Tuesday 8 April 2014

Mixing silicon with other materials improves the diversity of nanoscale electronic devices

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Cross-sectional view of stable nanowires made from carbon–silicon (left), germanium–silicon (center) and tin–silicon (right), as predicted by calculations. The silicon atoms (yellow) are found at the edge of the nanowire when alloyed with tin (gray) and germanium (green). In contrast, in carbon–silicon nanowires (where carbon is indicated in black), they have an ordered arrangement. Credit: A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing The semiconductor silicon lies at the heart of the current revolution in electronics and computing. In particular, it can produce compact integrated circuits when processed by modern techniques capable of fabricating structures just a few nanometers in size. Now, Man-Fai Ng and Teck Leong Tan at the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing in Singapore have shown that mixing silicon with similar materials can open the door to the fabrication of nanoscale devices with a diverse array of properties that have a wider range of applications. Ng and Tan used state-of-the-art computer simulations to assess the structural stability and electronic properties of silicon-based nanowires. As their name suggests, nanowires are just a few nanometers wide but can be up to a millimeter long. They exhibit unusual electronic properties because their small width confines the motion of electrons across the

The post Mixing silicon with other materials improves the diversity of nanoscale electronic devices has been published on Technology Org.


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Distant galactic creature emerges from egg

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Distant galactic creature emerges from egg
..or so it seems to me with my 'poetic' goggles on ;)

  #chandra   #forwidersharing  

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory originally shared:

Chandra Flashback of the Day – N63A: Celestial Illumination: The X-Ray Glow From An Exploded Star 
http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2003/n63a/

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Scalable CVD process for making 2-D molybdenum diselenide

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Nanoengineering researchers have unveiled a potentially scalable method for making one-atom-thick layers of molybdenum diselenide -- a material that is similar to graphene but has better properties for making certain electronic devices like switchable transistors and light-emitting diodes.

via Science Daily

Orbital physics is child's play with 'Super Planet Crash'

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Super Planet Crash is a pretty simple game: players build their own planetary system, putting planets into orbit around a star and racking up points until they add a planet that destabilizes the whole system. Beneath the surface, however, this addictive little game is driven by highly sophisticated software code that astronomers use to find planets beyond our solar system (called exoplanets).



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Saturn Solar Eclipse Posters

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: space, astronomy, saturn, stars, planets, earth, cassini, sun, exploration, rings, moons

You may think that this is a fake image, but it is actually a real photo taken from the Cassini space craft of Saturn eclipsing the Sun. The rings glow brightly as the light filters through them and the reflect that light all the way around to the back of the planet creating a surreal effect. A special surprise in the photo is that, just to the left of the rings, that bright blue dot is Earth, where you're sitting right now. This is truly a fascinating and beautiful image. Courtesy of NASA and JPL.

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The intriguingly mysterious ocean on Saturn's icy moon

Science Focus

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Finding liquid water on a celestial body within the solar system is exciting. The only thing that is probably more exciting is finding an ocean full of it. This week, such news comes via Cassini, which has made measurements that show that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface.

While orbiting Saturn in 2005, Cassini found jets of salty water spewing from the south polar region of Enceladus. According to Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome, lead author of the new study published in Science, "The discovery of the jets was unexpected."

Geysers require liquid...

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Crossrail digs up Black Death victims

Science Focus

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Skeletons unearthed by London's Crossrail are victims of the Black Death and may be part of a mass grave, forensic tests reveal.
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Meet the sand-pooping, reef-saving, hermaphroditic parrotfish

Science Focus

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You'll probably hear the parrotfish before you see them. The animals chomp through solid rock and coral with fused beaks. When you're snorkeling on one of Hawaii's reefs, the noise is unmistakable. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

To watch the grazers at work, it would be easy to mistake parrotfish for the bad guys. Their chompers scar the reef with deep gouges and reduce what was once hard stone into nothing more than a cloud of sand, squirted unceremoniously out the fish's backsides.

Yes, that is what happens.

Parrotfish eat the algae that grows on rocks and coral. Special plates in the throat called...

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Saturn's hexagon: An amazing phenomenon

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An unusual structure with a hexagonal shape surrounding Saturn's north pole was spotted on the planet for the first time thirty years ago. Nothing similar with such a regular geometry had ever been seen on any planet in the solar system. Astronomers have now been able to study and measure the phenomenon and, among other achievements, establish its rotation period. What is more, this period could be the same as that of the planet itself. Saturn is the only planet in the solar system whose rotation time remains unknown.

via Science Daily

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A Starburst Galaxy - Messier 82 (Cigar Galaxy) Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, galaxies and stars, hubble, messier 82, cigar galaxy, active galaxies, starburst galaxy, nasa esa, sbglxymet

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series This mosaic image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (aka Cigar Galaxy) is a really sharp wide-angle view of M82. It is a galaxy remarkable for its webs of shredded clouds and flame-like plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out from its central regions where young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside in our Milky Way Galaxy.

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image code: sbglxymet

Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI) and P. Puxley (NSF).

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M42: Inside the Orion Nebula

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Fantastic Hubble Images 1 Cover For The iPad Mini

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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Keep a little bit of the universe with you and take home this Galaxy. Image from NASA Hubble and is PD.

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Catheter innovation destroys dangerous biofilms

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An artistic configuration of catheters in various stages of being clogged by biofilm. Credit: Duke University For the millions of people forced to rely on a plastic tube to eliminate their urine, developing an infection is nearly a 100 percent guarantee after just four weeks. But with the help of a little bubble-blowing, biomedical engineers hope to bring relief to urethras everywhere. About half of the time, the interior of long-term urinary catheters become plagued by biofilms—structures formed by colonies of bacteria that are extremely difficult to kill. Once established, it is only a matter of time before the biofilm becomes a welcoming host for other, more dangerous bacteria or begins to choke urine drainage, causing leakage—or even trauma to the patient’s body. Duke University engineers have developed a new urinary catheter design that can eliminate nearly all of the hard-to-kill biofilm from the catheter’s walls. Instead of focusing on expensive antibacterial coatings, the researchers use physical deformation to knock the infectious film from its moorings. “A biofilm is like a city that protects and harbors harmful bacteria,” said Vrad Levering, a PhD student in biomedical engineering. “Our solution is like an earthquake that demolishes the infrastructure, leaving the rubble to be easily washed

The post Catheter innovation destroys dangerous biofilms has been published on Technology Org.


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Every galaxy should have one

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Every galaxy should have one
...and we've got our very own magnetar. A magnetar is a type of neutron star that has a relatively slow spin rate and that occasionally flares with large outpourings of X-rays.

  #chandra  

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory originally shared:

Learn about magnetars and find out what is exceptional about the one in our very own galaxy: http://www.chandra.si.edu/photo/2013/sgr0418/

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CERN's Ben Segal joins Internet Hall of Fame




At a ceremony today in Hong Kong, the Internet Society inducted CERN computer scientist Ben Segal into the Internet Hall of Fame.


Launched by the Internet Society in 2012, the Internet Hall of Fame in its virtual museum celebrates individuals for their significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet.


Segal was awarded the honour Global Connector, recognizing individuals from around the world who have made significant contributions to the global growth and use of the Internet.


Segal joined CERN's Data Handling Division in 1971 and worked in the field of computer communications. One early project was "STELLA" – an experiment that linked CERN by high-speed satellite connection with five other European research laboratories. He also worked on networking heterogeneous computer systems at CERN, including the gatewaying of workstations and UNIX systems to each other and to the CERN mainframes (IBM, CDC, Vax and Cray).


From 1985 to 1988, as CERN's first official "TCP/IP Co-ordinator", Segal was responsible for coordinating the introduction of the Internet protocols within CERN. He also taught TCP/IP, Unix and distributed computing from 1986 to 2002 in many countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America.


Segal joins three other CERN members of the Internet Hall of Fame including World Wide Web innovators Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, and Internet innovator François Fluckiger.


The award ceremony for the 24 inductees is scheduled for 8 April at 6pm Hong Kong time.





via CERN: Updates for the general public

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/04/cerns-ben-segal-joins-internet-hall-fame

I see no god up here poster

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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I see no god up here

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Sculpted Region of the Orion Nebula Stickers

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, galaxies and stars, orion nebula detail, sculpted gas clouds, sgcion, stellar winds, sculpting trapezium stars, messier 42, messier 43

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A region within the Orion Nebula showing the sculpting effect that stars can have on any surrounding gas clouds. This glowing region reveals arcs and bubbles formed when stellar winds - streams of charged particles ejected by the nearby Trapezium stars - collide with material.

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image code: sgcion

Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

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Perseus Nebula Wall Graphic

Here's a great wall decal featuring a beautiful image from deep space


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"Baby stars are forming near the eastern rim of the cosmic cloud Perseus, in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

"The baby stars are approximately three million years old and are shown as reddish-pink dots to the right of the image. The pinkish color indicates that these infant stars are still shrouded by the cosmic dust and gas that collapsed to form them. These stars are part of the IC348 star cluster, which consists of over 300 known member stars.

"The Perseus Nebula can be seen as the large green cloud at the center of the image."

Read more at the JPL/Spitzer website.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Cieza

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Pink Blue Stars Cross White iPad Air Cases

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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Simple cross shape colored with a NASA Hubble space image of the colorful blue and pink galaxy cluster Abell 2744. You can change the background color.

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