Science

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Mysterious, massive, magnetic stars

A Canadian PhD student has discovered a unique object – two massive stars with magnetic fields in a binary system. Matt Shultz of Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada found the system – Epsilon Lupi – and will publish the new result in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Study Contrasts Effects of Two Types of SoCal Fires

A new University of California/NASA study finds Southern California autumn wildfires driven by Santa Ana winds have been 10 times as costly in the past 20 years as summer wildfires, even though both types of fires have consumed about the same total acreage. Both types of fires are predicted to increase by midcentury, but non-Santa Ana fires are expected to increase more.

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Team announces breakthrough observation of Mott transition in a superconductor

An international team of researchers, including the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in The Netherlands and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, announced in Science the observation of a dynamic Mott transition in a superconductor.

The discovery experimentally connects the worlds of classical and quantum mechanics and illuminates the mysterious nature of the Mott transition. It also could shed light on non-equilibrium physics, which is poorly understood but governs most of what occurs in our world. The finding may also represent a step towards more efficient electronics based on the Mott transition.

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Rice researchers demo solar water-splitting technology: Process uses light-harvesting nanoparticles, captures energy from 'hot electrons'

Rice University researchers have demonstrated an efficient new way to capture the energy from sunlight and convert it into clean, renewable energy by splitting water molecules.

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Rice University researchers have demonstrated an efficient new way to capture the energy from sunlight and convert it into clean, renewable energy by splitting water molecules.

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Nanoporous gold sponge makes DNA detector: Possible new rapid tests for human, animal, plant pathogens

Sponge-like nanoporous gold could be key to new devices to detect disease-causing agents in humans and plants, according to UC Davis researchers.

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Nanoporous gold contains tiny pores that can filter DNA from other biomolecules. The material can be used to make DNA detection devices for use in diagnostics.

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New nanomaterial maintains conductivity in three dimensions: International team seamlessly bonds CNTs and graphene

An international team of scientists has developed what may be the first one-step process for making seamless carbon-based nanomaterials that possess superior thermal, electrical and mechanical properties in three dimensions.

The research holds potential for increased energy storage in high efficiency batteries and supercapacitors, increasing the efficiency of energy conversion in solar cells, for lightweight thermal coatings and more. The study is published on Sept. 4 in the online journal Science Advances.

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Fortifying Computer Chips for Space Travel

Berkeley Lab's particle accelerator blasts microprocessors with high-energy beams to toughen them up.

Space is cold, dark, and lonely. Deadly, too, if any one of a million things goes wrong on your spaceship. It’s certainly no place for a computer chip to fail, which can happen due to the abundance of radiation bombarding a craft. Worse, ever-shrinking components on microprocessors make computers more prone to damage from high-energy radiation like protons from the sun or cosmic rays from beyond our galaxy.

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Making nanowires from protein and DNA

The ability to custom design biological materials such as protein and DNA opens up technological possibilities that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. For example, synthetic structures made of DNA could one day be used to deliver cancer drugs directly to tumor cells, and customized proteins could be designed to specifically attack a certain kind of virus. Although researchers have already made such structures out of DNA or protein alone, a Caltech team recently created--for the first time--a synthetic structure made of both protein and DNA. Combining the two molecule types into one biomaterial opens the door to numerous applications.

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Making fuel from light: Argonne research sheds light on photosynthesis and creation of solar fuel

Refined by nature over a billion years, photosynthesis has given life to the planet, providing an environment suitable for the smallest, most primitive organism all the way to our own species.

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A marine creature's magic trick explained: Crystal structures on the sea sapphire's back appear differently depending on the angle of reflection

Tiny ocean creatures known as sea sapphires perform a sort of magic trick as they swim: One second they appear in splendid iridescent shades of blue, purple or green, and the next they may turn invisible (at least the blue ones turn completely transparent). How do they get their bright colors and what enables them to "disappear?" New research at the Weizmann Institute has solved the mystery of these colorful, vanishing creatures, which are known scientifically as Sapphirinidae. The findings, could inspire the development of new optical technologies.

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Tiny sea sapphires' iridescence, created by a regular array of thin transparent crystal plates, is also the secret of their "disappearance."