410 search results

Supporting sustainable and responsible space exploration
Science, Maths & Technology

Supporting sustainable and responsible space exploration

...carbon fibre, adhesives, lubricants, greases and more – each with its own function and its own history of cleanliness. A huge amount of industry’s investment in planetary protection goes towards identifying the ways contamination of spacecraft happens and how it can be contained. For example, a common approach is to isolate critical areas of the spacecraft where...
Introduction to Planetary Protection
Science, Maths & Technology

Introduction to Planetary Protection

...carbon-based, but it is a complex system. So, AI could satisfy some of the criteria for life, especially as it becomes more sophisticated. You may have different levels of understanding of each of the examples and so have quite different notes to those here, but this will have made you realise that defining life is very complex and may even change as we come to understand...
How are scientists testing for the growth of antibiotic resistance?
Health, Sports & Psychology

How are scientists testing for the growth of antibiotic resistance?

...carbon and nitrogen; in this case inactivation (resistance) is really just digestion. Perhaps bacteriocins, if not antibiotics, exist not to help bacteria but rather to ensure their own survival. In an experiment published in 2013, Inglis and colleagues showed that bacteriocins can act primarily as selfish genetic elements promoting their own transmission in the...
The Silver Bridge Disaster: Stresses and strains
Science, Maths & Technology

The Silver Bridge Disaster: Stresses and strains

...carbon, heat-treated steel which, presumably, he thought meant that you could build a less substantial structure. Undoubtedly he expected lower ‘live’ loading than in Pittsburgh. But each bridge was a much longer span and so the loads at the tops of the chains in the towers would have been greater than in the bridges in Pittsburgh. The towers themselves were less...
EU Referendum - Economy
Society, Politics & Law

EU Referendum - Economy

...carbon emissions restrictions and safer banking regulations in a way that the UK on its own might not. The union also prevents the effectiveness of member states’ policies being blocked by the actions or inactions of other European countries, through coordination in the many areas where decisions by one country (or the big businesses based in it) have cross-border...
Life in the Palaeozoic
Nature & Environment

Life in the Palaeozoic

...carbonate about 0.2 mm across, found in late Precambrian strata about 550 Ma old. The unknown organisms that produced them were living at the same time as the Ediacaran fauna. SAQ 1 What, in general, was different about the size of fossils with hard shelly parts in the earliest Cambrian, compared with late Precambrian life such as the Ediacaran organisms? Answer The...
Level 1: Introductory 12 hrs
Practising science: Reading the rocks and ecology
Science, Maths & Technology

Practising science: Reading the rocks and ecology

...carbonate (CaCO3). Whereas most minerals are identified on the basis of physical characteristics (density, hardness, colour, etc.) calcite can also be readily identified with a chemical test. Calcite reacts with dilute hydrochloric acid, liberating bubbles of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas in a vigorous fizzing froth. The chemical reaction is written as In words, this equation...
A year in review 2022
Education & Development

A year in review 2022

...due to pay and patient safety concerns, and U.S. scientists made a major nuclear fusion breakthrough after 70 years of trying, revitalising hopes for unlimited zero-carbon energy in the future. New to OpenLearn: The Byzantine icon – a free course as interesting as the title sounds! And Putting the child before the player, an interactive about football for children....