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A schematic of the experimental setup. Ham and Yoon measured the change in phase of a microwave signal sent through the graphene.

In space, ice forms by building up a ‘frost-like’ layer on dust grains at a temperature of -263 degrees Celsius. The layer that results is a bit like the frost that forms on a car windscreen on a (somewhat less) cold morning on Earth. In this image the dust layer is represented by the blue coloured molecules at the bottom of the image. Water molecules have two hydrogen atoms (shown here in white) and one oxygen atom (shown here in red). Here the ice forms without structure (so-called amorphous ice), quite unlike the more familiar cubes of ice that you might find in a drink. This results in pores forming in the ice - the big 'hole' in the middle of this simulation. The 'hole' here is nano-sized - about a million times smaller in diameter than the diameter of a human hair. Gases get trapped in these pores, which can have a profound effect on temperatures and densities in regions of star formation.

NASA satellite data incorporated into OpenNEX include global views of drought conditions. Green regions in this map of July 2012 are areas with more vegetation than an average July (2000-2013); red regions have less vegetation than average. Regions in black have no data due to clouds and snow.

New research on the nitrogen in Titan's atmosphere indicates that the moon's raw materials might have been locked up in ices that condensed before Saturn began its formation.

Rice University scientists have reduced to one step the process to turn silicon wafers into the black silicon used in solar cells. The advance could cut costs associated with the production of solar cells. Here, a cross section shows inverted pyramids etched into silicon by a chemical mixture over eight hours.

An artist’s concept of the ATLAST telescope under construction in space. This design has a segmented mirror 20 metres across.

Core/shell PbSe/CdSe quantum dots (a) and a carrier multiplication (CM) pathway (b) in these nano structures. (a) Transmission electron microscopy image of thick-shell PbSe/CdSe quantum dots developed for this study. (b) A hot hole generated in the shell via absorption of a photon collides with a core-localized valence-band electron, promoting it across the energy-gap, which generates a second electron-hole pair. In thick-shell PbSe/CdSe quantum dots this process is enhanced due to slow relaxation of shell-localized holes into the core.