ScienceDaily: Top Technology News

---

• NASA's Orion spacecraft comes to life
• A ghostly trio from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope
• Plasmonic crystal alters to match light-frequency source: Device is like a photonic crystal, but smaller and tunable
• Less toxic metabolites, more chemical product
• Spinning atoms in light crystals
• New technology shows promise in taking the guesswork out of vaccine development
• Historic demonstration proves laser communication possible

NASA's Orion spacecraft comes to life Posted: 29 Oct 2013 11:11 AM PDT NASA's first-ever deep space craft, Orion, has been powered on for the first time, marking a major milestone in the final year of preparations for flight.

A ghostly trio from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Posted: 29 Oct 2013 11:07 AM PDT In the spirit of Halloween, scientists are releasing a trio of stellar ghosts caught in infrared light by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. All three spooky structures, called planetary nebulas, are in fact material ejected from dying stars. As death beckoned, the stars' wispy bits and pieces were blown into outer space.

Plasmonic crystal alters to match light-frequency source: Device is like a photonic crystal, but smaller and tunable Posted: 29 Oct 2013 10:37 AM PDT A plasma-containing crystal, tunable by varying a voltage, could increase the bandwidth of high-speed communication networks and generally enhance high-speed electronics.

Less toxic metabolites, more chemical product Posted: 29 Oct 2013 10:35 AM PDT By preventing the build-up of toxic metabolites in engineered microbes, a dynamic regulatory system can help boost production of an advanced biofuel, a therapeutic drug, or other valuable chemical products. The system has already been used to double the production in E. coli of amorphadiene, a precursor to the premier antimalarial drug artemisinin.

Spinning atoms in light crystals Posted: 29 Oct 2013 07:15 AM PDT After more than 40 years of intense research, experimental physicists still seek to explore the rich behavior of electrons confined to a two-dimensional crystalline structure exposed to large magnetic fields. Now scientists have developed a new experimental method to simulate these systems using a crystal made of neutral atoms and laser light. In such artificial quantum matter, the atoms could be exposed to a uniform effective magnetic field several thousand times stronger than in typical condensed matter systems.

New technology shows promise in taking the guesswork out of vaccine development Posted: 28 Oct 2013 01:28 PM PDT Scientists have developed a comprehensive, microchip-based technology, called immunosignature diagnosis, which can rapidly and comprehensively measure an individual's vaccine response, promising to take much of the initial guesswork out of predicting effective vaccines.

Historic demonstration proves laser communication possible Posted: 28 Oct 2013 11:15 AM PDT In the early morning hours of Oct. 18, NASA's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) made history, transmitting data from lunar orbit to Earth at a rate of 622 Megabits-per-second (Mbps). That download rate is more than six times faster than previous state-of-the-art radio systems flown to the moon.

You are subscribed to email updates from ScienceDaily: Top Technology News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610