Thursday 3 July 2014

Targeting tumors using silver nanoparticles

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A new platform developed at UCSB increases the efficiency of drug delivery and allows excess particles to be washed away Prostate cancer cells were targeted by two separate silver nanoparticles (red and green), while the cell nucleus was labeled in blueusing Hoescht dye. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have designed a nanoparticle that has a couple of unique — and important — properties. Spherical in shape and silver in composition, it is encased in a shell coated with a peptide that enables it to target tumor cells. What’s more, the shell is etchable so those nanoparticles that don’t hit their target can be broken down and eliminated. The research findings appear today in the journal Nature Materials. The core of the nanoparticle employs a phenomenon called plasmonics. In plasmonics, nanostructured metals such as gold and silver resonate in light and concentrate the electromagnetic field near the surface. In this way, fluorescent dyes are enhanced, appearing about tenfold brighter than their natural state when no metal is present. When the core is etched, the enhancement goes away and the particle becomes dim. Erkki Ruoslahti Photo Credit: SPENCER BRUTTIG UCSB’s Ruoslahti Research Laboratory also developed a simple etching technique using biocompatible chemicals to rapidly

The post Targeting tumors using silver nanoparticles has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Do cell phones in pants pockets really affect men's fertility?

Science Focus

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The Conversation

A new study has claimed that keeping mobile phones in trouser pockets can damage a man's sperm count, affecting his chances of becoming a father. While the possibility that mobile phone radiation could adversely affect fertility is understandably of great interest to the public, there is no new information to be found here.

The question about whether non-ionising radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) that come from mobile phones are harmful or not is as old as the technology itself. Decades of research in this highly controversial area have led to two conclusions. First, that the...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/263085/do-cell-phones-in-pants-pockets-really-affect-mens-fertility
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VIDEO: Making solar cells with tofu salt

Science Focus

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Making solar cells with a salt used in tofu manufacturing could make generating energy from the Sun much cheaper, say scientists. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28017935#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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The surprising science of butter

Science Focus

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Julia Child had it right: "With enough butter, anything is good." The 2014 World Science Festival event "Scientific Kitchen: Butter Lab" revealed the scientific truth behind Child's wise words. Chemist Kent Kirshenbaum, physicist David Grier, and pastry chef Michael Laiskonis teamed up for a comprehensive and interactive discussion on the intersection of butter and science.

The science of butter starts with the primary ingredient — milk. Milk is 88 percent water, 3.5 percent fat, 3.25 percent protein, and 4.6 percent lactose (sugar). After a cow is milked, we typically do two important...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/263118/the-surprising-science-of-butter
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Butterfly Nebula in Scorpius Constellation Stickers

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


tagged with: envelope sealers, galaxies and stars, stellar winds, btbgneb, butterfly nebula, bug nebula, scorpius constellation, ngc 6302, sculptured gas clouds

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series NGC 6302, more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula, lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius.
The central dying star cannot be seen because it's hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the centre. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.
The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. The white-coloured regions are areas where light is emitted by sulphur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star).

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image code: btbgneb

image credit: NGC 6302 was imaged on 27 July 2009 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur were used to create this composite image.

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Along the Cygnus Wall

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The prominent ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive shape popularly called The North America Nebula, the ridge spans about 10 light-years along an outline that suggests the western coast of Mexico. Constructed from narrowband image data, the cosmic close-up maps emission from sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms to red, green, and blue colors. The result highlights the bright ionization front with fine details of dark, dusty forms in silhouette. Sculpted by energetic radiation from the region's young, hot, massive stars, the dark shapes inhabiting the view are clouds of cool gas and dust with stars likely forming within. The North America Nebula itself, NGC 7000, is about 1,500 light-years away. To find it, look northeast of bright star Deneb in the high flying constellation Cygnus.

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A more earth friendly way to make bright white cotton fabrics

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With a growing number of consumers demanding more earth-friendly practices from the fashion world, scientists are developing new ways to produce textiles that could help meet rising expectations. They report in the ACS journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research one such method that can dramatically reduce the amount of energy it takes to bleach cotton while improving the quality of the popular material. Quan Zu and colleagues point out that the cotton industry’s current whitening techniques require bleaching the natural fiber at very high temperatures with hydrogen peroxide. Although this method results in the bright white material consumers have grown so fond of, it also lowers the quality of the material and takes a lot of energy to carry out. Multiply that by the 7.3 billion pounds of cotton produced in the U.S. alone, and the energy needs soar. To cut down on the energy the textile industry uses to make cotton, Zu’s team targeted its efforts toward lowering the bleaching technique’s high temperatures. They developed a novel compound that, when used with hydrogen peroxide, drops the bleaching temperature down to 140 degrees Fahrenheit from 200 degrees. The authors estimated that 60 degree difference would result in a process requiring less than

The post A more earth friendly way to make bright white cotton fabrics has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Milky Way Panorama 2.0 Print

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


tagged with: milky way, all sky, all-sky, milky way panorama, axel mellinger, galaxy, big dipper, orion, astronomy, astrophotography

Between October 2007 and August 2009, Central Michigan University physics professor Axel Mellinger assembled a digital all-sky mosaic image from more than 3000 individual CCD frames, which he took from remote, dark sites in South Africa, Texas and Michigan. The result is a panoramic image of our home galaxy that no stargazer could ever see from a single spot on Earth. It shows stars 1000 times fainter than those visible to the unaided human eye.

For more information, visit Dr. Mellinger's Milky Way home page at http://home.arcor-online.de/axel.mellinger/.
Or go directly to a zoomable version of the panorama: http://galaxy.phy.cmich.edu/~axel/mwpan2/krpano/.

»visit the MilkyWayUniverse store for more designs and products like this
Click to customize with size, paper type etc.
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Butterfly Nebula in Scorpius Constellation Rectangular Sticker

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


tagged with: peel off, galaxies and stars, stellar winds, btbgneb, butterfly nebula, bug nebula, scorpius constellation, ngc 6302, sculptured gas clouds

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series NGC 6302, more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula, lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius.
The central dying star cannot be seen because it's hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the centre. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.
The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. The white-coloured regions are areas where light is emitted by sulphur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star).

more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

image code: btbgneb

image credit: NGC 6302 was imaged on 27 July 2009 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur were used to create this composite image.

»visit the HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this
Click to customize.
via Zazzle Astronomy market place

Making graphene from plastic?

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Graphene is gaining heated attention, dubbed a "wonder material" with great conductivity, flexibility and durability. However, graphene is hard to come by due to the fact that its manufacturing process is complicated and mass production has not been possible. A carbon material has now been developed without artificial defects commonly found during the production process of graphene while maintaining its original characteristics.

via Science Daily

One of world's thinnest piezoelectric materials identified

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There are a handful of naturally occurring materials, known as piezoelectric materials, that generate electricity if you bend, stretch or apply another mechanical force to them, and vice versa -- if you apply a voltage across them, they'll deform accordingly. These materials are currently the subject of intense research for their potential applications in energy harvesting, artificial muscles and sensors, among others. These materials are also used in everyday devices, such as loudspeakers, which rely on piezoelectrics to convert electrical signals to mechanical vibrations which create sound waves to produce the desired acoustic signal. Mechanical engineers have now identified one of the thinnest possible piezoelectric materials on the planet -- graphene nitride.

via Science Daily

Superconducting-silicon qubits: Using a bottom-up approach to make hybrid quantum devices

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Theorists propose a way to make superconducting quantum devices such as Josephson junctions and qubits, atom-by-atom, inside a silicon crystal. Such systems could combine the most promising aspects of silicon spin qubits with the flexibility of superconducting circuits.

via Science Daily

Lobster Nebula Room Decal

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


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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Hubble Interacting Galaxy NGC 5256 iPad Air 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!


tagged with: galaxy, space, universe, stars, travel, exploration, science, sun, astronomy, hubble interacting galaxy ngc 5256, planets, the milky way, telescope images, moons, phenomena, supernovas, cosmos, cosmology, nebula, star cluster, solar system, space shuttle, nasa, space images, themilkyway, hubble, interacting, ngc, 5256

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