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If you take certain atoms and make them almost as cold as they possibly can be, the atoms will fuse into a collective low-energy quantum state called a Bose-Einstein condensate. In 1968 physicist Herbert Fröhlich predicted that a similar process at a much higher temperature could concentrate all of the vibrational energy in a biological protein into its lowest-frequency vibrational mode. Now scientists in Sweden and Germany have the first experimental evidence of such so-called Fröhlich condensation. They report their results in the journal Structural Dynamics.

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For all our love of the simple slice of bread, we don’t have a solid understanding of much of the science behind squishy dough, like the interplay between a dough's microstructure and its rheology -- the way in which it deforms and flows. Understanding this science would help bakers improve bread recipes intended for ovens both big and small. Next month, during The Society of Rheology's 87th Annual Meeting, a team of researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands will describe how gluten and starch affect the overall dough behavior, as well as the optimal amount of glucose oxidase enzyme to use to enhance bread-making performance.

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"People intuitively know that frost can be bad," said Amy Betz, a professor in mechanical engineering at Kansas State University. Betz and her colleagues have created a surface that can significantly delay frost formation, even at temperatures of down to 6 degrees Celsius below freezing. The surface is biphilic, meaning it repels water in some areas and attracts it in others. The researchers describe their results in a paper in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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A group of researchers in Japan is exploring the behavior of a certain type of SET (single-electron transistor) made from two quantum dots, which are bits of material so small they start to exhibit quantum properties. The group has produced a detailed analysis of the electrical characteristics of the so-called double-quantum-dot SETs, which could help researchers design better devices to manipulate single electrons. They report their findings in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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The 2015 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded today to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald for "the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass." To help journalists and the public understand the context of this work, AIP has compiled a Physics Nobel Prize Resources page featuring relevant scientific papers and articles, quotes from experts and other resources. Seminal papers from the American Physical Society as well as coverage of that work in Physics Today and other relevant papers published by AIP Publishing have now been made freely available.

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The American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today that physicist, editor and science writer Charles Day will soon assume the role of Editor-in-Chief of Physics Today (http://www.physicstoday.org) the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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Over time, the electrodes inside a rechargeable battery cell can grow tiny, branch-like filaments called dendrites, causing short circuits that kill the battery or even ignite it in flames. But thanks to new experiments and computer simulations, researchers from the California Institute of Technology have explored in detail how higher temperatures can break down these dendrites — and possibly extend battery lifetimes. They discuss their findings in this week’s Journal of Chemical Physics.

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The primary mechanism behind evaporative patterning has long been known: water evaporates faster at the edges of drops, which gives rise to a fluid flow carrying dissolved substances all the way to the edges. There, aggregates form, leading to residual patterns. But how does the transition between different patterning occur? Can we control patterning by altering the dynamics? A team from Harvard University explored these questions and describes their findings in the Physics of Fluids.

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An alloy first made nearly two decades ago by the U. S. Navy could provide an efficient new way to produce electricity. The material, dubbed Galfenol, consists of iron doped with the metal gallium. In new experiments, a team of researchers has shown that Galfenol can generate as much as 80 megawatts of instantaneous power per cubic meter under strong impacts. The team describes the findings in the Journal of Applied Physics.

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researchers from the University of Zurich, Switzerland have made a breakthrough by obtaining the first nanometer (one billionth of a meter) resolved image of individual tobacco mosaic virions, a rod-shaped RNA virus that infects a wide range of plants, especially tobacco. The work demonstrates the potential of low-energy electron holography as a non-destructive, single-particle imaging technique for structural biology. The researchers describe their work in a paper published this week on the cover of the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

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Researchers around the globe are on a quest for materials capable of capturing and storing greenhouse gases. This shared goal led researchers in Germany and India to team up to explore the feasibility of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VACNTs) to trap and store two greenhouse gases in particular: carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). They report their findings in this week’s The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Researchers at Korea University and the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology have now developed a new type of thin film transistor that's significantly faster than its predecessors -- an important step toward speeding up image display on devices like TVs and smartphone screens. The scientists made the transistor from zinc oxynitride, or ZnON, which they then plasma treated with argon gas. They present their work this week in Applied Physics Letters.

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Light, sound, and now, heat -- just as optical invisibility cloaks can bend and diffract light to shield an object from sight, and specially fabricated acoustic metamaterials can hide an object from sound waves, a recently developed thermal cloak can render an object thermally invisible by actively redirecting incident heat. The system, designed by scientists in Singapore and described in this week’s Applied Physics Letters, has the potential to fine-tune temperature distribution and heat flow in electronic and semiconductor systems.

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In the Marvel Comics universe, Professor Xavier and the X-Men are only able to fend off archrival Magneto, the magnetic mutant with the ability to control metals, once they understand the scope of his powers. To better understand the behavior of the microbial world's Magnetos -- magnetically influenced water-dwellers known as magnetotactic bacteria -- three researchers have developed a tool that allows these microscopic species to be studied more easily, especially in their natural environment.

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Researchers show how natural materials like plant cellulose can self-assemble into surfaces with stunning optical properties -- including shiny iridescence and colors that change depending on the humidity.

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Researchers from the Italian National Research Council (SPIN-CNR) and the National Enterprise for nanoScience and nanoTechnology (NEST-CNR) in Italy have devised a novel, inexpensive way to turn low frequency signals into higher frequencies. The approach makes use of a Nobel Prize-winning device called a Josephson junction, which is currently used to make extremely sensitive voltmeters and detect minute changes in magnetic fields. The researchers describe their new application in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing.

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The American Institute of Physics has named Anna Rothschild and Greg Kestin as winners of the 2015 AIP Science Communication Awards in the Broadcast/New Media category for their video, "2.5 Ways to Die in a Black Hole," published on the NOVA|PBS website on March 3, 2014. Rothschild and Kestin’s video has a playful style and implements clever visuals and writing to explain a difficult topic: what might happen to objects in a black hole.

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Materials scientists want to squeeze every bit of performance out of materials, particularly in the aerospace industry, where small advantages in weight or extreme temperature tolerance translate into tremendous performance benefits. In Review of Scientific Instruments, a group of researchers, motivated by potential pay-offs, describes how they created a system to squeeze and stretch a material while rotating and bombarding it with high-energy synchrotron X-rays, which capture information about how it responds to mechanical stress.

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Understanding the biomechanics of natural cartilage could lead to the development of better artificial joint implants. That’s exactly the goal of researchers at the Queensland University of Technology. The team studied kangaroo cartilage as an analogue for human tissue, and found that a network of collagen protein close to the surface played an important role in helping the cartilage absorb forces without damaging. The researchers report their findings in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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Researchers combine diamond and cubic boron nitride with a novel alloying process for a superhard material

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The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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Researchers in France have discovered a new way to levitate liquid droplets, which surprisingly also creates a mini light show, with the droplet sparking as it floats above a faint blue glowing gap. The work may offer an inexpensive new way to generate a freely movable microplasma, as well as yield insights into fundamental physics questions.

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A Lab-on-a-Disc platform developed by a German and Irish team of researchers combines modern microfluidic techniques with fast optical diagnostics to dramatically cut the time to detect bacterial species that cause urinary tract infections—a major cause of sepsis—from 24 hours to within 70 minutes.

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Third win in a row for Science News magazine for a piece investigating what happens to objects entering a black hole

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Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing have recently used a technique called zero-kinetic energy photoelectron spectroscopy to obtain a list in unprecedented detail of the quantum energy levels of the cyanoacetylene cation, a linear, five-atom molecule that exhibits nuclear and electronic coupling effects and is found in interstellar clouds and in the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon Titan.

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Ukranian Physicists Uprooted by War, Behemoth Telescopes that Cost a Billion Dollars or More, the Heaviest Elements Science can Make, and a Satellite View of the Nepalese Quake

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In a step towards more widespread use of terahertz radiation, researchers have designed a new device that can convert a DC electric field into a tunable source of terahertz radiation. Their results are published this week in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing.

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New discovery about how surface gradients influence droplet behavior may enable novel surfaces with anti-icing capabilities for a tremendous range of applications.

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One question of the origin of life in particular remains problematic: what enabled the leap from a primordial soup of individual monomers to self-replicating polymer chains? A new model published this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics, proposes a potential mechanism by which self-replication could have emerged. It posits that template-assisted ligation, the joining of two polymers by using a third, longer one as a template, could have enabled polymers to become self-replicating.

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Researchers from the University of Maryland have come up with a new definition of chaos that applies more broadly than Lyapunov exponents and other previous definitions of chaos. The new definition fits on a few lines, can be easily approximated by numerical methods, and works for a wide variety of chaotic systems.

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This week in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, from AIP Publishing, the group describes developing and launching their imager, which centers on "Lobster-Eye optics," as well as its capabilities and future applications in space exploration.

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BPA’s popularity soared after the 1950s, but evidence suggests that even low doses might be harmful to human and environmental health. Many manufacturers are now phasing out BPA, but it doesn't break down easily, making safe disposal difficult. Now, researchers have developed a hybrid photocatalyst that can break down BPA using visible light. Their findings could eventually be used to treat water supplies and to more safely dispose of BPA and materials like it.

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A team of researchers in Colombia and Chile has explored the role of chaos in the dynamics of vehicles within cities, keeping traffic and the bus systems of various countries in mind, and this week in the journal Chaos, the team presents and analyzes the consequences of "discrete mapping" the exact evolution of a bus operating under ideal city conditions.

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Graphene has been studied intensively for its unique properties, and now researchers have developed a microelectronics-compatible method to grow it and have synthesized wafer-scale, high-quality graphene on silicon substrates. The method is based on an ion implantation technique, a process in which ions are accelerated under an electrical field and smashed into a semiconductor. In Applied Physics Letters, the researchers describe their work, which takes graphene a step closer to commercial applications in silicon microelectronics.

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The fundamental constants that govern the laws of nature are being determined with increasing accuracy. A new paper in this week’s Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data outlines the proceedings from this year's Workshop on the Determination of the Fundamental Constants, where scientists convened to share their research of fundamental constants. Ultimately, better definitions of these constants will aid the redefinition of several standard scientific units, including the kilogram and the Kelvin, by 2018.

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When a sound wave hits an obstacle and is scattered, the signal may be lost or degraded. But what if you could guide the signal around that obstacle, as if the interfering barrier didn't even exist? Recently, researchers at Nanjing University in China created a material from polyethylene membranes that does exactly that.

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An ongoing international effort to redefine the kilogram by 2018 has been helped by recent efforts from a team researchers from Italy, Japan and Germany to correlate two of the most precise measurements of Avogadro's number and obtain one averaged value that can be used for future calculations. Their results are published this week in the Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data, from AIP Publishing.

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65th Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association (ACA) Convenes in Philadelphia this Month, from July 25-29, 2015

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Ainissa Ramirez, a self-described "science evangelist," is the winner of the 2015 Andrew Gemant Award, an annual prize recognizing significant contributions to the cultural, artistic or humanistic dimension of physics, the American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced today.

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The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today (www.physicstoday.org), the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.

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10 years after graduating, many have found financially solid and meaningful employment in the private sector, according to a new report from the American Institute of Physics

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Seeking a better way to identify faulty energy infrastructure before it fails, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are using subatomic particles called muons to analyze the thickness of concrete slabs and metal pipes. Their technique, described in a June 30 paper in the journal AIP Advances, from AIP Publishing, is a way to safely and non-invasively find worn infrastructure components using background radiation already present in the environment.

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New study of hydrogen storage material magnesium hydride reveals path to better performance, possibly paving way toward better future fuel tanks

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Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with a new solution to alleviate the environmental burden of discarded electronics. They have demonstrated the feasibility of making microwave biodegradable thin-film transistors from a transparent, flexible biodegradable substrate made from inexpensive wood, called cellulose nanofibrillated fiber (CNF). This work opens the door for green, low-cost, portable electronic devices in future.

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A new ultrasonic fingerprint sensor measures 3-D image of your finger’s surface and the tissue beneath it—enhancing biometrics and information security for smartphones and other devices

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Fish may seem to glide effortlessly through the water, but the tiny ripples they leave behind are evidence of a constant give-and-take of energy between the swimmer and its aqueous environment -- a momentum exchange that propels the fish forward but is devilishly tricky to quantify. Now, new research shows that a fish's propulsion can be understood by studying vortices in the surrounding water as individual units instead of examining the flow as a whole.

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High-transition-temperature materials demand novel device architectures, which have proved difficult to create. Added to that set of challenges, process control at the sub-10-nanometer-scale is required to make high-quality Josephson junctions -- the basic building block of superconducting electronics -- out of these materials. Maneuvering around these challenges, a group of researchers has developed a new approach to fabricate oxide Josephson junctions, which they report in a paper this week in Applied Physics Letters.

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Routine communications blackouts, between a re-entry spacecraft and ground control, can cause anxiety, as there is no way to know or control the location and state of the spacecraft from the ground, but researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology in China have proposed a new way to maintain communication with spacecraft as they re-enter the atmosphere. The approach might also be applied to other hypersonic vehicles such as futuristic military planes and ballistic missiles.