Science

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NASA's Hubble to Begin Search Beyond Pluto for a New Horizons Mission Target

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This is an artist's rendering of the New Horizons spacecraft encountering a Kuiper Belt object — a city-sized icy relic left over from the birth of our solar system. The Sun, more than 4.1 billion miles (6.7 billion kilometers) away, shines as a bright star embedded in the glow of the zodiacal dust cloud. Jupiter and Neptune are visible as orange and blue "stars" to the right of the Sun.

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New quantum mechanism to trigger the emission of tunable light at terahertz frequencies

Scientists have found that two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures with asymmetric design enable a new quantum mechanism, triggering the emission of tunable light at terahertz frequencies—with unprecedented efficiency.

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This is an optoelectronic device formed of multiple quantum wells, whose design is optimised to maximise the dipole and thus its efficiency, emitting terahertz light.

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Developing an improved liposuction technique that melts fat

Although liposuction is one of the most common and well-established cosmetic surgery procedures in the U.S., it still has its drawbacks. But a new biomedical start-up says it may have found a novel way to improve the procedure using gold nanoparticles to literally melt fat

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Melting fat away could one day become a reality with a new liposuction technique now under development.

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Titan Flybys Test the Talents of NASA's Cassini Team

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Cassini will attempt to bounce signals off of Saturn's moon Titan once more during a flyby on June 18, 2014, revealing important details about the moon's surface.

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Soaring Over Lunar Mt. Hadley

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Dynamic Spectroscopy Duo: 2D Electronic-Vibrational Spectroscopy Technique Provides Unprecedented Look into Photochemical Reactions

From allowing our eyes to see, to enabling green plants to harvest energy from the sun, photochemical reactions - reactions triggered by light - are both ubiquitous and critical to nature. Photochemical reactions also play essential roles in high technology, from the creation of new nanomaterials to the development of more efficient solar energy systems. Using photochemical reactions to our best advantage requires a deep understanding of the interplay between the electrons and atomic nuclei within a molecular system after that system has been excited by light. A major advance towards acquiring this knowledge has been reported by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley.

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2D-EV spectral data tells researchers how photoexcitation of a molecular system affects the coupling of electronic and nuclear vibrations that is essential to understanding how the system functions.

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Move over, silicon, there's a new circuit in town

When it comes to electronics, silicon will now have to share the spotlight. How they have overcome a major issue in carbon nanotube technology by developing a flexible, energy-efficient hybrid circuit combining carbon nanotube thin film transistors with other thin film transistors. This hybrid could take the place of silicon as the traditional transistor material used in electronic chips, since carbon nanotubes are more transparent, flexible, and can be processed at a lower cost.

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Hybrid CNT/IGZO circuits fabricated on a polyimide film laminated on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate

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Nanoscale composites improve MRI: Rice, Methodist researchers merge magnetic particles to detect, fight disease

Submicroscopic particles that contain even smaller particles of iron oxide could make magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) a far more powerful tool to detect and fight disease.

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Submicrometer particles that contain even smaller particles of iron oxide could make magnetic resonance imaging a far more powerful tool to detect and fight disease, according to researchers at Rice University.

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A virus reveals the physics of nanopores

Nanopores could provide a new way to sequence DNA quickly, but the physics involved isn't well understood. That's partly because of the complexities involved in studying the random, squiggly form DNA takes in solution. Researchers from Brown have simplified matters by using a stiff, rod-like virus instead of DNA to experiment with nanopores. Their research has uncovered previously unknown dynamics in polymer-nanopore interactions.

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A better way to study what actually happens at the nanopore
A computer simulation depicts an fd virus translocating through a nanopore. Unlike DNA, which tangles up in solution, the fd remains stiff and straight, allowing researchers to study the physics of translocation through nanopores.

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NASA's Messenger Spots Giant Space Weather Effects at Mercury

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The yellow color shows the standing bow shock in front of Mercury. The signature of material flowing in a vastly different direction than the solar wind -- an HFA – can be seen in red at the lower left.

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