Mapping the road to quantum gravity

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The road uniting quantum field theory and general relativity -- the two great theories of modern physics -- has been impassable for 80 years. Could a tool from condensed matter physics finally help map the way?

via Science Daily

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Some astronauts at risk for cognitive impairment, animal studies suggest

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Rats exposed to high-energy particles, simulating conditions astronauts would face on a long-term deep space mission, show lapses in attention and slower reaction times, even when the radiation exposure is in extremely low dose ranges, new research shows. The cognitive impairments — which affected a large subset, but far from all, of the animals — appear to be linked to protein changes in the brain, the scientists say.

via Science Daily

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Excitons observed in action for the first time

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Diagram of an exciton within a tetracene crystal, used in these experiments, shows the line across which data was collected. That data, plotted below as a function of both position (horizontal axis) and time (vertical axis) provides the most detailed information ever obtained on how excitons move through the material.Illustration courtesy of the researchers     A quasiparticle called an exciton — responsible for the transfer of energy within devices such as solar cells, LEDs, and semiconductor circuits — has been understood theoretically for decades. But exciton movement within materials has never been directly observed. Now scientists at MIT and the City College of New York have achieved that feat, imaging excitons’ motions directly. This could enable research leading to significant advances in electronics, they say, as well as a better understanding of natural energy-transfer processes, such as photosynthesis. The research is described this week in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper co-authored by MIT postdocs Gleb Akselrod and Parag Deotare, professors Vladimir Bulovic and Marc Baldo, and four others. “This is the first direct observation of exciton diffusion processes,” Bulovic says, “showing that crystal structure can dramatically affect the diffusion process.” “Excitons are at the heart of devices that

The post Excitons observed in action for the first time has been published on Technology Org.

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Researchers See New Importance for Y Chromosome

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Two surveys have reconstructed the full history of the shrunken male chromosome, which provides regulatory genes that play a role throughout the body.















via New York Times

Orion's Belt Deep Wide Field Poster

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

Orion's Belt Deep Wide Field Poster

tagged with: astronomy, space, nebula, orion

A deep field panorama that extends from Orion's belt (left) to the M42 nebula (upper right).

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Interested in how life works?

Science Focus

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Interested in how life works?
Look inside a cell and see it doing its stuff. Fascinating animated videos show first an idealized version for us lay folk to see what's going on. The second is is more true to life.

The article describes what's going on in the videos so you know what to look out for.

It's a must read and watch!

#science  

---

Sean Carroll originally shared:

The noisy, turbulent world inside a cell is a maelstrom of statistical mechanics. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/science/watch-proteins-do-the-jitterbug.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/04/22/how-kinesin-actually-moves/ 

Watch Proteins Do the Jitterbug

 
original post: https://plus.google.com/116000959328274308893/posts/3BbAxK5t2sn
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Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Sticker

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

Carina Nebula - Breathtaking Universe Sticker

tagged with: stlrnrsry, star clusters, galaxies, starfields, awesome astronomy pictures, constellation puppis, the stern, star nurseries, exploring outer space, universe pictures, european southern observatory, nebulae, 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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Arp 81: 100 Million Years Later

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From planet Earth, we see this strongly distorted pair of galaxies, cataloged as Arp 81, as they were only about 100 million years after their close encounter. The havoc wreaked by their mutual gravitational interaction during the encounter is detailed in this color composite image showing twisted streams of gas and dust, a chaos of massive star formation, and a tidal tail stretching for 200 thousand light-years or so as it sweeps behind the cosmic wreckage. Also known as NGC 6622 (left) and NGC 6621, the galaxies are roughly equal in size but are destined to merge into one large galaxy in the distant future, making repeated approaches until they finally coalesce. Located in the constellation Draco, the galaxies are 280 million light-years away. Even more distant background galaxies can be spotted in this sharp, reprocessed, image from Hubble Legacy Archive data.

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Nanomechanical sensors detect cancer from breath

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An array of functionalised membrane-type surface stress sensors (MSS) distinguishes cancer patients from healthy people through a signature response to breath samples.



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Ring Nebula Hubble Space Room Sticker

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

Ring Nebula Hubble Space Room Sticker

tagged with: ring nebula, planetary nebula, hubble, astronomy, nebula photo, nasa, outer space, hubble space telescope, nature, cool space, nebula, nebulae, m57, esa, universe, hubble telescope, hubble photo, cosmos, astronomical, astrophotography, cosmology, space photo, space picture, space image, deep space, space, natural, science, abstract, orange, ring, oval, round, cool astronomy

Hubble photograph of the Ring Nebula

This is an image of the oval-shaped Ring Nebula, situated around 2000 light years from Earth. It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998, and shows orange and yellow outer areas around a blue-green centre.

Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)

You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize it' to see all the options. IMPORTANT: If you choose a different sized version of the product, it's important to click Customize and check the image in the Design view to ensure it fills the area to the edge of the product, otherwise white edges may be visible.

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MIT chemists design nanoparticles that can deliver three cancer drugs at a time

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Delivering chemotherapy drugs in nanoparticle form could help reduce side effects by targeting the drugs directly to the tumors. In recent years, scientists have developed nanoparticles that deliver one or two chemotherapy drugs, but it has been difficult to design particles that can carry any more than that in a precise ratio. Now MIT chemists have devised a new way to build such nanoparticles, making it much easier to include three or more different drugs. In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers showed that they could load their particles with three drugs commonly used to treat ovarian cancer. “We think it’s the first example of a nanoparticle that carries a precise ratio of three drugs and can release those drugs in response to three distinct triggering mechanisms,” says Jeremiah Johnson, an assistant professor of chemistry at MIT and the senior author of the new paper. Such particles could be designed to carry even more drugs, allowing researchers to develop new treatment regimens that could better kill cancer cells while avoiding the side effects of traditional chemotherapy. In the JACS paper, Johnson and colleagues demonstrated that the triple-threat nanoparticles could kill ovarian cancer cells more effectively than

The post MIT chemists design nanoparticles that can deliver three cancer drugs at a time has been published on Technology Org.

Similar news or articles:

1. Trackable drug-filled nanoparticles – a potential weapon against cancer
2. Targeting cancer with a triple threat
3. Nanoparticles can overcome drug resistance in breast cancer cells

 
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MINERvA searches for wisdom among neutrinos

Christine Sutton

Neutrino physicists enjoy a challenge, and the members of the MINERvA (Main INjector for ExpeRiment for v-A) collaboration at Fermilab are no exception. MINERvA seeks to make precise measurements of neutrino cross-section on light and heavy nuclei. Using the laboratory’s intense neutrino beam together with a detector of finely segmented scintillators and a further detector to measure muons, the experiment can measure the cross-sections of different types of neutrino interaction: quasi-elastic, resonance production, and deep-inelastic scatters, among others. In this way, the experiment is continuing Fermilab’s rich history of difficult neutrino measurements.

Read more: "MINERvA searches for wisdom among neutrinos" – CERN Courier

via CERN: Updates for the general public

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/04/minerva-searches-wisdom-among-neutrinos

Earth at Night Posters

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

Earth at Night Posters

tagged with: earth, night, astronomy, space

Earth at Night

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Trifid Nebula, Messier 16 Rectangle Sticker

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

Trifid Nebula, Messier 16 Rectangle Sticker

tagged with: breathtaking astronomy images, star forming nebulae, trfdnbl, star nurseries, galaxies, nebulae, star factory, trifid nebula, star clusters, heavens, factories for stars, eso, vista, european southern observatory

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A fantastic picture from our universe featuring the massive star factory known as the Trifid Nebula.

It was captured in all its glory with the Wide-Field Imager camera attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in northern Chile.
So named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, the Trifid Nebula is a rare combination of three nebulae types that reveal the fury of freshly formed stars and point to more star birth in the future. The field of view of the image is approximately 13 x 17 arcminutes.
It's an awe-inspiring, breathtaking image that reveals some of the wonder that is our universe.

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ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
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Ring Nebula Hubble Space Wall Stickers

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

Ring Nebula Hubble Space Wall Stickers

tagged with: ring nebula, planetary nebula, hubble, astronomy, nebula photo, nasa, outer space, hubble space telescope, nature, cool space, nebula, nebulae, m57, esa, universe, hubble telescope, hubble photo, cosmos, astronomical, astrophotography, cosmology, space photo, space picture, space image, deep space, space, natural, science, abstract, orange, ring, oval, round, cool astronomy

Hubble photograph of the Ring Nebula

This is an image of the oval-shaped Ring Nebula, situated around 2000 light years from Earth. It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998, and shows orange and yellow outer areas around a blue-green centre.

Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)

You can personalise the design further if you'd prefer, such as by adding your name or other text, or adjusting the image - just click 'Customize it' to see all the options. IMPORTANT: If you choose a different sized version of the product, it's important to click Customize and check the image in the Design view to ensure it fills the area to the edge of the product, otherwise white edges may be visible.

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Bright lights, small crystals: Scientists use nanoparticles to capture images of single molecules

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When imaging at the single-molecule level, small irregularities known as heterogeneities become apparent – features that are lost in higher-scale, so-called ensemble imaging. At the same time, it has until recently been challenging to develop luminescent probes with the photostability, brightness and continuous emission necessary for single-molecule microscopy. Now, however, scientists in the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA have developed upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) under 10 nm in diameter whose brightness under single-particle imaging exceeds that of existing materials by over an order of magnitude. The researchers state that their findings make a range of applications possible, including cellular and in vivo imaging, as well as reporting on local electromagnetic near-field properties of complex nanostructures.



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