Physicists shine a light on particle assembly (w/ video)

New York University physicists have developed a method for moving microscopic particles with the flick of a light switch. Their work, reported in the journal Science, relies on a blue light to prompt colloids to move and ...

Researchers develop a small-molecule switch to activate proteins

From growing teeth, bones, and tissue in skin and organs to creating enzymes and hormones, proteins are one of the most diverse and important elements of living organisms. But those varied purposes, along with the interconnectivity ...

How smart technology gadgets can avoid speed limits

Speed limits apply not only to traffic. There are limitations on the control of light as well, in optical switches for internet traffic, for example. Physicists at Chalmers University of Technology now understand why it is ...

Optogenetics -- Combination switch turns neurons on and off

(PhysOrg.com) -- Flies that display courtship behaviour at the press of a button, worms made to wriggle by remote control: since the dawn of optogenetics, scientists can turn nerve cells on and off using pulses of light. ...

A 3-D light switch for the brain

A new tool for neuroscientists delivers a thousand pinpricks of light to a chunk of gray matter smaller than a sugar cube. The new fiber-optic device, created by biologists and engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of ...

When the light is neither 'on' nor 'off' in the nanoworld

Whether the light in our living spaces is on or off can be regulated in everyday life simply by reaching for the light switch. However, when the space for the light is shrunk to a few nanometers, quantum mechanical effects ...

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