Science

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When galaxies switch off

Some galaxies hit a point in their lives when their star formation is snuffed out, and they become "quenched". Quenched galaxies in the distant past appear to be much smaller than the quenched galaxies in the Universe today. This has always puzzled astronomers — how can these galaxies grow if they are no longer forming stars? A team of astronomers has now used a huge set of Hubble observations to give a surprisingly simple answer to this long-standing cosmic riddle.

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Galaxies Fed by Funnels of Fuel

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Created with the help of supercomputers, this still from a simulation shows the formation of a massive galaxy during the first 2 billion years of the universe. Hydrogen gas is gray, young stars appear blue, and older stars are red. The simulation reveals that gas flows into galaxies along filaments akin to cosmic bendy, or swirly, straws.

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Auto lubricant could rev up speed of medical imaging

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have built a device that could speed up medical imaging without breaking the bank.

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Shown is an experimental photodetector made out of amorphous silicon and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). The two semiconductors together form a high speed photodetector.

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Faster Treatment of Third-Degree Burns by Nanofibrous Coatings

Taking into consideration the biological and high antimicrobial properties of chitosan and the characteristics of nanofibers, including porosity and 3-dimensional structure, Iranian researchers succeeded in the production of antibacterial nanofibrous coatings with the ability to cure the wounds of third-degree burns.

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VCU Physicists Discover Theoretical Possibility of Large, Hollow Magnetic Cage Molecules: New molecules could be larger than the original Buckminster fullerene with potential applications in technology and health care

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have discovered, in theory, the possibility of creating large, hollow magnetic cage molecules that could one day be used in medicine as a drug delivery system to non-invasively treat tumors, and in other emerging technologies.

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Illustration depicts a Mn24C18 cluster carrying a magnetic moment of 70 Bohr magnetons.

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Tiny, brightly shining silicon crystals could be safe for deep-tissue imaging: In a new study, the crystals had no toxic effects in non-human primates

Tiny silicon crystals caused no health problems in monkeys three months after large doses were injected, marking a step forward in the quest to bring such materials into clinics as biomedical imaging agents, according to a new study.

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Bright light emission from silicon quantum dots in a cuvette. The image is from a camera that captures the near-infrared light that the quantum dots emit. The light emission shown is a psuedo color, as near-infrared light does not fall in the visible spectrum.

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Tetrapod Quantum Dots Light the Way to Stronger Polymers: Berkeley Lab Researchers Use Fluorescent Tetrapod Quantum Dots to Measure the Mechanical Strength of Polymer Fibers

Fluorescent tetrapod nanocrystals could light the way to the future design of stronger polymer nanocomposites. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed an advanced opto-mechanical sensing technique based on tetrapod quantum dots that allows precise measurement of the tensile strength of polymer fibers with minimal impact on the fiber's mechanical properties.

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Fluorescent tetrapod quantum dots or tQDs (brown) serve as stress probes that allow precise measurement of polymer fiber tensile strength with minimal impact on mechanical properties. Inserts show relaxed tQDs (upper) and stressed tQDs (lower).

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Novel Nanostructures Synthesized to Adsorb Toxic Ions from Polluted Water

Iranian researchers from Sharif University of Technology synthesized a set of zeolite modified nanostructures which can entrap toxic ions of heavy metals in water.

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Earth from Space: Peaceful Paxi

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Elementary Physics in a Single Molecule

A team of physicists has succeeded in performing an extraordinary experiment: They demonstrated how magnetism that generally manifests itself by a force between two magnetized objects acts within a single molecule.

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The molecule of about 2 nm in size is kept stable between two metal electrodes for several days.