Friday 30 May 2014

Ames Lab creates multifunctional nanoparticles for cheaper, cleaner biofuel

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory has created a faster, cleaner biofuel refining technology that not only combines processes, it uses widely available materials to reduce costs. Ames Laboratory scientists have developed a nanoparticle that is able to perform two processing functions at once for the production of green diesel, an alternative fuel created from the hydrogenation of oils from renewable feedstocks like algae. The method is a departure from the established process of producing biodiesel, which is accomplished by reacting fats and oils with alcohols. “Conventionally, when you are producing biodiesel from a feedstock that is rich in free fatty acids like microalgae oil, you must first separate the fatty acids that can ruin the effectiveness of the catalyst, and then you can perform the catalytic reactions that produce the fuel,” said Ames Lab scientist Igor Slowing. “By designing multifunctional nanoparticles and focusing on green diesel rather than biodiesel, we can combine multiple processes into one that is faster and cleaner.” Contrary to biodiesel, green diesel is produced by hydrogenation of fats and oils, and its chemical composition is very similar to that of petroleum-based diesel. Green diesel has many advantages over biodiesel, like being more stable and

The post Ames Lab creates multifunctional nanoparticles for cheaper, cleaner biofuel has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Two GOES-R instruments complete spacecraft integration

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Two of the six instruments that will fly on NOAA's first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - R satellite have completed integration with the spacecraft. The Solar Ultraviolet Imager and Extreme Ultraviolet and X-ray Irradiance Sensors were installed on the sun-pointing platform.

via Science Daily

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Warming effects of black hole 'burps' is the reason

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Warming effects of black hole 'burps' is the reason
..in some cases. Once the black hole has eaten and digested everything within reach, then star formation will begin.
  #outerspace  

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory originally shared:

Elliptical Galaxies: Chandra Helps Explain "Red and Dead Galaxies"

http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/coldgas/

This four-panel of images represents a sample of giant elliptical galaxies observed by Chandra and the Hershel Space Observatory in a study to investigate why these objects have such low levels of star formation. In six galaxies, Herschel detected surprisingly large amounts of cold gas – the fuel for star formation. Chandra revealed that the hot gas in the center of these galaxies appears to be much more disturbed than in the cold gas-free systems. This is a sign that material has been ejected from regions close to the central black hole. The energy from these outbursts helps to prevent the cold gas from cooling sufficiently to form stars. In two other galaxies, jets pushing against the hot gas are creating enormous cavities that are observed in the Chandra images. These jets may be heating the hot, X-ray emitting gas, preventing it from cooling and forming cold gas and stars.

(Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ/N.Werner et al; Optical: DSS)

 » see original post https://plus.google.com/116000959328274308893/posts/bSNxxjJ79g4
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First real time movies of the light-to-current conversion in an organic solar cell

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Scientists have reported the first real time movies of the light-to-current conversion process in an organic solar cell. Researchers show that the quantum-mechanical, wavelike nature of electrons and their coupling to the nuclei is of fundamental importance for the charge transfer in an organic photovoltaic device.

via Science Daily

Quantum mechanisms of organic devices for alternative solar panels are revealed

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Silicon panel-based technology requires a very costly, contaminating manufacturing process, while organic photovoltaic devices have been positioned as one of the most attractive alternatives as a source of solar energy. This is the first time the quantum mechanisms that trigger the photovoltaic function of these devices have been deciphered.

via Science Daily

Unlocking the mystery of how your brain keeps time

Science Focus

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In Audrey Niffenegger's novel The Time Traveler's Wife, Henry DeTamble is a man with a rare disorder that causes him to involuntarily travel through time. His wife Clare experiences life linearly, but never knows when or where she will see her husband next. "Each moment that I wait feels like a year," Clare says. "Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting."

You don't need a time-traveling husband to have a warped experience of time like Clare's — think of how long a Monday back at work seems to stretch out, and how quickly the weekend flashes by. Time should march...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/261814/unlocking-the-mystery-of-how-your-brain-keeps-time
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50 years with the Big Bang’s “smoking gun”

Science Focus

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The microwave horn in New Jersey where Wilson and Penzias first detected the hum left over from the birth of the Universe.

Today, Alcatel-Lucent, the corporate entity that inherited Bell Labs, is celebrating one of the lab's most momentous discoveries: the cosmic microwave background, a remnant of the Big Bang. Since its discovery, the study of the cosmic microwave background's details has continued to pay dividends in our understanding of the Universe and its formation, with the latest results being released just this year.

We're a long way from 1964, where pigeon droppings in New Jersey were an experimental complication.

Seeing the background

The story of the cosmic microwave background's discovery is anything but a sudden eureka-like breakthrough, which makes putting an exact date on it a pointless exercise. Back in 1964, Bell Lab's Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson weren't looking to do astronomy; they were trying to do microwave communications, something directly relevant to Bell Lab's parent company. The problem they had was that no matter where they pointed their equipment, there was a steady hum of noise.

Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

 
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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/UDdHKnCcoRE/
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Scientists overcome fundamental atom laser limit to build brightest atom laser to date

Science Focus

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The new atom laser technique can be used to create different types of lasers. These figures show the atom density distributions of (a) a well-collimated atom laser beam, (b) an ultra-high flux atom laser, and (c) an atom beam combining an atom laser and thermal emission. Credit: Bolpasi, et al. ©2014 IOP Publishing In an atom laser, millions of individual atoms propagate through space with minimal spreading, just like photons propagate in a coherent photon laser beam. Although both types of lasers are similar, atom lasers are still in the early stages of research with much work to be done before they can be used for applications, which may include atom lithography, atom interferometry, and magnetometry (measuring magnetic fields). A key factor for both types of lasers is their flux, which is the rate at which the atoms and photons are emitted. In current atom lasers, the flux is fundamentally limited by the same outcoupling process that is used to create the atom laser in the first place. Now in a new study published in the New Journal of Physics, researchers from Greece and Singapore have demonstrated a novel, ultra-bright atom laser that overcomes this fundamental atom laser limit, achieving a

The post Scientists overcome fundamental atom laser limit to build brightest atom laser to date has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/rT72PHGTGko/
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Monogram Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Stickers

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


tagged with: stlrnrsry, star clusters, galaxies, stars, starfields, awesome astronomy pictures, constellation puppis, the stern, monogram, monograms, star nurseries, nebulae, european southern observatory, eso, vista, initials, initialled, monogrammed

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

A gorgeous set of oval stickers showing the area surrounding the stellar cluster NGC 2467, located in the southern constellation of Puppis ("The Stern"). With an age of a few million years at most, it is a very active stellar nursery, where new stars are born continuously from large clouds of dust and gas.

The image, looking like a colourful cosmic ghost or a gigantic celestial Mandrill, contains the open clusters Haffner 18 (centre) and Haffner 19 (middle right: it is located inside the smaller pink region - the lower eye of the Mandrill), as well as vast areas of ionised gas.

The bright star at the centre of the largest pink region on the bottom of the image is HD 64315, a massive young star that is helping shaping the structure of the whole nebular region.

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Image code: stlrnrsry

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Space-based experiment could test gravity's effects on quantum entanglement

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(Phys.org) —Physicists are continually looking for ways to unify the theory of relativity, which describes large-scale phenomena, with quantum theory, which describes small-scale phenomena. In a new proposed experiment in this area, two toaster-sized "nanosatellites" carrying entangled condensates orbit around the Earth, until one of them moves to a different orbit with a different gravitational field strength. As a result of the change in gravity, the entanglement between the condensates is predicted to degrade by up to 20%. Experimentally testing the proposal may be possible in the near future.



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A matter of matter: Demonstrating destructive quantum interference using Bose-Einstein condensates

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(Phys.org) —When C. K. Hong, Z. Y. Ou and Leonard Mandel demonstrated destructive quantum interference between pairs of indistinguishable bosons in their 1987 paper1, they did so with massless photons. Their protocol – christened the Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) effect – remained unchanged until recently, when scientists at The University of Queensland, Brisbane proposed an experiment to implement HOM in the matter-wave regime. This massive-particle version of the HOM effect uses pair-correlated atoms produced in a collision of two Bose–Einstein condensates and subjected to two laser-induced so-called Bragg pulses. (A Bose-Einstein condensate, or BEC, is a phase of matter in which bosons in a dilute gas enter the same quantum state when cooled to a temperature near absolute zero – that is, 0 K or −273.15 °C – and macroscopic-scale quantum effects appear. Bragg pulses replicate atom optics analogs of the mirror and beam-splitter elements of the photonic HOM interferometer.) By simulating the atom-optics HOM effect using colliding condensates and predicting an interference visibility of about 70%, the researchers say that their matter-wave approach may lead to stronger tests of quantum mechanics, including Bell inequality violations and the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox, the latter now being known as entanglement.



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Planetary Nebula Abell 36

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The gorgeous, gaseous shroud of a dying sunlike star, planetary nebula Abell 36 lies a mere 800 light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. At that distance it spans over 1.5 light-years in this sharp telescopic view. Shrugging off its outer layers, the nebula's central star is contracting and becoming hotter, evolving towards a final white dwarf phase. In fact, in Abell 36, the central star is estimated to have a surface temperature of over 73,000 K, compared to the Sun's present 6,000 K temperature. As a result, the intensely hot star is much brighter in ultraviolet light, compared to its visual appearance here. The invisible ultraviolet light ionizes hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the nebula and ultimately powers the beautiful visible light glow.

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Engineering earth-abundant catalysts that mimic platinum in renewable energy technologies

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When one considers nonrenewable resources, the first to come to mind are fossil fuels: petroleum, coal, and natural gas. The rapid depletion of these unsustainable resources has sparked global research on renewable-energy technologies, such as fuel cells, electrolyzers, and lithium-air batteries. Unfortunately there is a common unsustainable thread that links these burgeoning technologies: a dependence on platinum-group metals (PGMs). These elements — platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, and osmium — are the six least-abundant in the Earth’s lithosphere, yet are the most stable and active catalysts. Even with efficient recycling, numerous studies have indicated that the Earth simply does not contain enough PGMs to support a global renewable-energy economy. Thus, PGMs can be considered unsustainable resources that are currently needed to enable renewable energy technologies. MIT graduate student Sean Hunt, postdoc Tarit Nimmandwudipong, and Yuriy Román, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, have an idea for how to replace PGMs with metals that are more plentiful. In a paper published recently in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the team explained its process of synthesizing these alternative catalysts. “Because the PGMs tend to be the most active and stable catalysts in virtually all relevant thermal and electrocatalytic processes, our research sought to answer an exciting question,”

The post Engineering earth-abundant catalysts that mimic platinum in renewable energy technologies has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Spacecraft to Ferry U.S. Astronauts Is Unveiled

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SpaceX, which has flown cargo capsules to the International Space Station, introduced the Dragon V2, designed to carry astronauts to low-Earth orbit.















via New York Times

Monogrammed Helix Nebula, Galaxies and Stars Stickers

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


tagged with: star nurseries, star clusters, galaxies, stars, astronomy, nebulae, helixneb, helix nebula, initialled, monogrammed, starfields, heavens, eso, european southern observatory, vista, monogram, initials, monograms

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293). It was created from images obtained using the Wide Field Imager (WFI), an astronomical camera attached to the 2.2-metre Max-Planck Society/ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile.

The blue-green glow in the centre of the Helix comes from oxygen atoms shining under effects of the intense ultraviolet radiation of the 120 000 degree Celsius central star and the hot gas.

Further out from the star and beyond the ring of knots, the red colour from hydrogen and nitrogen is more prominent. A careful look at the central part of this object reveals not only the knots, but also many remote galaxies seen right through the thinly spread glowing gas.
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image code: helixneb

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Click to customize.
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