Hong Kong (AFP) Dec 3, 2020
Asian markets drifted Thursday as investors struggled to build on last month's spectacular rally, with vaccine optimism largely priced in and any further advances kept in check by near-term virus concerns.
While met with great joy, the first approval of a Covid-19 drug by Britain on Wednesday had little impact on stocks as it had been widely expected soon.
Focus is now on regulators in t
Paris (AFP) Dec 2, 2020
China pushed past the United States in the third quarter to become the European Union's top trade partner, as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the US while Chinese activity rebounded.
Over the first nine months of 2020, trade between the EU and China totalled 425.5 billion euros ($514 billion), while trade between the EU and the United States came in at 412.5 billion euros, according to Euros
San Francisco (AFP) Dec 1, 2020
BlackBerry and Amazon on Tuesday announced an alliance to create a cloud computing platform that cars could link to for services and insights based on data from vehicles and users..
Word of plans for an Intelligent Vehicle Data Platform called "IVY" synching cars wirelessly to computing power at Amazon Web Services caused shares in Canada-based company to rev more than 50 percent to nearly n
United Nations, United States (AFP) Dec 2, 2020
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday denounced a "suicidal" failure to combat global warming and said recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic could be humanity's chance for a reset to save the planet.
"The state of the planet is broken. Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal," the UN chief said in a speech at Columbia University in New York City.
"Next year we have
Washington DC (UPI) Dec 01, 2020
Planting trees and protecting forests are two of the myriad strategies for keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.
Of all the options, they're considered the most eco-friendly, or greenest, but new research suggests planting and protecting trees does come with costs - and those costs are quite a bit larger than has been previously estimated.
According to a new study, published Tue
Paris (ESA) Dec 03, 2020
Solar cells for space are typically grown on slices of germanium metal. An ESA General Support Technology Programme (GSTP) project looked into being able to remove and recycle this rare, expensive metal, resulting in much thinner and cheaper solar cells for missions.
The activity tested a method where the surface of the Germanium substrate is treated so that a cavity is introduced just bel
Saskatoon, Canada (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
Many have dreamed of being able to turn straw into gold like the fabled Rumpelstiltskin. While this may not be possible in the literal sense, scientists are using sunlight to turn straw into something more valuable.
With the aid of technology from the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, Canadian researchers have made important advances to use the power of the sun
Wilmington NC (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) has announced that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a Final Safety Evaluation Report for the first of several licensing topical reports (LTRs) that have been submitted for the BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR). The LTR, which was submitted to the NRC in December 2019, forms the basis for the dramatic simplification of the BWRX-300.
Sydney, Australia (The Conversation) Dec 03, 2020
In September 2019, my colleague Anna Kapinska gave a presentation showing interesting objects she'd found while browsing our new radio astronomical data. She had started noticing very weird shapes she couldn't fit easily to any known type of object.
Among them, labelled by Anna as WTF?, was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio emission, hanging out in space like a cosmic smoke-ring. None
Paris (ESA) Dec 03, 2020
The ESA-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is celebrating its twenty-fifth launch anniversary.
Two and a half decades of scientific discovery is a major milestone for any space mission. But when the spacecraft at the heart of the celebration was only designed to last for two years, and operates from an area outside the Earth's protective magnetosphere, it's an unalloyed triumph
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
The effect that nearly massless, subatomic particles called neutrinos have on the formation of galaxies has long been a cosmological mystery - one that physicists have sought to measure since discovering the particles in 1956.
But an international research team including the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Principal Investigator Naoki Yoshida, w
Tsukuba, Japan (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
Computer simulations have struggled to capture the impact of elusive particles called neutrinos on the formation and growth of the large-scale structure of the Universe. But now, a research team from Japan has developed a method that overcomes this hurdle.
In a study published this month in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers led by the University of Tsukuba present simulations that acc
Chelmsford UK (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
Teledyne e2v, part of the Teledyne Imaging Group, will supply infrared detectors for the UK-led climate change TRUTHS mission. The Traceable Radiometry Underpinning Terrestrial and Helio Studies (TRUTHS) mission aims to establish an SI-traceable space-based climate and calibration observing system to improve confidence in climate-change forecasts, often referred to as a standards laboratory in s
Washington DC (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
Nearly all photons emitted after the Big Bang are now visible only at far-infrared wavelengths. This includes light from the cold universe of gas and dust from which stars and planets form, as well as faint signals from distant galaxies tracing the universe's evolution to today.
Earth's atmosphere blocks most of this light, and space missions are an ideal but prohibitively expensive way to
Ramnicu Valcea, Romania (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
ARCA introduced the EcoRocket, world's most cost-effective orbital launcher with a cost of $390,000/launch.
The reusable EcoRocket has a capability of 10kg to Low Earth Orbit and it's ARCA's answer to the European Commission's 10 million Euros prize that aims to stimulate the European Union's development of small orbital launchers.
EcoRocket will operate on the nano-micro satellites
Paris, France (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
EUMETSAT has joined the signatories of the "joint statement on the institutional exploitation of Ariane 6 and Vega C" in favor of a European preference for launchers on institutional missions in Europe, initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA) in October 2018.
In this framework, Arianespace and EUMETSAT will consolidate the launch planning for Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) and Metop-
Paris (ESA) Dec 03, 2020
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins poses next to a thriving radish crop growing inside the Advanced Plant Habitat in the International Space Station.
Located in Europe's Columbus module, the NASA experiment is the latest in the study of plants growing in microgravity.
With plans to visit the Moon and Mars, future astronauts will need a regular, fresh source of food as they take on these miss
Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
Technicians are simultaneously manufacturing NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) core stages for the Artemis II and Artemis III lunar missions at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The core stage for the deep space rocket consists of two huge propellant tanks, four RS-25 engines, and miles of cabling for the avionics systems and flight computers.
All the main core stage structur
Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX) Dec 03, 2020
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, topped with the upgraded version of the Cargo Dragon spacecraft, is seen inside the company's hangar at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 2, 2020, prior to being rolled out to the launch pad in preparation for the CRS-21 launch. The rocket and spacecraft are slated to make the short journey to the pad later this afternoon.
The first launch for SpaceX
Berlin (AFP) Dec 3, 2020
Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has blocked a Chinese defence company from buying up a German company specialising in satellite and radio technologies including 5G over national security risks, local media reported Thursday.
Based in North Rhine-Westphalia state, the company called IMST is an acquisition target of Addsino, a subsidiary of state-owned defence group China Aerospace Scien
Beijing (AFP) Dec 3, 2020
A Chinese space probe left the surface of the Moon Thursday to return to Earth, an ambitious effort to bring back the world's first lunar samples in four decades.
China has poured billions into its military-run space programme, with hopes of having a crewed space station by 2022 and eventually sending humans to the Moon.
The Chang'e-5 spacecraft, named after the mythical Chinese Moon go
Scientists are a step closer to restoring vision for the blind, after building an implant that bypasses the eyes and allows monkeys to perceive artificially induced patterns in their brains. The technology, developed by a team at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN), was described in the journal Science on Thursday. It builds on an […]
Style expert Jenna Lyons discusses moving on from retail after 27 years at J. Crew and working on reality TV show "Stylist with Jenna Lyons." (Dec. 3)
Over a quarter of all proteins in a cell are found in the membrane, where they perform vital functions. To fulfill these roles, membrane proteins must be reliably transported from their site of production in the cell to their destination and correctly inserted into the target membrane. Researchers from the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center (BZH) have succeeded in determining the three-dimensional structure of a molecular machine responsible for the correct placement of an important membrane... Читать дальше...
AMMAN — The International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which falls annually on December 3, this year is commemorated under the theme “Building Back Better: Towards a disability-inclusive, accessible and sustainable post-COVID-19 World”.
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