Science

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NASA Sends Yeast to Space on SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket

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NASA's Swift Satellite Discovers A New Black Hole In Our Galaxy

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Nanoparticles against aging

A team of Spanish scientists has developed an intelligent nanodevice that lays the foundations for the future development of new therapies against aging. The device consists of nanoparticles that can selectively release drugs in aged human cells. Its potential future use ranges from the treatment of diseases involving tissue or cellular degeneration such as cancer, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, among others, to accelerated aging disorders (progeria).

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Internalization and controlled release of the fluorescent molecule rhodamine in senescent fibroblasts of patients with dyskeratosis congenita, by MSN-S1 nanodevice.

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More certainty on uncertainty's quantum mechanical role: Researchers present findings at Frontiers in Optics 2012 that observation need not disturb systems as much as once thought, severing the act of measurement from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Scientists who study the ultra-small world of atoms know it is impossible to make certain simultaneous measurements, for example finding out both the location and momentum of an electron, with an arbitrarily high level of precision. Because measurements disturb the system, increased certainty in the first measurement leads to increased uncertainty in the second. The mathematics of this unintuitive concept - a hallmark of quantum mechanics - were first formulated by the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg at the beginning of the 20th century and became known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg and other scientists later generalized the equations to capture an intrinsic uncertainty in the properties of quantum systems, regardless of measurements, but the uncertainty principle is sometimes still loosely applied to Heisenberg's original measurement-disturbance relationship. Now researchers from the University of Toronto have gathered the most direct experimental evidence that Heisenberg's original formulation is wrong.

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A general method for measuring the precision and disturbance of any system. The system is weakly measured before the measurement apparatus and then strongly measured afterwards.

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NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Prepares to Study Martian Soil

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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the "Rocknest" site to give researchers a better opportunity to examine the particle-size distribution of the material forming the ripple.

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Ice-coated beauty in Mars’ Silver Island

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Topographical view Argyre Planitia

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Research Shows Graphene Nanopores Can Be Controlled: Less Costly Ways of Sequencing DNA Could Open New Possibilities for Disease Prevention

Engineers at The University of Texas at Dallas have used advanced techniques to make the material graphene small enough to read DNA.

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These are transmission electron microscope images of a nanopore in graphene. The original pore on the left grows considerably under the influence of the electron beam. The image on the right is the pore after four minutes at 800 °C. Pores either shrink or grow depending on the temperature and electron beam irradiation.

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NASA's Infrared Observatory Measures Expansion of Universe

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Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have greatly improved the cosmic distance ladder used to measure the expansion rate of the universe, as well as its size and age. The cosmic distance ladder, symbolically shown here in this artist's concept, is a series of stars and other objects within galaxies that have known distances.

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Comet crystals found in a nearby planetary system

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Close-up of olivine crystals seen inside a meteorite found on Earth that originated from a partly melted Solar System asteroid. The yellow olivine crystals are on the order of a few millimetres to centimetres in size and are held together by an alloy of iron and nickel. In contrast, the olivine crystals found in pristine comets, such as in the material measured in the Beta Pictoris system by ESA’s Herschel space observatory, are iron-poor but magnesium-rich.

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The Helix Nebula: Bigger in Death than Life

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A dying star is throwing a cosmic tantrum in this combined image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which NASA has lent to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In death, the star's dusty outer layers are unraveling into space, glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation being pumped out by the hot stellar core.