Science

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NASA Highlights Science Launching on Next SpaceX Cargo Mission

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Raven, a technology demonstration headed to the International Space Station on the next SpaceX cargo launch, scheduled for mid-February, will provide a real-time relative navigation system for future autonomous rendezvous missions.

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UCLA physicists map the atomic structure of an alloy: Researchers measured the coordinates of more than 23,000 atoms in a technologically important material

In the world of the very tiny, perfection is rare: virtually all materials have defects on the atomic level. These imperfections -- missing atoms, atoms of one type swapped for another, and misaligned atoms -- can uniquely determine a material's properties and function. Now, UCLA physicists and collaborators have mapped the coordinates of more than 23,000 individual atoms in a tiny iron-platinum nanoparticle to reveal the material's defects.

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Identification of the 3-D coordinates of 6,569 iron and 16,627 platinum atoms in an iron-platinum nanoparticle to correlate 3-D atomic arrangements with material properties at the single-atom level. CREDIT Courtesy of Colin Ophus and Florian Nickel

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Scientists Determine Precise 3-D Location and Identity of All 23,000 Atoms in a Nanoparticle

Berkeley Lab researchers help to map iron-platinum particle in unprecedented detail

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New Planet Imager Delivers First Science

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The vortex mask shown at left is made out of synthetic diamond. Viewed with an scanning electron microscope, right, the "vortex" microstructure of the mask is revealed.

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New 'needle-pulse' beam pattern packs a punch

A new beam pattern devised by University of Rochester researchers could bring unprecedented sharpness to ultrasound and radar images, burn precise holes in manufactured materials at a nano scale -- even etch new properties onto their surfaces.

These are just a few of the items on the "Christmas tree" of possible applications for the beam pattern that Miguel Alonso, professor of optics, and Kevin Parker, the William F. May Professor of Engineering, describe in a recent paper in Optics Express.

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Cosmic lenses support finding on faster than expected expansion of the Universe

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HE0435-1223, located in the centre of this wide-field image, is among the five best lensed quasars discovered to date. The foreground galaxy creates four almost evenly distributed images of the distant quasar around it.

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First 3-D observation of nanomachines working inside cells: Researchers headed by IRB Barcelona combine genetic engineering, super-resolution microscopy and biocomputation to allow them to see in 3-D the protein machinery inside living cells

Currently, biologists who study the function of protein nanomachines isolate these complexes in test tubes, divorced from the cell, and then apply in vitro techniques that allow them to observe their structure up to the atomic level. Alternatively, they use techniques that allow the analysis of these complexes within the living cell but that give little structural information. In this study, the scientists have managed to directly observe the structure of the protein machinery in living cells while it is executing its function.

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On the left, in vivo image of nanomachines using current microscopy techniques; on the right, the new method allows 3D observation of nanomachines in vivo and provides 25-fold improvement in resolution.

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A New Test for Life on Other Planets

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Mono Lake, California, with salt pillars known as "tufas" visible. JPL scientists tested new methods for detecting chemical signatures of life in the salty waters here, believing them to be analogs for water on Mars or ocean worlds like Europa.

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Storms Filled 37 Percent of CA Snow-Water Deficit

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January storms in the Sierra Nevadas reduced California's deficit in stored snow water by about 37 percent.

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Traffic jam in empty space: New success for Konstanz physicists in studying the quantum vacuum

With these results, the researchers from the field of ultrafast phenomena and photonics build on their earlier findings, published in October 2015 in the scientific journal Science, where they have demonstrated direct detection of signals from pure nothingness. This essential scientific progress might make it possible to solve problems that physicists have grappled with for a long time, ranging from a deeper understanding of the quantum nature of radiation to research on attractive material properties such as high-temperature superconductivity. The new results are published on 19 January 2017 in the current online issue of the scientific journal Nature: DOI: 10.1038/nature21024.

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Schematic sketch of the spatio-temporal deviations from the level of bare vacuum fluctuations of the electric field which are generated by deforming space-time and sampled in the time domain. The color-coded hypersurface combines a longitudinal time trace (red line) with the transverse mode function.