Atmospheric pressure plasma jet from a grounded electrode

Because they are portable and easy to operate at ambient temperatures, cold atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) should find innovative applications in biomedicine, materials science and fabrication industries. Research ...

Liquid crystals light way to better data storage

As cell phones and computers continue to shrink, many companies are seeking better ways to store hundreds of gigabytes of data in small, low-power devices.

Density-near-zero acoustical metamaterial made in China

When a sound wave hits an obstacle and is scattered, the signal may be lost or degraded. But what if you could guide the signal around that obstacle, as if the interfering barrier didn't even exist? Recently, researchers ...

Self-healing autonomous material comes to life

You've seen it in movies: the human-like, robot assassin quickly regenerates its structure after being damaged beyond recognition. This "Terminator" scenario is becoming less far-fetched as recent advances in structural health ...

If plants generate magnetic fields, they're not sayin'

Searching for magnetic fields produced by plants may sound as wacky as trying to prove the existence of telekinesis or extrasensory perception, but physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, are seriously looking ...

Tiny generators turn waste heat into power

The second law of thermodynamics is a big hit with the beret-wearing college crowd because of its implicit existential crunch. The tendency of a closed systems to become increasingly disordered if no energy is added or removed ...

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