Saturday 19 April 2014

A passive method for sorting and fixing microbeads of different sizes

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Microscopy image of a microtrap array showing the capture of large 16-micrometer-diameter beads in surface traps. Smaller 8-micrometer-diameter beads accumulate in the underlying dispersion gap. Credit: A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics Biological assays are an integral part of the researcher’s toolkit in the fields of biomolecular chemistry and genomics. Microfluidic microbead systems, which consist of arrays of beads coated with an assay-specific reagent, have revolutionized biological assay technology by allowing the high-throughput detection of target molecules from small sample volumes. Fabrication of the microbead systems, however, requires great care and various ancillary devices. Chee Chung Wong and colleagues from the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics have now developed a passive and robust method for manufacturing sorted arrays of multiple microbead types. The preparation of microbead systems conventionally involves the use of a pump to introduce a bead-carrying fluid into a microfluidic circuit. The beads then adsorb to the walls of the microchannels with little control over position or sorting. The resultant microbead-coated channels can be used for targeted molecule detection, but the beads can be easily dislodged by flow. Read more at: Phys.org

The post A passive method for sorting and fixing microbeads of different sizes has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Immune cells to be tested on the International Space Station

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The human body is fine-tuned to Earth's gravity. Scientists are now conducting an experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) to study whether this also applies to human cells. We know the effect of gravity on muscles, bones and joints inside out; it has been studied extensively in medicine for centuries. For a long time, however, exactly how gravity affects the cells remained a mystery.

via Science Daily

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Sir Isaac Newton Science Rocks Posters

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


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Science Rocks Isaac Newton Posters

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*Spasers? Spasers!

Science Focus

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*Spasers? Spasers!
Surface Plasmon Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation no less. I prefer "spaser" :)
This looks like it will run and run. Great news that they've found they can make spasers with graphene
 #science
 
original post: https://plus.google.com/116000959328274308893/posts/U22TQJQfRXB
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75-year-old human cloned for the production of stem cells

Science Focus

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Several years ago, as the therapeutic potential of stem cells was first being recognized, the only way to create them was to harvest cells from an early embryo. That embryo could come from the large collection of those that weren't used during in vitro fertilization work. But to get one that was genetically matched to the person who needed the therapy, researchers had to create an embryo that's a genetic duplicate of that individual—meaning they had to clone them.

With the development of induced stem cells, work on this approach largely fell by the wayside—induced cells were easier to create and came without the ethical baggage. But there are some lingering doubts that the induced cells are truly as flexible as the ones derived from an embryo, leading a number of labs to continue exploring cloning for therapeutic purposes. Now, a collaboration of US and Korean researchers have succeeded in creating early embryos from two adult humans and converted the embryos to embryonic stem cells.

The method used is called somatic cell nuclear transplant. It involves taking an unfertilized egg and removing its nucleus, thereby deleting the DNA of the egg donor. At the same time, a nucleus from the cell of a donor is carefully removed and injected into the egg. After some time, during which the environment of the egg resets the developmental status of the donor's DNA, cell division is activated. If the process is successful, the end result is a small cluster of cells that starts along the path of forming an embryo.

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original post: http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/uUXFSYxSNXE/
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NIST Launches a New U.S. Time Standard: NIST-F2 Atomic Clock

Science Focus

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The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has officially launched a new atomic clock, called NIST-F2, to serve as a new U.S. civilian time and frequency standard, along with the current NIST-F1 standard. NIST-F2 would neither gain nor lose one second in about 300 million years, making it about three times as accurate as NIST-F1, which has served as the standard since 1999. Both clocks use a “fountain” of cesium atoms to determine the exact length of a second. NIST scientists recently reported the first official performance data for NIST-F2,* which has been under development for a decade, to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), located near Paris, France. That agency collates data from atomic clocks around the world to produce Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the international standard of time. According to BIPM data, NIST-F2 is now the world’s most accurate time standard.** NIST-F2 is the latest in a series of cesium-based atomic clocks developed by NIST since the 1950s. In its role as the U.S. measurement authority, NIST strives to advance atomic timekeeping, which is part of the basic infrastructure of modern society. Many everyday technologies, such as cellular telephones, Global Positioning

The post NIST Launches a New U.S. Time Standard: NIST-F2 Atomic Clock has been published on Technology Org.

 
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original post: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/fceQnC73S_k/
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Name, Intriguing Outer Space Phenomena Pictures Gift Wrapping Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!


tagged with: hubble, outer space, deep space, star galaxies, spiral galaxy, nebula, interstellar dust, sky watching, intriguing astronomy pictures, cosmic star dust

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Giftwrap with person's name. This gift wrap uses four amazing images from deep in outer space - perfect wrapping paper for any out of this world gift!
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Earth-size Kepler-186f

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Planet Kepler-186f is the first known Earth-size planet to lie within the habitable zone of a star beyond the Sun. Discovered using data from the prolific planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, the distant world orbits its parent star, a cool, dim, M dwarf star about half the size and mass of the Sun, some 500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. M dwarfs are common, making up about 70 percent of the stars in our Milky Way galaxy. To be within the habitable zone, where surface temperatures allowing liquid water are possible, Kepler-186f orbits close, within 53 million kilometers (about the Mercury-Sun distance) of the M dwarf star, once every 130 days. Four other planets are known in the distant system. All four are only a little larger than Earth and in much closer orbits, also illustrated in the tantalizing artist's vision. While the size and orbit of Kepler-186f are known, its mass and composition are not, and can't be determined by Kepler's transit technique. Still, models suggest that it could be rocky and have an atmosphere, making it potentially the most Earth-like exoplanet discovered so far ...

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Carina Nebula Room Graphics

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


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The Carina Nebula is a large bright nebula that surrounds several open clusters of stars.

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Cone Nebula 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 lovely detail of an image of the Cone Nebula thanks to NASA/Hubble.

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SpaceX-3 launches science cargo to International Space Station

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A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft full of NASA cargo, experiments and equipment blazed into orbit Friday, April 18, aboard the company's Falcon 9 rocket. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station will unload the supplies after the Dragon arrives at the orbiting research laboratory.

via Science Daily

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Impact glass from asteroids and comets stores biodata for millions of years

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Bits of plant life encapsulated in molten glass by asteroid and comet impacts millions of years ago give geologists information about climate and life forms on the ancient Earth. Scientists exploring large fields of impact glass in Argentina suggest that what happened on Earth might well have happened on Mars millions of years ago. Martian impact glass could hold traces of organic compounds.

via Science Daily

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Synthetic gene circuits pump up cell signals

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Synthetic genetic circuitry created by researchers at Rice University is helping them see, for the first time, how to regulate cell mechanisms that degrade the misfolded proteins implicated in Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and other diseases. The Rice lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Laura Segatori has designed a sophisticated circuit that signals increases in the degradation of proteins by the cell’s ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS). The research appears online in Nature Communications. The Deg-On system, an engineered regulator, controls the expression of a fluorescent reporter. Activation of the ubiquitin proteasome system (UPS) enhances degradation of the regulator and leads to an increase in fluorescent output. Tetracycline, an inducer, can be used to fine-tune the system and optimize detection of different levels of UPS activation. Courtesy of the Segatori Group     The UPS is essential to a variety of fundamental cellular processes, including the cell cycle, DNA repair, immune response, cell death and the degradation of misfolded and damaged proteins. It has several components: ubiquitin molecules that tag misfolded proteins for degradation and proteasomes that latch onto the tagged proteins and break them down into harmless peptides. When there are too few proteasomes in a cell, or they don’t function properly, misfolded proteins that remain floating in

The post Synthetic gene circuits pump up cell signals has been published on Technology Org.

 
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The Veil Nebula Selection Posters

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


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The Veil Nebula Selection Print. This is a small portion of the Veil Nebula — the shattered remains of a supernova that exploded thousands of years ago. The entire structure spans about 3 degrees on the sky, corresponding to about 6 full moons. The image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in November 1994 and August 1997. Courtesy: NASA.

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Deep space image: Emission Nebula in Puppis Gift Wrapping Paper

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A colourful star-forming region is featured in this stunning image of NGC 2467 located in the southern constellation of Puppis (The Stern). Looking like a roiling cauldron of some exotic cosmic brew, huge clouds of gas and dust are sprinkled with bright blue, hot young stars. Strangely shaped dust clouds, resembling spilled liquids, are silhouetted against a colourful background of glowing gas. Like the familiar Orion Nebula, NGC 2467 is a huge cloud of gas, mostly hydrogen, that serves as an incubator for new stars. Some of these youthful stars have emerged from the dense clouds where they were born and now shine brightly, hot and blue in this picture, but many others remain hidden.
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image code: enebicp

Image credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

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Spaced Heart 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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Hubble telescope nebula heart for geek girls

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