Press Releases - August 2007
Archive
26 August 2007 - EMBL
Minimum Information Standards - all for one and one for all
Three papers published by EMBL scientists and their collaborators will make it much easier to share and compare information from large-scale proteomics data. The papers are published in Nature Biotechnology on 8th and 26th August.
23 August 2007 - ESO
Edge-On!
As Uranus coasts through a brief window of time when its rings are edge-on to Earth - a view of the planet we get only once every 42 years - astronomers peering at the rings with ESO's Very Large Telescope and other space or ground-based telescopes are getting an unprecedented view of the fine dust in the system, free from the glare of the bright rocky rings. They may even find a new moon or two.
22 August 2007 - ESO
HAWK-I Takes Off
Europe's flagship ground-based astronomical facility, the ESO VLT, has been equipped with a new 'eye' to study the Universe. Working in the near-infrared, the new instrument - dubbed HAWK-I - covers about 1/10th the area of the Full Moon in a single exposure. It is uniquely suited to the discovery and study of faint objects, such as distant galaxies or small stars and planets.
9 August 2007 - EMBL
A unique arrangement for egg cell division
Which genes are passed on from mother to child is decided very early on during the maturation of the egg cell in the ovary. In a cell division process that is unique to egg cells, half of the chromosomes are eliminated from the egg before it is fertilised. Using a powerful microscope, researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] have now revealed how the molecular machinery functions that is responsible for chromosome reduction of egg cells in mice.
5 August 2007 - ESO
First Light for Word's Largest 'Thermometer Camera'
The world's largest bolometer camera for submillimetre astronomy is now in service at the 12-m APEX telescope, located on the 5100m high Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes. LABOCA was specifically designed for the study of extremely cold astronomical objects and, with its large field of view and very high sensitivity, will open new vistas in our knowledge of how stars form and how the first galaxies emerged from the Big Bang.
3 August 2007 - ESO
Star Caught Smoking
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, astronomers from France and Brazil have detected a huge cloud of dust around a star. This observation is further evidence for the theory that such stellar puffs are the cause of the repeated extreme dimming of the star.
2 August 2007 - ESO
The Planet, the Galaxy and the Laser
On the night of 21 July, ESO astronomer Yuri Beletsky took images of the night sky above Paranal, the 2600m high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert home to ESO's Very Large Telescope. The amazing images bear witness to the unique quality of the sky, revealing not only the Milky Way in all its splendour but also the planet Jupiter and the laser beam used at Yepun, one of the 8.2-m telescopes that make up this extraordinary facility.