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Technology News

Asteroids closer to home may get us to Mars

19:38
Scanning the skies for near-earth asteroids might be the best first step for getting humans to Mars. planetary scientist Richard Binzel argues that NASA should abandon the AsteroidRedirect Mission, the space agency’s plan to snag a space rock and jockey it into lunar orbit for astronauts to explore. Instead, NASA should beef up its telescope surveys to search for asteroids that come closer...

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Mini stomachs grown in lab

19:33
Itty-bitty seeds of human stomachs can now bud in plastic dishes. By bathing stem cells in a brew of growth-boosting chemicals, scientists have kick-started the constructionof crude organs about as bigas the head of a pin. These primitive balls of gastric tissue — the first to be cooked up in the lab — resemble the stomachs of developing fetuses. The lab-grown bellies represent...

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Birds large and small hop over obstacles in similar ways

19:30
A tiny quail and a huge ostrich would seem to have little in common given their 500-fold difference in size. But when faced with an obstacle in their path, the birds tackle it in the same way, scientistsreportOctober 29 in theJournal of Experimental Biology.Aleksandra Birn-Jeffery of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, England, and colleagues wanted to know how running birds negotiate a...

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New frog species discovered in New York City

19:26
A new frog species, discovered in New York City six years ago, has been found in many spots along the East Coast, from Connecticut to North Carolina.The Atlantic Coast leopard frog (Rana kauffeldi) wasfirstidentified on Staten Island when ecologists realized that its call was distinct fromthat of a lookalike, the southern leopard frog (Rana sphenocephala). The Atlantic Coast speciescroaks in a single burst...

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Ultra-Black Nano-Coating Applied to New 3D Solar Coronagraph

16:51
NASA scientists have applied new super-black carbon-nanotube coating to a 3-D component critical for suppressing stray light in a new solar coronagraph. An emerging super-black nanotechnology that is to be tested for the first time this fall on the International Space Station will be applied to a complex, 3-D component critical for suppressing stray light in a new, smaller, less-expensive solar coronagraph designed...

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