Science

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Optics, nanotechnology combined to create low-cost sensor for gases

Engineers have combined innovative optical technology with nanocomposite thin-films to create a new type of sensor that is inexpensive, fast, highly sensitive and able to detect and analyze a wide range of gases.

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Camera chip provides superfine 3-D resolution: New imaging technology fits on a tiny chip and, from a distance, can form a high-resolution 3-dimensional image of an object on the scale of micrometers

Imagine you need to have an almost exact copy of an object. Now imagine that you can just pull your smartphone out of your pocket, take a snapshot with its integrated 3-D imager, send it to your 3-D printer, and within minutes you have reproduced a replica accurate to within microns of the original object. This feat may soon be possible because of a tiny new, tiny high-resolution 3-D imager developed at Caltech.

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The micrometer-resolution image, taken from roughly half a meter (1.5 feet) away, shows the height of a US penny at various points.

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Team Returning Orbiter to Duty After Computer Swap

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Artist concept of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Frustrated magnets -- new experiment reveals clues to their discontent

An experiment conducted by Princeton researchers has revealed an unlikely behavior in a class of materials called frustrated magnets, addressing a long-debated question about the nature of these discontented quantum materials.

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Graduate student Max Hirschberger lowers the assembled experimental setup into a high-field magnet system, capable of creating fields as strong as 250,000 times the earth's magnetic field.

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Frustrated magnets -- new experiment reveals clues to their discontent

An experiment conducted by Princeton researchers has revealed an unlikely behavior in a class of materials called frustrated magnets, addressing a long-debated question about the nature of these discontented quantum materials.

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Graduate student Max Hirschberger lowers the assembled experimental setup into a high-field magnet system, capable of creating fields as strong as 250,000 times the earth's magnetic field.

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Hubble and Chandra Discover Dark Matter Is Not as Sticky as Once Thought

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This collage shows images of six different galaxy clusters taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The clusters were observed in a study of how dark matter in clusters of galaxies behaves when the clusters collide. Seventy-two large cluster collisions were studied in total.
Using visible-light images from Hubble, the team was able to map the post-collision distribution of stars and also of the dark matter (colored in blue), which was traced through its gravitational lensing effects on background light. Chandra was used to see the X-ray emission from impacted gas (pink).
The team determined that dark matter interacts with itself and everything else even less than previously thought.

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Prototype 'nanoneedles' generate new blood vessels in mice: Scientists have developed tiny 'nanoneedles' that have successfully prompted parts of the body to generate new blood vessels, in a trial in mice

The researchers, from Imperial College London and Houston Methodist Research Institute in the USA, hope their nanoneedle technique could ultimately help damaged organs and nerves to repair themselves and help transplanted organs to thrive.

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The image shows a single human cell (brown) on a bed of nanoneedles (blue).

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Rover Amnesia Event Follows Latest Memory Reformatting

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NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has extended its robotic arm for studying a light-toned rock target called "Athens" in this March 25, 2015, image from the rover's front hazard avoidance camera.

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Saturn Spacecraft Returns to the Realm of Icy Moons

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After a couple of years in high-inclination orbits that limited its ability to encounter Saturn's moons

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EU successfully launches two Galileo satellites

Galileo, the EU's satellite navigation programme, has just placed two more satellites into orbit. The lift-off took place on 27 March at 22.46 CET from the European spaceport near Kourou in French Guiana. We have received signals proving that they were positioned as expected.