Applied Physics

Doped Rare Earth Iron Oxyarsenides Properties May Mean An Entirely New Kind Of Superconductor

Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 and has perplexed, astounded and inspired scientists since, but to most it can be thought of as "frictionless" electricity. In conventional electricity, heat is generated by friction as electrons (electric ...

Article - News Staff - May 28 2008 - 11:05pm

Nanowire Mesh Is A 'Paper Towel' For Oil Spills

MIT scientists say they have created a membrane, a mat of nanowires with the touch and feel of paper, that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil, and can be recycled many times for future use. The oil itself can also be recovered. Some 200,000 tons o ...

Article - News Staff - May 31 2008 - 9:32am

Genetic Mutation For Quadrupedality Gets Closer

The discovery of four families in which some members only walk on all fours (quadrupedality) may help us understand how humans, unlike other primates, are able to walk for long periods on only two legs, according to professor Tayfun Ozcelik, of Bilkent Uni ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 1 2008 - 5:40pm

UCSD Wants To Measure How Much Information There Is- In The Whole World

Getting an accurate picture of information and people is difficult. If you start counting people in China today, by the time you finish there are a lot more. Ditto with information. So you may get only a snapshot accurate to milliseconds. But researchers a ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 3 2008 - 11:26am

RepRap- Open Source Machine 'Prints' 3-D Objects, Including Copies Of Itself

Dr Adrian Bowyer, a senior lecturer in engineering in the Faculty of Engineering & Design at the University of Bath, has created RepRap, an open source prototype machine that has succeeded in making a duplicate of itself- by printing its own parts and ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 3 2008 - 11:34pm

No Stem Cells Needed- New Cartilage Grown Using Intense Pressure

Cartilage, a tissue in the human body that cannot heal itself, has long been a target of tissue engineers. Cartilage is the skeleton's shock absorber, and its stiffness, strength and other mechanical properties derive not from living cartilage cells b ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 4 2008 - 9:56am

Can Macro-Scale Chemical Engineering Tame Volcanic Eruptions?

Could macro-scale chemical engineering be used to stop a volcanic lava flow in its tracks and save potentially thousands of lives and homes when the next eruption occurs? R.D. Schuiling of Geochem Research BV, based in The Netherlands, thinks so. During th ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 5 2008 - 10:28am

Superconducting 'Universal Toolkit' Takes X-Rays To The Nano Scale

Technology-development studies at Cornell University and Jefferson Laboratory are showing how to use the brightest X-ray light ever generated for the scientific examination of everything from human proteins to forged art. X-ray beams from an energy-recover ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 7 2008 - 7:30am

Biometrics May Soon Identify You By The Way You Walk

Biometrics is commonly associated with retinal scans, iris recognition and DNA databases but researchers in India are working on another form of biometrics that could allow law enforcement agencies and airport security to recognize suspects- their characte ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 9 2008 - 3:12pm

NIPs Protein Discovery Could Clear Rice In Arsenic Environments

Arsenic is acutely toxic and a highly potent carcinogen, but is widespread in the earth's crust and easily taken up and accumulated in crops. Contaminated water is the main source of arsenic poisoning, followed by ingestion of arsenic-rich food, espec ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 9 2008 - 10:49pm