Herschel results stream in

Herschel results stream in

The first science results from the ultra-cold telescope Herschel are being announced this week at a meeting organised by the European Space Agency.

Herschel, which was launched a year ago along with Planck, is looking in the infrared, places where cool objects, like young stars and molecular clouds, can be found. These processes will give astronomers a better inkling about how stars and galaxies were first formed billions of years ago.

Volcanic ash update

Volcanic ash update

Here’s a magnified image of what’s been causing international travel chaos for days. It’s an image of silica particles from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, currently spewing out a huge ash cloud, which might now be abating. The picture was taken by Ian Russell, a public science promoter, using his home microscope. Russell scraped the ash from his car, which was parked on his drive in Derbyshire, UK.

Artificial pancreas offers diabetes hope

Artificial pancreas offers diabetes hope

An artificial pancreas that can help control the havoc-wreaking diabetes causing hormones has been developed and successfully tested.

The system was developed at Boston University (BU), and consists of a blood glucose monitor and insulin pump hooked up to a laptop that runs a programme to control the levels of the important hormones insulin and glucagon. Administering insulin to a type 1 diabetes patient always carries a risk of hypoglycaemia with it. But by running an algorithm that monitors blood sugar levels and is capable of administering both blood-sugar raising and lowering hormones – glucagon and insulin respectively – this system seems to remove that risk.

Volcanic ash havoc

Volcanic ash havoc

An erupting volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, in Iceland is causing havoc to air travel in Europe. The volcano, which began erupting last month, has just shifted its point of exit slightly and is spewing out huge quantities of ash high into the atmosphere. The ash is headed straight for the north of the UK, and northern Europe, as can be seen in the picture, and this has forced a number of airports to close.

BCA backs off Singh

BCA backs off Singh

The British Chiropractic Association has today ended its libel claim against science writer Simon Singh. The news from Singh’s lawyers comes two weeks after a ruling that went in Singh’s favour, overturning a previous ruling by a different judge that Singh’s piece, in the Guardian, criticising chiropractic, was not comment and therefore Singh could be sued by the BCA.

Water on Mars yet again

Water on Mars yet again

Further evidence for water flowing on Mars today has turned up in a paper published recently in Geophysical Research Letters.

Dennis Reiss and his colleagues at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster used images from the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, run by NASA and University of Arizona scientists, and currently onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Deepest deep sea vents found

The deepest underwater hydrothermal vents ever known have been discovered by a robot exploring waters off the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean.

The black smokers, as these vents are known, are 5 kilometres down in the Cayman Trough, half a mile deeper than previously other deep vents, and were discovered by scientists working on the Royal Research Ship James Cook, led by Jon Copley, a marine biologist from the University of Southampton’s School of Ocean and Earth Science.