The very idea of fibers made of carbon nanotubes is neat, but Rice University scientists are making them neat -- literally.
The single-walled carbon nanotubes in new fibers created at Rice line up like a fistful of uncooked spaghetti through a process designed by chemist Angel Martí and his colleagues.
The tricky bit, according to Martí, whose lab reported its results this month in the journal ACS Nano, is keeping the densely packed nanotubes apart before they're drawn together into a fiber.
A Solar Storm that arrived at Earth today means a great show of the Aurora Borealis over the UK this evening.
Researchers from STFC have been tracking the solar storm since it was created in a big eruption on the Sun late on Wednesday afternoon. The eruption sent a large Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) straight towards the Earth as well as producing a bright solar flare. The solar flare caused a minor radio blackout over the UK.
Tropical Depression 15W intensified during the early morning hours of September 12 and became a tropical storm re-named "Kalmaegi." NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead as the storm intensified.
The sixth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season formed in the central Atlantic Ocean yesterday, and today, September 12, it strengthened into Tropical Storm Edouard. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite flew over Edouard and provided forecasters with an infrared view of what's happening within the strengthening storm.
As Tropical Storm Odile continues to affect Mexico's west coast and stir up dangerous surf, NASA's TRMM and Aqua satellites provided forecasters information on clouds and rainfall in the coast-hugging storm. On September 12, A Tropical Storm Watch remained in effect from Manzanillo to Cabo Corrientes, Mexico.
Tropical Storm Odile formed on September 10, 2014 in the same area where Norbert formed.
Gathering Rainfall and Thunderstorm Height Information
The central mystery of quantum mechanics is that small chunks of matter sometimes seem to behave like particles, sometimes like waves. For most of the past century, the prevailing explanation of this conundrum has been what's called the "Copenhagen interpretation" — which holds that, in some sense, a single particle really is a wave, smeared out across the universe, that collapses into a determinate location only when observed.
Underscoring the vast differences between Earth and its neighbor Venus, new research shows a glimpse of giant holes in the electrically charged layer of the Venusian atmosphere, called the ionosphere. The observations point to a more complicated magnetic environment than previously thought – which in turn helps us better understand this neighboring, rocky planet.
MADISON, Wis. — One of the greatest casualties of war is its lasting effect on the minds of soldiers. This presents a daunting public health problem: More than 20 percent of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a 2012 report by RAND Corp.
TEMPE, Ariz. – World leaders face multiple barriers in their efforts to reach agreement on greenhouse gas emission policies. And, according to Arizona State University researchers, without globally consistent, independent emissions assessments, climate agreements will remain burdened by errors, self-reporting, and the inability to verify emissions progress.
PHILADELPHIA – Amid recent discussion about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, Penn Medicine physicians say that high-income countries like the United States have an obligation to help those affected by the outbreak and to advance research to fight the deadly disease — including in the context of randomized clinical trials of new drugs to combat the virus.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2014—Zooming in on diseased tissue or scanning fragile biological samples are essential tools in medicine and biological research, but this often requires peering through layers of tissue and other materials that can blur and distort the image. Certain modern microscopes can compensate for this, but only for weak aberrations or by using invasive "guide stars," imaging aids that provide a stable reference point.
After the detection of the ozone-depleting properties of CFCs in the 1970s, data from satellite measurements in 1985 startled mankind. A huge hole had been discovered over the Antarctic in the ozone layer that protects the Earth from dangerous, carcinogenic UV rays. Already in 1987 politicians around the world reached agreement on the Montreal Protocol that bans ozone-depleting substances, in particular chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). 197 states have now ratified this international treaty. A series of scientific expert reports has since accompanied the efforts to save the ozone layer.
A team led by Gastón Folatelli at the Kavli IPMU, the University of Tokyo, has found evidence of a hot binary companion star to a yellow supergiant star, which had become a bright supernova. The existence of the companion star had been predicted by the same team on the basis of numerical calculations. This finding provides the last link in a chain of observations that have so far supported the team's theoretical picture for this supernova.
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane and a team of researchers presented today the definition of a "Venus Zone," the area around a star in which a planet is likely to exhibit the unlivable conditions found on the planet Venus.
Identification of planets orbiting distant stars is spurring the search for an Earth-like planet. Now a team of researchers has developed a way to distinguish a distant Venus-like planet from an Earth-like one.
"We want to know how common Venus-like planets are," said Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, research associate in geosciences, Penn State. "We also want to know how common solar systems like ours are."