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NASA's Curiosity Mars rover autonomously selects some targets for the laser and telescopic camera of its ChemCam instrument. For example, on-board software analyzed the Navcam image at left, chose the target indicated with a yellow dot, and pointed ChemCam for laser shots and the image at right.

Hybrids of two-dimensional materials like the graphene-molybdenum disulfide illustrated here have electronic properties that don't follow the same rules as their 3-D cousins, according to Rice University researchers. The limited direct contact between the two materials creates an electric field that greatly increases the size of the p/n junction.

The left and center diagrams show the structure of cement hydrate as determined by the researchers’ model, which calculates the positions of particles based on particle-to-particle forces. Each simulation box is about 600 nanometers wide. The packing fraction (the fraction of the box occupied by particles) is assumed to be 0.35 in the left diagram and 0.52 in the center one. Open pores, indicated by the white areas, are more prevalent at the lower packing fraction. The right-hand diagram is a sketch of cement hydrate published by T.C. Powers in 1958.

(a,b) Targeted movement of magnetic cells was facilitated by external magnetic field (in liquid media); (c) sedimentation of magnetically concentrated cells; (d) targeted movement and growth of magnetic cells on solid surface (inset shows a higher-magnification view of cells arranged on the surface).

Scientists at EPFL and ETHZ have developed a new method for building microrobots that could be used in the body to deliver drugs and perform other medical operations.

University of Otago physicist Niels Kjærgaard and his team have used extremely precisely controlled laser beams to confine, accelerate and gently collide ultracold atomic clouds of fermionic potassium.
This allowed them to directly observe a key principle of quantum theory, the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
This principle predicts a forbidden zone along a meridian of the spherical halo of scattered particles, which the Otago experiments indeed unveiled.
The dark band in the graphic shows a rule derived from the principle in action. This rule is that indistinguishable fermions cannot scatter out at 90 degrees to the collision axis.

A new University at Buffalo-led study suggests that chlorophyll-based nanoparticles are an effective imaging agent for the gut.

Atomic force microscopy image of a graphene sheet draped over a Bacillus bacterium (left). The bacterium is about 1 micron or 1/25,000 of an inch wide. After applying vacuum and heat treatment, regular wrinkles form in the graphene (right, at twice the magnification).