http://phys.org/physics-news/ en-us Phys.org provides the latest news on physics, materials, nanotech, science and technology. Updated Daily. The results of a new study led by George Washington University Professor Tianshu Li provide direct computational evidence that nucleation of ice in small droplets is strongly size-dependent, an important conclusion in understanding water's behavior at the nanoscale. The formation of ice at the nanoscale is a challenging, basic scientific research question whose answer also has important implications for climate research and other fields. http://phys.org/news288368224.html Physics Tue, 21 May 2013 15:17:12 EST news288368224 A fried breakfast food popular in Spain provided the inspiration for the development of doughnut-shaped droplets that may provide scientists with a new approach for studying fundamental issues in physics, mathematics and materials. http://phys.org/news288354259.html Physics Tue, 21 May 2013 11:24:27 EST news288354259 One of the many promising applications of quantum mechanics in the information sciences is quantum key distribution (QKD), in which the counterintuitive behavior of quantum particles guarantees that no one can eavesdrop on a private exchange of data without detection. http://phys.org/news288340062.html Physics Tue, 21 May 2013 07:27:57 EST news288340062 (Phys.org) —Lasers are an unseen backbone of modern society. They're integral to technologies ranging from high-speed Internet services to Blu-ray players. http://phys.org/news288335525.html Physics Tue, 21 May 2013 06:13:01 EST news288335525 Meeting the demand for more data storage in smaller volumes means using materials made up of ever-smaller magnets, or nanomagnets. One promising material for a potential new generation of recording media is an alloy of iron and platinum with an ordered crystal structure. Researchers led by Professor Kai Liu and graduate student Dustin Gilbert at the University of California, Davis, have now found a convenient way to make these alloys and tailor their properties. http://phys.org/news288284396.html Physics Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:36 EST news288284396 (Phys.org) —Entanglement, by general consensus of physicists, is the weirdest part of quantum science. To say that two particles, A and B, are entangled means that they are actually two parts of an inseparable quantum thing. An important consequence of this inherent kinship is that measuring a property of A (say, the particle's polarization) is necessarily to know the corresponding property of B, even if you're not there with a detector to observe B and even if (as explained below) the existence of that property had no prior fixed value until the moment particle A was detected. http://phys.org/news288283333.html Physics Mon, 20 May 2013 15:42:22 EST news288283333 (Phys.org) —Using a laser, the St Andrews scientists can now carry out detailed analysis of a spirit sample no bigger than a teardrop and can even confirm whether it is toxic or not. It's hoped the testing breakthrough will help cut the worldwide toll of death and serious injury arising from consumption of fake and adulterated spirits. http://phys.org/news288260416.html Physics Mon, 20 May 2013 09:20:31 EST news288260416 Innsbruck physicists led by Rainer Blatt and Peter Zoller experimentally gained a deep insight into the nature of quantum mechanical phase transitions. They are the first scientists that simulated the competition between two rival dynamical processes at a novel type of transition between two quantum mechanical orders. They have published the results of their work in the journal Nature Physics. http://phys.org/news288248146.html Physics Mon, 20 May 2013 05:55:55 EST news288248146 Materials belonging to the family of dilute magnetic oxides (DMOs)—an oxide-based variant of the dilute magnetic semiconductors—are good candidates for spintronics applications. This is the object of study for Davide Sangalli of the Microelectronics and Microsystems Institute (IMM) at the National Research Council (CNR), in Agrate Brianza, Italy, and colleagues. They recently explored the effect of iron (Fe) doping on thin films of a material called zirconia (ZrO2 oxide). For the first time, the authors bridged the gap between the theoretical predictions and the experimental measurements of this material, in a paper about to be published in EPJ B. http://phys.org/news288008030.html Physics Fri, 17 May 2013 11:30:02 EST news288008030 An international team of scientists using a new X-ray method recorded the internal structure and cell movement inside a living frog embryo in greater detail than ever before. http://phys.org/news288002003.html Physics Fri, 17 May 2013 09:33:39 EST news288002003 Spinning-disk confocal microscopy is an optical imaging technique that can be used to generate detailed three-dimensional fluorescence images of living cells and their contents. Although a powerful tool for observing dynamic processes in living organisms, it has proved difficult to use for all but the thinnest biological specimens. Motivated by a need to see more deeply into living cells, Yuko Mimori-Kiyosue at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology and colleagues have now made major technical improvements to the technique that deliver greatly improved resolution and clarity. http://phys.org/news288001026.html Physics Fri, 17 May 2013 09:17:19 EST news288001026 Most cells exist in a hydrated state and often live suspended in solution. In order to be imaged, cells must generally be frozen or dried, and then stained with substances such as heavy metals. Unfortunately, these processes can also alter the structure and chemical composition of the cells, resulting in inaccurate observations. Imaging the internal structures of whole, intact cells in their natural state has therefore been a particular challenge for scientists. http://phys.org/news287999387.html Physics Fri, 17 May 2013 09:10:01 EST news287999387 Andong He saw a phenomenon at work in his breakfast bowl that he couldn't explain. It prompted this question: How does cereal shape influence the way cereals floating in the milk join? http://phys.org/news287997193.html Physics Fri, 17 May 2013 08:13:22 EST news287997193 An international collaboration of scientists has discovered a unique crystalizing behavior at the interface between two immiscible liquids that could aid in sustainable energy development. http://phys.org/news287996944.html Physics Fri, 17 May 2013 08:09:23 EST news287996944 (Phys.org) —Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab. That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by Vanderbilt physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light. http://phys.org/news287995914.html Physics Fri, 17 May 2013 07:52:11 EST news287995914 A new window into the nature of the universe may be possible with a device proposed by scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno and Stanford University that would detect elusive gravity waves from the other end of the cosmos. Their paper describing the device and process was published in the prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters. http://phys.org/news287940091.html Physics Thu, 16 May 2013 16:21:37 EST news287940091 A new tool being developed by UT Arlington assistant professor of physics could help scientists map and track the interactions between neurons inside different areas of the brain. http://phys.org/news287937996.html Physics Thu, 16 May 2013 15:46:42 EST news287937996 University of Toronto engineering researchers, working with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, have published new insights into how materials transfer heat, which could lead eventually to smaller, more powerful electronic devices. http://phys.org/news287920772.html Physics Thu, 16 May 2013 10:59:48 EST news287920772 (Phys.org) —A massive telescope in the Antarctic ice reports the detection of 28 extremely high-energy neutrinos that might have their origin in cosmic sources. Two of these reached energies greater than 1 petaelectronvolt (PeV), an energy level thousands of times higher than the highest energy neutrino yet produced in a manmade accelerator. http://phys.org/news287908466.html Physics Thu, 16 May 2013 07:34:49 EST news287908466 Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have demonstrated a paradigm-shifting "polariton" laser that's fueled not by light, but by electricity. http://phys.org/news287851057.html Physics Wed, 15 May 2013 15:37:46 EST news287851057 Physicists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have found out how tiny islands of magnetic material align themselves when sorted on a regular lattice - by measurements at BESSY II. Contrary to expectations, the north and south poles of the magnetic islands did not arrange themselves in a zigzag pattern, but in chains. http://phys.org/news287850787.html Physics Wed, 15 May 2013 15:33:26 EST news287850787 Second sound is a quantum mechanical phenomenon, which has been observed only in superfluid helium. Physicists from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Trento, Italy, have now proven the propagation of such a temperature wave in a quantum gas. The scientists have published their historic findings in the journal Nature. http://phys.org/news287841227.html Physics Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:11 EST news287841227 (Phys.org) —Detecting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could soon become far easier with the help of an innovative technique developed by a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where scientists have overcome an issue preventing the effective use of lasers to rapidly scan samples. http://phys.org/news287827779.html Physics Wed, 15 May 2013 09:30:11 EST news287827779 (Phys.org) —Quantum dot LEDs (QLEDs) are a promising technology for creating large-area displays that could have applications for TVs, cell phones, and digital cameras. So far, however, the highest efficiencies of QLEDs have fallen short of those of organic LEDs (OLEDs), another large-area LED technology. Now in a new study, researchers have developed a new type of QLED with an efficiency and luminance that are the highest reported to date and comparable to state-of-the-art phosphorescent OLEDs. The new QLED's external quantum efficiency of 18% more than doubles the current highest value of which the researchers are aware, which is 8%. The efficiency is also close to the theoretical maximum for any planar thin-film LED, which is 20%. http://phys.org/news287764572.html Physics Tue, 14 May 2013 15:40:01 EST news287764572 An international team of scientists, including a University of York researcher, has carried out ground-breaking experiments to investigate the atomic structure of astatine (Z=85), the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth. http://phys.org/news287688641.html Physics Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:07 EST news287688641 Like small children, scientists are always asking the question 'why?'. One question they've yet to answer is why nature picked quantum physics, in all its weird glory, as a sensible way to behave. Researchers Corsin Pfister and Stephanie Wehner at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore tackle this perennial question in a paper published today in Nature Communications. http://phys.org/news287689070.html Physics Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:01 EST news287689070 (Phys.org) —Today, Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that for the first time, irradiated uranium fuel has been recycled and reused for molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) production, with virtually no losses in Mo-99 yields or uranium recovery. This demonstrates the viability of the separation process, as well as the potential for environmentally- and cost-friendly fuel recycling. Medical isotope production technology has advanced significantly now that scientists have made key advances in separating Mo-99 from an irradiated, low-enriched uranium (LEU) solution. http://phys.org/news287740670.html Physics Tue, 14 May 2013 09:10:02 EST news287740670 Researchers at the University of Twente's MESA+ research institute have given the first demonstration of how the drag exerted on liquids flowing through tiny "fluidic chips" is affected by the introduction of diminutive gas bubbles. Armed with this knowledge, scientists can directly manipulate flow resistance in a variety of applications involving combinations of liquids and gas bubbles. This could be useful in areas ranging from the manufacture of fizzy drinks to the development of artificial lungs. http://phys.org/news287741273.html Physics Tue, 14 May 2013 09:08:26 EST news287741273 New York University physicists have uncovered how energy is released and dispersed in magnetic materials in a process akin to the spread of forest fires, a finding that has the potential to deepen our understanding of self-sustained chemical reactions. http://phys.org/news287667453.html Physics Mon, 13 May 2013 12:39:05 EST news287667453 Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden can now reveal the mechanism behind the curved path of a curling stone. The discovery by the researchers, who usually study friction and wear in industrial and technical applications, is now published in the scientific journal Wear. http://phys.org/news287667179.html Physics Mon, 13 May 2013 12:33:10 EST news287667179