In a major step toward understanding the mysterious “pseudogap” state in high-temperature cuprate superconductors, a team of scientists have found a “broken symmetry,” where electrons act like molecules in a liquid crystal: Electrons between copper and oxygen atoms arrange themselves differently “north-south” than “east-west.”
A new approach to processing X-ray data could lower by a factor of ten or more the amount of radiation patients receive during cone beam CT scans, report researchers from the University of California, San Diego.
Binghamton University physicist Michael Lawler and his colleagues have made a breakthrough that could lead to advances in superconductors. Their findings will be published this week in the prestigious British journal Nature.
ols to measure a core sample's electrical anisotropy have been sadly lacking, says John Kickhofel. To solve this problem, he and colleagues at Schlumberger found inspiration in a type of logging technology currently used by the modern oil industry. They created a device capable of noninvasively measuring electrical conductivity.
Now a group of scientists at Nanjing University in China have shown how a rather wide spectrum of light -- a rainbow of radiation -- can be trapped in a single structure. They propose to do this by sending the light rays into a self-similar-structured dielectric waveguide (SDW) -- essentially a light pipe with a cladding of many layers.
The movement of long chain polymers through nanopores is a key part of many biological processes, including the transport of RNA, DNA, and proteins. New research reported in The Journal of Chemical Physics describes an improved theoretical model for this type of motion.
Research reported in The Journal of Chemical Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics, provides the first real-time measurements of the time dependence of the individual steps of dissociation of a complex consisting of two rare gas atoms and a halogen molecule.
Physicists at NIST have demonstrated an ion trap with a built-in optical fiber that collects light emitted by single ions, allowing quantum information stored in the ions to be measured. The advance could simplify quantum computer design and serve as a step toward swapping information between matter and light in future quantum networks.
Scientists at JILA, working with Italian theorists, have discovered another notable similarity between ultracold atomic gases and high-temperature superconductors, suggesting there may be a relatively simple shared explanation for equivalent behaviors of the two very different systems.
With the attention of sports fans worldwide focused on South Africa and the 2010 FIFA World Cup, U.S. scientist John Eric Goff has made the aerodynamics of the soccer ball a focus of his research.
Physicists concerned about proliferation of smaller, more efficient technologies that could be used to build nuclear weapons.
Old glass is not the same as new glass -- and the difference is not just due to manufacturing techniques. Unlike crystalline solids, glasses change as they age, increasing packing density and stability. Ideally, a glass should be cooled slowly, maybe over 10,000 years or so, but that is not usually practical.
Since Richard Feynman's first envisioned the quantum computer in 1982, there have been many studies of potential candidates -- computers that use quantum bits, or qubits, capable of holding an more than one value at a time and computing at speeds far beyond existing silicon-based machines for certain problems. Most of these candidate systems, such as atoms and semiconducting quantum dots, work for quantum computing, but only at very low temperatures.
BC5, a diamond-like material with an extremely high boron content, offers exceptional hardness and resistance to fracture, but unlike diamond, it is a superconductor rather than an insulator. A research team in China studying BC5 describes its potential in the Journal of Applied Physics.
In an important advance, scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have created a stable, rewritable memory device that exploits a liquid crystal property called the “anchoring transition.” The work is described in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).
Two scientists in India have conceptually designed a new, cleaner motorcycle engine that uses compressed air to turn a small air turbine, generating enough power to run a motorcycle for up to 40 minutes. Their design is described in a recent issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy.
An understanding of particle diffusion in the presence of constrictions is essential in fields as diverse as drug delivery, cellular biology, nanotechnology, materials engineering, and spread of pollutants in the soil. When a driving force is applied, displacement of particles occurs as well as diffusion. A paper in The Journal of Chemical Physics quantifies the effects of periodic constrictions on drift and diffusion in systems experiencing a driving force.
Atmospheric research often focuses on clouds’ impact on weather and climate. Yet even low clouds are a long way off, with a base some 6,000 feet above earth. University of Notre Dame fluid dynamics and engineering professor Harindra Fernando works the other end of the air column closer to home—the bottom of the atmosphere in the city, which is known as the urban boundary layer.
The secret life of water just got weirder. For years water has been known to exist in 15 phases -- not just the merry threesome of solid, liquid and gas from grade school science. Now, University of Utah chemists have confirmed the coexistence of ice and liquid after water crystallizes at very low temperatures.
Anyone who is an online shopper and humanitarian might find this research project appealing. Physics professor John Scales is working on a low-cost, human-focused, high technology effort to stop the devastation of unexploded buried land mines with a novel acoustical/microwave detection system.
With controlled stretching of molecules, Cornell researchers have demonstrated that single-molecule devices can serve as powerful new tools for fundamental science experiments. Their work has resulted in detailed tests of long-existing theories on how electrons interact at the nanoscale.
Physics experts at the University of Adelaide believe the new ball created for the 2010 World Cup, called the Jabulani, will play "harder and faster", bending more unpredictably than its predecessor.
"Frustrated" systems -- those in which the interacting components cannot reach a single minimum-energy state -- are of enormous interest to fields from neural networks and protein folding to social structures and magnetism. But they have been difficult to study because even systems with small numbers of objects cannot be modeled on the best conventional computers. Now a research team has devised a scalable quantum-mechanical simulation.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the University of Tennessee (UT) and six collaborating universities have performed an unprecedented nuclear reaction experiment that explores the unique properties of the “doubly magic” radioactive isotope of 132Sn, or tin-132.
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are designing, fabricating and testing planar ion traps that can be more readily combined into large, interconnected trap arrays. In the future, these arrays may be used to create a useful quantum computer. Details of the research effort will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics on May 26 and 27.
As the world's most powerful subatomic particle collider gathers data, Baylor University scientists will now be there to analyze the information. Baylor has been accepted into the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.
Quantum dots may be small. But they usually don’t let anyone push them around. Now, however, JQI Fellow Edo Waks and colleagues have devised a self-adjusting remote-control system that can place a dot 6 nanometers long to within 45 nm of any desired location. That’s the equivalent of picking up golf balls around a living room and putting them on a coffee table – automatically, from 100 miles away.
In the May 7 edition of Physical Review Letters, a journal of the American Physical Society, an international team led by University of Delaware researchers reports new findings about helium that may lead to more accurate standards for how temperature and pressure are measured.
A team of scientists from Columbia University, Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have programmed an autonomous molecular "robot" made out of DNA to start, move, turn, and stop while following a DNA track.
Using observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, astronomers have announced a robust detection of a vast reservoir of intergalactic gas about 400 million light years from Earth. This discovery is the strongest evidence yet that the “missing matter” in the nearby Universe is located in an enormous web of hot, diffuse gas.
Scientists have used quantum mechanics to reveal that the most common mineral on Earth is relatively uncommon deep within the planet.
A fission reaction in a nuclear reactor? There’s an “app” for that! An iPhone “application” or software developed at the University of Utah can display simulations of a nuclear reactor’s core on an iPod, iPhone or iPad.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Georgia Tech have demonstrated that atomic scale moiré patterns, an interference pattern that appears when two or more grids are overlaid slightly askew, can be used to measure how sheets of graphene are stacked and reveal areas of strain.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed the first "dimmer switch" for a superconducting circuit linking a quantum bit (qubit) and a quantum bus. The NIST switch is a new type of control device that can "tune" interactions between these components and potentially could speed up development of a practical quantum computer.
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