Recent Comments

    From Platypus to Parsecs and MilliCrab: Why do Astronomers use such Weird Units?

    April 19, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A bright, multi-coloured supernova remnant with dusty, wispy filaments and something resembling a tornado (the pulsar wind nebula) in the centre.
    Image of the Crab Nebula where red is radio from the Very Large Array, yellow is infra-red from the Spitzer Space Telescope, green is visible from the Hubble Space Telescope, and blue and purple are X-ray from the XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray Observatories respectively. NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI

    You may have heard about an asteroid set to fly near Earth that is the size of 18 platypus, or maybe the one that’s the size of 33 armadillos, or even one the size of 22 tuna fish.

    These outlandish comparisons are the invention of Jerusalem Post journalist Aaron Reich (who bills himself as “creator of the giraffe...

    Read More

    Graphene ‘Tattoo’ treats Cardiac Arrhythmia with Light

    April 18, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Graphene implant on tattoo paper

    Researchers led by Northwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin (UT) have developed the first cardiac implant made from graphene, a two-dimensional super material with ultra-strong, lightweight and conductive properties.

    Similar in appearance to a child’s temporary tattoo, the new graphene “tattoo” implant is thinner than a single strand of hair, yet still functions like a classical pacemaker. But unlike current pacemakers and implanted defibrillators, which require hard, rigid materials that are mechanically incompatible with the body, the new device softly merges with the heart to simultaneously sense and treat irregular heartbeats...

    Read More

    PSR J0901-4046 is the Most Magnetized Radio Pulsar known, study finds

    April 18, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    PSR J0901-4046 is the most magnetized radio pulsar known, study finds
    The background for both images shows the 1.28 GHz radio continuum emission from the nebula surrounding the high-mass X-ray binary system Vela X-1, and its newly-discovered radio bow shock (van den Eijnden et al. 2022). On the left and right we can see the MeerKAT images of the pulsar PSR J0901-4046 before and during a pulse, respectively. Credit: Ian Heywood.

    Astronomers have investigated an ultraslow radio pulsar known as PSR J0901-4046, finding that it has an extremely high magnetic field—at a level of 30 quadrillion Gauss. The discovery, published April 7 in Physical Review D, makes PSR J0901-4046 the most magnetized radio pulsar known to date.

    Extraterrestrial sources of radiation with a regular periodicity, known as pulsars, are usually detected in the form of short bursts of...

    Read More

    Two Brain Networks are Activated while Reading, study finds

    April 18, 2023, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    The neural activity of these patients was measured while reading three forms of sentences: regular sentences; “Jabberwocky” sentences (based on Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem), which use correct grammar and syntax but contain nonsense words, making them meaningless; and lists of words or nonsense words. Image is in the public domain

    When a person reads a sentence, two distinct networks in the brain are activated, working together to integrate the meanings of the individual words to obtain more complex, higher-order meaning, according to a study at UTHealth Houston.

    The study, led by Oscar Woolnough, Ph.D., postdoctoral research fellow in the Vivian L...

    Read More