ScienceDaily (June 6, 2010) — The Yangtze River in China is 40 million years older than was previously thought, according to new research.A study of minerals by a team led by Durham University reveals that the Yangtze River began to cut the Three Gorges area around 45 million years ago, making it much older than previously believed.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2010) — Heating and squishing microalgae in a pressure-cooker can fast-forward the crude-oil-making process from millennia to minutes.

University of Michigan professors are working to understand and improve this procedure in an effort to speed up development of affordable biofuels that could replace fossil fuels and power today's engines.

They are also examining the possibility of other new fuel sources such as E. coli bacteria that would feed on waste products from previous bio-oil batches.

西安晚报4月14日报道 随着世博会的日益临近，一篇名为《中国2010年上海世博会3日游攻略》的帖子在网络上受到热捧，作者在帖子中为游客设计了一条三天参观世博会的线路，内容涉及到了参观线路、就餐和参观内容等多方面，被网民们称为“民间最牛观博攻略”。这个攻略还被上海世博会执委会副主任周汉民多次提起，称其“写得很好”，并猜测作者一定是内部的“大内高手”。经联系，记者采访到了攻略的作者倪文灏，今年23岁的他原本是上海世博会展示中心的一名“金牌讲解员”，目前是世博会城市最佳实践区的运营工作人员。

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — British scientists have identified a new candidate for the biggest comet measured to date. Dr Geraint Jones of UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory presented the results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow on April 13. Instead of using the length of the tail to measure the scale of the comet, the group used data from the ESA/NASA Ulysses spacecraft to gauge the size of the region of space disturbed by the comet's presence.

Comet McNaught viewed over the Pacific in 2007. (Credit: Sebastian Deiries/ESO)

ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2010) — A new high-performance anode structure based on silicon-carbon nanocomposite materials could significantly improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries used in a wide range of applications from hybrid vehicles to portable electronics.

This schematic shows a silicon-carbon nanocomposite granule formed through a hierarchical bottom-up assembly process. Annealed carbon black particles are coated by silicon nanoparticles and then assembled into rigid spheres with open interconnected internal channels. (Credit: Courtesy of Gleb Yushin)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 15, 2010) — Unmanageable volumes of data accumulate in our digitized working world. Scientists are developing analytical techniques that make use of our ability to identify complex data relationships by means of pictorial images.

Scientists at the Fraunhofer IGD are developing analytical techniques based on our ability to identify complex relationships with the aid of pictorial images. (Credit: Copyright Fraunhofer IGD)

Every day vast amounts of information flood into business databases. To achieve their corporate objectives, companies try to evaluate information relevant to their activities as effectively as possible. In the day-to-day working environment they use business intelligence programs to collect, evaluate and present data. But many of the current analytical methods can only display information statically, as lists or reports. Visualization techniques help to present the information in a form that can be more easily understood.

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ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2010) — Using the latest in aberration-corrected electron microscopy, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and their colleagues have obtained the first images that distinguish individual light atoms such as boron, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.

The ORNL images were obtained with a Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). Individual atoms of carbon, boron, nitrogen and oxygen--all of which have low atomic numbers--were resolved on a single-layer boron nitride sample.

"This research marks the first instance in which every atom in a significant part of a non-periodic material has been imaged and chemically identified," said Materials Science and Technology Division researcher Stephen Pennycook. "It represents another accomplishment of the combined technologies of Z-contract STEM and aberration correction."

Pennycook and ORNL colleague Matthew Chisholm were joined by a team that includes Sokrates Pantelides, Mark Oxley and Timothy Pennycook of Vanderbilt University and ORNL; Valeria Nicolosi at United Kingdom's Oxford University; and Ondrej Krivanek, George Corbin, Niklas Dellby, Matt Murfitt, Chris Own and Zotlan Szilagyi of Nion Company, which designed and built the microscope. The team's Z-contrast STEM analysis is described in an article published March 25 in the journal Nature.

The new high-resolution imaging technique enables materials researchers to analyze, atom by atom, the molecular structure of experimental materials and discern structural defects in those materials. Defects introduced into a material--for example, the placement of an impurity atom or molecule in the material's structure--are often responsible for the material's properties.

The group analyzed a monolayer hexagonal boron nitride sample prepared at Oxford University and was able to find and identify three types of atomic substitutions--carbon atoms substituting for boron, carbon substituting for nitrogen and oxygen substituting for nitrogen. Boron, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen have atomic numbers--or Z values-- of five, six, seven and eight, respectively.

The annular dark field analysis experiments were performed on a 100-kilovolt Nion UltraSTEM microscope optimized for low-voltage operation at 60 kilovolts.

Aberration correction, in which distortions and artifacts caused by lens imperfections and environmental effects are computationally filtered and corrected, was conceived decades ago but only relatively recently made possible by advances in computing. Aided by the technology, ORNL's Electron Microscopy group set a resolution record in 2004 with the laboratory's 300-kilovolt STEM.

The recent advance comes at a much lower voltage, for a reason.

"Operating at 60 kilovolts allows us to avoid atom-displacement damage to the sample, which is encountered with low Z-value atoms above about 80 kilovolts," Pennycook said. "You could not perform this experiment with a 300-kilovolt STEM."

Armed with the high-resolution images, materials, chemical and nanoscience researchers and theorists can design more accurate computational simulations to predict the behavior of advanced materials, which are key to meeting research challenges that include energy storage and energy efficient technologies.

The research was funded by the DOE Office of Science.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Journal Reference:

1. Ondrej L. Krivanek, Matthew F. Chisholm, Valeria Nicolosi, Timothy J. Pennycook, George J. Corbin, Niklas Dellby, Matthew F. Murfitt, Christopher S. Own, Zoltan S. Szilagyi, Mark P. Oxley, Sokrates T. Pantelides, Stephen J. Pennycook. Atom-by-atom structural and chemical analysis by annular dark-field electron microscopy. Nature, 2010; 464 (7288): 571 DOI: 10.1038/nature08879