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| December 15, 2013 |
 The Dragon Has Landed Sydney, Australia (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - The successful landing of China's Chang'e-3 spacecraft on the Moon is significant for several reasons. This is China's first landing on another heavenly body, and represents an important step forward for their space program. It's also the first object to safely land on the Moon in 36 years, breaking a mission drought that has gone longer than most analysts would have expected. Like the lau ... more |  |
China's first lunar rover lands on moon: State TV Beijing (AFP) Dec 14, 2013 - A space module carrying China's first lunar rover landed on the moon Saturday, state television said, the first soft landing on the moon in nearly four decades and a major step for Beijing's ambitious space programme. Scientists burst into applause as a computer generated image representing the spacecraft was seen landing on the moon's surface via screens at a Beijing control centre, state b ... more |  |
 Iran sends second monkey into space: president Tehran (AFP) Dec 14, 2013 - Iran said on Saturday that it had safely returned a monkey to Earth after blasting it into space in the second such launch this year in its controversial ballistic programme. President Hassan Rouhani congratulated the scientists involved in the mission, in a message carried by Iran's official IRNA news agency. In January, Iran said it had successfully brought a live monkey, which it name ... more |  |
 SpaceX to bid for rights to historic NASA launch pad Washington (AFP) Dec 13, 2013 - In a battle of technology titans for the right to lease a historic NASA launch pad in Florida, SpaceX has beat out competitor Blue Origin, the US space agency said Friday. The California-based SpaceX is owned by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and Blue Origin is a venture of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. "NASA will begin working with SpaceX to negotiate the terms of its lease for LC-39A," ... more |  |
 NASA mulls spacewalks to fix space station Washington (AFP) Dec 13, 2013 - A series of spacewalks might be necessary to fix a breakdown in the equipment cooling system aboard the International Space Station, NASA said Friday. A US space agency spokesman told AFP that NASA will decide by Monday on the appropriate measures to fix the breakdown, which has posed no danger to the six-man crew. "Station program managers will have further discussions on potential cont ... more |  |
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 Rare meteorite sat unnoticed in private Dutch collection for 140 years Leiden, Netherlands (UPI) Dec 13, 2013 - A rare meteorite formed soon after the origin of the solar system has sat unnoticed for more than a century in a private Dutch collection, scientists say. Estimated at 4.6 billion years old, the cosmic fragment was "rediscovered" by a Dutch amateur astronomer when he examined the collection last year. It was officially handed over to the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden in ... more |  |
 Morphing material has mighty potential Houston TX (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Heating a sheet of plastic may not bring it to life - but it sure looks like it does in new experiments at Rice University. The materials created by Rice polymer scientist Rafael Verduzco and his colleagues start as flat slabs, but they morph into shapes that can be controlled by patterns written into their layers. Materials that can change their shape based on environmental conditions are ... more |  |
 Can We Turn Unwanted Carbon Dioxide Into Electricity San Francisco CA (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Researchers are developing a new kind of geothermal power plant that will lock away unwanted carbon dioxide (CO2) underground - and use it as a tool to boost electric power generation by at least 10 times compared to existing geothermal energy approaches. The technology to implement this design already exists in different industries, so the researchers are optimistic that their new approac ... more |  |
New sensor tracks zinc in cells Boston MA (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Zinc, an essential nutrient, is found in every tissue in the body. The vast majority of the metal ion is tightly bound to proteins, helping them to perform biological reactions. Tiny amounts of zinc, however, are only loosely bound, or "mobile," and thought to be critical for proper function in organs such as the brain, pancreas, and prostate gland. Yet the exact roles the ion plays in biologica ... more |  |
 Geoengineering approaches to reduce climate change unlikely to succeed Munich, Germany (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface by geoengineering may not undo climate change after all. Two German researchers used a simple energy balance analysis to explain how the Earth's water cycle responds differently to heating by sunlight than it does to warming due to a stronger atmospheric greenhouse effect. Further, they show that this difference implies that ref ... more |  |
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 Graphene-based nano-antennas may enable networks of tiny machines Atlanta GA (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Networks of nanometer-scale machines offer exciting potential applications in medicine, industry, environmental protection and defense, but until now there's been one very small problem: the limited capability of nanoscale antennas fabricated from traditional metallic components. With antennas made from conventional materials like copper, communication between low-power nanomachines would ... more |  |
Oregon scientists offer new insights on controlling nanoparticle stability Eugene OR (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - University of Oregon chemists studying the structure of ligand-stabilized gold nanoparticles have captured fundamental new insights about their stability. The information, they say, could help to maintain a desired, integral property in nanoparticles used in electronic devices, where stability is important, or to design them so they readily condense into thin films for such things as inks or cat ... more |  |
Less is more with adding graphene to nanofibers Lincoln NB (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Figuring that if some is good, more must be better, researchers have been trying to pack more graphene, a supermaterial, into structural composites. Collaborative research led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln materials engineers discovered that, in this case, less is more. The team, led by Yuris Dzenis, McBroom professor of mechanical and materials engineering and a member of UNL's Nebras ... more |  |
Negative resistivity leads to positive resistance in the presence of a magnetic field Atlanta GA (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - In a paper appearing in Nature's Scientific Reports, Dr. Ramesh Mani, professor of physics and astronomy at Georgia State University, reports that, in the presence of a magnetic field, negative resistivity can produce a positive resistance, along with a sign reversal in the Hall effect, in GaAs/AlGaAs semiconductor devices. The electrical resistance is a basic property of components known ... more |  |
A Stopwatch for Electron Flashes Munich, Germany (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Physicists at LMU Munich and the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics measure the duration of energetic electron pulses using laser fields. A stopwatch made of light can determine the duration of extremely brief electron flashes. Teams based in the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at LMU and at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have, for the first time, succeeded in measu ... more |  |
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Polymers can be semimetals Linkoping, Sweden (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Polymers can behave like insulators, semiconductors and metals - as well as semimetals. Twenty researchers, under the leadership of Xavier Crispin, Docent in organic electronics at Linkoping University, are behind the breakthrough published in Nature Materials. Traditional plastics, or polymers, are electrical insulators. In the seventies a new class of polymers that conduct electricity li ... more |  |
Deep Carbon Observatory scientists discover quick recipe for producing hydrogen Washington, DC (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Scientists in Lyon, a French city famed for its cuisine, have discovered a quick-cook recipe for copious volumes of hydrogen (H2). The breakthrough suggests a better way of producing the hydrogen that propels rockets and energizes battery-like fuel cells. In a few decades, it could even help the world meet key energy needs - without carbon emissions contributing to the greenhouse effect an ... more |  |
CWRU researchers report nanoscale energy-efficient switching devices Cleveland OH (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - By relentlessly miniaturizing a pre-World War II computer technology, and combining this with a new and durable material, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have built nanoscale switches and logic gates that operate more energy-efficiently than those now used by the billions in computers, tablets and smart phones. Electromechanical switches were the building blocks of electroni ... more |  |
Scientists scale terahertz peaks in nanotubes Houston TX (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - Carbon nanotubes carry plasmonic signals in the terahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum, but only if they're metallic by nature or doped. In new research, the Rice University laboratory of physicist Junichiro Kono disproved previous theories that dominant terahertz response comes from narrow-gap semiconducting nanotubes. Knowing that metallic or doped nanotubes respond with plasmon ... more |  |
 Carbon capture technology could be vital for climate targets Laxenburg, Austria (SPX) Dec 14, 2013 - The future availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be pivotal in reaching ambitious climate targets, according to a new comprehensive study of future energy technologies from IIASA, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change, the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum, and researchers worldwide. The study, published in a special issue of the journal Climatic Change, provides an overvie ... more |  |
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