Thursday 1 May 2014

Excitons observed in action for the first time

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Diagram of an exciton within a tetracene crystal, used in these experiments, shows the line across which data was collected. That data, plotted below as a function of both position (horizontal axis) and time (vertical axis) provides the most detailed information ever obtained on how excitons move through the material.Illustration courtesy of the researchers     A quasiparticle called an exciton — responsible for the transfer of energy within devices such as solar cells, LEDs, and semiconductor circuits — has been understood theoretically for decades. But exciton movement within materials has never been directly observed. Now scientists at MIT and the City College of New York have achieved that feat, imaging excitons’ motions directly. This could enable research leading to significant advances in electronics, they say, as well as a better understanding of natural energy-transfer processes, such as photosynthesis. The research is described this week in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper co-authored by MIT postdocs Gleb Akselrod and Parag Deotare, professors Vladimir Bulovic and Marc Baldo, and four others. “This is the first direct observation of exciton diffusion processes,” Bulovic says, “showing that crystal structure can dramatically affect the diffusion process.” “Excitons are at the heart of devices that

The post Excitons observed in action for the first time has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Hubble Astronomers Check the Prescription of a Cosmic Lens



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If you need to check whether the prescription for your eye glasses or contact lenses is still accurate, you visit an ophthalmologist for an eye exam. The doctor will ask you to read an eye chart, which tests your visual acuity. Your score helps the doctor determine whether to change your prescription.




via HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/21/

Quasar Poster

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An amazing photograph of a Quasar in outer space.

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Using bugs—aphids, specifically—to spy on plants’ electrical communications

Science Focus

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I’m catching some signals, fellow aphid. Are you?

Internal communications in plants share striking similarities with those in animals, new research reveals. With the help of tiny insects, scientists were able to tap into this communication system. Their results reveal the importance of these communications in enabling plants to protect themselves from attack by insect pests.

Like any organism, plants need to transport essential nutrients from one part to another. This is achieved by two parts of the plant: the xylem and the phloem. Xylem, which is largely made of dead cells, transports water and dissolved nutrients obtained by roots up to the aerial tissues of the plants. By contrast, the phloem is made up of living cells—active tubes that transport a syrupy sap, rich in sugars made by photosynthesis in the leaves.

In the 1980s, scientists discovered that phloem cells also function as a communication system through which electrical signals travel, similar to the electrical signals transmitted through the neurons in your nervous system.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/b3SupK0D8JU/
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Robotics goes micro-scale

Science Focus

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The shaping of micro-scale objects enables fine control over their mechanical interactions with light, providing a new avenue towards light driven micro-machines. This image shows a schematic of an optically trapped probe with specially shaped conical handles and a sharp tip for imaging surface features. Illustration by David Phillips.       The development of light-driven ‘micro-robots’ that can autonomously investigate and manipulate the nano-scale environment in a microscope comes a step closer, thanks to new research from the University of Bristol. Such devices could be used for high-resolution imaging, allowing the investigation of delicate biological samples such as cells in new ways. Dr David Phillips, Professor Mervyn Miles and Dr Stephen Simpson of Bristol’s School of Physics, and colleagues, aim to develop such micro-robots and control them using a technology known as ‘optical tweezers’.  In a paper published today in Nature Photonics, they investigate how optical tweezers can be used to manipulate nanofabricated structures to generate high-resolution images. Optical tweezers use light to move microscopic objects such as individual cells or particles 1,000 times smaller than the width of human hair. When light reflects from a surface, or bends as it travels into a transparent material, it exerts a force

The post Robotics goes micro-scale has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/N9ZTkUzKspc/
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Pre-pregnancy diet 'affects genes'

Science Focus

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A mother's diet can permanently alter the functioning of her child's genes, even before conception, say scientists. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27211153#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Researchers suggest dark matter disk in Milky Way plane could signal rash of comet strikes on Earth

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(Phys.org) —A pair of researchers at Harvard University has published a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, in which they suggest that a dark matter disk hiding in the Milky Way plane might be responsible for causing asteroids or comets to head our way. In their paper, Lisa Randall and Matthew Reece suggest that such a dark matter disk could pull other bodies from the Oort cloud, some of which could wind up heading toward Earth.



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Monogram Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672 Stickers

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series This NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672 unveils details in the galaxy's star-forming clouds and dark bands of interstellar dust.
One of the most striking features is the dust lanes that extend away from the nucleus and follow the inner edges of the galaxy's spiral arms. Clusters of hot young blue stars form along the spiral arms and ionize surrounding clouds of hydrogen gas that glow red. Delicate curtains of dust partially obscure and redden the light of the stars behind them by scattering blue light.
Galaxies lying behind NGC 1672 give the illusion they are embedded in the foreground galaxy, even though they are really much farther away. They also appear reddened as they shine through NGC 1672's dust. A few bright foreground stars inside our own Milky Way Galaxy appear in the image as bright and diamond-like objects.
As a prototypical barred spiral galaxy, NGC 1672 differs from normal spiral galaxies, in that the arms do not twist all the way into the center. Instead, they are attached to the two ends of a straight bar of stars enclosing the nucleus. Viewed nearly face on, NGC 1672 shows intense star formation regions especially off in the ends of its central bar.
Astronomers believe that barred spirals have a unique mechanism that channels gas from the disk inward towards the nucleus. This allows the bar portion of the galaxy to serve as an area of new star generation.
NGC 1672 is also classified as a Seyfert galaxy. Seyferts are a subset of galaxies with active nuclei. The energy output of these nuclei can sometimes outshine their host galaxies. This activity is powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes.
NGC 1672 is more than 60 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado. These observations of NGC 1672 were taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in August of 2005. The composite image was made by using filters that isolate light from the blue, green, and infrared portions of the spectrum, as well as emission from ionized hydrogen.
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Image credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

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Name, Witch Head Nebula deep space astronomy image Wrapping Paper

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A witch appears to be screaming out into space in this image from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The infrared portrait shows the Witch Head nebula, named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch. Astronomers say the billowy clouds of the nebula, where baby stars are brewing, are being lit up by massive stars. Dust in the cloud is being hit with starlight, causing it to glow with infrared light, which was picked up by WISE's detectors.
The Witch Head nebula is estimated to be hundreds of light-years away in the Orion constellation, just off the famous hunter's knee.
WISE was recently "awakened" to hunt for asteroids in a program called NEOWISE. The reactivation came after the spacecraft was put into hibernation in 2011, when it completed two full scans of the sky, as planned.
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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Brisbane Sunset Moonset

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In skies over Brisbane at the southeastern corner of Queensland, Australia, Planet Earth, the Sun and New Moon set together on April 29. There the celestial line-up, the first solar eclipse of 2014, was seen as a partial solar eclipse. This dramatic composite is a digital stack of images taken about 5 minutes apart with telephoto lens and solar filter. It follows the eclipse in progress, approaching a western horizon where crepuscular rays from cloud banks in silhouette joined the silhouetted Moon. From Brisbane, the maximum eclipse phase with the Moon covering about 25% of the Sun occurred just after sunset. Only from a remote spot on the continent of Antarctica was it even possible to see the eclipse in its brief annular phase, the entire dark lunar disk surrounded by a thin, bright ring of fire.

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War and Peace Nebula Wall Stickers

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tagged with: pismis 24, star cluster, stars, nebula, ngc 6357, emission nebula, cosmology, astronomy, starcluster, space, universe, astronomer, war and peace nebula, nebulae, nebulas

NGC 6357 is a diffuse nebula near NGC 6334 in the constellation Scorpius. The nebula contains many proto-stars shielded by dark disks of gas, and young stars wrapped in expanding "cocoons". This nebula was given the name War and Peace Nebula by the Midcourse Space Experiment scientists because of its appearance. They said that in infrared images the bright, western part resembles a dove, while the eastern part looks like a skull. This nebula includes the open cluster Pismis 24, which is home to several massive stars. One of the brightest stars in the cluster, Pismis 24-1, was thought possibly to be the most massive on record, approaching 300 solar masses, until it was discovered to be a binary system with each star exceeding 100 solar masses. Image by NASA, ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

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New physical phenomenon on nanowires seen for the first time

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False-colour scanning electron micrograph of a nanowire strain device. Very tiny wires made of semiconducting materials – more than one thousand times thinner than a human hair – promise to be an essential component for the semiconductor industry. Thanks to these tiny nanostructures, scientists envision not only a more powerful new generation of transistors, but also to integrate optical communication systems within the very same piece of silicon. This would make possible data transfer between chips at the speed of light. But for optical communication to happen, it is essential to convert the electrical information used in the microprocessor into light, by using light emitters. On the other end of the optical link, one needs to translate the information contained in the stream of light into electrical signals by using light detectors. Current technologies use different materials to realize these two distinct functions – silicon or germanium for light detection and materials combining elements from the III-V columns of the periodic table for light emission. However, this might be going to change soon thanks to a new discovery. In a paper appearing today in the journal Nature Communications, scientists at IBM Research – Zurich and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have

The post New physical phenomenon on nanowires seen for the first time has been published on Technology Org.

 
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High Frontier Colonization Poster-Map, April 2014

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tagged with: sierra madre, games, high frontier, colonization, science, fiction, astronomy, solar system, phil eklund, poster-map, alpha centauri

Use this Poster-Map as a game board to play any edition of High Frontier. It has many more sites to explore than the standard Colonization map, including new sites on Luna and Mercury, the inner systems of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune including the Neptune aerostat, the solar Oberth maneuver, Phobos space elevator, the asteroids Fortuna and Icarus plus the Sylvia family, Comet Holmes, the Norse moonlets, the Portia Group, the Kreutz sungrazer, a fourth space venture, and the newly discovered rings of Chariklo. Updated Apr 2014. "I printed the Colonization HF Poster-Map in Large (48.00" x 22.46"), Value Poster Paper (Matte). It is great as long as you have the space for it. Otherwise, I would get the 36” X 24" version. If you combine with another Poster-Map (Bios-Origins or Interstellar) then you could do even better on price since you only need to pay for shipping once. The quality on both maps are top notch so I can strongly recommend them." Russell Harley

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Monogram, Witch Head Nebula deep space image Sticker

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tagged with: monogram initials, star galaxies, outer space picture, deep space astronomy, wtchneb, witch head nebula, cursing witch, nasa space photograph, faces in space, witches curse, screaming witch

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A witch appears to be screaming out into space in this image from NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The infrared portrait shows the Witch Head nebula, named after its resemblance to the profile of a wicked witch. Astronomers say the billowy clouds of the nebula, where baby stars are brewing, are being lit up by massive stars. Dust in the cloud is being hit with starlight, causing it to glow with infrared light, which was picked up by WISE's detectors.
The Witch Head nebula is estimated to be hundreds of light-years away in the Orion constellation, just off the famous hunter's knee.
WISE was recently "awakened" to hunt for asteroids in a program called NEOWISE. The reactivation came after the spacecraft was put into hibernation in 2011, when it completed two full scans of the sky, as planned.
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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Name, The Rings of Gas Giant Saturn - solar system Gift Wrap Paper

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Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A stunning image of Saturn, taken when the planet's rings were at their maximum tilt of 27 degrees toward Earth. Saturn experiences seasonal tilts away from and toward the Sun, much the same way Earth does. This happens over the course of its 29.5-year orbit. This means that approximately every 30 years, Earth observers can catch their best glimpse of Saturn's South Pole and the southern side of the planet's rings. Between March and April 2003, researchers took full advantage to study the gas giant at maximum tilt. They used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to capture detailed images of Saturn's Southern Hemisphere and the southern face of its rings.
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Image credit: NASA (Hubble Telescope) and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)

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Lobster Nebula Room Decal

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tagged with: lobster nebula, star cluster, stars, nebula, ngc 6357, emission nebula, cosmology, astronomy, starcluster, space, universe, astronomer, war and peace nebula, nebulaes, nebulas, milky way, galaxy, galaxies

This image from ESO’s VISTA telescope captures a celestial landscape of vast, glowing clouds of gas and tendrils of dust surrounding hot young stars. This infrared view reveals the stellar nursery known as NGC 6357 in a new light. It was taken as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey, which is currently scanning the Milky Way in a bid to map our galaxy’s structure and explain how it formed. Source http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1309a/ Author: ESO/VVV Survey/D. Minniti.

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When did the universe emerge from its 'dark age'? Spectrum of gamma-ray burst's afterglow indicates beginning of re-ionization process

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Scientists have discovered an indicator of when re-ionization of the primordial Universe began. The team used the Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) mounted on the Subaru Telescope to thoroughly study the visible wavelength spectrum of the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst, which is a violent explosion of a massive star. Direct measurement of the absorption features in the spectrum of the afterglow toward GRB 130606A, located at a great distance, revealed the proportion of neutral hydrogen gas absorbing the light in its vicinity. This finding provides the best estimate of the amount of such neutral gas in the early universe. The team's research means that scientists can now narrow down the time when the universe was beginning to re-ionize after its dark age.

via Science Daily

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Astronomers observe corkscrew nature of light from a distant black hole

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For the first time an international team of astronomers has measured circular polarization in the bright flash of light from a dying star collapsing to a black hole, giving insight into an event that happened almost 11 billion years ago.

via Science Daily

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Length of exoplanet day measured for first time: Spin of Beta Pictoris b measured

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Observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have, for the first time, determined the rotation rate of an exoplanet. Beta Pictoris b has been found to have a day that lasts only eight hours. This is much quicker than any planet in the planetary system — its equator is moving at almost 100,000 kilometers per hour. This new result extends the relation between mass and rotation seen in the solar system to exoplanets.

via Science Daily

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Entire star cluster thrown out of its galaxy

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The galaxy known as M87 has a fastball that would be the envy of any baseball pitcher. It has thrown an entire star cluster toward us at more than two million miles per hour. The newly discovered cluster, which astronomers named HVGC-1, is now on a fast journey to nowhere. Its fate: to drift through the void between the galaxies for all time.

via Science Daily

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How do we clean up the junkyard orbiting Earth?

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The biggest-sized junkyard in the world orbits it, and an aerospace systems engineering graduate student says it’s time to get active about reducing the debris field before we reach a tipping point beyond which we may not be able to do much.

via Science Daily

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NGC 602 bright stars 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!


tagged with: nasa, space, astronomy, shuttle, hubble, bright, star, starry, blue, nebula

NGC 602 is a young, bright open cluster of stars located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. Radiation and shock waves from the stars have pushed away much of the lighter surrounding gas and dust that compose the nebula known as N90, and this in turn has triggered new star formation in the ridges (or "elephant trunks") of the nebula.

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