http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (Phys.org)—On Nov. 13, 2012, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 9:04 p.m. EST. http://phys.org/news272042158.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:16:48 EST news272042158 (Phys.org)—Technologists generally agree that power amplifiers have proven to be inefficient pieces of hardware. Turning electricity into radio signals, they eat into the battery life of smartphones and they waste power. One may find that a cellular phone cannot stream live video without running down the battery in minutes. Now a team of engineers have come up with an alternative amplifier technology that can extend smartphone battery life. Eta Devices, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts with an office in Stockholm, and cofounded by two MIT electrical engineering professors, Joel Dawson and David Perreault, offers a new amplifier design. The result is described in Technology Review as a "blazingly fast electronic gearbox." The engineers call their approach "asymmetric multilevel outphasing (AMO)." It is able to "intelligently" select, among voltages that can be sent across the transistor, the one that minimizes power consumption. http://phys.org/news271011337.html Technology Thu, 01 Nov 2012 17:56:00 EST news271011337 (Phys.org)—Cornell researchers have created an autonomous flying robot that is as smart as a bird when it comes to maneuvering around obstacles. http://phys.org/news270970865.html Electronics Thu, 01 Nov 2012 06:41:12 EST news270970865 The sun emitted a significant solar flare on Oct. 22, 2012, peaking at 11:17 p.m. EDT. The flare came from an active region on the left side of the sun that has been numbered AR 1598, which has already been the source of a number of weaker flares. This flare was classified as an X1.8-class flare. http://phys.org/news270214404.html Space & Earth Tue, 23 Oct 2012 12:50:16 EST news270214404 The sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 2:14 p.m. EDT on Oct. 20, 2012. This flare is classified as an M9 flare. M-class flares are the weakest flares that can still cause some space weather effects near Earth. Since flares are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, an M9 is a particularly strong M class flare, but still ten times weaker than the most powerful flares, which are labeled X-class. http://phys.org/news270111485.html Space & Earth Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:58:16 EST news270111485 EU-funded scientists experimentally and theoretically validated technology for the future convergence of wireless and wireline communications into a common infrastructure. http://phys.org/news269598112.html Technology Tue, 16 Oct 2012 09:23:18 EST news269598112 (Phys.org)—A team, led by researchers at the Universities of St Andrews and Washington, used novel radio-transmitters to study the social networks of New Caledonian crows, a species renowned for using sophisticated foraging tools. http://phys.org/news266659155.html Biology Wed, 12 Sep 2012 09:20:03 EST news266659155 (Phys.org)—Gravitational waves, much like the recently discovered Higgs boson, are notoriously difficult to observe. Scientists first detected these ripples in the fabric of space-time indirectly, using radio signals from a pulsar-neutron star binary system. The find, which required exquisitely accurate timing of the radio signals, garnered its discoverers a Nobel Prize. Now a team of astronomers has detected the same effect at optical wavelengths, in light from a pair of eclipsing white dwarf stars. http://phys.org/news265373549.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:00:01 EST news265373549 (Phys.org) -- The sun emitted a mid-level flare, peaking at 4:55 PM EDT on July 28, 2012. http://phys.org/news262945037.html Space & Earth Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:17:34 EST news262945037 Over a dozen radio signals that have hindered data collection on ESA's SMOS water mission have been switched off. The effort also benefits satellites such as NASA's Aquarius mission, which measures ocean salinity at the same frequency. http://phys.org/news260529598.html Space & Earth Tue, 03 Jul 2012 10:20:06 EST news260529598 (Phys.org) -- Astronomers have found evidence of hundreds of black holes in a galaxy 250 million light years away. The discovery, made with a worldwide network of radio telescopes, gives scientists a new way to find out how black holes are created. http://phys.org/news260447259.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Jul 2012 11:27:55 EST news260447259 An international research team, led by Associate Professor Tohru Nagao from Kyoto University, and including researchers from Japan and Europe, has observed a "submillimeter galaxy" located about 12.4 billion light-years away using ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), and has successfully detected an emission line from nitrogen contained in that galaxy. http://phys.org/news259597959.html Space & Earth Fri, 22 Jun 2012 15:33:00 EST news259597959 (Phys.org) -- Astronomers in Australia have reported on their findings in their paper posted on the preprint server arXiv, regarding their use of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to study radio signals emitted from a single star system some 20 light years away. In their paper, soon to be published in the Astronomical Journal, the researchers say that the absence of signals from the studied star system was not unexpected as the odds of finding signals from intelligent beings when aiming at any given star system are not good when noting that there are billions to choose from. Despite this, they report feeling optimistic as the project proved that such technology could be used to rule out other star systems in the future. http://phys.org/news258096424.html Space & Earth Tue, 05 Jun 2012 06:27:26 EST news258096424 (Phys.org) -- A NASA mission to study the moon from crust to core has completed its prime mission earlier than expected. The team of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission, with twin probes named Ebb and Flow, is now preparing for extended science operations starting Aug. 30 and continuing through Dec. 3, 2012. http://phys.org/news257535839.html Space & Earth Tue, 29 May 2012 18:44:12 EST news257535839 Australia has hailed a surprise decision giving it a role in a radio telescope project aimed at revolutionising astronomy, vowing to draw on its decades of experience in space science. http://phys.org/news257238748.html Space & Earth Sat, 26 May 2012 08:12:38 EST news257238748 The northern lights interfere with radio communications, GPS navigation and satellite communications. Researchers are now going to launch 20 satellites containing world class instruments from the University of Oslo to find out why. http://phys.org/news256235567.html Space & Earth Mon, 14 May 2012 17:34:02 EST news256235567 Graphene and carbon nanotubes could improve the electronics used in computers and mobile phones, reveals new research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. http://phys.org/news256223973.html Nanotechnology Mon, 14 May 2012 14:19:42 EST news256223973 Penn State University astronomers using the world's largest radio telescope, at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have discovered flaring radio emission from an ultra-cool star, not much warmer than the planet Jupiter, shattering the previous record for the lowest stellar temperature at which radio waves were detected. http://phys.org/news254996319.html Space & Earth Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:19:05 EST news254996319 Radio signals reach pilots on board an aircraft through the "radar dome", the rounded nose of the aircraft. But if errors occur during the production of this "nose", - tiny foreign particles, drops of water or air bubbles - this can impede radio traffic. In the future, a non-destructive testing system will identify just such imperfections during production. Researchers will be presenting the new testing system at the Control trade fair, May 8-11 in Stuttgart. http://phys.org/news254653151.html Technology Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:59:34 EST news254653151 Plans to build the world's most powerful radio telescope are looking at whether the site can be split between rival bidders South Africa and Australia, organisers said on Thursday. http://phys.org/news254052617.html Space & Earth Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:40:01 EST news254052617 (Phys.org) -- Autonomous, self-replicating robots -- exobots -- are the way to explore the universe, find and identify extraterrestrial life and perhaps clean up space debris in the process, according to a Penn State engineer, who notes that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence -- SETI -- is in its 50th year. http://phys.org/news253988373.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:19:47 EST news253988373 (Phys.org) -- Astronomers using the world's largest radio telescope, at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have discovered flaring radio emission from an ultra-cool star, not much warmer than the planet Jupiter, shattering the previous record for the lowest stellar temperature at which radio waves were detected. http://phys.org/news253982909.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:59:01 EST news253982909 CSIRO's Murchison Radioastronomy Observatory (MRO), located in remote Western Australia, is the site proposed by Australia and New Zealand to host the high-density core of the multi-billion dollar Square Kilometre Array (SKA), and is already producing world-class research that will be described at an international conference in the UK this week. http://phys.org/news253878102.html Space & Earth Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:42:01 EST news253878102 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft orbiting the moon officially have begun their science collection phase. During the next 84 days, scientists will obtain a high-resolution map of the lunar gravitational field to learn about the moon's internal structure and composition in unprecedented detail. The data also will provide a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed and evolved. http://phys.org/news250343231.html Space & Earth Wed, 07 Mar 2012 11:47:19 EST news250343231 The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), charged by the United Nations with coordinating global radio spectrum use, recently came to an agreement that will foster improvements in ocean radar technology, which may eventually allow near real-time detection and tracking of tsunamis and prediction of the likely paths of oil spills, ocean debris and persons lost at sea. http://phys.org/news249123608.html Space & Earth Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:00:16 EST news249123608 (PhysOrg.com) -- The driving bass rhythm of rap music can be harnessed to power a new type of miniature medical sensor designed to be implanted in the body. http://phys.org/news246812650.html Technology Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:04:25 EST news246812650 Engineers with NASA's Cassini mission are conducting diagnostic testing on a part of the spacecraft's radio system after its signal was not detected on Earth during a tracking pass in late December. The spacecraft has been communicating with Earth using a backup part. http://phys.org/news245661436.html Space & Earth Fri, 13 Jan 2012 07:30:02 EST news245661436 As the Kepler space telescope begins finding its first Earth-sized exoplanets, with the ultimate goal of finding ones that are actually Earth-like, it would seem natural that the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) program would take a look at them as well, in the continuing search for alien radio signals. That is exactly what SETI scientists are doing, and they’ve started releasing some of their preliminary results. http://phys.org/news245322207.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:30:01 EST news245322207 US researchers have demonstrated the potential use of a new way to measure properties of Earth's magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble that surrounds the planet. http://phys.org/news244893497.html Space & Earth Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:58:33 EST news244893497 (PhysOrg.com) -- The second of NASA's two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the moon as never before. http://phys.org/news244703916.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:18:48 EST news244703916