Science

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Best Ever Image of a Star’s Surface and Atmosphere

First map of motion of material on a star other than the Sun

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Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of a star — the red supergiant star Antares. They have also made the first map of the velocities of material in the atmosphere of a star other than the Sun, revealing unexpected turbulence in Antares’s huge extended atmosphere.

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Millions Across US Watch Total Solar Eclipse

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The moon is seen blotting out 81 percent of the sun during a solar eclipse in Washington, D.C., Monday, Aug. 21, 2017.

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Gold nanostars and immunotherapy vaccinate mice against cancer: New treatment cures, vaccinates mouse in small proof-of-concept study

By combining an FDA-approved cancer immunotherapy with an emerging tumor-roasting nanotechnology, Duke University researchers improved the efficacy of both therapies in a proof-of-concept study using mice.

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A gold nanostar under an electron microscope. The nanostar's size causes it to accumulate within tumors, where researchers use infrared light to heat it and destroy cancerous growths.

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Silk could improve sensitivity, flexibility of wearable body sensors

Silkworm silk, with five thousand years' usage history, is a popular natural material for clothes or wearing accessories. In this talk, I will present our work on exploring the application of silk in flexible electronics. The development of flexible electronics and equipment attracts significant interests in recent years. Low-dimensional carbon materials are one kind of ideal materials for flexible electronics. It is of great importance to explore low cost and scalable preparation approaches for high performance flexible carbon materials-based wearable electronics. We demonstrated that carbonized silk fabric with a plain-weave structure, based on its unique N-doped graphitic carbon nanostructure and the macroscale woven structure, could be worked as strain sensors with both of high sensitivity (gauge factor of 9.6 in the strain range of 0%-250% and 37.5 in the range of 250%-500%) and high tolerable strain (more than 500%). The as-obtained sensors have fast response (<30 ms) and high durability (>10,000 cycles). It was demonstrated that such strain sensors could be used for monitoring both of vigorous human motions (such as jumping, marching, jogging, bending and rotation of joints), subtle human motions (such as pulse, facial expression, respiration and phonation) and even sound, and further demonstrated the capture and reconstruction of human body movements with our sensors, showing their superior performance and tremendous potential applications in wearable electronics and intelligent robots. In addition, transparent electronics skins based on graphene, carbon nanotubes, and silk nanofibers will be demonstrated.

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Silk could soon be used to produce more sensitive and flexible body sensors like this one.

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Large Asteroid to Safely Pass Earth on Sept. 1

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Asteroid Florence, a large near-Earth asteroid, will pass safely by Earth on Sept. 1, 2017, at a distance of about 4.4 million miles.

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Gold shines through properties of nano biosensors: Researchers discover that fluorescence in ligand-protected gold nanoclusters is an intrinsic property of the gold particles themselves

With their remarkable electrical and optical properties, along with biocompatibility, photostability and chemical stability, gold nanoclusters are gaining a foothold in a number of research areas, particularly in biosensing and biolabeling.

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The researchers used Au20, gold nanoparticles with a tetrahedral structure, to show that fluorescence in ligand-protected gold clusters is an intrinsic property of the gold nanoparticles themselves.

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Candy cane supercapacitor could enable fast charging of mobile phones

Supercapacitors promise recharging of phones and other devices in seconds and minutes as opposed to hours for batteries. But current technologies are not usually flexible, have insufficient capacities, and for many their performance quickly degrades with charging cycles.

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Supercapacitors promise recharging of phones and other devices in seconds and minutes as opposed to hours for batteries. But current technologies are not usually flexible, have insufficient capacities, and for many their performance quickly degrades with charging cycles.

http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=54680

內湖 2021 陳鵬程

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Supermassive Black Holes Feed on Cosmic Jellyfish

ESO’s MUSE instrument on the VLT discovers new way to fuel black holes

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Observations of “Jellyfish galaxies” with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed a previously unknown way to fuel supermassive black holes. It seems the mechanism that produces the tentacles of gas and newborn stars that give these galaxies their nickname also makes it possible for the gas to reach the central regions of the galaxies, feeding the black hole that lurks in each of them and causing it to shine brilliantly.

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Cassini Prepares to Say Goodbye to a True Titan

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These two views of Saturn's moon Titan exemplify how NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed the surface of this fascinating world.

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From hot to cold: How to move objects at the nanoscale: Moving a single gold nanocluster on a graphene membrane, thanks to a thermal gradient applied to the borders: a new study sheds light on the physical mechanisms driving this phenomenon

To move a nanoparticle on the surface of a graphene sheet, you won't need a "nano-arm": by applying a temperature difference at the ends of the membrane, the nanocluster laying on it will drift from the hot region to the cold one. In addition, contrary to the laws ruling the world at the macroscale, the force acting on the particle -- the so-called thermophoretic force -- should not decrease as the sheet length rises, sporting a so-called ballistic behavior, same as a bullet in a gun barrel. In fact, simulations show that vertical thermal oscillations of the graphene membrane flow ballistically from hot to cold, providing a push to the object. Yet, these vertical waves, known as flexural phonons, should not be able to impress any lateral shift to an object. Nevertheless, computer simulations show that they do push the nanocluster in the same way a surfboard is taken to shore by ocean waves. And, of course within limits, no matter how far away the wave came from. These theoretical predictions could be of great interest in the frame of manipulating materials at the nanoscale, in view of potential technological applications.

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The theoretical predictions of these study could be of great interest in the frame of manipulating materials at the nanoscale for technological applications.

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