science wire

Q&A: Stanford’s Philip Taubman on an unlikely alliance to rid the world of nuclear weapons
In a new book, former New York Times reporter Philip Taubman, a consulting professor at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, tells the story of five famous men who have joined efforts to eliminate the ultimate weapon.

Researchers awarded funds to develop promising technologies
Five Princeton faculty teams are the new recipients of support from a University fund designed to help propel promising discoveries out of the laboratory into products and technologies that can benefit society. The funding will support the following projects: a cheaper and more efficient solar cell for converting sunlight to electricity; a novel water-treatment technology; a microscope that uses sound waves to focus the lens; a graphene-based boost for battery-like devices; and a new class of antiviral drugs.

Self-Assembling Nanorods
A relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods – rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals – to self-assemble into one-, two- and even three-dimensional macroscopic s

Want to understand the fluid dynamics of the oceans and atmosphere? UCLA’s got the video
Oceans and clouds, even the atmosphere itself, are in constant motion and can undergo dramatic fluctuations, like hurricanes, that lead to severe consequences.

How Do You Fight Fire in Space? Experiments Provide Some Answers
Improving fire-fighting techniques in space and getting a better understanding of fuel combustion here on Earth are the focus of a series of experiments on the International Space Station, led by a professor at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. A first round of experiments ran from March 2009 to December 2011.

Bell Museum Hosts 2nd Annual Sustainability Film Series: Stories From a Changing Planet
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (01/31/2012) —Beginning February 2, the University's Bell Museum of Natural History and Institute on the Environment are inviting visitors to explore sustainability issues through the medium of film.

U of M Physics Circus brings large-scale stunts and physics lessons to the public Feb. 9
Media Note: Members of the media may attend a daytime school group show at the Minneapolis Convention Center to get photos or video, but please Rhonda Zurn at rzurn [a] umn (p) edu to make arrangements. MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (01/31/2012) —If you've never seen a physicist drop 20 feet through thin air while a friend shoots a ball at him from a cannon, or grown men and women shooting streams of toilet paper over an audience with a leaf blower, the University of Minnesota Physics Force has a show for you.

Astronomer Andrea Ghez to highlight ever-improving technology for studying space in annual Bunyan lecture

Physics at 2,500 feet
Sharing his lifelong passion for flight, CNS manager T. Fettah Kosar teaches aerodynamics from the cockpit Ismail Türsan, at right, stands in front of the Kleopatra, a glider he built with his friends and flew in 1934, in Turkey.

From Cancer Research to Energy Storage, Berkeley Lab Scientist Takes on Big Challenges
On a typical day, Rizia Bardhan walks through the doors of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Molecular Foundry and immerses herself in the tricky business of tweaking optical spectroscopy equipment to study phase transitions in metal hydrides. It's fair to say that what she does is difficult to grasp.

Volunteers sought for simulated Mars mission and study of ’menu fatigue’
Astronauts on a mission to Mars will need much more than freeze-dried ice cream to sustain them, and researchers at Cornell are working to determine the best way to keep them well nourished during their three-year journeys and four-month stays on the Red Planet.

Berkeley Lab to Develop Novel Materials for Hydrogen Storage
The biggest challenge with hydrogen-powered fuel cells lies in the storage of hydrogen: how to store enough of it, in a safe and cost-effective manner, to power a vehicle for 300 miles?  Lawrence Ber

Suomi remembered for problem-solving ability, drive
Verner Suomi's career — even his life — may not have been as long and illustrious had he not been an inveterate problem solver.

Satellite renamed to honor UW-Madison space pioneer
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have renamed their newest Earth-observing satellite after Verner Suomi, a longtime UW-Madison professor who often is called the father of satellite meteorology.

Robots go head to head, 250 miles above Earth
Third annual Zero Robotics competition pits robots against each other on the International Space Station.

Under the Electron Microscope - A 3-D Image of an Individual Protein
When Gang Ren whirls the controls of his cryo-electron microscope, he compares it to fine-tuning the gearshift and brakes of a racing bicycle. But this machine at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is a bit more complex. It costs nearly $1.5 million, operates at the frigid temperature of liquid nitrogen, and it is allowing scientists to see what no one has seen before.

Researchers provide new insight into how metals fail
The eventual failure of metals, such as the aluminum in ships and airplanes, can often be blamed on breaks, or voids, in the material's atomic lattice. They're at first invisible, only microns in size, but once enough of them link up, the metal eventually splits apart. Cornell engineers, trying to better understand this process, have discovered that nanoscale voids behave differently than the larger ones that are hundreds of thousands of atoms in scale, studied through traditional physics.

Top astronomers’ group honors Yale physics chair, Meg Urry

UCLA professors Andrea Ghez, Terence Tao honored by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Two internationally renowned UCLA professors — Andrea Ghez, a professor of physics and astronomy, and Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics — have been awarded the Crafoord Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The prize, which recognizes extraordinary achievements in mathematics, astronomy and other fields, is among the most prestigious honors in science.

Femtosecond laser research wins SPIE Green Photonics Award

S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation Gives $25 Million to Enrich Campus Life, Outreach Programs
With an interest in enhancing the living and learning environment at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the S. D. Bechtel, Jr.

Interdisciplinary science building opens doors to researchers
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - When Penn State's Millennium Science Complex opened its doors to researchers this fall, it inaugurated a new era of scientific discovery at the intersection of materials science, engineering, nanoscience and the life sciences at Penn State.

Jim Arnold, Founding Chemist at UC San Diego Dies at 88
James R. Arnold, founding chairman of UC San Diego's chemistry department and first director of the California Space Institute whose contributions to science spanned the study of cosmic rays to the future of manned space flight, died Friday, January 6. He was 88. "Jim Arnold truly was a visionary scientist who found creative ways of looking at a broad range of problems, terrestrial and extraterrestrial," said Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences.

DOE Awards Record Supercomputing Time to UC San Diego, SDSC Researchers
One Quarter Billion Hours Plus Allocated for 2012 Scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and other areas of the University of California, San Diego, conducting research in physics, computer science, earth science, and engineering, together were awarded an all-time high of more than a quarter billion hours in supercomputing processor time by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the agency's 2012 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.

Astronomers Release Unprecedented Data Set on Celestial Objects that Brighten and Dim
Astronomers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Arizona have released the largest data set ever collected that documents the brightening and dimming of stars and other celestial objects—two hundred million in total.

Supercomputers help Yale astrophysicists interpret secrets of the universe
A series of papers released this week by the international scientific collaboration known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey depended heavily on supercomputing performed by Yale astrophysicists.

Choreographing dance of electrons offers promise in pursuit of quantum computers
by John Sullivan In the basement of Hoyt Laboratory at Princeton University, Alexei Tyryshkin clicked a computer mouse and sent a burst of microwaves washing across a silicon crystal suspended in a frozen cylinder of stainless steel. The waves pulsed like distant music across the crystal and deep within its heart, billions of electrons started spinning to their beat.

Calculating What’s in the Universe from the Biggest Color 3-D Map
Scientific : Shirley Ho, cwho [a] lbl (p) gov Since 2000, the three Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS I, II, III) have surveyed well over a quarter of the night sky and produced the biggest color map of the universe in three dimensions ever.

Planets with Double Suns are Common
Austin, TX - Astronomers using NASA's Kepler mission have discovered two new circumbinary planet systems - planets that orbit two stars, like Tatooine in the movie Star Wars. Their find, which brings the number of known circumbinary planets to three, shows that planets with two suns must be common, with many millions existing in our Galaxy.

Milky Way stars that wander but are not lost
Panel discussion 'Responding to Child Sexual Abuse' set for Jan. 24 Penn State President Erickson signs employment contract New York Alumni Town Hall meeting to be streamed Website consolidates sexual assault resource information Affirmative Action vice provost presents sexual harassment workshop New evidence that will help to answer long-standing questions about the history of stars in the disk of our galaxy is being released this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society by a team that includes a Penn State astronomer.

Hubble spies old stars that shed their skins to look younger
Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a University of Washington-led team has peered deep into the neighboring Andromeda galaxy to find what look like young blue stars in a neighborhood that should be populated by old stars. Blue is considered a telltale signal for hot, young stars but, in a “surprising and intriguing” twist, it turns out that some old stars can also be blue, said Philip Rosenfield, a UW doctoral student in astronomy who discussed the findings Jan.

Berkeley Lab Seeks to Help U.S. Assert Scientific Leadership in Critical Materials
A few short decades ago, few could have imagined that the world would be seriously concerned over something called dysprosium. Also known as number 66 on the periodic table, dysprosium was once just another element for chemistry students to memorize but is now one of the most sought-after and critically needed materials on the planet.

Doomsday Clock moves one minute closer to midnight
Faced with inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change, the University of Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Jan.

At Yale, (future) female physicists to gather by the hundreds

Yale’s new microscope brings atoms’ identities into focus
Yale's acquisition of a powerful new transmission electron microscope (TEM) is expected to transform researchers' ability to examine and manipulate atom-scale materials and devices on campus.

The Next Big Step Toward Atom-Specific Dynamical Chemistry
For Ali Belkacem of Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division, "What is chemistry?" is not a rhetorical question. "Chemistry is inherently dynamical," he answers.

Now you see it, now you didn’t: Cloaking a moment in time
In movie magic, people and objects can appear or disappear or move from place to place in an instant. Just stop the camera, move things around and start it again. Now, Cornell researchers have demonstrated a similar "temporal cloak" - albeit on a very small scale - in the transport of information by a beam of light.

Stanford physicist’s moderate approach to climate change gaining supporters
Stanford physicist's prescriptions include more natural gas and nuclear power, doubts about renewable energy goals, and a new way to gain political support.

New technique makes it easier to etch semiconductors
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Creating semiconductor structures for high-end optoelectronic devices just got easier, thanks to University of Illinois researchers. The team developed a method to chemically etch patterned arrays in the semiconductor gallium arsenide, used in solar cells, lasers, light emitting diodes (LEDs), field effect transistors (FETs), capacitors and sensors.

Flipping an egg carton of light traps giant atoms
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - In an egg carton of laser light, University of Michigan physicists can trap giant Rydberg atoms with up to 90 percent efficiency, an achievement that could advance quantum computing and terahertz imaging, among other applications.

Engineers boost electrical efficiency in organic semiconductors
By packing molecules closer together, chemical engineers at Stanford have dramatically improved the electrical conductivity of organic semiconductors. The advance could herald flexible electronics, more efficient solar panels, and perhaps even better television screens. Organic semiconductors could usher in an era of foldable smartphones, better high-definition television screens and solar clothing that turns sunlight into electricity for recharging your iPad.

A Single Cell Endoscope
An endoscope that can provide high-resolution optical images of the interior of a single living cell, or precisely deliver genes, proteins, therapeutic drugs or other cargo without injuring or damaging the cell, has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Glacial tap is open but the water will run dry
Retreating glaciers threaten water supplies Glaciers are retreating at an unexpectedly fast rate according to research done in Peru's Cordillera Blanca by McGill doctoral student Michel Baraer.

Chinese Academy of Sciences Names CMU’s Veloso As One of 20 Einstein Chair Professors for 2012
: Chinese Academy of Sciences Names CMU's Veloso As One of 20 Einstein Chair Professors for 2012-Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University Noted Computer Scientist Will Lecture at Leading

Understanding the Mechanical Biology of Life’s Bonds
Julio Fernandez talks about creating a new field, mechanical biology, to further study protein dynamics.

Robert Osserman, noted Stanford mathematician, dies at 84
In addition to his important research, Bob Osserman brought math to a broad audience through public conversations with comedian Steve Martin, among others.

Powerful potential
SEAS holiday lecture engages young learners with the wonders of energy By Mureji Fatunde '12 Research assistant Daniel Rosenberg, a key member of Harvard's science lecture demonstration te

Scanning the Arctic skies
Researchers from the University of Toronto's Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics are taking the search for other worlds to a new frontier: the Canadian Arctic.

Caltech Chemists Propose Explanation for Superconductivity at High Temperatures
It has been 25 years since scientists discovered the first high-temperature superconductors—copper oxides, or cuprates, that conduct electricity without a shred of resistance at temperatures much higher than other superconducting metals. Yet no one has managed to explain why these cuprates are able to superconduct at all.

More Clues in the Hunt for the Higgs
Physicists have announced that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has produced yet more tantalizing hints for the existence of the Higgs boson.

’Fingerprinting’ method tracks mercury emissions from coal-fired power plant
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - For the first time, the chemical "fingerprints" of the element mercury have been used by University of Michigan researchers to directly link environmental pollution to a specific coal-burning power plant. The primary source of mercury pollution in the atmosphere is coal combustion.

Disaster looms for gas cloud falling into Milky Way’s central black hole
A simulated view of the gas cloud (red orbit) now approaching the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Closest Type Ia Supernova in Decades Solves a Cosmic Mystery
Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia's) are the extraordinarily bright and remarkably similar "standard candles" astronomers use to measure cosmic growth, a technique that in 1998 led to the discovery of dark energy - and 13 years later to a Nobel Prize, "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe." The light from thousands of SN Ia's has been studied, but until now their physics - how they detonate and what the star systems that produce them actually look like before they explode - has been educated guesswork.

Sharpening the lines
New advance could lead to even smaller features in the constant quest for more compact, faster microchips. The microchip revolution has seen a steady shrinking of features on silicon chips, packing in more transistors and wires to boost chips' speed and data capacity. But in recent years, the technologies behind these chips have begun to bump up against fundamental limits, such as the wavelengths of light used for critical steps in chip manufacturing.

Hints of the Higgs Boson Seen as Trap Set for the Elusive Particle Tightens
A spray of particles scatters after two protons collide in the LHC.

New Path to Flex and Stretch Electronics
Imprinting electronic circuitry on backplanes that are both flexible and stretchable promises to revolutionize a number of industries and make "smart devices" nearly ubiquitous.

World science community abuzz as latest Higgs boson results announced
The international team of researchers that has been smashing high-energy protons together inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to re-create the conditions at the time of the Big Bang announced new evidence today pointing to an observation of the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive elementary particle that is predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics.

Trillion-frame-per-second video
By using optical equipment in a totally unexpected way, MIT researchers have created an imaging system that makes light look slow.

Diamonds and Dust for Better Cement
It's no surprise that humans the world over use more water, by volume, than any other material. But in second place, at over 17 billion tons consumed each year, comes concrete made with Portland cement. Portland cement provides the essential binder for strong, versatile concrete; its basic materials are found in many places around the globe; and, at about $100 a ton, it's relatively cheap.

Rosemary Knight: Geophysicist, senate chair, hitchhiking advocate
Rosemary Knight, who joined the Stanford faculty in 2000 after teaching for a decade at the University of British Columbia, loved math, physics and chemistry in high school and was elated when she "discovered" geology, a field that combined all three.

Nine UC San Diego Professors Named 2011 AAAS Fellows
Nine professors at the University of California, San Diego have been named 2011 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the nation's largest scientific organization.

Researchers enhance graphene to enable multicolor photodetection
Graphene, a one-atom–thick layer of carbon lattice with a honeycomb structure, is seen as an attractive semiconductor material for use in future electronics and optoelectronics because of its speed, transparency, flexibility and strength.

Engineers making solar power more efficient
Innovations by a team of Yale University researchers could lead to improvements in basic solar power technology that result in lower-cost, higher-efficiency photovoltaic systems.

100 years of discovery: Celebrating South Pole research
To mark the centennial of Roald Amundsen's expedition to the South Pole, the IceCube Research Center is hosting an evening of exploration and learning on Tuesday, Dec. 13 from 6:30-8:30 at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. A hose caries hot water to the top of an Antarctic drill tower as part of the IceCube project.

Device promises nutrition diagnosis in minutes
Bioengineer Buddy Ratner believes his lab's latest device could be a powerful tool, capable of addressing health and child development issues by delivering a blood test in minutes to some of the most remote parts of the globe. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also sees potential in the device, adding an additional $611,000 last month to prior funding for this work.

Capasso awarded honorary doctorate from Université Paris Diderot

Five Penn Researchers Named American Physical Society Fellows
PHILADELPHIA - The American Physical Society has elected five University of Pennsylvania faculty members to its 2011 APS Fellowship class.

Campus Leaders Describe Plans to “Flash Forward from 50” in Research and Discovery
As the campus looks beyond last year's 50th anniversary celebrations, university leaders are developing a new long-term vision for the decades ahead. The central idea behind that vision is a familiar one: "We will build on faculty collaboration across disciplines to produce transformative research with societal impact." The Founders' Symposium, held on Nov.

Partnership for Progress in Electronics Strengthened by New Lab-Industry Investment
As manufacturers pack more and more circuitry into the tiny microchips on which electronic technologies depend, ultraviolet light's narrow wavelengths are essential for creating the densely patterned chips of the future.

Pair of black holes ‘weigh in’ at 10 billion suns, the most massive yet
AUSTIN, Texas — A team of astronomers including Karl Gebhardt and graduate student Jeremy Murphy of The University of Texas at Austin have discovered the most massive black holes to date - two

Peculiar cosmic explosion on Christmas Day 2010 remains a mystery
Town Hall Forum video posted Board executive committee reaffirms, ratifies earlier decisions Students host fundraiser to benefit abused children Penn State, PA Coalition Against Rape join to

Record massive black holes discovered lurking in monster galaxies
University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered the largest black holes to date - two monsters with masses equivalent to 10 billion suns that are threatening to consume anything, even light, within a region five times the size of our solar system.

A novel way to concentrate sun’s heat
MIT researchers find a way to generate power without the usual mirror arrays. — Most technologies for harnessing the sun’s energy capture the light itself, which is turned into electricity using photovoltaic materials.

In the Dragonfish's Mouth
Three astronomers at the University of Toronto have found the most numerous batch of young, supermassive stars yet observed in our galaxy: hundreds of thousands of stars, including several hundreds of the most massive kind - blue stars dozens of times heavier than our Sun.

David Krakauer nurtures scientific collaboration
David Krakauer, the new director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, discusses his thoughts on "transcience" and scientific collaboration.

Princeton's new computing research center builds research capacity
by Catherine Zandonella After several years of planning and more than a year of construction, Princeton University's High-Performance Computing Research Center opened its doors this week.

New Exhibition, Website Guide Visitors through the Evolving Universe

Penn State science is among the best in the U.S., national study shows
Football head coach search committee formed University launches hotline for reporting abuse Student government leaders to host forum for students, administrators Penn State faculty offer tea

Stanford play examines what may have happened when two eminent physicists met during WW II
Copenhagen: Stanford play examines what may have happened when two of the world's foremost physicists met in the dark hours of World War II The play explores the relationship of two scientists, bound by physics, friendship and war.

Nanoparticle electrode for batteries could make large-scale power storage on the energy grid feasible, say Stanford researchers
Stanford researchers have used nanoparticles of a copper compound to develop a high-power battery electrode that is so inexpensive to make, so efficient and so durable that it could be used to build b

Physicists: Did neutrinos break the speed of light?
The revolutionary news that an experiment measured particles traveling faster than the speed of light drew varied ages and backgrounds to a standing-room only physics department forum, "Faster Than the Speed of Light'," in Clark Hall Nov. 17. The experiment that triggered the excitement was simple: Scientists at the CERN accelerator in Switzerland fired a beam of neutrinos 730 kilometers through the mountains to the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy and its enormous OPERA neutrino detector.

On the Road to Plasmonics With Silver Polyhedral Nanocrystals
The question of how many polyhedral nanocrystals of silver can be packed into millimeter-sized supercrystals may not be burning on many lips but the answer holds importance for one of today's hottest new high-tech fields - plasmonics! Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) may have opened the door to a simpler approach for the fabrication of plasmonic materials by inducing polyhedral-shaped silver nanocrystals to self-assemble into three-dimensional supercrystals of the highest possible density.

Team develops highly efficient method for creating flexible, transparent electrodes
As the market for liquid crystal displays and other electronics continues to drive up the price of indium — the material used to make the indium tin oxide (ITO) transparent electrodes in these devices — scientists have been searching for a less costly and more dynamic alternative, particularly for use in future flexible electronics.

’Perfect black’ coating can render a 3D object flat, raises intriguing dark veil possibility in astronomy
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - A carbon nanotube coating developed at the University of Michigan acts as a "magic black cloth" that conceals an object's three-dimensional geometry and makes it look like a flat black sheet. The 70-micron coating, or carbon nanotube carpet, is about half the thickness of a sheet of paper.

NASA’s Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement
Cambridge, MA - New details about the birth of a famous black hole that took place millions of years ago have been uncovered, thanks to a team of scientists who used data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory as well as from radio, optical and other X-ray telescopes.

Mars Science Lab: Michigan scientists bring special expertise to new rover mission
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Two University of Michigan planetary scientists are vital members of the science team of the Mars Science Laboratory, which will study whether the Red Planet was ever capable of harboring microbial life.

In new quantum-dot LED design, researchers turn troublesome molecules to their advantage
A robust new architecture enables optimization for quantum-dot displays : Caroline Perry , (617) 496-1351 By nestling quantum dots in an insulating egg-crate structure, researchers at the Ha

Lightning-fast, efficient data transmission developed at Stanford
A new nanoscale device developed at Stanford's School of Engineering transmits data at ultrafast rates while using thousands of times less energy than current technologies. The nanophotonics device is a major step forward for on-chip data transmission, the researchers say. A team at Stanford's School of Engineering has demonstrated an ultrafast nanoscale light-emitting diode (LED) that is orders of magnitude lower in power consumption than today's laser-based systems and is able to transmit data at the very rapid rate of 10 billion bits per second.

Using ionized plasmas as cheap sterilizers for developing world
University of California, Berkeley, scientists have shown that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial - able to kill bacteria - for as long as a week after treatment.

Voyager 2 Completes Switch to Backup Thruster Set
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Voyager 2 has successfully switched to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft.

NASA Releases Updated Radar Movie of Asteroid 2005 YU55
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA Scientists working with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have released a second, longer, and more refined, movie clip of asteroid 2005 YU55. The images were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Nov. 7, 2011, between 11:24 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. PST (2:24 p.m. and 4:35 p.m. EST).

Asteroid video captured by NASA's Swift satellite
As an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier streaked past Earth during the early-morning hours last week, a team of astronomers at Penn State University and other institutions using NASA's Swift s

The Tarantula Glows with X-rays and Infrared Light
This spiderweb-like tangle of gas and dust is a star-forming region called 30 Doradus. It is one of the largest such regions located close to the Milky Way galaxy, and is found in the neighboring galaxy Large Magellanic Cloud.

NASA Sets Mars Science Laboratory Launch Coverage
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft with the Curiosity rover is set to launch to the planet Mars aboard an Atlas V rocket on Nov.

NASA Ready for November Launch of Car-Size Mars Rover
The Mars Science Laboratory Spacecraft, inside its payload fairing, is hoisted onto its Atlas V launch vehicle (left).

Astronomer Sally Dodson-Robinson Receives Prestigious Career Grant from National Science Foundation
AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas at Austin Assistant Professor Sally Dodson-Robinson has received a Faculty Early Career Development award of $363,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Berkeley Lab-founded Program Shares Astronomy With African Youth
Susan Murabana majored in economics, but science is her true calling, or more specifically, science education and outreach.

Graphene to propel mechanical device technology forward
Graphene is sort of a scientific rock star, with countless groups studying its amazing electrical properties and tensile strength and dreaming up applications ranging from flat-panel screens to elevators in space.

Switching light on and off -- with just a few photons
Cornell researchers have demonstrated that the passage of a light beam through an optical fiber can be controlled by just a few photons of another light beam. Such all-optical control is the idea behind photonics, where beams of light replace electric currents in circuits, yielding higher speed and lower power consumption.

NASA to Hold Media Briefing About Mars Rover Launch

Space Shuttle Data Helps Researchers Develop Better Model for Forecasting Solar Power Production
The space shuttle program may have ended, but data the space craft collected over the past three decades are still helping advance science.

Nanowires could be solution for high- performance solar cells
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Tiny wires could help engineers realize high-performance solar cells and other electronics, according to University of Illinois researchers. The research group, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Xiuling Li, developed a technique to integrate compound semiconductor nanowires on silicon wafers, overcoming key challenges in device production.

NASA Captures New Images of Large Asteroid Passing Earth
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif. has captured new radar images of Asteroid 2005 YU55 passing close to Earth.

Cassini Flyby Focuses on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus

Research Sparks Record-Breaking Solar Cell Performances
Theoretical research by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has led to record-breaking sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies in solar cells. The researchers showed that, contrary to conventional scientific wisdom, the key to boosting solar cell efficiency is not absorbing more photons but emitting more photons.

Nonterrestrial artifacts hard to find
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Two Pioneer probes left our solar system carrying plaques about humankind, and two Voyager probes will soon join them to gather information about places far out in our galaxy. We can and will send more autonomous probes into outer space, but why have we never found evidence of other civilizations doing the same? A pair of postdoctoral researchers at Penn State, approaching the problem mathematically, shows that we have not looked in enough places to ensure that no extraterrestrial artifacts exist in our solar system.

Voyager 2 to Switch to Backup Thruster Set
Voyager Mission Status Report NASA's Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft on Nov.

An Incredible Shrinking Material
They shrink when you heat 'em. Most materials expand when heated, but a few contract. Now engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have figured out how one of these curious materials, scandium trifluoride (ScF 3 ), does the trick—a finding, they say, that will lead to a deeper understanding of all kinds of materials.

‘Be Different or Die:’ Words of Advice from Entrepreneur and Peregrine Semiconductor Founder
Capital comes with instructions. Everything takes ‘ times longer and costs ' times as much as you thought.

City Lights Could Reveal E.T. Civilization
Cambridge, MA - In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights.

NASA’s Cassini Makes a New Pass at Enceladus
NASA's Cassini spacecraft will acquire the first detailed radar images of Saturn's moon Enceladus during a flyby on Sunday, Nov.

Engineering researchers awarded $4.5M to develop stronger carbon nanotube materials
Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have been awarded $4.5 million over four years by the U.S. Department of Defense to strengthen carbon nanotube yarns and sheets, materials that hold great promise for advancing satellite technology.

Wavechasers condemn gummy bears to crushing ocean depths
Follow the serious science – and the development of novel “Will it crush?” segments inspired by the YouTube hit “Will it blend?” – as University of Washington Wavechasers work in the South Pacific near Samoa.

Value of spaceflight is like putting a price on Beethoven’s music, says industry expert
As someone deeply involved in the American aerospace industry since its inception in the late 1950s, Norman Augustine says that the United States may need a "jolt" similar to the 1958 launching of th

Chemically assembled metamaterials could lead to superlenses and cloaking
Nanomanufacturing technology has enabled scientists to create metamaterials - stuff that never existed in nature - with unusual optical properties.

Drell to step down as SLAC laboratory director
Stanford University announced today that Persis S. Drell, director at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, has decided to return to her position as a faculty member.

’Mysteries’ Slideshow Highlights Spooky Side of Space

Scientists Develop New Tool for the Study of Spatial Patterns in Living Cells
Football has often been called “a game of inches,” but biology is a game of nanometers, where spatial differences of only a few nanometers can determine the fate of a cell – whether it lives or dies, remains normal or turns cancerous. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new and better way to study the impact of spatial patterns on living cells.

Engineers open new field of inquiry in bioelectronics
A device created by Yale University engineers could open a new field of inquiry in bioelectronics, or the merging of biological and electronic systems.

A SHARP New Microscope for the Next Generation of Microchips
Moore's Law, hardly a law but undeniably a persistent trend, says that every year and a half, the number of transistors that fit on a chip roughly doubles.

MIT professor touts artificial leaf as potential clean energy solution
During a recent visit to the University of Toronto , Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said the global energy picture wasn't good.

Graphene grows better on certain copper crystals
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - New observations could improve industrial production of high-quality graphene, hastening the era of graphene-based consumer electronics, thanks to University of Illinois engineers. By combining data from several imaging techniques, the team found that the quality of graphene depends on the crystal structure of the copper substrate it grows on.

Part II: The Energy that Drives the Stars - Different Technologies for Unique Demands
Berkeley Lab, a partner in the Heavy Ion Fusion Sciences Virtual National Laboratory (HIFS VNL) with Lawrence Livermore and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, has been a leader in developing a special kind of accelerator for experiments aimed at fusion power, called an induction accelerator.

NASA in Final Preparations for Nov. 8 Asteroid Flyby
October 26, 2011 NASA scientists will be tracking asteroid 2005 YU55 with antennas of the agency's Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., as the space rock safely flies past Earth slightly closer than the moon's orbit on Nov.

NASA Says Comet Elenin Gone and Should Be Forgotten
October 25, 2011 Comet Elenin is no more. Latest indications are this relatively small comet has broken into even smaller, even less significant, chunks of dust and ice.

NASA Telescopes Help Solve Ancient Supernova Mystery
October 24, 2011 PASADENA, Calif. - A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, reveal how the first supernova ever recorded occurred and how its shattered remains ultimately spread out to great distances.

Researchers build transparent, super-stretchy skin-like sensor
Using carbon nanotubes bent to act as springs, Stanford researchers have developed a stretchable, transparent skin-like sensor.

From red planet to deep blue sea: Astronomer Squyres becomes NASA aquanaut
Cornell professor of astronomy Steven Squyres, the lead scientist for NASA's Rover mission to Mars, has just taken the plunge as a NASA aquanaut.

Researchers Identify Mysterious Life Forms in the Extreme Deep Sea
Voyager to the Marian Trench Marine Biology Research Division Integrative Oceanography Division Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Scripps Homepage ScrippsNews Home Prosp

Mars Rover Carries Device for Underground Scouting
October 20, 2011 An instrument on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity can check for any water that might be bound into shallow underground minerals along the rover's path. "If we conclude that there is something unusual in the subsurface at a particular spot, we could suggest more analysis of the spot using the capabilities of other instruments," said this instrument's principal investigator, Igor Mitrofanov of the Space Research Institute, Russia.

Latest Cassini Images of Enceladus on View

Michigan Solar Car Team places third in the world
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Through a smoldering brush fire, past wind-shearing road trains, across the Australian continent, the University of Michigan's Quantum was the first American car to finish the World Solar Challenge today.

Engineering Professor Works to Make Data Transmission Secure
Dirk Englund is developing technology that tackles one of the most pressing problems of the Information Age— keeping information secure.

Researchers watch how ’heavy fermions’ get less heavy
By "tuning" the behavior of "heavy-fermion" materials, we may learn more about how superconductivity works, according to a new Cornell study reported Oct. 17 in the Early Online Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Spitzer Snaps a Picture of the Coolest of Companions
These two infrared images were taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in 2004 and 2009. They show a faint object moving through space together with a dead star called a white dwarf.

NASA’s Spitzer Detects Comet Storm in Nearby Solar System
October 19, 2011 PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected signs of icy bodies raining down in an alien solar system.

Part I: The Energy that Drives the Stars Comes Closer to Earth
Nuclear fusion drives the stars, including our sun. But on Earth, despite efforts dating to the 1940s, sustained and controlled fusion for electrical power production has never been realized.

Tiny stamps for tiny sensors
New glass stamp may make cheaper, more precise biosensors. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Advances in microchip technology may someday enable clinicians to perform tests for hundreds of diseases - sifting out specific molecules, such as early stage cancer cells - from just one drop of blood.

Orion’s Belt Lights Up Cassini’s View of Enceladus
October 18, 2011 NASA's Cassini mission will take advantage of the position of two of the three stars in Orion's belt when the spacecraft flies by Saturn's moon Enceladus on Wed., Oct.

Multiphoton endoscope could bring diagnostic imaging into doctors’ offices
From precancerous lesions in the bladder to polyps in the colon, pathologists are constantly examining tissue biopsies for diagnoses.

Led team creates amorphous diamond, a super-hard form of carbon
A new form of carbon that rivals diamonds in its hardness, but has an amorphous structure similar to glass, has been produced under ultrahigh pressure in laboratory experiments. The research team was led by Stanford mineral physicist Wendy Mao and graduate student Yu Lin. An amorphous diamond – one that lacks the crystalline structure of diamond, but is every bit as hard – has been created by a Stanford-led team of researchers.

Shaken, not Stirred: Berkeley Lab Scientists Spy Molecular Maneuvers
Stir this clear liquid in a glass vial and nothing happens. Shake this liquid, and free-floating sheets of protein-like structures emerge, ready to detect molecules or catalyze a reaction.

Illinois professor to be inducted into Engineering and Science Hall of Fame
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Nick Holonyak Jr., a renowned innovator of semiconductor devices, has joined the elite ranks of scientists and inventors inducted into the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame.

Caltech Awarded $12.6 Million for New Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has been awarded $12.6 million in funding over the next five years by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a new Physics Frontiers Center.

Laser pioneer Anthony Siegman dies at 79
One of the great innovators of laser science wrote the classic reference text on the subject, yet he is as renowned for his eminent students as for his own achievements.

Nobel laureate explains putting the squeeze on hydrogen
Hydrogen, normally a gas, may act like a metal when squeezed under extreme pressure. In that state, competing chemical and physical effects determine its properties, said Nobel laureate Roald Hoffman

NASA’s Dawn Science Team Presents Early Science Results
October 12, 2011 Scientists with NASA's Dawn mission are sharing with other scientists and the public their early information about the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta.

Improving the physics of grocery store display cases to save energy
Shoppers don't usually give a second thought as they reach into a cooler to grab milk, cheese or prepackaged lunches. Open-front refrigerated display cases, which make up roughly 60 percent of the refrigerated cases in grocery stores and supermarkets, provide quick access to chilled products such as dairy, meat, fish and produce.

Clearing the cosmic fog of the early universe: Massive stars may be responsible
Oct. 12, 2011 Clearing the cosmic fog of the early universe: Massive stars may be responsible ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The space between the galaxies wasn't always transparent. In the earliest times, it was an opaque, dense fog. How it cleared is an important question in astronomy. New observational evidence from the University of Michigan shows how high energy light from massive stars could have been responsible.

Life might have survived ‘snowball Earth’
Global glaciation likely put a chill on life on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago, but new research indicates that simple life in the form of photosynthetic algae could have survived in a narrow body of water with characteristics similar to today's Red Sea.

U of M Physics and Nanotechnology Building's ceremonial groundbreaking set for Oct. 12
Building was centerpiece of state's capital investment plan passed during the 2011 special legislative session Media Note: This is an invitation-only event, open to media.

New View of Vesta Mountain From NASA’s Dawn Mission
October 10, 2011 A new image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows a mountain almost three times as high as Mt.

Video Documents Three-Year Trek on Mars by NASA Rover
October 10, 2011 While NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity was traveling from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, between September 2008 and August 2011, the rover team took an end-of-drive image on each Martian day that included a drive.

Suspects in Quenching of Star Formation Exonerated
Enormous amounts of energy are released as matter falls toward the supermassive black hole at the center of an active galactic nucleus.

Progress in quantum computing, qubit by qubit
Researchers control the rate of photon emission from luminescent imperfections in diamond Engineers and physicists at Harvard have managed to capture light in tiny diamond pillars embedded in silver, releasing a stream of single photons at a controllable rate.

Crab Pulsar emits light at highest energies ever detected in a pulsar system, scientists report
An international team of scientists has detected the highest energy gamma rays ever observed from a pulsar, a highly magnetized and rapidly spinning neutron star. The VERITAS experiment measured gamma rays coming from the Crab Pulsar at such large energies that they cannot be explained by current scientific models of how pulsars behave, the researchers said.

Crab Pulsar Dazzles Astronomers with its Gamma-Ray Beams
Cambridge, MA - A thousand years ago, a brilliant beacon of light blazed in the sky, shining brightly enough to be seen even in daytime for almost a month. Native American and Chinese observers recorded the eye-catching event. We now know that they witnessed an exploding star, which left behind a gaseous remnant known as the Crab Nebula.

Elusive Planets in Decade-Old Hubble Data
October 06, 2011 In a painstaking reanalysis of images taken in 1998 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have found visual evidence for two exoplanets that went undetected back then. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars beyond our sun. Finding these hidden gems in the Hubble archive gives astronomers an invaluable time machine for comparing much earlier planet orbital motion data to more recent observations.

NASA’s Moon Twins Going Their Own Way
October 06, 2011 PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-B spacecraft successfully executed its first flight path correction maneuver Wednesday, Oct.

Colored solar cells could make display screens more efficient
Oct. 6, 2011 Colored solar cells could make display screens more efficient ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new kind of screen pixel doubles as a solar cell and could boost the energy efficiency of cell phones and e-readers.

Team Uses Laser Light to Cool Object to Quantum Ground State
For the first time, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in collaboration with a team from the University of Vienna, have managed to cool a miniature mechanical object to its lowest possible energy state using laser light. The achievement paves the way for the development of exquisitely sensitive detectors as well as for quantum experiments that scientists have long dreamed of conducting.

Mars Science Laboratory Meets its Match in Florida
October 05, 2011 In preparation for launch later this year, the "back shell powered descent vehicle" configuration containing NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, has been placed on the spacecraft's heat shield.

Space Observatory Provides Clues to Creation of Earth’s Oceans
October 05, 2011 PASADENA, Calif. - Astronomers have found a new cosmic source for the same kind of water that appeared on Earth billions of years ago and created the oceans. The findings may help explain how Earth's surface ended up covered in water. New measurements from the Herschel Space Observatory show that comet Hartley 2, which comes from the distant Kuiper Belt, contains water with the same chemical signature as Earth's oceans.

Sulfur in hollow nanofibers overcomes challenges of lithium-ion battery design
Yi Cui and his students have used sulfur-coated hollow carbon nanofibers and an electrolyte additive to fabricate a superior rechargeable lithium battery cathode.

Media Advisory: Physics Nobelist Saul Perlmutter to speak at reception today
ATTENTION: Science writers, general assignment and photo desks WHAT: A celebratory reception for Physics Nobelist Saul Perlmutter hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, Department of Physics.

NSF grant will virtualize evidence-based teaching for science and engineering
Harvard and UT-Austin aim to give any instructor, anywhere in the world, open-access research-based tools Harvard University and The University of Texas at Austin have received a $500,000 grant

Survey gives clues to origin of Type Ia supernovae
The largest survey to date of distant exploding stars is giving astronomers new clues to what's behind the Type Ia supernovae they use to measure distances across the cosmos. These stellar explosions helped astronomers conclude more than a decade ago that dark energy is accelerating the expansion of the universe, and today (Tuesday, Oct.

Saul Perlmutter awarded 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics
Saul Perlmutter, who led one of two teams that simultaneously discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe, has been awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, to be shared with two members of the rival team.

Berkeley Lab’s Saul Perlmutter wins Nobel Prize in Physics
BERKELEY, CA — Saul Perlmutter, an astrophysicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California at Ber

Weatherspoon gets $1.35M to fix ’potholes’ in private information superhighways
To avoid the congestion of the public Internet, scientists, the military and the managers of huge "cloud computing" data centers have created private information superhighways - dedicated fiber-optic systems known as lambda networks.

CfA Project Gets First Look through New ALMA Telescope
Cambridge, MA - Humanity's most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has officially opened for astronomers at its 16,500-foot high desert plateau in northern Chile.

NASA Mars Rovers Win Popular Mechanics ’Breakthrough’ Award
October 03, 2011 More than seven years after completing their three-month prime missions on opposite sides of Mars, NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been selected for lifetime achievement award honors as part of the Breakthrough Awards presented by Popular Mechanics magazine.

Saturn’s Geyser Moon Enceladus Shows off for NASA’s Cassini
October 03, 2011 PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its Oct. 1 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus and its jets of water vapor and ice.

NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Begins New Vesta Mapping Orbit
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Dawn spacecraft has completed a gentle spiral into its new science orbit for an even closer view of the giant asteroid Vesta.

’Artificial leaf’ makes fuel from sunlight
Solar cell bonded to recently developed catalyst can harness the sun, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

NASA Selects Science Investigations For Concept Studies
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA has selected 11 science proposals, including one from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for evaluation as potential future science missions.

New era of plasma nuclear science opens on the Omega Laser Facility
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The University of Rochester's Omega Laser Facility has given rise to many innovative ways to probe matter under conditions of extreme energy density. These conditions include pressures of 100 billion atmospheres, temperatures of 200,000,000 kelvins and densities 20 times that of gold; they occur in nature only at the center of the Giant Planets Jupiter and Saturn and inside stars.

Extreme space weather at Mercury blasts the planet’s poles
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The solar wind sandblasts the surface of planet Mercury at its poles, according to new data from a University of Michigan instrument on board NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft. The sodium and oxygen particles the blistering solar wind kicks up are the primary components of Mercury's wispy atmosphere, or "exosphere," the new findings assert.

JPL Participates in Space-Themed Corn Maze

NASA Announces Tweetup for Mars Rover Launch
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA will host a two-day launch Tweetup for 150 of its Twitter followers on Nov.

The arXiv at 20: a global resource
As the e-print arXiv of scientific publications celebrates its 20th anniversary, what started as an effort to "level the playing field" for researchers has created a whole new playing field on which the white lines are still not clearly drawn.

Obama names Stanford physicist Benjamin Lev for honor
Benjamin Lev, who studies the behavior of quantum matter, will attend an Oct. 14 awards ceremony in Washington D.C. for early-career scientists.

Joint BioEnergy Institute Scientists Identify New Microbe-Produced Advanced Biofuel as an Alternative to Diesel Fuel
Researchers with the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have identified a potential new advanced biofuel that could replace today's standard fuel for diesel engines but would be clean, green, renewable and produced in the United States. Using the tools of synthetic biology, a JBEI research team engineered strains of two microbes, a bacteria and a yeast, to produce a precursor to bisabolane, a member of the terpene class of chemical compounds that are found in plants and used in fragrances and flavorings.

U-M president announces ambitious goals for sustainability
Sept.

Two Berkeley Lab Scientists Win 2011 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
The White House today announced that President Obama has named two researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) as winners of this year's Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

A heart of gold
New cardiac patch uses gold nanowires to enhance electrical signaling between cells, a promising step toward better treatment for heart-attack patients.

NASA to Host News Conference on Asteroid Search Findings