Top 5 Science Images of 2007 Honored

A striking image of seaweed shows the complexity of even the simplest organisms.

Seen here is Irish moss—Chondrus crispus—a common Atlantic red alga that is routinely harvested for its carrageenan. The chemical is used as a thickener in many processed foods.

Andrea Ottesen of the University of Maryland's Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture shared a first place prize in the photography category of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for the natural light photo.

The awards are given out each year by the National Science Foundation and the journal Science for the imagery that best conveys complex scientific information and concepts. This year the winners are announced in the September 28 issue of Science.

It may look like a strange insect , but this is actually a CT image revealing the delicate structures underlying the human nose.

The multicolored pockets, seen in a cutaway from below the nose looking up, are the paranasal sinuses—the air-filled spaces in the skull that are the bane of many an allergy sufferer.

Kai-hung Fung of Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital in Hong Kong captured the image, a co-winner in the photography category of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, while examining a 33-year-old Chinese woman for thyroid disease.

This is the fifth year that the prizes have been awarded.

Metal with the consistency of ribbon garnered engineering graduate student Adam Siegel and chemist George M. Whitesides of Harvard University an honorable mention in the photography category of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

The pair created this image by injecting molten solder into a tiny silicone channel.

When the solder cooled, it formed a delicate metallic structure that was flexible enough to be tied into a knot—but could still conduct electricity.

Not pictured here are the winners of the informational graphics category.

"Modeling the Flight of a Bat" by David J. Willis of Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mykhaylo Kostandov of Brown University earned the first place accolade, while "How Does A Muscle Work?" by Mark McGowan and David Goodsell of the Exploratorium Institute took honorable mention.

A still image from a 3-D animation shows how nicotine stimulates nerve impulses to the pleasure center of the brain.

Donna DeSmet and Jason Guerrero of Hurd Studios won the first-place prize in the noninteractive media category of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for the video, titled "Nicotine: The Physiologic Mechanism of Tobacco Dependence."

Not seen here is "Towers in the Tempest," an animation of soaring hurricane clouds, which earned Gregory W. Shirah and Lori K. Perkins of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center an honorable mention in the noninteractive media category.

Understanding even basic geometrical transformations can be difficult—unless you get a little perspective.

This still image comes from "Mobius Transformations Revealed," a short film by Douglas N. Arnold and Jonathan Rogness of the University of Minnesota that shows how some mathematics can become simpler in higher dimensions.

The movie was an honorable mention in the noninteractive media category of the 2007 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

Other winners not shown here included the following:

First Place, Interactive Multimedia: "Physics Education Technology Project" (PhET) by Carl Wieman of the University of Colorado and the PhET Team.

Honorable Mention, Interactive Multimedia: "Breast Cancer Virtual Anatomy" by Cathryn Tune and Samantha Belmont of CCG Metamedia.

Referance :http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Ancient Egyptian cosmetics and chemistry

An analysis of Egyptian cosmetic powders dating back to as early as 2000 BC revealed an unexpected level of sophistication in the 'wet' chemistry practised by the ancient Egyptians.

It was already well-known that they were using fire-based technology to produce their blue pigments prior to 2500 BC. Yet this is the first time that the analysis of the black, green and white cosmetic powders shed light on the level of their practices in chemistry.

Researchers identified a number of organic and mineral ingredients in the powders. Two of the mineral ingredients were naturally occurring ores which were crushed, ore of galena (PbS) and cerussite (PbCO3). However, the surprise came from laurionite (PbOHCl) and phosgenite (Pb2Cl2CO3), which were both compounds which occurred rarely in nature. They are found when lead artefacts are weathered by sea water. Or in the case of phosgenite, the compound could also be found when lead-containing minerals were exposed to carbonated and chlorinated waters.

The researchers ruled out the possibility that these compounds were extracted from scarce natural sources since they were too abundant in the preserved cosmetic samples. Also they ruled out the alteration of the other natural lead compounds in the make-up as a source. And in doing so, they arrived at the conclusion that the Egyptians were capable of artificially synthesising the compounds.

They reconstructed the process which the Egyptians probably used by following recipes documented by classical authors. According to the ancient recipe crushed purified silver foam (PbO) was mixed with rock salt and sometimes with natron (Na2Co3). This mixture was filtered and the procedure was repeated daily for several weeks.

The authors recreated the process using PbO and salt powders in carbonate free water. The resulting precipitate was successfully identified as laurionite. The same process in the presence of carbonate would produce phosgenite.

Given that the procedures required repetitive operations, the manufacturing of these compound revealed a previously unknown level of sophistication of ancient Egyptian chemistry.

Original article: Nature, 11 February 1999; Making make-up in Ancient Egypt, P. Walter et al., p. 483-484

Star with vast tail astonishes scientists

A NASA craft has spot­ted a sur­pris­ingly long com­et-like tail be­hind a star streak­ing through space at su­pe­r­son­ic speeds.


“This is an ut­terly new phe­nom­e­non to us, and we are still in the pro­cess of un­der­stand­ing the phys­ics in­volved,” said Mark Seib­ert of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of the Car­ne­gie In­sti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton in Pas­a­de­na, Ca­lif..

“We hope to be able to read Mi­ra’s tail like a tick­er tape to learn about the star’s life,” added Seib­ert, co-au­thor of a pa­pe­r de­scrib­ing the find­ings. Mi­ra would be in a sense the first real “shoot­ing star” known—since the streaks of light tra­di­tion­ally called shoot­ing stars are really me­te­ors, or rocks fall­ing through the at­mos­phere.

This im­age is a mo­sa­ic made up of in­di­vid­u­al im­ages tak­en by the far-ul­t­ra­vio­let light de­tec­tor on NA­SA's Gal­axy Ev­o­lu­tion Ex­plor­er in No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber, 2006. (Cred­it: NA­SA/JPL-Cal­tech)


The star, named Mi­ra af­ter the Lat­in word for “won­der­ful,” has been a fa­vor­ite of as­tro­no­mers for ap­prox­i­mately 400 years. It is a fast-mov­ing, old­er red gi­ant that is shed­ding mas­sive amounts of sur­face ma­te­ri­al.

It’s “a­maz­ing to dis­cov­er such a startlingly large and im­por­tant fea­ture of an ob­ject that has been known and stud­ied for more than 400 years,” said James D. Neill of the Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy In Pas­a­de­na, Ca­lif. The in­sti­tute leads the mis­sion for NA­SA’s Gal­axy Ev­o­lu­tion Ex­plor­er space­craft.

The craft scanned the pop­u­lar star dur­ing an on­go­ing sky sur­vey. As­tro­no­mers then no­ticed what looked like a com­et with a gi­ant tail. Ma­te­ri­al blow­ing off Mi­ra is form­ing a wake 13 light-years long, or about 20,000 times the av­er­age dis­tance of Plu­to from the sun. Noth­ing like this has been seen be­fore around a star.

“I was shocked when I first saw this com­pletely un­ex­pected, hu­mon­gous tail trail­ing be­hind a well-known star,” said Cal­tech’s Chris­to­pher Mar­tin. “It was amaz­ing how Mi­ra’s tail ech­oed on vast, in­ter­stel­lar scales the fa­mil­iar phe­nom­e­na” such as the stream of gas be­hind a je­t or a speed­boat’s tur­bu­lent wake.

Mar­tin is prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor for the space­craft and lead au­thor of the pa­pe­r, in the Aug. 15 edi­tion of the re­search jour­nal Na­ture.

As­tro­no­mers say Mi­ra’s tail of­fers a un­ique op­por­tun­ity to study how stars like our sun die and ul­ti­mately seed new so­lar sys­tems. As Mi­ra hur­tles along, its tail sheds car­bon, ox­y­gen and oth­er im­por­tant el­e­ments needed to form new stars, plan­ets and pos­sibly even life. This tail ma­te­ri­al, vis­i­ble for the first time, has been re­leased dur­ing the past 30,000 years.

Bil­lions of years ago, Mi­ra was si­m­i­lar to our sun. Over time, it be­gan to swell in­to what is called a varia­ble red gi­ant—a pul­sat­ing, puffed-up star that pe­r­i­od­ic­ally grows bright enough to see with the na­ked eye. Mi­ra eventually will eject all its re­main­ing gas in­to space, form­ing a col­or­ful shell called a plan­e­tary neb­u­la, as­tro­no­mers say. The neb­u­la will fade with time, leav­ing only the burnt-out co­re of the orig­i­nal star, which will then be called a white dwarf.

Com­pared to oth­er red gi­ants, Mi­ra is trav­el­ing un­usu­ally fast, pos­sibly due to boosts from the gra­vity of pass­ing stars, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said. It plows along at an es­ti­mat­ed 291,000 miles per hour. Rac­ing along with it is a small, dis­tant com­pan­ion thought to be a white dwarf. The pair, al­so known as Mi­ra A (the red gi­ant) and Mi­ra B, or­bit slowly around each oth­er as they trav­el to­geth­er in the con­stella­t­ion Ce­tus, 350 light-years from Earth.

In ad­di­tion to Mi­ra’s tail, the space­craft al­so found a bow shock, a type of build­up of hot gas, in front of the star, and two sin­u­ous streams of ma­te­ri­al em­a­nat­ing from the star’s front and back. As­tro­no­mers think hot gas in the bow shock is heat­ing the gas blow­ing off the star, caus­ing it to flu­o­resce with ul­tra­vi­o­let light. This glow­ing ma­te­ri­al then swirls around be­hind the star, cre­at­ing a tur­bu­lent, tail-like wake. The pro­cess is si­m­i­lar to a speed­ing boat leav­ing a chop­py wake or a steam train pro­duc­ing a trail of smoke.

Mi­ra’s tail only glows with ul­tra­vi­o­let light, a type of light more en­er­get­ic than that vis­i­ble to the eye, which might ex­plain why oth­er tele­scopes have missed it, re­search­ers said. The Gal­axy Ev­o­lu­tion Ex­plor­er is very sen­si­tive to such light and al­so has an ex­tremely wide field of view, so it can scan the sky for un­usu­al ul­tra­vi­o­let ac­ti­vity.

Star with vast tail astonishes scientists

A NASA craft has spot­ted a sur­pris­ingly long com­et-like tail be­hind a star streak­ing through space at su­pe­r­son­ic speeds.

“This is an ut­terly new phe­nom­e­non to us, and we are still in the pro­cess of un­der­stand­ing the phys­ics in­volved,” said Mark Seib­ert of the Ob­ser­va­to­ry of the Car­ne­gie In­sti­tu­tion of Wash­ing­ton in Pas­a­de­na, Ca­lif..

“We hope to be able to read Mi­ra’s tail like a tick­er tape to learn about the star’s life,” added Seib­ert, co-au­thor of a pa­pe­r de­scrib­ing the find­ings. Mi­ra would be in a sense the first real “shoot­ing star” known—since the streaks of light tra­di­tion­ally called shoot­ing stars are really me­te­ors, or rocks fall­ing through the at­mos­phere.

The star, named Mi­ra af­ter the Lat­in word for “won­der­ful,” has been a fa­vor­ite of as­tro­no­mers for ap­prox­i­mately 400 years. It is a fast-mov­ing, old­er red gi­ant that is shed­ding mas­sive amounts of sur­face ma­te­ri­al.

This im­age is a mo­sa­ic made up of in­di­vid­u­al im­ages tak­en by the far-ul­t­ra­vio­let light de­tec­tor on NA­SA's Gal­axy Ev­o­lu­tion Ex­plor­er in No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber, 2006. (Cred­it: NA­SA/JPL-Cal­tech)

It’s “a­maz­ing to dis­cov­er such a startlingly large and im­por­tant fea­ture of an ob­ject that has been known and stud­ied for more than 400 years,” said James D. Neill of the Cal­i­for­nia In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy In Pas­a­de­na, Ca­lif. The in­sti­tute leads the mis­sion for NA­SA’s Gal­axy Ev­o­lu­tion Ex­plor­er space­craft.

The craft scanned the pop­u­lar star dur­ing an on­go­ing sky sur­vey. As­tro­no­mers then no­ticed what looked like a com­et with a gi­ant tail. Ma­te­ri­al blow­ing off Mi­ra is form­ing a wake 13 light-years long, or about 20,000 times the av­er­age dis­tance of Plu­to from the sun. Noth­ing like this has been seen be­fore around a star.

“I was shocked when I first saw this com­pletely un­ex­pected, hu­mon­gous tail trail­ing be­hind a well-known star,” said Cal­tech’s Chris­to­pher Mar­tin. “It was amaz­ing how Mi­ra’s tail ech­oed on vast, in­ter­stel­lar scales the fa­mil­iar phe­nom­e­na” such as the stream of gas be­hind a je­t or a speed­boat’s tur­bu­lent wake.

Mar­tin is prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor for the space­craft and lead au­thor of the pa­pe­r, in the Aug. 15 edi­tion of the re­search jour­nal Na­ture.

As­tro­no­mers say Mi­ra’s tail of­fers a un­ique op­por­tun­ity to study how stars like our sun die and ul­ti­mately seed new so­lar sys­tems. As Mi­ra hur­tles along, its tail sheds car­bon, ox­y­gen and oth­er im­por­tant el­e­ments needed to form new stars, plan­ets and pos­sibly even life. This tail ma­te­ri­al, vis­i­ble for the first time, has been re­leased dur­ing the past 30,000 years.

Bil­lions of years ago, Mi­ra was si­m­i­lar to our sun. Over time, it be­gan to swell in­to what is called a varia­ble red gi­ant—a pul­sat­ing, puffed-up star that pe­r­i­od­ic­ally grows bright enough to see with the na­ked eye. Mi­ra eventually will eject all its re­main­ing gas in­to space, form­ing a col­or­ful shell called a plan­e­tary neb­u­la, as­tro­no­mers say. The neb­u­la will fade with time, leav­ing only the burnt-out co­re of the orig­i­nal star, which will then be called a white dwarf.

Com­pared to oth­er red gi­ants, Mi­ra is trav­el­ing un­usu­ally fast, pos­sibly due to boosts from the gra­vity of pass­ing stars, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said. It plows along at an es­ti­mat­ed 291,000 miles per hour. Rac­ing along with it is a small, dis­tant com­pan­ion thought to be a white dwarf. The pair, al­so known as Mi­ra A (the red gi­ant) and Mi­ra B, or­bit slowly around each oth­er as they trav­el to­geth­er in the con­stella­t­ion Ce­tus, 350 light-years from Earth.

In ad­di­tion to Mi­ra’s tail, the space­craft al­so found a bow shock, a type of build­up of hot gas, in front of the star, and two sin­u­ous streams of ma­te­ri­al em­a­nat­ing from the star’s front and back. As­tro­no­mers think hot gas in the bow shock is heat­ing the gas blow­ing off the star, caus­ing it to flu­o­resce with ul­tra­vi­o­let light. This glow­ing ma­te­ri­al then swirls around be­hind the star, cre­at­ing a tur­bu­lent, tail-like wake. The pro­cess is si­m­i­lar to a speed­ing boat leav­ing a chop­py wake or a steam train pro­duc­ing a trail of smoke.

Mi­ra’s tail only glows with ul­tra­vi­o­let light, a type of light more en­er­get­ic than that vis­i­ble to the eye, which might ex­plain why oth­er tele­scopes have missed it, re­search­ers said. The Gal­axy Ev­o­lu­tion Ex­plor­er is very sen­si­tive to such light and al­so has an ex­tremely wide field of view, so it can scan the sky for un­usu­al ul­tra­vi­o­let ac­ti­vity.

Nanorobots (nanobots, nanoids or nanites)

Nanobots are machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometres (10-9 metres)

Nanorobots

Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometres (10-9 metres). More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the still largely hypothetical nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots. Nanorobots (nanoids, nanobots or nanites) would be typically devices ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometres and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components. As no artificial non-biological nanorobots have so far been created, they remain a hypothetical concept at this time.
Another definition sometimes used is a robot which allows precision interactions with nanoscale objects, or can manipulate with nanoscale resolution. Following this definition even a large apparatus such as an atomic force microscope can be considered a nanorobotic instrument when configured to perform nanomanipulation. Also, macroscale robots or microrobots which can move with nanoscale precision can also be considered nanorobots.
Nanorobots are largely in the research-and-development phase, but some primitive devices have been tested. An example is a sensor having a switch approximately 1.5 nanometers across, capable of counting specific molecules in a chemical sample. The first useful applications of nanomachines, if such are ever built, might be in medical technology, where they might be used to identify cancer cells and destroy them. Another potential application is the detection of toxic chemicals, and the measurement of their concentrations, in the environment. Recently, Rice University has demonstrated a single-molecule car which is developed by a chemical process and includes buckyballs for wheels. It is actuated by controlling the environmental temperature and by positioning a scanning tunneling microscope tip.

Nanotech Assembler

Productive Nanosystems:
From molecules to superproducts....

Simple to complex: a molecular perspective

Modern synthetic chemistry has reached the point where it is possible to prepare small molecules to almost any structure. These methods are used today to produce a wide variety of useful chemicals such as pharmaceuticals or commercial polymers. This ability raises the question of extending this kind of control to the next-larger level, seeking methods to assemble these single molecules into supramolecular assemblies consisting of many molecules arranged in a well defined manner.
These approaches utilize the concepts of molecular self-assembly and/or supramolecular chemistry to automatically arrange themselves into some useful conformation through a bottom-up approach. The concept of molecular recognition is especially important: molecules can be designed so that a specific conformation or arrangement is favored due to non-covalent intermolecular forces. The Watson-Crick basepairing rules are a direct result of this, as is the specificity of an enzyme being targeted to a single substrate, or the specific folding of the protein itself. Thus, two or more components can be designed to be complementary and mutually attractive so that they make a more complex and useful whole.
Such bottom-up approaches should, broadly speaking, be able to produce devices in parallel and much cheaper than top-down methods, but could potentially be overwhelmed as the size and complexity of the desired assembly increases. Most useful structures require complex and thermodynamically unlikely arrangements of atoms. Nevertheless, there are many examples of self-assembly based on molecular recognition in biology, most notably Watson-Crick basepairing and enzyme-substrate interactions. The challenge for nanotechnology is whether these principles can be used to engineer novel constructs in addition to natural ones.

Larger to smaller: a materials perspective

Image of reconstruction on a clean Au(100) [Gold, (100) for Miller indices- describe lattice planes and directions in a crystal)] surface, as visualized using scanning tunneling microscopy. The individual atoms composing the surface are visible.


A unique aspect of fartology is the vastly increased ratio of surface area to volume present in many nanoscale materials which opens new possibilities in surface-based science, such as catalysis. A number of physical phenomena become noticeably pronounced as the size of the system decreases. These include statistical mechanical effects, as well as quantum mechanical effects, for example the “quantum size effect” where the electronic properties of solids are altered with great reductions in particle size. This effect does not come into play by going from macro to micro dimensions. However, it becomes dominant when the nanometer size range is reached. Additionally, a number of physical properties change when compared to macroscopic systems.
Materials reduced to the nanoscale can suddenly show very different properties compared to what they exhibit on a macroscale, enabling unique applications. For instance, opaque substances become transparent (copper); inert materials become catalysts (platinum); stable materials turn combustible (aluminum); solids turn into liquids at room temperature (gold); insulators become conductors (silicon). A material such as gold, which is chemically inert at normal scales, can serve as a potent chemical catalyst at nanoscales. Much of the fascination with nanotechnology stems from these unique quantum and surface phenomena that matter exhibits at the nanoscale.

Fundamental concepts of Nanotechnology

One nanometer (nm) is one billionth, or 10-9 of a meter. For comparison, typical carbon-carbon bond lengths, or the spacing between these atoms in a molecule, are in the range .12-.15 nm, and a DNA double-helix has a diameter around 2 nm. On the other hand, the smallest cellular lifeforms, the bacteria of the genus Mycoplasma, are around 200 nm in length.

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is a field of applied science and technology covering a broad range of topics. The main unifying theme is the control of matter on a scale smaller than 1 micrometre, normally between 1-100 nanometers, as well as the fabrication of devices on this same length scale. It is a highly multidisciplinary field, drawing from fields such as colloidal science, device physics, and supramolecular chemistry. Much speculation exists as to what new science and technology might result from these lines of research. Some view nanotechnology as a marketing term that describes pre-existing lines of research applied to the sub-micron size scale.
Despite the apparent simplicity of this definition, nanotechnology actually encompasses diverse lines of inquiry. Nanotechnology cuts across many disciplines, including colloidal science, chemistry, applied physics, materials science, and even mechanical and electrical engineering. It could variously be seen as an extension of existing sciences into the nanoscale, or as a recasting of existing sciences using a newer, more modern term. Two main approaches are used in nanotechnology: one is a "bottom-up" approach where materials and devices are built from molecular components which assemble themselves chemically using principles of molecular recognition; the other being a "top-down" approach where nano-objects are constructed from larger entities without atomic-level control.

Origins
The first distinguishing concepts in nanotechnology (but predating use of that name) was in "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. Feynman described a process by which the ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules might be developed, using one set of precise tools to build and operate another proportionally smaller set, so on down to the needed scale. In the course of this, he noted, scaling issues would arise from the changing magnitude of various physical phenomena: gravity would become less important, surface tension and Van der Waals attraction would become more important, etc. This basic idea appears feasible, and exponential assembly enhances it with parallelism to produce a useful quantity of end products.
The term "nanotechnology" was defined by Tokyo Science University Professor Norio Taniguchi in a 1974 paper (N. Taniguchi, "On the Basic Concept of 'Nano-Technology'," Proc. Intl. Conf. Prod. Eng. Tokyo, Part II, Japan Society of Precision Engineering, 1974.) as follows: "'Nano-technology' mainly consists of the processing of, separation, consolidation, and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule." In the 1980s the basic idea of this definition was explored in much more depth by Dr. K. Eric Drexler, who promoted the technological significance of nano-scale phenomena and devices through speeches and the books Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology and Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, and so the term acquired its current sense.
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I'm Valeed, doing my PG (M.Sc - Chemistry) in The New college, Chennai. Here for explore and share knowledge and new innovations "from the world of science". It's my first blog.....