news 2011

A fundamental problem that has long puzzled scientists has been solved after more than 70 years. An international team of researchers has discovered a subtle electronic effect in magnetite, the most magnetic of all naturally occurring minerals. The effect causes a dramatic change to how this material conducts electricity at very low temperatures.

Discovery is of a fundamental interest for the development of future electronics A team of scientists, led by Guillaume Gervais from McGill's Physics Department and Mike Lilly from Sandia National Laboratories, has engineered one of the world's smallest electronic circuits. It is formed by two wires separated by only about 150 atoms or 15 nanometers (nm).

Hands-free information could stream across your lens, in a device that came one step closer to reality this week. In a new paper , University of Washington researchers demonstrated the safety of a prototype device tested in the eye of a rabbit. At the moment, the lens device contains only a single pixel of information, but the researchers say it is a proof of the concept that the device could be worn by a person.

by Steven Schultz Conventional wisdom would say that blocking a hole would prevent light from going through it, but Princeton University engineers have discovered the opposite to be true. A research team has found that placing a metal cap over a small hole in a metal film does not stop the light at all, but rather enhances its transmission.

Most exciting is that the Los Alamos researchers have shown that blinking can be controlled and even completely suppressed electrochemically. LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, November 9, 2011—Research by Los Alamos scientists published today documents significant progress in understanding the phenomenon of quantum-dot blinking.

A new technique which lets scientists 'see' our brain waves at work could revolutionise our understanding of the human body's most complex organ and help transform the lives of people suffering from schizophrenia and ADHD. Although, scientifically, the brain is the most studied organ in our body we still know relatively little about it.

Researchers have developed a form of crystal that can deliver highly accurate temperature readings, down to individual milli-kelvins, over a very broad range of temperatures: -120to +680 degrees centigrade. The researchers used a "birefringent" crystal which splits light passing through it into two separate rays.

UCL scientists are part of an international team which has developed a novel X-ray technique for imaging atomic displacements in materials with unprecedented accuracy. The team has applied the technique to determine how a recently discovered class of exotic materials - multiferroics - can be simultaneously both magnetically and electrically ordered.

Precise measurement of the molecular weight, size and density of a nanoparticle in a single procedure is now possible, thanks to an ultracentrifugation method. Although nanoparticles are used in a variety of domains - such as medicine, solar energy and photonics - there is still much about them to be discovered.

Internet connection speeds could be tens of times faster than they currently are, thanks to research by University of Manchester scientists using wonder material graphene. A collaboration between the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge, which includes scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, has discovered a crucial recipe for improving characteristics of graphene devices for use as photodetectors in future high-speed optical.

Environmentally friendly fuels are not just of interest for use in cars. The University of Birmingham has been operating a canal boat with a fuel cell drive for three years now.

Sunspots spawn solar flares that can cause billions of dollars in damage to satellites, networks and power grids. But researchers have developed a way to detect incipient sunspots as deep as 65,000 kilometers inside the sun, providing up to two days' advance warning of a damaging solar flare. Viewed from the technological perspective of modern humans, the sun is a seething cauldron of disruptive influences that can wreak havoc on communication systems, air travel, power grids and satellites - not to mention astronauts in space.

The effect can be seen just by poking a stick into the water; at the water surface, the light changes its direction, the stick appears to be bent. This tilt is described by the refractive index. For years, scientists have been trying to create special materials with a negative refractive index - their optical properties are quite different from those of normal materials.

Researchers have taken a step forward in studying the wonder material graphene and revealing its exciting electronic properties for future electronic applications. The academics have revealed more about the electronic properties of its slightly fatter cousin - bilayer graphene. The researchers, from the universities of Manchester, Lancaster (UK), Nijmegen (the Netherland) and Moscow (Russia), have studied in detail the effect of interactions between electrons on the electronic properties of bilayer graphene.

An electromagnetic three-phase motor will enable the watchmaking industry to build watches that are three times more efficient and that can include more applications.

Researchers have taken another step forward towards the understanding of wonder material graphene. Research institutes and universities around the world are already looking at ways to build devices such as touch-screen phones, ultrafast transistors and photodetectors. Now the new findings promise to accelerate that research, and potentially open up countless more electronic opportunities.

PASADENA, Calif.—Water really is everywhere. Two teams of astronomers, each led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. Looking from a distance of 30 billion trillion miles away into a quasar—one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos—the researchers have found a mass of water vapor that's at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world's oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun.

Hershey, Pa. Penn State College of Medicine announced Wednesday (July 13) that it will receive additional funding through Grand Challenges Explorations, an initiative created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that enables researchers worldwide to test unorthodox ideas that address persistent health and development challenges.

New MIT-developed materials make it possible to produce photovoltaic cells on paper or fabric, nearly as simply as printing a document. The sheet of paper looks like any other document that might have just come spitting out of an office printer, with an array of colored rectangles printed over much of its surface.

You are here: Home - News & Events - Press Releases - With a simple coating, nanowires show a dramatic increase in efficiency and sensitivity Development holds promise for photodetectors and energy harvesting applications like solar cells By applying a coating to individual silicon nanowires, researchers at Harvard and Berkeley have significantly improved the materials? efficiency and sensitivity.