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Friday, August 9, 2013

ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

ScienceDaily: Top Technology News


New NASA mission to help us learn how to mine asteroids

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 10:02 PM PDT

Over the last hundred years, the human population has exploded from about 1.5 billion to more than seven billion, driving an ever-increasing demand for resources. To satisfy civilization's appetite, communities have expanded recycling efforts while mine operators must explore forbidding frontiers to seek out new deposits, opening mines miles underground or even at the bottom of the ocean.

A path to better MTV-MOFs: Best method for predicting adsorption in carbon dioxide-scrubbing materials

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 02:03 PM PDT

Researchers have developed a method for accurately predicting the ability of MTV-MOFs (multivariate metal organic frameworks) to scrub carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of fossil fuel power plants.

Pass the salt: Common condiment could enable new high-tech industry -- silicon nanostructures

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 11:21 AM PDT

Chemists have identified a compound that could significantly reduce the cost and potentially enable the mass commercial production of silicon nanostructures -- materials that have huge potential in everything from electronics to biomedicine and energy storage. This extraordinary compound is called table salt.

Atomic clock can simulate quantum magnetism

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 11:21 AM PDT

Researchers have for the first time used an atomic clock as a quantum simulator, mimicking the behavior of a different, more complex quantum system. All but the smallest, most trivial quantum systems are too complicated to simulate on classical computers, hence the interest in quantum simulators to understand the quantum mechanical behavior of exotic materials such as high-temperature superconductors.

Terahertz technology fights fashion fraud

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 09:41 AM PDT

Scientists have demonstrated how a technique called terahertz time-domain spectroscopy could be used to help spot fakes and combat textile counterfeiting.

Molecules form 2-D patterns never before observed: Nanoscience experiments produce elusive 5-vertex tilings

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 09:38 AM PDT

Tessellation patterns that have fascinated mathematicians since Kepler worked out their systematics 400 years ago -- and that more recently have caught the eye of artists and crystallographers -- can now be seen in the laboratory. They first took shape on a surface more perfectly two-dimensional than any sheet of paper, a single layer of atoms and molecules atop an atomically smooth substrate. Physicists coaxed these so-called Kepler tilings "onto the page" through guided self-assembly of nanostructures.

Visualization tool helps researchers see their data like never before

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 09:33 AM PDT

Making sense of the ever-increasing mounds of data is one of the great challenges facing researchers today. Staff and students in a university information technology department have come up with an approach to help researchers gain a new perspective on their data.

Hubble finds source of Magellanic Stream: Astronomers explore origin of gas ribbon wrapped around our galaxy

Posted: 08 Aug 2013 09:33 AM PDT

Astronomers have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy. New Hubble observations reveal that most of this stream was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud some 2 billion years ago, with a smaller portion originating more recently from its larger neighbor.

Practice at 'guesstimating' can speed up math ability

Posted: 07 Aug 2013 10:42 AM PDT

There's a connection between how well a person does at the approximate number system and how skilled they become at the symbolic math they learn in school. Researchers have shown that practice with approximations can help a person's speed at symbolic math problems.

Magnetic switching simplified

Posted: 07 Aug 2013 10:41 AM PDT

Researchers have described a new physical effect that could be used to develop more efficient magnetic chips for information processing. The quantum mechanical effect makes it easier to produce spin-polarized currents necessary for the switching of magnetically stored information.

Squeezed light using a silicon micromechanical system

Posted: 07 Aug 2013 10:41 AM PDT

Scientists have managed to engineer a miniature silicon system that produces a type of light that is quieter at certain frequencies -- meaning it has fewer quantum fluctuations -- than what is usually present in a vacuum.

Electric buses provide public transportation services and are recharged right from the road

Posted: 06 Aug 2013 10:23 AM PDT

For the first time anywhere, electric buses provide public transportation services and are recharged right from the road.

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