A partnership between Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, IBM, and the FUND for Lake George has developed preliminary models of key natural processes within the watershed. A network of 12 sensor platforms including vertical profilers and tributary monitoring stations are now being deployed in Lake George and its tributaries, providing an unprecedented amount of data for researchers that will be interpreted at a new visualization laboratory.
In a recent article published in the Review of Scientific Instruments, a research team led by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory describe a technique for 3-D image processing of a high-speed photograph of a target, "freezing" its motion and revealing hidden secrets. This technique is particularly applicable in targets that are "shocked."
Astronomers Chih-Hao Li and David Phillips of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics want to rediscover Venus. They plan to “find” the second planet again using a powerful new optical device installed on the Italian National Telescope that will measure Venus' precise gravitational pull on the sun. If they succeed, their first-of-its-kind demonstration will be later used for finding Earth-like exoplanets orbiting distant stars.
Inexpensive microrobots capable of probing and manipulating individual cells and tissue for biological research and medical applications are closer to reality with the design of a system that senses the minute forces exerted by a robot's tiny probe. Microrobots small enough to interact with cells already exist. However, there is no easy, inexpensive way to measure the small forces applied to cells by the robots, until now.
In a new experiment, Joint Quantum Institute physicists have performed an experiment using incoherent light, where the light is a jumble of waves, and “stupid” photon detectors that only count to zero. The surprising result from sending this light through a double-slit baffle was a sharp 30-nm-wide interference effect, a new extreme for this type of light detection and a possible new avenue to effective sub-wavelength imaging.
A surprising hot spot of the potent global-warming gas methane hovers over part of the southwestern U.S., according to satellite data. That result hints that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies considerably underestimate leaks of methane, also called natural gas. While methane isn't the most plentiful heat-trapping gas, scientists worry about its increasing amounts and have had difficulties tracking emissions.
Plant scientists are working to improve important food crops to meet the food needs of a growing world population. However, boosting crop output will require improving more than what can be seen of these plants above the ground. Root systems are essential to gathering water and nutrients, but understanding what’s happening in these unseen parts of the plants has until now depended mostly on lab studies and subjective field measurements.
Spectroscopic chemical sensing has great promise, but current technologies lack sensitivity and broad spectral coverage. DARPA’s Spectral Combs from UV to THz (SCOUT) program aims to overcome these limitations. The goal is to develop chip-sized, optical frequency combs that accurately identify even tiny traces of dangerous biological and chemical substances several football fields away, DARPA is now soliciting proposals for a solution.
A proposal to develop a new way to remotely control brain cells from Sarah Stanley, a research associate in Rockefeller Univ.’s Laboratory of Molecular Genetics is among the first to receive funding from President Barack Obama’s BRAIN initiative. The project will make use of a technique called radiogenetics that combines the use of radio waves or magnetic fields with nanoparticles to turn neurons on or off.
A new crystallographic technique, called fast time-resolved crystallography, developed in the U.K. is set to transform scientists’ ability to observe how molecules work. Although this method, also known as Laue crystallography, has previously been possible, it has required advanced instrumentation that is only available at three sites worldwide. Only a handful of proteins have been studied using the traditional technique.
Researchers at NIST have demonstrated a laser-based imaging system that creates high-definition 3-D maps of surfaces from as far away as 10.5 m. The method, which combines a form of laser detection and ranging that is sensitive enough to detect weak reflected light with the ranging accuracy made possible by frequency combs, may be useful in diverse fields, including precision machining and assembly, as well as in forensics.
Two Americans and a German scientist won the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for finding ways to make microscopes more powerful than previously thought possible. Working independently of each other, U.S. researchers Eric Betzig and William Moerner and Stefan Hell of Germany shattered previous limits on the resolution of optical microscopes by using molecules that glow on command to peer inside tiny components of life.
Optical system designers often need to evaluate the effect of different laser beam diameters during prototyping. Although it’s possible to do this by introducing several different beam expanders in sequence, or by stopping the beam down with apertures, variable-magnification beam expanders provide flexibility and performance in an easy-to-use package.
People who wish to know how memory works are forced to take a glimpse into the brain. They can now do so without bloodshed: Researchers have developed a new method for creating 3-D models of memory-relevant brain structures. The approach is unique because it enables automatic calculation of the neural interconnections in the brain on the basis of their position inside the space and their projection directions.
Trying on clothes when a shop is closed could become a reality thanks to new research that uses semi-transparent mirrors in interactive systems. The innovation, which builds on a mirror’s ability to map a reflection to one unique point behind the mirror, independently of the observer’s location, could change the way people interact and collaborate in public spaces, such as museums and shop windows.
Researchers in Spain and Italy have designed a multispectral imaging system capable of obtaining information from a total of 36 color channels, which is up to twelve times more color information than the human eye and conventional cameras, which have three color image sensors. This important scientific development will facilitate the easy capture of multispectral images in real time.
Scientists have created a new map of the world's seafloor, offering a more vivid picture of the structures that make up the deepest, least-explored parts of the ocean. The feat was accomplished by accessing two untapped streams of satellite data, which has allowed thousands of previously uncharted mountains rising from the seafloor, called seamounts, to be revealed on the map, along with new clues about the formation of the continents.
Only a minority of suspicious mammograms actually leads to a cancer diagnosis, which results in lots of needless worry and spent time for women and their families. Ultrasound elastography could be an excellent screening tool but it requires a lot of skill and interpretation. In an effort to improve results, researchers in Michigan have developed a virtual “breast”, allowing medical professionals to practice in the laboratory.
For decades, planetary geologists have speculated that glaciers might once have crept through Valles Marineris, the 2000-mile-long chasm that constitutes the Grand Canyon of Mars. A research team has now identified what could be the first mineralogical evidence of past glaciers within the Valles Marineris: a layer of mixed sulfate minerals halfway up three-mile-high cliffs in the canyon system.
How the brain ages is still largely an open question because this organ is mostly insulated from direct contact with other systems in the body. In recent research, scientists in Israel found evidence of a unique “signature” that may be the “missing link” between cognitive decline and aging. The scientists believe that this discovery may lead, in the future, to treatments that can slow or reverse cognitive decline in older people.
In a rare case of having their cake and eating it too, scientists from NIST and other institutions have developed a toolset that allows them to explore the complex interior of tiny, multi-layered batteries they devised. It provides insight into the batteries’ performance without destroying them, which results in both a useful probe for scientists and a potential power source for micromachines.
A novel x-ray technique used at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source has revealed surprising dynamics in the nanomechanics of operating batteries and suggests a way to mitigate battery failures by minimizing the generation of elastic energy. The method could open a path to wider use of these batteries in conjunction with renewable energy sources.
Scanning electron microscopes can determine chemical compositions with the help of energy dispersive spectrometers. However, lighter elements like carbon emit secondary fluorescence in an energy range insufficiently resolved by these instruments. Physicists have developed a potential solution to this problem by adding reflection zone plate optics to a specialized spectrometer that delivers high resolution from 50 to 1,120 eV.
using an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope, researchers have recently understood how defects in 2-D crystals such as tungsten disulphide can move, or dislocate, to other locations in the material. Understanding how atoms "glide" and "climb" on the surface of 2-D crystals may pave the way for researchers to develop materials with unusual or unique characteristics.
Researchers in the Netherlands have managed to open nanovesicles in a reversible process and close them using a magnet. Previously, these vesicles had been “loaded” with a drug and opened elsewhere using a chemical process, such as osmosis. The magnetic method, which is repeatable, is the first to demonstrate the viability of another method.
In recent years, it has become possible to see directly individual atoms using electron microscopy, especially in graphene. Using electron microscopy and computer simulations, an international team has recently shown how an electron beam can move silicon atoms through the graphene lattice without causing damage.
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