ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

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• Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope report the earliest spiral galaxy ever seen
• Inflatable spacecraft heat shield set to launch
• The future of biomaterial manufacturing: Spider silk production from bacteria
• Fighting obesity with thermal imaging
• Riding the plasma wave: Evidence for a type of plasma wave moving faster than theory predicted
• Heat is source of 'Pioneer Anomaly', NASA spacecraft study finds
• Magma world: NASA'S Spitzer finds evidence for an exoplanet smaller than Earth
• Nanomedicine: Bringing brighter light into living bodies
• X-ray imaging used to observe running batteries in action
• 'Loops of light' promising for optical detection of individual molecules
• Heart of a distant quasar observed with unprecedented sharpness: Sharpness two million times finer than human vision

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope report the earliest spiral galaxy ever seen Posted: 18 Jul 2012 10:17 AM PDT Astronomers have discovered the first spiral galaxy in the early universe, billions of years before many other spiral galaxies formed.

Inflatable spacecraft heat shield set to launch Posted: 18 Jul 2012 09:33 AM PDT NASA technicians and engineers are putting the finishing touches on a unique experiment designed to demonstrate that an inflatable aeroshell/heat shield could be used to protect spacecraft when entering a planet's atmosphere or returning here to Earth.

The future of biomaterial manufacturing: Spider silk production from bacteria Posted: 18 Jul 2012 09:28 AM PDT New research demonstrates procedures to harvest and process synthetic spider silk from bacteria. The procedure revolutionizes the spider silk purification process by standardizing a key step known as "post-spin."

Fighting obesity with thermal imaging Posted: 18 Jul 2012 09:27 AM PDT Scientists in the United Kingdom believe they've found a way of fighting obesity -- with a pioneering technique which uses thermal imaging. This heat-seeking technology is being used to trace our reserves of brown fat -- the body's 'good fat' -- which plays a key role in how quickly our body can burn calories as energy.

Riding the plasma wave: Evidence for a type of plasma wave moving faster than theory predicted Posted: 18 Jul 2012 09:23 AM PDT Using data from the WAVES instrument on NASA's Wind mission, researchers have discovered evidence for a type of plasma wave moving faster than theory predicted it could move. The research suggests that a different process than expected, electrical instabilities in the plasma, may be driving the waves. This offers scientists another tool to understand how heat and energy can be transported through plasma.

Heat is source of 'Pioneer Anomaly', NASA spacecraft study finds Posted: 18 Jul 2012 08:53 AM PDT The unexpected slowing of NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft -- the so-called "Pioneer Anomaly" -- turns out to be due to the slight, but detectable effect of heat pushing back on the spacecraft, according to a recent paper. The heat emanates from electrical current flowing through instruments and the thermoelectric power supply.

Magma world: NASA'S Spitzer finds evidence for an exoplanet smaller than Earth Posted: 18 Jul 2012 08:49 AM PDT Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is a planet two-thirds the size of Earth. The exoplanet candidate, called UCF-1.01, is located a mere 33 light-years away, making it possibly the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet.

Nanomedicine: Bringing brighter light into living bodies Posted: 18 Jul 2012 08:15 AM PDT Fluorescent dyes with aggregation-induced emission provide new probes for cancer diagnosis and therapy.

X-ray imaging used to observe running batteries in action Posted: 18 Jul 2012 07:39 AM PDT Scientists are using X-ray technology to observe lithium-sulfur batteries in action. Their findings could lead to improvements in this promising power source for electric vehicles.

'Loops of light' promising for optical detection of individual molecules Posted: 18 Jul 2012 07:38 AM PDT Researchers have developed a new method for manipulating light at the nanoscale in order to optically detect single molecules. By shining circularly polarized light on a gold, square-ring shaped nanostructure, the researchers were able to 'activate' the entire surface of the nanostructure, thereby significantly increasing the opportunity for interaction with molecules. The method has a broad range of potential applications in nanoscale photochemistry and could assist in the advancement of technologies for visualising single molecules and multiple-molecule interactions.

Heart of a distant quasar observed with unprecedented sharpness: Sharpness two million times finer than human vision Posted: 18 Jul 2012 04:39 AM PDT Astronomers have observed the heart of a distant quasar with unprecedented sharpness, two million times finer than human vision. The observations form a crucial step towards the dramatic scientific goal of the "Event Horizon Telescope" project: imaging the supermassive black holes at the center of our own galaxy and others.

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