Science | WPN World People News

MIT researchers have devised a technique that “reverse engineers” complex 3-D computer-aided design (CAD) models — breaking them down into the many individual shapes they’re made of — to make them far easier for users to customize for manufacturing and 3-D printing applications.

These three radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2003 SD220 were obtained on Dec. 15-17, by coordinating observations with NASA's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California and the National Science Foundation's (NSF) 330-foot (100-meter) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

A wound covered by an electric bandage on a rat's skin (top left) healed faster than a wound under a control bandage (right).

Perspective view of Korolev crater

Proteins designed in the lab can now zip together in much the same way that DNA molecules zip up to form a double helix. The technique could enable the design of protein nanomachines that can potentially help diagnose and treat disease, allow for the more exact engineering of cells and perform a wide variety of other tasks. This technique provides scientists a precise, programmable way to control how protein machines interact.

This diagram illustrates Lucy's orbital path. The spacecraft’s path (green) is shown in a frame of reference where Jupiter remains stationary, giving the trajectory its pretzel-like shape. After launch in October 2021, Lucy has two close Earth flybys before encountering its Trojan targets. In the L4 cloud Lucy will fly by (3548) Eurybates (white), (15094) Polymele (pink), (11351) Leucus (red), and (21900) Orus (red) from 2027-2028. After diving past Earth again Lucy will visit the L5 cloud and encounter the (617) Patroclus-Menoetius binary (pink) in 2033. As a bonus, in 2025 on the way to the L4, Lucy flies by a small Main Belt asteroid, (52246) Donaldjohanson (white), named for the discoverer of the Lucy fossil. After flying by the Patroclus-Menoetius binary in 2033, Lucy will continue cycling between the two Trojan clouds every six years.

This shows how a plane electron wave and a magnetic charge interact, forming an electron vortex state that carries orbital angular momentum.

NASA's InSight spacecraft, its heat shield and its parachute were imaged on Dec. 6 and 11 by the HiRISE camera onboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The tunneling leakage is a major quantum obstacle which hinders further miniaturization of electronic devices. To explore the miniaturization limits of molecular electronics, the oligo(aryleneethynylene) (OAE) molecules were employed to investigate the transition between through-space tunneling and molecular tunneling. For the shortest OAE molecule, the intrinsic single-molecule charge transport can be outstripped from tunneling leakage at 0.66 nm, suggesting the potential to push the miniaturization limit of molecular electronic devices to the angstrom scale.

(a) (left) Previously proposed quantum circuit. (b) (right) New parallelized quantum circuit. In (b), the complexity of the circuit is reduced drastically.