Doubly accelerated electrons detected in collisions of galaxy clusters

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A cosmic phenomenon resulting from the acceleration of a gas cloud by a black hole and its reacceleration by the shock waves from the merging of two galaxy clusters has been described by an international collaboration of astronomers. The study enriches scientists' understanding of the universe on the largest scale.
via Science Daily
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Charting the skies of history

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Ice cores and ancient sediments can be gleaned for clues to weather and climate in the past. But astronomical phenomena -- such as solar flares or auroras -- at best leave only faint environmental traces lacking in specificity. Now scientists have used historical documents to garner better insight into the patterns of past solar events.
via Science Daily
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Researchers 'iron out' graphene's wrinkles

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Engineers have found a way to make graphene with fewer wrinkles, and to iron out the wrinkles that do appear. After fabricating and then flattening out the graphene, the researchers tested its electrical conductivity. They found each wafer exhibited uniform performance, meaning that electrons flowed freely across each wafer, at similar speeds, even across previously wrinkled regions.
via Science Daily

Carbon nanotubes self-assemble into tiny transistors

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Carbon nanotubes can be used to make very small electronic devices, but they are difficult to handle. Scientists have developed a method to select semiconducting nanotubes from a solution and make them self-assemble on a circuit of gold electrodes.
via Science Daily

Life on Mars: Get to Know the Crew

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Six people are living in isolation for eight months on a volcano in Hawaii as part of a study to simulate human exploration of Mars. In the second episode of this 360-video series, we find out how they are settling in — and how they clean the toilet.
via New York Times

Neptune's journey during early planet formation was 'smooth and calm'

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A major discovery has been made on the formation of icy bodies within the Kuiper Belt, unlocking unique evidence that Neptune's movement during early planet formation was a 'smooth and calm' journey.
via Science Daily
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Filaments of Active Galaxy NGC 1275

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What keeps these filaments attached to this galaxy? The filaments persist in NGC 1275 even though the turmoil of galactic collisions should destroy them. First, active galaxy NGC 1275 is the central, dominant member of the large and relatively nearby Perseus Cluster of Galaxies. Wild-looking at visible wavelengths, the active galaxy is also a prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission. NGC 1275 accretes matter as entire galaxies fall into it, ultimately feeding a supermassive black hole at the galaxy's core. This composite image, recreated from archival Hubble Space Telescope data, highlights the resulting galactic debris and filaments of glowing gas, some up to 20,000 light-years long. Observations indicate that the structures, pushed out from the galaxy's center by the black hole's activity, are held together by magnetic fields. Also known as Perseus A, NGC 1275 spans over 100,000 light years and lies about 230 million light years away.

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DNA double helix structures crystals

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Engineers have now succeeded in producing complex crystal lattices, so-called clathrates, from nanoparticles using DNA strands. The programmed synthesis of clathrates represents a template for the precision modelling of novel nanomaterials.
via Science Daily

Tiny black holes enable a new type of photodetector for high speed data

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Tiny 'black holes' on a silicon wafer make for a new type of photodetector that could move more data at lower cost around the world or across a datacenter.
via Science Daily

Photonic crystal and nanowire combo advances 'photonic integration'

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While bigger nanowires can improve light confinement and performance, it increases both energy consumption and device footprint -- both of which are considered 'fatal' when it comes to integration. Addressing this problem, researchers came up with an approach that involves combining a sub-wavelength nanowire with a photonic crystal platform.
via Science Daily

Atomic-level activity of green catalyst used in PVC production revealed by researchers

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Individual ions of gold dispersed on a carbon support are the ideal catalytic species for converting acetylene, a gas derived from coal, into the molecule used to manufacture PVC, report scientists. The discovery comes amid international efforts to phase out acetylene conversion, which relies on a mercury-containing catalyst.
via Science Daily

Next-generation software supports explorations beyond the nanoworld into the intramolecular picoworld

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A physicist has recently upgraded his data acquisition and visualization software for scanning probe microscopy, enhancing scientists’ ability to observe and control individual atoms and molecules.
via Science Daily

Engineer Patents Waterlike Polymer to Create High-Temperature Ceramics

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Using five ingredients — silicon, boron, carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen — an engineer has created a liquid polymer that can transform into a ceramic with valuable thermal, optical and electronic properties.
via Science Daily

Modern alchemy creates luminescent iron molecules

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Scientists have made the first iron-based molecule capable of emitting light. This could contribute to the development of affordable and environmentally friendly materials for e.g. solar cells, light sources and displays.
via Science Daily

A faster single-pixel camera

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A new technique makes image acquisition using compressed sensing 50 times as efficient, report investigators. In the case of the single-pixel camera, it could get the number of exposures down from thousands to dozens.
via Science Daily

Team highlights work on tuning block polymers for nanostructured systems

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High-performance materials are enabling major advances in a wide range of applications from energy generation and digital information storage to disease screening and medical devices. Block polymers, which are two or more polymer chains with different properties linked together, show great promise for many of these applications, and a research group has made significant strides in their development over the past several years.
via Science Daily

Discovery: Stretchy silver for flexible phones

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A team of scientists has discovered that silver wires, between about 10 and 40 nanometers wide, have an amazing combination of super-strength and stretchiness. The discovery holds promise for the creation of flexible touchscreens and other technologies.
via Science Daily

Quantum communication: How to outwit noise

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Quantum information transfer requires reliable information transfer from one quantum system to the other, which is extremely difficult to achieve. Independently, two research teams have now developed a new quantum communication protocol. This protocol enables reliable quantum communication even under the presence of contaminating noise. Both research groups work with the same basic concept: To make the protocol immune to the noise, they add an additional element, a so-called quantum oscillator, at both ends of the quantum channel.
via Science Daily