Applied Physics

Countdown To The Large Hadron Collider

  The biggest ever science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, should be operational this summer.  Three years behind schedule and 30% over budget, the $8.7 billion LHC will collide protons together and lead ions next year, at colossal energies never b ...

Article - Alan Gillis - Sep 1 2008 - 9:40pm

New Catalyst Means Methanol Fuel Cells Are Still In The Mix

Over the past decades competition for fossil fuels and the concern that they are generating large quantities of contaminating gases have given rise to a growing scientific interest in the development of alternative energies. Most current research is focuse ...

Article - News Staff - May 5 2008 - 7:56pm

Cell-Based Sensor-On-A-Chip Applies Moore's Law To Cell Biology

Current biochemical detectors are slow and produce an unacceptable number of false readings because they are easily fooled by subtle differences between deadly pathogens and harmless substances. They simply cannot fully monitor or interpret the different w ...

Article - News Staff - May 6 2008 - 2:38pm

Foldit- Play A Video Game, Contribute To Medical Science

Like video games? Want to also solve puzzles for science? A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-d ...

Article - News Staff - May 8 2008 - 11:38am

CP29- The 'Dimmer' Switch Of Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is of great interest outside biology, specifically in the energy industry. Using photosynthesis, green plants are able to harvest energy from sunlight and convert it to chemical energy at an energy transfer efficiency rate of approximately 9 ...

Article - News Staff - May 9 2008 - 8:55am

MagnaLab And NazcaLab- Two New Machines That Make Stem Cell Research Easier

Stem cells, the body's wonder tool, are extremely versatile. They can develop in 220 different ways, transforming themselves into a correspondingly diverse range of specialized body cells. Biologists and medical scientists plan to make use of this dif ...

Article - News Staff - May 10 2008 - 5:46pm

PAIN Protein Discovery In Fruit Flies May Lead To Natural Painkillers

At first, fruit flies eat like horses. Hatching inside over-ripe fruit where they were laid, they feed wildly in the sugar-rich environment until nature sends them an offer they can’t refuse. To survive, they must leave the fruit, wander off and burrow int ...

Article - News Staff - May 11 2008 - 10:05pm

Turn Six Sigma Techniques Toward Green Energy

Six Sigma is a business strategy designed to use smarter data and methodology to reduce defects- six standard deviations between the mean and the nearest specification limit. Statistically it is 3.4 defects per million. Could this business practice be used ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2008 - 9:28am

New Bacteria-Resistant Films Are Only 50 Billionths Of A Meter Thick

MIT engineers have created ultrathin films made of polymers that could be applied to medical devices and other surfaces to control microbe accumulation. The inexpensive, easy-to-produce films could provide a valuable layer of protection for the health care ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2008 - 10:41pm

Nanotechnology Breakthrough Leads To Room Temperature T-Rays

Engineers and applied physicists from Harvard University have demonstrated the first room-temperature electrically-pumped semiconductor source of coherent Terahertz (THz) radiation, also known as T-rays. The breakthrough in laser technology, based upon com ...

Article - News Staff - May 19 2008 - 12:43am