NASA’s Juno spacecraft will be forging ahead into a treacherous environment at Jupiter with more radiation than any other place NASA has ever sent a spacecraft, except the sun. In a specially filtered cleanroom in Denver, where Juno is being assembled, engineers recently added a unique protective shield around its sensitive electronics. New pictures of [...]
Archive for the ‘Physics’ Category
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Fibers That Can Hear and Sing: Fibers Created That Detect and Produce Sound
July 16th, 2010 For centuries, “man-made fibers” meant the raw stuff of clothes and ropes; in the information age, it’s come to mean the filaments of glass that carry data in communications networks. But to Yoel Fink, an Associate professor of Materials Science and principal investigator at MIT’s Research Lab of Electronics, the threads used in textiles and [...]
Physical Model Describes Structures of Viral Capsids
June 17th, 2010 The genetic material of viruses is shielded by a protective protein covering called a capsid. The UB researchers David Reguera and Antoni Luque, of the Department of Fundamental Physics, have uncovered the strict selection rules that define capsid structure in spherical and bacilliform viruses, which they report in two papers published in the Proceedings of the [...]
110-Foot Concrete Bridge Withstands 8.0 Earthquake Simulation
June 15th, 2010 After a succession of eight separate earthquake simulations, a 110-foot long, 200-ton concrete bridge model at the University of Nevada, Reno withstood a powerful jolting, three times the acceleration of the disastrous 1994 magnitude 6.9 Northridge, Calif. earthquake, and survived in good condition. “This is very satisfying to see how well the design and components [...]
Origin of Life: Adding UV Light Helps Form ‘Missing G’ of RNA Building Blocks
June 14th, 2010 For scientists attempting to understand how the building blocks of RNA originated on Earth, guanine — the G in the four-letter code of life — has proven to be a particular challenge. While the other three bases of RNA — adenine (A), cytosine (C) and uracil (U) — could be created by heating a simple [...]
Towards Nanowire Solar Cells With a 65-Percent Efficiency
June 12th, 2010 Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/) researchers want to develop solar cells with an efficiency of over 65 percent by means of nanotechnology. In Southern Europe and North Africa these new solar cells can generate a substantial portion of the European demand for electricity. The Dutch government reserves EUR 1.2 million for the research. The current [...]
New Process Is Promising for Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars
June 10th, 2010 A new process for storing and generating hydrogen to run fuel cells in cars has been invented by chemical engineers at Purdue University. The process, given the name hydrothermolysis, uses a powdered chemical called ammonia borane, which has one of the highest hydrogen contents of all solid materials, said Arvind Varma, R. Games Slayter Distinguished [...]
On a Roll: Designing the Next Rover to Explore Mars
June 2nd, 2010 The concept of a wind-powered vehicle that can be used to explore the surface of Mars — a so-called “tumbleweed rover” that would roll over the surface of Mars like a tumbleweed — has been around for more than 10 years, but so far there has been no consensus on exactly what that vehicle should [...]
First Images of Heavy Electrons in Action: Characteristics of ‘Hidden Order’ in Unusual Uranium Compound
June 2nd, 2010 Using a microscope designed to image the arrangement and interactions of electrons in crystals, scientists have captured the first images of electrons that appear to take on extraordinary mass under certain extreme conditions. The technique reveals the origin of an unusual electronic phase transition in one particular material, and opens the door to further explorations [...]
Microbe Power as a Green Means to Hydrogen Production
June 1st, 2010 Scientists have been hard at work harnessing the power of microbes as an attractive source of clean energy. Now, Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University researcher Dr. Prathap Parameswaran and his colleagues have investigated a means for enhancing the efficiency of clean energy production by using specialized bacteria. Microbial electrochemical cells or MXCs are able [...]