Although superconductivity has already been observed in intercalated bulk graphite--three-dimensional crystals layered with alkali metal atoms,
based on the graphite used in pencils--inducing superconductivity in single-layer graphene has eluded until now scientists.""Decorating monolayer graphene with a layer of lithium atoms enhances the graphene's electron-phonon coupling to the point where superconductivity can be induced,
#Genome mining effort discovers 19 new natural products in four years It took two postdoctoral researchers, a lab technician,
The researchers describe the new findings as a proof of concept that genome mining can be used on a scale that will speed the process of drug discovery,
consists of a 200 nanometre thin layer of yttrium iron garnet (a mineral and magnetic insulator, YIG in short), with a conducting platinum strip on top of that on both sides.
you can now add hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. However, unlike the other contenders, which are covalent semiconductors,
these 2d hybrid perovskites are ionic materials, which gives them special properties of their own. Researchers at the U s. Department of energy (DOE)' s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have grown successfully atomically thin 2d sheets of organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites from solution.
The ultrathin sheets are of high quality large in area, and square-shaped. They also exhibited efficient photoluminescence, color-tunability,
and characterization of atomically thin 2d hybrid perovskites and introduces a new family of 2d solution-processed semiconductors for nanoscale optoelectronic devices, such as field effect transistors and photodetectors."
The paper is titled"Atomically thin two-dimensional organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites.""The lead authors are Letian Dou, Andrew Wong and Yi Yu, all members of Yang's research group.
Traditional perovskites are typically metal-oxide materials that display a wide range of fascinating electromagnetic properties,
In the past couple of years, organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites have been processed solution into thin films or bulk crystals for photovoltaic devices that have reached a 20-percent power conversion efficiency.
while a Phd student at Harvard university, Yang proposed a method for preparing 2d hybrid perovskite nanostructures
a hybrid perovskite made from a blend of lead, bromine, nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen atoms.""Unlike exfoliation and chemical vapor deposition methods,
which normally produce relatively thick perovskite plates, we were able to grow uniform square-shaped 2d crystals on a flat substrate with high yield
This suggests that color-tuning could be achieved in these 2d hybrid perovskites by changing sheet thickness as well as composition via the synthesis of related materials."
Such ion-selective membranes may also be useful in mining: In the future, it may be possible to make graphene nanopores capable of sifting out trace amounts of gold ions from other metal ions, like silver and aluminum.
Knowing this, researchers may one day be able to tailor pores at the nanoscale to create ion-specific membranes for applications such as environmental sensing and trace metal mining."
#Scientists pave way for diamonds to trace early cancers Physicists from the University of Sydney have devised a way to use diamonds to identify cancerous tumours before they become life threatening.
synthetic version of the precious gem can light up early-stage cancers in nontoxic, noninvasive Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.
researchers from the University investigated how nanoscale diamonds could help identify cancers in their earliest stages."
"We knew nano diamonds were of interest for delivering drugs during chemotherapy because they are largely nontoxic and non-reactive,
"We thought we could build on these nontoxic properties realising that diamonds have magnetic characteristics enabling them to act as beacons in MRIS.
a process of aligning atoms inside a diamond so they create a signal detectable by an MRI SCANNER."
"By attaching hyperpolarised diamonds to molecules targeting cancers the technique can allow tracking of the molecules'movement in the body,
the researchers used a single-point diamond turning lathe. The lenses were enclosed then in an all-plastic, 3d-printed microscope housing and objective.
#Internal fingerprint sensor peers inside fingertips for more surefire ID In the 1971 film Diamonds are Forever,
British secret agent James bond uses fake fingerprints as part of a ploy to assume the identity of a diamond smuggler.
Scientists have experimented for decades with a class of catalysts known as zeolites that transform alcohols such as ethanol into higher-grade hydrocarbons.
As ORNL researchers were developing a new type of zeolite-based conversion technology, they found the underlying reaction unfolds in a different manner than previously thought."
Instead, an energy-producing"hydrocarbon pool"mechanism allows the zeolite catalysts to directly produce longer hydrocarbon chains from the original alcohols."
especially at night. ore than half of all men in their sixties and as many as 80 percent of men in their seventies and eighties have some symptoms of BPH,
Yet fossil fuels, especially coal, will remain a significant source of energy to meet human needs for the foreseeable future.
Cytof employs a technique called mass spectrometry and rare earth metals instead of fluorescent compounds, so scientists can use about 40 markers (and up to 100 in the future).
#Transparent Armor based on Spinel Could Also Ruggedize Your Smart Phone Imagine a glass window that tough like armor,
Except it not glass, it a special ceramic called spinel {spin-ELL} that the U s. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been researching over the last 10 years. pinel is actually a mineral,
it magnesium aluminate, says Dr. Jas Sanghera, who leads the research. he advantage is it so much tougher, stronger, harder than glass.
a thinner layer of spinel can give better performance than glass. or weight-sensitive platforms-UAVS unmanned autonomous vehicles, head-mounted face shieldst a game-changing technology.
NRL invented a new way of making transparent spinel, using a hot press, called sintering.
Sanghera says spinel has nique optical properties; not only can you see through it, but it allows infrared light to go through it.
That means the military, for imaging systems, an use spinel as the window because it allows the infrared light to come through.
NRL is also looking at spinel for the windows on lasers operating in maritime and other hostile environments. e got to worry about wave slap and saltwater and things like that,
And so that where spinel comes into its own, says Sanghera. Says Sanghera, verything we do,
What is spinel? Spinel can be mined as a gemstone; a famous example is the Black Prince Ruby,
which is actually spinel with a color dopant. NRL chemists have synthesized also their own ultra-high purity spinel powder,
and other synthetic versions are commercially available. he precursors are all earth abundant, so it available in reasonably low cost, says Sanghera.
The spinel NRL makes is a polycrystalline material, or a lot of crystal particles all pressed together.
Whereas with glass, crack that forms on the surface will go all the way through, spinel might chip
but it won crack. t like navigating through the asteroid belt, you create a tortuous path:
if I have all these crystals packed together, the crack gets deflected at the hard crystals:
When scientists first started trying to make glass-like spinel, they were using a crucible instead of a press. big problem with growing crystals is that you have to melt the starting powder at very high temperatures,
the spinel will come out flat. ut if I have a ball and socket joint, put the powder in there,
with the sintering aid they were adding to the spinel powder. t about one percent of a different powder,
and the spinel will come out clear across the press. To further increase the quality of the optic, ou can grind
and polish this just like you would do gems, says Sanghera. This is the most costly part of the process. ne of the things wee looking at is,
The military in particular may want to use spinel as transparent armor for vehicles and face shields.
and glass perhaps five inches thick. f you replaced that with spinel, you reduce the weight by a factor of two or more,
The military also interested in using spinel to better protect visible and infrared cameras on planes and other platforms.
Spinel windows could also protect sensors on space satellites, an area Sanghera interested in testing. ou could leave these out there for longer periods of time,
NRL is also looking at spinel (and other materials) for next generation (NEXTGEN) lasers. asers can be thought of as a box comprised of optics,
working with ltra high purityspinel powder theye synthesized in NRL clean rooms, spinel incredible potential. For active laser applications, theye demonstrated how sintering can be used with materials other than spinel to make a laser that xcellent optical quality.
Instead of spinel they use, hings like yttria or lutecia and and dope them with rare earth ions.
NRL has transitioned both types of laser materials and applications to industry. What makes NRL tick is solving problems Sanghera came to NRL in 1988,
after completing his Phd at the Imperial College, London in materials science. ittle by littlealking to people,
and a lot of his success with spinel comes from that heritage of insisting on purity and quality. n optical fiber very long:
Palacci and colleagues wrapped pale polymer around tiny cubes of hematite, a dark mineral of iron and oxygen that protrudes from the spherical beads as a reddish dot.
Under blue light the hematite conducts electricity and when bathed in hydrogen peroxide will catalyze a chemical reaction to split oxygen from hydrogen.
The polymer beads surf forward on those flows in the direction of their hematite protrusions.
This film is coated on both sides with highly flexible electrodes of graphite or carbon black. When the film deforms as a result of compression or stretching,
a type of lung cancer caused by inflammation following chronic exposure to asbestos, and colon cancer in people with a history of inflammatory bowel disease, says Bogdan Fedeles,
for instance, function as a coupled temperature-moisture sensor that rapidly switches from turquoise to dark blue colour for easy identification, reversibly, upon heating.
and too high-maintenance, said Tony Jun Huang, Penn State professor of engineering science and mechanics. ore importantly,
The current industry standard for rechargeable lithium-ion battery anodes is synthetic graphite, which comes with a high cost of manufacturing
a cheaper and sustainable source to replace graphite is needed. Using biomass a biological material from living or recently living organisms,
as a replacement for graphite, has drawn recent attention because of its high carbon content, low cost and environmental friendliness.
with optimization, replace graphite anodes. It also provides a binderless and current-collector free approach to anode fabrication. ith battery materials like this,
Nanocarbon architectures derived from biological materials such as mushrooms can be considered a green and sustainable alternative to graphite-based anodes,
One of the problems with conventional carbons, such as graphite, is that they are prepared typically with chemicals such as acids
It is expected that nearly 900,000 tons of natural raw graphite would be needed for anode fabrication for nearly six million electric vehicle forecast to be built by 2020.
This requires that the graphite be treated with harsh chemicals, including hydrofluoric and sulfuric acids, a process that creates large quantities of hazardous waste.
a nanomaterial consisting of graphite that is extremely thin measuring the thickness of a single atom.
by showing that potassium can work with graphite in a potassium-ion battery a discovery that could pose a challenge and sustainable alternative to the widely-used lithium-ion battery.
people have assumed that potassium couldn work with graphite or other bulk carbon anodes in a battery, said Xiulei (David) Ji,
because they open some new alternatives to batteries that can work with well-established and inexpensive graphite as the anode,
as the charge carrier whose ions migrate into the graphite and create an electrical current.
The new findings show that it can work effectively with graphite or soft carbon in the anode of an electrochemical battery.
#Next-generation perovskite solar cells made stable by metal oxide andwichucla professor Yang Yang, member of the California Nanosystems Institute, is renowned a world innovator of solar cell technology
whose team in recent years has developed next-generation solar cells constructed of perovskite, which has remarkable efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
Despite this success, the delicate nature of perovskite a very light, flexible, organic-inorganic hybrid material stalled further development toward its commercialized use.
perovskite cells broke down and disintegrated within a few hours to few days. The cells deteriorated even faster
mainly due to the hydroscopic nature of the perovskite. Now Yang team has conquered the primary difficulty of perovskite by protecting it between two layers of metal oxide.
This is a significant advance toward stabilizing perovskite solar cells. Their new cell construction extends the cell effective life in air by more than 10 times, with only a marginal loss of efficiency converting sunlight to electricity.
The study was published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Postdoctoral scholar Jingbi You and graduate student Lei Meng from the Yang Lab were the lead authors on the paper. here has been much optimism about perovskite solar cell technology
Meng said. In less than two years, the Yang team has advanced perovskite solar cell efficiency from less than 1 percent to close to 20 percent. ut its short lifespan was a limiting factor we have been trying to improve on since developing perovskite cells with high efficiency.
Yang, who holds the Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas, Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering at UCLA, said there are several factors that lead to quick deterioration in normally layered perovskite solar cells.
The most significant, Yang said, was that the widely used top organic buffer layer has poor stability
and can effectively protect the perovskite layer from moisture in the air, speeding cell degradation. The buffer layers are important to cell construction
Meng said that in this study the team replaced those organic layers with metal oxide layers that sandwich the perovskite layer,
now that the main perovskite problem has been solved p
#Team describes rapid, sensitive test for HIV mutations Tests that can distinguish whether HIV-positive people are infected with a drug-resistant strain
Now, a group of researchers funded by The swiss National Science Foundation have developed a new memristor prototype, based on a slice of perovskite just 5 nanometres thick.
hwachman-Diamond Syndromeand a more common form of acute leukaemia to a common pathway involved in the construction of ribosomes.
This provides an explanation for how cellular processes go awry in both Shwachman-Diamond syndrome and one in 10 cases of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
The bicarbonate can then be processed further into products such as baking soda and chalk. In an industrial setting, the UF researchers believe the carbonic anhydrase could be captured this way:
constantly computing whether a cancer is present. ore immediate practical applications may include deploying the DNA walker in the body
and Android mobile softwares now just one of many subsidiaries of a conglomerate called Alphabet.
And in his post today Page said that he expected his new company to make it easier to get ore ambitious things done,
During testing, the team scratched the material with stainless steel tweezers, screwdrivers, diamond-tipped scribers and pummeled it with hundreds of thousands of hard, heavy beads.
Google is our contemporary maker and breaker of truth, commerce and the stuff of life.
which runs the National Traffic information service. ore data in and more data out can only be a good thing.
Much of the country relies on cheap coal fired power plants, and it has resisted traditionally outside efforts to review its industries,
The burning of coal and the mining industry are the biggest culprits and too much exposure to mercury can lead to serious health problems for humans and wildlife.
and will become a wholly owned subsidiary of a new conglomerate known as Alphabet. The move, Page said,
However that trend could be short-lived as key materials known as rare earth elements become more expensive.
Plus most of these lights are made with rare earth elements that are increasingly in demand for use in almost all other high-tech devices
The researchers designed a family of materials that don't include rare earths but instead are made out of copper iodide
To get an idea of these cliff formations think of one of the nation's most spectacular tourist attractions the Grand canyon. The Colorado plateau for example has areas with a very simple sandstone-over-shale layered stratigraphy.
and sediment off that sandstone ends up down in the stream channels on the shale and affects the erosion by those streams explains Ward.
The Suntag was developed by researchers in the lab of Ron Vale Phd a professor of molecular and cellular pharmacology and a HHMI investigator at UCSF.
Vale received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2012 for his discovery of molecular motors that ferry cargo around within cells.
The Vale team used the Suntag to greatly amplify the light-emitting signal from the green fluorescent protein commonly used by researchers to label molecules within cells.
Viewed through a microscope the signal that can be obtained with the Suntag is so strong it can be used to track a single molecule within the molecular motors that Vale studies.
but especially for switching genes on the previously reported methods were inefficient according to Vale. It depends on the gene
but this new approach appears to amplify gene-switching by as much as 50-fold Vale said.
Superconductivity and ferromagnetism--the normal form of magnetism such as that found in the familiar horseshoe magnet--are like chalk and cheese:
NTU Singapore's scientists replaced the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide an abundant cheap and safe material found in soil.
NTU professor Rachid Yazami who was the co-inventor of the lithium-graphite anode 34 years ago that is used in most lithium-ion batteries today said Prof Chen's invention is the next
The authors consider wind solar hydraulic nuclear coal and gas as potential energy sources. In their model the energy demand and availability are cast as random variables.
#Mining big data yields Alzheimers discovery Scientists at The University of Manchester have used a new way of working to identify a new gene linked to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.
A lot of that information is shared now widely so by mining what we already know we can learn so much more,
To meet that need scientists at the U s. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have developed a method to fabricate nanocrystalline spinel that is 50%harder than the current spinel armor materials used in military vehicles.
With the highest reported hardness for spinel NRL's nanocrystalline spinel demonstrates that the hardness of transparent ceramics can be increased simply by reducing the grain size to 28 nanometers.
This harder spinel offers the potential for better armor windows in military vehicles which would give personnel and equipment such as sensors improved protection along with other benefits.
To create the harder spinel the NRL research team sinters or consolidates commercial nanopowders into fully dense nanocrystalline materials.
However the NRL team is the first to succeed in making this harder spinel through their development of the Enhanced High pressure Sintering (EHPS) approach explains Dr. James Wollmershauser a lead investigator in the research.
Using this EHPS approach to create the nanocrystalline spinel the NRL research team did not observe any decline in density or fracture resistance due to residual porosity.
Other researchers have tried to make nanocrystalline spinel but they have had all problems with the final product such as a reduced density reduced fracture resistance or reduced transparency.
In current applications spinel and sapphire (which is also very hard) are used to create materials for military armor windows.
A drawback with sapphire is that it is expensive to make into windows. By increasing the hardness of spinel even further NRL researchers can make a material harder than sapphire
and possibly replace sapphire windows with windows made out of nanocrystalline spinel. Also harder nanocrystalline spinel windows can be made thinner and still meet the current military specifications.
This thinness translates to weight savings on the vehicle. So the NRL-developed nanocrystalline spinel brings improvements in hardness window thickness and weight and cost.
A final benefit is that the NRL-developed nanocrystalline spinel is highly transparent making it useful in UV visible and infrared optics.
The armor material used by the military needs to be transparent so that both equipment and personnel can see.
Different sensors see different wavelengths of light. Infrared is important for heat-seeking capabilities. UV imaging can be used to detect threats not seen in the visible spectrum.
A single window that could be produced using the NRL-developed nanocrystalline spinel would be transparent across many technologically important wavelengths easing design
Beyond the use for a harder spinel in armor windows there could be other potential Dod and civilian applications in better/stronger office windows smartphones and tablets screens military/civilian vehicles
The technique called quartz-enhanced photoacoustic absorption spectroscopy (QEPAS invented at Rice by Tittel, Professor Robert Curl and their collaborators in 2002,
What makes the technique possible is the small quartz tuning fork, which vibrates at a specific frequency when stimulated."
"The laser beam is focused between the two prongs of the quartz tuning fork. When light at a specific wavelength is absorbed by the gas of interest,
and that excites the quartz tuning fork.""The tuning fork is a piezoelectric element, so when the wave causes it to vibrate,
This research was funded by the Kathy and Curt Marble Cancer Research Fund through the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of General medicine Sciences
and conclude that they can only be explained by pentaquark states says LHCB physicist Tomasz Skwarnicki of Syracuse University. ore precisely the states must be formed of two up quarks,
commonly called fracking, is a technique drillers use to reach vast tracts of previously untouchable gas trapped in shale.
It's possible to use CO2 to fracture shale rock formations, but it's expensive, particularly in large-scale operations.
Need to print with full color sandstone? This is your place. The closest printer to me, for example, is a Prusa Mendel I2 that uses#ABS Plastic in numerous colors.
A marble countertop, for example, could be rigged to charge a wireless coffeemaker and a blender along with a variety of phones, tablets and computers as needed.
#Asteroid mining Firm's First Spacecraft Deploys from Space station Last week, the first in a line of spacecraft designed to test technologies needed to eventually mine asteroids launched from the International space station.
asteroid mining firm Planetary Resources, aims to test critical electronic systems and software during its 90-day mission.
The asteroid mining firm formed in 2012 with the purpose of figuring out an economical way to mine platinum
palladium, or rare earth materials from near-Earth asteroids. Prominent billionaire backers include Hollywood director James cameron and Google executives Larry page and Eric Schmidt.
But the exact mineral wealth of the asteroids most easily accessible from Earth remains unknown.
Indeed, a Harvard university study found just 10 nearby asteroids worth mining. Planetary Resourcesext demonstrator, called the Arkyd-6 (A6),
and obtaining data on the presence of water or water-rich minerals. The A6 is scheduled to launch sometime later this year Planetary Resources says it wants to pursue a est oftenphilosophy in building the A3r
electrons have had to be held in place in a ferromagnetic insulator material, like yttrium iron garnet (YIG.
It was during this experimentation with different materials that Wu found himself working with YIG on a substrate of paramagnetic gadolinium gallium garnet (GGG.
The Fueloyal Is A Smart Fuel Cap For Truckers Breaker breaker 10-4 good buddy.
The feature will be powered by Canadian company##Graphite Software#s OS-level virtualization software. Speaking to Techcrunch back in October Blackphone cofounder Jon Callas indicated an app store was incoming detailing a plan##to expand its##hardened Android OS to include a curated app store experience#offering third party apps##it##has selected
a level playing field where local enterprise can compete with global conglomerates. The proponents of this movement are empowered to defy conventions
or Samsonite so the price will reflect that. luesmart now employs eight people including the five founders.
#Trillion-Dollar Alternative Lending Industry Is A VC Gold mine In a recovering economy where big banks are restricted by complex regulations,
And Driverup, a lending platform for automotive financing, announced a $50 million Series A last week from Emerald Development Managers
as a part of the company efforts to bring its credit products ore to the center of Paypal.
where their user data is then subject to systematic mining by the state as a byproduct of citizensdigital participation,
Also, this year China government has announced already a plan to reduce air pollution by taxing and limiting coal use.
Karplus and collaborators at Tsinghua University in Beijing found that demand for coal could peak sometime between 2020 and 2025,
Besides a small rise in the price of natural gas and slightly cheaper coal, the weather played the biggest role in in pushing up emissions,
while the price of coal dropped from $2. 38 per million BTU to $2. 35.
More coal and less gas meant a much smaller drop in the U s. energy system arbon intensity?
Judy Miner president of Foothill, is justifiably proud of its accomplishments. Students routinely transfer to prestigious four-year colleges,
Miner is also blunt about the challenges facing a school that proudly accepts he top 100 percent of all applicants.
Miner says, her achievements and aptitude opened the possibility of Harvard or Yale, but no one else in her family had gone to college,
says Miner. n California, it the zip code. A ribbon-cutting ceremony at East Palo alto Academy is a poignant indication of how much needs to be done to close the zip-code divide.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011