Feature Channels: Particle Physics

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Jefferson Sciences Associates (JSA) has announced the award of $558,060 through its JSA Initiatives Fund Program. The program supports projects by staff and scientific users at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The FY23 program awards leveraged over $800,000 in matching funds, and taken together, the program and matching awards total over $1.3 million. Project awards include scientific meeting support, education and career development, and outreach activities, all of which support the lab’s mission.

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An international team of scientists led by a University of Houston physicist and several of his former students has reported a new approach to constructing the thermoelectric modules, using silver nanoparticles to connect the modules’ electrode and metallization layers.

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Whenever SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s linear accelerator is on, packs of around a billion electrons each travel together at nearly the speed of light through metal piping. These electron bunches form the accelerator’s particle beam, which is used to study the atomic behavior of molecules, novel materials and many other subjects.

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The tensor charge in protons is the net transverse spin of the proton or the quarks that make it up. The only way to obtain the tensor charge from experimental data is using the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) to extract the "transversity" function, which encodes the difference between the number of quarks with their spin aligned and anti-aligned to the proton’s spin when it is in a transverse direction. Using state-of-the-art data science techniques, researchers recently made the most precise ever empirical determination of the tensor charge.

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Ammonia (NH3) is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world, with a production of over 187 million tons in 2020. About 85% of it is used to produce nitrogenous fertilizers, while the rest is used for refining petroleum, manufacturing a wide range of other chemicals, and creating synthetic fibers such as nylon.

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A team of researchers has demonstrated the ultimate sensitivity allowed by quantum physics in measuring the time delay between two photons. It has the potential to significantly improve the imaging of nanostructures, including biological samples, and nanomaterial surfaces.

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Physicist Emily Mace will share her science journey and an interactive presentation about her current research with middle school and high school students from across the country at the National Science Bowl.

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Researcher will discuss the study which involved a sleeping aid known as suvorexant that is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for insomnia, hints at the potential of sleep medications to slow or stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

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In a unique analysis of experimental data, nuclear physicists have made the first-ever observations of how lambda particles, so-called “strange matter,” are produced by a specific process called semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS). What’s more, these data hint that the building blocks of protons, quarks and gluons, are capable of marching through the atomic nucleus in pairs called diquarks, at least part of the time.

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A multi-institutional team of nuclear science researchers has published the results of the first experiment at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams. The experiment involved colliding a beam of stable calcium-48 nuclei traveling at about 60 percent of the speed of light into a beryllium target to produce isotopes near the “drip line,” the spot where neutrons can no longer bind to a nucleus but instead drip off.

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For the last six years, Indiana University researchers and collaborators from around the world have helped push the horizons on research concerning one of the fundamental building blocks of the universe: neutrinos.

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In Applied Physics Letters, researchers in the U.K. introduce a novel imaging method to detect gold nanoparticles in woodlice. Their method, known as four-wave mixing microscopy, flashes light that the gold nanoparticles absorb. The light flashes again and the subsequent scattering reveals the nanoparticles’ locations. With information about the quantity, location, and impact of gold nanoparticles within the organism, scientists can better understand the potential harm other metals may have on nature.

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Aerosols particles in the atmosphere are an important factor in the Earth’s climate, but researchers lack information on these aerosols’ molecular composition, especially for aerosols during the day and night above agricultural fields. In this research, scientists examined secondary organic aerosols over agricultural fields in the Southern Great Plains in Oklahoma. They found that the aerosols’ composition and structure differ from day to night and that some aerosols are ultimately from urban sources.

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Researchers are designing nanoparticles to treat inflammatory bowel diseases such as such as Chron’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Key innovations are the design of self-assembling nanoparticles that carry drugs and naturally target inflamed colons. The nanoparticles could deliver relief to more than 3 million Americans who suffer from the diseases.

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Scientists analyzed data from collisions of heavy ions to determine the factors that most influence fluctuations in the flow of particles. The researchers found that conditions established just as the ions collide have the greatest impact on particle flow fluctuations. This will help physicists make more precise calculations of the properties of the quark-gluon plasma formed in these collisions and understand how the collision transforms nuclei from protons and neutrons into quark-gluon plasma.

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Navid Vafaei-Najafabadi is a scientist who wears many hats. At Stony Brook University, he is an assistant professor in Department of Physics and Astronomy and leads the Plasma Accelerator Group. At the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Vafaei-Najafabadi is the facility scientist at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF), where he helps set the scientific direction of the work performed there.

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In certain molecules, the so-called photoacids, a proton can be released locally by excitation with light. There is a sudden change in the pH value in the solution – a kind of fast switch that is important for many chemical and biological processes.