Wednesday 13 August 2014

Forces that hold rapidly spinning near-Earth asteroid together discovered

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Astronomers studied near-Earth asteroid 1950 DA and discovered that the body, which rotates extremely quickly, is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals, never detected before on an asteroid.

via Science Daily

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Nanoscale details of electrochemical reactions in electric vehicle battery materials

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Jiajun Wang, Karen Chen and Jun Wang prepare a sample for study at NSLS beamline X8C. Using a new method to track the electrochemical reactions in a common electric vehicle battery material under operating conditions, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have revealed new insight into why fast charging inhibits this material’s performance. The study also provides the first direct experimental evidence to support a particular model of the electrochemical reaction. The results, published August 4, 2014, in Nature Communications, could provide guidance to inform battery makers’ efforts to optimize materials for faster-charging batteries with higher capacity. “This is the first time anyone has been able to see that delithiation was happening differently at different spatial locations on an electrode under rapid charging conditions.” — Brookhaven physicist Jun Wang “Our work was focused on developing a method to track structural and electrochemical changes at the nanoscale as the battery material was charging,” said Brookhaven physicist Jun Wang, who led the research. Her group was particularly interested in chemically mapping what happens in lithium iron phosphate—a material commonly used in the cathode, or positive electrode, of electrical vehicle batteries—as the battery charged. “We wanted to catch and monitor

The post Nanoscale details of electrochemical reactions in electric vehicle battery materials has been published on Technology Org.

 
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After 10 years, Rosetta probe catches up with its comet destination

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Today, the European Space Agency announced that its Rosetta mission successfully arrived at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10-year journey. As the probe approached over the past several weeks, it provided greater detail on the oddly shaped comet, which was venting water as its orbit drew it closer to the Sun. Now, at just 100km from the comet's surface, Rosetta is providing detailed images of a truly otherworldly landscape.

67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko occupies an elliptical orbit that takes it from areas beyond Jupiter to somewhere in between Earth and Mars (currently, it's midway between Jupiter and Mars). That presents a significant challenge, since any probe intended to track the comet must roughly match its orbit before approaching—or it would need a prohibitive volume of propellant to slow down. This explains Rosetta's 10-year journey, which included four orbital flybys of Earth and Mars to put it in place for a gradual approach.

Earlier this year, Rosetta successfully woke from hibernation, and it's been imaging the comet during its approach. Early images indicated that 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has a two-lobed structure that some have compared to a rubber duck, albeit one with an unusually large head. The second lobe, corresponding to the duck's body, is broader and more oblong.

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 » see original post http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/science/~3/HMLCqkrKUes/
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Fiber optic light pipes in the retina do much more than simple image transfer

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Muller Cells appear to act as living optical fibers. Credit: vision-research.eu Having the photoreceptors at the back of the retina is not a design constraint, it is a design feature. The idea that the vertebrate eye, like a traditional front-illuminated camera, might have been improved somehow if it had only been able to orient its wiring behind the photoreceptor layer, like a cephalopod, is folly. Indeed in simply engineered systems, like CMOS or CCD image sensors, a back-illuminated design manufactured by flipping the silicon wafer and thinning it so that light hits the photocathode without having to navigate the wiring layer can improve photon capture across a wide wavelength band. But real eyes are much more crafty than that. A case in point are the Müller glia cells that span the thickness of the retina. These high refractive index cells spread an absorptive canopy across the retinal surface and then shepherd photons through a low-scattering cytoplasm to separate receivers, much like coins through a change sorting machine. A new paper in Nature Communicationsdescribes how these wavelength-dependent wave-guides can shuttle green-red light to cones while passing the blue-purples to adjacent rods. Read more at: Phys..org  

The post Fiber optic light pipes in the retina do much more than simple image transfer has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/7RvSooslF6o/
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AUDIO: Scientists hail dinosaur discovery

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Scientists from the University of Zurich and the Natural History Museum have discovered a previously unknown species of dinosaur. 
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 » see original post http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-28673614#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Rings Around the Ring Nebula

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

NGC 3372 Carinae Nebula from the Hubble Case For The iPad Mini

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: carinae, nebula, ngc, 3372, hubble, telescope, astronomy, space, outer space

A Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of NGC 3372. The image is 50 light-years wide and a composite of 48 frames. The false color image was created using the following formula: red for sulfur, green for hydrogen, and blue for oxygen emissions. Sign up to Mr. Rebates for FREE and save 12% on any zazzle order in addition to a $5.00 sign up bonus All Rights Reserved; without: prejudice, recourse or notice (U.C.C. 1-308) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eta_Carinae_Nebula_1.jpg carinae nebula ngc 3372 hubble telescope astronomy space "outer space"

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“Active” surfaces control what’s on them

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Researchers at MIT and in Saudi Arabia have developed a new way of making surfaces that can actively control how fluids or particles move across them. The work might enable new kinds of biomedical or microfluidic devices, or solar panels that could automatically clean themselves of dust and grit. “Most surfaces are passive,” says Kripa Varanasi, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, and senior author of a paper describing the new system in the journal Applied Physics Letters. “They rely on gravity, or other forces, to move fluids or particles.” Varanasi’s team decided to use external fields, such as magnetic fields, to make surfaces active, exerting precise control over the behavior of particles or droplets moving over them. The system makes use of a microtextured surface, with bumps or ridges just a few micrometers across, that is then impregnated with a fluid that can be manipulated — for example, an oil infused with tiny magnetic particles, or ferrofluid, which can be pushed and pulled by applying a magnetic field to the surface. When droplets of water or tiny particles are placed on the surface, a thin coating of the fluid covers them, forming a magnetic cloak. The thin magnetized

The post “Active” surfaces control what’s on them has been published on Technology Org.

 
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The Sun in the Milky Way galaxy poster

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


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Early explorers mapping the continents of our globe, astronomers are busy charting the spiral structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Using infrared images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have discovered that the Milky Way's elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Previously, our galaxy was thought to possess four major arms. This artist's concept illustrates the new view of the Milky Way, along with other findings presented at the 212th American Astronomical Society meeting in St. Louis, Mo. The galaxy's two major arms (Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus) can be seen attached to the ends of a thick central bar, while the two now-demoted minor arms (Norma and Sagittarius) are less distinct and located between the major arms. The major arms consist of the highest densities of both young and old stars; the minor arms are primarily filled with gas and pockets of star-forming activity. The artist's concept also includes a new spiral arm, called the "Far-3 kiloparsec arm," discovered via a radio-telescope survey of gas in the Milky Way. This arm is shorter than the two major arms and lies along the bar of the galaxy. Our sun lies near a small, partial arm called the Orion Arm, or Orion Spur, located between the Sagittarius and Perseus arms.

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