Friday 11 April 2014

Catalysts caught in the act undergo radical rearrangements during reactions

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Left: Oxidized vanadium V5+ supported on a single titanium oxide crystal (top) catalyzes the dehydration reaction of cyclohexane (C6H12) to become reduced vanadium V4+ (bottom). The addition of oxygen returns vanadium to its oxidized form. Right: An atomic-scale model of reduced vanadium4+ based on data from XSW experiments. Chemists who develop catalysts are always trying to improve catalytic efficiency or create novel reaction pathways, but they’re doing so largely in the dark. The atomic-scale structure and chemical properties of catalysts remain surprisingly mysterious, despite the critical roles that catalysts play in a variety of industrial and environmental applications. Heterogeneous catalysts—which differ in phase from their substrates—are used, for example, to convert toxic nitric oxide from automotive emissions to less harmful gases. Hoping to shed some light on how catalysts behave, and connect these behaviors to catalysts’ activity and selectivity, researchers working at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source teased out structural and chemical information about a single layer of vanadium oxide, a catalyst, supported on the surface of a titanium oxide crystal. The data revealed that vanadium oxide undergoes a dramatic and reversible change in both chemical states and structure during a redox reaction cycle, providing unprecedented

The post Catalysts caught in the act undergo radical rearrangements during reactions has been published on Technology Org.


#materials
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Slumber no longer, arise and welcome this, your day

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Slumber no longer, arise and welcome this, your day
So much inquisitive hope lies in this little lander, let's all wish it luck :)
 #outerspace #forwidersharing  

Universe Today originally shared:

ESA Awakens Rosetta's Comet Lander

Little Philae is awake! ESA sent a wake-up call to the 100-kg (220-lb) lander riding aboard the Rosetta spacecraft this morning at 06:00 GMT, bringing it out of its nearly 33-month-long slumber and beginning its preparation for its upcoming (and historic) landing on a comet in November.

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/110822/esa-awakens-rosettas-comet-lander/

Image credit: ESA

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Sombrero Galaxy - M104 - poster/print

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


tagged with: sombrero, galaxy, space, astronomy, hubble, telescope, sombrero galaxy, hubble space telescope, skies, nasa, horseshoes3

This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is part of the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The above image shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across and lies 28 million light years away. M104 can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo. This image is in the public domain

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AUDIO: Man stung by bees in pain experiment

Science Focus

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A PhD student has allowed bees to sting him 190 times - to find out which part of the body it hurts the most.
#science 
original post...
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CERN technology that could help out in space

Mars near Opposition

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Tonight Mars is between opposition (April 8) and closest approach (April 14) looping through the constellation Virgo opposite the Sun in the night sky. That makes it prime season for telescopic views of the the Red Planet, like this one from April 3rd. The clear, sharp image was captured with a high-speed digital camera and 16-inch diameter telescope from Assis, Brazil, Planet Earth. Mars' north polar cap is at the top left. Also visible are whitish orographic clouds - water vapor clouds condensing in the cold atmosphere above the peaks of Mars' towering volcanos. The exact dates of closest approach and opposition are slightly different because of the planet's elliptical orbit. Still, get your telescope out on the night of closest approach (April 14/15) and you can view both Mars and a total eclipse of the Moon. Mars will be about 1/100th the angular size of the Moon.

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Carina Nebula Detail Wall Skin

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


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"A towering "mountain" of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust is the site of new star formation in the Carina Nebula. The great gas pillar is being eroded by the ultraviolet radiation from the hottest newborn stars in the nebula."

(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2007-16)

Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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Hubbles First Servicing Cover For iPad

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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Professor charges toward better electric vehicle battery life

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Paul Mayne, Western News Western Engineering professor Andy Sun, Canada Research Chair in Development of Nanomaterials for Clean Energy, is working toward increasing the performance of electric cars, by using lithium iron phosphate batteries.   While you may see a Chevrolet Volt here, or a Nissan Leaf there, the future of the electric car has a way to go when it comes to safety, cost and, especially, performance. However, Engineering professor Andy Sun may have an answer to that final challenge. Recently published in Nature Communications, Sun’s research showed, for the first time, carbon coating on electric car batteries not only affects conductivity and performance, but also alters the chemistry of the battery material’s interactive surface. Unlocking this secret may lead to better batteries – and longer distances traveled on the road – for these vehicles. Currently, the average electric car gets 90 kilometres per charge. Paul Mayne, Western News   “So, it’s best only in the city,” Sun said. “For the highway, 90 kilometres is not enough. That’s why we want to develop a battery with much higher capacity. You can make bigger batteries to run longer, but they’re too big for the car. “Like a computer, you want to

The post Professor charges toward better electric vehicle battery life has been published on Technology Org.


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It's all a matter of scale

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It's all a matter of scale
...if we were the size of galaxies, it wouldn't even be a firecracker.

  #outerspace  

Universe Today originally shared:

Starquake! How Super-Suns Swing, And What It Could Look Like

Much like how an earthquake can teach us about the interior of the Earth, a starquake shows off certain properties about the inside of a star. Studying the closest star we have (the sun) has yielded information about rotation, radius, mass and other properties of stars that are similar to our own. But how do we apply that information to other types of stars?

Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/110895/starquake-how-super-suns-swing-and-what-it-could-look-like/#ixzz2xeO4kLIC

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Star birth in Carina Nebula from Hubble's WFC3 det Posters

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


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ImageID: 42-23286264 / STScI / NASA/Corbis / Star birth in Carina Nebula from Hubble's WFC3 detector

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Crab Pulsar Time Lapse - Neutron Star Stickers

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


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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Multiple observations made over several months with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope captured the spectacle of matter and antimatter propelled to near the speed of light by the Crab pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star the size of Manhattan.

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image code: crbplsr

Image credit: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope

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Helix Nebula Room Graphics

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


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"The Helix is a planetary nebula, the glowing gaseous envelope expelled by a dying, sun-like star. The Helix resembles a simple doughnut as seen from Earth. But looks can be deceiving. New evidence suggests that the Helix consists of two gaseous disks nearly perpendicular to each other."

(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2004-32)

Credit: NASA, ESA, C.R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University), M. Meixner and P. McCullough (STScI)

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spiral galaxy iPad mini case

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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a spiral galaxy, photograph by the hubble space telescope, nasa.

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