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Researchers have found a new way to control the properties of quantum dots, those tiny chunks of semiconductor material that glow different colors depending on their size. Quantum dots, which are so small they start to exhibit atom-like quantum properties, have a wide range of potential applications, from sensors, light-emitting diodes, and solar cells, to fluorescent tags for biomedical imaging and qubits in quantum computing.

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The emerging field of molecular electronics could take our definition of portable to the next level, enabling the construction of tiny circuits from molecular components. In these highly efficient devices, individual molecules would take on the roles currently played by comparatively-bulky wires, resistors and transistors. A team of researchers has identified a potential candidate for use in small-scale electronics: a molecule called picene.

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Researchers have developed a new model to study the motion patterns of bacteria in real time and to determine how these motions relate to communication within a bacterial colony. They chemically attached colonies of E. coli bacteria to a microcantilever, coupling its motion to that of the bacteria. As the cantilever itself isn’t doesn’t generate any vibrations, or ‘noise,’ this allowed the researchers to monitor the colony’s reactions to various stimuli in real time.

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At a dinner ceremony last night in London, the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) honored H. Frederick Dylla, Executive Director and CEO of the American Institute of Physics, for his work advancing scholarly publishing and enhancing public access to research results.

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The ability of pathogenic bacteria to evolve resistance to antibiotic drugs poses a growing threat to human health worldwide, and scientists have now discovered that some of our microscopic enemies may be even craftier than we suspected, using hidden genetic changes to promote rapid evolution under stress and developing antibiotic resistance in more ways than previously thought. The results appear in a new paper in the journal Biomicrofluidics.

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Our hands and swatters often fail in the struggle to kill flies. This isn’t our fault, but rather is due to flies’ compound eyes. Arranged in a hexagonal, convex pattern, compound eyes consist of hundreds of optical units called ommatidia, which together bestow upon flies a nearly 360-degree field of vision. With this capability in mind, a team of researchers is drawing on this structure to create miniature light-emitting devices and optical sensors.

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Artificial membranes mimicking those found in living organisms have many potential applications ranging from detecting bacterial contaminants in food to toxic pollution in the environment to dangerous diseases in people. Now a group of scientists in Chile has developed a way to create these delicate, ultra-thin constructs through a "dry" process, by evaporating two commercial, off-the-shelf chemicals onto silicon surfaces.

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Researchers have created a new model that could help determine what area of the world is to blame for each ocean garbage patch of floating debris – a difficult task for a system as complex and massive as the ocean. The researchers describe the model in a paper published in the journal Chaos.

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A team of researchers led by Shaoxin Li at Guangdong Medical College in China has demonstrated the potential of a new, non-invasive method to screen for prostate cancer, a common type of cancer in men worldwide. They describe their laboratory success testing an existing spectroscopy technique called surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with a new, sophisticated analysis technique called support vector machine (SVM).

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Organic photovoltaic cells -- a type of solar cell that uses polymeric materials to capture sunlight -- show tremendous promise as energy conversion devices, thanks to key attributes such as flexibility and low-cost production, but have complex power conversion processes. To maneuver around this problem, researchers have developed a method to determine the absolute value of the charge formation efficiency. The secret of their method is the combination of two types of spectroscopy.

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If you've ever watched a gecko, you probably wondered about their uncanny ability to adhere to any surface -- including upside down. It turns out the little lizards can turn the "stickiness" of toe hairs on their feet on and off, which enables them to run at great speeds or cling to ceilings without expending much energy. In the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers describe their work exploring the subtleties of geckos' adhesion system mechanism.

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A team of researchers is developing new approaches to chemical synthesis and mineral processing based on solid-state chemistry -- and inspired by examples from nature. At the 23rd Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography, Tomislav Friščić will describe some of his unconventional approaches and how they promise better, safer and far less expensive methods for extracting metals from mineral ores as well as for the scalable synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs.

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The beauty of these crystals isn’t entirely on their outside. Tiny gases trapped inside the crystals are revealing secrets about crystal growth and morphology under conditions difficult to replicate within a laboratory because of the amount of time required to grow crystals of that enormous size. The lessons of these giant, ancient crystals will be explored at the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) Congress and General Assembly meeting next week in Montreal, Canada.

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A new approach for formulating the active chemical ingredients of common drugs and agricultural products has been developed by researchers in Italy, and it holds broad potential to make such products more durable, safer, cheaper, easier to manufacture and less harmful to the environment.

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Journalists are invited to participate in a "Newswise Live Event" this Thursday and join Nobel laureate Dan Shechtman and a distinguished panel of crystallography experts who will detail new discoveries and describe some of the international activities in 2014, a special year for this field.

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Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering have now developed a probe that combines into one device three unique ways of using light to measure the properties of skin tissue and detect cancer. The researchers have begun testing their 3-in-1 device in pilot clinical trials and are partnering with funding agencies and start-up companies to help bring the device to dermatologists’ offices.

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By carefully controlling the position of an atomic-scale diamond defect within a volume smaller than what some viruses would fill, researchers have cleared a path toward better quantum computers and nanoscale sensors. They describe their technique in a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

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New research has offered a tantalizing new possibility in the realm of interstellar molecules and diffuse interstellar bands: these mysterious molecules may be silicon-capped hydrocarbons like SiC3H, SiC4H and SiC5H. The team of scientists presents data and theoretical arguments to back that hypothesis in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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A research team in Korea has created flexible metamaterial absorbers designed to suppress electromagnetic radiation from mobile electronics -- work appearing in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing

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Some 2,500 scientists and experts from around the world will gather next month in Montreal for the largest international meeting of the year devoted to crystallography -- a discipline that draws researchers from fields as far flung as genomics and geology who help solve problems as diverse as designing new manufacturing processes to creating life-saving drugs. Journalists are invited to attend this meeting, the 23rd Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr), which will be held August 5-12, 2014 in Montreal, Canada. To request free press registration, please contact Jason Socrates Bardi at 240-535-4954 or [email protected]

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The American Institute of Physics (AIP) today announced that Sean Carroll, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, is the winner of the 2014 Andrew Gemant Award, an annual prize recognizing significant contributions to the cultural, artistic or humanistic dimension of physics.

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Interest in magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is escalating, thanks to demand for fast, low-cost, nonvolatile, low-consumption, secure memory devices. MRAM boasts all of these advantages as an emerging technology, but so far it hasn't been able to match flash memory in terms of storage density. In Applied Physics Letters, a France-U.S. research team reports an intriguing new multi-bit MRAM storage paradigm with the potential to rival flash memory.

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The fly can pinpoint the location of a chirping cricket with remarkable accuracy because of its freakishly acute hearing, which relies upon a sophisticated sound processing mechanism that really sets it apart from all other known insects. A team of researchers has developed a tiny prototype device that mimics the parasitic fly’s hearing mechanism, which may be useful for a new generation of hypersensitive hearing aids.

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In a new paper in the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers apply the Construcal Law to airplanes, showing "that we can witness evolution in our lifetime by documenting the evolution of a flow system that is a little more than a century old: the flying 'human-and-machine species'.

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Using a newly developed, ultrafast femtosecond infrared light source, chemists at the University of Chicago have been able to directly visualize the coordinated vibrations between hydrogen-bonded molecules -- the first time this sort of chemical interaction, which is found in nature everywhere at the molecular level, has been directly visualized. They describe their experimental techniques and observations in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Thermoelectric devices, which convert heat to electricity and vice versa, can harness that wasted heat, and possibly provide the green tech energy efficiency that's needed for a sustainable future. A new study shows how porous substances can act as thermoelectric materials—pointing the way for engineering the use of such materials in thermoelectric devices of the future.

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Bacteria love to colonize surfaces inside your body, but they have a hard time getting past your skin. Surgeries to implant medical devices give such bacteria the opportunity needed to gain entry into the body cavity, allowing the implants themselves to act then as an ideal growing surface for biofilms. Researchers are looking to combat these dangerous sub-dermal infections by upgrading your new hip or kneecap in a fashion appreciated since ancient times – adding gold.

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In a special focus issue of the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing, a physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) details an important method of detecting and correcting unwanted chaotic behavior in particle colliders. The method is helping accelerator physicists design high-performing, cost-efficient accelerators in an era of constrained science budgets.

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"Ghost imaging" sounds like the spooky stuff of frivolous fiction, but it's an established technique for reconstructing hi-res images of objects partly obscured by clouds or smoke. Now a group of researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) is applying ghost imaging to secure stored or shared electronic data. Their work establishes "marked ghost imaging" technology as a new type of multi-layer verification protocol for data storage or transmission.

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Imagine a world in which a consumer's real-time physical and emotional response helped to determine his/her experience of music, online ads or the temperature in the room. That may not be so far away -- a team of researchers has developed a flexible, wearable 20mm x 20mm polymer sensor that can directly measure the degree and occurrence of goose bumps, caused by sudden changes in body temperature or emotional states.

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Using microscopic polymer light resonators that expand in the presence of specific gases, researchers at MIT's Quantum Photonics Laboratory have developed new optical sensors with predicted detection levels in the parts-per-billion range. Optical sensors are ideal for detecting trace gas concentrations due to their high signal-to-noise ratio, compact, lightweight nature and immunity to electromagnetic interference.

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Take a fine strand of silica fiber, attach it at each end to a slow-turning motor, torture it over a flame until it nearly reaches its melting point and then pull it apart. The middle will thin out like taffy until it is less than half a micron across, and that, according to researchers at the University of Maryland, is how you fabricate ultrahigh transmission optical nanofibers, a potential component for future quantum information devices.

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First Application of Microscopy Technique Called X-PEEM to Study Electrically Anomalous Regions Called Domain Walls in Materials Used in Solar Panels, Sensors, Computer Memory, and More

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A team of Canadian-Bulgarian researchers has developed a promising novel approach for magnetic cooling that’s far more efficient and ‘greener’ than today’s standard fluid-compression form of refrigeration.

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New insight into how malaria parasites perturb flow, turning infected cells into sticky capillary cloggers, may lead to new and better treatments.

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Leonardo da Vinci's iconic self-portrait, drawn in the 16th century, is vanishing as the work of art 'yellows' with age. By studying chromophores, the yellowing agents that form within cellulose during the oxidation process, a group of researchers has developed a nondestructive way to determine the state of degradation of ancient documents and works of art.

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Researchers from the University of Twente in the Netherlands have taken the precise art of origami down to the microscopic scale. Using only a drop of water, the scientists have folded flat sheets of silicon nitride into cubes, pyramids, half soccer-ball-shaped bowls and long triangular structures that resemble Toblerone chocolate bars – an omnium-gatherum of geometric objects, which are almost too tiny to see with the naked eye.

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A team of researchers has developed sperm-inspired microrobots, which consist of a head coated in a thick cobalt-nickel layer and an uncoated tail. When the robot is subjected to an oscillating field of less than five millitesla, it experiences a magnetic torque on its head, which causes its flagellum to oscillate and propel it forward. The researchers are then able to steer the robot by directing the magnetic field lines towards a reference point.

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It took every inch of the Large Hadron Collider's 17-mile length to accelerate particles to energies high enough to discover the Higgs boson. Now, imagine an accelerator that could do the same thing in, say, the length of a football field. Or less. That is the promise of laser-plasma accelerators. Scientists have grappled with building these devices for two decades, and a new theoretical study predicts that this may be easier than previously thought.

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Nineteen students from across the U.S. will train for the mentally grueling exams and lab tests they'll face at the 45th International Physics Olympiad to be held from July 13 – 21, 2014 in Astana, Kazakhstan, where more than 400 student scholars from 92 nations will test their knowledge in physics, competing with the best in the world.

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A research team describes how water molecules "caged" in fullerene spheres ("buckyballs") are providing a deeper insight into spin isomers -- varieties of a molecule that differ in their nuclear spin. The results of this work may one day help enhance the analytical and diagnostic power of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

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A team of researchers has created a new type of lithium ion conductor for future batteries that could be the basis for a whole new generation of solid-state batteries. It uses rock salt Lithium Borohydride (LiBH4), a well-known agent in organic chemistry laboratories that has been considered for batteries before, but up to now has only worked at high temperatures or pressures.

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Large storms produce strong undertows that can strip beaches of sand. By predicting how undertows interact with shorelines, researchers can build sand dunes and engineer other soft solutions to create more robust and sustainable beaches. New research presented in Physics of Fluids clears up some of the controversy in undertow modeling, so planners can assess erosion threats faster and more accurately.

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The ability to transfer a gene or DNA sequence from one animal into the genome of another plays a critical role in a wide range of medical research—including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes, and now there’s a way to avoid cell death when introducing DNA into egg cells. In Review of Scientific Instruments, the team describes its microelectromechanical system nanoinjector, which was designed to inject DNA into mouse zygotes.

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The eye is an exquisitely sensitive system with many aspects that remain somewhat of a mystery—both in the laboratory and in the clinic. A U.S.-based team of mathematicians and optometrists is working to change this by gaining a better understanding of the inner workings of tear film distribution over the eye’s surface. This, in turn, may lead to better treatments or a cure for the tear film disease known as “dry eye.”

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A team of U.K. researchers has developed a way to dramatically reduce the complexity of modeling "bistable" systems which involve the interaction of two evolving species where one changes faster than the other (“slow-fast systems”). Described in The Journal of Chemical Physics, the work paves the way for easier computational simulations and predictions involving such systems, which are found in fields as diverse as chemistry, biology and ecology.

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Nearly 90 years after Werner Heisenberg pioneered his uncertainty principle, a group of researchers from three countries has provided substantial new insight into this fundamental tenet of quantum physics with the first rigorous formulation supporting the uncertainty principle as Heisenberg envisioned it.

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In recent decades, many large high-tech companies have eliminated in-house research programs, turning instead to startup companies as their primary source of breakthrough innovations. AIP has released a new report on physics startups, based on interviews with 140 physicists and other professionals at some 91 startup companies in 14 states, companies which are engaged in making medical devices, manufacturing tools, nanotechnology, lasers and optical devices, renewable energy technologies and other products.

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By combining the powers of two single-atom-thick carbon structures, researchers at the George Washington University's Micro-propulsion and Nanotechnology Laboratory have created a new ultracapacitor that is both high performance and low cost. The device, described in the Journal of Applied Physics, capitalizes on the synergy brought by mixing graphene flakes with single-walled carbon nanotubes, two carbon nanostructures with complementary properties.

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A team of researchers in Japan has developed a solid-state lamp that emits high-energy ultraviolet (UV) light at the shortest wavelengths ever recorded for such a device, from 140 to 220 nanometers. This is within the range of vacuum-UV light -- so named because while light of that energy can propagate in a vacuum, it is quickly absorbed by oxygen in the air.