Tuesday 21 July 2015

Miniature Technology, Large-Scale Impact

original post »

The postage stamp-sized square of fused silica Kjeld Janssen is holding may not look like a whole lot

The post Miniature Technology, Large-Scale Impact has been published on Technology Org.

 
#materials 
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

Degrading BPA with visible light and a new hybrid photocatalyst

more »
BPA's popularity soared after the 1950s, but evidence suggests that even low doses might be harmful to human and environmental health. Many manufacturers are now phasing out BPA, but it doesn't break down easily, making safe disposal difficult. Now, researchers have developed a hybrid photocatalyst that can break down BPA using visible light. Their findings could eventually be used to treat water supplies and to more safely dispose of BPA and materials like it.
via Science Daily

An easy, scalable and direct method for synthesizing graphene in silicon microelectronics

more »
In the last decade, graphene has been intensively studied for its unique optical, mechanical, electrical and structural properties. The one-atom-thick carbon sheets could revolutionize the way electronic devices are manufactured and lead to faster transistors, cheaper solar cells, new types of sensors and more efficient bioelectric sensory devices. As a potential contact electrode and interconnection material, wafer-scale graphene could be an essential component in microelectronic circuits, but most graphene fabrication methods are not compatible with silicon microelectronics, thus blocking graphene's leap from potential wonder material to actual profit-maker.
via Science Daily

Vintage Astronomy, Celestial Planisphere Map Poster

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


tagged with: antique, constellations, retro, planisphere, americana, vintage illustration, norhtern hemisphere, celestial map, star chart, astronomy, antique celestial

Vintage illustration astronomy and antique celestial map by Joseph (James) Moxon (1627-1691). Star chart featuring a world planisphere and celestial sphere - both are surrounded by scenes from the Old and New Testaments including vignettes of the Creation, the Garden of Eden, the Deluge, Moses, the Crucifixion and angels observing the Holy City. Created circa 1691 -1699.

Joseph Moxon was a hydrographer to Charles II, was an English printer of mathematical books and maps, a maker of globes and mathematical instruments, and mathematical lexicographer. Joseph Moxin produced the first English language dictionary devoted to mathematics. In November 1678 he became the first tradesman to be elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

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

Satellites peer into rock 50 miles beneath Tibetan Plateau

more »
Gravity data captured by satellite has allowed researchers to take a closer look at the geology deep beneath the Tibetan Plateau.
via Science Daily
Zazzle Space Exploration market place

Tough tail of a seahorse may provide robotic solutions

Science Focus

original post »

One of the ocean’s oddest little creatures, the seahorse, is providing inspiration for robotics researchers as they learn

The post Tough tail of a seahorse may provide robotic solutions has been published on Technology Org.

 
#physics 
 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/TOt5Byg7yDw/
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

Name, Red Supergiant Star Monocerotis, Outer Space 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: hubble images, red supergiant star, interstellar dust, supermassive red giant, swirling dust clouds, monoceros constellation, astronomy pictures, outer space, star galaxies, hrbstslr monocerotis

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

image code: monocerotis

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

»visit the HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this
Click to personalize with name and message - or just to see it bigger.
via Zazzle Astronomy market place

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.

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

image code: tnitac

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

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

Macroscopic quantum phenomena discovered in ice

more »
(Phys.org)—Scientists have discovered an anomaly in the properties of ice at very cold temperatures near 20 K, which they believe can be explained by the quantum tunneling of multiple protons simultaneously. The finding is a rare instance of quantum phenomena emerging on the macroscopic scale, and is even more unusual because it is only the second time—the first being superconductivity—that macroscopic quantum phenomena have been observed in a system that is based on fermions, which include protons, electrons, and all other matter particles. Other systems exhibiting macroscopic quantum phenomena have been based on photons, a type of boson, which mediate the forces between matter.

Zazzle Space market place

Comet Tails and Star Trails

more »
After grazing the western horizon on northern summer evenings Comet PanSTARRS (also known as C/2014 Q1) climbed higher in southern winter skies. A visitor to the inner Solar System discovered in August 2014 by the prolific panSTARRS survey, the comet was captured here on July 17. Comet and colorful tails were imaged from Home Observatory in Mackay, Queensland, Australia. The field of view spans just over 1 degree. Sweeping quickly across a the sky this comet PanSTARRS was closest to planet Earth about 2 days later. Still, the faint stars of the constellation Cancer left short trails in the telescopic image aligned to track the comet's rapid motion. PanSTARRS' bluish ion tails stream away from the Sun, buffetted by the solar wind. Driven by the pressure of sunlight, its more diffuse yellowish dust tail is pushed outward and lags behind the comet's orbit. A good target for binoculars from southern latitudes, in the next few days the comet will sweep through skies near Venus, Jupiter, and bright star Regulus.

Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Orion Nebula Sixteenth Note Wall Graphic

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


tagged with: orion, nebula, cosmic, astronomy, green, space image, space, musical, sixteenth, note, shape, pretty, image, aqua

Space image of the Orion Nebula on the shape of a musical sixteenth note.

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

New galaxies seen with the Hubble Space Telescope iPad Mini Cover

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: celestial bodies, exploration, galaxy, natural science, natural world, nebula, nobody, outer space, science, space exploration and research, star cluster, stars

ImageID: 42-24078213 / STScI / NASA/Corbis / New galaxies seen with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera

»visit the corbisimages store for more designs and products like this
The Zazzle Promise: We promise 100% satisfaction. If you don't absolutely love it, we'll take it back!

Flavours of Physics: Join the LHCb machine-learning contest

In a machine-learning challenge organised by CERN and Yandex Data Factory (a data-analytics division of Russia’s leading web search provider Yandex), and hosted by the data-science website Kaggle, LHCb physicists invite you to help them investigate a rare phenomenon in particle physics for the chance to win up to $7000. The phenomenon in question? Charged-lepton flavour violation.

Leptons are subatomic particles that, together with quarks, help to make up visible matter.  But unlike quarks, leptons do not take part in strong interactions. The leptons comprise the electron, the muon, the tau and the neutrinos, and their “flavour” are related to their type.

In the Standard Model of particle physics, if two or more particles have identical interactions, then they may be interchanged without affecting the physics. This is known as symmetry.

Lepton flavour is one such possible symmetry. If the symmetry exists in a particle interaction, then the numbers of electrons and electron-neutrinos, muons and muon-neutrinos, and taus and tau-neutrinos should be separately conserved – they should each remain the same. But in many proposed extensions to the Standard Model this lepton-flavour symmetry doesn’t exist, and particle decays that do not conserve lepton flavour are possible.

One decay that physicists are searching for at the LHC is where a tau particle decays to three muons. Observation of this decay would be a clear indication of the violation of lepton flavour and a sign of long-sought “new physics”.

And that's when you come in. Using real data from the LHCb experiment at CERN, mixed with simulated datasets of the decay, your task is to classify events into "tau decay to three muons" versus "background." No knowledge of particle physics is required.

Participants can download the LHCb data from Kaggle, then build a statistical model using whichever tools they prefer, and upload their code to Kaggle, which scores the solution and shows it on a leaderboard. Participants with the best score and who meet the eligibility criteria detailed in the competition rules will be awarded $7000, $5000 and $3000 for first, second and third place respectively. The winning method may eventually be applied to real data and the winners may be invited to follow-up workshop to discuss their results with high-energy physicists.

The first submission deadline is 5 October 2015. This challenge is sponsored by Yandex and Intel. Both companies are members of CERN openlab


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/07/flavours-physics-join-lhcb-machine-learning-contest

The chemistry of grilling

original post »

If you’re firing up the barbecue this week for a backyard family cookout, you don’t want to miss this video

The post The chemistry of grilling has been published on Technology Org.

 
#materials 
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

Failure of One Metal Strut Seemed to Doom SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket

more »
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s chief executive, said a preliminary inquiry pointed to the failure of a single metal strip that was holding down a helium bottle within the second-stage liquid oxygen tank.










via New York Times

Saturn Poster

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


tagged with: saturn, cassini, solar system, space, planets, astronomy

This image of Saturn is a composite of 30 images taken by Cassini in 2008. credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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

Name, Carina Nebula, intriguing outer 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: star nurseries, star clusters, galaxies, starfields, nebulae, carina nebula, outer space photography, astronomy photographs, universe images, hrbstslr crnneb, european southern observatory, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic astronomy photograph showing a panoramic view of the WR 22 and Eta Carinae regions of the Carina Nebula.
The picture was created from images taken with the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

It's a stunning, fantastic image that reveals a little of the wonder that is our universe.
more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

image code: crnneb

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

»visit the HightonRidley store for more designs and products like this
Click to personalize with name and message - or just to see it bigger.
via Zazzle Astronomy market place

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.

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

image code: trgarp

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

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

NASA Stormy Colorful Hubble Astronomy Case iPad Folio Cover

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, nasa, space, exploration, astronomy, night, sky, stars, milkyway, psychedelic, trippy

Like the fury of a raging sea, this anniversary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a bubbly ocean of glowing hydrogen, oxygen, and sulphur gas in the extremely massive and luminous molecular nebula Messier 17. This Hubble photograph captures a small region within Messier 17 (M17), a hotbed of star formation. M17, also known as the Omega or Swan Nebula, is located about 5500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation.

»visit the Mastervault store for more designs and products like this
The Zazzle Promise: We promise 100% satisfaction. If you don't absolutely love it, we'll take it back!