Scientists have developed the first liquid nanoscale laser and it's tunable in real time, meaning you can quickly and simply produce different colors, a unique and useful feature. The laser technology could lead to practical applications, such as a new form of a "lab on a chip" for medical diagnostics.The laser's color can be changed in real time when the liquid dye in the microfluidic channel above the laser's cavity is changed.

The brain function of people addicted to cocaine is different from that of people who are not addicted, and often linked to highly impulsive behavior. The variation in the way that different regions of the brain connect, communicate and function in people addicted to cocaine is an observation published in NeuroImage: Clinical. 

Cocaine addiction exists among an estimated 800,000 people in the U.S. alone, but despite decades of attempts, FDA-approved medications for cocaine use disorder remain to be discovered. 

Researchers have shown that a laser-generated microplasma in air can be used as a source of broadband terahertz radiation.

In a paper published this week in Optica, Fabrizio Buccheri and Xi-Cheng Zhang demonstrate that an approach for generating terahertz waves using intense laser pulses in air - first pioneered in 1993 - can be done with much lower power lasers, a major challenge until now. Ph.D. student and lead author Buccheri explains that they exploited the underlying physics to reduce the necessary laser power for plasma generation. He adds that it could potentially be improved for applications in the monitoring of explosives or drugs.

The first large international study to investigate the late side-effects of a combination of two forms of brachytherapy to treat cervical cancer has shown that the technique successfully delivers higher radiation doses to the tumour without an increase in treatment-related problems afterwards.

It's not a surprise that in a modern materialistic society, the desire to buy the latest iGimmick will lead to sadness if the money to do so is not available but we fortunately have the statistics to back that up. The recent Great Recession was accompanied by a significant and sustained  major depression claims by U.S. adults, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

A research team has provided ground-truth for a method of measuring plant photosynthesis on a global scale: from low-Earth orbit.