Scientists don’t know what dark matter is, but they know it’s all over the universe. Everything humans observe in the heavens—galaxies, stars, planets and the rest—makes up only 4 percent of the universe, scientists say. The remaining 96 percent is composed of dark matter and its even more mysterious sibling, dark energy. Scientists recently found direct evidence that dark matter exists by studying a distant galaxy cluster and observing different types of motion in luminous versus dark matter. Still, no one knows what dark matter is made of.
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The experiment is the most sensitive in the world aiming to detect exotic particles called WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), which are one of scientists’ best guesses at what makes up dark matter. Other options include neutrinos, theorized particles called axions or even normal matter like black holes and brown dwarf stars that are just too faint to see.

WIMPS are thought to be neutral in charge and weigh more than 100 times the mass of a proton. At the moment these elementary particles exist only in theory and have never been observed.

If the launch does not happen on Dec. 7, NASA can keep trying through Dec. 17. After that, the agency will re-evaluate its options and may call it quits until January.

NASA wants Discovery back from its 12-day mission by New Year’s Eve because shuttle computers are not designed to make the change from the 365th day of the old year to the first day of the new year while in flight.

The space agency has figured out a solution for the New Year’s Day problem, but managers are reluctant to try it since it has not been thoroughly tested.

But armed with an author name, Christine Born, I could do a Google search, and found many more articles — for example, this one from the Washington Post. Of course, I still want to know more about the study, which brings me to another pet peeve of mine: mainstream media reports on research that hasn’t yet been peer reviewed. This article doesn’t appear to have been published, just presented at a conference. We don’t know how the group defines “better-known” brands, or even what brands were used. We don’t even know if this research is actually publishable.

Researchers worldwide are striving to apply these nanostructures in electronics, high-resolution displays, high-strength composites and biosensors. A fundamental problem relating to their synthesis, however, has limited their widespread use.

Current methods for synthesizing carbon nanotubes produce mixtures of tubes that differ in their diameter and twist. Variations in electronic properties arise from these structural differences, resulting in carbon nanotubes that are unsuitable for most proposed applications.
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carbon nanotubes first are encapsulated in water by soap-like molecules called surfactants. Next, the surfactant-coated nanotubes are sorted in density gradients which are spun at tens of thousands of rotations per minute in an ultracentrifuge. By carefully choosing the surfactants utilized during ultracentrifugation, the researchers found that carbon nanotubes could be sorted by diameter and electronic structure.

Although its origins are uncertain, the new studies of the inscriptions suggest it would have been constructed around 100-150 BC…

Writing in Nature, the team says that the mechanism was “technically more complex than any known device for at least a millennium afterwards”.
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the Moon sometimes moves slightly faster in the sky than at others because of the satellite’s elliptic orbit. To overcome this, the designer of the calculator used a “pin-and-slot” mechanism to connect two gear-wheels that introduced the necessary variations.

“When you see it your jaw just drops and you think: ‘bloody hell, that’s clever’. It’s a brilliant technical design,” said Professor Mike Edmunds.

We aim to create a tool that allows the engineer to sketch a mechanical system as she would on paper, and then allows her to interact with the design as a mechanical system, for example by seeing a simulation of her drawing. We have built an early incarnation of such a tool, called ASSIST, which allows a user to sketch simple mechanical systems and see simulations of her drawings in a two-dimensional kinematic simulator.

The advantages of designed experiments over [One Factor at a Time] OFAT experiments are illustrated using three real engineering OFAT experiments, and showing how in each case a designed experiment would have been better. This topic is important because many scientists and engineers continue to perform OFAT experiments.

Girls who are overly protected in the lab or on the playground have few chances to assess risks and solve problems on their own. In SMART classes, once-dreaded mistakes become hypotheses. Girls are urged to go back to the drawing board to figure out why their newly assembled electric door alarm doesn’t work or why their water filter gets clogged. Supported by adults instead of rescued, girls learn to embrace their curiosity, face their fear, and trust their own judgment.

“We want to address ways to make science education more interesting for the students, and incorporating engineering and technology into elementary science programs often motivates the students to learn the science,” explains Tufts University Professor of Mechanical Engineering Chris Rogers, who is also the director of CEEO. Research on how people learn suggests that weaving engineering and technology into basic science curricula can deepen students’ understanding of and interest in science, which can be especially critical for young girls.

Improvements compared with conventional instruction Researchers expect that including engineering in science instruction in this way will help students deepen their understanding of the material. The curriculum design will also be informed by the “theory of triarchic intelligence,” developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts and director of the PACE Center. Sternberg’s work indicates that course instruction that builds a combination of analytical, practical and creative skills to improve student achievement compared with conventional instruction.

Arizona’s famous Meteor Crater is a long way from the Moon. But for a menagerie of intelligent robots hoping to earn supporting roles in NASA’s lunar exploration plans, the massive impact crater west of Flagstaff is center stage.

In September, several such robots and an autonomous Moon buggy called Scout were put through their paces in the rough desert terrain. During a two-week campaign conducted by NASA’s Desert Research and Technology Studies team — a collection of government, university and industry scientists and engineers known as the Desert Rats — the robots demonstrated their ability to work side-by-side with space-suited researchers, helping with the kinds of tasks that actual astronauts will have to perform as they begin exploring the Moon and establishing outposts.

Don’t try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.