http://phys.org/physics-news/ en-us Phys.org Phys.org provides the latest news on physics, materials, nanotech, science and technology. Updated Daily. Materials belonging to the family of dilute magnetic oxides (DMOs)—an oxide-based variant of the dilute magnetic semiconductors—are good candidates for spintronics applications. This is the object of study for Davide Sangalli of the Microelectronics and Microsystems Institute (IMM) at the National Research Council (CNR), in Agrate Brianza, Italy, and colleagues. They recently explored the effect of iron (Fe) doping on thin films of a material called zirconia (ZrO2 oxide). For the first time, the authors bridged the gap between the theoretical predictions and the experimental measurements of this material, in a paper about to be published in EPJ B. http://phys.org/news288008030.html Physics 2013-05-17T11:30:02-07:00 An international team of scientists using a new X-ray method recorded the internal structure and cell movement inside a living frog embryo in greater detail than ever before. http://phys.org/news288002003.html Physics 2013-05-17T09:33:39-07:00 Spinning-disk confocal microscopy is an optical imaging technique that can be used to generate detailed three-dimensional fluorescence images of living cells and their contents. Although a powerful tool for observing dynamic processes in living organisms, it has proved difficult to use for all but the thinnest biological specimens. Motivated by a need to see more deeply into living cells, Yuko Mimori-Kiyosue at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology and colleagues have now made major technical improvements to the technique that deliver greatly improved resolution and clarity. http://phys.org/news288001026.html Physics 2013-05-17T09:17:19-07:00 Most cells exist in a hydrated state and often live suspended in solution. In order to be imaged, cells must generally be frozen or dried, and then stained with substances such as heavy metals. Unfortunately, these processes can also alter the structure and chemical composition of the cells, resulting in inaccurate observations. Imaging the internal structures of whole, intact cells in their natural state has therefore been a particular challenge for scientists. http://phys.org/news287999387.html Physics 2013-05-17T09:10:01-07:00 Andong He saw a phenomenon at work in his breakfast bowl that he couldn't explain. It prompted this question: How does cereal shape influence the way cereals floating in the milk join? http://phys.org/news287997193.html Physics 2013-05-17T08:13:22-07:00 An international collaboration of scientists has discovered a unique crystalizing behavior at the interface between two immiscible liquids that could aid in sustainable energy development. http://phys.org/news287996944.html Physics 2013-05-17T08:09:23-07:00 (Phys.org) —Physicists may have created the smallest drops of liquid ever made in the lab. That possibility has been raised by the results of a recent experiment conducted by Vanderbilt physicist Julia Velkovska and her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and most powerful particle collider located at the European Laboratory for Nuclear and Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland. Evidence of the minuscule droplets was extracted from the results of colliding protons with lead ions at velocities approaching the speed of light. http://phys.org/news287995914.html Physics 2013-05-17T07:52:11-07:00 A new window into the nature of the universe may be possible with a device proposed by scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno and Stanford University that would detect elusive gravity waves from the other end of the cosmos. Their paper describing the device and process was published in the prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters. http://phys.org/news287940091.html Physics 2013-05-16T16:21:37-07:00 A new tool being developed by UT Arlington assistant professor of physics could help scientists map and track the interactions between neurons inside different areas of the brain. http://phys.org/news287937996.html Physics 2013-05-16T15:46:42-07:00 University of Toronto engineering researchers, working with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, have published new insights into how materials transfer heat, which could lead eventually to smaller, more powerful electronic devices. http://phys.org/news287920772.html Physics 2013-05-16T10:59:48-07:00 (Phys.org) —A massive telescope in the Antarctic ice reports the detection of 28 extremely high-energy neutrinos that might have their origin in cosmic sources. Two of these reached energies greater than 1 petaelectronvolt (PeV), an energy level thousands of times higher than the highest energy neutrino yet produced in a manmade accelerator. http://phys.org/news287908466.html Physics 2013-05-16T07:34:49-07:00 Engineering researchers at the University of Michigan have demonstrated a paradigm-shifting "polariton" laser that's fueled not by light, but by electricity. http://phys.org/news287851057.html Physics 2013-05-15T15:37:46-07:00 Physicists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have found out how tiny islands of magnetic material align themselves when sorted on a regular lattice - by measurements at BESSY II. Contrary to expectations, the north and south poles of the magnetic islands did not arrange themselves in a zigzag pattern, but in chains. http://phys.org/news287850787.html Physics 2013-05-15T15:33:26-07:00 Second sound is a quantum mechanical phenomenon, which has been observed only in superfluid helium. Physicists from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Trento, Italy, have now proven the propagation of such a temperature wave in a quantum gas. The scientists have published their historic findings in the journal Nature. http://phys.org/news287841227.html Physics 2013-05-15T13:00:11-07:00 (Phys.org) —Detecting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could soon become far easier with the help of an innovative technique developed by a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where scientists have overcome an issue preventing the effective use of lasers to rapidly scan samples. http://phys.org/news287827779.html Physics 2013-05-15T09:30:11-07:00 (Phys.org) —Quantum dot LEDs (QLEDs) are a promising technology for creating large-area displays that could have applications for TVs, cell phones, and digital cameras. So far, however, the highest efficiencies of QLEDs have fallen short of those of organic LEDs (OLEDs), another large-area LED technology. Now in a new study, researchers have developed a new type of QLED with an efficiency and luminance that are the highest reported to date and comparable to state-of-the-art phosphorescent OLEDs. The new QLED's external quantum efficiency of 18% more than doubles the current highest value of which the researchers are aware, which is 8%. The efficiency is also close to the theoretical maximum for any planar thin-film LED, which is 20%. http://phys.org/news287764572.html Physics 2013-05-14T15:40:01-07:00 An international team of scientists, including a University of York researcher, has carried out ground-breaking experiments to investigate the atomic structure of astatine (Z=85), the rarest naturally occurring element on Earth. http://phys.org/news287688641.html Physics 2013-05-14T11:00:07-07:00 Like small children, scientists are always asking the question 'why?'. One question they've yet to answer is why nature picked quantum physics, in all its weird glory, as a sensible way to behave. Researchers Corsin Pfister and Stephanie Wehner at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore tackle this perennial question in a paper published today in Nature Communications. http://phys.org/news287689070.html Physics 2013-05-14T11:00:01-07:00 (Phys.org) —Today, Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that for the first time, irradiated uranium fuel has been recycled and reused for molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) production, with virtually no losses in Mo-99 yields or uranium recovery. This demonstrates the viability of the separation process, as well as the potential for environmentally- and cost-friendly fuel recycling. Medical isotope production technology has advanced significantly now that scientists have made key advances in separating Mo-99 from an irradiated, low-enriched uranium (LEU) solution. http://phys.org/news287740670.html Physics 2013-05-14T09:10:02-07:00 Researchers at the University of Twente's MESA+ research institute have given the first demonstration of how the drag exerted on liquids flowing through tiny "fluidic chips" is affected by the introduction of diminutive gas bubbles. Armed with this knowledge, scientists can directly manipulate flow resistance in a variety of applications involving combinations of liquids and gas bubbles. This could be useful in areas ranging from the manufacture of fizzy drinks to the development of artificial lungs. http://phys.org/news287741273.html Physics 2013-05-14T09:08:26-07:00 New York University physicists have uncovered how energy is released and dispersed in magnetic materials in a process akin to the spread of forest fires, a finding that has the potential to deepen our understanding of self-sustained chemical reactions. http://phys.org/news287667453.html Physics 2013-05-13T12:39:05-07:00 Researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden can now reveal the mechanism behind the curved path of a curling stone. The discovery by the researchers, who usually study friction and wear in industrial and technical applications, is now published in the scientific journal Wear. http://phys.org/news287667179.html Physics 2013-05-13T12:33:10-07:00 (Phys.org) —It is widely known that the optical properties of certain materials can be modified by using lasers to control the quantum states of their optical electrons. Lasers that can generate ultra-short pulses in the attosecond range at very high power can now be used to probe and control nanostructures like photonic crystals, metal hole arrays, and conductance in quantum dots. The light absorption spectrum of a material reveals critical details about its microstructure. Depending on different factors, this spectrum can take on a symmetric Lorentzian line shape, or an antisymmetric Fano line shape. A new paper in Science now demonstrates that this absorption profile can by changed from a Lorentzian shape, to a Fano shape, by manipulating laser intensity. Led by Christian Ott, from the Max Planck Institut in Germany, the researchers achieved this by co-propagating a broadband UV pulse train with a "few cycle" near-infrared (NIR) beam in a helium target. http://phys.org/news287662687.html Physics 2013-05-13T11:18:38-07:00 (Phys.org) —In today's wireless communication systems, the wireless signals are non-chaotic, meaning they have a well-defined period and frequency. Non-chaotic wireless signals are used in many applications, such as satellite communications, GPS navigation, cell phones, and Wi-Fi devices. However, as many people know first-hand, wireless systems usually have inferior performance compared to wired systems. The problem is due to physical impediments that the wireless signal faces in open space caused by the atmosphere, water, mountains, buildings, and other different media. Now in a new study, researchers have investigated how wireless communication could be implemented with chaotic signals, and found that chaotic signals could overcome some of these physical constraints and lead to superior performance. http://phys.org/news287642002.html Physics 2013-05-13T09:00:02-07:00 (Phys.org) —Harnessing the unique features of the quantum world promises a dramatic speed-up in information processing as compared to the fastest classical machines. Scientists from the Group of Philip Walther from the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna succeeded in prototyping a new and highly resource efficient model of a quantum computer – the boson sampling computer. The results will be published in the upcoming issue of the renowned scientific journal Nature Photonics. http://phys.org/news287650890.html Physics 2013-05-13T08:20:02-07:00 Improving our understanding of the human brain, gathering insights into the origin of our universe through the detection of gravitational waves, or optimizing the precision of GPS systems- all are difficult challenges to master because they require the ability to visualize highly fragile elements, which can be terminally damaged by any attempt to observe them. Now, quantum physics has provided a solution. In an article published in Nature Photonics, researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) report the observation of a highly fragile and volatile body through a new quantum-mechanical measurement technique. http://phys.org/news286955848.html Physics 2013-05-12T17:03:47-07:00 (Phys.org) —A team of researchers at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has developed a new class of metamaterials that allow for control of the spread of light in communications devices. As the team explains in their paper published in the journal Science, the new materials are able to alter the standard characteristics of light waves. http://phys.org/news287395536.html Physics 2013-05-10T09:50:01-07:00 Lasers are widely used in many areas of science, industry and medicine and the quality of the beams they produce needs to be measured to make sure they perform correctly. As electronic devices become smaller and smaller over time, these measurements become ever more important, as laser light needs to be directed onto smaller targets. http://phys.org/news287394702.html Physics 2013-05-10T09:40:01-07:00 X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) produce higher-power laser pulses over a broader range of energies compared with most other x-ray sources. Although the pulse durations currently available are enormously useful for the study of materials, even shorter pulses are needed to observe features such as electrons at subatomic scales. Takashi Tanaka from the RIKEN SPring-8 Center has now proposed a theoretical pulse-amplification scheme that allows for the production of ultrashort x-ray pulses at extremely high energies. http://phys.org/news287394015.html Physics 2013-05-10T08:50:01-07:00 Matter is categorized as either conductive, semi-conductive or resistive to the flow of electrons based on its bulk properties. However, physicists have now predicted a new state of matter in which the bulk of the material is insulating—resisting electron flow—but where electrons are free to move along its edges. The possibility of such a material, known as a 'topological insulator', has caused a great deal of excitement among physicists because its surface conducting states are unusually stable, making them a promising resource for use in quantum computers. Bohm-Jung Yang and Naoto Nagaosa from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and their co‐workers have now devised a general theory for how an insulator changes into a topological insulator, which should aid in the practical search for such materials. http://phys.org/news287393985.html Physics 2013-05-10T08:39:52-07:00