Saturday 17 May 2014

Novel compound could make finding diseases quicker and easier

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A new compound created by Wake Forest chemists could help scientists probe the secrets behind deadly forms of cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease. Bruce King, a professor of chemistry and associate provost of research, and Thomas Poole, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry, engineered the molecular tool to pinpoint exactly where cell damage is occurring as a result of the body burning too much oxygen. It could one day help to determine if a person is at risk of developing a life-threatening disease. The results of their work appear in the current edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. “In the future we might be able to take a blood sample and inject our molecule into it to determine if certain proteins are undergoing a reaction associated with a particular disease,” King said. That could help us determine if you are going to develop cancer or if you are going to get sick.” Too much oxygen is a bad thing Oxidation is the process of burning in the body. In the right amounts, the body’s immune system uses oxidation to cause inflammation and fight off disease. Too much, however, can damage cells and DNA. This in turn can make

The post Novel compound could make finding diseases quicker and easier has been published on Technology Org.

 
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VIDEO: Opening the doors on animal testing

Science Focus

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UK animal researchers have signed a pledge to be transparent about the nature of their experiments. In a film for BBC Newsnight, surgeon Gabriel Weston considers the pros and cons of testing and is given access to a medical research facility. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27427579#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Tadpole Nebula, Auriga Constellation Square Sticker

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


tagged with: envelope sealers, star forming activity, awesome astronomy images, tnitac, tadpole nebula, auriga constellation, interstellar gas clouds, new born stars, hot young stars, star nursery, dust clouds

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome outer space picture featuring the Tadpole Nebula, a star forming hub located about 12000 light years away in the Auriga constellation.
This nebula is brimming with new-born stars, many as young as only a million years of age. It's called the Tadpole nebula because the masses of hot, young stars are blasting out ultraviolet radiation that has etched the gas into two tadpole-shaped pillars, called Sim 129 and130, the yellow forms that seem to be swimming away from the three red stars close to the centre of the picture.

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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

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Hubble's Jupiter and the Amazing Shrinking Great Red Spot

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Gas giant Jupiter is the solar system's largest world with about 320 times the mass of planet Earth. It's also known for a giant swirling storm system, the Great Red Spot, featured in this sharp Hubble image from April 21. Nestled between Jupiter-girdling cloud bands, the Great Red Spot itself could still easily swallow Earth, but lately it has been shrinking. The most recent Hubble observations measure the spot to be about 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) across. That's the smallest ever measured by Hubble and particularly dramatic when compared to 14,500 miles measured by the Voyager 1 and 2 flybys in 1979, and historic telescopic observations from the 1800s indicating a width of about 25,500 miles on its long axis. Current indications are that the rate of shrinking is increasing for the long-lived Great Red Spot.

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A small connection with big implications: Wiring up carbon-based electronics

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Artistic view of an electric connection between a carbon-based “football” molecule and a single metallic atom (gray ball). The researchers were able to quantify how the current depends on the chemical nature of the contacting atom. Credit: Universidad del País Vasco Carbon-based nanostructures such as nanotubes, graphene sheets, and nanoribbons are unique building blocks showing versatile nanomechanical and nanoelectronic properties. These materials which are ordered in the nanoscale, that is, in the dimension of a millionth of millimetre, are promising candidates to envision applications in nanoscale devices, ranging from energy conversion to nano-electronic transistors. A good connection between carbon-based materials and external metallic leads is of major importance in nanodevice performance, an aspect where an important step has been surmounted by researchers from UPV/EHU, DIPC and CNRS by studying contacts of carbon nanostructures with atoms of different chemical nature. The chemical nature of contacting leads is of major importance as it affects the electronic properties and the geometry of the contact. The impact of these two aspects on the transport properties are entangled and this group studied these two parameters for contacts shrunk to the limit of individual atoms as for large structures it is challenging to address them separately. Read more

The post A small connection with big implications: Wiring up carbon-based electronics has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Lighting the way to graphene-based devices

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A technique whereby semiconductors made from graphene and boron nitride can be charge-doped to alter their electronic properties using only visible light has been demonstrated by researchers. Graphene continues to reign as the next potential superstar material for the electronics industry, a slimmer, stronger and much faster electron conductor than silicon.

via Science Daily

Fast and curious: Electrons hurtle into the interior of a new class of quantum materials

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Scientists have made a step forward in developing a new class of materials that could be used in future technologies. They have discovered a new quantum effect that enables electrons -- the negative-charge-carrying particles that make today's electronic devices possible -- to dash through the interior of these materials with very little resistance.

via Science Daily

The Rose Galaxies, Arp 273 Square Sticker

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


tagged with: envelope sealers, trgarp, breathtaking hubble space photos, rose galaxy, interacting spiral galaxies, amazing astronomy images, arp 273, star forming activity, new born stars, star nursery, hot young stars

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An amazing outer space picture featuring two interacting galaxies that together form the shape of a rose. The larger of the spiral galaxies, UGC 1810, has a disk that is twisted by the gravitational pull of its companion galaxy, UGC 1813.
Knots of young, hot blue stars bejewel the spirals arms in glistening starlight while below, its smaller, nearly edge-on companion is going through intense star formation at its centre, perhaps triggered by their encounter.

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Image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

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