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PhysOrg.com
EU musicians oppose Europe-wide online licensing (AP) -- The Bee Gees' Robin Gibb and other European music composers warned Thursday that standardizing music royalties across Europe could hurt musicians and the songs they write. Ulysses hanging on valiantly The Ulysses spacecraft, whose mission was expected to end on 1 July 2008, is hanging on valiantly as spacecraft controllers wait for a sign of the fuel freeze that would end the mission. This could happen any time now. Printed optical electronics come into view European researchers have taken a major step towards the goal of developing printable electronics that can be used for creating radio frequency identification tags and flexible watch displays. Synthetic molecules emulate enzyme behavior for the first time When chemists want to produce a lot of a substance -- such as a newly designed drug -- they often turn to catalysts, molecules that speed chemical reactions. Many jobs require highly specialized catalysts, and finding one in just the right shape to connect with certain molecules can be difficult. Natural catalysts, such as enzymes in the human body that help us digest food, get around this problem by shape-shifting to suit the task at hand. Swedes e-mail lawmakers, protest eavesdropping law (AP) -- Swedes have bombarded lawmakers with more than 1 million e-mails protesting the country's new eavesdropping law, adding to the growing public outcry over the measure, an official said Monday. Cluster listens to the sounds of Earth The first thing an alien race is likely to hear from Earth is chirps and whistles, a bit like R2-D2, the robot from Star Wars. In reality, they are the sounds that accompany the aurora. Now ESA's Cluster mission is showing scientists how to understand this emission and, in the future, search for alien worlds by listening for their sounds. Oxygen Ions for Fuel Cells Get Loose at Low Temperatures Seeking to understand a new fuel cell material, a research team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with the University of Liverpool, has uncovered a novel structure that moves oxygen ions through the cell at substantially lower temperatures than previously thought possible. The finding announced this month in Nature Materials may be key to solving fuel cell reliability issues and lead to reduced operating costs in high-performance stationary fuel cells. Electromagnetic interference from some identification devices may pose hazards to medical equipment The use of radio frequency identification devices appears to have the potential to cause critical care medical equipment to malfunction, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA. Radio telescopes reveal unseen galactic cannibalism Mystery of black hole 'feeding' resolved Radio-telescope images have revealed previously-unseen galactic cannibalism -- a triggering event that leads to feeding frenzies by gigantic black holes at the cores of galaxies. Astronomers have long suspected that the extra-bright cores of spiral galaxies called Seyfert galaxies are powered by supermassive black holes consuming material. However, they could not see how the material is started on its journey toward the black hole. FCC lifts Sprint deadline to swap some channels (AP) -- The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday agreed to give Sprint Nextel Corp. more time to swap some wireless spectrum frequencies with public safety agencies. ... |