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CWN Editor's Note: Pope Francis has issued a canonical order for all agencies of the Holy See to deposit their liquid assets in the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Vatican bank. In a rescript published in L’Osservatore Romano on August 23, the Pope said that the apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium should be understood to mean that the IOR has the sole authority to manage “the movable assets of the Holy See and of the institutions linked to the Holy See.” The papal order makes it clear that Vatican offices are not to maintain separate bank accounts in non-Vatican institutions....

A revolutionary cryogenic tank design promises to radically boost the range of hydrogen-powered aircraft – to the point where clean, fuel-cell airliners could fly up to four times farther than comparable planes running on today's dirty jet fuel. Weight is the enemy of all things aerospace – indeed, hydrogen's superior energy storage per weight is what makes it such an attractive alternative to lithium batteries in the aviation world. We've written before about HyPoint's turbo air-cooled fuel cell technology, but its key differentiator in the aviation market is its enormous power density compared with traditional fuel cells. For its high...

Explanation: Why would the surface of Titan light up with a blinding flash? The reason: a sunglint from liquid seas. Saturn's moon Titan has numerous smooth lakes of methane that, when the angle is right, reflect sunlight as if they were mirrors. Pictured here in false-color, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 imaged the cloud-covered Titan in 2014 in different bands of cloud-piercing infrared light. This specular reflection was so bright it saturated one of Cassini's infrared cameras. Although the sunglint was annoying -- it was also useful. The reflecting regions confirm that northern Titan...

The typical rocket launch dumps the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as one airliner does in the course of a trans-Atlantic crossing If you’re worried about your ‘carbon footprint’ - a concept foisted on the world in 2004 by British Petroleum to persuade people that their own behaviour, and not giant oil companies like BP, is causing the climate problem -- then you definitely should not sign up for a sub-orbital space flight. Besides, you probably can’t afford it ($250,000 pp). Millions of people can afford it, however, and since the Branson/Bezos ‘space race’ last month tickets for...

Inventors of centuries past and scientists of today have found ingenious ways to make our lives better with magnets – from the magnetic needle on a compass to magnetic data storage devices and even MRI body scan machines. All of these technologies rely on magnets made from solid materials. But what if you could make a magnetic device out of liquids? Using a modified 3D printer, a team of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have done just that. Their findings, to be published July 19 in the journal Science, could lead to a...

A wine bar and bistro is being fined over 100,000 pounds for causing a woman severe injuries. According to the BBC, Gaby Scanlon was celebrating her 18th birthday at Oscar’s Wine Bar & Bistro in 2012. During the celebration, a bartender gave Scanlon a Nitro-Jagermeister, which contains liquid nitrogen. “I turned to the man and asked if it was okay to drink. He said, ‘Yes,” Scanlon testified in court. “Smoke was coming from my nose and mouth. Straight away, I knew something was not right. My stomach expanded.” She was immediately rushed to the hospital, where doctors say she was...

Researchers in Poland have developed a liquid that’s super-light and flexible... until you shoot a bullet at it that is. Upon impact, their specially designed 'shear-thickening fluid', or STF, turns into a solid that's reportedly not just more comfortable than Kevlar - the most widely used material in bulletproof armour - but also offers even better protection against bullets and other projectiles. Created by the Moratex Institute of Security Technologies, the liquid is what's known as a non-Newtonian fluid. Unlike regular Newtonian fluids like water, which only change their structure according to temperature or pressure fluctuations, non-Newtonian fluids change their...

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An oasis of liquid methane has unexpectedly been discovered amid the tropical dunes of Saturn's moon Titan, researchers say. This lake in the otherwise dry tropics of Titan hints that subterranean channels of liquid methane might feed it from below, scientists added. Titan has clouds, rain and lakes, like Earth, but these are composed of methane rather than water. However, methane lakes were seen only at Titan's poles until now — its tropics around the equator were apparently home to dune fields instead.

Ahmed Ressam was resentenced this morning to 22 years in federal prison for conspiring to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport despite telling a judge that he recanted everything he has told the federal government about terrorist activities. Federal prosecutors had urged U.S. District Judge John Coughenour to send Ressam to prison for life — a sentence Ressam said he would accept now that he had cleared his conscience about his cooperation, which ended in 2003. Prosecutors pointed out that Ressam's defiance has cost two high-profile terrorism prosecutions so far, and that Ressam has actively tried to help the cases...

APRIL 25, 2010 2:02 AM SNIPPET: "MONTREAL — A British Airways flight bound for London was reportedly held up for almost two hours on the tarmac at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport Saturday night as officials questioned a passenger who exhibited suspicious behaviour just before the plane was scheduled to take off." SNIPPET: "Fellow passengers reportedly told the cabin crew that the man had been behaving oddly and was in possession of a small quantity of clear liquid. "It was more than what you would normally be allowed to have, and passengers said he was doing something suspicious with it,"...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products. The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the...

G.'s young son was recently ill with H1N1, but no pharmacy in the city where he lives had liquid Tamiflu in stock. (Even the federal government released its stockpile not long ago.) He writes that nearly every pharmacy he called turned him down. Then he learned that the liquid can be made from Tamiflu capsules by pharmacists, or even by parents at home. Why didn't the pharmacy staff, or his doctor, tell him this? He writes: When his H1N1-induced fever spiked at 104, I brought my 16-month-old son to the pediatrician, who promptly prescribed Tamiflu.When I arrived at CVS, I...

SCHENECTADY — This plot may rival the real murder mystery. On Sunday, several plastic bottles of an azure colored liquid with the inscriptions, "Winter of Frozen Dreams" were discovered outside the Times Union and at Proctors where a movie by the same title is scheduled to debut next month. Then Monday, county hazardous material crews took samples from five, 2-liter bottles left in a plastic bin in the driveway of the Daily Gazette by an older woman clad in a kerchief, police said.

Without a good way to store electricity on a large scale, solar power is useless at night. One promising storage option is a new kind of battery made with all-liquid active materials. Prototypes suggest that these liquid batteries will cost less than a third as much as today's best batteries and could last significantly longer. The battery is unlike any other. The electrodes are molten metals, and the electrolyte that conducts current between them is a molten salt. This results in an unusually resilient device that can quickly absorb large amounts of electricity. The electrodes can operate at electrical currents...

Liquid droplets seem to form and move on the leg of the Phoenix Mars lander, as seen in images taken on days 8, 31, and 44 (seen above from left to right) of the craft's mission. Scientists think the water could stay liquid even in the frigid Martian arctic because of its high concentration of perchlorates, salts that acts like antifreeze. Images courtesy Image NASA/JPL-Caltech//University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute

The military believed that plans by the Abu Sayyaf to conduct bombings in the country were averted with the discovery of the biggest camp of the group in Jolo, Sulu, ABS-CBN News reported Friday. An exclusive report of late night newscast Bandila said that as early as July, the military had already planned to raid the camp of the Abu Sayyaf in the jungles of Jolo after receiving information from residents living nearby. The camp was being used as training ground for Abu Sayyaf members and was once the hiding place of leaders Abu Sulayman, Khadaffy Janjalani and Radulan...

Q&A: Liquid explosives An alleged plot to blow up planes from the UK mid-flight and cause "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said. It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft. BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the plan "revolved around liquids of some kind". One theory is that the attack may have involved liquid explosive being carried on to a plane in either drink bottles or cans. Dr Clifford Jones, an explosives expert from the University of Aberdeen, says even...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

amed Fluidlens, this lens is made of liquid and is no bigger than a contact lens, but can achieve an optical zoom of up to 10 times, matching the zoom capabilities of lenses found on mid-range and high-end digital cameras and superior than most cellphone cameras which use digital zoom that relies on software rather than the lens to zoom in on an object. This liquid lens system achieves optical zooming through altering its focal length by changing its shape which mimics the action of the human eye. “Currently there is no practical alternative to compensate for the fixed focus...