The same physics that gives tornadoes their ferocious stability lies at the heart of new University of Washington research, and could lead to a better understanding of nuclear dynamics in studying fission, superconductors and the workings of neutron stars.
Run 14 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) will feature a dramatic improvement in machine performance enabling detailed studies of the quark-gluon plasma of the early universe and its transition to the matter we see in the universe today.
Can scientists generate any color of light? The answer is not really, but the invention of the laser in 1960 opened new doors for this endeavor. In a result published in Nature Communications scientists demonstrate a new semiconductor microstructure that performs frequency conversion. This design is a factor of 1000 smaller than previous devices.
University of Adelaide physics researchers have developed a new type of laser that will enable exciting new advances in areas as diverse as breath analysis for disease diagnosis and remote sensing of critical greenhouse gases.
A small, secretive creature with unlikely qualifications for defying gravity may hold the answer to an entirely new way of getting off the ground. Analysis of high-speed film reveals how salamanders—or at least several species of the Plethodontidae family—achieve vertical lift.
Researchers have created and photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles under lab conditions. The development lays the foundation for the underlying structure of the natural magnetic monopole – the detection of which would be a revolutionary event comparable to the discovery of the electron.
Scientists from McGill University and Sandia National Laboratories have succeeded in conducting a new experiment that supports the existence of the long-sought-after Luttinger liquid state.
A scientific breakthrough may give the field of radiation oncology new tools to increase the precision and safety of radiation treatment in cancer patients by helping doctors “see” the powerful beams of a linear accelerator as they enter or exit the body.
A University of Arkansas physicist and his collaborators have demonstrated the capability of measuring temperature changes in very small 3-D regions of space.
Until recently measuring a 27-dimensional quantum state would have been a time-consuming, multistage process using a technique called quantum tomography, which is similar to creating a 3D image from many 2D ones. Researchers at the University of Rochester have been able to apply a recently developed, alternative method called direct measurement to do this in a single experiment with no post-processing.
Introduction of relatively weak magnetic fields into Sandia's Z machine unexpectedly lessened plasma instabilities that have sunk previous fusion efforts.
A team of Wayne State University researchers , led a large collaborative effort of physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois reporting a bizarre "social" behavior of particles containing "charm" quarks: an observation of "charm mixing." The result was published this month in Physical Review Letters, the highly-regarded journal for particle physics.
Physicists at the University of Chicago and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, are uncovering the fundamental physical laws that govern the behavior of cellular materials.
South Pole Telescope scientists have detected for the first time a subtle distortion in the oldest light in the universe, which may help reveal secrets about the earliest moments in the universe’s formation.
Ultrasound-stimulated microbubbles have been showing promise in recent years as a non-invasive way to break up dangerous blood clots. But though many researchers have studied the effectiveness of this technique, not much was understood about why it works. Now a team of researchers in Toronto has collected the first direct evidence showing how these wiggling microbubbles cause a blood clot’s demise. The team’s findings are featured in the AIP Publishing journal Applied Physics Letters.
New research at the University of Arkansas shows that behavior can be predicted and understood in thin films made of materials called relaxors, which can be used in electronic devices.
If recent news that University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) researchers observed the largest gamma ray burst ever has you nervous about getting blasted into extinction, the UAH researchers say chances of that are exceedingly rare.
New analyses of deuteron-gold collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider indicate that collisions between gold ions and much smaller deuterons, designed as control experiments, may be serving up miniscule drops of hot quark-gluon plasma.
To technology insiders, graphene is a certified big deal. The one-atom thick carbon-based material elicits rhapsodic descriptions as the strongest, thinnest material known. It also is light, flexible, and able to conduct electricity as well as copper. Graphene-based electronics promise advances such as faster internet speeds, cheaper solar cells, novel sensors, space suits spun from graphene yarn, and more. Now a research team at NIST may help bring graphene’s promise closer to reality.
Craig Dolder, an acoustical engineer, always wanted to go to a Formula 1 Grand Prix but knew he needed to protect himself from the deafening roar of the engines. The advice he found online varied and the technical papers he read provided assessments of sound levels for NASCAR and other races, but he could find nothing that measured the noise levels or dosage specifically for Formula 1. So he decided to conduct his own test.
Tongue twisters are not just fun to say; it turns out that these sound-related slip-ups can also open windows into the brain’s speech-planning processes. A team from MIT will report new insights gleaned from a comparison of two types of tongue twisters at the 166th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, held Dec. 2-6, 2013, in San Francisco, Calif.
New research indicates a phenomenon known as "quantum entanglement" might be intrinsically linked with wormholes, hypothetical features of space-time that could link one part of the universe with another.
The sounds of bubbles escaping from melting ice make underwater glacial fjords one of the loudest natural marine environments on earth, according to research to be presented at the fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).
Brazilian researchers study acoustics of the caxirola, official World Cup instrument, in work to be presented at the fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).
Science can sometimes be all about serendipity. Three colleagues got together and watched a documentary on whirling dervishes. The result was a collaboration that led to simple equations that govern how fixed or free-flowing cone-shaped structures behave when rotating.
Fire-ant rafts aren’t just unusual in that they’re “viscoelastic,” like Jell-O and toothpaste, according to a new study presented in a talk at the upcoming APS’s Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting. Researchers found the rafts actively reorganize their structure, a feat that allows them to more effectively cushion themselves against applied forces, such as the battering of raindrops or the surges of waves.
Scientists know that by introducing plasma to combustion, new chemical species are produced that catalyze the reaction. But no one knows precisely what species are involved, what the reactions are, and what their rates are. To better understand plasma-assisted combustion and to develop future technology, researchers are conducting experiments and creating computer models to determine which chemical processes are involved.
Biologists have long thought that the spores produced by a mushroom’s cap simply drop into the wind and blow away. The problem with that notion, scientists say, is that spores can be dispersed even when the air is still. So how do the mushrooms do it? A team of researchers believe they have found the answer: mushrooms make their own wind.
Up, up in the sky: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a . . . jellyfish? That's what researchers have built -- a small vehicle whose flying motion resembles the movements of those boneless, pulsating, water-dwelling creatures. The work, which will be presented at the APS’s DFD meeting on November 24, demonstrates a new method of flight that could transport miniaturized future robots for surveillance, search-and-rescue, and monitoring of the atmosphere and traffic.
An old, hilarious if somewhat juvenile party trick involves covertly tapping the top of someone's newly opened beer bottle and standing back as the suds foam out onto the floor. Now researchers from Carlos III University and Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Institut Jean le Rond d'Alembert, have produced new insight into the science behind the foaming, exploring the phenomenon of cavitation. They present their explanation at the annual APS Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting.
A deadly menace stalks the loons, gulls and other water birds of the Great Lakes region: Type E botulism. Cases of the disease are on the rise, and to understand die-off origin and distribution, ocean engineers from Florida Atlantic University are using their expertise in experimental hydrodynamics. They have teamed with the U.S. Geological Survey to help develop a novel way of tracking waterfowl carcasses to determine the source of lethal outbreaks.
Many owl species have developed specialized plumage to effectively eliminate the aerodynamic noise from their wings – allowing them to hunt and capture their prey in silence. A research group working to solve the mystery of exactly how owls achieve this acoustic stealth will present their findings at the APS’s Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, work that may one day help bring “silent owl technology” to the design of aircraft, wind turbines, and submarines.
The Universe is always talking to us, but we have to be clever to hear what it’s saying. That was the thinking behind the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a unique astrophysical telescope deployed deep in the Antarctic ice to detect neutrinos—very small, nearly massless particles—coming from the outer reaches of our galaxy and beyond.
The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a particle detector buried in the Antarctic ice, is a demonstration of the power of the human passion for discovery, where scientific ingenuity meets technological innovation. Today, nearly 25 years after the pioneering idea of detecting neutrinos in ice, the IceCube Collaboration announces the observation of 28 very high-energy particle events that constitute the first solid evidence for astrophysical neutrinos from cosmic accelerators.
Neutrinos can zip right through your body, the walls of your house, entire planets, even emerging from near the surface of fascinating and frightening black holes. And now, an international scientific collaboration that includes researchers from the University of Delaware has taken an 'astronomical' step forward in unmasking the origins of some of these high-energy particles, the so-called “messengers of the universe.”
A team of biochemists and mathematicians have developed a sophisticated geometric model to predict how a biological molecule will interact with water molecules, computing the results up to 20 times faster than other existing approaches. This new approach may help researchers find new drugs to treat human diseases, said the team, who described their theoretical approach in The Journal of Chemical Physics, which is produced by AIP Publishing.
Unexpected behavior in ferroelectric materials explored by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory supports a new approach to information storage and processing.
The source and mechanism of a whistling kettle has never been fully described scientifically; acknowledging the vibrations made by the build-up of steam escaping through two metal spout plates is about as far as the explanation went. That wasn’t enough for a team of engineers at the University of Cambridge, who, through a series of experiments, have produced the world's first accurate model of the whistling mechanism inside the classic stovetop kettle.
At the APS’s Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting, Nov. 24 – 26, Flavio Noca, who has explored leveraging penguins’ “rocket” properties to create new propulsion technologies with high maneuverability and improved hydrodynamic efficiency, will present a penguin-inspired propulsion system that uses a novel spherical joint mechanism developed and manufactured by Bassem Sudki, a research assistant within Noca’s aerodynamics group, under the supervision of Professor Michel Lauria who leads hepia’s Robotics Laboratory.
Based on what scientists understand about fluid dynamics, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot should have disappeared centuries ago. Pedram Hassanzadeh, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, and Philip Marcus, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, think they can explain why. Their work, which Hassanzadeh will present at the annual meeting of the APS’S Division of Fluid Dynamics this November, also provides insight into persistent ocean eddies and vortices that contribute to star and planet formation.
The phonon, like the photon or electron, is a physical particle that travels like waves, representing mechanical vibration. Phonons transmit everyday sound and heat. Recent progress in phononics has led to the development of new ideas and devices that are using phononic properties to control sound and heat, according to a new review in Nature.
Researchers across the globe are racing to find ways to improve the cooling of hot surfaces -- for technologies ranging from small electronics to nuclear power plants. Zeroing in on the physics at play underlying surface phenomena, MIT and Boston University researchers made a significant breakthrough. Although somewhat counterintuitive, they discovered that by creating sparsely packed textures on surfaces rather than densely packed ones, they were able to hold droplets in place and enable cooling.
Researchers have identified some of the physics that may explain how insects can so quickly recover from a midflight stall -- unlike conventional fixed wing aircraft, where stalls often lead to crash landings. The analysis, in which the researchers studied the flow around a rotating model wing, improves the understanding of how insects fly and informs the design of small flying robots built for intelligence gathering, surveillance, search-and-rescue, and other purposes.
Although we don’t often think about it, fluid dynamics touches almost every aspect of our lives, from a billowing breeze that buffets a flag, to swirling river currents that shape canyons to the surging blood that sustains our lives. One of the basest of bodily functions -- urination -- is governed primarily by the equations of fluid motion.
Physicists are using a detector at the University of Washington to hunt for an elusive particle called an axion, a leading candidate for the makeup of cold dark matter that accounts for about one-quarter of the mass of the universe.
In a new synthesis of past work, researchers found that women consistently score lower than men on common assessments of conceptual understanding of physics. However, when examining the factors that may account for these differences (such as student background and test-taking strategies), no clear pattern emerged. Thus, despite previous claims that the causes of this gender gap have been pinpointed, the problem remains unsolved and poorly understood. This has critical importance for science education reform.
A new class of materials developed at the University of Arkansas may influence the next generation of nano-devices, in which integrated circuits are composed of many layers of dissimilar materials.
Three generations of University of Chicago physicists have spent decades painstakingly cataloging the characteristics of a family of exotic particles called kaons, and an upcoming experiment promises to be the most precise one yet.
Using Magnets and Opposing Jets, Researchers in France and England Create the Optimal Industrial Mixer, Which Creates a Pattern that Resembles a Cat's Eye
For Infrared Tracking and Recognition, Two Sensors are Better than One, According to Article in the Journal "Review of Scientific Instruments"
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right