2008 NOV 17 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "In this study new results are presented regarding the relationships between the coronal magnetic field and the intensities and Doppler shifts of ultraviolet emission lines. This combination of magnetic field and spectroscopic data is used here to study material flows in association with the coronal field," scientists in Germany report.

  "We introduce the term ''coronal circulation'' to describe this flow, and to indicate that the plasma is not static but flows everywhere in the extended solar atmosphere. The blueshifts and redshifts often seen in transition region and coronal ultraviolet emission lines are interpreted as corresponding to upflows and downflows of the plasma on open (funnels) and closed (loops) coronal magnetic field lines, which tightly confine and strongly lead the flows in the low-beta plasma. Evidence for these processes exists in the ubiquitous redshifts mostly seen at both legs of loops on all scales, and the sporadic blueshifts occurring in strong funnels," wrote E. Marsch and colleagues ...read more

  2008 NOV 17 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "It has been recently argued that low-luminosity gamma-ray bursts (LL-GRBs) are likely a unique GRB population. Here, we present systematic analysis of the light-curve characteristics from X-ray to gamma-ray energy bands for the two prototypical LL-GRBs, 980425 and 060218," scientists in Kunming, People's Republic of China report.

  "It is found that both the pulse width (w) and the ratio of the rising width to the decaying width (r/d) of theses two bursts are energy-dependent over a broad energy band. There exists a significant trend that the pulses tend to be narrower and more symmetrical at higher energy bands for the two events. Both the X-rays and the gamma-rays follow the same w-E and r/d-E relations. These facts may indicate that the X-ray emission tracks the gamma-ray emission, and both are likely to originate from the same physical mechanism. Their light curves show significant spectral lags. We calculate the three types of lags with the pulse peaking time (t(peak)), the pulse centroid time (t(cen)), and the cross-correlation function (CCF). The derived t(peak) and t(cen) are power-law functions of energy. The lag calculated by CCF is strongly correlated with that derived from tpeak. However, the lag derived from tcen correlates less with that derived from tpeak and CCF. The energy dependence of the lags is shallower at higher energy bands," wrote F.W. Zhang and colleagues ...read more

  2008 NOV 3 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "Nitrogen isotopes appear to be escaping from Mars at approximately the Primordial ratio N-14/N-15 approximate to 275 and to have an atmospheric nitrogen depletion time scale of about 800 Myr. For the standard model of a Progressive decline of an initial inventory of atmospheric nitrogen, having no source of N, the agreement of the isotopic ratio of escaping N with primitive nitrogen would be coincidental," researchers in the United States report ...read more