A team of University of Hawai'i at Mānoa researchers led by Ralf Kaiser, physical chemist at UH Mānoa, unraveled the chemical evolution of the orange-brownish colored atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, the only solar system body besides Venus and Earth with a solid surface and thick atmosphere. The UH Mānoa team, including Xibin Gu and Seol Kim, conducted simulation experiments mimicking the chemical reactions in Titan's atmosphere utilizing crossed molecular beams in which the consequence of a single collision between molecules can be followed.
Heavens
The first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project — a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO's observing sites in Chile — has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world.
Space is not a fun place to get a stomach bug. To ensure drinking water is adequately disinfected, University of Utah chemists developed a two-minute water quality monitoring method that just started six months of tests aboard the International Space Station.
"Now they bring water back on the space shuttle and analyze it on the ground. The problem is there is a big delay. You'd like to be able to maintain iodine or silver [disinfectant] levels in real time with an onboard monitor," says Marc Porter, a University of Utah professor of chemistry and chemical engineering.
Researchers from the Eindhoven University of Technology and the University of Ulm have made the first high-resolution 3D images of the inside of a polymer solar cell. This gives them important new insights in the nanoscale structure of polymer solar cells and its effect on the performance. The findings were published online in Nature Materials on Sunday 13 September.
The investigations shed new light on the operational principles of polymer solar cells.
Cost-effective, flexible and lightweight
SEATTLE – An aggressive vaccination program that first targets children and ultimately reaches 70 percent of the U.S. population would mitigate pandemic influenza H1N1 that is expected this fall, according to computer modeling and analysis of observational studies conducted by researchers at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute (VIDI) at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere.
The simple picture of star formation calls for giant clouds of gas and dust to collapse inward due to gravity, growing denser and hotter until igniting nuclear fusion. In reality, forces other than gravity also influence the birth of stars. New research shows that cosmic magnetic fields play a more important role in star formation than previously thought.
A molecular cloud is a cloud of gas that acts as a stellar nursery. When a molecular cloud collapses, only a small fraction of the cloud's material forms stars. Scientists aren't sure why.
"This is one more important step in the confirmation of this wonderful mission. We Europeans are proud to be part of this and heartily congratulate the engineers, astronauts and scientists who got us to this point," said ESA's Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, David Southwood.
Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Space Science Division and a team of international researchers have positively identified cosmic sources of gamma-ray emissions through the discovery of 16 pulsating neutron stars. Using the Large Area Telescope (LAT), the primary instrument on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope satellite, the discoveries were made by conducting blind frequency searches on the sparse photon data provided by the LAT.
Antennas for the latest implanted medical devices are being developed by Queen Mary University of London and tested through a unique piece of kit at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
Unravelling a microbe's multilayer defence mechanisms could lead to effective new treatments for potentially lethal fungal infections in cancer patients and others whose natural immunity is weakened.
Rates of binge drinking were 37 percent lower among eighth-grade students in communities in seven states that used a prevention system designed to reduce drug use and delinquent behavior compared to teenagers in communities that did not use the system.
STANFORD, Calif. — Globs of human fat removed during liposuction conceal versatile cells that are more quickly and easily coaxed to become induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, than are the skin cells most often used by researchers, according to a new study from Stanford's School of Medicine.
Novel bacterial strains capable of neutralizing toxins produced by blue-green algae have been identified by researchers at Robert Gordon's University, Aberdeen. Aakash Welgama presented the group's findings during the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.