Increasing oil's performance with crumpled graphene balls
Chicago IL (SPX) Jan 28, 2016 -
When an automobile's engine is improperly lubricated, it can be a major hit to the pocketbook and the environment. For the average car, 15 percent of the fuel consumption is spent overcoming friction in the engine and transmission. When friction is high, gears have to work harder to move. This means the car burns more fuel and emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"Every year, mil ...
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Anti-hydrogen origin revealed by collision simulation
New York NY (SPX) Jan 28, 2016 -
Antihydrogen is a particular kind of atom, made up of the antiparticle of an electron - a Positron - and the antiparticle of a Proton - an antiproton. Scientists hope that studying the formation of anti hydrogen will ultimately help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
In a new study published in EPJ D, Igor Bray and colleagues from Curtin University, Perth, Au ...
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UCR research advances oil production in yeast
Riverside CA (SPX) Jan 28, 2016 -
A team led by a researcher at the University of California, Riverside has adapted the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system for use in a yeast strain that can produce useful lipids and polymers. The development will lead to new precursors for biofuels, specialty polymers, adhesives and fragrances.
Published recently in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology, the research involves the oleaginous (oil- ...
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Acoustic tweezers provide much needed pluck for 3-D bioprinting
Pittsburgh PA (SPX) Jan 28, 2016 -
Researchers, including Carnegie Mellon University President Subra Suresh and collaborators Tony Jun Huang from the Pennsylvania State University and Ming Dao from MIT, have demonstrated that acoustic tweezers can be used to non-invasively move and manipulate single cells along three dimensions, providing a promising new method for 3-D bioprinting. Their findings are published in this week's issu ...
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Nanoribbons show 'topological' transport, potential for new technologies
West Lafayette IN (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
Researchers have created nanoribbons of an emerging class of materials called topological insulators and used a magnetic field to control their semiconductor properties, a step toward harnessing the technology to study exotic physics and building new spintronic devices or quantum computers.
Unlike ordinary materials that are either insulators or conductors, topological insulators are parad ...
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Designing a pop-up future
Boston MA (SPX) Jan 28, 2016 -
What if you could make any object out of a flat sheet of paper? That future is on the horizon thanks to new research by L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). He is also a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically ...
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Anti-hydrogen origin revealed by collision simulation
New York NY (SPX) Jan 28, 2016 -
Antihydrogen is a particular kind of atom, made up of the antiparticle of an electron - a Positron - and the antiparticle of a Proton - an antiproton. Scientists hope that studying the formation of anti hydrogen will ultimately help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.
In a new study published in EPJ D, Igor Bray and colleagues from Curtin University, Perth, Au ...
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A new model emerges for monsoons in a changing global climate
New Haven CT (SPX) Jan 28, 2016 -
A Yale University study suggests that continent-scale monsoons will adapt to climate change gradually, without suddenly losing their watery oomph.
Writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Yale atmospheric scientists William Boos and Trude Storelvmo say a broad range of factors - from changes in land use to increased aerosol emissions and greenhouse gas concent ...
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DuPont announces breakthrough platform technology for long sought-after molecule
Wilmington DE (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
Today, science and agricultural leaders DuPont Industrial Biosciences (DuPont) and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) announced a new breakthrough process with the potential to expand the materials landscape in the 21st century with exciting and truly novel, high-performance renewable materials. The technology has applications in packaging, textiles, engineering plastics and many other industr ...
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Ariane 6 design finalized, set for 2020 launch
Paris (UPI) Jan 28, 2016 -
Airbus Safran Launchers has finalized the architecture for its Ariane 6 launch vehicle, announcing a maiden launch to take place in 2020.
The Ariane 6 is a joint venture between Airbus and Safran. Unlike earlier efforts, Le Figaro reports the next European heavy launcher will be partially assembled horizontally, similarly to the Russian Soyuz rocket.
Ariane 6 will be built in A62 ...
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US remembers astronauts killed, pledges to reach Mars
Washington (AFP) Jan 28, 2016 -
The United States marked the 30th anniversary Thursday of the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle with a pledge to remember lost astronauts as it presses on toward Mars.
At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the shuttle blasted off on January 28, 1986, singers in red and blue belted out the Star Spangled Banner for a crowd that included relatives and friends of the seven killed ...
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Giant gas cloud boomeranging back into Milky Way
Notre Dame IN (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
Since astronomers discovered the Smith Cloud, a giant gas cloud plummeting toward the Milky Way, they have been unable to determine its composition, which would hold clues as to its origin. University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Nicolas Lehner and his collaborators have now determined that the cloud contains elements similar to our sun, which means the cloud originated in the Milky Way's outer ...
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NASA Radar Brings a New View of World Heritage Site
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 29, 2016 -
In just two 10-minute overflights, an airborne NASA synthetic aperture radar proved it could pinpoint areas of disturbance in Peru's Nasca lines World Heritage Site.
The data collected on the two flights will help Peruvian authorities fully catalog the thousand-year-old designs drawn on the ground in and around the site for the first time, as well as giving them a new tool for protecting t ...
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Innovations in the Air
Pasadena CA (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
Sure, Google's driverless car is pretty cool. But according to key leaders in the aerospace industry, much of the world's most innovative work is happening not in Silicon Valley but in the laboratories at their companies, where researchers are expanding the boundaries of everything from space travel to deep-sea exploration.
At the "Innovation in Aerospace" forum held at Caltech - part of t ...
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New billing system to better serve mobile Intelsat customers
McLean VA (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
Most Intelsat General customers pay for satellite usage under contracts that provide a specific amount of transponder capacity over a certain period of time. But customers using mobile satellite services through devices like satellite telephones often are billed based on actual airtime.
To better serve these customers, Intelsat General has switched to a specialized airtime billing system c ...
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Bringing time and space together for universal symmetry
Nathan, Australia (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
New research from Griffith University's Centre for Quantum Dynamics is broadening perspectives on time and space. In a paper published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Associate Professor Joan Vaccaro challenges the long-held presumption that time evolution - the incessant unfolding of the universe over time - is an elemental part of Nature.
In the paper, enti ...
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Ancient Babylonians used geometry to track Jupiter
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
Analysis of ancient Babylonian tablets reveals that, to calculate the position of Jupiter, the tablets' makers used geometry, a technique scientists previously believed humans had not developed until at least 1,400 years later, in 14th century Europe.
These tablets are the earliest known examples of using geometry to calculate positions in time-space and suggest that ancient Babylonian ast ...
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Astronaut rescue exercise proves Det. 3 command, control ready to support DoD, NASA
Patrick AFB FL (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
It's not common an astronaut must be rescued out of rough open waters after descending home to Earth in a crewed capsule but when those Space Race era days of human space flight return, a small Air Force detachment knows they will be ready.
The 45th Operations Group Detachment 3 joined NASA's Commercial Crew Program and Air Force pararescuemen, Combat Rescue Officers and survival, evasion, ...
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NASA Webb Telescope mirrors installed with robotic arm precision
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
Inside a massive clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland the James Webb Space Telescope team is steadily installing the largest space telescope mirror ever. Unlike other space telescope mirrors, this one must be pieced together from segments using a high-precision robotic arm.
The team uses a robotic arm called the Primary Mirror Alignment and Integration Fi ...
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James describes way forward to Space-Launch System
Washington DC (AFNS) Jan 29, 2016 -
Everyone agrees the United States depends on space-based assets as part of the defense of the homeland and the ability to command and control forces worldwide, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning. What's at issue is launching these critical capabilities into orbit using Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines, she said.
The United Nations ...
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Pentagon Can't Overcome Its Russian Engines Addiction: McCain
Washington DC (Sputnik) Jan 29, 2016 -
Despite John McCain's profound displeasure, US defense officials are not inclined to abandon the RD-180 Russian rocket engines until 2021 or 2022 earliest.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States Air Force has become one of Russia's longstanding customers: for years the Pentagon was buying the RD-180 Russian rocket engines to put its satellites into space. However, after t ...
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DigitalGlobe Receives Early Commitments for WorldView-4 Satellite Capacity
Westminster CO (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
DigitalGlobe has announced its third customer commitment for direct access capacity on the WorldView-4 satellite, which is expected to begin commercial operations in early 2017 following its launch in September. Since the end of the third quarter of 2015, DigitalGlobe has received contracts and letters of intent from international defense and intelligence customers totaling $335 million for capa ...
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Moon was produced by a head-on collision between Earth and a forming planet
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
The moon was formed by a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a "planetary embryo" called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, UCLA geochemists and colleagues report.
Scientists had already known about this high-speed crash, which occurred almost 4.5 billion years ago, but many thought the Earth collided with Theia (pronounced THAY-eh) at an angle ...
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Antarctic fungi survive Martian conditions on the International Space Station
Madrid, Spain (SPX) Jan 29, 2016 -
European scientists have gathered tiny fungi that take shelter in Antarctic rocks and sent them to the International Space Station. After 18 months on board in conditions similar to those on Mars, more than 60% of their cells remained intact, with stable DNA. The results provide new information for the search for life on the red planet. Lichens from the Sierra de Gredos (Spain) and the Alps (Aus ...
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Denmark orders hundreds of Piranha 5 armored vehicles
Madrid (UPI) Jan 28, 2016 -
General Dynamics European Land Systems is to deliver 309 Piranha 5 armored vehicles and vehicle sustainment services to Denmark.
The contract signed with the Danish Defense Acquisition and Logistic Organization covers six Piranha variants: infantry vehicles, command vehicles, ambulances, engineering Piranhas, and mortar and repair vehicles.
The contract's value is about $600 mill ...
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