Science | WPN World People News

It was less than an hour into the new day of January 15, 2006 (EST), when tens of thousands of miles above our planet, two cable cutters and two retention bolts fired, releasing a spring which pushed a 101-pound (46-kilogram) sample return capsule away from its mother ship. Later, during its final plunge Earthward, the capsule would become the fastest human-made object to enter our atmosphere, achieving a velocity of about 28,600 mph (12.8 kilometers per second).

Such a technique may be applicable to developing better broadband reflectors and custom multi-spectral filters for a wide variety of applications, including advanced optical coatings for glass, laser protection, infrared imaging systems, optical communication systems and photovoltaics, according to Douglas Werner, John L. and Genevieve H. McCain Chair Professor in Electrical Engineering, Penn State.

This image shows rubber with red, green and blue luminescent proteins used to produce the BioLEDs.

Thanks to knowledge of their quantum mechanics, dyes can be customized for use in organic light-emitting diodes.

The results show that such clumps become incorporated via chemical interactions with atoms in the crystals, an unexpected mechanism based on previous understanding. By providing insight into the formation of natural minerals that are a composite of both soft and hard components, the work will help scientists develop new materials for a sustainable energy future, based on this principle.

Dr. Rafal Klajn of the Weizmann Institute's Organic Chemistry Department and his team were originally studying the light-induced self-assembly of nanoparticles. They were employing a method earlier developed by Klajn in which inorganic nanoparticles are coated in a single layer of organic molecules that change their configuration when exposed to light; these alter the properties of the nanoparticles such that they self-assemble into crystalline clusters. When spherical nanoparticles of gold or other materials self-assembled into a cluster, empty spaces formed between them, like those between oranges packed in a case. Klajn and his team members realized that the empty spaces sometimes trapped water molecules, which led them to suggest that they could also trap "guest" molecules of other materials and function as tiny flasks for chemical reactions. A cluster of a million nanoparticles would contain a million such nanoflasks.

Understanding microbiomes — human and otherwise — will require a suite of advanced new tools.

A set of vivid red, green and blue pixels based on aluminum nanostructures are shown in a liquid crystal display (left: schematic, right: digital photograph).