Science

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Supermassive Black Hole Spins Super-Fast

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In this artist's conception a supermassive black hole is surrounded by a hot accretion disk, while some inspiraling material is funneled into a wispy blue jet. New measurements show that the black hole at the center of galaxy NGC 1365 is spinning at close to the maximum possible rate. This suggests that it grew via "ordered accretion" rather than by swallowing random blobs of gas and stars.

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UK invests £88 million in world’s largest ever optical telescope

The UK research base and industry will be playing a leading role in one of the biggest global science collaborations in history, after the government confirmed long-term investment in the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) to be built in Chile.

The E-ELT will make huge strides toward our understanding of the Universe, the effects of dark matter and energy and planets outside of the solar system. Its 39 metres in diameter mirror will collect 15 times more light than any existing telescope and it will produce images 16 times sharper than the Hubble space-based telescope.

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Future Soldiers Will Have Flexible Electronics Everywhere

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Future soldiers will have plastic electronic sensors embedded in their helmets and uniforms. Research has brought electronics to flexible plastic through the combined efforts of industry, academia and Army scientists.
The Army’s goal was to get this amazing technology into the hands of soldiers.

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The Birth of a Giant Planet?

Candidate protoplanet spotted inside its stellar womb

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Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have obtained what is likely the first direct observation of a forming planet still embedded in a thick disc of gas and dust. If confirmed, this discovery will greatly improve our understanding of how planets form and allow astronomers to test the current theories against an observable target.

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Using Microbes to Generate Electricity

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Private US Group Plans Mars Fly-by in 2018

Plans are underway for the first manned mission to Mars -- just five years from now.

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NASA's NuSTAR Helps Solve Riddle of Black Hole Spin

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This artist's concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun. Supermassive black holes are enormously dense objects buried at the hearts of galaxies.

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Fermi's Motion Produces a Study in Spirograph

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This image compresses the Vela movie sequence into a single snapshot by merging pie-slice sections from eight individual frames.

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Rice builds nanotube photodetector: Project with Sandia National Laboratories leads to promising optoelectronic device

Researchers at Rice University and Sandia National Laboratories have made a nanotube-based photodetector that gathers light in and beyond visible wavelengths. It promises to make possible a unique set of optoelectronic devices, solar cells and perhaps even specialized cameras.

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This illustration shows an array of parallel carbon nanotubes 300 micrometers long that are attached to electrodes and display unique qualities as a photodetector.

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Changing Shape Makes Chemotherapy Drugs Better at Targeting Cancer Cells: Researchers at UC Santa Barbara find that making anti-cancer drug particles rod-shaped significantly increases their ability to target and inhibit breast cancer cells

Bioengineering researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara have found that changing the shape of chemotherapy drug nanoparticles from spherical to rod-shaped made them up to 10,000 times more effective at specifically targeting and delivering anti-cancer drugs to breast cancer cells.

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