In astronomy, for example, evenly spaced slits known as diffraction gratings are used routinely to direct light and spread it into its component colors.
By"tuning"the spaces between the bars, it's possible to select the specific color to be reflected.
and there is no space left at radio frequencies for future expansion. At the same time, the grand challenge of the next-generation 5g network is to increase the data capacity by 1, 000 times.
"said study lead author Hirotaka Sato, an assistant professor at NTU's School of Mechanical and Aerospace engineering."
and Tania Monteiro (UCL Physics and Astronomy) has developed a new technology which could one day create quantum phenomena in objects far larger than any achieved so far.
& Astronomy), lead author of the study.""Large objects, like the ones we see around us,
and so barely interact with gravity. Observing quantum effects in large and heavy objects like these nanoparticles would also shed light on the role of gravity in quantum physics s
#Revolutionary 3-D printing technology uses continuous liquid interface production (w/video) A 3d printing technology developed by Silicon valley startup,
the speed of light is reduced. This will greatly enhance the optical nonlinearity. At a slightly different frequency, the bandgap will completely inhibit
which enables them to perform powerful movements in restricted spaces, explains Seelecke. The term shape memory refers to the fact that the wire is able to remember its shape
The technology also is gravity independent and potentially highly reliable, so it may find use in the thermal management of space systems as well.
The next big step is"to build the first prototype to demonstrate the technology's potential,
"It's also important in space applications, where any change in humidity could signal a leak,
#Desalination with nanoporous graphene membrane Less than 1 percent of Earth's water is drinkable. Removing salt and other minerals from our biggest available source of water--seawater--may help satisfy a growing global population thirsty for fresh water for drinking, farming, transportation, heating, cooling and industry.
such as soft and lightweight robots for circumstances with restricted space and weight requirements or flapping wings of soft robotic birds that can generate a large lift force.
Developed at A*STAR, the model describes the movement of vibrations called phonons, which are responsible for carrying heat in insulating materials.
As the rocket contracts, it can achieve more than 2. 6 times the thrust of a rigid rocket doing the same manoeuvre,
This arrangement produces a flying saucer shape, with the ligands stretching out more at the interface than above or below.
such as ultra-sensitive photo detectors to image distant stars, or flexible memory elements which could be used in wearable computers s
The sun is an abundant and practically infinite source of energy, so researchers around the world are racing to create novel approaches to"harvest"clean energy from the sun or transfer that energy to other sources.
This week in the journal Applied Physics Letters("Metamaterial electromagnetic energy harvester with near unity efficiency"),researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada report a novel design for electromagnetic energy harvesting based on
Among the most important is space solar power, an emerging critical technology that can significantly help to address energy shortages.
with plans to begin harvesting solar power from space by 2030.""Our research enables significantly higher energy absorption than classical antennas,
the direction of the center of the Earth. An accelerometer measures all the accelerations of the aircraft including gravity,
which is directed always toward the center of the Earth. However, this essential tool has no equivalent in insects,
which fly quite happily without this information. Researchers Fabien Expert and Franck Ruffier therefore took inspiration from winged insects to create Beerotor,
Lightness is required also in the space industry, where every kilogram sent into space has a considerable cost.
Without necessarily replacing accelerometers optic flow sensors could be used as an ultra-light backup system in the event of failure on a space mission4.
Notes (1) The robot, which has 3 degrees of freedom (pitch, altitude, forward) flies around an axis to
#Flexible sensors turn skin into a touch-sensitive interaction space for mobile devices (w/video) If a mobile phone rings during a meeting,
thin hairs. hen we put these two aliens together, we create something better, Yap says,
#5 billion light years across: the largest feature in the universe A Hungarian-US team of astronomers have found
what appears to be the largest feature in the observable universe: a ring of nine gamma ray bursts and hence galaxies-5 billion light years across.
The scientists, led by Prof Lajos Balazs of Kokoly Observatory in Budapest, report their work in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society("A giant ringlike structure at 0. 78<z<0. 86 displayed by GRBS").
"Gamma-ray bursts (GRBS) are the most luminous events in the universe, releasing as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun does over its 10 billion year lifetime.
They are thought to be the result of massive stars collapsing into black holes. Their huge luminosity helps astronomers to map out the location of distant galaxies, something the team exploited.
The GRBS that make up the newly discovered ring were observed using a variety of space -and ground-based observatories (see the Gamma ray Burst Online Index at http://www. astro. caltech. edu/grbox/grbox. php).
They appear to be at very similar distances from us around 7 billion light years in a circle 36°across on the sky,
or more than 70 times the diameter of the Full moon. This implies that the ring is more than 5 billion light years across,
and according to Prof Balazs there is only a 1 in 20,000 probability of the GRBS being in this distribution by chance.
Most current models indicate that the structure of the cosmos is uniform on the largest scales.
This osmological Principleis backed up by observations of the early universe and its microwave background signature
seen by the WMAP and Planck satellites. Other recent results and this new discovery challenge the principle,
which sets a theoretical limit of 1. 2 billion light years for the largest structures. The newly discovered ring is almost five times as large.
If the ring represents a real spatial structure, then it has to be seen nearly face-on because of the small variations of GRB distances around the object's centre.
The ring could though instead be a projection of a sphere, where the GRBS all occurred within a 250 million year period,
a short timescale compared with the age of the universe. A spheroidal ring projection would mirror the strings of clusters of galaxies seen to surround voids in the universe;
voids and string-like formations are seen and predicted by many models of the cosmos. The newly discovered ring is however at least ten times larger than known voids.
Prof Balazs comments: f we are right, this structure contradicts the current models of the universe.
It was a huge surprise to find something this big and we still don quite understand how it came to exist at all.
The team now want to find out more about the ring, and establish whether the known processes for galaxy formation
and large scale structure could have led to its creation, or if astronomers need to radically revise their theories of the evolution of the cosmos l
#Nanotechnology developed to help treat heart attack and stroke Australian researchers funded by the National Heart Foundation are a step closer to a safer
and more effective way to treat heart attack and stroke via nanotechnology. The research jointly lead by Professor Christoph Hagemeyer, Head of the Vascular Biotechnology Laboratory at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute and Professor Frank Caruso,
which a robot might use gravity to toss and catch an object, as well as how surfaces like a tabletop may help a robot roll an object between its fingers.
or even space exploration whenever you have a gripper that is not dexterous like a human hand,
and atmosphere molecules, resulting in new optical properties in graphene. The potential of the altered optical properties (like spectral transmission) of functionalized graphene are just starting to be recognized,
and power plants into the atmosphere and instead turns it into a useful product. One possible end product is methanol,
says Yong Zhu, co-senior author of the paper and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State.
#Astronomers discover'young Jupiter'exoplanet The first planet detected by the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) from an international team of astronomers,
& Astronomy at Stony Brook University, is one outside earths solar system at 100 light years away.
The exoplanet is being called a young Jupiter by the researchers because it shares many characteristics of Jupiter.
A paper outlining the full findings is published in Science. Discovery image of the planet 51 Eridani b with the Gemini Planet Imager taken in the near-infrared light on December 18 2014.
The bright central star has been removed mostly to enable the detection of the exoplanet one million times fainter.
Image: J. Rameau, Udem and C. Marois, NRC Herzberg) The finding could serve as a decoder ring for astronomers to understand how planets formed around our sun
because one of the best ways to learn how our solar system evolved is to look to younger star systems in the earlier phase of development.
Stanimir Metchev, a Physics & Astronomy Professor at Western University in Canada and at Stony Brook University, is a co-investigator on the scientific study,
along with Rahul I. Patel, a Phd student in Stony Brooks Department of physics & Astronomy. They are both members of the international Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES) team
which is dedicated to imaging and characterising exoplanets, planets discovered outside of earths solar system. The new planet is called 51 Eridani b. The GPI is a new astronomy instrument operated by an international collaboration headed by Bruce Macintosh, a Professor of Physics in the Kavli Institute at Stanford.
The exoplanet is the'faintest'one on record, and also shows the strongest methane signature ever detected on an alien planet,
which should yield additional clues as to how the planet formed. The key to the solar system?
What makes 51 Eridani particularly interesting is that it also harbours dust and ice in the planetary system,"explains Professor Metchev.
These are much like the dust and the ice grains produced by collisions among asteroids and comets in the Solar system."
"Metchev's team conducted a study with data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE TO search for any thermal glow that such dust
and ice can produce.""We found that 51 Eridani is surrounded by warm dust that indicates the presence of an asteroid belt,
"says Patel, who led the WISE study and whose previous work identifying recycled planetary dust, known as debris disks, around close to a hundred other star systems, puts the discovery of the exoplanet in context.
Finding dust around a star is like seeing a large signpost that tells us there might be a planet,
he adds. This is because the dust is created usually when lots of large asteroids collide and destroy each other, usually pushed around by a large planet like 51 Eridani b. Metchev adds,"
"And more data from the European space agency's Herschel Space observatory reveal that 51 Eridani is surrounded also by a more distant and colder cometary belt, much like the Kuiper belt of comets beyond Neptune in the Solar system."
"The two belts the asteroid and the cometary belt around 51 Eridani fall on either side of the newly discovered planet 51 Eridani b."The overall structure bears striking resemblance to our own Solar system,
with Jupiter as the most massive planet orbiting between a belt of asteroids and a belt of comets,"explains Metchev."
"In 51 Eridani, we are therefore seeing what the Solar system resembled at a very young age,
around the time when the Earth was still forming.""A clear line of sight The GPI was designed specifically for discovering
and analyzing faint, young planets orbiting bright stars. NASA's Kepler mission indirectly discovers planets by the loss of starlight
when a planet blocks a star.""To detect planets, Kepler sees their shadow; GPI sees their glow,
"says Macintosh.""What GPI does is referred to as direct imaging.""The astronomers use adaptive optics to sharpen the image of a star,
and then block out the starlight. Any remaining incoming light is analyzed then, the brightest spots indicating a possible planet.
After GPI was installed on the 8-meter Gemini South Telescope in Chile, the team set out to look for planets orbiting young stars.
To date, the astronomers have looked at nearly 100 stars.""51 Eridani is only 20 million years old,
a little more massive than our sun a perfect target,"says James Graham, a professor at UC Berkeley and Project Scientist for GPI.
As far as the cosmic clock is concerned, 20 million years is young for a star,
and this is exactly what made the direct detection of the planet possible, explains Macintosh.""When planets coalesce, material falling into the planet releases energy and heats it up.
Over the next hundred millions years they radiate that energy away, mostly as infrared light,"says Macintosh.
Once the astronomers zeroed in on the star, they blocked its light and spotted 51 Eridani b orbiting a little farther away from its parent star than Saturn does from the sun
. Even though the light from the planet is very faint nearly a million times fainter than its star subsequent observations revealed that it is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter.
Other directly-imaged planets are five times the mass of Jupiter or more. In addition to being the faintest planet ever imaged
it's also the coldest 400 Celsius (C), whereas others are around 700 C and features the strongest atmospheric methane signal on record.
Previous Jupiter-like exoplanets have shown only faint traces of methane, far different from the heavy methane atmospheres of the gas giants in our solar system.
All of these characteristics, the researchers say, point to a planet that is very much what models suggest Jupiter was like in its infancy."
"All of the exoplanets astronomers have imaged before have atmospheres that look like stars very cool stars, but still stars,"says Macintosh,
who led the construction of GPI and now leads the survey.""This is the first one that really looks like a planet."
"Of course, it's not exactly like Jupiter. The planet is so young and still has a temperature of 400 C,
which is hot enough to melt lead.""In the atmospheres of the cold giant planets of our solar system carbon is found as methane,
unlike most exoplanets where carbon has mostly been found in the form of carbon monoxide. Since the atmosphere of 51 Eridani is also methane rich,
it signifies that this planet is well on its way to becoming a cousin of our own familiar Jupiter,
"says Mark Marley, an astrophysicist at NASAS Ames Research center r
#Black phosphorus surges ahead of graphene A Korean team of scientists tune BP's band gap to form a superior conductor,
allowing for the application to be produced mass for electronic and optoelectronics devices("Observation of tunable bandgap and anisotropic Dirac semimetal state in black phosphorus").The research team operating out of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH),
affiliated with the Institute for Basic Science's (IBS) Center for Artificial Low Dimensional Electronic systems (CALDES), reported a tunable band gap in BP,
effectively modifying the semiconducting material into a unique state of matter with anisotropic dispersion. This research outcome potentially allows for great flexibility in the design
and optimization of electronic and optoelectronic devices like solar panels and telecommunication lasers. black phosphorus To truly understand the significance of the team's findings,
it's instrumental to understand the nature of two-dimensional (2-D) materials, and for that one must go back to 2010
when the world of 2-D materials was dominated by a simple thin sheet of carbon,
a layered form of carbon atoms constructed to resemble honeycomb, called graphene. Graphene was heralded globally as a wonder-material thanks to the work of two British scientists who won the Nobel prize for Physics for their research on it.
Graphene is extremely thin and has remarkable attributes. It is stronger than steel yet many times lighter
more conductive than copper and more flexible than rubber. All these properties combined make it a tremendous conductor of heat and electricity.
A defect-free layer is also impermeable to all atoms and molecules. This amalgamation makes it a terrifically attractive material to apply to scientific developments in a wide variety of fields, such as electronics, aerospace and sports.
For all its dazzling promise there is however a disadvantage; graphene has no band gap. Stepping stones to a Unique State A material's band gap is fundamental to determining its electrical conductivity.
Imagine two river crossings, one with tightly-packed stepping-stones, and the other with large gaps between stones.
The former is far easier to traverse because a jump between two tightly-packed stones requires less energy.
A band gap is much the same; the smaller the gap the more efficiently the current can move across the material and the stronger the current.
Graphene has a band gap of zero in its natural state, however, and so acts like a conductor;
"Since before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour,
or monochromatic light oscillates at all points in space with the same frequency but varying relative delays, or phases.
Polarization refers to the trajectory of the oscillations of the electromagnetic field at each point in space.
Unlike conventional solar cells that directly absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity, an LSC absorbs the light on a plate embedded with highly efficient light-emitters called lumophores that then re-emit the absorbed light at longer wavelengths, a process known as the Stokes shift.
thus allowing arge scale exploration alloy materials space, according to their article. They specifically concentrated on the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide on metal electrodes ecause of the current interest in this process for sustainable production of fuels and value added chemicals,
Conversion of CO2 to something useful could dramatically reduce its emission into the atmosphere and help alleviate the global warming problem.
They are planned also for use in the next Mars rover vehicle.""But if they become easier and cheaper to make,
they could be used widely in many applications including as exceptionally strong components in personal electronic devices, in space exploration vehicles,
or ionized, from its orbit around a helium atom. Like all subatomic particles, electrons occupy a realm governed by quantum mechanics.
By firing two time-delayed, ultrashort laser pulses at a helium atom, the researchers found that the distribution of momentum values for these intersecting electron waves can take the form of a two-armed vortex that resembles a spiral galaxy.
a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a member of UCLA California Nanosystems Institute, is published Sept. 21 in the online edition of the journal Nature Materials("Three-dimensional coordinates of individual atoms
"For more than 100 years, researchers have inferred how atoms are arranged in three-dimensional space using a technique called X-ray crystallography,
noninvasive 3d biomedical imaging photonic chips aerospace photonics micromachines laser tweezing the process of using lasers to trap tiny particles.
#Highest efficiency hydrogen production under natural sunlight Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Miyazaki University have produced hydrogen under natural sunlight at an energy conversion efficiency of 24.4,
and it is possible to produce hydrogen under sunlight at a high efficiency with an appropriate system design for each installation,
but if operated in countries with high solar irradiance it would be possible to generate solar electricity at low cost owing to the high energy conversion efficiency.
So far, physicists have assumed that it is impossible to directly access the characteristics of the ground state of empty space.
From spontaneous emission of light by excited atoms e g. in a fluorescent tube to influences on the structure of the universe during the Big Bang:
A sailor will use cues such as the stars or landmarks to determine where their ship is on a map,
The robot was able to detect loops in the path through the office space and,
In the scheme, laser pulses, functioning as three-dimensional lenses in both time and space, can compress electron pulses to attosecond durations and sub-micrometer dimensions,
Compressing Electron Pulses In time and Space Short pulse durations are critical for high temporal resolution in ultrafast electron imaging techniques.
such as transporting substances through outer space, shaping the earth's surface and processing ozone-damaging molecules in the stratosphere.
night-vision goggles and smoke detectors to surveillance systems and satellites--that rely on electronic light sensors. Integrated into a digital camera lens, for example, it could reduce bulkiness and boost both the acquisition speed and quality of video or still photos.
Jingchuan Sun, an EM expert in Li's lab, was essential to the success of the work.
"Sun said.""Our lab has expertise and a decade of experience using electron microscopy to study DNA replication,
A Layered Manganese Oxide To Capture Sunlight for Water-Splitting Catalysis"),Assistant professor of Chemical engineering Jose L. Mendoza-Cortes details how this new material efficiently captures sunlight and then,
and it could turn rain water into energy with the help of the sun."But, unlike many other energy sources,
and you do need not a large amount to capture enough sunlight to carry out fuel generation
#Ultrasensitive sensors made from boron-doped graphene Ultrasensitive gas sensors based on the infusion of boron atoms into graphene--a tightly bound matrix of carbon atoms--may soon be possible, according to an international team of researchers
when exposed to the atmosphere. One-centimeter-square sheets were synthesized at Penn State in a one-of-a-kind bubbler-assisted chemical vapor deposition system.
#Scientists discover the gene that will open the door for space-based food production Queensland University of Technology (QUT) scientists have discovered the gene that will open the door for space-based food production.
--and space was an intriguing option.""So the recent film The Martian, which involved an astronaut stranded on Mars growing potatoes
while living in an artificial habitat, had a bit more science fact than fiction than people might think,
"he said. Professor Waterhouse said the team's findings also have implications for future genetic research back here On earth."
or when the sun goes down remains a challenge, largely due to cost. Now researchers are developing a new battery that could bring the price of storage to more affordable levels.
Facebook Reveals Facebook has entered the virtual digital assistant space with a new service for its millions of Messenger users,
Facebook M can complete the tasks on behalf of the userfacebook M brings something new to the virtual digital assistant space
a space that is vastly dominated by Siri from Apple and Google Now from you know where.
The analysis showed that the chemically fixed brain was much smaller in volume, showing a significant loss of extracellular space the space around neurons.
The new paper suggests that the narrow spaces between ocular dominance columns associated with the left and right eye are where the brain coordinates each eye working field of vision.
those narrow spaces can function with either eye uch like a bilingual person living near the border of two countries,
because more information can be collected in a shorter space of time. Dr. Gaur added: his device could transform the way people with severe muscular weakness
but even a state-of-the-art humanoid such as NASA Robonaut has only 42 sensors in its hand and wrist.
developed together with researchers at Intelligent Fiber optic Systems Corp.,with support from NASA, Sept. 29 at the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2015, in Hamburg, Germany.
which protect the organisms from negative effects of sunlight, such as DNA damage. The research also shows that the exact manner in which the photoreceptors bind to the DNA is novel.
#t bleak The universe is dying he Universe has plonked basically itself down on the sofa,
An international team of astronomers from the Galaxy and Mass Assembly Survey analysed starlight from more than 200,000 galaxies to find the universe is emitting far less energy than it once was.
from the International Centre for Radio astronomy Research, said scientists came to this conclusion after conducting the largest multi wavelength survey ever put together. e used as many space
and ground-based telescopes we could get our hands on to measure the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible,
In total the team measured outputs across 21 different wavelengths from ultraviolet (characterises younger stars) to the far infrared (characterises younger stars.
Prof Driver said the data showed the amount of energy being generated was two times less than the amount of energy that was being generated two billion years ago. hat tells us that the universe is essentially dying,
and moving towards its grand era of retirement after having produced massive bursts of energy early on in the formation of the universe. t now fading and dwindling and diminishing. t will just become a very dark,
Prof Driver added it has been common knowledge the universe has been fading since the late 1990s,
#NASA Mars isolation experiment begins SIX people are about to shut themselves inside a dome in Hawaii for a year,
in the longest US isolation experiment yet aimed at helping NASA prepare for a pioneering journey to Mars. The crew includes a French astrobiologist, a German physicist and four Americans a pilot, an architect, a doctor/journalist and a soil
The men and women have their own small rooms, with space for a sleeping cot and desk,
only going outside if dressed in a spacesuit, and having limited access to the internet.
NASA current technology can send a robotic mission to the Red planet in eight months, and the space agency estimates that a human mission would take between one and three years.
With all that time spent in a cramped space without access to fresh air, food,
or privacy, conflicts are certain to occur. The US space agency is studying how these scenarios play out On earth in a program called Hawaii Space exploration Analog
and Simulation (HI-SEAS) before pressing on toward Mars, which NASA hopes to reach sometime in the 2030s.
The first HI-SEAS experiment involved studies about cooking on Mars, and was followed by a four-month and an eight-month cohabitation mission.
NASA is spending $us1. 2 million ($a1. 67 million) on these simulations, and has received just funding of another million for three more in the coming years according to principal investigator Kim Binsted. hat is very cheap for space research,
she told AFP. t is compared really inexpensive to the cost of a space mission going wrong. Binsted said that during the eight-month cohabitation mission
which ended earlier this year, conflicts did arise but the crew was able to work through their problems. think one of the lessons is that you really can prevent interpersonal conflicts.
It is going to happen over these long-duration missions, even with the very best people,
she told AFP. ut what you can do is help people be resilient so they respond well to the problems
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