ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Tiny structure gives big boost to solar power
• What is creating gullies on giant asteroid Vesta?
• Little telescope spies gigantic galaxy clusters
• Apollo's lunar dust data being restored
• Silver nanocubes make super light absorbers, hold great potential for solar cells
• Seeing in color at the nanoscale: Scientists develop a new nanotech tool to probe solar-energy conversion
• Researchers craft tool to minimize threat of endocrine disruptors in new chemicals
• Harmful greenhouse gas turned into tool for making pharmaceuticals: New technique finds use for ozone-destroying chemical waste product
• World's smallest reaction chamber
• New atomic-layer electrodeposition method yields surprising results
• 'Time reversal' research may open doors to future tech
• Fermi improves its vision for thunderstorm Gamma-ray flashes
• Image of the Carina Nebula marks inauguration of VLT Survey Telescope
• Searching for the best black hole recipe
• Sungrazing comets as solar probes
• NASA investigates use of 'trailblazing' material for new sensors
• Flexible silicon solar-cell fabrics may soon become possible
• Hubble sees a galaxy hit a bullseye
• New '4-D' transistor is preview of future computers

Tiny structure gives big boost to solar power Posted: 06 Dec 2012 05:34 PM PST Researchers have found a simple and economic way to nearly triple the efficiency of organic solar cells, the cheap and flexible plastic devices that many scientists believe could be the future of solar power.

What is creating gullies on giant asteroid Vesta? Posted: 06 Dec 2012 01:08 PM PST In a preliminary analysis of images from NASA's Dawn mission, scientists have spotted intriguing gullies that sculpt the walls of geologically young craters on the giant asteroid Vesta. The scientists have found narrow channels of two types in images from Dawn's framing camera -- some that look like straight chutes and others that carve more sinuous trails and end in lobe-shaped deposits. The mystery, however, is what is creating them?

Little telescope spies gigantic galaxy clusters Posted: 06 Dec 2012 01:00 PM PST Our solar system, with its colorful collection of planets, asteroids and comets, is a fleck in the grander cosmos. Hundreds of billions of solar systems are thought to reside in our Milky Way galaxy, which is itself just a drop in a sea of galaxies. The rarest and largest of galaxy groupings, called galaxy clusters, can be the hardest to find. That's where NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) can help. The mission's all-sky infrared maps have revealed one distant galaxy cluster and are expected to uncover thousands more.

Apollo's lunar dust data being restored Posted: 06 Dec 2012 12:36 PM PST Forty years after the last Apollo spacecraft launched, the science from those missions continues to shape our view of the moon. In one of the latest developments, readings from the Apollo 14 and 15 dust detectors have been restored by scientists with the National Space Science Data Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Silver nanocubes make super light absorbers, hold great potential for solar cells Posted: 06 Dec 2012 12:36 PM PST Microscopic metallic cubes could unleash the enormous potential of metamaterials to absorb light, leading to more efficient and cost-effective large-area absorbers for sensors or solar cells, researchers have found.

Seeing in color at the nanoscale: Scientists develop a new nanotech tool to probe solar-energy conversion Posted: 06 Dec 2012 12:36 PM PST If nanoscience were television, we'd be in the 1950s. Although scientists can make and manipulate nanoscale objects with increasingly awesome control, they are limited to black-and-white imagery for examining those objects. But that may all change with the introduction of a new microscopy tool that delivers exquisite chemical details with a resolution once thought impossible.

Researchers craft tool to minimize threat of endocrine disruptors in new chemicals Posted: 06 Dec 2012 11:20 AM PST Researchers have developed a safety testing system to help chemists design inherently safer chemicals and processes.

Harmful greenhouse gas turned into tool for making pharmaceuticals: New technique finds use for ozone-destroying chemical waste product Posted: 06 Dec 2012 11:20 AM PST Chemists have developed a way to transform a hitherto useless ozone-destroying greenhouse gas that is the byproduct of Teflon manufacture and transform it into reagents for producing pharmaceuticals.

World's smallest reaction chamber Posted: 06 Dec 2012 11:20 AM PST The world's smallest reaction chamber, with a mixing volume measured in femtolitres (million billionths of a litre), can be used to study the kind of speedy, nanoscale biochemical reactions that take place inside individual cells. By combining two electrospray emitters, not only can such reactions occur but the resulting products can be determined by mass spectrometry.

New atomic-layer electrodeposition method yields surprising results Posted: 06 Dec 2012 11:13 AM PST A new method for creating very thin layers of materials at the atomic scale could "unlock an important new technology" for creating nanomaterials, according to nanomaterials experts.

'Time reversal' research may open doors to future tech Posted: 06 Dec 2012 09:43 AM PST Imagine a cell phone charger that recharges your phone remotely without even knowing where it is; a device that targets and destroys tumors, wherever they are in the body; or a security field that can disable electronics, even a listening device hiding in a prosthetic toe, without knowing where it is. While these applications remain only dreams, researchers have come up with a sci-fi seeming technology that one day could make them real. Using a "time-reversal" technique, the team has discovered how to transmit power, sound or images to a "nonlinear object" without knowing the object's exact location or affecting objects around it.

Fermi improves its vision for thunderstorm Gamma-ray flashes Posted: 06 Dec 2012 09:24 AM PST Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above thunderstorms.

Image of the Carina Nebula marks inauguration of VLT Survey Telescope Posted: 06 Dec 2012 09:19 AM PST A spectacular new image of the star-forming Carina Nebula has been captured by the VLT Survey Telescope at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory and released on the occasion of the inauguration of the telescope in Naples today. The picture was taken with the help of Sebastián Piñera, President of Chile, during his visit to the observatory on June 5, 2012.

Searching for the best black hole recipe Posted: 06 Dec 2012 09:17 AM PST In this holiday season of home cooking and carefully-honed recipes, some astronomers are asking: what is the best mix of ingredients for stars to make the largest number of plump black holes? They are tackling this problem by studying the number of black holes in galaxies with different compositions. One of these galaxies is the ring galaxy NGC 922 that was formed by the collision between two galaxies.

Sungrazing comets as solar probes Posted: 06 Dec 2012 07:50 AM PST To observe how winds move high in Earth's atmosphere, scientists sometimes release clouds of barium as tracers to track how the material corkscrews, blows around, and changes composition in response to high altitude winds -- but scientists have no similar technique to study the turbulent atmosphere of the sun. So researchers were excited in December 2011, when Comet Lovejoy swept right through the sun's corona with its long tail streaming behind it.

NASA investigates use of 'trailblazing' material for new sensors Posted: 06 Dec 2012 07:45 AM PST Tiny sensors -- made of a potentially trailblazing material just one atom thick and heralded as the "next best thing" since the invention of silicon -- are now being developed to detect trace elements in Earth's upper atmosphere and structural flaws in spacecraft.

Flexible silicon solar-cell fabrics may soon become possible Posted: 06 Dec 2012 06:47 AM PST For the first time, a silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities has been developed that is capable of being scaled up to many meters in length. The research opens the door to the possibility of weaving together solar-cell silicon wires to create flexible, curved, or twisted solar fabrics.

Hubble sees a galaxy hit a bullseye Posted: 06 Dec 2012 06:45 AM PST In Hubble's image, NGC 922 clearly reveals itself not to be a normal spiral galaxy. The spiral arms are disrupted, a stream of stars extends out towards the top of the image, and a bright ring of nebulae encircles the core. New observations reveal more chaos in the form of ultraluminous X-ray sources dotted around the galaxy.

New '4-D' transistor is preview of future computers Posted: 05 Dec 2012 05:02 PM PST A new type of transistor shaped like a Christmas tree has arrived just in time for the holidays, but the prototype won't be nestled under the tree along with the other gifts.

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