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Successful Test of New U.S. Magnet Puts Large Hadron Collider on Track for Major Upgrade

By Guest PostAugust 3, 2013Scienceaccelerator technology, advance, berkeley lab, CERN, fermilab, gianluca sabb, higgs boson, high field quadrupole, high luminosity, hq02a, Large Hadron Collider, larp, lucio rossi, magnetic excitation, magnets, nb3sn, new us magnet, old dominion university, quench, superconducting quadrupole magnet, superconducting state, superconductor niobium tin

U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories – including Berkeley Lab – collaborate to build the new magnets CERN needs to increase LHC luminosity by an order of magnitude

The U.S. LHC Accelerator Program (LARP) has successfully tested a powerful superconducting quadrupole magnet that will play a key role in developing a new beam focusing system for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This advanced system, together with other major upgrades to be implemented over the next decade, will allow the LHC to produce 10 times more high-energy collisions than it was originally designed for.

Dubbed HQ02a, the latest in LARP’s series of High-Field Quadrupole magnets is wound with cables of the brittle but high-performance superconductor niobium tin (Nb₃Sn). Compared to the final-focus quadrupoles presently in place at the LHC, which are made with niobium titanium, HQ02a has a larger aperture and superconducting coils designed to operate at a higher magnetic field. In a recent test at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), HQ02a achieved all its challenging objectives. (more…)

CU-Boulder team develops new water splitting technique that could produce hydrogen

By Guest PostAugust 3, 2013Sciencealan weimer, biological engineering, boulder, brian evanko, charles musgrave, christopher muhich, contraction, holy grail, hydrogen, hydrogen molecules, janna martinek, kayla weston, metal oxides, mirror system, new, oxygen, oxygen atoms, produce hydrogen, solar thermal reactor, solar thermal system, sunlight, sustainable hydrogen economy, thermal expansion, university of colorado, water splitting technique, xinhua liang

A University of Colorado Boulder team has developed a radically new technique that uses the power of sunlight to efficiently split water into its components of hydrogen and oxygen, paving the way for the broad use of hydrogen as a clean, green fuel.

The CU-Boulder team has devised a solar-thermal system in which sunlight could be concentrated by a vast array of mirrors onto a single point atop a central tower up to several hundred feet tall. The tower would gather heat generated by the mirror system to roughly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,350 Celsius), then deliver it into a reactor containing chemical compounds known as metal oxides, said CU-Boulder Professor Alan Weimer, research group leader. (more…)

How Did Earth’s Primitive Chemistry Get Kick Started?

By Guest PostAugust 2, 2013Scienceacetate, alkaline hydrothermal fluids, alkaline hydrothermal vents, ancient enzymes, atlantic ocean, bottom of oceans, chemical signature, distribution, earliest oceans, earth, enceladus, evolution, floor, future of life, hypothesis, icy worlds, jupiter, lauren white, laws of thermodynamics, mike russell, moon europa, nano engines, NASA, organic carbon, origin, polymers, primitive chemistry, saturn

How did life on Earth get started? Three new papers co-authored by Mike Russell, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., strengthen the case that Earth’s first life began at alkaline hydrothermal vents at the bottom of oceans. Scientists are interested in understanding early life on Earth because if we ever hope to find life on other worlds — especially icy worlds with subsurface oceans such as Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus — we need to know what chemical signatures to look for.

Two papers published recently in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B provide more detail on the chemical and precursor metabolic reactions that have to take place to pave the pathway for life. Russell and his co-authors describe how the interactions between the earliest oceans and alkaline hydrothermal fluids likely produced acetate (comparable to vinegar). The acetate is a product of methane and hydrogen from the alkaline hydrothermal vents and carbon dioxide dissolved in the surrounding ocean. Once this early chemical pathway was forged, acetate could become the basis of other biological molecules. They also describe how two kinds of “nano-engines” that create organic carbon and polymers — energy currency of the first cells — could have been assembled from inorganic minerals. (more…)

Blind(fold)ed by Science: Study Shows the Strategy Humans Use to Chase Objects

By Guest PostAugust 2, 2013Sciencearizona state university, blindfolded, brain, charles swank, dennis shaffer, eric mcmanama, motion capture equipment, moving object, polymodal

Vision and Hearing Work Together in the Brain to Help Us Catch a Moving Target

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A new study has found that chasing down a moving object is not only a matter of sight or of sound, but of mind.

The study found that people who are blindfolded employ the same strategy to intercept a running ball carrier as people who can see, which suggests that multiple areas of the brain cooperate to accomplish the task.

Regardless of whether they could see or not, the study participants seemed to aim ahead of the ball carrier’s trajectory and then run to the spot where they expected him or her to be in the near future. Researchers call this a “constant target-heading angle” strategy, similar to strategies used by dogs catching Frisbees and baseball players catching fly balls. (more…)

Is sexual addiction the real deal?

By Guest PostAugust 1, 2013Health, Science, SexBible, brain, criteria, diagnosing mental disorders, dsm 5, economic ruin, hypersexual disorder, hypersexual people, hypersexual problems, hypersexuality, mental health experts, nicole prause, p300 reaction, p300 response, psychology, romantic images, sex addiction, sexual addiction, sexual compulsions, sexual desire, sexual images, timothy fong, ucla

Controversy exists over what some mental health experts call “hypersexuality,” or sexual “addiction.” Namely, is it a mental disorder at all, or something else? It failed to make the cut in the recently updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, considered the bible for diagnosing mental disorders. Yet sex addiction has been blamed for ruining relationships, lives and careers.

Now, for the first time, UCLA researchers have measured how the brain behaves in so-called hypersexual people who have problems regulating their viewing of sexual images. The study found that the brain response of these individuals to sexual images was not related in any way to the severity of their hypersexuality but was instead tied only to their level of sexual desire. (more…)

Water Geysers on Saturn’s Moon

By Guest PostAugust 1, 2013Sciencecassini spacecraft, christophe sotin, cornell university, data, enceladus, enceladus plume, galileo, gravity, hydrocarbon composition, icy surface, instrument, ithaca, jet propulsion laboratory, linda spilker, matt hedman, moon, moon of saturn, NASA, organic material, robert brown, saturn, saturn gravity, saturnian moon, seismological signs, tiger stripes, titan, university of arizona, vims, water geysers

A new study published in Nature this week describes the forces that control the jets of water and organic material that erupt from the icy surface of Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. UA scientists contributed data to the study.

The intensity of the jets of water ice and organic molecules that shoot out from Saturn’s moon Enceladus depends on the moon’s proximity to the planet, according to data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The finding, detailed in the journal Nature this week, is the first clear observation that shows the Enceladus plume varies in a predictable manner. (more…)

Origins and uses of wrinkles, creases, folds

By Guest PostJuly 31, 2013Scienceanatomy, biology, brown university, creases, engineers, folds, hollow channels, huajian gao, initial strain, kyung suk kim, mazen diab, micro organs, origins, properties of surface, ruga states, ruike zhao, skin creases, teng zhang, uses of wrinkles, wrinkle phase

New research into the origins of — and structural differences between — wrinkles, creases, and folds could have applications in many fields, from flexible electronic devices to dermatology to flexible sheets that become sticky when stretched. Findings from a Brown University research group appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Engineers from Brown University have mapped out the amounts of compression required to cause wrinkles, creases, and folds to form in rubbery materials. The findings could help engineers control the formation of these structures, which can be useful in designing nanostructured materials for flexible electronic devices or surfaces that require variable adhesion. (more…)

Some volcanoes ‘scream’ at ever-higher pitches until they blow their tops

By Guest PostJuly 31, 2013Scienceeruptive cycles, harmonic tremor, small earthquakes, tremor frequency, volcanic eruption

It is not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption. They can reach a point of such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor that resembles sound made by various types of musical instruments, though at frequencies much lower than humans can hear. (more…)

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