Physics & Chemistry
Physicists at JILA have created the first "frequency comb" in the extreme ultraviolet band of the spectrum, high-energy light less than 100 nanometers (nm) in wavelength. Laser-generated frequency combs are the most accurate method...
For decades, chemists considered a chemical pathway known as the formose reaction the only route for producing sugars essential for life to begin, but more recent research has called into question the plausibility of such thinking. Now a group from...
The heart's inner workings are mysterious, perhaps even more so with a new finding. Engineers at the University of Washington have discovered an electrical property in arteries not seen before in mammalian tissues. The researchers found that the...
An innovative low-cost smart paint that can detect microscopic faults in wind turbines, mines and bridges before structural damage occurs is being developed by researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. The environmentally-...
Like a magician employing sleight of hand, the protein mitoNEET -- a mysterious but important player in diabetes, cancer and aging -- draws the eye with a flurry of movement in one location while the subtle, more crucial action takes place somewhere...
Japan used seawater to cool nuclear fuel at the stricken Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant after the tsunami in March 2011 -- and that was probably the best action to take at the time, says Professor Alexandra Navrotsky of the University of California...
Rice University physicists have gone to extremes to prove that Isaac Newton's classical laws of motion can apply in the atomic world: They've built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom of potassium. In a new paper...
A special group of proteins, the so-called chaperones, helps other proteins to obtain their correct conformation. Until now scientists supposed that hydrolyzing ATP provides the energy for the large conformational changes of chaperone Hsp90. Now a...
For the first time, a superconducting current limiter based on YBCO strip conductors has now been installed at a power plant. At the Boxberg power plant of Vattenfall, the current limiter protects the grid for own consumption that is designed for 12...
An international team of scientists led by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Professor Ralf I. Kaiser, Alexander M. Mebel of Florida International University, and Alexander Tielens of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, discovered a novel...
University of Illinois materials scientists have developed a new reactive silver ink for printing high-performance electronics on ubiquitous, low-cost materials such as flexible plastic, paper or fabric substrates. Jennifer Lewis, the Hans Thurnauer...
Polymer nano-films and nano-composites are used in a wide variety of applications from food packaging to sports equipment to automotive and aerospace applications. Thermal analysis is routinely used to analyze materials for these applications, but...
University of Illinois researchers have shown that by tuning the properties of laser light illuminating arrays of metal nanoantennas, these nano-scale structures allow for dexterous optical tweezing as well as size-sorting of particles. "...
A superlens would let you see a virus in a drop of blood and open the door to better and cheaper electronics. It might, says Durdu Guney, make ultra-high-resolution microscopes as commonplace as cameras in our cell phones. No one has yet made a...
Just 100 nanometers in diameter, nanowires are often considered one-dimensional. But researchers at Northwestern University have recently reported that individual gallium nitride nanowires show strong piezoelectricity -- a type of charge-generation...
The smallest wires ever developed in silicon -- just one atom tall and four atoms wide -- have been shown by a team of researchers from the University of New South Wales, Melbourne University and Purdue University to have the same current-carrying...
Electronics are getting smaller and smaller, flirting with new devices at the atomic scale. However, many scientists predict that the shrinking of our technology is reaching an end. Without an alternative to silicon-based technologies, the...
Microscopic spheres form strings in surprising alignments when suspended in a viscous fluid and sheared between two plates -- a finding that will affect the way scientists think about the properties of such wide-ranging substances as shampoo and...
Scientists have uncovered how nature minimises energy costs in rings of liquids with an internal nanostructure made of two chemically discordant polymers joined with strong bonds, or di-blocks, deposited on a silicon surface, in an article about to...
Many of the particles in the atmosphere are produced by the natural world, and it is possible that plants have in recent decades reduced the effects of the greenhouse gases to which human activity has given rise. One consequence of this is that the...
Atomic force microscope cantilever tips with integrated heaters are widely used to characterize polymer films in electronics and optical devices, pharmaceuticals, paints, and coatings. These heated tips are also used in research labs to explore new...
Endoscopes -- small cameras or optic fibres that are usually attached to flexible tubing designed to investigate the interior of the body -- can be dangerously invasive. Procedures often require sedative medications and some recovery time. Now a...
Deterioration and damage to cellular telecommunications cables cost organizations and customers millions in lost revenue and services in the always-on digital economy. A new sensor device, smaller than a quarter, might alleviate some of the impact....
Scientists know that plants can actually "sense" day length, and "schedule" their growth to coincide with specific environmental conditions. These natural events are based on the circadian clock, a 24-hour system found in most...
The surprising discovery of a new way to tune and enhance thermal conductivity -- a basic property generally considered to be fixed for a given material -- gives engineers a new tool for managing thermal effects in smart phones and computers, lasers...
A newly released study from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) concludes that small modular reactors may hold the key to the future of U.S. nuclear power generation. "Clearly, a robust commercial SMR industry is...
A new chemical technique for depositing a non-crystalline form of silicon into the long, ultra-thin pores of optical fibers has been developed by an international team of scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom. The technique, which...
Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. At the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November, the international team transferred data...
Hui Hu pulled a model wind turbine from the top of an office filing cabinet. The turbine tower was just 10 inches high. Its three blades were 10 inches in diameter. It was a perfect 1:320 scale reproduction of the 80-meter diameter wind turbines...
At least one person admits that the extreme heat in Texas this year was beneficial. But all the same, he'd opt next time for a handmade torture chamber. "Some people will complain about the heat, but from my viewpoint as a breeder, I love...
For a long time miniaturization has been the magic word in electronics. Dr. Willi Auwaerter and Professor Johannes Barth, together with their team of physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), have now presented a novel molecular...
Carnegie Mellon University's Roberto R. Gil and Rongchao Jin have successfully used NMR to analyze the structure of infinitesimal gold nanoparticles, which could advance the development and use of the tiny particles in drug development. Their...
Using a new mathematical methodology, researchers at MIT have created a scientifically rigorous analogy that shows the similarities between the physical structure of spider silk and the sonic structure of a melody, proving that the structure of each...
It looks like bone. It feels like bone. For the most part, it acts like bone. And it came off an inkjet printer.
Washington State University researchers have used a 3-D printer to create a bone-like material and structure that can be used in...
Led by a group at the University of Maryland (UMd), a multi-institution team of researchers has combined modern materials research and an age-old metallurgy technique to produce an alloy that could be the basis for a new class of sensors and...
Conventional wisdom would say that blocking a hole would prevent light from going through it, but Princeton University engineers have discovered the opposite to be true. A research team has found that placing a metal cap over a small hole in a metal...
Carbon nanotubes, tiny cylinders composed of one-atom-thick carbon lattices, have gained fame as one of the strongest materials known to science. Now a group of researchers from the University of Michigan is taking advantage of another one of carbon...
A new class of high power lasers can effectively accelerate particles like electrons and ions with very intense, short laser pulses. This has attracted the interest of researchers around the globe, working out the details of the acceleration process...
Scientists at Chalmers have succeeded in creating light from vacuum -- observing an effect first predicted over 40 years ago. In an innovative experiment, the scientists have managed to capture some of the photons that are constantly appearing and...
Supplied with sufficient energy, a freight train would ride the rails as far as they go. But nature also knows systems whose dynamics suddenly turn into a kind of endless loop. Like in a hamster wheel, a train caught up in such a system would...
University of California, Berkeley, scientists have shown that ionized plasmas like those in neon lights and plasma TVs not only can sterilize water, but make it antimicrobial -- able to kill bacteria -- for as long as a week after treatment....
Copper's days are numbered, and a new study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could hasten the downfall of the ubiquitous metal in smart phones, tablet computers, and nearly all electronics. This is good news for technophiles who are seeking...
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a simple way to convert two-dimensional patterns into three-dimensional (3-D) objects using only light. "This is a novel application of existing materials, and has potential for...
NASA engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it -- a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology. The team of...
Researchers at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand, have developed a new, lower-voltage method of generating extra-long, lightning-like electrical arcs. The arcs are created when an electrical impulse is applied to a thin copper wire that...
Taxanes are a family of compounds that includes one of the most important cancer drugs ever discovered, Taxol®, among other cancer treatments. But the difficulty producing these complex molecules in the lab has hampered or blocked exploration of...
Converting sunlight into electricity is not economically attractive because of the high cost of solar cells, but a recent, purely optical approach to improving luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) may ease the problem, according to researchers at...
From detecting pathogens in blood samples to the study of protein synthesis, Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) sensors have many uses in modern biology. In this technique, antibodies anchored to gold electrodes on a piece of quartz crystal act like...
Misshapen red blood cells (RBCs) are a sign of serious illnesses, such as malaria and sickle cell anemia. Until recently, the only way to assess whether a person's RBCs were the correct shape was to look at them individually under a microscope -- a...
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new computational approach to improve the utility of superconductive materials for specific design applications -- and have used the approach to solve a key research obstacle for the...
