Press Releases - September 2006
Archive
28 September 2006 - ESO
Watching How Planets Form
With the VISIR instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have mapped the disc around a star more massive than the Sun. The very extended and flared disc most likely contains enough gas and dust to spawn planets. It appears as a precursor of debris discs such as the one around Vega-like stars and thus provides the rare opportunity to witness the conditions prevailing prior to or during planet formation.
27 September 2006 - EMBL
How nature tinkers with the cellular clock
The life of a cell is all about
growing and dividing at the right time. A control
system with several layers adjusts when key components of the
cell cycle machinery are produced, activated and degraded to
make sure that the schedule is kept. These layers of control work
differently and are usually studied separately, but researchers at
the EMBL and the
Technical University of Denmark [DTU] have now discovered
that they change in a highly coordinated fashion during evolution.
25 September 2006 - ESA
Colloquium on space, defence and European security (Kourou, French Guiana)
On 19-22 September 2006, the WEU Assembly and the European Interparliamentary Space Conference joined forces to hold a colloquy on Space, Defence and European Security in Kourou (French Guiana) in association with the European Space Agency (ESA), France's national centre for space studies, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and Arianespace. The event brought together over a hundred Members of Parliament from European nations along with Members of the European Parliament and senior executives from ESA, CNES, Arianespace and the space industry in Europe.
25 September 2006 - CERN
World's largest scientific Grid sustains a million jobs per month
A milestone for scientific Grid computing was announced today at the launch of EGEE'06, a major conference on scientific Grids hosted by CERN and held in Geneva this week. The Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) project maintains a global Grid infrastructure that has been able to sustain more than 30000 jobs a day – over a million per month – for a period of six months this year.
20 September 2006 - ESO
To Be or Not to Be: Is It All About Spinning?
Thanks to the unique possibilities offered by ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), astronomers have solved a 140-year-old mystery concerning active hot stars. They indeed show that the star Alpha Arae is spinning almost on the verge of breaking and that its disc rotates the same way planets do around the Sun.
18 September 2006 - ESA
Space, defence and European security discussed at Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana
The WEU Assembly and the European Interparliamentary Space Conference (EISC) are jointly holding a conference on space, defence and European security in Kourou, French Guiana from 19-22 September 2006, at the invitation of the European Space Agency (ESA), the French space agency (CNES) and Arianespace. Numerous members of the national parliaments of European countries, as well as representatives of the European Parliament and the EU Military Staff and Satellite Centre, will be attending, alongside leading figures from Europe's space industry.
15 September 2006 - ESRF
Researchers watch seeds in 3D and discover an unknown air path
Researchers from the CNRS, the University J. Fourier (UJF) of Grenoble and the ESRF have recently visualised a plant seed in 3D using synchrotron light. This new view has revealed that there is a network of voids between the cells which may be used for oxygen storage that is needed for efficient germination. It is the first time that a living organism is studied using the holotomography technique at a third generation synchrotron source. The team behind the discovery publishes its results this week in PNAS.
15 September 2006 - ESA
ESA astronauts, including Thomas Reiter live from space, meet the press at the European Astronaut Centre
For Europe, the spotlight is currently on the International Space Station. With construction of the ISS once more under way, a press conference has been organised at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany for 22 September to highlight present and forthcoming European human spaceflight missions to the Station.
15 September 2006 - CERN
CERN Grid leadership recognized by business world
This week at GridWorld, a major conference for enterprise Grids held in Washington, D.C., CERN was honoured with two awards for "Most Innovative Grid Implementation in Public Sector Research" and "Overall Top Research Grid". The awards were presented by the publishers of GRIDtoday, a leading source of news on Grid technology for the business world. These awards signal the growing interest of the business community in the Grid technology that CERN and its partners have been developing.
13 September 2006 - CERN
Mammoth CMS magnet reaches full-field at CERN
The world's largest superconducting solenoid magnet has reached full field. Weighing in at over 10,000 tonnes, the CMS experiment's magnet is built around a
6-metre diameter, 13-metre long superconducting solenoid coil. It generates a field of 4 teslas, some 100,000 times higher than that of the Earth, and stores 2.5 gigajoules of energy, sufficient to melt 18 tonnes of gold.
13 September 2006 - ESA
ESA at the IAC in Valencia, Spain
Every year, the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) is organised by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) and its associates, the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and the International Institute of Space Law (IISL).
This time round, the International Astronautical Congress, the 57th, is taking place in Valencia, on 2-6 October.
12 September 2006 - ESO
A "Genetic Study" of the Galaxy
Looking in detail at the composition of stars with ESO's VLT, astronomers are providing a fresh look at the history of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. They reveal that the central part of our Galaxy formed not only very quickly but also independently of the rest.
7 September 2006 - EMBL
New EMBL/CRG Research Unit for Systems Biology launched today
Today the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL], the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science (MEC) officially launch their new joint EMBL/CRG Research Unit in Systems Biology on the campus of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park. The Spanish Ministry for Education and Science will fund the new unit with 12.7 million Euros over the next nine years.
3 September 2006 - ESA
Impact landing ends SMART-1 mission to the Moon
Early this morning, a small flash illuminated the surface of the Moon as the European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft impacted onto the lunar soil, in the 'Lake of Excellence' region. The planned impact concluded a successful mission that, in addition to testing innovative space technology, had been conducting a thorough scientific exploration of the Moon for about a year and a half.
3 September 2006 - EMBL
Lost in the labyrinth
Blood cells have limited lifespans, which means that they must be continually replaced by calling up reserves and turning these into the blood cell types needed by the body. Claus Nerlov and his colleagues at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) unit in Monterotondo, Italy, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Lund in Sweden, have now uncovered how an intracellular communication pathway contributes to this process.