and natural gas using only sunlight. And imagine using those fuels to heat our homes or run our cars without adding any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
By combining nanoscience and biology, researchers led by scientists at University of California, Berkeley, have taken a big step in that direction.
a type of solar power based on the ability of plants to transform sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars.
"Burning fossil fuels is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than natural photosynthesis can take it out.
#Artificial'plants'could fuel the future The developer of a new technology that turns sunlight into liquid fuel,
and natural gas using only sunlight. And imagine using those fuels to heat our homes or run our cars without adding any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
By combining nanoscience and biology, researchers led by scientists at University of California, Berkeley, have taken a big step in that direction.
a type of solar power based on the ability of plants to transform sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars.
"Burning fossil fuels is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than natural photosynthesis can take it out.
Hills and Potholes Many of these types of flexible electronic devices will rely on thin films of organic materials that catch sunlight
the NUS team, led by Associate professor Boon Chuan Low and his postdoctoral fellow Dr Jichao Sun,
the NUS team, led by Associate professor Boon Chuan Low and his postdoctoral fellow Dr Jichao Sun,
#Scientists reveal how stem cells defend against viruses Scientists from the Institute of Molecular and Cell biology (IMCB), a research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR),
a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a member of UCLA's California Nanosystems Institute, is published Sept. 21 in the online edition of the journal Nature Materials.
#Engineers invent transparent coating that cools solar cells to boost efficiency Every time you stroll outside you emit energy into the universe:
Their invention shunts away the heat generated by a solar cell under sunlight and cools it in a way that allows it to convert more photons into electricity.
The material is transparent to the visible sunlight that powers solar cells, but captures and emits thermal radiation,
"Solar arrays must face the sun to function, even though that heat is detrimental to efficiency, "Fan said."
"Our thermal overlay allows sunlight to pass through, preserving or even enhancing sunlight absorption, but it also cools the cell by radiating the heat out
and improving the cell efficiency.""A cool way to improve solar efficiency In 2014, the same trio of inventors developed an ultrathin material that radiated infrared heat directly back toward space without warming the atmosphere.
They presented that work in Nature, describing it as"radiative cooling "because it shunted thermal energy directly into the deep, cold void of space.
when the sun is beating down. The Stanford team tested their technology on a custom-made solar absorber--a device that mimics the properties of a solar cell without producing electricity--covered with a micron-scale pattern designed to maximize the capability to dump heat
but requires the preservation of the visible spectrum of sunlight for either practical or aesthetic reasons."
a particularly complex BMC that requires a series of protein-protein interactions involving at least six gene products to form a metabolic core that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere and converts it into sugar.
Improving their capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere makes it a win-win, Gonzalez-Esquer said."
"Cyanobacteria have adapted to live in ponds that are drenched by sun, blanketed by shade, frozen solid in the winter, not to mention the other organisms with
Results from the METEOR trial Patients with advanced kidney cancer live for nearly twice as long without their disease progressing
about results from the first 375 patients out of a total of 658 patients recruited to the phase III clinical METEOR trial comparing cabozantinib with everolimus,
The results of the METEOR trial indicate that cabozantinib is able to shrink tumours and slow down tumour growth much better than current standard treatment in patients who previously received VEGFR-targeted drugs.
"An early evaluation of overall survival from the ongoing METEOR trial has shown a strong trend indicating that survival may be improved in patients receiving cabozantinib compared to standard therapy.
Patients recruited to the METEOR clinical trial, which started in June 2013, were randomised to receive either 60 mg a day of cabozantinib in tablet form,
The METEOR trial is also evaluating the safety of the treatment. The incidence of serious side effects was similar for both drugs
"The METEOR results are important from a clinical and scientific point of view. Overcoming mechanisms of tumour escape
The results of the METEOR study are remarkable and most likely will be practice changing. This, together with the report of the Checkmate 025 study, are definitely among the highlights of this congress."
it doesn't. Nothing in the universe travels faster than light carrying information--Einstein is still right about that.
This speed of light increases or decreases depending on the material it's moving through. When light passes through water, for example, its phase velocity is reduced as its wavelengths get squished together.
and more suited to climate change in order to feed Earth's increasing population. Currently European union GMO regulations don't allow for food with added DNA.
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.
For instance, when there is a change in temperature due to the car's air-conditioner or heat from the sun,
and reducing it to a number of overlapping 2-D images that contain all the same information, much like making maps of Earth,
what happens in common Mercator projections of Earth, in which Africa and Greenland appear as the same size.
"explains Wei Sun, a lead author on the paper.""The grown embryoid body is uniform and homogenous,
or via the'suspension'method (where a'stalagmite'of cells is built up by material being dropped via gravity.)"
"continues Wei Sun."However, these don't show the same cell uniformity and homogenous proliferation.""""I think that we've produced a 3-D microenvironment
"concludes Wei Sun."This would promote different cell types developing next to each other --which would lead the way for growing micro-organs from scratch within the lab
#Sound waves levitate cells to detect stiffness changes that could signal disease Utah Valley University physicists are literally applying rocket science to the field of medical diagnostics.
With a few key changes, the researchers used a noninvasive ultrasonic technique originally developed to detect microscopic flaws in solid fuel rockets, such as space shuttle boosters,
Sun Accused of Stealing Planetary Objects from Another Star Technology: Introducing the First Vehicle Powered by Evaporation More Science:
The Universe Is Dying Slowly The most comprehensive assessment of the energy output in the nearby universe reveals that today's produced energy is only about half of
A team of international scientists used several of the world's most powerful telescopes to study the energy of the universe
and concluded that the universe is slowly dying.""We used as many space -and ground-based telescopes as we could get our hands on to measure the energy output of over 200,000 galaxies across as broad a wavelength range as possible,"Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) team leader Simon Driver,
of the University of Western australia, said in a statement. The astronomers created a video explaining the slow death of the universe to illustrate the discovery.
When the Big bang created the energy of the universe about 13.8 billion years ago, some portion of that energy found itself locked up as mass.
When stars shine they are converting that mass back into energy, as described by Albert Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 (energy=mass x speed of light squared).
From the Big bang to Now in 10 Easy Steps"While most of the energy sloshing around in the universe arose in the aftermath of the Big bang,
additional energy is constantly being generated by stars as they fuse elements like hydrogen and helium together,
"Driver said.""This new energy is absorbed either by dust as it travels through the host galaxy,
or escapes into intergalactic space and travels until it hits something, such as another star, a planet,
or, very occasionally, a telescope mirror.""Astronomers have known that the universe is slowly fading out since the late 1990s.
Using several telescopes on the ground, as well as NASA's orbiting GALEX and WISE and the European space agency's Herschel,
the team found that the energy output is dropping over 21 different wavelengths, making their results the most comprehensive assessment to date of the energy output of the nearby universe."
"The universe will decline from here on in, sliding gently into old age, "Driver said d
#Exoplanet 51 Eridani b: A Red-hot Young Jupiter Around Distant Star (Infographic) Astronomers have photographed directly a planet not unlike Jupiter orbiting 51 Eridani, a sunlike star 96 light-years from Earth.
The star is young, only 20 million years old (compared with the sun's 4. 6 billion years).
The planet, 51 Eridani b, still glows with the heat of its formation. Scientists used the Gemini Planet Imager, an instrument on the Gemini South telescope in Chile,
to make the discovery. The Gemini Planet Imager is designed an instrument specifically for directly imaging exoplanets around distant stars s
#Saltwater lamp could replace dangerous kerosene lights The majority of inhabitants on the Philippines7000 islands do not have access to electricity.
Instead, they rely primarily on kerosene powered lamps to provide light sources at night, which are not only hazards and pollutants,
but also very expensive and inconvenient to refill. Hoping to provide a solution, SALT IS an efficient,
safe light source powered by salt and water, which can last for up to six months when used for eight hours a day.
The SALT lamp which stands for Sustainable Alternative Lighting IS LED an light that makes use of the science behind the Galvanic cell (the basis for batteries) and changes electrolytes to a nontoxic
saline solution. Users simply add one glass of water and one tablespoon of salt saltwater from the ocean can also be used to power the device.
SALT IS the latest of a number of devices which could help lessen the reliance on kerosene power in disconnected regions.
We have seen also solar school backpacks that charge up on the walk home, an energy harnessing musical instrument,
and a flatpack biofuel stove. What other sustainable resources could be tapped into for similar purposes
Kirobo traveled to the International space station last year to chat with a Japanese astronaut. Kirobo may have gone to space
Nanoscale Speed bump Could Regulate Plasmons for High-speed data Flow The name sounds like something Marvin the Martian might have built,
but that like scorching the earth, said Reddy. wanted to develop tools to go in and modify very specific epigenetic marks in very specific places to find out what individual enhancers are doing.
#Star Pair#s Dusty Disk Shines Light on Planet formation Astronomers using the Gemini South telescope in Chile have discovered striking new evidence for planet formation in a dusty disk surrounding
a pair of stars in Sagittarius. The team took advantage of an offering for Early Science using the Gemini Planet Imager to study infrared light scattered off dust grains in the disk around the binary system V4046 Sgr.
Left: J-band polarized intensity (P#)images. Right: P#scaled by r2, where r is the distance in pixels from the central binary, corrected for projection effects.
The coronagraph is represented by the black filled circles. Left: J-band polarized intensity (P#)images.
The coronagraph is represented by the black filled circles. he Gemini Planet Imager allows us to study nearby planet forming disks in sufficient detail that we can obtain direct-image evidence for young planets in orbits similar to those of the giant planets
in our own solar system, says Valerie Rapson of the Rochester Institute of technology, who led the research team.
the GPI imaging reveals an intriguing double ring structure around the V4046 Sgr binary that is most likely due to the formation of a giant planet
(or planets) at some 4-12 times the Earth-Sun distance (approximately between Jupiter and Uranus,
if orbiting our Sun). his is perhaps the best such evidence yet for planet formation so close to a binary system,
Analysis of the data also indicates that the dust grains orbiting the star are sorted by particle size,
as predicted by recent planet formation models. The result is published in The Astrophysica i
#Scientists discover new treatment for dementia Pushing new frontiers in dementia research, Nanyang Technological University,
The destruction of the Amazon is bad news for the whole planet. Let start with the good news part of the story,
#Major Advance in Artificial Photosynthesis Poses Win/Win for the Environment A potentially game-changing breakthrough in artificial photosynthesis has been achieved with the development of a system that can capture carbon dioxide emissions before they are vented into the atmosphere
which plants use the energy in sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. However
The more carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere the warmer the atmosphere becomes. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, primarily as a result of the burning of fossil fuels.
Technologies for sequestering carbon before it escapes into the atmosphere are being pursued but all require the captured carbon to be stored,
Yang says. hen sunlight is absorbed, photo-excited electron#hole pairs are generated in the silicon and titanium oxide nanowires,
With this approach, the Berkeley team achieved a solar energy conversion efficiency of up to 0. 38-percent for about 200 hours under simulated sunlight,
It akin to the difference between looking at the stars with a standard telescope versus an observatory-quality refractor telescope, according to Yale chair of neurology, Dr. David Hafler, who worked with Montgomery to bring Cytof to Yale. t allows
and which can operate under harsh atmosphere, which previously was not attainable for the individual ESB.
so they opened a door to a universe of new and unknown possibilities. e have created
and other synthetic versions are commercially available. he precursors are all earth abundant, so it available in reasonably low cost, says Sanghera.
but it won crack. t like navigating through the asteroid belt, you create a tortuous path:
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,
This pioneering Earth Explorer mission will provide accurate and timely profiles of the world winds as well as information on aerosols and clouds.
To do this, the satellite will carry some of the most challenging technology ever put into orbit:
a novel wind lidar called Aladin incorporating two powerful lasers, a large telescope and very sensitive receivers.
which is beamed towards Earth. This light bounces off air molecules and small particles such as dust, ice and droplets of water in the atmosphere.
The fraction of light that is scattered back towards the satellite is collected by Aladin telescope and measured.
The movement of the air molecules, particles or droplets cause this backscattered light to change frequencies slightly.
the winds below the satellite can be determined. A lot of time has gone into developing the technology involved
and the DLR German Aerospace Center in Stuttgart, should not be underestimated. hanks to these collective efforts,
and Radar Institute/GFZ/e-GEOS/INGVSA SEOM INSARAP study Sentinel-1a is the first satellite for the Copernicus environment-monitoring programme led by the European commission.
The satellite is planned to provide systematic observations of tectonic and volcanic areas at global level.
Camera is so capable it can capture light traveling through a crystal lattice at close to one sixth the speed of light.
The daily vertical migration of marine plankton toward sunlight, is one example, and it the way many microbes find food. f you can design particles that can feel their environment
you will see flashes of light every time the wheel is at the perfect spot for sunlight to hit it.
and aerospace applications. t a simple process and can create a lightweight CNT film, or ucky paper, that is a meter wide and twice as strong as previous such films it even stronger than CNT FIBERS,
a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, and principal developer of the mission-planning system. ith this system, we were showing we could safely zigzag all the way around the reef,
and the top-down command center of the fictional starship Enterprise, after which Williams modeled and named the system.
Just as a hierarchical crew runs the fictional starship Williamsenterprise system incorporates levels of decision-makers. For instance, one component of the system acts as a aptain, making higher-level decisions to plan out the overall mission,
Autonomy in the sea The system is similar to one that Williams developed for NASA following the loss of the Mars Observer, a spacecraft that, days before its scheduled insertion into Marsorbit in 1993,
lost contact with NASA. here were human operators On earth who were experts in diagnosis and repair,
and were ready to save the spacecraft, but couldn communicate with it, Williams recalls. ubsequently,
NASA realized they needed systems that could reason at the cognitive level like engineers, but that were onboard the spacecraft.
Williams, who at the time was working at NASA AMES RESEARCH CENTER, was tasked with developing an autonomous system that would enable spacecraft to diagnose
and repair problems without human assistance. The system was tested successfully on NASA Deep space 1 probe,
which performed an asteroid flyby in 1999. hat was the first chance to demonstrate goal-directed autonomy in deep space,
Williams says. his was a chance to do the same thing under the sea. By giving robots control of higher-level decision-making
we can use Earth-orbiting satellites, but they don penetrate much below the surface, Williams says. ou could send sea vessels which send one autonomous vehicle,
season and year along with weather events and increased use of intermittent renewable energy from the sun
#Astronomers discover powerful aurora beyond solar system Astronomers have discovered the first aurora ever seen in an object beyond our Solar system.
The aurora similar to the famous orthern Lightson Earth is 10,000 times more powerful than any previously seen.
They found the aurora not from a planet, but from a low-mass star at the boundary between stars and brown dwarfs.
The discovery reveals a major difference between the magnetic activity of more-massive stars and that of brown dwarfs and planets,
the scientists said. ll the magnetic activity we see on this object can be explained by powerful auroras,
said Gregg Hallinan, of the California Institute of technology (Caltech. his indicates that auroral activity replaces solar-like coronal activity on brown dwarfs and smaller objects,
he added. The astronomers observed the object, called LSR J1835+3259, using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at radio wavelengths,
along with the 5-meter Hale Telescope on Palomar Mountain and the 10-meter Keck Telescope in Hawaii at optical wavelengths.
The combination of radio and optical observations showed that the object, 18 light-years from Earth, has characteristics unlike any seen in more-massive stars.
Brown dwarfs, sometimes called ailed stars, are objects more massive than planets, yet too small to trigger the thermonuclear reactions at their cores that power stars.
The astronomers said their observations of LSR J1835+3259 indicate that the coolest stars and brown dwarfs have outer atmospheres that support auroral activity,
rather than the type of magnetic activity seen on more-massive and hotter stars. The discovery also has implications for studying extrasolar planets.
The aurora the scientists observed from LSR J1835+3259 appears powered by a little-understood dynamo process similar to that seen on larger planets in our Solar system.
This process is different from that which causes the Earth auroral displays the planet magnetic field interacting with the solar wind. hat we see on this object appears to be the same phenomenon wee seen on Jupiter, for example,
but thousands of times more powerful, Hallinan said. his suggests that it may be possible to detect this type of activity from extrasolar planets,
many of which are significantly more massive than Jupiter, he added e
#Real-time data for cancer therapy In the battle against cancer, which kills nearly 8 million people worldwide each year,
doctors have in their arsenal many powerful weapons, including various forms of chemotherapy and radiation.
What they lack, however, is good reconnaissance a reliable way to obtain real-time data about how well a particular therapy is working for any given patient.
Magnetic resonance imaging and other scanning technologies can indicate the size of a tumor, while the most detailed information about how well a treatment is working comes from pathologistsexaminations of tissue taken in biopsies.
Yet these methods offer only snapshots of tumor response and the invasive nature of biopsies makes them a risky procedure that clinicians try to minimize.
Now, researchers at MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research are closing that information gap by developing a tiny biochemical sensor that can be implanted in cancerous tissue during the initial biopsy.
and basic science at Virginia Tech Carilion Medical school, analyzed an often ignored part of the human genome repetitive DNA sequences referred to as microsatellites.
More than 1 million microsatellites exist in the human genome including in neural crest tissues, a thin layer of cells within an embryo that contains genetic instructions to build hundreds of cell types, from neurons to adrenal cells.
or predicted from specific markers within these repetitive sequences, known as cancer-associated microsatellite loci, or CAML.
microsatellites are known for their role in certain diseases such as Fragile X and Huntington disease. Garner group has shown that these regions can be informative about diseases ranging from cancer to autism spectrum disorder.
#Perseid meteors to light up summer skies The evening of Wednesday 12 august into the morning of Thursday 13 august sees the annual maximum of the Perseid meteor shower.
This year, a new moon makes prospects for watching this natural firework display particularly good. A Perseid seen in August 2010 above the four enclosures of the European Southern Observatory Very Large telescope at Paranal, Chile.
Credit: ESO/S. Guisard. Meteors (popularly known as hooting stars are the result of small particles,
some as small as a grain of sand, entering the Earth atmosphere at high speed.
The tail of the Comet Swift-Tuttle, which last passed near the Earth in 1992, leaves such debris in the Earth path.
On entering the atmosphere, these particles heat the air around them, causing the characteristic streak of light seen from the ground.
This shower of meteors appears to originate from a single point, called a adiant in the constellation of Perseus, hence the name.
The shower is active each year from around 17 july to 24 august although for most of that period only a few meteors an hour will be visible.
From the UK, the peak of the shower occurs in the late evening on 12 august to the morning of 13 august,
when as many as 100 meteors or more may be seen each hour. This year, for the first time since 2007, this peak coincides with a new moon on 14 august,
creating ideal dark sky conditions for meteor-spotting. Perseid shooting star near the Pleiades over Woodingdean, Sussex, on the early morning of the 13th,august 2013.
Credit: Darren Baskill. Professor Mark Bailey, Director of Armagh Observatory, said he Perseid meteor shower is one of the best and most reliable meteor showers of the year.
The french astronomer Jeremie Vaubaillon has predicted also that the Perseids may this year produce an outburst of activity around 7. 40pm BST on 12th august.
Although it is unfortunately still daylight at that time in the UK and Ireland, it is just possible that enhanced rates may persist for a few hours around this time
and so be observable soon after dark. nlike many celestial events meteor showers are straightforward to watch,
and for most people the best equipment to use is simply the naked eye. Advice from experienced meteor observers is to wrap up well and set up a reclining chair to allow you to look up at the sky in comfort.
If possible it also helps to be in a dark place away from artificial light, and to have unobstructed an view of the sky.
Although the number of visible meteors is hard to predict accurately, at least one every few minutes can be expected.
They mostly appear as fleeting streaks of light lasting less than a second but the brightest ones leave behind trails of vaporised gases
their trajectories are bent into circular orbits, causing them to loop around and around. The higher the magnetic field, the tighter a particle orbit becomes.
However, to confine electrons to the microscopic scale of a crystalline material, a magnetic field 100 times stronger than that of the strongest magnets in the world would be required.
ultrahigh magnetic field, using laser beams to push atoms around in tiny orbits, similar to the orbits of electrons under a real magnetic field.
However, in a tilted lattice, the atoms would have to work against gravity. In this scenario, atoms could only move with the help of laser beams. ow the laser beams could be used to make neutral atoms move around like electrons in a strong magnetic field
the group could make the atoms orbit, or loop around, in a radius as small as two lattice squares, similar to how particles would move in an extremely high magnetic field. nce we had the idea,
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