news 2017

The team demonstrates that using their "designer" quantum dots, they can achieve light amplification in a nanocrystal solid with direct-current electrical pumping. We have been working to develop new lasing media, using chemically synthesized quantum dots, although it had been widely believed that quantum dot lasing with electrical stimulation is simply impossible.

New research suggests that few people, if any, should be asked to leave their homes after a big nuclear accident, which is what happened in March 2011 following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. This is the main finding of a multi-university research study led by Philip Thomas, Professor of Risk Management at the University of Bristol, involving the universities of Manchester and Warwick, The Open University and City, University of London.

For the first time, physicists have developed a technique that can peer deep beneath the surface of a material to identify the energies and momenta of electrons there. The energy and momentum of these electrons, known as a material's "band structure," are key properties that describe how electrons move through a material.

Some scientists speculate these extra positrons have an exotic origin, such as yet-undetected processes involving dark matter. HAWC, with its wide field of view, measures the gamma rays made by the positrons as they move away from the pulsar. And we see the positrons are not moving fast enough to make it to Earth.

In large parts of the developing world, people have abundant heat from the sun during the day, but most cooking takes place later in the evening when the sun is down, using fuel - such as wood, brush or dung - that is collected with significant time and effort. Now, a new chemical composite developed by researchers at MIT could provide an alternative.

Multiband tunable antennas are a critical part of many communication and radar systems. New research by engineers at the University of Bristol has shown significant advances in antennas by using optically induced plasmas in silicon to tune both radiation patterns and operation frequency. Conventional antenna tuning is performed with diodes or Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) switches.

Measurements at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI further constrain theories about the nature of dark matter Experts are largely in agreement that a major portion of the mass in the universe consists of so-called dark matter. Its nature, however, remains completely obscure. One kind of hypothetical elementary particle that might make up the dark matter is the so-called axion.

Hunt for dark matter is narrowed by new University of Sussex research Scientists at the University of Sussex have disproved the existence of a specific type of axion - an important candidate 'dark matter' particle - across a wide range of its possible masses. The data were collected by an international consortium, the Neutron Electric Dipole Moment (nEDM) Collaboration, whose experiment is based at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland.

An international team of astronomers have discovered, for the first time, observational evidence in how some features at the surface of the hot massive supergiant star 'Zeta Puppis' induce the formation of fundamental structures in its wind. In contrast to cool low-mass stars like the Sun, hot massive stars are scarce, possess extremely strong winds, and catastrophically end their lives as supernovae that stir up and enrich the interstellar medium with chemical elements involved in the creation of new stars and even planets like Earth.

Researchers at MIT and Paris Descartes University have developed a new optogenetic technique that sculpts light to target individual cells bearing engineered light-sensitive molecules, so that individual neurons can be precisely stimulated. Until now, it has been challenging to use optogenetics to target single cells with such precise control over both the timing and location of the activation.

By organizing pigments on a DNA scaffold, an MIT-led team of researchers has designed a light-harvesting material that closely mimics the structure of naturally occurring photosynthetic structures. The researchers showed that their synthetic material can absorb light and efficiently transfer its energy along precisely controlled pathways.

Research news Scientists in Munich have completed the first detailed simulation of the Sumatra earthquake that triggered a devastating tsunami on Christmas 2004. The results of the largest-ever rupture dynamics simulation of an earthquake offer new insights into the underlying geophysical processes. It was performed on the SuperMUC supercomputer at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center (LRZ) of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich.

Researchers from Empa have developed a flexible material that generates electricity when stressed. In future, it might be used as a sensor, integrated into clothing or even implanted in the human body, for instance, to power a pacemaker.

A new study led by ANU has shed light on how the earliest forms of life evolved on Earth about four billion years ago. In a major advance on previous work, the study found a compound commonly used in hair bleach, hydrogen peroxide, made the eventual emergence of life possible. Lead researcher Associate Professor Rowena Ball from ANU said hydrogen peroxide was the vital ingredient in rock pores around underwater heat vents that set in train a sequence of chemical reactions that led to the first forms of life.

With a new method for modifying antibodies, drugs are developped showing more stability and, thus, having fewer side-effects. At the time Spycher, a postdoctoral radiopharmaceutical researcher at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, was concerned with the question of how active agents could be bound to antibodies more efficiently.

In its final years of operation, a particle collider in Northern California was refocused to search for signs of new particles that might help fill in some big blanks in our understanding of the universe. A fresh analysis of this data, co-led by physicists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), limits some of the hiding places for one type of theorized particle - the dark photon, also known as the heavy photon - that was proposed to help explain the mystery of dark matter.

Hydrogen-based solar energy storage and biosensing techniques could be dramatically improved after University of Sydney researchers show the validity of theory first proposed in 1931. Researchers at the University of Sydney have applied quantum techniques to understanding the electrolysis of water, which is the application of an electric current to H2O to produce the constituent elements hydrogen and oxygen.

Researchers have determined how certain liquids stiffen in response to powerful impacts. At first glance, colloids resemble homogeneous liquids such as milk or blood plasma. But in fact they consist of particles in suspension. Some colloids have remarkable properties: they may stiffen following an impact and absorb surface shocks.

The largest study to date of body sizes over millions of years finds a "pulse and stasis" pattern to hominin evolution, with surges of growth in stature and bulk occurring at different times. At one stage, our ancestors got taller around a million years before body mass caught up.

For the first time, scientists have directly detected gravitational waves - ripples in space and time - in addition to light from the spectacular collision of two neutron stars. This is the first time that astronomers have been able to study the same event with both gravitational waves and light. The discovery was made using the U.S.-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO); the Europe-based Virgo detector, and some 70 groundand space-based observatories.