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. Researchers funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research at the University of Michigan invented a new type of magnetron that may be used to defeat enemy electronics. A magnetron is type of vacuum tube used as the frequency source in microwave ovens, radar systems and other high-power microwave circuits. http://phys.org/news172331211.html Technology Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:10:02 EST news172331211 Antennas for the latest implanted medical devices are being developed by Queen Mary University of London and tested through a unique piece of kit at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL). http://phys.org/news171620414.html Technology Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:30:01 EST news171620414 The price of fresh food in shops and supermarkets could be reduced if innovative work at The University of Manchester to develop intelligent low-cost sensors is successful. http://phys.org/news171548748.html Chemistry Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:50:01 EST news171548748 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bigger speakers, bigger sound - this is the music lover’s creed. Flat panel loudspeakers offer an alternative to those who would rather not or cannot clutter up their homes with speakers. These speakers can be integrated inconspicuously on walls or in furniture. At the Internationale Funkausstellung IFA in Berlin, Germany, from September 4 to 9, Fraunhofer scientists are presenting a completely new concept for ultra-flat loudspeakers that still deliver full sound reproduction. http://phys.org/news171211002.html Technology Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:37:26 EST news171211002 You imagine a clock to be different -- yet the optical table with its many complicated set-ups really is one. Optical clocks like the strontium clock in the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Braunschweig could be the atomic clocks of the future; some of them though are already ten times more precise and stable than the best primary caesium atomic clocks. http://phys.org/news171195370.html Physics Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:16:41 EST news171195370 Samsung Electronics announced today that it has developed the first Long Term Evolution (LTE) modem that complies with the latest standards of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which were released in March 2009. Utilizing Release 8 of the 3GPP, this LTE modem is a significant upgrade from the previous standard that was released in December 2008. http://phys.org/news171132583.html Electronics Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:10:02 EST news171132583 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study on the use of radio-frequency identification tags on individual retail items shows that inventory accuracy decreases or diminishes over time with conventional systems that rely on barcodes and/or human counting to track inventory. The research, conducted by the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, also demonstrated that the use of an RFID-enabled system could improve inventory accuracy by more than 27 percent over a 13-week period. http://phys.org/news170606806.html Technology Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:00:01 EST news170606806 In what may prove to be a major development for scientists in fields ranging from forensics to quantum communications, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a new, highly sensitive, low-cost technique for measuring light in the near-infrared range. http://phys.org/news170516085.html Physics Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:10:01 EST news170516085 (PhysOrg.com) -- A wireless internet network that uses portions of the old analog TV spectrum may one day become a reality. The plans for a computer network that uses "white spaces," which are empty fragments of the old analog TV spectrum scattered between used frequencies, will be presented at the ACM SIGCOMM 2009, a communications conference held in Barcelona, Spain. http://phys.org/news169988679.html Technology Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:05:24 EST news169988679 (PhysOrg.com) -- An investigation by a major scientific group has advanced understanding of the early evolution of the universe. http://phys.org/news169907305.html Physics Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:29:09 EST news169907305 (AP) -- Verizon Wireless says it has completed the first calls using a brand-new network that's planned to go live next year, offering faster Internet speeds. http://phys.org/news169481268.html Technology Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:20:03 EST news169481268 While the researchers can't promise delivery to a parallel universe or a school for wizards, books like Pullman's Dark Materials and JK Rowling's Harry Potter are steps closer to reality now that researchers in China have created the first tunable electromagnetic gateway. http://phys.org/news169373038.html Physics Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:04:48 EST news169373038 Until now, creating the microchips that power all of our electronic gadgets has been a laborious, complex and time-consuming process costing billions of dollars. But if a Milpitas, Calif.-based startup succeeds, making them could be as easy as printing a piece of paper. http://phys.org/news169319540.html Technology Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:13:15 EST news169319540 Imagine a world where bright, energy sipping, cheap, durable LEDs light the world. A world where if you have enough light to see, you are connected. http://phys.org/news169316555.html Technology Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:50:02 EST news169316555 Researchers in the Nanofabrication and Devices group at the Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, Advanced Diamond Technologies Inc., and Innovative Micro Technology, have discovered that defects at the grain boundary in ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) hold primary responsibility for the fundamental mechanism of energy dissipation. http://phys.org/news169309041.html Nanotechnology Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:30:04 EST news169309041 (PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine a world where bright, energy-sipping, cheap, durable LEDs light the world. A world where if you have enough light to see, you are connected. The University of California, Riverside will lead a multi-campus effort that could reshape the way we communicate and navigate in homes, offices, airports and especially in hospitals, airports and other places where radio frequency communication is prohibited. http://phys.org/news168623704.html Technology Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:10:07 EST news168623704 (AP) -- A cane equipped with the technology that retailers use to tag merchandise could help blind people avoid obstacles. http://phys.org/news168533723.html Technology Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:56:27 EST news168533723 (PhysOrg.com) -- "The terahertz regime has become of particular interest simply because it may allow us to look into materials in a completely new way," Diego Kienle tells PhysOrg.com. "This regime, which lies between microwave and optical frequencies is known as the terahertz gap. What one would like to have are devices which can operate - simply speaking - within this intermediate regime of conventional electronics and photonics." http://phys.org/news168084513.html Nanotechnology Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:05:36 EST news168084513 (PhysOrg.com) -- Powerful new radio technologies that promise blisteringly fast WiFi have been given a boost by a team of European researchers’ cutting-edge work on miniscule microchips. http://phys.org/news168099929.html Technology Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:50:01 EST news168099929 Light is intangible and, in addition, it travels at great velocity. Nevertheless, it can be confined to a very small space by controllably inserting light into a microscopic container surrounded by reflective walls. The light will then be stored by continuous reflections and cannot escape. In the scientific domain, such a small reflective microcavity is termed a microresonator. These microresonators find applications in all areas where the interaction between light and matter shall be enhanced and studied in a controlled manner. An important area of usage is, for example, the laser diode, which has revolutionized telecommunications and optical data storage in the past few decades. http://phys.org/news168074155.html Physics Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:30:01 EST news168074155 By studying gold nanoparticles with highly uniform sizes and shapes, scientists now understand how they lose energy, a key step towards producing nanoscale detectors for weighing any single atom. http://phys.org/news167912822.html Nanotechnology Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:27:29 EST news167912822 Using devices millionths of a meter in size, physicists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a technique to determine the mass of a single molecule, in real time. http://phys.org/news167490673.html Nanotechnology Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:11:57 EST news167490673 Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a Motorola reader he'd bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car. http://phys.org/news166552331.html Technology Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:32:49 EST news166552331 National Semiconductor today announced the industry’s lowest-noise, fully integrated frequency synthesizer. The PowerWise LMX2541 provides less than 2 milli-radians (mrad) root-mean-square (rms) noise at 2.1 GHz and 3.5 mrad rms noise at 3.5 GHz, outperforming the nearest competitor by 10 dB in both in-band phase-locked loop (PLL) noise and spurious performance. http://phys.org/news166110640.html Technology Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:51:02 EST news166110640 (PhysOrg.com) -- The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Jazz Semiconductor, a Tower Group Company, today announced that they have collaborated to develop a two-antenna quad-beam RFIC phased array receiver covering the 11-15 GHz frequency range. First time success was achieved using Jazz Semiconductor’s high performance 0.18-micron SiGe BiCMOS process and its own proprietary models, kit and DIRECT MPW (Multiproject Wafer) program. The chip was designed and tested by the Electrical and Computer Engineering School at UCSD. http://phys.org/news165768262.html Technology Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:45:24 EST news165768262 (PhysOrg.com) -- "Jellyfish are one of the most awesome marine animals, doing a spectacular and psychedelic dance in water," explain engineers Sung-Weon Yeom and Il-Kwon Oh from Chonnam National University in the Republic of Korea. Recently, Yeom and Oh have built a jellyfish robot that imitates the curved shape and unique locomotive behavior of the living jellyfish. http://phys.org/news165234976.html Electronics Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:38:18 EST news165234976 (PhysOrg.com) -- IBM scientists in collaboration with the University of Regensburg, Germany, and Utrecht University, Netherlands, for the first time demonstrated the ability to measure the charge state of individual atoms using noncontact atomic force microscopy. Measuring with the precision of a single electron charge and nanometer lateral resolution, researchers succeeded in distinguishing neutral atoms from positively or negatively charged ones. http://phys.org/news164996346.html Nanotechnology Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:19:39 EST news164996346 (PhysOrg.com) -- MIT engineers have built a fast, ultra-broadband, low-power radio chip, modeled on the human inner ear, that could enable wireless devices capable of receiving cell phone, Internet, radio and television signals. http://phys.org/news163242050.html Technology Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:01:26 EST news163242050 By combining the best of two different distance measurement approaches with a super-accurate technology called an optical frequency comb, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have built a laser ranging system that can pinpoint multiple objects with nanometer precision over distances up to 100 kilometers. The novel LIDAR ("light detection and ranging") system could have applications from precision manufacturing lines on Earth to maintaining networks of satellites in perfect formation, creating a giant space-based platform to search for new planets. http://phys.org/news162395437.html Physics Sun, 24 May 2009 14:51:06 EST news162395437 While today's law enforcement officers don't wear utility belts full of crimefighting gadgets like Batman, they do rely on a variety of state-of-the-art technologies to do their jobs efficiently and safely. Two of these devices—down-the-road (DTR) radar used in speed enforcement and the ballistic chronograph, which measures the speed of bullets -- soon should be more useful tools thanks to recent research conducted by the Office of Law Enforcement Standards (OLES) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. http://phys.org/news162129877.html Physics Thu, 21 May 2009 13:05:28 EST news162129877