Plasma-Structural Coloring: A New Colorful approach to an Inkless Future

(a) Scheme illustrating the “plasma-structural coloring”; (b) The picture of a letter “A” written by a pencil; (c) The picture of the sample after the plasma irradiation for 80 seconds.

Classic graphite pencils can be used and transformed into colorful works using plasma irradiation, without a drop of colored ink used. New developments for achieving structural coloring through plasma irradiation of graphite can reduce the reliance upon harmful color dyes. Colors achieved by plasma irradiation are completely erasable and can be manipulated using time exposed to the plasma irradiation, intensity of the irradiation and the thickness of the graphite layer applied...

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Evidence that Saturn’s moon Mimas is a Stealth Ocean World

Saturn moon Mimas and a graph of two options of its geology
Courtesy of NASA/JPL/SSI/SwRI

Simulations suggest that Saturn’s smallest, innermost moon could have an expanding, geologically young ocean. When a Southwest Research Institute scientist discovered surprising evidence that Saturn’s smallest, innermost moon could generate the right amount of heat to support a liquid internal ocean, colleagues began studying Mimas’ surface to understand how its interior may have evolved. Numerical simulations of the moon’s Herschel impact basin, the most striking feature on its heavily cratered surface, determined that the basin’s structure and the lack of tectonics on Mimas are compatible with a thinning ice shell and geologically young ocean.

“In the waning days of NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn, the spacecraft identified a curious libration, or os...

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New Breakthrough in the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis

A research team, led by Professor Sung Ho Park in the Department of Biological Sciences at UNIST announced the results of a study on osteoblasts that damage joint bones in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

In this study, the research team studied the possibility of a treatment method targeting mechanisms related to the differentiation process of osteoblasts that melt bones through enzyme reactions. First, it was confirmed that a superinhancer is formed near the NFATC1 gene, which is known to be an important factor in the formation of osteoblasts, and it is formed only in osteoblasts.

In addition, it was confirmed that an enhancer RNA, a type of non-encrypted RNA, is formed in the NFATC1 superinhand during osteoblastic cell formation.

Non-encrypted RNA does not encode protei...

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New Type of Solar Cell is being tested in Space

New type of solar cell is being tested in space
Nanowires in three materials imaged by a scanning electron microscope. A thread is a thousand times thinner than a strand of hair. The red and blue colour shows the direction of the current, and that the nanowires work as a tandem solar cell. Credit: Lund University

Physics researchers at Lund University in Sweden recently succeeded in constructing small solar radiation-collecting antennas—nanowires—using three different materials that are a better match for the solar spectrum compared with today’s silicon solar cells. As the nanowires are light and require little material per unit of area, they are now to be installed for tests on satellites, which are powered by solar cells and where efficiency, in combination with low weight, is the most important factor...

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