Researchers discover a metamaterial with inherently robust sound transport

Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York and at the City College of New York (CCNY) have developed a metamaterial that can transport sound in unusually robust ways along its edges and localize it at its corners.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Qc7iyJ

Discovery of topological LC circuits transporting EM waves without backscattering

NIMS has succeeded in fabricating topological LC circuits arranged in a honeycomb pattern where electromagnetic (EM) waves can propagate without backscattering, even when pathways turn sharply. These circuits may be suitable for use as high-frequency electromagnetic waveguides, which would allow miniaturization and high integration in electronic devices such as mobile phones.

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Our universe: An expanding bubble in an extra dimension

Uppsala University researchers have devised a new model for the universe – one that may solve the enigma of dark energy. Their new article, published in Physical Review Letters, proposes a new structural concept, including dark energy, for a universe that rides on an expanding bubble in an additional dimension.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2EUhYRy

Electronics of the future: A new energy-efficient mechanism using the Rashba effect

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology proposed new quasi-1-D materials for potential spintronic applications, an upcoming technology that exploits the spin of electrons. They performed simulations to demonstrate the spin properties of these materials and explained the mechanisms behind their behavior.

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Nucleus-specific X-ray stain for 3-D virtual histology

Histology is used to identify structural details of tissue at the microscale in the pathology lab, but analyses remain two-dimensional (2D) as they are limited to the same plane. Nondestructive 3D technologies including X-ray micro and nano-computed tomography (nanoCT) have proven validity to understand anatomical structures, since they allow arbitrary viewing angles and 3D structural detail. However, low attenuation of soft tissue has hampered their application in the field of 3D virtual histology. In a recent study, now published on Scientific Reports, Mark Müller and colleagues at the Department of Physics and Bioengineering have developed a hematein-based X-ray staining method to specifically target cell nuclei, followed by demonstrations on a whole liver lobule of a mouse.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2QUnl9w

Electrically charged Higgs versus physicists: 1-0 until break

The last missing particle of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson, was discovered in 2012 in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. Since then, searching for new, related particles has been underway. Predicted by various theories that go beyond known physics, Higgs bosons with positive or negative electric charge are among the candidates to be observed. But do these particles really exist?

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Cold atoms offer a glimpse of flat physics

These days, movies and video games render increasingly realistic 3-D images on 2-D screens, giving viewers the illusion of gazing into another world. For many physicists, though, keeping things flat is far more interesting.

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Next generation of scientists for modelling and analysing complex systems

Quantitative models based on nonlinear dynamics and complex systems are frequently used in various areas ranging from climate research to neuroscience to power networks. Such systems, including biological organisms, consist of interacting units with oscillatory elements. For example, several measurable quantities in living systems such as blood flow, respiration and brain activity are oscillatory and their frequencies and amplitudes vary in time, often in an almost deterministic and nearly periodic manner. It's crucial to understand these time-variable oscillations in order to develop applications in fields like physiology and medicine.

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'Kondo metamagnet' is first in a family of eccentric quantum crystals

There's an oddball in most families, but Rice University physicist Emilia Morosan has discovered an entire clan of eccentric compounds that could help explain the mysterious electronic and magnetic workings of other quantum materials engineers are eying for next-generation computers and electronics.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2EGP5bm

The coolest experiment in the universe

What's the coldest place you can think of? Temperatures on a winter day in Antarctica dip as low as -120ºF (-85ºC). On the dark side of the Moon, they hit -280ºF (-173ºC). But inside NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory on the International Space Station, scientists are creating something even colder.

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New insights into pion condensation and the formation of neutron stars

In 1973, Russian physicist A.B. Migdal predicted the phenomenon of pion condensation above a critical, extremely high—several times higher than that for normal matter— nuclear density. Although this condensation has never been observed, it is expected to play a key role in the rapid cooling process of the core of neutron stars. These city-size heavy stellar objects are so dense that on Earth, one teaspoonful would weigh a billion tons.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Cr0qK6

Beyond the black hole singularity

Our first glimpses into the physics that exist near the center of a black hole are being made possible using "loop quantum gravity"—a theory that uses quantum mechanics to extend gravitational physics beyond Einstein's theory of general relativity. Loop quantum gravity, originated at Penn State and subsequently developed by a large number of scientists worldwide, is opening up a new paradigm in modern physics. The theory has emerged as a leading candidate to analyze extreme cosmological and astrophysical phenomena in parts of the universe, like black holes, where the equations of general relativity cease to be useful.

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Team creates and demonstrates first quantum sensor for satellite gravimetry

NASA and the Sunnyvale, California-based AOSense, Inc., have successfully built and demonstrated a prototype quantum sensor capable of obtaining highly sensitive and accurate gravity measurements—a stepping stone toward next-generation geodesy, hydrology, and climate-monitoring missions in space.

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A major step closer to a viable recording material for future hard disk drives

Magnetic recording is the primary technology underpinning today's large-scale data storage. Now, companies are racing to develop new hard disk devices (HDDs) capable of recording densities greater than 1 terabit per square inch.

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Amoeba finds approximate solutions to NP-hard problem in linear time

Researchers have demonstrated that an amoeba—a single-celled organism consisting mostly of gelatinous protoplasm—has unique computing abilities that may one day offer a competitive alternative to the methods used by conventional computers.

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Why does nuclear fission produce pear-shaped nuclei?

Nuclear fission is a process in which a heavy nucleus split into two. Most of the actinides nuclei (plutonium, uranium, curium, etc) fission asymmetrically with one big fragment and one small. Empirically, the heavy fragment presents on average a xenon element (with charge number Z=54) independently from the initial fissioning nucleus. To understand the mechanism that determines the number of protons and neutrons in each of the two fragments has been a longstanding puzzle.

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Analyzing 3-D neutron polarization under high pressure

A joint research team consisting of NIMS, JAEA and the Institut Laue Langevin has developed a high-pressure cell composed of completely nonmagnetic materials. The team then succeeded for the first time in analyzing neutron polarization in three dimensions at an extremely high pressure of several gigapascals using the cell. This technique is applicable to detailed analysis of electron spin arrangements. The team also discovered a material with potential as a next-generation PC memory material due to the multiferroic properties it exhibited under high pressure. The technique may be used to understand pressure-induced changes in electron spin arrangements in various materials and to develop new materials by controlling spins.

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Researchers develop non-destructive method to measure the salt content of concrete structures

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics (RAP) have used a method, using the RANS compact neutron source, to non-destructively measure the salt content of structures such as bridges, tunnels, and elevated roadways, which can suffer from degradation due to exposure to salt from seawater and other sources.

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Better security achieved with randomly generating biological encryption keys

Data breaches, hacked systems and hostage malware are frequently topics of evening news casts—including stories of department store, hospital, government and bank data leaking into unsavory hands—but now a team of engineers has an encryption key approach that is unclonable and not reverse-engineerable, protecting information even as computers become faster and nimbler.

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Precision experiment first to isolate, measure weak force between protons, neutrons

A team of scientists has for the first time measured the elusive weak interaction between protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom. They had chosen the simplest nucleus consisting of one neutron and one proton for the study.

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New study on low noise and high-performance transistors could bring innovations in electronics, sensing

A research study on low noise and high-performance transistors led by Suprem Das, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, in collaboration with researchers at Purdue University, was recently published by Physical Review Applied.

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Radium revealed: 120 years since the Curies found the most radioactive substance on the planet

Scientific discovery can be achingly slow, but it was moving swiftly in the 1890s. X-rays had been discovered in Germany just a few days before Christmas in 1895. Several months later, while researching these new X-rays, the French physicist Henri Becquerel accidentally discovered another new mysterious type of ray when he detected radiation emitting from uranium.

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Scientists find a way to connect quantum and classical physics

Physicists from Skoltech have invented a new method for calculating the dynamics of large quantum systems. Underpinned by a combination of quantum and classical modeling, the method has been successfully applied to nuclear magnetic resonance in solids. The results of the study were published in Physical Review B.

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Physics instructor writes book on shock waves

A sonic boom and a thunderclap may seem like different phenomena, but their behavior is the same, according to SDState Physics Instructor W. Robert Matson. This is one of the ways he explains shock waves in "Sonic Thunder," his latest book.

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Proton scattering reveals the secrets of strongly-correlated proton-neutron pairs in atomic nuclei

The nuclear force that holds protons and neutrons together in the center of atoms has a non-central component—the tensor force, which depends on the spin and relative position of the interacting particles.

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GlueX completes first phase

An experiment that aims to gain new insight into the force that binds all matter together has recently completed its first phase of data collection at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

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Correlation between the structure and magnetic properties of ceramics

A team of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (BFU) together with an international scientific group has studied a correlation between the structure of ceramic materials based on bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) and their magnetic properties. In their work, the scientists determined the factors that affect structural evolution of materials and changes in their magnetic behavior. The work will help create new ceramic materials with given properties. The article was published in the Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids.

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Adventures in phase space: Unified map on plastic and elastic glasses

Glasses are an enigma among solid phases. Like crystalline solids they are hard, but unlike crystals they are amorphous on the molecular scale. Because of this structural disorder, each piece of glass is technically out of equilibrium, and unique. As a result, its properties depend not only on its chemical ingredients, but on how it was cooled.

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Machine learning to predict and optimise the deformation of materials

Researchers at Tampere University of Technology and Aalto University taught machine learning algorithms to predict how materials stretch. This new application of machine learning opens new opportunities in physics and possible applications can be found in the design of new optimal materials. The study has been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

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Massive new dark matter detector gets its 'eyes'

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) dark matter detector, which will soon start its search for the elusive particles thought to account for a majority of matter in the universe, had its first set of "eyes" delivered Thursday.

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Gravity is mathematically relatable to dynamics of subatomic particles

Albert Einstein's desk can still be found on the second floor of Princeton's physics department. Positioned in front of a floor-to-ceiling blackboard covered with equations, the desk seems to embody the spirit of the frizzy-haired genius as he asks the department's current occupants, "So, have you solved it yet?"

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System monitors radiation damage to materials in real-time

In order to evaluate a material's ability to withstand the high-radiation environment inside a nuclear reactor, researchers have traditionally used a method known as "cook and look," meaning the material is exposed to high radiation and then removed for a physical examination. But that process is so slow it inhibits the development of new materials for future reactors.

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Pressure tuned magnetism paves the way for novel electronic devices

Advances in the technology of material growth allow fabricating sandwiches of materials with atomic precision. The interface between the two materials can sometimes exhibit physical phenomena which do not exist in both parent materials. For example, a magnetic interface found between two non-magnetic materials. A new discovery, published today in Nature Physics, shows a new way of controlling this emergent magnetism which may be the basis for new types of magnetic electronic devices.

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Pedestrians keep a 75 cm comfort zone to prevent collisions

Pedestrians are constantly avoiding collisions with oncoming people. Meters in advance they unconsciously change their walkway to pass each other. Physicists at Eindhoven University of Technology in collaboration with American and Italian researchers analyzed 5 million pedestrian movements at the Eindhoven train station. They discovered that people want to keep an average distance of at least 75 cm. Professor Federico Toschi and postdoc Alessandro Corbetta publish these results today in the journal Physical Review E.

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Scientists invent easier, cheaper way to measure gravity

The world has one official kilogram against which all other country's kilograms are measured and scales calibrated.

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How complexity science can quickly detect climate record anomalies

The history of our climate is written in ice. Reading it is a matter of deciphering the complex signals pulled from tens of thousands of years of accumulated isotopes frozen miles below the surface of Antarctica.

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Scientists dismiss the idea of travel through wormholes

A RUDN employee and Brazilian colleagues have called into question the concept of using stable wormholes as portals to different points of space-time. The results of the studies were published in Physical Review D.

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When heat ceases to be a mystery, spintronics becomes more real

The development of spintronics depends on materials that guarantee control over the flow of magnetically polarized currents. However, it is hard to talk about control when the details of heat transport through the interfaces between materials are unknown. This thermal gap in our material knowledge has just been filled thanks to a Polish-German team of physicists, who now describe in detail the dynamic phenomena occurring at the interface between a ferromagnetic metal and a semiconductor.

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It's not so easy to gain the true measure of things

I teach measurement – the quantification of things. Some people think this is the most objective of the sciences; just numbers and observations, or what many people call objective facts.

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Using Wi-Fi signals to perform analog, wave-based computations

A pair of researchers, one with the Langevin Institute, the other a company called Greenerwave, both in France, has developed a way to use ordinary Wi-Fi signals to perform analog, wave-based computations. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review X, Philipp del Hougne and Geoffroy Lerosey describe their experiments and what they represent.

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Magic number colloidal clusters

Complexity in nature often results from self-assembly, and is considered particularly robust. Compact clusters of elemental particles can be shown to be of practical relevance, and are found in atomic nuclei, nanoparticles or viruses. An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by professors Nicolas Vogel and Michael Engel at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has decoded the structure and the process behind the formation of one class of such highly ordered clusters. Their findings have increased the understanding of how structures are formed in clusters, and have now been published in Nature Communications.

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The splendid generative potential of the Sierpinski triangle

One transistor can become an oscillator with a surprising richness of behavior. However, even more interesting effects emerge if the structure of connections is fractal and shows some imperfections. Could similar rules explain the diversity and complexity of human brain dynamics?

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Good vibrations: Neutrons lend insight into acoustic fracking

Hydraulic fracturing contributes significantly to US energy production. It works by tapping hard-to-reach pockets of oil and natural gas where more traditional drilling methods fall short. However, the process requires large amounts of water and chemicals, which can negatively impact public health and the environment.

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Timken turns to neutrons to get its bearings on internal stresses

Bearings are used in many common applications such as wheels, drills, and even toys like the popular fidget spinner. Those applications and others like them rely on bearings to allow for smooth, efficient motion for millions of rotations.

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Researchers lay foundation for smart contrast medium

Molecular imaging techniques are playing an increasingly important role in medical diagnostics and developing new treatment methods. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the fields of chemistry, material sciences, biomedicine, quantum physics and toxicology has managed to develop the foundations for a novel contrast medium for MRI in the framework of the FET Open EU excellence programme. Molecular changes in the human body could thus become detectable by MRI and improve and elucidate the treatment of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's and heart diseases.

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The secret life of cloud droplets

Do water droplets cluster inside clouds? Researchers confirm two decades of theory with an airborne imaging instrument.

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Time travel is possible – but only if you have an object with infinite mass

The concept of time travel has always captured the imagination of physicists and laypersons alike. But is it really possible? Of course it is. We're doing it right now, aren't we? We are all traveling into the future one second at a time.

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Novel X-ray imaging technique provides nanoscale insights into behavior of biological molecules

Berkeley Lab researchers, in collaboration with scientists from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Max Planck Institute, have demonstrated that fluctuation X-ray scattering is capable of capturing the behavior of biological systems in unprecedented detail.

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Two-micron fill tubes fill two needs

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) and General Atomics engineers have created an inertial confinement fusion (ICF) fuel capsule with a two-micron-diameter fill tube—and along the way, found a solution to a "Bay Bridge"-like dilemma that could have dramatically slowed the process of fabricating NIF capsules.

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High-efficiency discovery drives low-power computing

Challenge any modern human to go a day without a phone or computer, and you'd be hard pressed to get any takers. Our collective obsession with all things electronic is driving a dramatic daily drain on the world's power. In fact, according to studies from the Semiconductor Research Corporation, if we continue on pace with our current ever-increasing energy consumption, by the year 2035, we will use all of the world's energy to run our computers—an impossible/unsustainable situation.

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How bacterial communities transport nutrients

Under threat of being scrubbed away with disinfectant, individual bacteria can improve their odds of survival by joining together to form colonies, called biofilms. What Arnold Mathijssen, postdoctoral fellow in bioengineering at Stanford University, wanted to understand was how stationary biofilms find food once they've devoured nearby nutrients.

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Researchers discover unusual new type of phase transformation in a transition metal

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have discovered an unusual new type of phase transformation in the transition metal zirconium. The mechanism underlying this new type of phase transition is the first of its kind that has ever been observed, and only could be seen with the application of very high pressures. The research was recently published by Physical Review B as a Rapid Communication.

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Researchers make shape shifting cell breakthrough

A new computational model developed by researchers from The City College of New York and Yale gives a clearer picture of the structure and mechanics of soft, shape-changing cells that could provide a better understanding of cancerous tumor growth, wound healing, and embryonic development.

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Physicists edge closer to controlling chemical reactions

A team of researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and Aarhus University in Denmark has developed an algorithm for predicting the effect of an external electromagnetic field on the state of complex molecules. The algorithm, which is based on a theory developed earlier by the same team, predicts tunneling ionization rates of molecules. This refers to the probability that an electron will bypass the potential barrier and escape from its parent molecule. The new algorithm, presented in a paper in the Journal of Chemical Physics, enables researchers to look inside large polyatomic molecules, observe and potentially control electron motion therein.

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Answering the mystery of what atoms do when liquids and gases meet

How atoms arrange themselves at the smallest scale was thought to follow a 'drum-skin' rule, but mathematicians have now found a simpler solution.

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Topological matters: Toward a new kind of transistor

Billions of tiny transistors supply the processing power in modern smartphones, controlling the flow of electrons with rapid on-and-off switching.

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Compelling evidence for small drops of perfect fluid

Nuclear physicists analyzing data from the PHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at Brookhaven National Laboratory—have published in the journal Nature Physics additional evidence that collisions of miniscule projectiles with gold nuclei create tiny specks of the perfect fluid that filled the early universe.

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ESRF puts its shining light in standby mode, to return brighter in 2020

"No beam for a while. Restart in about 20 months." Early this morning, operators of the ESRF Control room turned off the beam, ending 26 years of successful operation of the European Synchrotron, the world's most powerful synchrotron light source. 2018 is a key year in the history of the ESRF. Thirty years after the signature of the ESRF Convention, the ESRF's shining light has been put in standby mode. The ESRF now enters a 20-month shutdown and will dismantle its flagship storage ring to make way for a revolutionary X-ray source, an Extremely Brilliant Source (EBS), open for users in 2020.

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Iron-rich lamellae in a semiconductor

There is often a pronounced symmetry when you look at the lattice of crystals: It doesn't matter where you look—the atoms are uniformly arranged in every direction. This behavior would also be expected of a crystal, which physicists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the University of Warsaw and the Polish Academy of Sciences produced with a compound from an indium arsenide semiconductor spiked with iron. The material, however, did not adhere to perfect symmetry. The iron formed two-dimensional, lamellar-shaped structures in the crystal that were magnetic. In the long term, the result could be vital in understanding superconductors.

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Supercomputers without waste heat

Generally speaking, magnetism and the lossless flow of electrical current ("superconductivity") are competing phenomena that cannot coexist in the same sample. However, for building supercomputers, synergetically combining both states comes with major advantages as compared to today's semiconductor technology, characterized by high power consumption and heat production. Researchers from the Department of Physics at the University of Konstanz have now demonstrated that the lossless electrical transfer of magnetically encoded information is possible. This finding enables enhanced storage density on integrated circuit chips and significantly reduces the energy consumption of computing centres. The results of this study have been published in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature Communications.

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Milestone for bERLinPro: Photocathodes with high quantum efficiency

Teams from the accelerator physics and the SRF groups at HZB are developing a superconducting linear accelerator featuring energy recovery (Energy Recovery Linac) as part of the bERLinPro project. It accelerates an intense electron beam that can be used for applications like generating brilliant synchrotron radiation. After use, the electron bunches are directed back to the superconducting linear accelerator, where they release almost all their remaining energy. This energy is then available for accelerating new electron bunches.

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A new 'spin' on kagome lattices

Like so many targets of scientific inquiry, the class of material referred to as the kagome magnet has proven to be a source of both frustration and amazement. Further revealing the quantum properties of the kagome magnet is seen as one of the primary challenges in fundamental physics—to both theorists and experimentalists.

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Hunting for rare isotopes: The mysterious radioactive atomic nuclei that will be in tomorrow's technology

When you hear the term "radioactive" you likely think "bad news," maybe along the lines of fallout from an atomic bomb.

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Blasting molecules with extreme X-rays

Reading these words, your eyes let you see each letter and the spaces between them. But if you need reading glasses, the letters may be fuzzy or incomprehensible. Scientists face a similar challenge. Gathering the right data depends on having tools that can provide accurate, comprehensive measurements. After all, scientists want to have the clearest sight possible.

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Capturing spray from flash-boiling liquid jets

Ultrafast video capture of droplet cloud formation should help minimize the risk of gas-leak explosions.

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Technique inspired by dolphin chirps could improve tests of soft materials

When you deform a soft material such as Silly Putty, its properties change depending on how fast you stretch and squeeze it. If you leave the putty in a small glass, it will eventually spread out like a liquid. If you pull it slowly, it will thin and droop like viscous taffy. And if you quickly yank on it, the Silly Putty will snap like a brittle, solid bar.

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First observation of a square lattice of merons and antimerons

Scientists have, for the first time, observed a square lattice of merons and antimerons—tiny magnetic vortices and antivortices that form in a thin plate of the helical magnet Co8Zn9Mn3. By finely varying a magnetic field applied perpendicularly to the thin plate, the researchers were able to induce a transformation between the square lattice of merons-antimerons and a hexagonal lattice of skyrmions, another form of vortex that is topologically different from merons and antimerons.

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COSINE-100 experiment investigates dark matter mystery

Astrophysical evidence suggests that the universe contains a large amount of non-luminous dark matter, but no definite signal has been observed despite concerted efforts by many experimental groups. One exception is the long-debated claim by the DAMA group of an annual modulation in the events observed in their detector using sodium-iodide target material as might be expected from weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) dark matter interactions. The new COSINE-100 experiment, an underground dark matter detector at the Yangyang Underground Laboratory (Y2L) in Korea is starting to explore this claim using the same medium and now has first results that significantly challenge the interpretations made by DAMA that have stood for nearly two decades. Y2L is operated by the Center for Underground Physics (CUP) of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Korea.

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On the trail of the Higgs Boson

For the physics community, the discovery of new particles like the Higgs Boson has paved the way for a host of exciting potential experiments. Yet, when it comes to such an elusive particle as the Higgs Boson, it's not easy to unlock the secrets of the mechanism that led to its creation. The experiments designed to detect the Higgs Boson involve colliding particles with sufficiently high energy head-on after accelerating them in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Reflecting antiferromagnetic arrangements

A team led by Rutgers University and including scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has demonstrated an X-ray imaging technique that could enable the development of smaller, faster, and more robust electronics.

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Theoretical predictions help dark matter hunt

A new Ph.D. thesis in the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, shows how utilizing tellurium as a detector material can help detect dark matter more effectively than currently used materials. The research also lays a foundation for differentiating between collisions caused by dark matter and neutrinos, the so-called ghost particles, in dark matter detectors using xenon.

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Can elementary particles change their flavor in flight?

Can elementary particles change their flavor in flight?

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Scientists develop a new drug for cancer diagnostics and treatment

Russian researchers announced the development of a combined action drug based on ionizing radiation and bacterial toxin. Their combined effect appeared to be 2,200 times stronger compared to that exerted by the radiation and toxin separately. The drug affects tumor cells, selectively providing better diagnostics and treatment of malignant tumors. These advances were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Galileo satellites prove Einstein's Relativity Theory to highest accuracy yet

Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system – already serving users globally – has now provided a historic service to the physics community worldwide, enabling the most accurate measurement ever made of how shifts in gravity alter the passing of time, a key element of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

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Plasmonic quantum size effects in silver nanoparticles are dominated by interfaces and local environments

When metallic dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale, a phenomenon termed localized surface-plasmon resonance (LSPR) appears due to electron oscillations, resulting in distinct optical properties suited for advanced imaging and sensing technologies. As particles approach the quantum regime with dimensions less than 10 nm in diameter, however, the existing knowledge of their properties becomes quite hazy. The plasmonic character depends on the collective electronic excitation that can be tuned across a large spectral range by adjusting the material's size and shape. Size dependent spectral shifts of the LSPR in small metal nanoparticles are induced by quantum effects, but the existing literature on the subject is quite controversial due to inconsistencies.

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Microscopic 'sunflowers' for better solar panels

The pads of geckos' notoriously sticky feet are covered with setae—microscopic, hairlike structures whose chemical and physical composition and high flexibility allow the lizard to grip walls and ceilings with ease. Scientists have tried to replicate such dynamic microstructures in the lab with a variety of materials, including liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs), which are rubbery networks with attached liquid crystalline groups that dictate the directions in which the LCEs can move and stretch. So far, synthetic LCEs have mostly been able to deform in only one or two dimensions, limiting the structures' ability to move throughout space and take on different shapes.

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ESA team blasts Intel's new AI chip with radiation at CERN

An ESA-led team subjected Intel's new Myriad 2 artificial intelligence chip to one of the most energetic radiation beams available on Earth. This test of its suitability to fly in space took place at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The AI chip is related in turn to an ESA-fostered family of integrated circuits.

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Scientists detect biggest known black-hole collision

An international team of scientists have detected ripples in space and time, known as gravitational waves, from the biggest known black-hole collision that formed a new black hole about 80 times larger than the Sun – and from another three black-hole mergers.

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Scientist at work: To take atomic-scale pictures of tiny crystals, use a huge, kilometer-long synchrotron

It's 4 a.m., and I've been up for about 20 hours straight. A loud alarm is blaring, accompanied by red strobe lights flashing. A stern voice announces, "Searching station B. Exit immediately." It feels like an emergency, but it's not. In fact, the alarm has already gone off 60 or 70 times today. It is a warning, letting everyone in the vicinity know I'm about to blast a high-powered X-ray beam into a small room full of electronic equipment and plumes of vaporizing liquid nitrogen.

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A new light on significantly faster computer memory devices

A team of scientists from Arizona State University's School of Molecular Sciences and Germany have published in Science Advances online today an explanation of how a particular phase-change memory (PCM) material can work one thousand times faster than current flash computer memory, while being significantly more durable with respect to the number of daily read-writes.

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The physics of extracting gas from shale formations

Extracting gas from new sources is vital in order to supplement dwindling conventional supplies. Shale reservoirs host gas trapped in the pores of mudstone, which consists of a mixture of silt mineral particles ranging from 4 to 60 microns in size, and clay elements smaller than 4 microns. Surprisingly, the oil and gas industry still lacks a firm understanding of how the pore space and geological factors affect gas storage and its ability to flow in the shale.

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How microscopic machines can fail in the blink of an eye

How long can tiny gears and other microscopic moving parts last before they wear out? What are the warning signs that these components are about to fail, which can happen in just a few tenths of a second? Striving to provide clear answers to these questions, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method for more quickly tracking microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as they work and, just as importantly, as they stop working.

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Table-top experiment flips current understanding of solutal convection

When Yu "Alex" Liang started graduate school at The University of Texas at Austin, he was tasked with running a straight-forward experiment to collect data on a well-understood phenomenon in fluid mechanics: how density differences influence fluid flow in a porous medium.

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Using hydrogen ions to manipulate magnetism on the molecular scale

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has determined how to use hydrogen ions, "pumped" from water in the air at room temperature, to electrically control magnetism within a very thin sample of a magnetic material. This approach for manipulating magnetic properties could speed up advances in computing, sensors, and other technologies.

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High-contrast imaging for cancer therapy with protons

Medical physicist Dr. Aswin Hoffmann and his team from the Institute of Radiooncology—OncoRay at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have combined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a proton beam, thus demonstrating for the first time that in principle, this commonly used imaging method can work with particle beam cancer treatments. This opens up new opportunities for targeted, healthy tissue-sparing cancer therapy. The researchers have published their results in the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology.

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Probing quantum physics on a macroscopic scale

Why does quantum mechanics work so well for microscopic objects, yet macroscopic objects are described by classical physics? This question has bothered physicists since the development of quantum theory more than 100 years ago. Researchers at Delft University of Technology and the University of Vienna have now devised a macroscopic system that exhibits entanglement between mechanical phonons and optical photons. They tested the entanglement using a Bell test, one of the most convincing and important tests to show a system behaves non-classically.

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'Sudoku' X-ray uncovers movements within opaque materials

When strolling along the beach, our footprints tell us that the sand under the surface must have moved but not precisely where or how. Similar movements occur in many other natural and man-made substances, such as snow, construction materials, pharmaceutical powders, and even cereals.

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High-speed camera shows incoming particles cause damage by briefly melting surfaces as they strike

When tiny particles strike a metal surface at high speed—for example, as coatings being sprayed or as micrometeorites pummeling a space station—the moment of impact happens so fast that the details of process haven't been clearly understood, until now.

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The future of fighting cancer: Zapping tumors in less than a second

New accelerator-based technology being developed by the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University aims to reduce the side effects of cancer radiation therapy by shrinking its duration from minutes to under a second. Built into future compact medical devices, technology developed for high-energy physics could also help make radiation therapy more accessible around the world.

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Moscovium and Nihonium: FIONA measures the mass number of two superheavy elements

A team led by nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has reported the first direct measurements of the mass numbers for the nuclei of two superheavy elements: moscovium, which is element 115, and nihonium, element 113.

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From turkeys to turn-keys

Last week, millions of Americans unwrapped a shrink-wrapped turkey for Thanksgiving. If so, they owe thanks to electron beams, which made the shrink-wrapping possible. But the electron beam can do a lot more: It can sterilize medical equipment, treat wastewater and print metal parts. Industrial accelerators that generate these electron beams are rapidly expanding. The Illinois Accelerator Research Center (IARC) is on a mission to build a high-power, compact, superconducting electron beam accelerator that will serve all of these purposes.

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Scientists obtain a hexagonal modification of silicon

A team of scientists from Lobachevsky University (Nizhny Novgorod, Russia) has obtained a material with a new structure for applications in next-generation optoelectronics and photonics. This material is one of the hexagonal modifications of silicon, which have better radiative properties compared to conventional cubic silicon, which is traditionally used in microelectronics.

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Neutron production at ORNL's SNS reaches design power level

The Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has broken a new record by ending its first neutron production cycle in fiscal year 2019 at its design power level of 1.4 megawatts.

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Research helps in understanding the dynamics of dune formation

Crescent-shaped dunes called barchans are structures that appear in a wide variety of environments, including beaches and deserts, riverbeds and the seafloor, inside water pipes and oil pipelines, and on the surface of Mars and other sandy planets with an atmosphere.

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New scientific concept for a Star Wars-like tractor beam

Physicists from ITMO University have developed a model of an optical tractor beam to capture particles based on new artificial materials. Such a beam is capable of moving particles or cells towards the radiation source. The study showed that hyperbolic metasurfaces are promising for experiments on creating the tractor beam, as well as for its practical applications. The results are published in ACS Photonics.

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New technique proposed to make objects invisible

In recent years, invisibility has become an area of increasing research interest due to advances in materials engineering. This research work by the UEx, which has been published in Scientific Reports, explored the electromagnetic properties of specific materials that can make certain objects invisible when they are introduced into its interior. Normally, artificial materials known as metamaterials, or materials with high dielectric or magnetic constants, are used

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Complex systems help explain how democracy is destabilised

Complex systems theory is usually used to study things like the immune system, global climate, ecosystems, transportation or communications systems.

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White cat hair on black pants: Study measures stability of precision masses to benefit trade

When are two nominally identical kilogram masses no longer identical? When each goes to a different place and adsorbs varying amounts of moisture and contaminants.

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Clarifying effects of negative mass

A FLEET study led by University of Queensland's David Colas clarifies recent studies of negative mass, investigating the strange phenomenon of self-interference.

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Paving the way: An accelerator on a microchip

Electrical engineers in the accelerator physics group at TU Darmstadt have developed a design for a laser-driven electron accelerator so small it could be produced on a silicon chip. It would be inexpensive and with multiple applications. The design, which has been published in Physical Review Letters, is now being realised as part of an international collaboration.

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Radical approach for brighter LEDs

Scientists have discovered that semiconducting molecules with unpaired electrons, termed 'radicals' can be used to fabricate very efficient organic-light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), exploiting their quantum mechanical 'spin' property to overcome efficiency limitations for traditional, non-radical materials.

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Researchers defy 19th Century law of Physics in 21st century boost for energy efficiency

Research led by a University of Sussex scientist has turned a 156-year-old law of physics on its head in a development which could lead to more efficient recharging of batteries in cars and mobile phones.

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Physicists develop concept of new fast non-volatile memory

Using micromagnetic simulation, scientists have found the magnetic parameters and operating modes for the experimental implementation of a fast racetrack memory module that runs on spin current, carrying information via skyrmionium, which can store more data and read it out faster. The results are published in Scientific Reports.

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Studying water flow for more efficient aquaponic systems

An aquaponic system is an example of an integrated farming method in which the waste byproduct from one production process, like raising fish and other seafood, serves as a nutrient for another part of the system—like growing plants, for instance.

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Electrons inside of some ceramic crystals appear to dissipate in a familiar way

A team of researchers from Canada, France and Poland has found that electrons inside of some ceramic crystals appear to dissipate in a surprising, yet familiar way—possibly a clue to the reason for the odd behavior of "strange metals." In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics, the researchers describe their experiments to better understand why strange metals behave the way they do.

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Your riding position can give you an advantage in a road cycling sprint, research shows

Many professional road cycling events are hundreds of kilometres long, but the final placings are often decided by what happens in the last few seconds of any race stage.

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The subtle science of wok tossing

Wok tossing is essential for making a good fried rice—or so claim a group of researchers presenting new work at the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics 71st Annual Meeting, which will take place Nov. 18-20 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

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'Magnetic topological insulator' makes its own magnetic field

A team of U.S. and Korean physicists has found the first evidence of a two-dimensional material that can become a magnetic topological insulator even when it is not placed in a magnetic field.

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Law of soot light absorption: Current climate models underestimate warming by black carbon aerosol

Soot belches out of diesel engines, rises from wood- and dung-burning cookstoves and shoots out of oil refinery stacks. According to recent research, air pollution, including soot, is linked to heart disease, some cancers and, in the United States, as many as 150,000 cases of diabetes every year.

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Making X-ray microscopy 10 times faster

Microscopes make the invisible visible. And compared to conventional light microscopes, transmission x-ray microscopes (TXM) can see into samples with much higher resolution, revealing extraordinary details. Researchers across a wide range of scientific fields use TXM to see the structural and chemical makeup of their samples—everything from biological cells to energy storage materials.

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Universal laws in impact dynamics of dust agglomerates under microgravity conditions

A collaboration between Nagoya University and TU Braunschweig finds evidence that when projectiles hit soft clumps of dust or hard clumps of loose glass beads, the scaling laws for energy dissipation and energy transfer are the same in each case. This helps to understand how granular clumps stick together, and how planets are formed.

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Swarmlike collective behavior in bicycling

Whether it's the acrobatics of a flock of starlings or the synchronized swimming of a school of fish, nature is full of examples of large-scale collective behavior. Humans also exhibit this behavior, most notably in pelotons, the mass of riders in bicycle races.

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Researchers propose solutions for urine sample splash dilemma

Urinating into a cup may be a medical necessity for monitoring the health of the kidney and other issues, but it's often uncomfortable, embarrassing and messy—especially for women. But what if there were a way to comfortably provide a sample without the splashback?

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Scientists explain how wombats drop cubed poop

Wombats, the chubby and beloved, short-legged marsupials native to Australia, are central to a biological mystery in the animal kingdom: How do they produce cube-shaped poop? Patricia Yang, a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, set out to investigate.

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Helping Marvel superheroes to breathe

Marvel comics superheroes Ant-Man and the Wasp—nom de guerre stars of the eponymous 2018 film—possess the ability to temporarily shrink down to the size of insects, while retaining the mass and strength of their normal human bodies. But a new study suggests that, when bug-sized, Ant-Man and the Wasp would face serious challenges, including oxygen deprivation.

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Explaining a fastball's unexpected twist

An unexpected twist from a four-seam or a two-seam fastball can make the difference in a baseball team winning or losing the World Series. However, "some explanations regarding the different pitches are flat-out wrong," said Barton Smith, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Utah State University who considers himself a big fan of the game.

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Scientists produce 3-D chemical maps of single bacteria

Scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory—have used ultrabright x-rays to image single bacteria with higher spatial resolution than ever before. Their work, published in Scientific Reports, demonstrates an X-ray imaging technique, called X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XRF), as an effective approach to produce 3-D images of small biological samples.

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Infinite-dimensional symmetry opens up possibility of a new physics—and new particles

The symmetries that govern the world of elementary particles at the most elementary level could be radically different from what has so far been thought. This surprising conclusion emerges from new work published by theoreticians from Warsaw and Potsdam. The scheme they posit unifies all the forces of nature in a way that is consistent with existing observations and anticipates the existence of new particles with unusual properties that may even be present in our close environs.

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Take a weight off: 'Grand K' kilo being retired

Humankind is about to sever one of the links between its present and its past.

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Neutron pinhole magnifies discoveries at ORNL

Advanced materials are vital ingredients in products that we rely on like batteries, jet engine blades, 3-D-printed components in cars. Scientists and engineers use information about the structure and motion of atoms in these materials to design components that make these products more reliable, efficient and safe to use.

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Scientists provide first-ever views of elusive energy explosion

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have captured a difficult-to-view singular event involving "magnetic reconnection"—the process by which sparse particles and energy around Earth collide producing a quick but mighty explosion—in the Earth's magnetotail, the magnetic environment that trails behind the planet.

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Fullerene compounds made simulation-ready

What in the smart nanomaterials world is widely available, highly symmetrical and inexpensive? Hollow carbon structures, shaped like a football, called fullerenes. Their applications range from artificial photosynthesis and nonlinear optics to the production of photoactive films and nanostructures. To make them even more flexible, fullerenes can be combined with added nanostructures. In a new study published in EPJ D, Kirill B. Agapev from ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia, and colleagues have developed a method that can be used for future simulations of fullerene complexes and thus help understand their characteristics.

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The kilogram is being redefined – a physicist explains

How much is a kilogram? 1,000 grams. 2.20462 pounds. Or 0.0685 slugs based on the old Imperial gravitational system. But where does this amount actually come from and how can everyone be sure they are using the same measurement?

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Cold neutrons used in hot pursuit of better thermoelectrics

Thermoelectric devices are highly versatile, with the ability to convert heat into electricity, and electricity into heat. They are small, lightweight, and extremely durable because they have no moving parts, which is why they have been used to power NASA spacecraft on long-term missions, including the Voyager space probes launched in 1977.

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The weak force—life couldn't exist without it

David Armstrong studies a phenomenon that is ubiquitous in nature, yet only a few non-scientists know what it is.

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Bursting bubbles launch bacteria from water to air

Wherever there's water, there's bound to be bubbles floating at the surface. From standing puddles, lakes, and streams, to swimming pools, hot tubs, public fountains, and toilets, bubbles are ubiquitous, indoors and out.

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First phase of Brazil's particle accelerator construction completed

Brazil President Michel Temer inaugurated the opening construction phase of a particle accelerator the size of the Maracana football stadium that will be used to make advances in medicine, nutrition, archeology, electronics, energy and the environment.

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Stretchable thermoelectric coils for energy harvesting in miniature flexible wearable devices

Miniaturized semiconductor devices with energy harvesting features have paved the way to wearable technologies and sensors. Although thermoelectric systems have attractive features in this context, the ability to maintain large temperature differences across device terminals remains increasingly difficult to achieve with accelerated trends in device miniaturization. As a result, a group of scientists in applied sciences and engineering has developed and demonstrated a proposal on an architectural solution to the problem in which engineered thin-film active materials are integrated into flexible three-dimensional (3-D) forms.

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When electric fields make spins swirl

We are reaching the limits of silicon capabilities in terms of data storage density and speed of memory devices. One of the potential next-generation data storage elements is the magnetic skyrmion. A team at the Center for Correlated Electron Systems, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea), in collaboration with the University of Science and Technology of China, have reported the discovery of small and ferroelectrically tunable skyrmions. Published in Nature Materials, this work introduces new compelling advantages that bring skyrmion research a step closer to application.

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Big jobs: Safety, planning key to increasing production performance at Spallation Neutron Source

For many species, winter serves as a time to rest and recuperate to return stronger in the year ahead. In many respects, so is it also for certain large-scale science facilities.

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Doubly-excited electrons reach new energy states

Positrons are short-lived subatomic particle with the same mass as electrons and a positive charge. They are used in medicine, e.g. in positron emission tomography (PET), a diagnostic imaging method for metabolic disorders. Positrons also exist as negatively charged ions, called positronium ions (Ps-), which are essentially a three-particle system consisting of two electrons bound to a positron.

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New finding of particle physics may help to explain the absence of antimatter

With the help of computer simulations, particle physics researchers may be able to explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the Universe. The simulations offer a new way of examining conditions after the Big Bang, and could provide answers to some fundamental questions in particle physics.

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Researchers ID promising key to performance of next-gen electronics

Taking electrons out for a spin through the nanoscopic streets of a digital device – without spinning out of control – has challenged researchers for years.

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Dark matter 'hurricane' offers chance to detect axions

A team of researchers from Universidad de Zaragoza, King's College London and the Institute of Astronomy in the U.K. has found that a "dark matter hurricane" passing through our solar system offers a better than usual chance of detecting axions. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review D, the group describes their findings and why they believe their observations could offer help in understanding dark matter.

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This is heavy: The kilogram is getting an update

The kilogram is getting an update.

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Quantum leap for mass as science redefines the kilogramme

Sealed in a vault beneath a duke's former pleasure palace among the sycamore-streaked forests west of Paris sits an object the size of an apple that determines the weight of the world.

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Innovative approach to controlling magnetism opens route to ultra-low-power microchips

A new approach to controlling magnetism in a microchip could open the doors to memory, computing, and sensing devices that consume drastically less power than existing versions. The approach could also overcome some of the inherent physical limitations that have been slowing progress in this area until now.

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Physicists build fractal shape out of electrons

In physics, it is well-known that electrons behave very differently in three dimensions, two dimensions or one dimension. These behaviours give rise to different possibilities for technological applications and electronic systems. But what happens if electrons live in 1.58 dimensions – and what does it actually mean? Theoretical and experimental physicists at Utrecht University investigated these questions in a new study that will be published in Nature Physics on 12 November.

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Atomic parity violation research reaches new milestone

A reflection always reproduces objects as a complete mirror image, rather than just its individual parts or individual parts in a completely different orientation. It's all or nothing, the mirror can't reflect just a little. This illustrates a fundamental symmetry principle in nature. For decades, physics assumed that the laws of nature in our world and in the mirror world would be identical, that parity would be preserved. Then in 1956, in the realm of elementary particles, or more precisely in the realm of the weak interaction, researchers discovered a violation of this principle. Parity violation has been a subject of scientific research ever since.

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Unified theory explains two characteristic features of frustrated magnets

For the first time, physicists present a unified theory explaining two characteristic features of frustrated magnets and why they're often seen together.

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Innovative experimental scheme can create mirror molecules

Exploring the mystery of molecular handedness in nature, scientists have proposed a new experimental scheme to create custom-made mirror molecules for analysis. The technique can make ordinary molecules spin so fast that they lose their normal symmetry and shape and form mirrored versions of each other. The research team from DESY, Universität Hamburg and University College London led by Jochen Küpper describes the innovative method in the journal Physical Review Letters. The further exploration of handedness, or chirality (from the ancient Greek word for hand, "cheir"), does not only enhance insight in the workings of nature, but could also pave the way for new materials and methods.

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Stephen Hawking's final book suggests time travel may one day be possible – here's what to make of it

"If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately," writes the physicist Stephen Hawking in his posthumous book Brief Answers to the Big Questions. He was right. But he was also right that asking whether time travel is possible is a "very serious question" that can still be approached scientifically.

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Sending spin waves into an insulating 2-D magnet

Quantum Hall ferromagnets are among the purest magnets in the world—and one of the most difficult to study. These 2-D magnets can only be made in temperatures less than a degree above absolute zero and in high magnetic fields, about the scale of an MRI.

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Four base units of measure in the metric system about to be changed

Officials with the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) have announced that at a meeting to be held next week, four of the base units used in the metric system will be redefined. The four units under review are the ampere, kilogram, mole and kelvin.

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Spacetime—a creation of well-known actors?

Most physicists believe that the structure of spacetime is formed in an unknown way at the Planck scale, i.e., at a scale close to one trillionth of a trillionth of a metre. However, careful considerations undermine this prediction. There are quite a few arguments in favour of the emergence of spacetime as a result of processes taking place at the level of quarks and their conglomerates.

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Letter shows a fearful Einstein long before Nazis' rise

More than a decade before the Nazis seized power in Germany, Albert Einstein was on the run and already fearful for his country's future, according to a newly revealed handwritten letter.

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Factors affecting turbulence scaling

Fluids exhibiting scaling behaviour can be found in diverse physical phenomena occurring both in the laboratory and in real-world conditions. For instance, they occur at the critical point when a liquid becomes a vapour, at the phase transition of superfluids, and at the phase separation of binary liquids whose components exhibit two different types of behaviour.

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Unlocking the secrets of metal-insulator transitions

By using an X-ray technique available at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), scientists found that the metal-insulator transition in the correlated material magnetite is a two-step process. The researchers from the University of California Davis published their paper in the journal Physical Review Letters. NSLS-II, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility located at Brookhaven National Laboratory, has unique features that allow the technique to be applied with stability and control over long periods of time.

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Producing four top quarks at once to explore the unknown

For several decades, particle physicists have been trying to better understand nature at the smallest distances by colliding particles at the highest energies. While the Standard Model of particle physics has successfully explained most of the results produced by experiments, many phenomena remain baffling. Thus, new particles, forces or more general concepts must exist and – if the history of particle physics is any indication – they could well be revealed at the high-energy frontier.

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Revealing the inner working of magnetic materials

Björn Alling, researcher in theoretical physics at Linköping University, has, together with his colleagues, completed the task given to him by the Swedish Research Council in the autumn of 2014: Find out what happens inside magnetic materials at high temperatures.

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Levitating particles could lift nuclear detective work

Laser-based 'optical tweezers' could levitate uranium and plutonium particles, thus allowing the measurement of nuclear recoil during radioactive decay. This technique, proposed by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, provides a new method for conducting the radioactive particle analysis essential to nuclear forensics.

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How beatboxers produce sound: Using real-time MRI to understand

Beatboxing is a musical art form in which performers use their vocal tract to create percussive sounds. Sometimes individual beatboxers perform as a part of an ensemble, using their vocal tracts to provide beats for other musicians; other times, beatboxers perform alone, where they might sing and beatbox simultaneously or simply make sounds without singing.

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Codebreaker Turing's theory explains how shark scales are patterned

A system proposed by world war two codebreaker Alan Turing more than 60 years ago can explain the patterning of tooth-like scales possessed by sharks, according to new research.

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Researchers create most complete high-resolution atomic movie of photosynthesis to date

Despite its role in shaping life as we know it, many aspects of photosynthesis remain a mystery. An international collaboration between scientists at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and several other institutions is working to change that. The researchers used SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser to capture the most complete and highest resolution picture to date of Photosystem II, a key protein complex in plants, algae and cyanobacteria responsible for splitting water and producing the oxygen we breathe. The results were published in Nature today.

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How stretchy fluids react to wavy surfaces

Viscoelastic fluids are everywhere, whether racing through your veins or through 1,300 kilometers of pipe in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Unlike Newtonian fluids, such as oil or water, viscoelastic fluids stretch like a sticky strand of saliva. Chains of molecules inside the fluids grant them this superpower, and scientists are still working to understand how it affects their behavior. Researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have brought us one step closer by demonstrating how viscoelastic fluids flow over wavy surfaces, and their results are unexpected.

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Dancing atoms in perovskite materials provide insight into how solar cells work

A closer look at materials that make up conventional solar cells reveals a nearly rigid arrangement of atoms with little movement. But in hybrid perovskites, a promising class of solar cell materials, the arrangements are more flexible and atoms dance wildly around, an effect that impacts the performance of the solar cells but has been difficult to measure.

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Scientists to track the reaction of crystals to the electric field

An international scientific team, which included scientists from China, Israel, England and Russia, has developed a new method for measuring the response of crystals on the electric field. The study, performed at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), were published in the Journal of Applied Crystallography and appeared on the cover of the October issue. This method will help to implement new and improve existing functional materials.

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Physicists design new antenna for next-generation super-sensitive magnetometers

Scientists from ITMO University and Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have proposed a new microwave antenna that creates a uniform magnetic field in large volume. It is capable of uniform, coherent addressing of the electronic spins of an ensemble of nanodiamond structure defects. This can be used to create super-sensitive magnetic field detectors for magnetoencephalography in the study and diagnosis of epilepsy and other diseases. The results are published in JETP Letters.

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How function may abruptly emerge or disappear in physical and biological systems

In physical, biological and technological systems, the time that a system's components take to influence each other can affect the transition to synchronization, an important finding that improves understanding of how these systems function, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

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Using neutrinos detected by IceCube to measure mass of the Earth

A trio of researchers from CSIC-Universitat de València and Universitat de Barcelona has used data from the IceCube detector in Antarctica to measure Earth's mass. In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics, Andrea Donini, Sergio Palomares-Ruiz and Jordi Salvado describe using data describing neutrinos passing through the Earth to learn more about the interior of the planet. Véronique Van Elewyck with Paris Diderot University has written a News and Views piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

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In materials hit with light, individual atoms and vibrations take disorderly paths

Hitting a material with laser light sends vibrations rippling through its latticework of atoms, and at the same time can nudge the lattice into a new configuration with potentially useful properties – turning an insulator into a metal, for instance.

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Mystery particle spotted? Discovery would require physics so weird that nobody has even thought of it

There was a huge amount of excitement when the Higgs boson was first spotted back in 2012 – a discovery that bagged the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013. The particle completed the so-called standard model, our current best theory of understanding nature at the level of particles.

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Deconstructing crowd noise at college basketball games

With thousands of fans clapping, chanting, shouting and jeering, college basketball games can be almost deafeningly loud. Some arenas have decibel meters, which, accurately or not, provide some indication of the noise volume generated by the spectators and the sound systems. However, crowd noise is rarely the focus of scientific inquiry.

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Griffith precision measurement takes it to the limit

Griffith University researchers have demonstrated a procedure for making precise measurements of speed, acceleration, material properties and even gravity waves possible, approaching the ultimate sensitivity allowed by laws of quantum physics.

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Laser blasting antimatter into existence

Antimatter is an exotic material that vaporizes when it contacts regular matter. If you hit an antimatter baseball with a bat made of regular matter, it would explode in a burst of light. It is rare to find antimatter on Earth, but it is believed to exist in the furthest reaches of the universe. Amazingly, antimatter can be created out of thin air—scientists can create blasts of matter and antimatter simultaneously using light that is extremely energetic.

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New antimatter gravity experiments begin at CERN

We learn it at high school: Release two objects of different masses in the absence of friction forces and they fall down at the same rate in Earth's gravity. What we haven't learned, because it hasn't been directly measured in experiments, is whether antimatter falls down at the same rate as ordinary matter or if it might behave differently. Two new experiments at CERN, ALPHA-g and GBAR, have now started their journey towards answering this question.

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Machine learning improves accuracy of particle identification at LHC

Scientists from the Higher School of Economics have developed a method that allows physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to separate between various types of elementary particles with a high degree of accuracy. The results were published in the Journal of Physics.

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First two-dimensional material that performs as both topological insulator and superconductor

A transistor based on the 2-D material tungsten ditelluride (WTe2) sandwiched between boron nitride can switch between two different electronic states—one that conducts current only along its edges, making it a topological insulator, and one that conducts current with no resistance, making it a superconductor—researchers at MIT and colleagues from four other institutions have demonstrated.

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Updating high-resolution MRI

How can you make a high-frequency MRI machine more precise? By taking an electrical engineering approach to creating a better, uniform magnetic field.

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Math describes how bubbles pop

Understanding the dynamics of bursting bubbles can provide critical insights for a range of fields from oceanography to atmospheric science, but the mechanisms that drive the final pop are complex and difficult to describe.

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Hawking's signed thesis, wheelchair auctioned in London

A copy of Stephen Hawking's doctorate thesis signed in a shaky hand was unveiled Tuesday as the highlight of a new auction of the British physicist's personal items in London.

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Electronic noise due to temperature difference in atomic-scale junctions

Noise is a fundamental feature of any electrical measurement that calculates random and correlated signal fluctuations. Although noise is typically undesirable, noise can be used to probe quantum effects and thermodynamic quantities. Writing in Nature, Shein Lumbroso and co-workers now report a new type of electronic noise discovered to be distinct from all other previous observations. Understanding such noise can be essential to design efficient nanoscale electronics.

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Electronic activity previously invisible to electron microscopes revealed

The chips that drive everyday electronic gadgets such as personal computers and smartphones are made in semiconductor fabrication plants. These plants employ powerful transmission electron microscopes. While they can see physical structures smaller than a billionth of a meter, these microscopes have no way of seeing the electronic activity that makes the devices function.

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Scientists refine the search for dark matter

Researchers from Lund University in Sweden, among others, have developed a more effective technique in the search for clues about dark matter in the universe. They can now analyse much larger amounts of the data generated at CERN.

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Fast-flowing electrons may mimic astrophysical dynamos

A powerful engine roils deep beneath our feet, converting energy in the Earth's core into magnetic fields that shield us from the solar wind. Similar engines drive the magnetic activity of the sun, other stars and even other planets—all of which create magnetic fields that reinforce themselves and feed back into the engines to keep them running.

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A new material for energy-efficient data storage reaches computer operating temperature

Multiferroics are considered miraculous materials for future data storage – as long as their special properties can be preserved at computer operating temperatures. This task has now been accomplished by researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, with colleagues from Institut Laue-Langevin ILL in Grenoble. With this, they have taken these materials one step closer to practical applications. The use of multiferroics holds promise for more energy-efficient computers because an electric field would suffice for magnetic data storage. To produce this, much less power and cooling are required than with conventional magnetic storage. Multiferroics combine magnetic and electrical properties to form a material that is extremely rare. Most such materials only exhibit these two properties at temperatures well below the freezing point. In order to keep the magnetic properties stable even at one hundred degrees, the researchers have employed a trick. They used atoms smaller than those employed in previous investigations, making the material more compact. This was enough to make its structure resistant to heat and preserve its crucial magnetic properties. The researchers published their results today in the journal Science Advances.

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Shedding light on Weyl fermions

Researchers from the Theory Department of the MPSD in Hamburg and North Carolina State University in the US have demonstrated that the long-sought magnetic Weyl semi-metallic state can be induced by ultrafast laser pulses in a three-dimensional class of magnetic materials dubbed pyrochlore iridates. Their results, which have been published in Nature Communications, could enable high-speed magneto-optical topological switching devices for next-generation electronics.

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Rationalizing phonon dispersion: an efficient and precise prediction of lattice thermal conductivity

Lattice thermal conductivity strongly affects the applications of materials related to thermal functionality, such as thermal management, thermal barrier coatings and thermoelectrics. In order to understand lattice thermal conductivity more quantitatively and in a time- and cost-effective way, many researchers have devoted their efforts and developed a few physical models using approximated phonon dispersions over the past century.

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The K-core as a predictor of structural collapse in mutualistic ecosystems

A network metric called the K-core could predict structural collapse in mutualistic ecosystems, according to research by physicists at The City College of New York. The K-core appears able to forecast which species is likely to face extinction first, by global shocks such as climate change, and when an ecosystem could collapse due to external forces.

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Research reveals secret shared by comets and sand crabs

Researchers at Nagoya University report a mechanical connection between sand crab burrow widths and widths of cometary pits using a simple granular experiment.

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Scientists develop computational model to predict human behavior

Army researchers have developed for the first time an analytic model to show how groups of people influence individual behavior.

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A first 'snapshot' of the complete spectrum of neutrinos emitted by the sun

About 99 percent of the Sun's energy emitted as neutrinos is produced through nuclear reaction sequences initiated by proton-proton (pp) fusion in which hydrogen is converted into helium, say scientists including physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Today they report new results from Borexino, one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, located deep beneath Italy's Apennine Mountains.

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STAR Detector on the move

How long does it take to roll a twelve-hundred-ton detector one hundred feet? In late August, it took 10 hours for the STAR detector to roll from its regular spot in the interaction region of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) to the assembly building to undergo maintenance. It's all part of a program to keep this giant multi-purpose particle detector (kind of like a giant 3-D digital camera) in tip-top condition for capturing subatomic smashups at RHIC, a DOE Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory.

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Halfway to high luminosity

The High-Luminosity LHC has reached its halfway point. The second-generation LHC project was launched eight years ago and is scheduled to start up in 2026, eight years from now. From 15 to 18 October, the institutes contributing to this future accelerator came together at CERN to assess the progress of the work as the project moves from prototyping to the series production phase for much of the equipment.

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Researchers validate 80-year-old ferroelectric theory

Researchers have successfully demonstrated that hypothetical particles that were proposed by Franz Preisach in 1935 actually exist. In an article published in Nature Communications, scientists from the universities in Linköping and Eindhoven show why ferroelectric materials act as they do.

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A bridge to the quantum world

Monika Aidelsburger uses a special type of optical lattice to simulate quantum many-body phenomena that are otherwise inaccessible to experimental exploration. She has now been awarded an ERC Starting Grant to pursue this work.

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Understanding the building blocks for an electronic brain

Computer bits are binary, with a value of zero or one. By contrast, neurons in the brain can have many internal states, depending on the input that they receive. This allows the brain to process information in a more energy-efficient manner than a computer. University of Groningen (UG) physicists are working on memristors made from niobium-doped strontium titanate, which mimic the function of neurons. Their results were published in the Journal of Applied Physics on 21 October.

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Stephen Hawking's wheelchair, thesis for sale

Stephen Hawking was a cosmic visionary, a figure of inspiration and a global celebrity.

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Merging mathematical and physical models toward building a more perfect flying vehicle

When designing flying vehicles, there are many aspects of which we can be certain but there are also many uncertainties. Most are random, and others are just not well understood. University of Illinois Professor Harry Hilton brought together several mathematical and physical theories to help look at problems in more unified ways and solve physical engineering problems.

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Researchers study interactions in molecules using AI

Researchers from the University of Luxembourg, Technische Universität Berlin, and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have combined machine learning and quantum mechanics to predict the dynamics and atomic interactions in molecules. The new approach allows for a degree of precision and efficiency that has never been achieved before.

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Scientists discover first high-temperature single-molecule magnet

A team of scientists led by Professor Richard Layfield at the University of Sussex has published breakthrough research in molecule-based magnetic information storage materials.

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The big problem of small data: A new approach

Big Data is all the rage today, but Small Data matters too! Drawing reliable conclusions from small datasets, like those from clinical trials for rare diseases or in studies of endangered species, remains one of the trickiest obstacles in statistics. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) researchers have developed a new way to analyze small data, one inspired by advanced methods in theoretical physics, but available as easy-to-use software.

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Scientists find unusual behavior in topological material

Argonne scientists have identified a new class of topological materials made by inserting transition metal atoms into the atomic lattice of a well-known two-dimensional material.

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Cryocooler cools an accelerator cavity

Particle accelerators are made of structures called cavities, which impart energy to the particle beam, kicking it forward. One type of cavity is the superconducting radio-frequency, or SRF, cavity. Usually made of niobium, SRF cavities require extreme cold to operate. A Fermilab team developed a new way of cooling SRF cavities without liquid helium. The new system is easier to operate and simpler to construct.

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A Bose-Einstein condensate has been produced in space for the first time

An international team of researchers has successfully produced a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in space for the first time. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes creating a small experimental device that was carried on a rocket into space and the experiments that were conducted during its freefall.

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Study supports Standard Model of particle physics, excludes alternative models

In a new study, researchers at Northwestern, Harvard and Yale universities examined the shape of an electron's charge with unprecedented precision to confirm that it is perfectly spherical. A slightly squashed charge could have indicated unknown, hard-to-detect heavy particles in the electron's presence, a discovery that could have upended the global physics community.

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Physicists create guidelines for non-equilibrium measurements of many-body systems

When it comes to non-equilibrium physics, not all assumptions are created equal. At least, those are the latest findings from NC State physicist Lex Kemper and colleagues from NC State and Georgetown University.

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Acrylic tanks provide clear window into dark matter detection

Scientists have a new window into the search for dark matter – an acrylic vessel that features a grouping of 12-foot-tall transparent tanks with 1-inch-thick walls.

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New memristor boosts accuracy and efficiency for neural networks on an atomic scale

Just like their biological counterparts, hardware that mimics the neural circuitry of the brain requires building blocks that can adjust how they synapse, with some connections strengthening at the expense of others. One such approach, called memristors, uses current resistance to store this information. New work looks to overcome reliability issues in these devices by scaling memristors to the atomic level.

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New reservoir computer marks first-ever microelectromechanical neural network application

As artificial intelligence has become increasingly sophisticated, it has inspired renewed efforts to develop computers whose physical architecture mimics the human brain. One approach, called reservoir computing, allows hardware devices to achieve the higher-dimension calculations required by emerging artificial intelligence. One new device highlights the potential of extremely small mechanical systems to achieve these calculations.

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Fermilab scientists to look for dark matter using quantum technology

Fermilab scientists are harnessing quantum technology in the search for dark matter.

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The state of the early universe: The beginning was fluid

Scientists from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, and their colleagues from the international ALICE collaboration recently collided xenon nuclei in the superconducting Large Hadron Collider in order to gain new insights into the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). The QGP is a special state consisting of quarks and the gluons that bind the quarks together. The results were published in Physics Letters B.

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Hawking's final book offers brief answers to big questions

Stephen Hawking's final work, which tackles issues from the existence of God to the potential for time travel, was launched on Monday by his children, who helped complete the book after the British astrophysics giant's death.

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