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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