003 AUG 18 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Computer hackers have adopted a startling strategy in their attempts to break into websites, reported the August 2, 2003, issue of New Scientist. By using the popular search engine Google, they...

Study finds jaws of clamworm are hardened by zinc.
August 18, 2003... 2003 AUG 18 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Scientists often look to nature for inspiration in the search for ways to make new materials. A new study of the clamworm, an intertidal creature, shows that it has jaws made partly of zinc,...

Titania nanotubes make supersensitive hydrogen sensors.
August 18, 2003... 2003 AUG 18 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Titania nanotubes are 1500 times better than the next best material for sensing hydrogen and may be one of the first examples of materials properties changing dramatically when crossing the border...

Subsidies for corn-based ethanol criticized.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The U.S. Senate passed an energy-policy bill July 31, 2003, that would double amounts of corn-based ethanol in American gasoline. At the same time, a Cornell University agricultural ecologist has...

Geological tool helps scientists map ocean's interior.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A new application of a decades-old technique to study Earth's interior is allowing scientists "see" the layers in the ocean, providing new insight on the structure of ocean currents, eddies and mixing...

Potentially cheaper, more efficient way to make acetic acid discovered.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A University of Southern California chemist has found what eventually could be a cheaper and more efficient way to create acetic acid, a petrochemical used in products ranging from aspirin to...

Grasslands may become wetter as temperatures rise.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Grassland ecosystems could become wetter as a result of global warming, according to a new study by researchers from Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. This surprising...

'Spintronics' could enable a new generation of electronic devices.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Moore's Law, a dictum of the electronics industry that says the number of transistors that fit on a computer chip will double every 18 months, may soon face some fundamental roadblocks. Most...

Search for life could include planets, stars unlike ours.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The search for life on other planets could soon extend to solar systems that are very different from our own, according to a new study by an Ohio State University astronomer and his colleagues. In...

Scientists make nanocrystals stable in solution.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Nanocrystals in solution interest researchers because their optical properties vary depending upon the crystal's size, making them potential candidates for use in biosensors, medical diagnostic...

California agency warns of ocean water risks.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Companies are lining up to help California squeeze salt from the sea in its quest for new water sources, but the agency that would approve the projects says tapping the ocean could pose serious...

Is erosion helping Himalayas to grow?
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Does erosion, which occurs over years or decades, influence mountain-building, which requires eons? Do surface forces like wind and rivers contribute to tectonic shifts miles below the earth's surface?...

Mega earthquake threats examined.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Researchers have found an important new application for seismic reflection data, commonly used to image geological structures and explore for oil and gas. Recently published in the journal Nature,...

Smoking submarine volcano found in the Indian Ocean.
August 25, 2003... 2003 AUG 25 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- At over 3,000 meters down in the northwest Indian Ocean, the Carlsberg Ridge is "probably the best ridge in the world," say excited scientists from Southampton Oceanography Centre. They've just...