Steps into Space - Commercialisation, Occupation, Colonization: 05/16/14

Friday, 16 May 2014

New lab-on-a-chip device overcomes miniaturization problems

UNSW chemists printed the university’s name using a novel technique they developed which involves fabricating a a pattern of ionic liquid droplets onto a gold-coated chip. Credit: UNSW UNSW Australia chemists have invented a new type of tiny lab-on-a-chip device that could have a diverse range of applications, including to detect toxic gases, fabricate integrated circuits and screen biological molecules. The novel technique developed by the UNSW team involves printing a pattern of miniscule droplets of a special solvent onto a gold-coated or glass surface. “We use a class of ‘green’ solvents called ionic liquids, which are salts that are liquid at room temperature. They are non-volatile, so this overcomes one of the main problems in making useful miniaturised devices – rapid evaporation of the solvents on the chip,” says Dr Chuan Zhao, senior author of the study. “The versatility of our chips means they could have a wide range of prospective functions, such as for use in fast and accurate hand-held sensors for environmental monitoring, medical diagnosis and process control in manufacturing.” Read more at: Phys.org

The post New lab-on-a-chip device overcomes miniaturization problems has been published on Technology Org.

#materials
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

Gemini Planet Imager captures best photo ever of an exoplanet

more »

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers at the Gemini South telescope in Chile, which has recently been retrofitted with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is reporting in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that they have captured the best photo ever of an exoplanet orbiting its star. The planet, Beta Pictoris b, orbits its sun approximately 63.5 light years from us, and the GPI has allowed for calculating its orbit at 20.5 years.

Zazzle Space market place

'Arrogance' over need for sleep

Science Focus

original post »
Society has become "supremely arrogant" in ignoring the importance of sleep, leading researchers have told the BBC's Day of the Body Clock.
#science
» see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-27286872#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

Why some tree ring records haven’t tracked recent warming

Science Focus

original post »

Cores of wood drilled from trees so the annual growth rings can be studied.

Scott St. George

The release of e-mails hacked from University of East Anglia climate scientists in 2009 (unimaginatively dubbed “Climategate” in media scandalese) generated about as much public discussion as any report of the science has. Long after the initial attention died down and a number of independent investigations found no evidence of scientific malpractice, snippets of quotes from the e-mails continue to pop up in conversations and opinion columns.

The most famous snippet related to reconstructions of past climate based on tree rings. One researcher, describing work putting together a graph, mentioned using “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline." It was exactly the nefarious-sounding sort of language that those who combed the e-mails for dirt wanted to find. Of course, it turned out to simply be a casual description of something much more mundane. “Mike’s Nature trick” was to display the instrumental temperature record and tree ring data on a graph—as climate scientist Michael Mann had done for a paper published in Nature.

So what about “the decline”? It’s no secret that many tree ring climate records from the Arctic diverge from instrumental data around the 1950s, failing to show the warming we’ve observed. So for some reconstructions, data from the second half of the 20th century is known to be inaccurate. In many ways, the divergence itself is much more interesting than arguments about unremarkable e-mails. Tree ring researchers have puzzled over what could explain the odd behavior of these Arctic trees.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

#science
» see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/r0c5m2sjP7E/
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

Chip-Sized Digital Optical Synthesizer to Aim for Routine Terabit-per-second Communications

Science Focus

original post »

In the 1940s, researchers learned how to precisely control the frequency of microwaves, which enabled radio transmission to transition from relatively low-fidelity amplitude modulation (AM) to high-fidelity frequency modulation (FM). This accomplishment, called microwave frequency synthesis, brought about many advanced technologies now critical to the military, such as wireless communications, radar, electronic warfare, atomic sensors and precise timing. Today, optical communications employ techniques analogous to those of pre-1940 AM radio, due to the inability to control frequency precisely at optical frequencies, which are typically 1,000 times higher than microwaves. The higher frequency of light, however, offers potential for 1,000-fold increase in available bandwidth for communications and other applications. As both government and commercial need for bandwidth continues to grow, DARPA’s new Direct On-chip Digital Optical Synthesizer program seeks to do with light waves what researchers in the 1940s achieved with radio microwaves. Currently, optical frequency synthesis is only possible in laboratories with expensive racks of equipment. If successful, the program would miniaturize optical synthesizers to fit onto microchips, opening up terahertz frequencies for wide application across military electronics systems and beyond. “The goal of this program is to make optical frequency synthesis as ubiquitous as microwave synthesis is today,” said

The post Chip-Sized Digital Optical Synthesizer to Aim for Routine Terabit-per-second Communications has been published on Technology Org.

#physics
» see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/yMX_-JI0KR0/
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

North American and Pelican Nebulae Square Sticker

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

North American and Pelican Nebulae Square Sticker

tagged with: envelope sealers, nanpn, pelican nebula, north american nebula, emission nebulae, billowing interstellar gas clouds, awesome astronomy images, dust clouds, hydrogen clouds, stellar winds, star forming activity, star nursery, star nurseries

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous picture from outer space featuring the North American and Pelican emission nebulae in the constellation of Cygnus, The Swan. The red, green and yellow areas all highlight the cloud of interstellar ionised hydrogen.
more items with this image
more items in the Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series
image code: nanpn

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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

Venus Express gets ready to take the plunge

After eight years in orbit, ESA’s Venus Express has completed routine science observations and is preparing for a daring plunge into the planet’s hostile atmosphere.

via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Express/Venus_Express_gets_ready_to_take_the_plunge

Unveiling Venus

Highlights from ESA’s Venus Express, following end of routine science observations after eight years orbiting the veiled planet

via ESA Space Science

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Highlights/Unveiling_Venus

Opportunity's Mars Analemma

Staring up into the martian sky, the Opportunity rover captured an image at 11:02 AM local mean time nearly every 3rd sol, or martian day, for 1 martian year. Of course, the result is this martian analemma, a curve tracing the Sun's motion through the sky in the course of a year (668 sols) on the Red Planet. Spanning Earth dates from July, 16, 2006 to June 2, 2008 the images are shown composited in this zenith-centered, fisheye projection. North is at the top surrounded by a panoramic sky and landscape made in late 2007 from inside Victoria crater. The tinted martian sky is blacked out around the analemma images to clearly show the Sun's positions. Unlike Earth's figure-8-shaped analemma, Mars' analemma is pear-shaped, because of its similar axial tilt but more elliptical orbit. When Mars is farther from the Sun, the Sun progresses slowly in the martian sky creating the pointy top of the curve. When close to the Sun and moving quickly, the apparent solar motion is stretched into the rounded bottom. For several sols some of the frames are missing due to rover operations and dust storms.

Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Optical traps on chip manipulate many molecules at once

original post »

An illustration of a nanophotonic standing wave array trap (nSWAT) for parallel manipulation and measurements of single molecules. Here, an array of DNA molecules with a bead attached at each end is precisely manipulated between two nSWATs. The position of each nSWAT is independently controlled to relocate and transport the array of trapped beads. Robert Forties Optical trapping, a technique for studying single molecules, is traditionally delicate, requiring special equipment and a soundproof room, with data collected one molecule at a time. Cornell physicists have shrunk the technology of an optical trap, which uses light to suspend and manipulate molecules like DNA and proteins, onto a single chip. And instead of just one molecule at a time, the new device can potentially trap hundreds of molecules at once, reducing month-long experiments to days. “We love single-molecule experiments because the data are beautiful and clear, and we learn so much by manipulating and perturbing molecules and watching how things change,” said Michelle Wang, professor of physics, who led the study published online in Nature Nanotechnology April 28. But the experimental technique itself could use some improvement, which motivated Wang, who studies DNA and its associated motor proteins, to contemplate solutions.

The post Optical traps on chip manipulate many molecules at once has been published on Technology Org.

#materials
See Zazzle gifts tagged with 'science'

CERN experiment sheds new light on cloud formation

Giant telescope tackles orbit and size of exoplanet

more »

Using one of the world's largest telescopes, astronomers have tracked the orbit of a planet at least four times the size of Jupiter. The scientists were able to identify the orbit of the exoplanet, Beta Pictoris b, which sits 63 light years from our solar system, by using the Gemini Planet Imager's (GPI) next-generation, high-contrast adaptive optics (AO) system. This approach is sometimes referred to as extreme AO.

via Science Daily

Zazzle Space Exploration market place

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is smaller than ever seen before

more »

Recent Hubble observations confirm that Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a swirling storm feature larger than Earth, has shrunken to the smallest size astronomers have ever measured. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a churning anticyclonic storm.

via Science Daily

Zazzle Space Exploration market place

Drought monitoring using space-based rainfall observations

more »

Using modern weather satellites to monitor rainfall has become a robust, widely practiced technique. However, establishing a reliable context for relating space-based rainfall observations to current and historical ground-based rainfall data has been difficult. Now researchers are using space-based rainfall observations and comparing them to current and historical ground-based rainfall data to observe early warning of drought and famine to monitor rainfall in near real-time, at a high resolution, over most of the globe.

via Science Daily

Zazzle Space Exploration market place

High-speed solar winds increase lightning strikes on Earth

more »

Scientists have discovered new evidence to suggest that lightning on Earth is triggered not only by cosmic rays from space, but also by energetic particles from the sun. Researchers found a link between increased thunderstorm activity on Earth and streams of high-energy particles accelerated by the solar wind, offering compelling evidence that particles from space help trigger lightning bolts.

via Science Daily

Zazzle Space Exploration market place

Orion Nebula and Trapezium Stars Sticker

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

Orion Nebula and Trapezium Stars Sticker

tagged with: envelope sealers, ornebcsfr, awesome astronomy images, orion nebula, emission nebula, trapezium stars, emission nebulae, dust clouds, hot young stars, star nursery, new born stars

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series A gorgeous picture from the deep universe featuring the bubbling, seething mass of gas and dust that is the Orion Nebula, 1500 light years away and the closest star-forming region to us. The nebula is a star nursery in which there are birthing, new-born, young and adult stars. Look carefully in the brightest central region and you'll see the Trapezium, four of the most massive stars in Orion.

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

Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

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