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Sandia National Laboratories and Boeing are collaborating on a project looking at the feasibility of using a hydrogen-powered fuel cell for providing backup power in aircraft.
Commercial and military aircraft use a variety of techniques for providing backup electrical power to critical subsystems during emergency scenarios. Depending on the aircraft, these may include dedicated battery power, in-flight operation of the auxiliary power unit, a ram air turbine, or other technologies.
Scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have created a synthetic polymer—a building block of plastics—that doesn’t burn, making it an attractive alternative to traditional plastics, many of which are so flammable they are sometimes referred to as “solid gasoline.”
An international team of astronomers led by Ohio State University has examined dark matter in the outer reaches of our galaxy in a new way.
For the first time, they were able to employ triangulation -- a method rooted in ancient Greek geometry -- to estimate the location of dark matter and calculate its mass.
The results, reported May 30 at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, suggest that this technique could help astronomers detect dark matter of a particular mass range for which there were previously no reliable tests.
Evidence for an awesome upheaval in a massive galaxy cluster was discovered in an image made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The origin of a bright arc of ferociously hot gas extending over two million light years requires one of the most energetic events ever detected.
The cluster of galaxies is filled with tenuous gas at 170 million degree Celsius that is bound by the mass equivalent of a quadrillion, or 1,000 trillion, suns. The temperature and mass make this cluster a giant among giants.
Astronomers at the University of Maryland have made the first quantitative measurements of the spin of several supermassive black holes, information that is essential to understanding how these giant black holes develop and grow.
ESA’s SOHO has helped uncover radio screams that foretell dangerous Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs, which produce radiation storms harming infrastructure on ground, in space as well as humans in space.
Scientists made the connection by analysing observations of CMEs from ESA/NASA’s SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) and NASA’s Wind spacecraft. The team includes researchers from Goddard, the Catholic University of America, Washington, the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, and the Observatory of Paris.
With a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are developing a physics-based virtual model that can simulate a patient's breathing in real time. When used in conjunction with existing 3-D models, adding the fourth dimension of time could significantly improve the accuracy and effectiveness of radiation treatment for lung and liver cancers.
Scientists have discovered for the first time just how fast a supermassive black hole can be thrown from a galaxy when it merges with another black hole. The crucial factor in producing large "kicks" turns out to be the spin that the black holes carry prior to the merger.
Brain "pacemakers" that have helped ease symptoms in people with Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders seem to work by drowning out the electrical signals of their diseased brains.
Despite the clinical success of the devices, which have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and can be found in the heads of about 30,000 Americans, the mechanisms by which deep brain stimulation alleviates disease symptoms aren't well understood.
Recent discoveries regarding the physics of ceramic superconductors may help improve scientists' understanding of resistance-free electrical power.
Tiny, isolated patches of superconductivity exist within these substances at higher temperatures than previously were known, according to a paper by Princeton scientists, who have developed new techniques to image superconducting behavior at the nanoscale.
Researchers at the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) at the University of Surrey have reported a new technique to UV laser processing of thin film silicon for applications such as display control circuits and solar cells, which could lead to device performances at lower costs.
Imagine a vehicle that runs on hydrogen or biofuels and offers the same features, performance and price as today's gasoline vehicle. Will it capture half the market? Not likely, concludes a new MIT analysis of the challenges behind introducing alternative-fuel vehicles to the marketplace. Not even if it's three times more fuel-efficient.
Stents are medical implants that, for example, prevent the blocking of arteries after surgery. One of the problems using stents is the biocompatibility as the human body rejects and attacks foreign material. The Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (FZD) developed a new method for making the surface of metal stents highly nano porous by producing millions of nano bubbles underneath.
A University of Alberta research team has combined two fields of study in nanotechnology to create a third field that the researchers believe will lead to revolutionary advances in computer electronics, among many other areas.
Dr. Abdulhakem Elezzabi and his colleagues have applied plasmonics principles to spintronics technology and created a novel way to control the quantum state of an electron's spin.
A new experiment has shown that it's possible to store multiple rudimentary memories in an artificial culture of live neurons. The ability to record information in a manmade network of neurons is a step toward a cyborg-like integration of living material into memory chips. The advance also may help neurologists to understand how our brains learn and store information.
Sound waves escaping the sun's interior create fountains of hot gas that shape and power a thin region of the sun's atmosphere which appears as a ruby red "ring of fire" around the moon during a total solar eclipse, according to research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.
The results are presented today at the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division meeting in Hawaii.
This region, called the chromosphere because of its color, is largely responsible for the deep ultraviolet radiation that bathes the Earth, producing the atmosphere's ozone layer.
A project which is using robots to help children with developmental or cognitive impairments to interact more effectively has just started at the University of Hertfordshire.
Professor Kerstin Dautenhahn, Dr. Ben Robins and Dr. Ester Ferrari at the University’s School of Computer Science are partners in the European Sixth Framework funded, €3.22 million Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions (IROMEC) project which is investigating the use of robotic toys to enable children with disabilities to develop social skills.
Small structure, big impact. Micrometer-fine patterns in surfaces endow components with amazing properties: Plastic dashboards, for example, can be made to look like leather; sharkskin ribs on an aircraft’s fuselage reduce air resistance; micro-recesses in implants improve connection with the bone.
There are many reasons for applying microstructures to workpieces, but actually doing so is by no means easy. While lasers have been used for quite a long time to structure flat surfaces, etching techniques have had to be deployed on three-dimensional components of complex shape - and this involves using large quantities of chemicals.
A group of Hawaii and California astronomers led by Lori Lubin of the University of California, Davis, and Roy Gal of the University of Hawaii at Manoa has mapped, for the first time, where the action is in a mega-structure in the distant universe. The results were announced May 27 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Large galaxy clusters are typically considered the universe's metropolises, and for years many astronomers have focused their attention "downtown." However, this research shows that all the action is actually happening in the galactic suburbs.
The world's largest and most prolific team of planet hunters announced today (Monday, May 28) the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, increasing to 236 the total number of known exoplanets.
University of California, Berkeley, post-doctoral fellow Jason T. Wright and newly minted Ph.D. John Asher Johnson reported the new exoplanets at a noon media briefing at the semi-annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Honolulu. The findings are a result of the combined work of the California and Carnegie Planet Search team and the Anglo-Australian Planet Search team.