Science

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Astronomers Detect Orbital Motion in Pair of Supermassive Black Holes

Using the supersharp radio “vision” of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), astronomers have made the first detection of orbital motion in a pair of supermassive black holes in a galaxy some 750 million light-years from Earth.

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NASA Keeps a Close Eye on Tiny Stowaways

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he International Space Station, as seen from space shuttle Atlantis in 2011.

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X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy under real ambient pressure conditions

Researchers at Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), Innovation Research Center for Fuel Cells, University of Electro-Communications, Research Center for Materials Science, Nagoya University, and JASRI (Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute), have improved an ambient-pressure photoelectron spectroscopy instrument using hard X-rays*1 produced at SPring-8*2 and succeeded in photoelectron spectrometry*3 under real atmospheric pressure for the first time in the world.

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(left) This is a picture of a front cone, a circular cone-shaped spectrometer component, taken from above. The 30 μm aperture created at the tip is the port where photoelectrons enter the spectrometer. (right) The peaks represent the photoelectron spectroscopic signals of gold thin film detected under atmospheric pressure of air.

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Mars Rover Opportunity on Walkabout Near Rim

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The Pancam on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity took the component images of this enhanced-color scene during the mission's "walkabout" survey of an area just above the top of "Perseverance Valley," in preparation for driving down the valley.

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Atomic imperfections move quantum communication network closer to reality

An international team led by the University of Chicago's Institute for Molecular Engineering has discovered how to manipulate a weird quantum interface between light and matter in silicon carbide along wavelengths used in telecommunications.

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Single spins in silicon carbide absorb and emit single photons based on the state of their spin.

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Laser-targeting A.I. Yields More Mars Science

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This is how AEGIS sees the Martian surface. All targets found by the A.I. program are outlined: blue targets are rejected, while red are retained. The top-ranked target is shaded green; if there's a second-ranked target, it's shaded orange. These NavCam images have been contrast-balanced.

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Rice U. chemists create 3-D printed graphene foam

Nanotechnologists from Rice University and China's Tianjin University have used 3-D laser printing to fabricate centimeter-sized objects of atomically thin graphene.

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3-D graphene foam objects are produced by shining a laser on a mixture of powdered sugar and nickel powder. The laser is moved back and forth to melt sugar in a 2-D pattern, and nickel acts as a catalyst to spur the growth of graphene foam. The process is repeated with successive layers of powder to build up 3-D objects.

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Researchers developed nanoparticle based contrast agent for dual modal imaging of cancer

Researchers from PSG College of Technology, India have developed nano-contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as well as optical imaging of cancer cells.

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This is a schematic diagram of the europium doped gadolinium oxide nanorods and the silica coating to improve the biocompatibility. Invitro cytotoxicity analysis, invitro magnetic resonance imaging and optical imaging of the prepared samples were carried out.

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NASA Mars Orbiter Views Rover Climbing Mount Sharp

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The feature that appears bright blue at the center of this scene is NASA's Curiosity Mars rover amid tan rocks and dark sand on Mount Sharp, as viewed by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on June 5, 2017.

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Enhanced photocatalytic activity by Cu2O nanoparticles integrated H2Ti3O7 nanotubes

Current hydrodesulfurization (HDS) technology is hard to remove thiols and refractory thiophenic compounds to a minimum in fuels. Moreover, the HDS technology requires severe operation conditions, along with other disadvantages in deep desulfurization. Therefore, considerable attention has been paid to non-HDS techniques, such as adsorption, biodesulfurization and photocatalytic oxidation, etc. Among them, the photocatalytic oxidation desulfurization is the most ideal "green chemistry" technology for deep desulfurization with mild operating conditions. Some researchers have reported nanocomposite as an effective photocatalytic functional material than the host alone, such as Nb6O17@Fe2O3, Cu2O@TiO2 nanotube arrays, etc.

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The suggested mechanism of photocatalytic oxidization of EM over Cu2O@H2Ti3O7 nanocomposite under sunlight irradiation. Under the sunlight irradiation, photo-generated electrons (e?) of nanocomposite aggregated on nanotubes, and holes (h?) aggregated on Cu2O nanoparticles, which will reduce the bandgap energy and prolong the effective separation of photo-induced electron-hole pairs, enhance eventually the photocatalytic activity. It causes a large number of the hydroxy radical groups (·OH) generated on nanocomposite, which will effectively oxidize EM due to the synergistic effect between them to form heterojunction structure. Therefore, nanocomposite exhibits the excellent photocatalytic performance.