Science

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Revisiting the Veil Nebula

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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope imaged three magnificent sections of the Veil Nebula in 1997. Now, a stunning new set of images from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 capture these scattered stellar remains in spectacular new detail and reveal its expansion over the last years.

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Brightness-equalized quantum dots improve biological imaging

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have introduced a new class of light-emitting quantum dots (QDs) with tunable and equalized fluorescence brightness across a broad range of colors. This results in more accurate measurements of molecules in diseased tissue and improved quantitative imaging capabilities.

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Left: Conventional fluorescent materials like quantum dots and dyes have mismatched brightness between different colors. When these materials are administered to a tumor (shown below) to measure molecular concentrations, the signals are dominated by the brighter fluorophores. Right: New brightness-equalized quantum dots that have equal fluorescence brightness for different colors. When these are administered to tumors, the signals are evenly matched, allowing measurement of many molecules at the same time.

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A necklace of fractional vortices

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have arrived at how what is known as time-reversal symmetry can break in one class of superconducting material.

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A route to a time-reversal symmetry-broken state for d-wave superconductors is shown to occur via the formation of a necklace of fractional vortices around the perimeter of the material, where neighboring vortices have opposite current circulation. This vortex pattern is a result of a spectral rearrangement of current-carrying states near the edges.

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Scientists found a natural nanostructure to control the flow of light

Optical and photonic devices have become critical in current military and civil applications, such as laser weapons, remote sensing and infrared detection. Traditional optical devices are bulky and heavy because they rely on the phase accumulation on a long optical path. In an article published in Science Advances, a journal founded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Prof. Xiangang Luo from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the co-workers have now demonstrated that ultrathin and lightweight optical devices could be constructed using nanostructures catenaries, which were typically used in architectures to construct incredible buildings. Two of the famous catenaries are the arches under the roof of Gaudí’s Casa Milà, Barcelona, Spain and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, United States.

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An illustration of optical catenaries for the OAM generation. When a light beam incident on the catenary structures, orbital angular momenta are transferred from the structure to photons. This process is independent of the wavelength.

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Production of High Temperature Ceramics with Modified Properties in Iran

Iranian researchers from University of Tabriz used graphite nanoparticles to produce laboratorial samples of high temperature ceramics which enjoy dense and nonporous structure with high fracture toughness.

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Horizontal magnetic tunneling in a field-effect device integrated on Silicon

The choice for energy-efficient technologies is not a matter of price choice but it is slowly turning into a matter of heat. A work recently published in Nature’s Scientific Reports suggests devices fabricated directly on Silicon with magnetic tunnel junctions governed by electric pulses, which means without current and minimizing the problem of overheating.

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New Nanomaterials Taking Research to Mexico, Possibly into Space

Professors Linda Hirst and Sayantani Ghosh are combining liquid crystals with nanoparticles such as gold and quantum dots to come up with a new platform that could have applications in fields such as optics and medicine.

A National Science Foundation grant of $410,000 will help Hirst and Ghosh study the fundamental physics behind the capsules that form when the two materials are combined.

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Berkeley Lab to Investigate Link between Thirdhand Smoke and Cancer

Berkeley Lab scientists have been awarded $1.3 million to study health impacts of thirdhand smoke.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers have been awarded $1.3 million for two sets of studies to better understand the health impacts of thirdhand smoke, the noxious residue that clings to virtually all indoor surfaces long after the secondhand smoke from a cigarette has cleared out.

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NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today's Mars

New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

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A Different Type of 2D Semiconductor

Berkeley Lab Researchers Produce First Ultrathin Sheets of Perovskite Hybrids

To the growing list of two-dimensional semiconductors, such as graphene, boron nitride, and molybdenum disulfide, whose unique electronic properties make them potential successors to silicon in future devices, you can now add hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites. However, unlike the other contenders, which are covalent semiconductors, these 2D hybrid perovskites are ionic materials, which gives them special properties of their own.

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