News tagged with optical tweezers

The Power of Light: Moving Macroscopic Amounts of Matter

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since 1970, scientists have been working with “optical tweezers” - lasers that move microscopic amounts of matter using forces originating from the light matter interaction. Now, for the first ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jan 29, 2009 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (12) | comments 17 feature

Scientists isolate, hold, photograph individual Rubidium 85 atom

(PhysOrg.com) -- In a major physics breakthrough, University of Otago scientists have developed a technique to consistently isolate and capture a fast-moving neutral atom - and have also seen and photographed ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 01, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (44) | comments 26 | with audio podcast

Physicists prove Einstein wrong with observation of instantaneous velocity in Brownian particles

A century after Albert Einstein said we would never be able to observe the instantaneous velocity of tiny particles as they randomly shake and shimmy, so called Brownian motion, physicist Mark Raizen and his ...

Physics / General Physics

created May 20, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (44) | comments 32 | with audio podcast

Micro-ear lets scientists eavesdrop on the micro-world

(PhysOrg.com) -- Acting as a microscope for sound, a new device called a micro-ear could make objects on the micro-scale audible. The device could enable scientists to listen to the sounds that cells and bacteria ...

Technology / Engineering

created Feb 26, 2010 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (14) | comments 1 | with audio podcast report

Small optical force can budge nanoscale objects

(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineering researchers have used a very tiny beam of light with as little as 1 milliwatt of power to move a silicon structure up to 12 nanometers.

Nanotechnology / Nanophysics

created Nov 17, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (16) | comments 0

Tailoring the optical dipole force for use on molecules

(PhysOrg.com) -- "Scientists have been working with dipole fields for quite some time," Peter Barker tells PhysOrg.com. "However, most of the work is focused on very small particles, like atoms, or on larger particles, such a ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 29, 2009 | popularity 3.5 / 5 (6) | comments 1 feature

Acoustic tweezers can position tiny objects

(PhysOrg.com) -- Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Aug 28, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 1

Gene transcribing machine takes halting, backsliding trip along the DNA

(PhysOrg.com) -- The body's nanomachines that read our genes don't run as smoothly as previously thought, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Jul 30, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 1

We need to talk: How cells communicate to activate notch

During formation of multi-cellular organisms, cells need to talk to each other to make critical decisions as to what kind of cell to become, as well as when and where to become that cell type. The Notch signaling system allows ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created May 31, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Light touch keeps a grip on delicate nanoparticles

(Phys.org) -- Using a refined technique for trapping and manipulating nanoparticles, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have extended the trapped particles' useful life ...

Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine

created May 03, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Tailored optical material from DNA: Nano spiral staircases modify light

In the human body genetic information is encoded in double-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid building blocks, the so-called DNA. Using artificial DNA molecules, an international team of scientists headed by the ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Mar 14, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Optical nanoantennas enable efficient multipurpose particle manipulation

University of Illinois researchers have shown that by tuning the properties of laser light illuminating arrays of metal nanoantennas, these nano-scale structures allow for dexterous optical tweezing as well ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jan 12, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Manipulating single molecules to unravel secrets of protein folding

Physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) are opening a new window into the life of biological cells, using a technique that lets them grab the ends of a single protein molecule and pull, making ...

Physics / General Physics

created Oct 27, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (6) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

'Next-generation' optical tweezers trap tightly without overheating (w/ video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers at Harvard have created a device that may make it easier to isolate and study tiny particles such as viruses.

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 26, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Previously unaccounted mechanism proposed for cell phone radiation damage

(PhysOrg.com) -- The long running debate on whether cell phones are capable of damaging human tissue and causing health problems received new fuel from a paper published at arXiv by theoretical biologist Bill Bruno from Los Alamos National Laborato ...

Physics / General Physics

created Apr 29, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (14) | comments 24 | with audio podcast report