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Danylo Zherebetskyy and his colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found unexpected traces of water in semiconducting nanocrystals. The water as a source of small ions for the surface of colloidal lead sulfide (PbS) nanoparticles allowed the team to explain just how the surface of these important particles are passivated, meaning how they achieve an overall balance of positive and negative ions.

Leukaemia drugs could help to improve treatments for blindness caused by abnormal blood vessel growth in the eye, finds new UCL research. The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, raises the possibility that medication prescribed for leukaemia could also be used to improve vision in patients with age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and other diseases caused by abnormal growth of blood vessels in the eye.

AUSTIN, Texas - Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have built the smallest, fastest and longest-running tiny synthetic motor to date. The team's nanomotor is an important step toward developing miniature machines that could one day move through the body to administer insulin for diabetics when needed, or target and treat cancer cells without harming good cells.

It's now more or less official: element 117 will have a seat at the periodic table. Earlier this month an international team of scientists that included researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's Nuclear Science Division found two atoms of superheavy element 117. The experiment, conducted at a particle accelerator at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany, builds on the previous 117 experiment by a different team working in Dubna, Russia in 2010 that identified six atoms of the superheavy element.

UCLA-led team creates 'diet control' technique that could have broad applications in manufacturing and medicine Matthew Chin Growth is a ubiquitous phenomenon in plants and animals. But it also occurs naturally in chemicals, metals and other inorganic materials. That fact has, for decades, posed a major challenge for scientists and engineers, because controlling the growth within materials is critical for creating products with uniform physical properties so that they can be used as components of machinery and electronic devices.

Something went wrong when gluing something? No problem. Researchers have developed a polymer structure which is capable of reversibly gluing materials together using nothing but light.

A new study has shed light on the first step of cloud formation, revealing that organic oxides - such as the molecule responsible for giving pine forests their smell - are a vital ingredient. The CLOUD experiment (Cosmic Leaving OUtdoor Droplets), conducted at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland by an international team, including academics from the University of Leeds, will help scientists to better understand the effect that clouds have on climate change.

CERN 's CLOUD experiment has shown that biogenic vapours emitted by trees and oxidised in the atmosphere have a significant impact on the formation of clouds, thus helping to cool the planet. These biogenic aerosols are what give forests seen from afar their characteristic blue haze. The CLOUD study shows that the oxidised biogenic vapours bind with sulphuric acid to form embryonic particles which can then grow to become the seeds on which cloud droplets can form.

A combination of nanotechnology and a unique twisting property of light could lead to new methods for ensuring the purity and safety of pharmaceuticals. Together, these technologies could help ensure that new drugs are safe and pure Ventsislav Valev A direct relationship between the way in which light is twisted by nanoscale structures and the nonlinear way in which it interacts with matter could be used to ensure greater purity for pharmaceuticals, allowing for 'evil twins' of drugs to be identified with much greater sensitivity.

A new study of preschools and day care centers finds that flame retardants are prevalent indoors, potentially exposing young children to chemicals known to be hazardous. The study, published online today (Thursday, May 15) in the journal Chemosphere , was led by researchers at UC Berkeley and funded by the California Air Resources Board.

New analysis of ancient Jian wares reveals the distinctive pottery contains an unexpected and highly unusual form of iron oxide. This rare compound, called epsilon-phase iron oxide, was only recently discovered and characterized by scientists and so far has been extremely difficult to create with modern techniques.

Taking a step toward much-coveted flexible electronics, an international research team that figured out how to coat an organic material as a thin film - like spreading butter on toast - wanted a closer look at why their spreadable organic semiconductor grew like it did. Enter Cornell scientists and the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), where a very tiny, extremely bright X-ray beam lit the way for high-speed movies showing how these organic molecules formed crystal lattices at the nanoscale.

Some years ago, Rudolf Grimm's team of quantum physicists in Innsbruck provided experimental proof of Efimov states - a phenomenon that until then had been known only in theory. Now they have also measured the second Efimov resonance of three particles in an ultracold quantum gas, thus, proving the periodicity of this universal physical phenomenon experimentally.

Carbon-rich planets may be more common than previously thought, according to new research by Yale University astronomers. Some of these planets, all located far beyond Earth's solar system, could contain vast deposits of graphite or diamonds, and their apparent abundance prompts new questions about the implications of carbon-intense environments for climate, plate tectonics, and other geological processes, as well as for life.

Yale University researchers have developed a simple method for controlling the "doping" of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), a chemical process that optimizes the tubes' properties. Reported April 29 in Nano Letters, the method could improve the utility of doped CNTs in a number of nanotechnologies and flexible electronics, including CNT-silicon hybrid solar energy cells.

Many people believe that free radicals, the sometimes-toxic molecules produced by our bodies as we process oxygen, are the culprit behind aging. Yet a number of studies in recent years have produced evidence that the opposite may be true. Now, researchers at McGill University have taken this finding a step further by showing how free radicals promote longevity in an experimental model organism, the roundworm C. elegans .

For years, scientists have had an itch they couldn't scratch. Even with the best microscopes and spectrometers, it's been difficult to study and identify molecules at the so-called mesoscale, a region of matter that ranges from 10 to 1000 nanometers in size. Now, with the help of broadband infrared light from the Advanced Light Source (ALS) synchrotron at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), researchers have developed a broadband imaging technique that looks inside this realm with unprecedented sensitivity and range.

07 May 2014 Scientists have used state-of-the-art imaging techniques to examine the cracks, fractures and breaks in the bones of a 150 million-year-old predatory dinosaur. The University of Manchester researchers say their groundbreaking work - using synchrotron-imaging techniques - sheds new light, literally, on the healing process that took place when these magnificent animals were still alive.

The stage is set for a new, super-heavy element to be added to the periodic table following research published in the latest Physics Review Letters, by a multinational team of physicists and chemists, including researchers from The Australian National University. Led by researchers at Germany's GSI laboratory, the team created atoms of element 117, matching the heaviest atoms ever observed, which are 40 per cent heavier than an atom of lead.

Transparent conductive films are now an integral part of our everyday lives. Whether in smartphones, tablets, laptops, flat screens or (on a larger scale) in solar cells.