Science

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Stuttgart researchers coordinate major EU project to clean up soil and ground water: Pollution control with nanoparticles

In the remediation of pollutions in the soil and groundwater, minute nanoparticles are being increasingly used that are to convert resp. break down pollutants on site. The process, often somewhat mistakenly described as "nano-remediation", can also be used with contaminations that have been hard to fight up to now, for example through heavy metals or the notorious, carcinogenic softener PCB. Yet how do the various nanoparticles behave in the earth, are they in turn harmless for humans and the environment and how can they be produced at a favourable price? These questions were investigated by scientists from the Research Facility for Subsurface Remediation (VEGAS) of the University of Stuttgart together with 27 partners from 13 countries in the framework of EU project "NanoRem", planned to last four years. For this purpose the European Union is providing around 10.5 million Euros from the 7th research framework programme.

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Carbo-Iron: combination of nano-iron and active carbon particles – a development by the project partner UFZ – are being tested at VEGAS on a large scale.

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Researchers build an all-optical transistor: An optical switch that can be turned on by a single photon could point toward new designs for both classical and quantum computers

Optical computing — using light rather than electricity to perform calculations — could pay dividends for both conventional computers and quantum computers, largely hypothetical devices that could perform some types of computations exponentially faster than classical computers.

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The Butterfly Nebula

The bright clusters and nebulae of planet Earth’s night sky are often named for flowers or insects. Though its wingspan covers over 3 light-years, NGC 6302 is no exception. With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the dying central star of this particular planetary nebula has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust.

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Nanoparticles Utilized to Improve Cancer Treatment

Iranian researchers at Tarbiat Modarres University used nanoparticles containing anti-cancer medicine to produce a new targeted drug delivery system to deliver drug to the damaged tissue.

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NASA Decommissions Its Galaxy Hunter Spacecraft

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This image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) shows Messier 94, also known as NGC 4736, in ultraviolet light. It is located 17 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici.

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Earth’s northern biomass mapped and measured

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Northern biomass

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A perfect sky

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Solar power heads in a new direction: thinner - Atom-thick photovoltaic sheets could pack hundreds of times more power per weight than conventional solar cells

Most efforts at improving solar cells have focused on increasing the efficiency of their energy conversion, or on lowering the cost of manufacturing. But now MIT researchers are opening another avenue for improvement, aiming to produce the thinnest and most lightweight solar panels possible.

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The MIT team found that an effective solar cell could be made from a stack of two one-molecule-thick materials: Graphene (a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms, shown at bottom in blue) and molybdenum disulfide (above, with molybdenum atoms shown in red and sulfur in yellow). The two sheets together are thousands of times thinner than conventional silicon solar cells.

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Efficient Production Process for Coveted Nanocrystals

A formation mechanism of nanocrystalline cerium dioxide (CeO2), a versatile nanomaterial, has been unveiled by scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.This finding potentially simplifies and alleviates the existing synthetic processes of nanocrystalline CeO2 production.

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Ce(IV) dimers and trimers form in aqueous solution nanometer-sized cer dioxide crystals (CeO2). The size of the nanocrystals is in the order of two to three nanometers.

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Three Planets in Habitable Zone of Nearby Star

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