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By controlling individual atoms, quantum properties can be investigated and made usable for technological applications. For about ten years, physicists have been working on a technology that can capture and control atoms: so-called nanooptical traps. The heating rate that has now been theoretically determined agrees very well with the experimental results. This finding has important consequences for applications: On the one hand, the technology can be significantly improved with simple counter-measures....

A smart contact lens is a product attached to the human eye like a normal lens and provides various information. Research on the lens is being conducted mainly on diagnosing and treating health. Recently, Google and others are developing smart contact lenses for displays that can implement AR. Still, many obstacles to commercialization exist due to severe technical challenges. In implementing AR with smart contact lenses, electrochromic[1] displays that can be driven with low power are suitable, and “Pure Prussian Blue” color, with high price competitiveness and quick contrast and transition between colors, is attracting attention as the lens’ material....

Although the emissions targets for aviation are in line with the overall goals of the Paris Agreement, there is a high likelihood that the climate impact of aviation will not meet these goals, according to a new study. Aviation is an important contributor to the global economy, but contributes to climate change by creating carbon dioxide (CO2) as well as non-CO2 effects such as forming nitrogen oxides, ozone, and contrail cirrus clouds, which all contribute to global warming....

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people wear masks in public. Because N95 and surgical masks are scarce and should be reserved for health care workers, many people are making their own coverings. Now, researchers report in ACS Nano that a combination of cotton with natural silk or chiffon can effectively filter out aerosol particles — if the fit is good....

A team of Yale University researchers have discovered a sort of master switching network of proteins crucial to sustain cell growth. The team — led by Susan Baserga and her graduate students Katie Farley-Barnes and Kat McCann in the Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry — screened for proteins crucial to the formation of nucleoli. At the Yale Center for Molecular Discovery at the West Campus, they screened 18,000 proteins and found 139 that represent a myriad of cellular pathways that had unexpected control over the production of ribosomes....

Researchers in Umeå, Sweden, have presented a model that explains why memory deteriorates as the body ages. With age, the brain receives an increased load from the heart’s beating as the body’s large arteries stiffen over the years, causing damage to the smallest blood vessels in the brain. The fact that human memory is deteriorating with increasing age is something that most people experience sooner or later, even among those who avoid diseases such as Alzheimer’s....

Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf finally calved a large iceberg in February 2021, two years after rifts opened rapidly across the ice and raised concerns about the shelf’s stability. The break was first detected by GPS equipment on February 26, 2021, and then confirmed the next day with radar images from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A satellite. On March 1, clouds were sparse enough for the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 to acquire this natural-color image of the new iceberg....

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-20 satellite captured this natural-color image of the state on October 1, 2020. The volume of smoke coming from the fires has been high in recent days and has spread across much of the state. On the same day, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Airnow system reported that many sensors across the state had measured unhealthy (between 150-200 on the air quality index) and hazardous (above 300 AQI) conditions in recent days....

For years, solar-fuel research has focused on developing catalysts that can split water into hydrogen and oxygen using only sunlight. The resulting hydrogen fuel could be used to power motor vehicles, electrical plants, and fuel cells. Since the only thing produced by burning hydrogen is water, no carbon pollution is added to the atmosphere. In 2014, researchers in the lab of Harry Gray, Caltech’s Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry, developed a water-splitting catalyst made of layers of nickel and iron....

This view is a composite of several images taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on August 17, 2015, at a distance of about 28,000 miles (44,500 kilometers) from Tethys. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on September 15, 2017. The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington....

Images taken using red, green, and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. Cassini’s narrow-angle camera took the images at a distance of approximately 1.27 million miles (2.05 million kilometers) from the center of the rings. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on September 15, 2017 The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency), and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington....

Saturn’s many cloud patterns, swept along by high-speed winds, look as if they were painted on by some eager alien artist. With no real surface features to slow them down, wind speeds on Saturn can top 1,100 mph (1,800 kph), more than four times the top speeds on Earth. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 29 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 4, 2014 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers....

This new Cassini image captures a side view of Saturn and its rings. Saturn’s rings appear to form a majestic arc over the planet in this image from the Cassini spacecraft. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 15, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 705 nanometers....

Almost 35 years ago, scientists made the then-radical proposal that colossal hydrogen bombs called novae go through a very long-term life cycle after erupting, fading to obscurity for hundreds of thousands of years and then building back up to become full-fledged novae once more. A new study is the first to fully model the work and incorporate all of the feedback factors now known to control these systems, backing up the original prediction while bringing new details to light....

The scientists published their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters. The light, emitted after a beam of electrons kicks a material’s own electrons in to a higher-energy state, is faint and diffuse, thus discouraging scientists from harnessing it for fine-scale imaging. A Dutch group has found a way to collect and focus this light, which was previously ignored. They used it to probe a material’s nanoscale structure. The technology will reach the market early this year, giving scientists another tool to investigate the behavior of light in the interiors of the complex nanostructures used in lasers, light-based circuits and solar cells....

The destruction of a planet may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of astronomers has found evidence that this may have happened in an ancient cluster of stars at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy. Using several telescopes, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers have found evidence that a white dwarf star – the dense core of a star like the Sun that has run out of nuclear fuel – may have ripped apart a planet as it came too close....

Astronomers have studied 51 quasars with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and found they may represent an unusual population of black holes that consume excessive amounts of matter, as described in our latest press release. Quasars are objects that have supermassive black holes that also shine very brightly in different types of light. By examining the X-ray properties with Chandra, and combining them with data from ultraviolet and visible light observations, scientists are trying to determine exactly how these large black holes grow so quickly in the early Universe....

An international team of scientists has determined the precise structural changes in the spike protein of the COVID-19 omicron variant. Their observations explain how the virus is able to evade antibodies against previous variants and still remain highly infectious. “The findings provide a blueprint that researchers can use to design new countermeasures, whether they be vaccines or therapeutics, against omicron and other coronavirus variants that may emerge,” said David Veesler, investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle....

Depleted uranium (DU) is a radioactive by-product from the process used to create nuclear energy. With many fearing the health risks from DU, it is either stored in expensive facilities or used to manufacture controversial armor-piercing missiles. But, in a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Professor Geoff Cloke, Professor Richard Layfield, and Dr. Nikolaos Tsoureas, all at the University of Sussex, have revealed that DU could, in fact, be more useful than we might think....

Next year’s Hollywood film Gravity features George Clooney stranded in orbit by cascading space junk. The threat is genuine, with debris levels rising steadily. ESA’s new Clean Space initiative is developing methods of preserving near-Earth space – and the terrestrial environment, too. Responding to public environmental concerns, Clean Space aims to reduce the environmental effect of Europe’s space activities, cutting waste and pollution on Earth and in orbit. Industry is contributing to ESA’s draft plans for developing Clean Space technologies: new tools to assess environmental effects, more eco-friendly replacements for materials and techniques, and ways to halt the production of more space debris and bring down existing debris levels....