Applied Physics

Not Just Christmas: Physicists Invoke Dreidel Metaphor To Discuss Nanowires

A new hypothetical material offers the tantalizing possibility of a signal path smaller than the nanowires for advanced electronics. Yes, theoretical materials. It must be the weekend. Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and postdoctoral ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 17 2012 - 4:56pm

Better Than SST: Energy-Efficient Computer Memory Uses Voltage Rather Than Current

By using voltage instead of current, researchers say they have made major improvements to magnetoresistive random access memory- MRAM-  a faster, higher-capacity class of computer memory. Current, magnetic memory is based on spin-transfer torque (STT), wh ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 16 2012 - 11:48am

'Evaporative Cooling'- Now In Molecules!

Evaporative cooling has been used to cool atoms to extraordinarily low temperatures. The process was used in 1995 to create a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of rubidium atoms (see Nobel laureate Carl Wieman and his Science 2.0 art ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2012 - 4:30pm

Press-On Solar Panels: Peel, Stick, Energize

Solar panels are easily susceptible to mechanical problems.  Storms, leaves, you name it- but some of that is because they are rigid.  That rigidity also limits their applications. New flexible, decal-like solar panels that can be peeled off like band-aid ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2012 - 10:43am

Below Absolute Zero- Boltzmann Distribution In Gas Gets Inverted

On the Kelvin Scale, the absolute temperature used by physicists, it is not possible to get colder than zero degrees kelvin. The physical meaning of the temperature of a gas is determined by chaos, the disordered movement of its particles. The colder the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2013 - 10:51pm

The Kilogram Is Heavier Than It Used To Be Too

Feel heavier after the holidays? Newcastle University says you are not alone. Their Theta-probe XPS machine, the only one of its kind in the world, has shown that the original kilogram is also heavier- at least compared to when it became the metric standa ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 7 2013 - 5:31am

Degradable Plastic Implants And Adult Stem Cells Make Light Work Of Broken Bones

Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton have brought the science of repairing broken bones into the 21st century, using adult bone stem cells combined with a degradable lightweight plastic  that encourages real bone to re-grow. ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 8 2013 - 11:56am

How To Better Detect Wind Turbine Failures

Wind energy is not very efficient and activists have turned on it because 300,000 out of 10,000,000,000 birds are killed by wind turbines each year. Without subsidies it would not exist but exist it does, only now manufacturers have had to discover physic ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 21 2013 - 11:03am

Intense Terahertz Pulses Can Induce DNA Repair

Terahertz (THz) radiation, in the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light, is rapidly finding important uses in medical diagnostics, security, and scientific research.  But researchers are pursuing answers regarding potential human ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 14 2013 - 12:08pm

Antimatter Magnetism Measured

A team of Harvard scientists have succeeding in measuring the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter more accurately, by capturing individual protons and antiprotons in a "trap" created by electric and magnetic fields and p ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 25 2013 - 10:48am