news 2013

Paper: "Effect of Particle Diameter and Surface Composition on the Spontaneous Fusion of Monolayer-Protected Gold Nanoparticles with Lipid Bilayers" Gold nanoparticles with special coatings can deliver drugs or biosensors to a cell's interior without damaging it. Cells are very good at protecting their precious contents - and as a result, it's very difficult to penetrate their membrane walls to deliver drugs, nutrients or biosensors without damaging or destroying the cell.

Computer simulations conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) could help scientists make sense of a recently observed and puzzling wrinkle in one of nature's most important chemical processes. It turns out that calcium carbonate-the ubiquitous compound that is a major component of seashells, limestone, concrete, antacids and myriad other naturally and industrially produced substances-may momentarily exist in liquid form as it crystallizes from solution.

d The Daya Bay Neutrino Experiment is designed to provide new understanding of neutrino oscillations that can help answer some of the most mysterious questions about the universe. Shown here are the photomultiplier tubes in the Daya Bay detectors. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt) The international Daya Bay Collaboration has announced new results about the transformations of neutrinos – elusive, ghostlike particles that carry invaluable clues about the makeup of the early universe.

It is well known to scientists that the three common phases of water - ice, liquid and vapor - can exist stably together only at a particular temperature and pressure, called the triple point. Also well known is that the solid form of many materials can have numerous phases, but it is difficult to pinpoint the temperature and pressure for the points at which three solid phases can coexist stably.

Paper: "The Roche Limit for Close-orbiting Planets: Minimum Density, Composition Constraints, and Application to the 4.2 hr Planet KOI 1843.03" MIT team discovers an exoplanet that orbits its star in 8.5 hours. In the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night's sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year.

Researchers at Umeå University, together with researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University, show in a new study how nitrogen doped graphene can be rolled into perfect Archimedean nano scrolls by adhering magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles on the surface of the graphene sheets. The new material may have very good properties for application as electrodes in for example Li-ion batteries.

14 August 2013 Scientists using ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope have discovered that a curious dead star has been hiding one of the strongest magnetic fields in the Universe all along, despite earlier suggestions of an unusually low magnetic field. The object, known as SGR 0418+5729 (or SGR 0418 for short), is a magnetar, a particular kind of neutron star.

We should see new materials and solar cells that make use of this very soon Akshay Rao Organic solar cells, a new class of solar cell that mimics the natural process of plant photosynthesis, could revolutionise renewable energy - but currently lack the efficiency to compete with the more costly commercial silicon cells.

Organic solar cells that convert light to electricity using carbon-based molecules have shown promise as a versatile energy source but have not been able to match the efficiency of their silicon-based counterparts. Now, researchers have discovered a synthetic, high-performance polymer that behaves differently from other tested materials and could make inexpensive, highly efficient organic solar panels a reality.

An iconic moment in the history of Hollywood movie magic was born in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz when Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale stepped out of the black and white world of Kansas into the rainbow colored world of Oz. An iconic moment in the history of infrared imaging may have been born with the announcement of the first technique to offer full color IR tomography.

For quantum physicists, entangling quantum systems is one of their every day tools. Entanglement is a key resource for upcoming quantum computers and simulators. Now, physicists in Innsbruck/Austria and Geneva/Switzerland realized a new, reliable method to verify entanglement in the laboratory using a minimal number of assumptions about the system and measuring devices.

Layer of microscopic spheres offers new approach to controlling acoustic waves. In some ways, granular material - such as a pile of sand - can behave much like a crystal, with its close-packed grains mimicking the precise, orderly arrangement of crystalline atoms. Now researchers at MIT have pushed that similarity to a new limit, creating two-dimensional arrays of micrograins that can funnel acoustic waves, much as specially designed crystals can control the passage of light or other waves.

Scientists have discovered a 'cosmic factory' for producing the building blocks of life, amino acids, according to research. The team from Imperial College London, the University of Kent and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that when icy comets collide into a planet, amino acids can be produced.

Forming perfect porous polymer films is not enough; they need both large and small pores, and the process of making them needs to be simple, versatile and repeatable. Creatively combining already established techniques, Cornell materials researchers have devised a so-called hierarchical porous polymer film synthesis method that may help make these materials useful for applications ranging from catalysis to bioengineering.

July 31, 2013 — Scientists at the University of Miami (UM) and Rice University have figured out how synthetic molecules designed at Rice latch onto the amyloid peptide fibrils thought to be responsible for Alzheimer's disease. Their discovery could point the way toward therapies to halt or even reverse the insidious disease.

From solar cells to optoelectronic sensors to lasers and imaging devices, many of today's semiconductor technologies hinge upon the absorption of light. Absorption is especially critical for nano-sized structures at the interface between two energy barriers called quantum wells, in which the movement of charge carriers is confined to two-dimensions.

Sometimes a little disorder is precisely what's in order. Taking advantage of the sensitive nature of randomly scattered light, Yale University researchers have developed an ultra-compact, low-cost spectrometer with improved resolution over existing micro models. The innovation represents an advance in "lab-on-a-chip" technology, or the consolidation of laboratory capabilities in miniature, highly portable devices.

It might be easier than previously thought for a planet to overheat into the scorchingly uninhabitable "runaway greenhouse” stage, according to new research by astronomers at the University of Washington and the University of Victoria published July 28 Geoscience. In the runaway greenhouse stage, a planet absorbs more solar energy than it can give off to retain equilibrium.

Next generation screens could slash energy use in TVs, mobiles and tablet PCs following new research on molecules that emit and detect twisted light. Brightly lit displays are a big drain on the energy supplies of mobile devices. Current technologies, such as backlit LCD screens, produce text and images by streaming white light through a series of polarising and colour filters, a process that typically wastes over 75 per cent of the light.

Albert Einstein's assertion that there's an ultimate speed limit - the speed of light - has withstood countless tests over the past 100 years, but that didn't stop University of California, Berkeley, postdoc Michael Hohensee and graduate student Nathan Leefer from checking whether some particles break this law.