Science

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Densest array of carbon nanotubes grown to date: New technique could one day help improve the performance of microelectronics in devices ranging from batteries to spacecraft

Carbon nanotubes' outstanding mechanical, electrical and thermal properties make them an alluring material to electronics manufacturers. However, until recently scientists believed that growing the high density of tiny graphene cylinders needed for many microelectronics applications would be difficult.

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Scanning electron microscope images are of CNT forests with low and high density.

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NASA Curiosity Rover Detects No Methane on Mars

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This picture shows a lab demonstration of the measurement chamber inside the Tunable Laser Spectrometer, an instrument that is part of the Sample Analysis at Mars investigation on NASA's Curiosity rover.

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Young Stars Cooking in the Prawn Nebula

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The glowing jumble of gas clouds visible in this new image make up a huge stellar nursery nicknamed the Prawn Nebula. Taken using the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, this may well be the sharpest picture ever taken of this object. It shows clumps of hot new-born stars nestled in among the clouds that make up the nebula.

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Container's material properties affect the viscosity of water at the nanoscale: Glass or plastic?

Water pours into a cup at about the same rate regardless of whether the water bottle is made of glass or plastic.

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This illustration shows how the different effective viscosity of water affects the force required to slide two surfaces separated by a thin layer of water when confined by a hydrophilic material or a hydrophobic material.

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In water as in love, likes can attract

At some point in elementary school you were shown that opposite charges attract and like charges repel. This is a universal scientific truth - except when it isn't. A research team led by Berkeley Lab chemist Richard Saykally and theorist David Prendergast, working at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), has shown that, when hydrated in water, positively charged ions (cations) can actually pair up with one another.

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This model of the guanidinium chloride salt (blue and silver) in solution shows carbon (yellow) and water (green) surrounding the cations and demonstrates cation-cation pairing.

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NASA 'HEROES' Set to Launch Balloon Solar/Space Imager

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Diagram of an example flight profile is shown. It takes about 3 hours from launch for the payload to reach float (maximum altitude). HEROES will observe the Sun for approximately 5 hours until it is no longer visible. Astrophysical observations will then take place during the night-time.

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NASA Invites Social Media Fans to Earth Science Event

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This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite.

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Invention jet prints nanostructures with self-assembling material

A multi-institutional team of engineers has developed a new approach to the fabrication of nanostructures for the semiconductor and magnetic storage industries. This approach combines top-down advanced ink-jet printing technology with a bottom-up approach that involves self-assembling block copolymers, a type of material that can spontaneously form ultrafine structures.

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This atomic force microscope image shows directed self-assembly of a printed line of block copolymer on a template prepared by photolithography. The microscope’s software colored and scaled the image. The density of patterns in the template (bounded by the thin lines) is two times that of the self-assembled structures (the ribbons).

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Iranian Scientists Produce New DNA Genosensor

Iranian researchers from Mazandaran University introduced a new DNA genosensor by synthesizing gold nanoparticles through chemical reduction method and producing carbon paste electrodes modified with the synthesized gold nanoparticles.

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Take a Virtual Tour of Vesta With New High-Resolution Images

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If you could drive a car around the giant Asteroid Vesta, you would need a road map akin to the atlas of images released from NASA's Dawn mission. Twenty-nine new maps of the asteroid, one of which is shown here, show its mountains and craters at a scale similar to that of common road maps.