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NASA Mars Rover Fully Analyzes First Soil Samples

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This is a view of the third (left) and fourth (right) trenches made by the 1.6-inch-wide (4-centimeter-wide) scoop on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity in October 2012.

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Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Gives a Big Boost to BigBOSS

$2.1 Million Grant to Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics advances dark energy research at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab

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The BigBOSS proposal adds a new widefield, prime-focus corrector to the Mayall 4-meter telescope. A focal array with 5,000 optical fibers, individually positioned by robotic actuators, delivers light to a set of 10 three-arm spectrometers.

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Nature Materials Study: Boosting Heat Transfer With Nanoglue: Interdisciplinary Study From Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Demonstrates New Method for Significantly Increasing Heat Transfer Rate Across Two Different Materials

A team of interdisciplinary researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a new method for significantly increasing the heat transfer rate across two different materials. Results of the team's study, published in the journal Nature Materials, could enable new advances in cooling computer chips and lighting-emitting diode (LED) devices, collecting solar power, harvesting waste heat, and other applications.

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Drag-and-Drop DNA: Novel technique aiding development of new cancer drugs

Using a simple "drag-and-drop" computer interface and DNA self-assembly techniques, researchers have developed a new approach for drug development that could drastically reduce the time required to create and test medications.

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A collection of pharmaceutical molecules is shown after self-assembly. The detail shows a single molecule, made up of strands of DNA, a therapeutic agent and other components that improve its ability to target cancer.

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NASA Spacecraft Finds New Mercury Water Ice Evidence

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Mercury's North Polar Region Acquired By The Arecibo Observatory.

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Retired GIOVE-A satellite helps SSTL demonstrate first High Altitude GPS navigation fix

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PTB measurements for the next computer chip generation: Cooperation between Carl Zeiss and PTB on EUV lithography extended

European companies are the world leaders in the development of EUV lithography for the manufacture of semiconductor chips with even shorter wavelengths than up to now, i.e. with 13.5 nanometres in the spectral range of the so-called "Extreme UV (EUV)". The volume production of lens systems and wafer scanners of EU lithography (EUVL) is planned for 2014. In this development, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is at the fore. With a new EUV beamline at PTB's own electron storage ring - the Metrology Light Source (MLS) in Berlin-Adlershof - it will characterize EUVL lens systems for this purpose. The cooperation with Carl Zeiss SMT GmbH, which has been running since 1998, has now been extended for another four years. PTB measurements will help to give proof of the quality of the Zeiss lens systems in the so-called "steppers" (lithography machines) of the Dutch company ASML, the global market leader in this field.

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Beamlines and instrumentation at the Metrology Light Source (MLS). (EUV beamline: #3; set-up for the calibration of radiation sources: #2b; undulator beamline: #1d; infrared beamline: #6)

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Small and efficient - water nanodroplets cool biomolecules ultrafast

Researchers of the Max-Born-Institute at Berlin, Germany, have observed how biomolecules transfer energy into extremely small water droplets in their environment. A water shell consisting of only 3 water molecules around a phospholipid molecule is sufficient for energy transfer within 1 ps.

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Upper left: Schematic of a reverse micelle consisting of phospholipid molecules. The phosphate groups of the lipid molecules (blue spheres) are arranged at the inner surface of the micelle. Water molecules are located in the inner part of the micelle. Upper right: Enlarged view of the structure of a phospholipid molecule. Oxygen atoms are shown in red, hydrogen atoms in white, carbon atoms in grey, the nitrogen atom in blue, and the phosphorus atom in orange. The angled water molecules are arranged around the phosphate (PO4) group. Lower part: Scheme of energy transfer. In the experiments, the (asymmetric) phosphate vibration is initially excited (red oxygen atoms). The energy released in the decay of the vibration is transferred to the surrounding water.

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MESSENGER Finds New Evidence for Water Ice at Mercury's Poles, says NASA

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Permanently Shadowed Polar Craters
Shown in red are areas of Mercury’s north polar region that are in shadow in all images acquired by MESSENGER to date. Image coverage, and mapping of shadows, is incomplete near the pole. The polar deposits imaged by Earth-based radar are in yellow (from Image 2.1), and the background image is the mosaic of MESSENGER images from Image 2.2. This comparison indicates that all of the polar deposits imaged by Earth-based radar are located in areas of persistent shadow as documented by MESSENGER images. Updated from N. L. Chabot et al., Journal of Geophysical Research, 117, doi: 10.1029/2012JE004172 (2012).

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Even Brown Dwarfs May Grow Rocky Planets

ALMA sizes up grains of cosmic dust around failed star

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Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have for the first time found that the outer region of a dusty disc encircling a brown dwarf contains millimetre-sized solid grains like those found in denser discs around newborn stars. The surprising finding challenges theories of how rocky, Earth-scale planets form, and suggests that rocky planets may be even more common in the Universe than expected.

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