Science

Tags:

Nano magnets arise at 2-D boundaries: Rice University theory has implications for spintronics

When you squeeze atoms, you don't get atom juice. You get magnets.

48517.jpg
Rice University theorists have discovered magnetic fields (blue) are created at grain boundaries in two-dimensional dichalcogenides. Dislocations along these boundaries, where atoms are thrown out of their regular hexagonal patterns, force electron spins into alignments that favor magnetism.

Tags:

UT Austin researchers grow large graphene crystals that have exceptional electrical properties

When it comes to the growth of graphene — an ultrathin, ultrastrong, all-carbon material — it is survival of the fittest, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

48519.jpg
Yufeng Hao, postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Austin, demonstrates large, single graphene crystals grown on copper.

Tags:

Black hole boasts heavyweight jets

Black_hole_with_disc_and_jets_large_0.jpg
Black hole with disc and jets

Tags:

NASA Helps Melt Secrets of Great Lakes Ice

GreatLakesiceFig1-640_0.jpg
A color-coded image of major ice types on Lake Superior, made from a RADARSAT1 radar backscatter image using a new NASA and NOAA-developed technique.

Tags:

Riding an electron wave into the future of microchip fabrication: Computer simulation explores how intense plasma waves generate suprathermal electrons, which are critical to microchip fabrication

Advanced plasma-based etching is a key enabler of Moore's Law that observes that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles nearly every two years. It is the plasma's ability to reproduce fine patterns on silicon that makes this scaling possible and has made plasma sources ubiquitous in microchip manufacturing.

48509.jpg
A plasma wave can give rise to a population of suprathermal electrons.

Tags:

Spitzer and ALMA Reveal a Star's Bubbly Birth

pia17555-640_0.jpg
Combined observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the newly completed Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have revealed the throes of stellar birth, as never before, in the well-studied object known as HH 46/47.

Tags:

NASA Cassini Spacecraft Provides New View of Saturn and Earth

pia17172-640_0.jpg
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings -- and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.

Tags:

Structure of bacterial nanowire protein hints at secrets of conduction: Electrically conducting bacteria important for energy, environment and technology

Tiny electrical wires protrude from some bacteria and contribute to rock and dirt formation. Researchers studying the protein that makes up one such wire have determined the protein's structure. The finding is important to such diverse fields as producing energy, recycling Earth's carbon and miniaturizing computers.

48502.jpg
Zooming in on the Geobacter-Gonorrhea composite shows how the aromatic residues (teal balloon-like structures) bulge from the surface of pilin proteins (variously colored helical structures) within the fiber.

Tags:

Taking a New Look at Carbon Nanotubes: Berkeley Researchers Develop Technique For Imaging Individual Carbon Nanotubes

Despite their almost incomprehensibly small size - a diameter about one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair - single-walled carbon nanotubes come in a plethora of different "species," each with its own structure and unique combination of electronic and optical properties. Characterizing the structure and properties of an individual carbon nanotube has involved a lot of guesswork - until now.

48503.jpg
In this display showing optical imaging and spectroscopy of an individual nanotube on substrates and in devices, (a–c) are schematics of a nanotube on a fused-silica substrate, in a field-effect transistor device with two gold electrodes, and under an alumina dielectric layer; (d–f) are SEM images and (g-i) are direct optical images of these individual nanotubes.

Tags:

NSA has no direct access to customers' data, IT firms tell MEPs

Microsoft, Google and Facebook managers denied giving the NSA or any government in the world direct or unfettered access to their servers, at the ninth NSA inquiry hearing on the mass surveillance of EU citizens held at Parliament on Monday. US Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner told MEPs that abuses by the NSA were carried out outside congressional authority.