http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Wouldn't it be convenient if you could reverse the rusting of your car by shining a bright light on it? It turns out that this concept works for undoing oxidation on copper nanoparticles, and it could lead to an environmentally friendly production process for an important industrial chemical, University of Michigan engineers have discovered. http://phys.org/news283694741.html Chemistry Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:00:04 EST news283694741 Researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington are pioneering a new method for using carbon dioxide, or CO2, to make liquid methanol fuel by using copper oxide nanowires and sunlight. http://phys.org/news280488848.html Chemistry Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:20:02 EST news280488848 (Phys.org)—When it comes to high-temperature superconductors, a class of materials called cuprates is king, and it is science's ongoing quest to determine their exact physical subtleties. Cornell physicists and materials scientists have now verified that cuprates respond differently when adding electrons versus removing them, resolving a central issue about the compounds' most fundamental properties. http://phys.org/news277552076.html Physics Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:48:02 EST news277552076 (Phys.org)—The road to a sustainably powered future may be paved with superconductors. When chilled to frigid temperatures hundreds of degrees Celsius below zero, these remarkable materials are singularly capable of perfectly conducting electric current. To meet growing global energy demands, the entire energy infrastructure would benefit tremendously from incorporating new electricity generation, storage, and delivery technologies that use superconducting wires. But strict limits on temperature, high manufacturing costs, and the dampening effects of high-magnetic fields currently impede widespread adoption. http://phys.org/news277023026.html Physics Thu, 10 Jan 2013 06:50:39 EST news277023026 A chemical nanostructure developed by Boston College researchers behaves much like the pores of the skin, serving as a precise control for a typically stubborn method of catalysis that is the workhorse of industrial chemistry. http://phys.org/news274595515.html Chemistry Thu, 13 Dec 2012 04:32:07 EST news274595515 Special underwater coatings prevent shells and other organisms from growing on the hull of ships—but biocide paints are ecologically harmful. Together with the industry, researchers have developed more environmentally-friendly alternatives. http://phys.org/news274015677.html Chemistry Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:28:12 EST news274015677 (Phys.org)—A team led by SLAC and Stanford scientists has made an important discovery toward understanding how a large group of complex copper oxide materials lose their electrical resistance at remarkably high temperatures. http://phys.org/news272186909.html Physics Thu, 15 Nov 2012 07:28:56 EST news272186909 (Phys.org)—As electricity travels from power plants and into homes, a large amount of the initial energy dissipates as heat along the way. This inefficiency comes from a resistance to current inherent to the metallic cables used to deliver the electricity. High-temperature superconductors, however, manage to transmit energy without loss, providing a potential conduit for efficient and inexpensive power distribution all over the globe. Unfortunately, the mechanism underlying these remarkable materials remains unknown, hampering the development of more advanced materials to provide that loss-free flow of electricity.  http://phys.org/news265959715.html Physics Tue, 04 Sep 2012 06:42:11 EST news265959715 Thanks to a little serendipity, researchers at Rice University have created a tiny coaxial cable that is about a thousand times smaller than a human hair and has higher capacitance than previously reported microcapacitors. http://phys.org/news258303664.html Nanotechnology Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:01:13 EST news258303664 An international team that includes University of British Columbia physicists has used ultra-fast laser pulses to identify the microscopic interactions that drive high-temperature superconductivity. http://phys.org/news252248622.html Physics Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:04:17 EST news252248622 Copper-iodide nanoparticles have long-lasting antiviral activity against the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus, according to a paper in the February issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. http://phys.org/news248540200.html Nanotechnology Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:30:03 EST news248540200 Rice University scientists have created a nano-infused oil that could greatly enhance the ability of devices as large as electrical transformers and as small as microelectronic components to shed excess heat. http://phys.org/news247324859.html Nanotechnology Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:21:12 EST news247324859 Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have invented a new type of electronic switch that performs electronic logic functions within a single molecule. The incorporation of such single-molecule elements could enable smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient electronics. The research findings, supported by a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, were published online in the Nov. 14 issue of Nano Letters. http://phys.org/news241964183.html Nanotechnology Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:50:01 EST news241964183 A solid explosive with an energy density equivalent to that of nitroglycerine: this is the composite material produced by researchers at the Laboratoire d'Analyse et d'Architecture des Systemes (CNRS) in Toulouse, France, using an innovative production process that brings nanoparticles into contact with strands of DNA. These strands then "assemble" the various kinds of nanoparticles used. The released energy and ignition temperature of the new explosive are among the best ever described in the literature. The explosive could thus be used as an energy source to power embedded systems, both in space and in the environment. This innovative material is the subject of a paper published online in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. http://phys.org/news239531221.html Nanotechnology Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:27:12 EST news239531221 (PhysOrg.com) -- Magnetic studies of ultrathin slabs of copper-oxide materials reveal that at very low temperatures, the thinnest, isolated layers lose their long-range magnetic order and instead behave like a "quantum spin liquid" - a state of matter where the orientations of electron spins fluctuate wildly. This unexpected discovery by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland may offer support for the idea that this novel condensed state of matter is a precursor to the emergence of high-temperature superconductivity - the ability to carry current with no resistance. http://phys.org/news226921512.html Physics Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:45:36 EST news226921512 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bubbles are blocking the current path of one of the most promising high temperature superconducting materials, new research suggests. http://phys.org/news224735453.html Physics Mon, 16 May 2011 03:31:36 EST news224735453 Black holes are some of the heaviest objects in the universe. Electrons are some of the lightest. Now physicists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown how charged black holes can be used to model the behavior of interacting electrons in unconventional superconductors. http://phys.org/news218309125.html Physics Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:26:47 EST news218309125 New research by University of British Columbia physicists indicates that high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides is linked to what they term 'incoherent excitations'--a discovery that sheds light on the electronic response of these materials before they become superconducting. http://phys.org/news206284409.html Physics Thu, 14 Oct 2010 14:13:56 EST news206284409 Superconductors are more than 150 times more efficient at carrying electricity than copper wires. However, to attain the superconducting state, these materials have to be cooled below an extremely low, so-called transition temperature, at which point normal electrical resistance disappears. Developing superconductors with higher transition temperatures is one of physics' greatest quests. http://phys.org/news201355600.html Physics Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:06:54 EST news201355600 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have been trying for some 20 years to understand why the low temperature at which copper-oxide superconductors carry current with no resistance can't be increased to be closer to room temperature. Recently, scientists have focused on trying to understand and control an electronic phase called the "pseudogap" phase, which is non-superconducting and is observed at a temperature above the superconducting phase. But what form of electronic order (if any) characterizes the pseudogap phase has remained a frustrating and challenging mystery. http://phys.org/news198326815.html Physics Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:00:06 EST news198326815 An international group of physicists from the University of Augsburg in Germany, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in creating a theoretical modelling of the microscopic defects in superconductors and in discovering the main cause for the drastic drop in the electric current. The results have been published in the internationally recognized scientific journal, Nature Physics. http://phys.org/news197901636.html Physics Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:41:32 EST news197901636  (PhysOrg.com) -- The first batch of a new range of powerful superconductors which could revolutionise the production of machines like hospital MRI scanners and protect the national grid has been developed by scientists. http://phys.org/news197898064.html Physics Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:41:57 EST news197898064 Deworming lambs can be minimized with rotational grazing and checking the animals' eye color, according to an Agricultural Research Service (ARS) study. http://phys.org/news197655489.html Biology Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:18:25 EST news197655489 Although the U.S. electric power industry is one of the greatest engineering marvels of the 20th century, aging technology and an increase in demand create problems for the electricity infrastructure that need to be fixed. Venkat Selvamanickam, director of the Applied Research Hub and the M.D. Anderson chair professor of the department of mechanical engineering, University of Houston, is developing a technology with high temperature superconducting wires that is revolutionizing the way power is generated, transported and used. http://phys.org/news189186212.html Physics Tue, 30 Mar 2010 17:10:01 EST news189186212 The concept of confinement is one of the central ideas in modern physics. The most famous example is that of quarks which bind together to form protons and neutrons. Now Prof. Bella Lake from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (Germany) together with an international team of scientists report for the first time an experimental realization and a proof of confinement phenomenon observed in a condensed matter system. http://phys.org/news178724926.html Physics Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:49:37 EST news178724926 (PhysOrg.com) -- A PhD student from the London Centre for Nanotechnology has won a prize for solving a decade-long mystery central to understanding modern magnetic systems. http://phys.org/news175857283.html Physics Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:15:30 EST news175857283 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Applied Superconductivity Center at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has received $1.2 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to understand and enhance a new form of superconducting material that could be used to build more-powerful magnets used in a wide range of scientific research. http://phys.org/news174676669.html Physics Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:20:01 EST news174676669 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team led by physicists at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) have resolved a decade-long puzzle that is set to have huge implications for use of one of the most versatile classes of materials available to us for future technology applications: copper oxide ceramics. The results are published online this week in the journal Nature Physics. http://phys.org/news174307778.html Physics Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:50:34 EST news174307778 (PhysOrg.com) -- The century-old challenge of transporting acetylene may have been solved in principle by a team of scientists working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. A NIST research team has figured out why a recently discovered material can safely store at low pressure up to 100 times as much of the volatile chemical as can be done with conventional methods. http://phys.org/news170517346.html Chemistry Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:30:03 EST news170517346 Superconductivity appears to rely on very different mechanisms in two varieties of iron-based superconductors. The insight comes from research groups that are making bold statements about the correct description of superconductivity in iron-based compounds in two papers about to be published in journals of the American Physical Society. http://phys.org/news166680373.html Physics Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:06:49 EST news166680373