Newswise: Physics Sponsored By AIP

Conquering the timing jitters

A large international team has developed a method that dramatically improves the time resolution achievable with X-ray free-electron lasers. Their method could have a broad impact in the field of ultrafast science.

Indoors, outdoors, 6 feet apart? Transmission risk of airborne viruses can be quantified

In the 1995 movie "Outbreak," Dustin Hoffman's character realizes, with appropriately dramatic horror, that an infectious virus is "airborne" because it's found to be spreading through hospital vents.

Molybdenum Disulfide Ushers in Era of Post-Silicon Photonics

Researchers of the Center for Photonics and Two-Dimensional Materials at MIPT, together with their colleagues from Spain, Great Britain, Sweden, and Singapore, including co-creator of the world's first 2D material and Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov, have measured giant optical anisotropy in layered molybdenum disulfide crystals for the first time. The scientists suggest that such transition metal dichalcogenide crystals will replace silicon in photonics. Birefringence with a giant difference in refractive indices, characteristic of these substances, will make it possible to develop faster yet tiny optical devices. The work is published in the journal Nature Communications.

How Did the Chaos of Chemicals Become Ordered Biology at the Dawn of Life on Earth?

By pursuing biochemical answers to how life on Earth began, UNC-Chapel Hill scientists hope to enhance our understanding of important cellular processes to open new avenues for disease detection and treatment strategies. Their research is funded by the W.M. Keck Foundation.

Complex Fluid Dynamics May Explain Hydroplaning

Research into hydroplaning currently uses a test track equipped with a transparent window embedded in the ground. The area above is flooded and a tire rolling over the window is observed with a high-speed camera. Investigators in France have developed a more sophisticated approach involving fluorescent seeding particles to visualize the flow and used a sheet of laser light to illuminate the area. They discuss their work in Physics of Fluids.

Using Stimuli-Responsive Biomaterials to Understand Heart Development, Disease

The heart cannot regenerate new tissue, because cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, do not divide after birth. However, researchers have now developed a shape memory polymer to grow cardiomyocytes. Raising the material's temperature turned the polymer's flat surface into nanowrinkles, which promoted cardiomyocyte alignment. The research is part of the growing field of mechanobiology, which investigates how physical forces between cells and changes in their mechanical properties contribute to development, cell differentiation, physiology, and disease.

Princeton Charter Middle School and West Windsor-Plainsboro North High School advance to National Science Bowl(r) competition

Two local teams will go to the National Science Bowl after PPPL hosted a virtual version of the New Jersey Regional Science Bowl for high school and middle school students.

Scientists improve understanding of plasma source for synthesis of nanomaterial for microchips and numerous products

Researchers have developed an insight that could facilitate production of microscopic carbon nanotubes, structures thousands of times thinner than a human hair used in everything from microchips to sporting goods to pharmaceutical products.

Testing wraps up for first Fermilab-designed cryomodule for PIP-II accelerator

A Fermilab team has completed tests for a crucial superconducting segment for the PIP-II particle accelerator, the future heart of the Fermilab accelerator chain. The segment, called a cryomodule, will be one of many, but this is the first to be fully designed, assembled and tested at Fermilab. It represents a journey of technical challenges and opportunities for innovation in superconducting accelerator technology.

Applications Sought for AIP Robert H.G. Helleman Memorial Fellowships

The American Institute of Physics is accepting nominations for three AIP Robert H.G. Helleman memorial fellowships, which support graduate students or postdoctoral fellows with Dutch citizenship to pursue research activities in physics in the United States and who demonstrate academic excellence and financial need. Applications to AIP for the inaugural awards will be accepted until March 15.

Story tips: Quantum building blocks, high-pressure diamonds, wildfire ecology, quick cooling tooling and printing on the fly

ORNL story tips: Quantum building blocks, high-pressure diamonds, wildfire ecology, quick cooling tooling and printing on the fly

Scientists claim that all high-energy cosmic neutrinos are born by quasars

Scientists of the P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (LPI RAS), the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and the Institute for Nuclear Research of RAS (INR RAS) studied the arrival directions of astrophysical neutrinos with energies more than a trillion electronvolts (TeV) and came to an unexpected conclusion: all of them are born near black holes in the centers of distant active galaxies powerful radio sources.

HPC Explorations of Supernova Explosions Help Physicists Reach New Milestones

Physicists have been studying the question of how supernova explosions occur for more than 60 years. Thanks to the increasing power of supercomputing resources such as those at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, they're moving ever closer to an answer.

Nuclear Physicists on the Hunt for Squeezed Protons

While protons populate the nucleus of every atom in the universe, sometimes they can be squeezed into a smaller size and slip out of the nucleus for a romp on their own. Observing these squeezed protons may offer unique insights into the particles that build our universe. Now, researchers hunting for these squeezed protons have come up empty-handed, suggesting there's more to the phenomenon than first thought. The result was recently published in Physical Review Letters.

A look into the mysteries of proton structure and the dynamics of antiquarks and gluons

A complex high-energy nuclear physics experiment, aiming to measure the contributions of antiquarks to the structure of the proton and neutron, has produced results that are the opposite of what had previously been understood about proton structure and the dynamics of strong interacting antiquarks and gluons.

World's first video of a space-time crystal

A German-Polish research team has succeeded in creating a micrometer-sized space-time crystal consisting of magnons at room temperature. With the help of the scanning transmission X-ray microscope Maxymus at Bessy II at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin, they were able to film the recurring periodic magnetization structure in a crystal.

Nature's funhouse mirror: understanding asymmetry in the proton

The results of a new experiment could shift research of the proton by reviving previously discarded theories of its inner workings.

After 20 years, physicists find a way to keep track of lost accelerator particles

Physicists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a measurement technique to better understand beam loss--stray particles that travel outside the confinement fields of a particle accelerator. Mitigating beam loss is paramount to realizing more powerful accelerators at smaller scales and lower costs.

Measuring Hemoglobin Levels with AI Microscope, Microfluidic Chips

A complete blood count can help ascertain the health of a patient and typically includes an estimate of the hemoglobin concentration, which can indicate several conditions, including anemia, polycythemia, and pulmonary fibrosis. In AIP Advances, researchers describe a new AI-powered imaging-based tool to estimate hemoglobin levels. The setup was developed in conjunction with a microfluidic chip and an AI-powered automated microscope that was designed for deriving the total as well as differential counts of blood cells.

Simply Speaking While Infected Can Potentially Spread COVID-19

COVID-19 can spread from asymptomatic but infected people through small aerosol droplets in their exhaled breath. Most studies of the flow of exhaled air have focused on coughing or sneezing; however, speaking while near one another is also risky. In Physics of Fluids, scientists used smoke and laser light to study the flow of expelled breath near and around two people conversing in various relative postures commonly found in the service industry, such as in hair salons, medical exam rooms, or long-term care facilities.

Low-Level Jets Create Winds of Change for Turbines

Global wind power capacity has increased more than fivefold over the past decade, leading to larger turbines, but low-level jets are one cause for concern. The effects of these strong, energetic wind flows depend on how high the wind flows are in relation to the turbines. In the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, researchers considered three different scenarios in which the LLJs were above, below, and in the middle of the turbine rotors.

Scientists shed light on 140-year-old challenge in chemistry and physics

In recent research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers Babak Sadigh, Luis Zepeda-Ruiz and Jon Belof report on a new mechanism of solidification in copper that provides an atomistic view of Ostwald's step rule and alters the fundamental understanding of nucleation at high pressure. They found that not only does the crystallization process proceed via a non-equilibrium phase, but that this phase can be kinetically stabilized by the temperature.