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Scientists within the New York Center for Astrobiology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have compiled years of research to help locate areas in outer space that have extreme potential for complex organic molecule formation. The scientists searched for methanol, a key ingredient in the synthesis of organic molecules that could lead to life. Their results have implications for determining the origins of molecules that spark life in the cosmos.

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An international research team led by the University at Buffalo has shown that large energy fluctuations can rile even a “relaxed” system, raising questions about how energy might travel through structures ranging from the ocean to DNA. The research appeared online Oct. 21 in Physical Review E.

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After some 180 days of running and four hundred trillion proton proton collisions, the LHC’s 2011 proton run came to an end at 5.15pm yesterday evening. For the second year running, the LHC team has largely surpassed its operational objectives, steadily increasing the rate at which the LHC has delivered data to the experiments.

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In this 100th anniversary year of the discovery of superconductivity, physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology have published a fully self-consistent theory of the new kind of superconducting behavior, Type 1.5, this month in the journal Physical Review B.

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Using a new tool, Cornell University researchers deliberately created atomic-level disorder in order to probe the workings of heavy fermion compounds. They found that, rather than hindering superconductivity, magnetism was an essential ingredient -- and if controlled, may be a key for future advances in the field.

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The kick-off meeting for the second phase of the LAGUNA’s design study starts today at CERN. The principal goal of LAGUNA (Large Apparatus for Grand Unification and Neutrino Astrophysics) is to assess the feasibility of a new pan-European research infrastructure able to host the next generation, very large volume, deep underground neutrino observatory. The scientific goals of such an observatory combine exciting neutrino astrophysics with research addressing several fundamental questions such as proton decay and the existence of a new source of matter-antimatter asymmetry in Nature, in order to explain why our Universe contains only matter and not equal amounts of matter and antimatter.

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Alex Travesset reports in the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Science that nanotechnology has entered a new era. Because of developments in nanoparticle self-assembly, designer materials with unique properties are now possible.

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Aeronautical engineers are devising ways to boost the efficiency of open-air refrigerated cases, which are increasingly common in supermarkets. Results could lower the energy use of existing cases by up to 15 percent -- potentially saving $100 million in electricity costs nationally each year.

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A University at Buffalo-led research team has established the presence of a dynamic Jahn-Teller effect in defective diamonds, a finding that will help advance development of diamond-based systems in applications such as quantum information processing.

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Physicists have predicted that under the influence of sufficiently high electric fields, liquid droplets of certain materials will undergo solidification, forming crystallites at temperature and pressure conditions that correspond to liquid droplets at field-free conditions. This electric-field-induced phase transformation is termed electrocrystallization. The study was performed by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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A coupled line of swinging pendulums apparently has nothing in common with an elastic film that buckles and folds under compression while floating on a liquid, but scientists at the University of Chicago and Tel Aviv University have discovered a deep connection between the two phenomena.

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Using one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, physicists are now measuring the flow of solar neutrinos reaching Earth more precisely than ever before. It probes matter at the most fundamental level to provide a powerful tool for directly observing the sun’s composition.

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Researchers recently isolated 63 unique dust particles from their laboratory – and that’s just the beginning. The chemists used a new kind of sensor to measure the composition of single dust particles.

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Adam Riess, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, today was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The academy recognized him for leadership in the High-z Team's 1998 discovery that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, a phenomenon widely attributed to a mysterious, unexplained "dark energy" filling the universe.

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University of Chicago physicists Henry Frisch and Melvyn Shochet became involved with the Tevatron particle accelerator when it was still in the planning stages at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 1976. Fermilab will shut down the Tevatron for the final time Sept. 30.

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The Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced Tuesday, October 4. The prize is given for the most groundbreaking and influential research. Its history chronicles many of the discoveries that underpin not only modern technology, but also our understanding of the Universe and our place in the cosmos. To discuss in advance of this year’s announcement, the impact of the prizes and to help explain the scientific significance and societal implications of the Nobel in Physics, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) provides the following experts:

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Molecular motion in proteins comes in three distinct classes, according to a collaboration by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, in research reported in Physical Review Letters.

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The kick-off meeting for ELENA, the Extra Low Energy Antiproton Ring, starts today at CERN . Approved by CERN Council in June this year, ELENA is scheduled to deliver its first antiprotons in 2016.

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Barry Blumenfeld, an experimental physicist at Johns Hopkins, can discuss the report of an experiment in which neutrinos were reported traveling faster than the speed of light (thereby contradicting Einstein’s theory of relativity).

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With an eye toward understanding DNA replication, Cornell researchers have learned how a helicase enzyme works to actually unzip the two strands of DNA.

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Southeastern Louisiana University physicist Rhett Allain is a modern day "Mr. Wizard." Author of the highly popular science blog "Dot Physics," he analyzes ideas and concepts and presents the science in relatively easy to understand language.

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Stony Brook University researchers, Artem R. Oganov, Professor of Geosciences and Physics and Dr. Andriy O. Lyakhov, Research Fellow, have developed an algorithm capable of predicting new superhard materials.

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Toxin proteins are genetically engineered into our food because they kill insects by perforating body cell walls, and Professor Rikard Blunck of the University of Montreal’s Group for the study of membrane proteins (GÉPROM) has detected the molecular mechanism involved.

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‘Oscar Madison’ approach to solar cells may outshine ‘Felix Unger’ design; Graphene may open the gate to future terahertz technologies; Bursting neurons follow the same beat, sometimes; Parabolic mirrors concentrate sunlight to power lasers.

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Neutron scattering studies of “cobalt blue,” a compound prized by artists for its lustrous blue hue, are revealing unique magnetic characteristics that could answer questions about mysterious properties in other materials.

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Researchers from Georgia Tech and the University of Alabama have received a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to conduct fundamental research into plasma interactions with the walls of the structures containing them.

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In things thick and thin: Cornell physicists explain how fluids – such as paint or paste - behave by observing how micron-sized suspended particles dance in real time. Using high-speed microscopy, the scientists unveil how these particles are responding to fluid flows from shear – a specific way of stirring.

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A University of Arkansas physicist and his colleagues have found that ultra-thin films of superconductors and related materials don’t lose their fundamental properties when built under strain when built as atomically thin layers, an important step towards achieving artificially designed room temperature superconductivity.

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Scientists from the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville have determined that an inexpensive semiconductor material can be "tweaked" to generate hydrogen from water using sunlight.

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Results to be presented by CERN ’s LHCb experiment at the biennial Lepton-Photon conference in Mumbai, India on Saturday 27 August are becoming the most precise yet on particles called B mesons, which provide a way to investigate matter-antimatter asymmetry.

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In a paper published in the journal Nature today, the CLOUD experiment at CERN has reported its first results.

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Scientists are proposing a novel method for forcing photons to act like electrons. Two researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI)*, Mohammad Hafezi and Jacob M. Taylor, and two researchers at Harvard, Eugene A. Demler and Mikhail D. Lukin, propose an optical delay line that could fit onto a computer chip. Kilometers of glass fiber are easily obtained, but fabricating optical elements that can fit on a single chip creates defects that can lead to reduced transmission of information.

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Results from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, presented at the biennial Lepton-Photon conference in Mumbai, India today, show that the elusive Higgs particle, if it exists, is running out of places to hide.

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Five of the world's most advanced instruments for neutron scattering research are serving the neutron science community following the completion of the $68.5 million SING project at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS).

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Deep under a hillside near Hong Kong, a pair of new antineutrino detectors are warming up for some serious physics.

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A new study proves that a much-sought exotic quantum state of matter can exist. Researchers uncover the existence of a spin liquid in a frustrated system.

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In a paper published today in the journal Nature, the Japanese-European ASACUSA experiment at CERN reported a new measurement of the antiproton’s mass accurate to about one part in a billion.

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Sometimes your worst enemy can become your best friend. That idea provided motivation for the latest breakthrough from Binghamton University physicist Michael Lawler and his colleagues, who are searching for the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity.

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The first of the major summer conferences for particle physics opens today in Grenoble. All of the LHC experiments will be presenting results, and a press conference is scheduled for Monday 25 July. The conference follows an extremely successful start to LHC running in 2011, and results are eagerly awaited.

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Some physicists are attempting to make more powerful magnets by combining two different types of magnetic materials on the nanometer scale.

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A University at Buffalo-led research team has developed a mathematical framework that could one day form the basis of technologies that turn road vibrations, airport runway noise and other “junk” energy into useful power.

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To build a quantum computer, one needs to create and precisely control individual quantum memory units, called qubits, for information processing. Olivier Pfister, a professor of physics in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, has just published findings in the journal Physical Review Letters demonstrating a breakthrough in the creation of massive numbers of entangled qubits, more precisely a multilevel variant thereof called Qmodes.

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Using a crystal ball to protect homeland security might seem far-fetched, but researchers at Wake Forest University and Fisk University have partnered to develop crystals that can be used to detect nuclear threats, radioactive material or chemical bombs more accurately and affordably.

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At an atomic scale, the tiniest bridge of gold -- that made of a single atom -- is actually the strongest, according to new research by engineers at the University at Buffalo’s Laboratory for Quantum Devices.

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Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) researchers have observed the onset of a quantum phase transition to a quantum ferromagnet using a nine ion crystal, in an atom-by-atom approach to quantum simulations of magnetism.

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At the smallest scales, magnetism may not work quite the way scientists expected, according to a paper by Rafał Oszwałdowski and Igor Žutić of the University at Buffalo and Andre Petukhov of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

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Astronomers are working with medical physicists and radiation oncologists to develop a potential new radiation treatment – one that is intended to be tougher on tumors, but gentler on healthy tissue.

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At its 159th session this week, the CERN Council congratulated CERN on the excellent performance of the LHC, and welcomed the news that formal confirmation has been received from the five countries applying for CERN Membership.

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Today at around 10:50 CEST, the amount of data accumulated by LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS clicked over from 0.999 to 1 inverse femtobarn, signalling an important milestone in the experiments’ quest for new physics.

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The international T2K collaboration announced today that they have observed an indication of a new type of neutrino transformation or oscillation from a muon neutrino to an electron neutrino. Evidence of this new type of neutrino oscillation may lead the way to new studies of a matter/ anti-matter asymmetry called charge-parity (CP) violation.