Wednesday 17 September 2014

Gold’s unexpected oxidation activity: Decoding the role of water in gold nanocatalysis

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Researchers from the University of Houston and Trinity University have for the first time provided direct evidence of

The post Gold’s unexpected oxidation activity: Decoding the role of water in gold nanocatalysis has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Physicists heat freestanding graphene to control curvature of ripples

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Physicists have discovered that heating can be used to control the curvature of ripples in freestanding graphene. The finding provides fundamental insight into understanding the influence temperature exerts on the dynamics of freestanding graphene. This may drive future applications of the flexible circuits of consumer devices such as cell phones and digital cameras.

via Science Daily

Smallest known galaxy with a supermassive black hole

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Astronomers have discovered that an ultracompact dwarf galaxy harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object. The finding suggests huge black holes may be more common than previously believed.

via Science Daily

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Hubble Helps Find Smallest Known Galaxy with a Supermassive Black Hole



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Astronomers have found an unlikely object in an improbable place: a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies known. The dwarf galaxy containing the black hole is the densest galaxy ever seen, cramming 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years (just 1/500th of our Milky Way galaxy's diameter). However, the black hole inside the galaxy is five times the mass of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way. This suggests that the dwarf galaxy may actually be the stripped remnant of a larger galaxy that was torn apart during a close encounter with a more massive galaxy. The finding implies that there are many other compact galaxies in the universe that contain supermassive black holes.




via HubbleSite NewsCenter -- Latest News Releases

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/41/

Vintage Astronomy Star Chart ~ Sagittarius Poster

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


tagged with: astrology, zodiac, constellations, decor, fine art, art, universe, old, world, star maps, signs, space, map, maps, world maps, vintage maps, antique map, antique maps, ancient, ancient maps, history, ancient history, artwork, vintage artwork, vintage art, unique, unusual, neat, cool, room decor, wall decor, den decor, framed prints, framed posters, framed art, canvas, the vintage vamp, thevintagevamp

A wonderful antique star chart depicting the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer) was represented as a Centaur, half man, half horse, ready to fire his/its bow and arrow at the heart of Scorpius, the Scorpion. Also shown is the much smaller constellation of Corona Australis (the Southern Crown) is quite distinctive to the eye though its stars are fainter than those in neighboring Sagittarius. It is quite ancient having be recognized by Ptolemy, and one legend has it that it represents the coronet worn by Sagittarius. This wonderful old constellation chart would be perfect for your home wall decor. Add a frame and it would make the perfect retro decoration in your bar, cafe, restaurant, home theater, office or kitchen. Framed canvas prints also make an exceptional gift for any occasion or holiday.

At The Vintage Vamp we obtain high quality images of vintage artwork. Then we use state of the art technology and editing to bring back to life the most compelling images from the past. Unlike a lot of reproductions sold on the Internet, ours have been refurbished to bring out the original colors and fix as many imperfections as possible. We use only PNG format and the largest PPI (pixels per inch) possible, which is the very best for printing. This assures that your image will print with the highest quality possible, no matter what size you choose. Credit: Library of Congress & Wikipedia




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NASA chooses American companies to transport U.S. astronauts to International Space Station

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U.S. astronauts once again will travel to and from the International Space Station from the United States on American spacecraft under groundbreaking contracts NASA announced Tuesday. The agency unveiled its selection of Boeing and SpaceX to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station using their CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively, with a goal of ending the nation's sole reliance on Russia in 2017.

via Science Daily

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Violent origins of disc galaxies: Why Milky Way-like galaxies are so common in the universe

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For decades scientists have believed that galaxy mergers usually result in the formation of elliptical galaxies. Now, for the the first time, researchers have found direct evidence that merging galaxies can instead form disc galaxies, and that this outcome is in fact quite common. This surprising result could explain why there are so many spiral galaxies like the Milky Way in the Universe.

via Science Daily

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Here's a big problem: Most surgical research ignores women

Science Focus

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The push to encourage women to enter STEM fields has become so ubiquitous that there are op-eds written seemingly every week, a dedicated page on the White House website, and even a line of interactive dolls. A lesser-known gender discrepancy in science, however, is the lack of female research subjects. Despite a 1993 law requiring women and minorities to be included as subjects in clinical research funded by the National Institutes of Health, women continue to be under-represented.

Of course, clinical trials (testing medical interventions on human subjects) are only a small subset of medical...

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 » see original post http://theweek.com/article/index/267780/heres-a-big-problem-most-surgical-research-ignores-women
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VIDEO: Haiti's disease fighting eco toilet

Science Focus

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Poor sanitation has caused serious health problems in Haiti - but could a special eco toilet improve the situation? 
#science 
 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-29217235#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Name, Carina Nebula in Argo Navis deep space image Wrapping Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!


tagged with: carina nebula, argos navis constellation, carina the keel, star formation, gas clouds, galaxy stars, ngc 3372, hrbstslr carnebngcttst, astronomy pictures, outer space

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Hubble's view of the Carina Nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The fantasy-like landscape of the nebula is sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit this inferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud from which the stars were born. The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel (of the old southern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, from Greek mythology).
The original image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Colour information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

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image code: carnebngcttst

Image credit: Hubble Space Telescope; colour data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile

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Red Supergiant Star V838 Monocerotis Star Stickers

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


tagged with: amazing astronomy images, hubble images, monocerotis, supermassive red giant, stars, interstellar dust, swirling dust clouds, monoceros constellation, red supergiant star, fun stickons

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous astronomy picture featuring a distant star, named V838 Monocerotis, in the direction of the constellation of Monoceros on the outer edge of our Milky Way. The image shows the swirls of dust spiralling across trillions of miles of interstellar space, lit mainly from within by a pulse of light from the red supergiant, two years into its journey.

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image code: monocerotis

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

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Aurora over Maine

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

A fix to our cell-phone waste problem?

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When it comes to cell phones, the world is stunningly wasteful. Customers will buy more than 1.8 billion

The post A fix to our cell-phone waste problem? has been published on Technology Org.

 
#materials 
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Vintage Astronomy Star Chart ~ Ursa Major Poster

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


tagged with: astrology, zodiac, constellations, decor, fine art, art, universe, old, world, star maps, signs, space, map, maps, world maps, vintage maps, antique map, antique maps, ancient, ancient maps, history, ancient history, artwork, vintage artwork, vintage art, unique, unusual, neat, cool, room decor, wall decor, den decor, framed prints, framed posters, framed art, canvas, the vintage vamp, thevintagevamp

A wonderful antique star chart depicting the constellation of Ursa Major. Ursa Major is a constellation visible throughout the year in most of the northern hemisphere. Its name means the Great Bear in Latin. It is dominated by the widely recognized asterism known as the Big Dipper or Plough, which is a useful pointer toward north, and which has mythological significance in numerous world cultures. This wonderful old constellation chart would be perfect for your home wall decor. Add a frame and it would make the perfect retro decoration in your bar, cafe, restaurant, home theater, office or kitchen. Framed canvas prints also make an exceptional gift for any occasion or holiday.

At The Vintage Vamp we obtain high quality images of vintage artwork. Then we use state of the art technology and editing to bring back to life the most compelling images from the past. Unlike a lot of reproductions sold on the Internet, ours have been refurbished to bring out the original colors and fix as many imperfections as possible. We use only PNG format and the largest PPI (pixels per inch) possible, which is the very best for printing. This assures that your image will print with the highest quality possible, no matter what size you choose. Credit: Library of Congress & Wikipedia




»visit the TheVintageVamp store for more designs and products like this
Click to customize with size, paper type etc.
via Zazzle Astronomy market place

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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Name, Swan Nebula, Intriguing Space Pictures Gift Wrap Paper

Get your out-of-this-world gift wrap here! Perfect for Christmas gifts for anyone who is fascinated by what the universe holds in store for us!


tagged with: midswneb, swan nebula, m17, hydrogen gas clouds, star forming activity, newly born stars, outer space, star galaxies, deep space astronomy, pictures of space, young hot stars

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series Amazingly this could almost be some underwater scene with strange creatures swimming in the aquamarine waters. It's actually the centre of the Swan Nebula, or M17, a hotbed of newly born stars wrapped in colourful blankets of glowing gas and cradled in an enormous cold, dark hydrogen cloud. This stunning picture was taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
The region of the nebula shown in this picture is about 3500 times wider than our Solar System. The area also represents about 60 percent of the total view captured by ACS. The nebula resides 5500 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Like its famous cousin in Orion, the Swan Nebula is illuminated by ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars - each about six times hotter and 30 times more massive than our Sun.

The powerful radiation from these stars evaporates and erodes the dense cloud of cold gas within which the stars formed. The blistered walls of the hollow cloud shine primarily in the blue, green, and red light emitted by excited atoms of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulphur. Particularly striking is the rose-like feature, seen to the right of centre, which glows in the red light emitted by hydrogen and sulphur.
As the infant stars evaporate the surrounding cloud, they expose dense pockets of gas that may contain developing stars. Because these dense pockets are more resistant to the withering radiation than the surrounding cloud, they appear as sculptures in the walls of the cloud or as isolated islands in a sea of glowing gas. One isolated pocket is seen at the centre of the brightest region of the nebula and is about 10 times larger than our Solar System.

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image code: midswneb

Image credit: NASA, the ACS Science Team

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Nanoribbon film keeps glass ice-free

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Scientists who created a deicing film for radar domes have now refined the technology to work as a transparent coating for glass. The new work could keep glass surfaces from windshields to skyscrapers free of ice and fog while retaining their transparency to radio frequencies (RF).

via Science Daily

Making quantum dots glow brighter

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Researchers have found a new way to control the properties of quantum dots, those tiny chunks of semiconductor material that glow different colors depending on their size. Quantum dots, which are so small they start to exhibit atom-like quantum properties, have a wide range of potential applications, from sensors, light-emitting diodes, and solar cells, to fluorescent tags for biomedical imaging and qubits in quantum computing.

via Science Daily

Hubble IPad 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: hubble

Hubble

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