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Mars Base

All-carbon-nanotube transistor can be crumpled like a piece of paper - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...stor-crumpled-piece-paper.html

scibyte36 transistor nanotube

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Thanks to the flexible yet robust properties of carbon nanotubes, researchers have previously fabricated transistors that can be rolled, folded, and stretched
  • Japan has made an all-carbon-nanotube transistor that can be crumpled like a piece of paper without degradation of its electrical properties
  • the most bendable reported to date that doesn’t experience a loss in performance
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • researchers, Shinya Aikawa and coauthors from the University of Tokyo and the Tokyo University of Science
  • could lead to active electronic devices that are applied like a sticker or an adhesive bandage, as well as to wearable electronics.”
Mars Base

Study: Facebook profile beats IQ test in predicting job performance - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...3-facebook-profile-iq-job.html

scibyte36 Facebook

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Can a person's Facebook profile reveal what kind of employee he or she might be? The answer is yes, and with unnerving accuracy,
  • Other things a prospective employer might be able to glean from your Facebook profile is openness to new experiences (vacation pictures from a glacier off New Zealand), emotional stability (are your friends constantly offering you words of comfort?) and agreeableness (are you constantly arguing with "friends?").
  • series of two studies
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • six people with experience in human resources were asked to rate a sample of 500 people in terms of key personality traits using only the sample group's Facebook pages as a guideline.
  • rate members of the sample group on what is known as the "Big Five" personality traits
  • extroversion, conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness and openness to new experiences
  • High scores
  • indication of future good job performance.
  • Members of the sample group were asked to give a self-evaluation and took an IQ test.
  • followed up with the employers of people in the sample group six months after their personality traits were rated, to ask questions about job performance.
  • raters were generally in agreement about the personality traits expressed in the sample group's Facebook page
  • ratings correlated strongly with self-rated personality traits
  • also found that the Facebook ratings were a more accurate way of predicting a person's job performance than an IQ test
  • employers need to tread carefully here
  • Facebook page can provide a lot of information that it would be illegal for an employer to ask of a candidate in a phone interview
  • gender, race, age and whether they have a disability
  • a 2011 study
  • found that 90 percent of recruiters and hiring managers look at an applicant's Facebook page whether they should or not.
  • one study should be used as a reason to start using Facebook in hiring.
Mars Base

Oxygen discovered at Saturn's moon Dione - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...-oxygen-saturn-moon-dione.html

scibyte36 Saturn Dione

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Dione, one of Saturn’s icy moons, has a weak exosphere which includes molecules of oxygen, according to new findings from the Cassini-Huygens mission
  • international mission made the discovery using combined data from one of Cassini’s instruments, called CAPS (Cassini Plasma Spectrometer
  • Dione joins Rhea and the main rings in Saturn's system in having an oxygen rich exosphere
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • It now looks like oxygen production is a universal process wherever an icy moon is bathed in a strong trapped radiation and plasma environment
  • Cassini flew by Dione on 7 April 2010
  • During that flyby
  • molecular oxygen ions near the moon's icy surface
  • used the measurements to estimate the density of the molecular oxygen ions to be in the range of 0.01 to 0.09 ions per cubic centimetre
  • molecular oxygen ions are produced when neutral molecules are ionized; the measurements confirm that a neutral exosphere surrounds Dione.
  • Dione's exosphere is very thin - compared to Earth's atmosphere the density is about a million billionth. The exciting thing is that there is oxygen
Mars Base

Hot-spring fossils preserve complete Jurassic ecosystem - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ossils-jurassic-ecosystem.html

scibyte36 fossils

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists are uncovering a beautifully-preserved ecosystem from around a Jurassic hot spring, helping fill a gap in the fossil record of more than 300 million years.
  • Patagonia in southern Argentina, the San Agustin geothermal deposits include animals, plants, fungi and bacteria, preserved in three dimensions and with their internal structure largely intact.
  • date from around 150 million years ago
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • formed around an area where water heated deep underground rose to the surface
  • first time a hot-spring habitat from the Mesozoic era (from about 250 to 65 million years ago) has ever been discovered
  • Hot springs
  • are treasure troves for palaeontologists
  • the dissolved silica in their waters quickly penetrates and preserves the bodies of living things that die there
  • preserved in three dimensions rather than crushed into a two-dimensional film
  • It's a near-intact ecosystem that's beautifully preserved
  • We have the remains of everything from the bacteria living right around the hot spring vents all the way to the plants, crustaceans and insects living in wetlands further away and the trees and ferns from the forests around the margins. We also have evidence of how all these organisms interacted
  • The discovery of a rich assemblage of fossils from between these extremes could transform scientists' understanding of a vital stage in life's development
Mars Base

Tube-shaped solar cells could be weaved into clothing - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...3-tube-shaped-solar-cells.html

scibyte36 solarcell

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • semiconducting nanorods grown on the surface of carbon fibers look more like bristles on a tiny hairbrush than a solar cell
  • the flexible tube-shaped cells can capture light from all directions and even have the potential to be weaved into clothing and paper for novel applications
  • current stage of development, researchers are trying to find a simple, low-cost method for fabricating high-quality tube-shaped solar cells.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • recently developed a new method for preparing uniform titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanorods on carbon fibers
  • advantages over the commonly used sol-gel method, which requires high temperatures and can cause cracks in the materials.
  • Fabricating tube-like solar cells is challenging due to the multiple steps involved
  • an ideal solution for preparing TiO2 nanostructures on carbon fibers is to grow them directly on the fiber’s surface
  • results showed that the rectangular bunched nanorod configuration achieved an energy conversion efficiency of 1.28%, compared with 0.76% for the unbunched configuration
  • attribute the difference to the larger surface area of the bunched nanorods, which enables more dye molecules to be adsorbed,
  • large surface area gives the tube-shaped solar cells the ability to capture light from all directions
Mars Base

Saturn's Icy Moon Dione Has Oxygen Atmosphere | Saturn Pictures | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/n-dione-oxygen-atmosphere.html

scibyte36 Saturn Dione

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • NASA spacecraft circling Saturn has discovered a wispy oxygen atmosphere on the ringed planet's icy moon Dione
  • is 5 trillion times less dense than the air at Earth's surface
  • detected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • equivalent to conditions 300 miles (480 kilometers) above Earth
  • one oxygen ion for every 2,550 cubic feet (90,000 cubic meters
  • still enough to qualify as an atmosphere
  • announced Friday (March 2).
  • Dione, in addition to Saturn's rings and the moon Rhea, is a source of oxygen molecules
  • shows that molecular oxygen is actually common in the Saturn system and reinforces that it can come from a process that doesn't involve life
  • Dione is one of Saturn's smaller moons
  • 698 miles (1,123 km) wide
  • orbits Saturn once every 2.7 days
  • distance of about 234,000 miles (377,400 km)
  • roughly the same as that between Earth and its moon
  • The oxygen on Dione may potentially be created by solar photons or high-energy particles that bombard the Saturn moon's ice-covered surface, kicking up oxygen ions in the process, Tokar explained.  Another idea suggests that geologic processes on Dione could feed the moon's atmosphere, researchers added.
  • atmosphere on Saturn's moon Rhea — one similar to that of Dione — was also detected in 2010
  • Dione was discovered in 1684 by astronomer Giovanni Cassini
  • named after the Greek goddess Dione, who the ancient Greek poet Homer described as the mother of the goddess Aphrodite
  • launched the Cassini mission in 1997 and it has been orbiting Saturn since its arrival at the ringed planet in 2004
  • joint effort by NASA and the space agencies of Europe and Italy, has been extended several times, most recently until 2017
Mars Base

Acidic Europa may eat away at chances for life - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...cidic-europa-chances-life.html

scibyte36 Jupiter Europa

shared by Mars Base on 03 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Europa's interior. The moon is thought to have a metallic core surrounded by a rocky interior, and then a global ocean on top of that surrounded by a shell of water ice
  • ocean underneath the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa could be too acid to support life
  • Europa, which is roughly the size of Earth's moon, could possess an ocean about 100 miles deep
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Recent findings even suggest its ocean could be loaded with oxygen, enough to support millions of tons worth of marine life like the kinds that exist on Earth
  • However, chemicals found on the surface of Europa might jeopardize any chances of life evolving there
  • compounds in question are oxidants, which are capable of receiving electrons from other compounds
  • usually rare in the solar system because of the abundance of chemicals known as reductants such as hydrogen and carbon
  • oxidants from Europa's surface might react with sulfides and other compounds in this moon's ocean before life could nab it
  • generating sulfuric and other acids
  • . If this has occurred for just about half of Europa's lifetime, not only would such a process rob the ocean of life-supporting oxidants
  • could become relatively corrosive, with a pH of about 2.6, "about the same as your average soft drink
  • ecosystem would need to evolve quickly to meet this crisis, with oxygen metabolisms and acid tolerance developing in only about 50 million years to handle the acidification
  • analogous to microbes found in acid mine drainage on Earth
  • bright red Río Tinto river in Spain
  • dominant microbes found there are acid-loving "acidophiles" that depend on iron and sulfide as sources of metabolic energy.
  • microbes there have figured out ways of fighting their acidic environment
  • If life did that on Europa, Ganymede, and maybe even Mars, that might have been quite advantageous
  • Others have questioned whether or not rock in Europa's seabed might actually neutralize the effects of this acidity
  • not think this is likely
  • one of the interesting possibilities is that they might have use blue phosphates as their bone material instead to evolve large organisms
Mars Base

Heart-powered pacemaker could one day eliminate battery-replacement surgery - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...ttery-replacement-surgery.html

scibyte36 heart health

shared by Mars Base on 04 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • A new power scheme for cardiac pacemakers turns to an unlikely source: vibrations from heartbeats themselves.
  • a device that harvests energy from the reverberation of heartbeats through the chest and converts it to electricity to run a pacemaker or an implanted defibrillator.
  • new energy harvester could save patients from repeated surgeries. That's the only way today to replace the batteries, which last five to 10 years.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • use ambient vibrations that are typically wasted and convert them to electrical energy
  • researchers haven't built a prototype yet
  • made detailed blueprints and run simulations demonstrating that the concept would work
  • A hundredth-of-an-inch thin slice of a special "piezoelectric" ceramic material would essentially catch heartbeat vibrations and briefly expand in response
  • Piezoelectric materials' claim to fame is that they can convert mechanical stress (which causes them to expand) into an electric voltage.
  • have precisely engineered the ceramic layer to a shape that can harvest vibrations across a broad range of frequencies
  • incorporated magnets, whose additional force field can drastically boost the electric signal that results from the vibrations.
  • new device could generate 10 microwatts of power, which is about eight times the amount a pacemaker needs to operate
  • originally designed the harvester for light unmanned airplanes, where it could generate power from wing vibrations
Mars Base

Floor of oldest fossilized forest discovered: 385 million years old - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...120301102716.htm

scibyte36

shared by Mars Base on 02 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • the discovery of the floor of the world's oldest forest
  • most exciting part was finding out just how many different types of footprints there were
  • newly uncovered area was preserved in such a way that we were literally able to walk among the trees, noting what kind they were, where they had stood and how big they had grown
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • dating back about 385 million years ago
  • The complexity of the Gilboa site can teach us a lot about the original assembly of our modern day ecosystems
Mars Base

Team reveals oldest fossilized forest - 0 views

www.physorg.com/...-oldest-fossilized-forest.html

scibyte36

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • research team has now unearthed and investigated an entire fossil forest dating back 385 million years
  • dating back about 385 million years ago
  • For decades scientists did not know what the trees connected to the stumps looked like
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • found fossils of the tree's intact crown in a nearby location in 2004, and a 28-foot-long trunk portion in 2005
  • named one of the "100 top Science Stories of 2007" by Discover Magazine
  • They were able to determine that these trees actually resembled modern-day cycads or tree ferns, but interestingly enough, were not related to either one
  • how much we don't know but need to understand about our ancient past
  • forest began to emerge -- during the Middle Devonian period, about 385 million years ago – Earth experienced a dramatic drop in global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the associated cooling led ultimately to a period of glaciation.
Mars Base

Exciting New 'Enceladus Explorer' Mission Proposed to Search for Life - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...on-proposed-to-search-for-life

scibyte36

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • project sponsored by the German Aerospace Center, Enceladus Explorer, was launched on February 22, 2012, in an attempt to answer the question of whether there could be life on (or rather, inside) Enceladus. The project lays the groundwork for a new, ambitious mission being proposed for some time in the future
Mars Base

Study: Old flu drug speeds brain injury recovery - 0 views

medicalxpress.com/...rug-brain-injury-recovery.html

scibyte36

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • reporting the first treatment to speed recovery from severe brain injuries caused by falls and car crashes: a cheap flu medicine whose side benefits were discovered by accident decades ago
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