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NOAA: Sunspot is harbinger of new solar cycle, increasing risk for electrical systems

01-07-2008 · EurekAlert!

A new 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity, bringing with it increased risks for power grids, critical military, civilian and airline communications, GPS signals and even cell phones and ATM transactions, showed signs it was on its way late Thursday when the cycle's first sunspot appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere, NOAA scientists said.

Keywords: noaa, sunspot, harbinger, solar, cycle, increasing, risk, electrical, systems, system

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M-POSSUM, an effective risk assessment system prior to operation
10-09-2007 · EurekAlert!
With progress in the medical sciences, operative indications are being expanded, the range of possible operations is growing and operative complications are increasing accordingly. The assessment of the functional condition of organs and systems helps in the quantifying of operative risks. Assessment methods allow us to judge the state of an illness and carry out the appropriate preventive treatment immediately, thereby decreasing operative complications and mortality. M-POSSUM is such a tool.
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28 new planets, 7 new brown dwarfs reported by California, Carnegie team
05-28-2007 · EurekAlert!
The combined California and Carnegie Planet Search team and Anglo-Australian Planet Search team announced at this week's American Astronomical Society meeting the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, a 12 percent increase in the number of known exoplanets. The bounty of new planets, not to mention seven new brown dwarfs, allows the astronomers to draw conclusions about how planets form and how planet systems evolve.
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Advance in understanding of blood pressure gene could lead to new treatments
02-04-2007 · EurekAlert!
Research by scientists at UCL (University College London) has clearly demonstrated for the first time the structure and function of a gene crucial to the regulation of blood pressure. The discovery could be important in the search for new treatments for illnesses such as heart disease, the UK's biggest killer. In a paper published online today in Nature Medicine, the team, led by Professor Patrick Vallance and Dr James Leiper, UCL Department of Medicine, reveal the role of the human gene dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), showing that loss of DDAH activity disrupts nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is critical in the regulation of blood pressure, nervous system functions and the immune system. The role of DDAH is to break down modified amino acids (Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and monomethyl arginine (L-NMMA)) that are produced by the body and have been shown to inhibit NO synthase. These molecules accumulate in various disease states including diabetes, renal failure and pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and their concentration in plasma (the fluid component of blood) is strongly predicative of cardiovascular disease and death. In a healthy human body, the majority of ADMA is eliminated through active metabolism by DDAH. Scientists have hypothesised that if DDAH function is impaired, NO production is reduced, and that this could be an important feature of increased cardiovascular risk. To examine this pathway in more detail, the researchers deleted the DDAH gene in mice. These mice went on to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure. They also designed specific inhibitors (small molecules) which bind to the active site of human DDAH. These small molecule inhibitors also induced hypertension in mice, confirming the importance of DDAH in the regulation of blood pressure. Dr Leiper, UCL Medicine, said: “These genetic and chemical approaches to disrupt DDAH showed remarkably consistent results, and provide compelling evidence that loss of DDAH function increases the concentration of ADMA and thereby disrupts vascular NO signalling. “There has been considerable scientific interest in this pathway and the role of ADMA as a novel risk factor, but so far there's been little evidence to support the idea that it's a cause of disease, rather than just a marker. Genes and their pathways are crucial to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and a better understanding of DDAH-1 could lead to important new treatments. “It could help us to establish if genetic variation predisposes certain people to these diseases, or whether environmental factors exert some of their effects through modulation of DDAH activity. “Our research also shows that this pathway could be harnessed therapeutically to limit production of NO in certain situations where too much nitric oxide is a bad thing; for example, hypotension and septic shock. These are some of the biggest problems in intensive care medicine and there is a huge unmet need for drug treatments.” The study, which was carried out at UCL's Rayne Institute, was funded by grants from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The unexpected finding in the 1980s that a simple gas, nitric oxide (NO), is made by cells in the blood vessel wall and is a powerful control of blood vessel relaxation led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1998 to its discoverers. "More recently, there has been increasing evidence that impairment of NO production is likely to be an important factor in the development of heart and circulatory disease, but the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. "This study suggests for the first time that the loss of the activity of the enzyme DDAH-1 leads to reduced NO production and may cause heart and circulatory disease. These findings are likely to be important in the search for new ways to optimise the health of our blood vessels." ### Notes for Editors 1. For more information, please contact Ruth Metcalfe in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: +44 (0)7990 675 947, out of hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: r.metcalfe@ucl.ac.uk2. 'Disruption of methylarginine metabolism impairs vascular homeostasis' is published in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Advance online publication is embargoed to 18.00 GMT (13.00 US Eastern) Sunday 4 February 2007. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting the UCL Media Relations Office.3. The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. About UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2006 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone), and members of the band Coldplay.
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Chance encounter with comet nets surprising results
10-01-2007 · EurekAlert!
Comets are made of the most primitive stuff in the solar system. As hunks of rock and ice that never coalesced into more planets, they give researchers clues to the evolution of solar systems.
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Sandia, Stirling Energy Systems set new world record for solar-to-grid conversion efficiency
02-13-2008 · EurekAlert!
Sandia National Laboratories and Stirling Energy Systems have set a new solar-to-grid system conversion efficiency record by achieving a 31.25 percent net efficiency rate. The old 1984 record of 29.4 percent was toppled Jan. 31 on SES's "Serial #3" solar dish Stirling system at Sandia's National Solar Thermal Test Facility.
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Astonomers discover Jupiter-Saturn-like planet in distant solar system
02-14-2008 · EurekAlert!
The simultaneously discovery of two exoplanets smaller than Jupiter and Saturn by an international team of astronomers that includes University of Notre Dame research associate professor of astrophysics David Bennett gives astrophysicists an important clue that solar systems like ours might be quite common.
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Powerful new tool to track carbon dioxide by source
03-21-2007 · EurekAlert!
Scientists from NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory released today a powerful new tool to monitor changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by region and source around the world. Called CarbonTracker, the online system will distinguish between changes in the natural carbon cycle and those occurring in fossil fuel emissions. Corporations, cities, states and nations can use CarbonTracker to assess their efforts to reduce, trade or store fossil fuel emissions.
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Philips patents TU Eindhoven's energy return system
01-24-2008 · EurekAlert!
An increasing number of private individuals supply their excess energy, from external energy sources (windmills and solar cells), to the electricity grid and only take energy from the grid when necessary. Dutch-sponsored researcher Haimin Tao examined how this externally generated energy can be better stored and transferred. Philips has acquired a patent for a part of the system.
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Health effects of pesticide mixtures: Unexpected insights from the salmon brain
02-16-2008 · EurekAlert!
In his research, NOAA scientist Nat Scholz examines how pesticides that run off the land and mix in rivers and streams combine to have a greater than expected toxic effect on the salmon nervous system. These pesticides are widely used in the United States and their occurrence as mixtures in the food supply for humans may also pose an unexpected risk for people.
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Astronomers discover scaled-down Jupiter and Saturn in a faraway solar system like our own
02-14-2008 · EurekAlert!
An international team of astronomers has discovered two planets that resemble smaller versions of Jupiter and Saturn in a solar system nearly 5,000 light years away. The find suggests that our galaxy hosts many planetary systems like our own, said Scott Gaudi, assistant professor of astronomy at Ohio State University.
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