Friday 18 July 2014

Overcoming imperfections: printing 3-D materials that resist flaws and fractures

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MIT graduate student Leon Dimas is no stranger to resilience: At 18, as a rising soccer star, the long-armed goalkeeper was a promising prospect who played for the youth academy of Rosenborg BK, a top-ranked Norwegian soccer club. He was set, it seemed, on a path that would allow him to pursue a professional career playing the game that was his first love. But when Dimas suffered nagging damage to a shoulder tendon, his professional prospects dimmed. Over the course of the next year, he made the decision to abandon professional soccer for good. “Once that dream broke, you wonder if you can get these kinds of feelings again,” Dimas says, “feelings of accomplishment and that someone believes in you.” It’s fair to say that Dimas, now a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has bounced back. Fittingly, he is now working on creating new materials that have resilience of their own — by borrowing from the oldest blueprint around. “The main idea is to look into nature,” Dimas says, “specifically, investigating mineralized composites and trying to understand why they perform so well.” Biomaterials such as bone and nacre (also known as mother-of-pearl) remain robust even

The post Overcoming imperfections: printing 3-D materials that resist flaws and fractures has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Looking back at the Jupiter crash 20 years later

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Twenty years ago, human and robotic eyes observed the first recorded impact between cosmic bodies in the solar system, as fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into the atmosphere of Jupiter. Between July 16 and July 22, 1994, space- and Earth-based assets managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, joined an armada of other NASA and international telescopes, straining to get a glimpse of the historic event.

via Science Daily

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NASA rover's images show laser flash on Martian rock

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Flashes appear on a baseball-size Martian rock in a series of images taken Saturday, July 12 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the arm of NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover. The flashes occurred while the rover's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument fired multiple laser shots to investigate the rock's composition.

via Science Daily

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Rosetta spacecraft approaching twofold comet

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As the European Space Agency's spacecraft Rosetta is slowly approaching its destination, comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the comet is again proving to be full of surprises. New images obtained by OSIRIS, the onboard scientific imaging system, confirm the body's peculiar shape hinted at in earlier pictures. Comet 67P is obviously different from other comets visited so far.

via Science Daily

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The Orion Nebula Print

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


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A massive image of The Orion Nebula in infrared, thanks to NASA/Hubble Space Telescope Program. The image file is 6000x6000.

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Single hotspot may be the source of many ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays

Science Focus

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The hotspot for ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays.

People make a big deal about the energies reached by the Large Hadron Collider, to the extent that they filed suit to block its operation over fears it would destroy the Universe. But as the physicists running the accelerator noted in their response, when it comes to high energies, nature got there first. While the LHC will eventually reach energies of 14 Tera-electronVolts, a cosmic ray called the Oh-My-God particle struck Earth with an energy of 300 Exa-electronVolts—over 10,000,000 times more energetic.

Such insanely energetic particles, while uncommon, aren't exactly rare. Over the last five years, an observatory in Utah built to study cosmic rays has identified 72 particles that struck the Earth with energies above 50 Exa-electronVolts. By roughly mapping their origin, the observatory found that many seem to originate in a cosmic hotspot located in the northern hemisphere sky. But the source (sources?) that raises particles to these energies remains unidentified.

Any particle physicist hoping to accelerate something to these energies better be incredibly patient. "To accelerate particles up to the ultrahigh-energy region," the authors of the paper describing the hotspot write, "particles must be confined to the accelerator site for more than a million years by a magnetic field and/or a large-scale confinement volume." Once released, however, they have a finite lifetime. Over time, they will interact with the cosmic microwave background in a way that will gradually slow them down.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/ZEECRWa9pR4/
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Independent research group testing D-Wave Two finds no quantum speedup

Science Focus

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Pictured is D-Wave’s current 512-qubit version. Credit: Courtesy of D-Wave Systems Inc. An independent research team with members affiliated with several universities in the U.S. and Switzerland has concluded that the D-Wave Two computer shows no signs of quantum speedup. They’ve written a paper describing how they tested one of the computers that was purchased by Lockheed Martin and the results they found and have had it published in the journal Science. Scientists would really like to build a truly quantum computer, the benefits it would offer would almost certainly be groundbreaking, leading to new discoveries in quantum physics and other areas—plus it would likely allow for speeding up processer intensive applications like weather forecasting. Unfortunately, such a computer is still decades away, and that’s assuming building one is really possible at all. In the meantime, researchers have made progress in building machines that are partially quantum, and one company D-Wave Systems, a startup in Burnaby, Canada has made one such machine for sale. Because of the high price, only a few have been sold, to Lockheed Martin, Google and likely some entities that have not been made public. Prime applications for such a machine are those that are analogous to seeking a

The post Independent research group testing D-Wave Two finds no quantum speedup has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/tMkxisTJv4U/
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Diamond crushed to Saturn's extremes

Science Focus

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Diamond, nature's hardest material, has been crushed to record extremes using the "world's biggest laser". 
#science 
 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28295574#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Star Birth in Constellation Cygnus, The Swan Star Sticker

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


tagged with: envelope sealers, star clusters, nebulae, gstlnrsr, rcw120, breathtaking astronomy images, star nurseries, inspirational stars, ionised gas clouds, starfields, galaxies, eso, european southern observatory, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous star forming region in Constellation Cygnus (The Swan). This Hubble image shows a dust-rich, interstellar gas cloud with a new-born star in the centre of the hour-glass shape. The glowing blue of the hydrogen in this nebula is due to the jets being emitted from the forming star as dust falls into into it and this causes the heating and turbulence of the hydrogen. The star, known as S106 IR, is reaching the end of its birth and will soon enter the much quieter period of adulthood known as the main stage.

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Image code: cygsb

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

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Ou4: A Giant Squid Nebula

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A mysterious, squid-like apparition, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth's sky. In the mosaic image, composed with narrowband data from the 2.5 meter Isaac Newton Telescope, it spans some 2.5 full moons toward the constellation Cepheus. Recently discovered by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the remarkable nebula's bipolar shape and emission are consistent with it being a planetary nebula, the gaseous shroud of a dying sun-like star, but its actual distance and origin are unknown. A new investigation suggests Ou4 really lies within the emission region SH2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, the cosmic squid would represent a spectacular outflow of material driven by a triple system of hot, massive stars, cataloged as HR8119, seen near the center of the nebula. If so, this truly giant squid nebula would physically be nearly 50 light-years across.

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There's a kind of Hush surrounding quantum systems

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(Phys.org) —Has a persistent noise ever kept you awake at night? Well it isn't just you. Scientists at The University of Nottingham have had the same problem with quantum technologies.



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Call for Media: Rosetta’s comet rendezvous

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On 6 August, after a decade-long journey through space, ESA’s Rosetta will become the first spacecraft in history to rendezvous with a comet. Members of the media are invited to join ESA at its European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, to mark this momentous occasion.




via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Call_for_Media_Rosetta_s_comet_rendezvous

Extreme explosion

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Space science image of the week: Searching for gamma-ray bursts, among the brightest and most powerful events in the Universe

via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/07/Extreme_explosion

Chemists seek state-of-the-art lithium-sulfur batteries

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When can we expect to drive the length of Germany in an electric car without having to top up the battery? Chemists at the NIM Cluster at LMU and at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have now synthesized a new material that could show the way forward to state-of-the-art lithium-sulfur batteries. Whether or not the future of automotive traffic belongs to the softly purring electric car depends largely on the development of its batteries. The industry is currently placing most of its hopes in lithium-sulfur batteries, which have a very high storage capacity. Moreover, thanks to the inclusion of sulfur atoms, they are cheaper to make and less toxic than conventional lithium-ion power packs. However, the lithium-sulfur battery still presents several major challenges that need to be resolved until it can be integrated into cars. For example, both the rate and the number of possible charge-discharge cycles need to be increased before the lithium-sulfur battery can become a realistic alternative to lithium-ion batteries. Lots of pores for sulfur The chemists Professor Thomas Bein (LMU), Coordinator of the Energy Conversion Division of the Nanosystems Initiative Munich, Professor Linda Nazar (University of Waterloo, Waterloo Institute of Nanotechology) and their colleagues have now

The post Chemists seek state-of-the-art lithium-sulfur batteries has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Horse head Nebula Poster

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


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The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1500 light years from Earth. It is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of the shape of its swirling cloud of dark dust and gases, which is similar to that of a horse's head when viewed from Earth.

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Lunar pits could shelter astronauts, reveal details of how 'man in the moon' formed

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While the moon's surface is battered by millions of craters, it also has over 200 holes -- steep-walled pits that in some cases might lead to caves that future astronauts could explore and use for shelter, according to new observations.

via Science Daily

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Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Star Sticker

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


tagged with: star clusters, galaxies, starfields, constellation puppis, the stern, star nurseries, nebulae, space exploration, universe photographs, hrbstslr stlrnrsry, european southern observatory, eso, vista

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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Metal Earth Globe Wall Graphic

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


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Shiny wire frame metal Earth globe with red space nebula background.

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Light Echo from Star V838 iPad Mini Cases

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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"[This is] the most recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope view of an unusual phenomenon in space called a light echo. Light from a star that erupted nearly five years ago continues propagating outward through a cloud of dust surrounding the star. The light reflects or "echoes" off the dust and then travels to Earth."

(qtd. from HubbleSite.org NewsCenter release STScI-2006-50)

Credit: NASA, ESA, and H. Bond (STScI)

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