Press Releases - December 2006
Archive
29 December 2006 - EMBL
Roadworks on the motorways of the cell
A cell is a busy place. In a permanent rush hour, molecules are transported along a dynamic motorway system made up of filaments called microtubules. Microtubules constantly grow and shrink and are rapidly assembled wherever a cargo needs to go, but during this transportation process they need to be kept stable. Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL] have discovered for the first time that a protein stabilises microtubules by binding to their weakest part, the so-called lattice seam. The study, which appears in this week's issue of the journal Cell, also suggests that the protein creates a special surface along the seam that offers an alternative track for transportation.
23 December 2006 - ESA
ESA's pair of astronauts back on earth
pace Shuttle Discovery landed in Cape Canaveral, Florida tonight at 23:32 CET (22:32/GMT), completing one of the most complex assembly missions to the International Space Station to date, and bringing back ESA's two astronauts, Christer Fuglesang and Thomas Reiter.
22 December 2006 - ESO
Czech Republic to Become Member of ESO
Today, an agreement was signed in Prague between ESO and the Czech Republic, aiming to make the latter become a full member of ESO as of 1 January 2007.
19 December 2006 - ESA
ESA polls stakeholders to inform its long-term exploration strategy
On 8 and 9 January, in the historic town of Edinburgh, ESA and BNSC are to hold a workshop to kick off the first in a series of consultations with key stakeholders. The aim is to define European long-term strategy for space exploration and set the scene for the decisions to be taken at the ESA Council meeting at ministerial level scheduled for 2008.
19 December 2006 - ESA
Europe looks forward to COROT launch
On 27 December, COROT is to be launched into space on a unique astronomy mission: its twin goals are to detect exoplanets orbiting around other stars and to probe the mysteries of stellar interiors as never before. COROT is a French national space agency (CNES)-led mission to which the European Space Agency and European partners are adding a particularly strong international flavour.
15 December 2006 - CERN
CERN Confident of LHC start-up in 2007
Delegates attending the 140th meeting of CERN Council today heard a confident report from the Laboratory about the scheduled start-up of the world's highest energy particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collier (LHC), in 2007.
15 December 2006 - ESRF
ESRF helps reveal the origin of the Solar System
Particles returned to Earth last January by the Stardust spacecraft from comet Wild 2 are yielding precious information about the origin of the solar system, thanks to the brilliant X-rays produced at several of the world's synchrotron facilities, including the ESRF. Although the particles are tiny, the X-ray beams available at synchrotrons can be even smaller, enabling researchers to illuminate the cometary material and in some cases determine the distribution of elements within the particles without damaging them. These results describe the overall composition and chemistry of the samples returned by Stardust, and are published as part of a special series of papers in the 15 December 2006 edition of the journal Science.
14 December 2006 - EIROforum
Magna Carta for Researchers
Today, Janez
Potočnik, European Commissioner for Science and
Research received a statement of support for the
European Charter for Researchers and the Code of
Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers from
EIROforum.
Statement of Support for the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers (pdf)
14 December 2006 - ESA
New Director of Resources Management named at ESA
Meeting on 12 December at the Agency's headquarters in Paris, the ESA Council appointed Mr Ludwig Kronthaler, of German nationality, to the post of Director of Resources Management for a four-year term.
13 December 2006 - ESA
Mars Express scientists find a different Mars underneath the surface
With results that the Principal Investigator of the Mars Express MARSIS radar, Giovanni Picardi, of the University of Rome 'La Sapienza', describes as unprecedented, Mars is showing scientists that it has an older, craggier face buried beneath its surface. The results were obtained by MARSIS, the pioneering sounding radar onboard ESA's Mars Express orbiter, and provide important new clues about the still-mysterious geological history of Mars.
11 December 2006 - ESO
The Rise of a Giant
European astronomy has received a tremendous boost with the decision from ESO's governing body to proceed with detailed studies for the European Extremely Large Telescope. This study, with a budget of 57 million euro, will make it possible to start, in three years time, the construction of an optical/infrared telescope with a diameter around 40m that will revolutionise ground-based astronomy. The chosen design is based on a revolutionary concept specially developed for a telescope of this size.
11 December 2006 - EMBL
Better, faster, easier - EMBL-EBI launches its new website with powerful search engine
Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) launches its new, faster and easier website with an exhaustive search engine at its centre.
10 December 2006 - ESA
ESA's Swedish Astronaut Christer Fuglesang Reaches Orbit
Christer Fuglesang was launched last night onboard NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery on a mission to proceed with the assembly of the International Space Station (ISS) and to bring back to Earth another ESA astronaut, Thomas Reiter, who has been working in the orbital outpost for five months.
8 December 2006 - ESRF
Growing Catalysts
Porous materials are involved in many chemical reactions that affect our daily lives. Despite their wide use, there is little knowledge about them. Scientists from the Netherlands, United Kingdom and the ESRF have just shed new light on how these materials organise themselves when they are created. Their experiments at the ESRF combined three different techniques in real time, with the aim of viewing a full picture of the process. This new information could help improve their synthesis in the future.
6 December 2006 - ESO
Do Galaxies Follow Darwinian Evolution?
Using VIMOS on ESO's Very Large Telescope, a team of French and Italian astronomers have shown the strong influence the environment exerts on the way galaxies form and evolve. The scientists have for the first time charted remote parts of the Universe, showing that the distribution of galaxies has considerably evolved with time, depending on the galaxies' immediate surroundings. This surprising discovery poses new challenges for theories of the formation and evolution of galaxies.
5 December 2006 - ESA
Explore planet Earth in near-real time
Have you ever wanted to track natural events such as fires, floods and volcanic eruptions as they are happening, or simply explore planet Earth through the eyes of a satellite? ESA has created a website, MIRAVI, which gives you access to the most recently acquired images from Envisat, the world's largest Earth observation satellite.
4 December 2006 - EMBL
Europe and India join forces to make more biological models available for research
The BioModels Database, hosted by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute [EMBL-EBI] in Cambridge, UK, has entered a formal data-exchange agreement with the Database of Quantitative Chemical Signalling [DOQCS] of the National Centre for Biological Sciences [NCBS] in Bangalore, India.