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How would electrons behave if confined to a wire so slender they could pass through it only in single-file? The question has intrigued scientists for more than half a century. In 1950, Japanese Nobel Prize winner Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, followed by American physicist Joaquin Mazdak Luttinger in 1963, came up with a mathematical model showing that the effects of one particle on all others in a one-dimensional line would be much greater than in twoor three-dimensional spaces.

The discovery of a material that has a similar electronic structure to graphene but can exist in three dimensions, instead of a flat sheet like graphene, could lead to faster transistors and more compact hard drives. An international team, led by scientists from Oxford University, Stanford University, and Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source, has discovered that sodium bismuthate can exist as a form of quantum matter called a three-dimensional topological Dirac semi-metal (3DTDS).

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Nanotechnology for diagnosing and treating prostate cancer will be the focus of a five-year, $1.58 million grant by the National Institutes of Health to Penn State and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Jian Yang, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Jer-Tsong Hsieh, the Dr. John McConnell Distinguished Chair in Prostate Cancer Research at Texas, will be co-principal investigators.

The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene - the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon - promises exciting new things to come for the high-tech industry, including much faster transistors and far more compact hard drives.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Nanotechnology for diagnosing and treating prostate cancer will be the focus of a five-year, $1.58 million grant by the National Institutes of Health to Penn State and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Jian Yang, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Jer-Tsong Hsieh, the Dr. John McConnell Distinguished Chair in Prostate Cancer Research at Texas, will be co-principal investigators.

A breakthrough for the field of Spintronics, a new type of technology which it is widely believed could be the basis of a future revolution in computing, has been announced by scientists in Cambridge. The results offer a glimpse into a future in which super-computing could be far more energy-efficient Jason Robinson The research, reported , provides the first evidence that superconductors could be used as an energy-efficient source for so-called "spin-based" devices, which are already starting to appear in microelectronic circuits.

"The interface is the device," Nobel laureate Herbert Kroemer famously observed, referring to the remarkable properties to be found at the junctures where layers of different materials meet. In today's burgeoning world of nanotechnology, the interfaces between layers of metal oxides are becoming increasingly prominent, with applications in such high-tech favorites as spintronics, high-temperature superconductors, ferroelectrics and multiferroics.

Video and computer games have seen a huge rise in popularity worldwide. The fact that such games provide an immersive virtual experience has led to public concerns, often articulated in the media, about a possible link between gaming and real world aggression. However, a new study by the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University has found that although the general population has a diverse set of attitudes towards gaming, our belief in whether there is a link between video and computer games and aggressive behaviour is often influenced by whether we have actual experience of gaming.

A team of material scientists, chemical engineers and physicists from the University of Pennsylvania has made another advance in their effort to use liquid crystals as a medium for assembling structures. In their earlier studies, the team produced patterns of "defects," useful disruptions in the repeating patterns found in liquid crystals, in nanoscale grids and rings.

New analysis shows that policies addressing energy consumption and technology choices individually can play an important part in reducing emissions. Discussions on curbing climate change tend to focus on comprehensive, emissions-focused measures: a global cap-and-trade scheme aimed at controlling carbon, or a tax on all carbon emissions.

13 Dec 2013 University of Manchester scientists have helped demonstrate that long, structurally well-defined ribbons of graphene can be made. Writing , researchers used different characterisation techniques, including Raman spectroscopy - led by Dr Cinzia Casiraghi and her group - to confirm that these ribbons, called GNRs, are structurally well-defined and have excellent charge-carrier mobility.

For a copy of the paper, go to http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/103/20/10. Nano Electronic Diamond Devices and Systems group Researchers at the University of Glasgow have found an improved method to introduce mobile electronic charge into synthetic diamond. The improved method will increase the stability and performance of electronic components such as transistors made from diamond and lead to a new generation of tough and durable electronic systems that could be used in space.

In magneto-electric materials, electric and magnetic vibrations can be coupled to "electromagnons". High hopes are placed on this technology, a breakthrough could now be achieved at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien).

A new modelling technique has been developed that could eliminate the need to build costly prototypes, which are used to test engineering structures such as aeroplanes. The study, by Dr Róbert Szalai at the University of Bristol, is published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society A .

New work by researchers at UC Berkeley could soon transform the building blocks of modern electronics by making nanomagnetic switches a viable replacement for the conventional transistors found in all computers. Semiconductor-based transistors, the on-off switches that direct the flow of electricity and form a computer's nervous system, have been consuming greater chunks of power at increasingly hotter temperatures as processing speeds grow.

AUSTIN, Texas — When it comes to the growth of graphene - an ultrathin, ultrastrong, all-carbon material - it is survival of the fittest, according to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. The team used surface oxygen to grow centimeter-size single graphene crystals on copper. The crystals were about 10,000 times as large as the largest crystals from only four years ago.

MIT researchers make surfaces that are easier to cool under extreme heat; finding could benefit power plants, electronics. When an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2011, knocking out emergency power supplies, crews sprayed seawater on the reactors to cool them - to no avail.

Using brain recordings and a computer model, an interdisciplinary team confounds the conventional wisdom about how the brain sorts out relevant versus irrelevant sensory inputs in making choices. While eating lunch you notice an insect buzzing around your plate. Its color and its motion both could influence how you respond.

From supersensitive detections of magnetic fields to quantum information processing, the key to a number of highly promising advanced technologies may lie in one of the most common defects in diamonds. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have taken an important step towards unlocking this key with the first ever detailed look at critical ultrafast processes in these diamond defects.

Data could aid in rehabilitation from strokes, other motor disorders. For most healthy bipeds, the act of walking is seldom given a second thought: One foot follows the other, and the rest of the body falls in line, supported by a system of muscle, tendon, and bones. Upon closer inspection, however, locomotion is less straightforward.