Página de Jessica Jimenez

Prometheus Wreaks Havoc in Saturn's F Ring

A recently released picture of the F Ring around Saturn shows it being obliterated on a certain portion by the passing of the tiny moon Prometheus through it. The image was snapped by the NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft on August 21. The probe, which has been orbiting the gas giant for many years, took advantage of its distant vantage point to image the interesting effects that the diminutive moon had on one of Saturn's most interesting rings. Its main trait is that it changes its appearance on a timescale of hours, which makes it the most active structure of this type in the solar system. It is also the outermost discrete ring circling the gas giant, and, as such, it is heavily influenced by the two moons flanking it, Prometheus and Pandora. The ring itself is composed of a central line and a spiral strand waving around the former. The first moon has the most dramatic influence on the structure of the ring. As it moves within it, it tends to basically “steal” matter from it, carving channels into the small formation, which is only a few hundred kilometers wide. It was known before that the Prometheus had the power to create kinks and knots in the F Ring, but the extent of this influence was not accurately assessed until the new Cassini observations. “The moon and the ring have eccentric, off...

Exposure to CO2 Leads to Fear of Suffocation

It would appear that our genetic legacy also features some very intriguing left-overs, which are not necessarily of use to us today. One such feature is the fact that the human brain triggers a primordial type of fear when exposed to increased amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2), which makes us fear suffocation in the most “thorough” way possible. The cortex seems to have what scientists have termed a built-in sensor against high CO2 concentrations, which circumvents other alert mechanisms. The new study could have significant implications for the people that suffer from panic attacks very often. The condition, which severely affects their lives – even if it's not lethal –, may come from mechanisms such as the recently discovered one, which malfunctions in some individuals. The work may also be able to finally explain why people drawing deep breaths can calm down when suffering from such anxiety attacks, LiveScience reports. The investigation was conducted on unsuspecting mice. In the research, scientists from the University of Iowa focused on a region of the brain known as the amygdala, which had been proven in past studies to play a major role in mediating innate and learned fear. The acid-sensing ion channel-1a (ASIC1a) was also a target of the scientific effort. This is a chemica...

China Reveals Copenhagen Summit Goals

In a gesture of good will towards the international community, China published just a few days ago its emission-cut goals, just a couple of weeks ahead of the UN Summit on Climate Change, to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark. The country is one of the few large polluters around the world that have become actively engaged in the fight against climate change and global warming, alongside countries such as the United Kingdom. To be appreciated is the fact that China made its promises regardless of the terms that the United States set for themselves, which makes the decisions all the more commendable. Officials in Beijing announce that they plan to cut emissions by 40 to 50 percent – depending on possibilities –, as opposed to 2005 levels. Their plan calls for this to happen over the next ten years, by 2020 at the latest. According to Quentin Sommerville, a BBC News expert in Beijing, this does not necessarily mean that the carbon-dioxide levels will start dropping. He explains that the country prefers measuring pollution in carbon intensity, which is a concept referring to how much carbon is being emitted for each unit of GDP. At this point, the country's economy largely grows based on toxic emissions from coal-powered electrical plants. This is further made obvious by the fact that, right now, the Asian...

Future Purposes for Ailing QuikSCAT Satellite Under Assessment

The ten-year-old QuikSCAT (Quick Scatterometer) NASA mission is considered by many at the American space agency and elsewhere as one of the most valuable national resources in orbit today. The satellite, whose goal was to provide up-to-date data on the direction and speed of winds over the planet's oceans, was originally designed to last for no more than five years. It was launched on June 19, 1999 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, aboard a Titan 23G delivery system, and entered the active scientific-operation stage shortly after. However, in recent months, age-related damages have prevented it from continuing its mission, experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announce. “In recent months, the QuikSCAT project team has been monitoring a pattern of increasing friction in the bearings that allow the antenna to spin, leading to increased resistance and strain on the motor that turns QuikSCAT's rotating antenna. This degradation was fully expected, as the spin mechanism was designed to last about 5 years,” a press release on the JPL official news blog shows. The antenna stopped spinning altogether on Monday, November 23, after showing increased signs of trouble over the weekend. Unfortunately, the glitch was not minor, and the mechanisms could no longer spin the SCAT. T...

New Magnetic Heat Shields Under Development

Arguably the most dangerous stage of a space flight is the reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. The process is so harsh that space agencies involved in the International Space Station (ISS) use it to destroy the resupply capsules completely. They are steered into the incorrect angle, and they burn up and disintegrate. The space shuttles and Soyuz capsules are the most advanced things we have in this regard. The NASA vehicle is protected by a large number of ceramic tiles, which offer as much protection as possible against the fierce temperatures that are generated by the spacecraft's impressive speed when it enters the atmosphere. However, at this point, efforts are being conducted to produce a completely new generation of heat shields, one that does not rely on direct protection, but rather on deflecting the super-hot plasma that is formed beneath spacecraft as they pass through the upper atmosphere. A number of space agencies in European countries, together with EADS Astrium, and the German aerospace center, DLR (Deutschen Zentrums for Luft- und Raumfahrt), are currently working on an approach that makes use of superconducting magnets. The goal is to create such powerful magnetic fields, that the plasma around the ship would essentially not be allowed to touch its hull, PhysOrg reports. The new technol...

AT&T-iPhone Marriage Might End in June 2010

Wireless carrier AT&T is predicted to lose the exclusivity deal on the Apple iPhone in mid-2010, according to analyst Brian Marshall. This is not the first time the carrier has been forecast to lose the right to exclusively distribute the Apple iPhone device in the United States during the next year, and even AT&T itself stated at a certain point that the deal wouldn't last forever. Even so, during an interview with Bloomberg TV, Marshall has provided a more solid window to expect for an exclusivity ending announcement, it seems. Apple's iPhone is, undoubtedly, one of the most popular mobile phones available on the market at the moment. Given the fact that a wide range of users are attracted to it, it is understandable that carriers are also trying to have it available in their offering. The iPhone can prove a very strong source of revenues, yet the exclusivity deals Apple signed with various carriers around the world limit both operators' and users' access to it. However, Apple has recently begun to offer a wider range of carriers in various markets around the world the possibility to sell the iPhone, and most of you might already know that O2 UK is no longer the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the country. Based on this move, it might be only a matter of time before we learn that AT&T has also lost...

Americans Have Wasteful Eating Habits

According to a new scientific study on the eating habits that citizens in the United States exhibit, nearly 40 percent of the food supply in the country goes to the trash can after purchase, rather than being consumed. This waste only seem to be getting worse as the years go by, experts say and argue that measures should be taken to curb this phenomenon, which may have deep repercussions on the economy and the social wellbeing of the people themselves. The work was conducted by experts at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), in Bethesda, Maryland. The team was conducted by scientist and quantitative physiologist Kevin Hall, ScienceNow reports. “The numbers are pretty shocking,” Hall says of the new research results. He explains that such studies are usually conducted either through direct interviews with samples of the population, or through garbage inspection. However, both methods are plagued with the possibility of error, the former because they are highly inaccurate, and the latter because it is geographically unrepresentative. So the NIDDK researchers took another approach, and created a model of the human metabolic system. For a time frame spanning between 1974 to 2003, the team analyzed the average weight of Americans, and, based on this mean, they calc...

Men Spend More Time in the Kitchen than Women

They usually say that a kitchen is a woman’s domain and, in many respects, this has continued to be so to this day. The only thing that proves that the saying is not necessarily accurate is with regard to the time spent there by men and women, with the former actually to be found in the kitchen for more hours daily than their partners, as a new survey cited by the Daily Mail informs. As strange as it may sound to some, a new survey conducted by Wickes Kitchens and Bathrooms among 3,000 Britons shows that men spend on average more hours in the kitchen than their female counterparts. However, that’s not to say that said time is spent cooking, as activities popular with men include eating, packing lunches, reading, relaxing and doing the dishes. Women, on the other hand, are primarily engaged in cooking when they’re in there. “A study has found the average man spends seven hours and six minutes a day in the room. That compares to a typical woman’s six hours and 52 minutes. The figure for men equates to 15 weeks and two days in the kitchen each year – but whether they use that time to good effect is debatable. While women are more likely to be cooking, men can be found relaxing, eating and preparing packed lunches – quite possibly for themselves.” the Mail wri...

Sony Won't Give Up on Physical Distribution Any Time Soon

Sony is making more and more of a push into the world of online distribution. Its PSP Go completely lost the UMD cartridge and the company supports more and more the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store by making most of its content available through theses two online services. As such, Sony feels the need to reassure gamers everywhere that physical releases are "not going away any time soon" and that it will continue to provide software support for them. SCEE boss Andrew House talked to GI.biz and said that, "Make no mistake, when you're looking at PS3 games and you're seeing the shift in the sheer size of the data that's becoming available, the packaged media business is not going away any time soon." Most likely, he was referring to the increasing number of people that were getting used to the PS3's online capabilities and were easily becoming more accustomed to the PSN. As such, online distribution is seeing a steady increase in sales. He tried to further explain the matter, but somewhere, somehow, things got a little bit mixed up. "I think there's been an overstatement there potentially, and then a backlash to that – but I don't think we were really responsible for that overstatement, so we're not really part and parcel of the backlash, if that makes sense." Well, to tel...

Plasma Prototype Devices Can Destroy MRSA

Two new devices, created by German scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and Japan-based ADTEC Plasma Technology Ltd., show tremendous promise in fighting methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), as well as other resilient bacteria. The two instruments are low-temperature plasma prototypes, which have demonstrated in tests that they can pose a real challenge to these microorganisms, which have remained unchecked until now. The find is made all the more important by the fact that these bacteria spread mostly in hospitals, where people are most likely to have a weakened immune system. In severe cases, these infections are lethal. The finds are detailed in two new separate papers, in a selection of publications on Plasma Medicine, which appear in the Thursday, November 26 issue of the New Journal of Physics. Plasma, the main “active” component in the new approach, is oftentimes said to be a fourth state of matter, in addition to the solid, liquid and gas ones. It can be best defined by its unique trait, namely that of being highly ionized. Most types of plasma only form at super-high temperatures, equivalent to those found inside stars, during nuclear fusion. However, room-temperature variations of the matter exist, and they can apparently ...

China anuncia meta de emisiones para cumbre Copenhague

Reuters - PEKIN (Reuters) - China anunció el jueves su primera meta firme para reducir las emisiones de los gases que causan el efecto invernadero, un compromiso que el primer ministro Wen Jiabao llevará el próximo mes a una cumbre en Copenhague con la esperanza de lograr un acuerdo global sobre cambio climático.

La Meca: fieles se congregan en Monte Arafat y pegrinos iraníes manifiestan

AFP - MONTE ARAFAT, Arabia Saudita (AFP) - Más de dos millones de personas se congregaron el jueves en el Monte Arafat para una jornada de plegaria, un momento importante de la peregrinación a La Meca, marcada por una concentración sin incidentes de los fieles iraníes contra los "enemigos del islam".

Clima: China revela sus planes a diez días de la cumbre de Copenhague

AFP - PEKÍN (AFP) - China, uno de los países más contaminantes del planeta, anunció el jueves por primera vez una meta cuantificada de sus reducciones de gas de efecto invernadero, tras los objetivos anunciados la víspera por Estados Unidos, a diez días de la conferencia de Copenhague sobre el clima.

India rinde tributo a las víctimas del atentado terrorista de Bombay de 2008

Agencia EFE -

Nueva Delhi, 26 nov (EFE).- Con velas encendidas, palabras de recuerdo y desfiles policiales, la ciudad india de Bombay rindió hoy tributo a las víctimas del asalto terrorista de hace un año, que mantuvo al mundo en vilo durante casi tres días.

El Baradei advierte antes de retirarse que la investigación iraní no avanza

Agencia EFE -

Viena, 26 nov (EFE).- El director general del OIEA, Mohamed El Baradei, advirtió hoy en Viena de que la investigación del polémico programa nuclear iraní "ha llegado a un callejón sin salida, a menos que Irán coopere plenamente".