Tag Archives: phenomenon

The Weird World of “Remote Heating”

*UMD Researchers Discover Nanoscale Phenomena with Potential for Computer Speed Advances*

College Park, Md.– A team of University of Maryland scientists have discovered that when electric current is run through carbon nanotubes, objects nearby heat up while the nanotubes themselves stay cool, like a toaster that burns bread without getting hot. Understanding this completely unexpected new phenomenon could lead to new ways of building computer processors that can run at higher speeds without overheating.

“This is a new phenomenon we’re observing, exclusively at the nanoscale, and it is completely contrary to our intuition and knowledge of Joule heating at larger scales-for example, in things like your toaster,” says first author Kamal Baloch, who conducted the research while a graduate student at the University of Maryland. “The nanotube’s electrons are bouncing off of something, but not its atoms. Somehow, the atoms of the neighboring materials-the silicon nitride substrate-are vibrating and getting hot instead.” (more…)

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Clocking an Accelerating Universe: First Results from BOSS

Berkeley Lab scientists are the leaders of BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. They and their colleagues in the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey have announced the most precise measurements ever made of the era when dark energy turned on.

Some six billion light years distant, almost halfway from now back to the big bang, the universe was undergoing an elemental change. Held back until then by the mutual gravitational attraction of all the matter it contained, the universe had been expanding ever more slowly. Then, as matter spread out and its density decreased, dark energy took over and expansion began to accelerate.

Today BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), announced the most accurate measurement yet of the distance scale of the universe during the era when dark energy turned on. (more…)

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Cellphone Use Linked to Selfish Behavior in UMD Study

COLLEGE PARK, Md. Though cellphones are usually considered devices that connect people, they may make users less socially minded, finds a recent study from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Marketing professors Anastasiya Pocheptsova and Rosellina Ferraro, with graduate student, Ajay T. Abraham, conducted a series of experiments on test groups of cellphone users. The findings appear in their working paper, The Effect of Mobile Phone Use on Prosocial Behavior. (more…)

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On the Road to Plasmonics with Silver Polyhedral Nanocrystals

*Berkeley Lab Researchers Find Simpler Approach to Making Plasmonic Materials*

The question of how many polyhedral nanocrystals of silver can be packed into millimeter-sized supercrystals may not be burning on many lips but the answer holds importance for one of today’s hottest new high-tech fields – plasmonics! Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) may have opened the door to a simpler approach for the fabrication of plasmonic materials by inducing polyhedral-shaped silver nanocrystals to self-assemble into three-dimensional supercrystals of the highest possible density. (more…)

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Crossing Your Arms Relieves Pain

Crossing your arms reduces the intensity of pain you feel when receiving a painful stimulus on the hand, according to research by scientists at UCL.

Published in the current issue of the journal PAIN, the research shows that crossing your arms over the midline (an imaginary line running vertically down the centre of the body) confuses the brain and reduces the intensity of the pain sensation. (more…)

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It’s all in a Name: ‘Global warming’ versus ‘Climate change’

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Many Americans are skeptical about whether the world’s weather is changing, but apparently the degree of skepticism varies systematically depending on what that change is called.

According to a University of Michigan study published in the forthcoming issue of Public Opinion Quarterly, more people believe in “climate change” than in “global warming.” (more…)

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Spacecraft Catches Thunderstorms Hurling Antimatter into Space

WASHINGTON — Scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected beams of antimatter produced above thunderstorms on Earth, a phenomenon never seen before.

Scientists think the antimatter particles were formed in a terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF), a brief burst produced inside thunderstorms and shown to be associated with lightning. It is estimated that about 500 such flashes occur daily worldwide, but most go undetected. (more…)

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Three Giant Spaceships to Attack Earth in 2012?

UFO encounters became especially frequent in the middle of the 20th century, when it became impossible to disregard incidents of UFO sightings anymore. Special services started establishing special departments for air defense troops, secret laboratories were organized to study the phenomenon. It is not ruled out, that secret services have already had chances to study fragments of alien spaceships or even aliens themselves.

It is about time science should say its word regarding the problem, and it did. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), an independent non-commercial organization, released a sensational statement. (more…)

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