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Astronomers Using the Hubble Space Telescope Report the Earliest Spiral Galaxy Ever Seen

By Guest PostJuly 19, 2012Sciencealice shapley, astronomer, big bang, bx442, charles steidel, david law, dawn erb, early universe, elliptical galaxy, hawaii, Hubble Space Telescope, james larkin, journal nature, keck observatory, mauna kea volcano, Milky Way, naveen reddy, osiris spectrograph, spiral galaxy, universe

Astronomers have witnessed for the first time a spiral galaxy in the early universe, billions of years before many other spiral galaxies formed. In findings reported July 19 in the journal Nature, the astronomers said they discovered it while using the Hubble Space Telescope to take pictures of about 300 very distant galaxies in the early universe and to study their properties. This distant spiral galaxy is being observed as it existed roughly three billion years after the Big Bang, and light from this part of the universe has been traveling to Earth for about 10.7 billion years.

“As you go back in time to the early universe, galaxies look really strange, clumpy and irregular, not symmetric,” said Alice Shapley, a UCLA associate professor of physics and astronomy, and co-author of the study. “The vast majority of old galaxies look like train wrecks. Our first thought was, why is this one so different, and so beautiful?” (more…)

The ‘New’ Bing: Transforming Search from Finding to Doing

By Guest PostMay 10, 2012Technologybing, derrick connell, Facebook, gartner analyst, Google, hawaii, la bernardin restaurant, Microsoft, new bing, new feature, new york city, online, online services division, qi lu, ray valdes, relevancy, robert dietz, sally salas, search, stefan weitz, Technology, Twitter, web, web page, web search

Bing’s new user experience surfaces the best from the Web, friends and experts to help people do more.

REDMOND, Wash. – May 10, 2012 – Microsoft today unveiled a major update to its Bing search engine that fundamentally transforms the way users search the Web. The update, the most significant since Microsoft launched Bing three years ago, is designed to help users act quickly by taking advantage of the Web’s evolving fabric.

With the new version of Bing, rolling out over the coming weeks and broadly available in the U.S. in early June, people can easily get advice and recommendations from friends and experts with the new social sidebar. They can also view useful, action-oriented information via the new snapshot feature. And they can find what they’re looking for faster, with more relevant results and a refreshed user interface. All of this is presented in a new, three-column design that focuses on helping users take the leap from finding information to making quick, informed decisions. (more…)

Black Hole Caught Red-Handed in a Stellar Homicide

By Guest PostMay 2, 2012Sciencearmin rest, astronomer, Baltimore, billion light years, black hole, chandra, demise, Galaxy, galaxy evolution explorer, haleakala, hawaii, helium gas, johns hopkins university, milky way galaxy, NASA, pan starrs1 telescope, supermassive, suvi gezari

PASADENA, Calif. – Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii were among the first to help identify the stellar remains.

Supermassive black holes, weighing millions to billions times more than the sun, lurk in the centers of most galaxies. These hefty monsters lie quietly until an unsuspecting victim, such as a star, wanders close enough to get ripped apart by their powerful gravitational clutches. (more…)

Safe Sleep Environments Key to Preventing Many Infant Deaths, MU Researcher Says

By Guest PostApril 20, 2012Healthback to sleep, california, campaign, delaware, hawaii, heather dykstra, infant, injury prevention, michigan, nevada, ohio, patricia schnitzer, Pennsylvania, sids, sleep environment, soft bedding, suids, tennessee, texas, theresa covington, united states, university of missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Since 1992, the government’s Back-to-Sleep Campaign has encouraged parents to place infants on their backs to sleep. Still, more than 4,500 infants die unexpectedly during sleep each year in the United States. Now, a University of Missouri injury prevention researcher says that safe, separate sleep environments for infants are critical to preventing sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUIDs).

“Many of these SUIDs are due to unsafe sleep environments, and these deaths are totally preventable,” said Patricia Schnitzer, an associate professor in the MU Sinclair School of Nursing. “The safest place for infants to sleep is on their backs in their own cribs without soft bedding.” (more…)

Slow Snails, Fast Genes: Predatory Snails Refine Venoms Through Continuous Gene Duplication

By Guest PostApril 3, 2012Natureamerican samoa, cone snail, conotoxins, dan chang, DNA, gene, gene family, genus conus, hawaii, marine, molecular mechanism, neurotoxin, olfactory genes, panama, scorpion, snake, thomas duda, tropical, venoms

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— When tropical marine cone snails sink their harpoon-like teeth into their prey, they inject paralyzing venoms made from a potent mix of more than 100 different neurotoxins.

Biologists have known for more than a decade that the genes which provide the recipes for cone snail toxins are among the fastest-evolving genes in the animal kingdom, enabling these predatory gastropods to constantly refine their venoms to more precisely target the neuromuscular systems of their prey. (more…)

Scientists Prepare to Take First-Ever Picture of a Black Hole

By Guest PostJanuary 16, 2012Scienceabyss of space, albert einstein, alma, arizona, astrophysicists, atacama large millimeter array, atmosphere, black hole, black void, center of milky way, Chile, cosmic traffic jam, dan marrone, daniel stolte, dimitrios psaltis, earth, einstein, event horizon, event horizon telescope, extreme environment, field of gravity, game changer, general relativity, global array, hawaii, haystack observatory, maelstroms, mass, massachusetts institute of technology, mauna kea, mercury, Mexico, MIT, mt graham, nothingness, optical telescopes, plasma, radio telescopes, radio waves, shadow, sheperd doeleman, south pole, space and time, steward observatory, sun, supermassive black hole, theory of general relativity, tucson, ultra precise timing, universe, university of arizona, virtual telescope, water vapor, wavelengths

*The Event Horizon Telescope is an Earth-sized virtual telescope powerful enough to see all the way to the center of our Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole will allow astrophysicists to put Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to the test.*

Astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields across the world will convene in Tucson, Ariz. on Jan. 18 to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous.

The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, and Dan Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. (more…)

NASA’s Kepler Mission Finds Three Smallest Exoplanets

By Guest PostJanuary 15, 2012Sciencecalifornia institute of technology, caltech, doug hudgins, exoplanets, Galaxy, hawaii, john johnson, jupiter, keck observatory, kepler, kepler 22b, kepler mission, koi 961, mauna kea, milky way galaxy, NASA, palomar observatory, phil muirhead, planet hunters, planetary systems, radius of earth, red dwarfs, san diego, size of mars, smallest planets

PASADENA, Calif. – Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called KOI-961, and are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. The smallest is about the size of Mars.

All three planets are thought to be rocky like Earth but orbit close to their star, making them too hot to be in the habitable zone, which is the region where liquid water could exist. Of the more than 700 planets confirmed to orbit other stars, called exoplanets, only a handful are known to be rocky. (more…)

NASA Radar to Study Hawaii’s Most Active Volcano

By Guest PostJanuary 12, 2012Scienceactive volcano, airborne radar, big island, deformation, dryden flight research center, earth surface, east rift zone, edwards, hawaii, interferometry, jet propulsion laboratory, kilauea volcano, NASA, pasadena, pulses of microwave energy, research aircraft, sensor, uavsar, uninhabited aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar

An airborne radar developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has returned to Hawaii to continue its study of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii’s current most active volcano.

The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, mounted in a pod under NASA’s G-III research aircraft from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., returned to Hawaii’s Big Island on Jan. 7. The one-week airborne campaign will help scientists better understand processes occurring under Earth’s surface at Kilauea. (more…)

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