NASA will target Saturday, Sept. 3 at 2:17 p.m. EDT, the beginning of a two-hour window, for the launch of Artemis I, the first integrated test of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Mission managers met Tuesday to discuss data and develop a forward plan to address ...

Large pieces of plastic can break down into nanosized particles that often find their way into the soil and water. Perhaps less well known is that they can also float in the air. It’s unclear how nanoplastics impact human health, but animal studies suggest they’re potentially harmful. As a step toward better understanding the prevalence of airborne nanoplastics, researchers have ...

Using sophisticated electronic tags, scientists have assembled a large biologging dataset to garner comparative insights on how sharks, rays, and skates – also known as “elasmobranchs” – use the ocean depths. While some species spend their entire lives in shallow waters close to our shores on the continental shelf, others plunge hundreds of meters or more off the slope waters ...

A new analysis of remains from medieval Cambridge shows that local Augustinian friars were almost twice as likely as the city’s general population to be infected by intestinal parasites. This is despite most Augustinian monasteries of the period having latrine blocks and hand-washing facilities, unlike the houses of ordinary working people. Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology ...

New research reveals more about the magnitude of January eruption, as researchers call for better preparedness. The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in January created an initial wave 90 metres high – almost the height of the Statue of Liberty (93m) University of Bath tsunami expert calls for better warning systems to detect volcanic eruptions, saying systems are ...

Rising temperatures are harmful to wheat yields. However, crop yields do not provide a holistic vision of food security. The impacts of climate change on wheat price, livelihood and agricultural market fundamentals are also important to food security but have been largely overlooked. An international research team has now estimated the comprehensive impact of climate change and extreme climate events ...

Summer is in full swing in the U.S., and people are turning up their air conditioners to beat the heat. But the hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants in these and other cooling devices are potent greenhouse gases and major drivers of climate change. Today, scientists report a prototype device that could someday replace existing “A/Cs.” It’s much more environmentally friendly and uses solid ...

Recent study shows that during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the proportion of working-aged UAmerican adults without health insurance did not change despite increases in unemployment, and the prevalence of unhealthy behaviors decreased. The findings, published by Wiley online in CANCER, studied individuals with and without a history of cancer. While cancer survivors often have high health care ...

Sixty million years of climate change triggered the meteoric rise of reptiles around 250 million years ago, not a mass extinction of mammals as previously thought,said a new study. Just over 250 million years ago, during the end of the Permian period, and start of the Triassic, reptiles’ rates of evolution and diversity started exploding, leading to a dizzying variety ...

The oldest strain of Yersinia pestis–the bacteria behind the plague that caused the Black Death, which may have killed as much as half of Europe’s population in the 1300s–has been found in the remains of a 5,000-year-old hunter-gatherer. A genetic analysis published on June 29 in the journal Cell Reports reveals that this ancient strain was likely less contagious and not as ...

Like a Swiss Army knife, NASA’s Lightweight Surface Manipulation System (LSMS) technology is likely to find many ways of usage on the surface of Moon as part of its Artemis moon program. This lightweight robotic crane with a structurally efficient truss frame and cable actuation mimics the movement of a human arm, but with a much longer reach as seen in ...

A 1,300-year-old Hindu temple of Vishnu has been discovered by Pakistani and Italian archaeological team at a mountain in northwest Pakistan’s Swat district. The temple was unearthed during an excavation at Barikot Ghundai. Built 1,300 years ago during the Hindu Shahi period, the temple site has traces of cantonment and watchtowers, said Fazle Khaliq of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Department of Archaeology. ...

A ‘rogue editor network’ infiltrated a research journal’s peer-review system in an attempt to publish sub-standard papers in an attempt to subvert the scietific research standards. The hijackers created fake e-mail accounts and web domains to impersonate respected academics, and managed to accept 19 papers for publication at The Journal of Nanoparticle Research. However, the suspicious activity was flagged by journal ...

The mystery of how the Galápagos Islands, a rocky, volcanic outcrop, with only modest rainfall and vegetation, is able to sustain its unique wildlife habitats has been resolved. The Galápagos archipelago, rising from the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean some 900 km off the South American mainland, is an iconic and globally significant biological hotspot. The islands are renowned for their ...

Erstwhile waste rock from abandoned and closed mines in the eastern Adirondack Mountains, New York, may prove valuable source for rare earth elements, said a newly published research after USGS found it following two of its recent surveys. Rare earth elements are critical for advanced technologies such as cell phones, supermagnets, computers, medical apparatus, renewable energies and advanced defense systems, ...

As astronomers are looking for a hypothetical “Planet Nine” in our solar system, an exoplanet 336 light years from Earth is looking more like the Planet Nine of its star system. Planet Nine, potentially 10 times the size of Earth and orbiting far beyond Neptune in a highly eccentric orbit around the sun, was proposed in 2012 to explain perturbations ...

Elon Musk-run SpaceX on Wednesday, November 25, 2020, launched another successful mission carrying 60 more Starlink satellites on its Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit that will join the rest in beaming affordable Internet. The reusable Falcon 9 rocket, which made a record-breaking seventh trip this time, was SpaceX’s 16th Starlink mission and the company has to date launched nearly 1,000 ...

Scientists are upset that one of astronomy’s most renowned telescopes — the 305-metre-wide radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico — is closing permanently, as engineers gave up on its repair after two cables supporting the megastructure broke catastrophically, one in August and another in early November. Featured in many movies such as Contact (1997), which was based on a novel by ...

India carried out final user trial of 3rd generation Anti Tank Guided Missile (ATGM) NAG on Thursday, 22 Oct 2020 at 0645 hrs from Pokhran range. The missile was integrated with the actual warhead and a tank target was kept at designated range. This was launched from NAG Missile Carrier NAMICA. The missile hit the target accurately defeating the armour. ...

India has unveiled the Draft Space Based Communication Policy 2020 (Spacecom Policy-2020) with draft Norms, Guidelines and Procedures for implementation of Spacecom NGP-2020. Under the policy guidelines, Indian private sector players wanting to provide communication service inside and outside India using a space-based asset are liable for damages caused to other space objects in outer space and its environment. Releasing ...