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. Experiments at Johns Hopkins have unearthed clues about which protein signaling molecules are allowed into hollow, hair-like "antennae," called cilia, that alert cells to critical changes in their environments. http://phys.org/news287575226.html Chemistry Sun, 12 May 2013 13:00:22 EST news287575226 (Phys.org) —Researchers have found a way to see synthetic nanostructures and molecules using a new type of super-resolution optical microscopy that does not require fluorescent dyes, representing a practical tool for biomedical and nanotechnology research. http://phys.org/news286479607.html Physics Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:40:14 EST news286479607 (Phys.org) —Recent progress in the engineering of plasmonic structures has enabled new kinds of nanometer-scale optoelectronic devices as well as high-resolution optical sensing. But until now, there has been a lack of tools for measuring nanometer-scale behavior in plasmonic structures which are needed to understand device performance and to confirm theoretical models. http://phys.org/news285852747.html Nanotechnology Mon, 22 Apr 2013 12:32:39 EST news285852747 (Phys.org) —Researchers at King's College London have achieved previously unseen levels of control over the travelling direction of electromagnetic waves in waveguides. Their ground-breaking results could have far-reaching benefits for the way light is controlled in optical waveguides and fibres, significantly improving integration, efficiency and speed. http://phys.org/news285578852.html Physics Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:27:48 EST news285578852 (Phys.org) —Researchers working at Japan's NTT Basic Research Laboratories have successfully built an all mechanical phonon laser. In their paper published in Physical Review Letters, the team describes how they built a phonon laser without using any optical parts by basing it on a traditional optical laser design. http://phys.org/news282911239.html Physics Tue, 19 Mar 2013 11:27:36 EST news282911239 Using chemical imaging techniques, scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory proved for the first time that titanium dioxide's surface defects shelter chemicals from decays caused by ultra-violet light. The defects are tiny gaps created when oxygen atoms are missing from the surface of this popular catalyst. Conventional wisdom says the vacancies are more active than the surface. The team showed the opposite is true for photooxidation. The carbon-based carboxylic group, trimethyl acetate (TMA), remains intact if bound in the vacancies while it readily decomposes at regular, or non-vacancy, sites on the surface. http://phys.org/news280053351.html Chemistry Thu, 14 Feb 2013 08:50:06 EST news280053351 (Phys.org)—When an earthquake strikes, damage to buildings such as nuclear power stations can worsen the catastrophe. Researchers from France's Institut Fresnel and the French division of Menard, a ground-improvement specialist company, have developed an invisibility cloak that could protect buildings during an earthquake by redirecting seismic waves around them. http://phys.org/news279871883.html Physics Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:53:43 EST news279871883 (Phys.org)—Finding ways to see, position, measure, and accurately manipulate nanoscale objects is an ongoing challenge for researchers developing the next generation of ultra-compact electronics, sensors and optical devices. Even the most advanced conventional microscopes are limited by diffraction of the shortest wavelength of visible light, about 400 nanometers, rendering them unable to produce images or measurements of objects that are significantly smaller than this threshold. http://phys.org/news279535002.html Nanotechnology Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:36:57 EST news279535002 (Phys.org)—By bringing nanophotonics technology to traditional optical spectroscopy, a new kind of optical spectrometer with functions of sensing and spectral measurement has been recently demonstrated by a research team at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.   Dr. Junpeng Guo, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Optics at UAHuntsville, recently created a new nanoscale photonic device called a super nano-grating, with the assistance of his doctoral student, Haisheng Leong. With a fabricated super nano-grating, Dr. Guo's group demonstrated a new kind of optical sensing apparatus called spectrometer sensors. http://phys.org/news278660953.html Nanotechnology Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:49:36 EST news278660953 (Phys.org)—Scientists have discovered that a solar cell consisting of two or three layers of quantum dots, with each layer tuned to a different part of the solar spectrum, has an efficiency that is 40-60% higher than the sum of the efficiencies of separate solar cells each made of one of the individual layers. The synergistic effect of the layered architecture could lead to new ways of designing quantum dot solar cells with high efficiencies and broad-spectrum absorption. http://phys.org/news277017370.html Nanotechnology Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:30:01 EST news277017370 (Phys.org)—Tanya Zelevinsky's Pupin Hall lab is home to a sprawling contraption of gangly wires, metal pipes and chambers, and flashing lights. Inside a container that opens up like a porthole is a glowing blue dot—a cloud of a million atoms cooled to nearly absolute zero, or close to minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit, eight orders of magnitude below room temperature. "I can safely say this is the coldest point in New York City," says Zelevinsky, an assistant professor of physics who may know more about cold than most people—she was born in Siberia. http://phys.org/news275132201.html Physics Wed, 19 Dec 2012 09:36:50 EST news275132201 (Phys.org)—As technology advances, it tends to shrink. From cell phones to laptops—powered by increasingly faster and tinier processors—everything is getting thinner and sleeker. And now light beams are getting smaller, too. http://phys.org/news274098495.html Physics Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:28:31 EST news274098495 (Phys.org)—An international research team led by David Smith of Duke University has created a new type of light absorbing material that is far cheaper to make than conventional methods. They describe their polymer coated gold base material dusted with tiny cubes of silver in their paper published in the journal Nature. http://phys.org/news274004449.html Nanotechnology Thu, 06 Dec 2012 08:50:01 EST news274004449 (Phys.org)—A microscale technique known as optical trapping uses beams of light as tweezers to hold and manipulate tiny particles. Stanford researchers have found a new way to trap particles smaller than 10 nanometers - and potentially down to just a few atoms in size – which until now have escaped light's grasp. http://phys.org/news273860695.html Nanotechnology Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:25:07 EST news273860695 (Phys.org)—While today's smart phones, tablets, and other small electronic devices rely on electrical data connections, in the future they may use optical connections in order to become even faster and smaller. Photonic crystals are ideal tools for this purpose, since they can guide and bend light on the nanometer scale. So far, researchers have not been able to look inside photonic crystals to measure how the light intensity is distributed. Now in a new study, a team of researchers from the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente, The Netherlands, has developed a method that can measure the intensity distribution of light inside photonic crystals. http://phys.org/news268331363.html Physics Tue, 02 Oct 2012 04:44:11 EST news268331363 Much like the checkout clerk uses a machine that scans the barcodes on packages to identify what customers bought at the store, scientists use powerful microscopes and their own kinds of barcodes to help them identify various parts of a cell, or types of molecules at a disease site. But their barcodes only come in a handful of "styles," limiting the number of objects scientists can study in a cell sample at any one time. http://phys.org/news267698578.html Chemistry Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:43:09 EST news267698578 (Phys.org)—The 'brightest' thing in nature, the Pollia condensata fruit, does not get its blue colour from pigment but instead uses structural colour – a method of reflecting light of particular wavelengths- new research reveals. The study was published today in the journal PNAS. http://phys.org/news266518304.html Biology Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:52:08 EST news266518304 (Phys.org)—Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology have demonstrated a low-noise device for changing the wavelength of light using nanofabricated waveguides created on a silicon-based platform using standard planar fabrication technology. http://phys.org/news266142803.html Physics Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:33:35 EST news266142803 (Phys.org)—The Fabry-Perot (FP) interferometer is one of the most fundamental and important optical instruments used for accurate measurements and control of the wavelength of light, and for making lasers. It is typically made of two parallel mirrors that successively reflect light back and forth in a cavity to create resonance. http://phys.org/news264924887.html Physics Thu, 23 Aug 2012 07:40:01 EST news264924887 Today, astronomers are releasing the highest-resolution images ever taken of the Sun's corona, or million-degree outer atmosphere, in an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength of light. The 16-megapixel images were captured by NASA's High Resolution Coronal Imager, or Hi-C, which was launched on a sounding rocket on July 11th. The Hi-C telescope provides five times more detail than the next-best observations by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. http://phys.org/news262024860.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:41:47 EST news262024860 Researchers at the University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering have developed a technique that enables metallic nanocrystals to self-assemble into larger, complex materials for next-generation antennas and lenses. The metal nanocrystals are cube-shaped and, like bricks or Tetris blocks, spontaneously organize themselves into larger-scale structures with precise orientations relative to one another. Their findings were published online June 10 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. http://phys.org/news258814322.html Nanotechnology Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:52:50 EST news258814322 (Phys.org) -- Researchers are edging toward the creation of new optical technologies using "nanostructured metamaterials" capable of ultra-efficient transmission of light, with potential applications including advanced solar cells and quantum computing. http://phys.org/news257092260.html Nanotechnology Thu, 24 May 2012 15:31:15 EST news257092260 Duke University engineers believe that continued advances in creating ever-more exotic and sophisticated man-made materials will greatly improve their ability to control light at will. http://phys.org/news251297369.html Physics Sun, 18 Mar 2012 14:00:34 EST news251297369 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of physicists from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Harvard University has developed a theory describing how to both detect weak electrical signals and cool electrical circuits using light and something very like a nanosized loudspeaker. If demonstrated through experiment, the work could have a tremendous impact on detection of low-power radio signals, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and the developing field of quantum information science. http://phys.org/news246703658.html Physics Wed, 25 Jan 2012 08:47:46 EST news246703658 Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have built a very simple nanoantenna that directs red and blue colours in opposite directions, even though the antenna is smaller than the wavelength of light. The findings – published in the online journal Nature Communications this week – can lead to optical nanosensors being able to detect very low concentrations of gases or biomolecules. http://phys.org/news235993147.html Nanotechnology Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:39:16 EST news235993147 By turning a common problem in chip manufacture into an advantage, MIT researchers produce structures only 30 atoms wide. http://phys.org/news234077185.html Nanotechnology Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:27:00 EST news234077185 Researchers are able to achieve extremely high-resolution microscopy through a process known as stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy. This cutting-edge imaging system has pushed the performance of microscopes significantly past the classical limit, enabling them to image features that are even smaller than the wavelength of light used to study them. They are able to achieve this extreme vision by using a single-color fluorescent dye that absorbs and releases energy, revealing cells and cellular components (such as proteins) in unprecedented detail. http://phys.org/news232799988.html Physics Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:10:01 EST news232799988 (PhysOrg.com) -- The atomic force microscope (AFM) is an important tool for nanoscale surface metrology. Typical AFMs map local tip-surface interactions by scanning a flexible cantilever probe over a surface. They rely on bulky optical sensing instrumentation to measure the motion of the probe, which limits the sensitivity, stability, and accuracy of the microscope, and precludes the use of probes much smaller than the wavelength of light. http://phys.org/news226231788.html Nanotechnology Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:10:09 EST news226231788 (PhysOrg.com) -- The ubiquitous barcodes found on product packaging provide information to the scanner at the checkout counter, but that's about all they do. Now, researchers at the Media Lab have come up with a new kind of very tiny barcode that could provide a variety of useful information to shoppers as they scan the shelves -- and could even lead to new devices for classroom presentations, business meetings, videogames or motion-capture systems. http://phys.org/news167924987.html Technology Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:00:02 EST news167924987 A new 3-minute test could help in diagnosing prostate cancer, the most common cancer in men in the UK, according to scientists. http://phys.org/news161933359.html Chemistry Tue, 19 May 2009 06:30:15 EST news161933359