Face mask construction, materials matter for containing coughing, sneezing droplets

Currently, there are no specific guidelines on the most effective materials and designs for facemasks to minimize the spread of droplets from coughs or sneezes to mitigate the transmission of COVID-19. While there have been prior studies on how medical-grade masks perform, data on cloth-based coverings used by the vast majority of the general public are sparse.

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Respiratory droplet motion, evaporation and spread of COVID-19-type pandemics

It is well established that the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 disease is transmitted via respiratory droplets that infected people eject when they cough, sneeze or talk. Consequently, much research targets better understanding droplet motion and evaporation to understand transmission more deeply.

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Researchers propose generalized definition of cavitation intensity

Cavitation usually refers to the generation and subsequent dynamic behaviors of cavities when liquid is exposed to a sufficient pressure drop. It has been widely used in sonochemistry, biomedicine, environmental science, and other areas.

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Researchers control elusive spin fluctuations in 2-D magnets

Like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, critical spin fluctuations in a magnetic system haven't been captured on film. Unlike the fabled creatures, these fluctuations—which are highly correlated electron spin patterns—do actually exist, but they are too random and turbulent to be seen in real time.

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New 3-D model shows how the paradise tree snake uses aerial undulation to fly

When the paradise tree snake flies from one tall branch to another, its body ripples with waves like green cursive on a blank pad of blue sky. That movement, aerial undulation, happens in each glide made by members of the Chrysopelea family, the only known limbless vertebrates capable of flight. Scientists have known this, but have yet to fully explain it.

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Light nucleus predicted to be stable despite having two strange quarks

Adding an exotic particle known as a Xi hyperon to a helium nucleus with three nucleons could produce a nucleus that is temporarily stable, calculations by RIKEN nuclear physicists have predicted. This result will help experimentalists search for the nucleus and provide insights into both nuclear physics and the structure of neutron stars.

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Case for axion origin of dark matter gains traction

In a new study of axion motion, researchers propose a scenario known as "kinetic misalignment" that greatly strengthens the case for axion/dark matter equivalence. The novel concept answers key questions related to the origins of dark matter and provides new avenues for ongoing detection efforts. This work, published in Physical Review Letters, was conducted by researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Michigan, and UC Berkeley.

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The nature of nuclear forces imprinted in photons

IFJ PAN scientists together with colleagues from the University of Milano (Italy) and other countries confirmed the need to include the three-nucleon interactions in the description of electromagnetic transitions in the 20O atomic nucleus. Vital for validating the modern theoretical calculations of the nuclear structure was the application of state-of-the-art gamma-ray detector systems and the newly developed technique for measurements of femtosecond lifetimes in exotic nuclei produced in heavy-ion deep-inelastic reactions.

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Theorists calculate upper limit for possible quantization of time

A trio of theoretical physicists at the Pennsylvania State University has calculated the upper limit for the possible quantization of time—they suggest 10−33 seconds as the upper limit for the period of a universal oscillator. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Garrett Wendel, Luis Martínez and Martin Bojowald outline their theory and suggest a possible way to prove it.

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CERN experiment makes first observation of rare events producing three massive force carriers

Modern physics knows a great deal about how the universe works, from the grand scale of galaxies down to the infinitesimally small size of quarks and gluons. Still, the answers to some major mysteries, such as the nature of dark matter and origin of gravity, have remained out of reach.

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Measure squeezing in a novel way

'Squeezing' is used in physics, among other things, to improve the resolution of measuring instruments. It allows disturbing noise to be suppressed in a way that smaller signals can be detected more sensitively. The team led by physicist Professor Eva Weig at the University of Konstanz has now been able to show how such a squeezed state can be measured in a much simpler way than with the existing methods. Moreover, the new method allows examining squeezed states in systems where such measurements were not possible before. The results are published in the current issue of the journal Physical Review X.

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Black hole collision may have exploded with light

When two black holes spiral around each other and ultimately collide, they send out ripples in space and time called gravitational waves. Because black holes do not give off light, these events are not expected to shine with any light waves, or electromagnetic radiation. Graduate Center, CUNY astrophysicists K. E. Saavik Ford and Barry McKernan have posited ways in which a black hole merger might explode with light. Now, for the first time, astronomers have seen evidence of one of these light-producing scenarios. Their findings are available in the current issues of Physical Review Letters.

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CNO fusion neutrinos from the sun observed for the first time

A team of researchers working on the Borexino project has announced that they have observed carbon/nitrogen/oxygen (CNO) fusion neutrinos from the sun for the first time. Co-spokesman for the group, Gioacchino Ranucci, a physicist at the University of Milan, announced the observation at this year's virtual Neutrino 2020 conference.

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Crews create a blast to take the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment to the next stage

It started with a blast.

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Order out of disorder in ice

The glass structure of a material is often believed to mimic its corresponding liquid. Polyamorphism between ices has been used as a guide to elucidate the properties of liquid water. But how many forms of amorphous ices are there? Do we understand how metastable high-pressure crystalline ice evolves towards the thermally stable low-density form?

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Introducing a new isotope: Mendelevium-244

A team of scientists working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has discovered a new form of the human-made element mendelevium. The newly created isotope, mendelevium-244, is the 17th and lightest form of mendelevium, which is element 101 on the periodic table.

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3-D-printed neutrino detectors

Plastic scintillators are one of the most used active materials in high-energy physics. Their properties make it possible to track and distinguish between particle topologies. Among other things, scintillators are used in the detectors of neutrino oscillation experiments, where they reconstruct the final state of the neutrino interaction. Measurements of oscillation phenomena are carried out through comparison of observations of neutrinos in near detectors (close to the target) and far detectors (up to several hundred kilometers away).

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A blue spark to shine on the origin of the universe

An interdisciplinary team of scientists led by researchers from DIPC, Ikerbasque and UPV/EHU, has demonstrated that it is possible to build an ultra-sensitive sensor based on a new fluorescent molecule able to detect the nuclear decay key to knowing whether or not a neutrino is its own antiparticle.

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Helicopter or cartwheel? What happens when a molecule collides with a surface

What happens when a molecule collides with a surface? Researchers at Swansea University have shown that the orientation of the molecule as it moves—whether it is spinning like a helicopter blade or rolling like a cartwheel—is important in determining what happens in the collision.

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ATLAS experiment finds evidence of spectacular four-top quark production

The ATLAS Collaboration at CERN has announced strong evidence of the production of four top quarks. This rare Standard Model process is expected to occur only once for every 70 thousand pairs of top quarks created at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and has proven extremely difficult to measure.

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A structural light switch for magnetism

Magnetic materials have been a mainstay in computing technology due to their ability to permanently store information in their magnetic state. Current technologies are based on ferromagnets, whose states can be flipped readily by magnetic fields. Faster, denser, and more robust next-generation devices would be made possible by using a different class of materials, known as antiferromagnets. Their magnetic state, however, is notoriously difficult to control.

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Lack of damage after secondary impacts surprises researchers

When a material is subjected to an extreme load in the form of a shock or blast wave, damage often forms internally through a process called spall fracture.

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Brexit's and research networks: Lower efficiency, reorganization of research communities

The United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union, a move known as Brexit, took effect Jan. 31, 2020. The results of this change affected trade and security, but scientists wanted to know how it might affect the EU Framework Programmes for Research, known as Horizon 2020.

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Transferring orbital angular momentum of light to plasmonic excitations in metamaterials

The vortex beam with orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a new and ideal tool to selectively excite dipole forbidden states through linear optical absorption. The emergence of the vortex beam with OAM provides intriguing opportunities to induce optical transitions beyond the framework of electric dipole interactions. The unique feature arose from the transfer of OAM from light-to-material as demonstrated with electronic transitions in atomic systems .

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Experiment confirms 50-year-old theory describing how an alien civilization could exploit a black hole

A 50-year-old theory that began as speculation about how an alien civilization could use a black hole to generate energy has been experimentally verified for the first time in a Glasgow research lab.

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New research deepens mystery of particle generation in proton collisions

A group of researchers including scientists from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, University of Tokyo, Nagoya University, and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) used the spin-polarized Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the United States to show that, in polarized proton-proton collisions, neutral pions emitted in the very forward area of collisions—where direct interactions involving quarks and gluons are not applicable—still have a large degree of left-right asymmetry. This finding suggests that the previous consensus regarding the generation of particle in such collisions need to be reevaluated.

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A Metal-like quantum gas: A pathbreaking platform for quantum simulation

Electronic properties of condensed matter are often determined by an intricate competition between kinetic energy that aims to overlap and delocalize electronic wave functions across the crystal lattice, and localizing electron-electron interactions. In contrast, the gaseous phase is characterized by valence electrons tightly localized around the ionic atom cores in discrete quantum states with well-defined energies. As an exotic hybrid of both situations, one may wonder which state of matter is created when a gas of isolated atoms is suddenly excited to a state where electronic wave functions spatially overlap, like in a solid?

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Experimentally identifying effective theories in many-body systems

One goal of science is to find physical descriptions of nature by studying how basic system components interact with one another. For complex many-body systems, effective theories are frequently used to this end. They allow describing the interactions without having to observe a system on the smallest of scales. Physicists at Heidelberg University have now developed a new method that makes it possible to identify such theories experimentally with the aid of so-called quantum simulators. The results of the research effort, led by Prof. Dr. Markus Oberthaler (experimental physics) and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Berges (theoretical physics), were published in the journal Nature Physics.

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A method to 3-D print components for refined neutron scattering

The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has licensed a novel method to 3-D print components used in neutron instruments for scientific research to the ExOne Company, a leading maker of binder jet 3-D printing technology.

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CERN Council endorses building larger supercollider

The CERN Council has unanimously endorsed the idea of building a newer, larger circular supercollider, dubbed the Future Circular Collider (FCC). The group made the announcement on June 19. The move is the first step toward building a 100 TeV 100-kilometer circumference collider around Geneva. As part of the vote, the group approved the launch of a technical and financial feasibility study for the new collider.

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Teaching physics to neural networks removes 'chaos blindness'

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered that teaching physics to neural networks enables those networks to better adapt to chaos within their environment. The work has implications for improved artificial intelligence (AI) applications ranging from medical diagnostics to automated drone piloting.

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Measuring a tiny quasiparticle is a major step forward for semiconductor technology

A team of researchers led by Sufei Shi, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has uncovered new information about the mass of individual components that make up a promising quasiparticle, known as an exciton, that could play a critical role in future applications for quantum computing, improved memory storage, and more efficient energy conversion.

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ATLAS Experiment measures light scattering on light and constrains axion-like particles

Light-by-light scattering is a rare phenomenon in which two photons—particles of light—interact, producing another pair of photons. Direct observation of this process at high energy had proven elusive for decades, until it was first seen by the ATLAS Experiment in 2016 and established in 2019. In a new measurement, ATLAS physicists are using light-by-light scattering to search for a hyped phenomenon beyond the Standard Model of particle physics: axion-like particles.

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Single-spin electron paramagnetic resonance spectrum with kilohertz spectral resolution

A high-resolution paramagnetic resonance detection method based on the diamond nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center quantum sensor was proposed and experimentally implemented in a study led by academician DU Jiangfeng from CAS Key Laboratory of Microscale Magnetic Resonance of University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

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BESIII reports most precise measurements of strong-phase parameters in neutral D meson decay

The BESIII collaboration has reported the most precise measurements to date of the relative strong-phase parameters in decays of neutral D mesons. These results are presented in two articles published in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D on June 15, respectively.

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Exploring mass dependence in electron-hole clusters

In solid materials, when an electron changes position without another to fill its place, a positively charged 'hole' can appear which is attracted to the original electron. In more complex situations, the process can even result in stable clusters of multiple electrons and holes, whose behaviors all depend on each other. Strangely, the masses of each particle inside a cluster can be different to their masses when they are on their own. However, physicists aren't yet entirely clear how these mass variations can affect the overall properties of clusters in real solids. Through a study published in EPJ B, Alexei Frolov at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, reveals that the behavior of one type of three-particle cluster displays a distinct relationship with the ratio between the masses of its particles.

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A step forward in solving the reactor-neutrino flux problem

Joint effort of the nuclear theory group at the University of Jyvaskyla and the international collaborative EXO-200 experiment paves the way for solving the reactor antineutrino flux problems. The EXO-200 collaboration consists of researchers from 26 laboratories and the experiment is designed to measure the mass of the neutrino. As a byproduct of the calibration efforts of the experiment the electron spectral shape of the beta decay of Xe-137 could be measured. This particular decay is optimally well suited for testing a theoretical hypothesis to solve the long-standing and persistent reactor antineutrino anomaly. The results of measurements of the spectral shape were published in Physical Review Letters in June 2020.

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Observation of excess events in the XENON1T dark matter experiment

Scientists from the international XENON collaboration, an international experimental group including the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), University of Tokyo; the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research (ICRR), University of Tokyo; the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research (ISEE), Nagoya University; the Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe (KMI), Nagoya University; and the Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, announced today that data from their XENON1T, the world's most sensitive dark matter experiment, show a surprising excess of events. The scientists do not claim to have found dark matter. Instead, they have observed an unexpected rate of events, the source of which is not yet fully understood. The signature of the excess is similar to what might result from a tiny residual amount of tritium (a hydrogen atom with one proton and two neutrons), but could also be a sign of something more exciting—such as the existence of a new particle known as the solar axion or the indication of previously unknown properties of neutrinos.

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Machine learning qualitatively changes the search for new particles

The ATLAS Collaboration at CERN is exploring novel ways to search for new phenomena. Alongside an extensive research program often inspired by specific theoretical models—ranging from quantum black holes to supersymmetry—physicists are applying new model-independent methods to broaden their searches. ATLAS has just released the first model-independent search for new particles using a novel technique called "weak supervision."

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Simultaneous nodal superconductivity and broken time-reversal symmetry in CaPtAs

In the vast majority of superconducting materials, Cooper pairs have what is known as even parity, which essentially means that their wave function does not change when electrons swap spatial coordinates. Conversely, some unconventional superconductors have been found to contain odd-parity Cooper pairs. This quality makes these unconventional materials particularly promising for quantum computing applications.

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Experiments expose how powerful magnetic fields are generated in the aftermath of supernovae

In a paper recently published by Physical Review Letters, a team of researchers including scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) detail the first quantitative measurements of the magnetic field structure of plasma filamentation driven by the Weibel instability, using a novel optical Thompson scattering technique.

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A new way to study how elements mix deep inside giant planets

There are giants among us—gas and ice giants to be specific. They orbit the same star, but their environmental conditions and chemical makeup are wildly different from those of Earth. These enormous planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus—can be seen as natural laboratories for the physics of matter at extreme temperatures and pressures.

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Graphics cards farm to help in search of new physics at LHCb

For the first time, data from LHCb, a major physics experiment, will be processed on a farm of GPUs. This solution is not only much cheaper, but it will help decrease the cluster size and process data at speeds up to 40 Tbit/s. The research paper has been published in Computing and Software for Big Science.

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New ideas in the search for dark matter

Since the 1980s, researchers have been running experiments in search of particles that make up dark matter, an invisible substance that permeates our galaxy and universe. Coined dark matter because it gives off no light, this substance, which constitutes more than 80 percent of matter in our universe, has been shown repeatedly to influence ordinary matter through its gravity. Scientists know it is out there but do not know what it is.

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Physicists document method to improve magnetoelectric response

University of Arkansas physicists have documented a means of improving the magnetoelectric response of bismuth ferrite, a discovery that could lead to advances in data storage, sensors and actuators.

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The smallest motor in the world

A research team from Empa and EPFL has developed a molecular motor which consists of only 16 atoms and rotates reliably in one direction. It could allow energy harvesting at the atomic level. The special feature of the motor is that it moves exactly at the boundary between classical motion and quantum tunneling - and has revealed puzzling phenomena to researchers in the quantum realm.

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What do 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' 'Macbeth,' and a list of Facebook friends all have in common?

To an English scholar or avid reader, the Shakespeare Canon represents some of the greatest literary works of the English language. To a network scientist, Shakespeare's 37 plays and the 884,421 words they contain also represent a massively complex communication network. Network scientists, who employ math, physics, and computer science to study vast and interconnected systems, are tasked with using statistically rigorous approaches to understand how complex networks, like all of Shakespeare, convey information to the human brain.

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A fractional corner anomaly reveals higher-order topology

Topological insulators (TIs) have an insulating interior and support conducting surface states with additional interfacing properties. The exotic metallic states on their surfaces can provide new routes to generate new phases and particles with potential applications in quantum computing and spintronics. Researchers have developed a theoretical framework to help identify and characterize such exotic states using new topological markers such as fractional charge density to detect topological states of matter. The resulting agreement between experimental work and theory has encouraged applications across topological platforms. In this work, Christopher W. Peterson and a team of scientists in electrical and computer engineering, physics, and mechanical science at the University of Illinois and the Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. discuss this new topological indicator introduced to identify higher-order topology and demonstrate the associated higher-order bulk-boundary correspondence. The work is now published on Science.

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A quantum metrology protocol for locating noncooperative targets in 3-D space

Radar technology, which stands for radio detection and ranging, has been around for several decades and has a wide range of real-world applications. Radar is currently used to detect targets or other objects in many settings. For instance, it is employed during military and aerospace operations to determine the location, range, angle and/or velocity of aircrafts, ships, spacecrafts, missiles or other vehicles.

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Quantum cryptography keys for secure communication distributed 1,000 kilometers farther than previous attempts

The exchange of a secret key for encrypting and decrypting messages over a distance of 1,120 kilometers is reported in Nature this week. This achievement is made using entanglement-based quantum key distribution, a theoretically secure communication technique. Previous attempts to directly distribute quantum keys between two ground users under real-world conditions have reached distances of only around 100 kilometers.

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Why pulsars shine bright: A half-century-old mystery solved

When Jocelyn Bell first observed the emissions of a pulsar in 1967, the rhythmic pulses of radio waves so confounded astronomers that they considered whether the light could be signals sent by an alien civilization.

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Radiation pressure with recoil: Experimental proof for a 90 year-old theory

Light exerts a certain amount of pressure onto a body: sun sails could thus power space probes in the future. However, when light particles (photons) hit an individual molecule and knock out an electron, the molecule flies toward the light source. Atomic physicists at Goethe University have now observed this for the first time, confirming a 90 year-old theory.

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Research reveals how material defects influence melting process

In 1972, physicists J. Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless published a groundbreaking theory of how phase changes could occur in two-dimensional materials. Experiments soon showed that the theory correctly captured the process of a helium film transitioning from a superfluid to a normal fluid, helping to usher in a new era of research on ultra-thin materials, not to mention earning Kosterlitz, a professor at Brown University, and Thouless shares of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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Elasticity key to plants and animals' ability to sting

A new study explains for the very first time the principles behind the design of stings, needles, and spikes in animals and plants. The principles can be directly used in the development of new tools and medical equipment.

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A quantum memory that operates at telecom wavelengths

To create large quantum networks, researchers will first need to develop efficient quantum repeaters. A key component of these repeaters are quantum memories, which are the quantum-mechanical equivalents of more conventional computer memories, such as random-access memories (RAM).

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Probing dark matter with the Higgs boson

Visible matter—everything from pollen to stars and galaxies—accounts for roughly 15% of the total mass of the universe. The remaining 85% is made of something entirely different from things we can touch and see: dark matter. Despite overwhelming evidence from the observation of gravitational effects, the nature of dark matter and its composition remain unknown.

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ATLAS Experiment searches for rare Higgs boson decays into a photon and a Z boson

The Higgs boson was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012 through its decays into pairs of photons, W bosons and Z bosons. Since then, physicists at these experiments have gained great insight into the properties of the Higgs boson through the study of its different production and decay processes. Decays to pairs of tau leptons and bottom quarks were established, as was the coupling to top quarks. However, the question remains whether the Higgs boson may also interact with yet-unknown particles or forces.

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Quantum effect observed in 'large' metal

In the world of materials science, sometimes main discoveries can be found in unexpected places. While working on the resistivity of a type of delafossite—PdCoO2—researchers at EPFL's Laboratory of Quantum Materials discovered that the electrons in their sample did not behave entirely as expected. When a magnetic field was applied, the electrons retained signatures of their wave-like nature, which could be observed even under relatively high temperature conditions and appeared in relatively large sizes. These surprising results, obtained in collaboration with several research institutions, could prove useful, for example in the quest for quantum computing. The research will be published today in the prestigious journal Science.

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Physicists publish worldwide consensus of muon magnetic moment calculation

For decades, scientists studying the muon have been puzzled by a strange pattern in the way muons rotate in magnetic fields, one that left physicists wondering if it can be explained by the Standard Model—the best tool physicists have to understand the universe.

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Scientists carry out first space-based measurement of neutron lifetime

Scientists have found a way of measuring neutron lifetime from space for the first time—a discovery that could teach us more about the early universe.

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Exotic electron-electron interactions found unnecessary for conduction in nickelates

Some metal oxides, such as nickelates, have a tuneable resistivity, which makes them an interesting material for adaptable electronics and cognitive computing. These materials can change their nature from metallic to insulating. How exactly this metal-insulator transition takes place is a topic of great interest in condensed matter physics. However, even the metallic behavior in nickelates seems unusual. Scientists from the University of Groningen, together with colleagues from Spain, have now found that it is not as complex as was previously assumed. The results were published on 11 June in the journal Nature Communications.

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Physics principle explains order and disorder of swarms

Current experiments support the controversial hypothesis that a well-known concept in physics—a critical point—is behind the striking behavior of collective animal systems. Physicists from the Cluster of Excellence Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz showed that light-controlled microswimming particles can be made to organize into collective states such as swarms and swirls. By studying the particles fluctuating between these states, they provide evidence for critical behavior—and support for a physical principle underlying the complex behavior of collectives. The research results were published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

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Quantum 'fifth state of matter' observed in space for first time

Scientists have observed the fifth state of matter in space for the first time, offering unprecedented insight that could help solve some of the quantum universe's most intractable conundrums, research showed Thursday.

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Signatures of fractional electronic charge observed in topological insulators

The charge of a single electron, e, is defined as the basic unit of electric charge. Because electrons—the subatomic particles that carry electricity—are elementary particles and cannot be split, fractions of electronic charge are not normally encountered. Despite this, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have recently observed the signature of fractional charges ranging from e/4 to 2e/3 in exotic materials known as topological crystalline insulators.

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Team solves old mystery, paving way toward advances in medicine, industry, environmental science

An Oregon State University environmental engineering professor has solved a decades-old mystery regarding the behavior of fluids, a field of study with widespread medical, industrial and environmental applications.

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What a bike moving at near the speed of light might look like to a human observer

A pair of researchers at Surrey University has attempted to show what a bicycle moving at near the speed of light might look like to a human observer. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, E. C. Cryer-Jenkins, and P. D. Stevenson expand on prior research that attempted to describe how a near-light-speed object would appear to a camera, this time focusing on its appearance to a binocular observer.

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Study provides new explanation for neutrino anomalies in Antarctica

A new research paper co-authored by a Virginia Tech assistant professor of physics provides a new explanation for two recent strange events that occurred in Antarctica—high-energy neutrinos appearing to come up out of the Earth on their own accord and head skyward.

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Examining a snapshot of exploding oxygen

For more than 200 years, we have been using X-rays to look inside matter and progressing to ever smaller structures—from crystals to nanoparticles. Now, within the framework of a larger international collaboration on the X-ray laser European XFEL in Schenefeld near Hamburg, physicists at Goethe University have achieved a qualitative leap forward. Using a new experimental technique, they have been able to X-ray molecules such as oxygen and view their motion in the microcosm for the first time.

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Mysterious iron X-ray lines grow stranger with high precision measurements

Two prominent X-ray emission lines of highly charged iron have puzzled astrophysicists for decades because their measured and calculated brightness ratios always disagree. This hinders good determinations of plasma temperatures and densities. New, careful high-precision measurements, together with top-level calculations, now exclude all hitherto proposed explanations for this discrepancy, and thus deepen the problem.

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Method found for making photons repel each other in an ultracold atomic gas

A team of researchers from MIT, Harvard University and the University of Belgrade has found a way to make photons repel each other inside a cloud of ultracold atomic gas. In their paper published in the journal Nature Physics, the group describes experiments they conducted that involved coupling pairs of photons to atomic states and what they learned from them.

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Video: Boiling. We research. You benefit.

Did you know that in microgravity you can better study the boiling process?

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Shock waves created in the lab mimic astrophysical particle accelerators powered by exploding stars

When stars explode as supernovas, they produce shock waves in the plasma surrounding them. So powerful are these shock waves, they can act as particle accelerators that blast streams of particles, called cosmic rays, out into the universe at nearly the speed of light. Yet how exactly they do that has remained something of a mystery.

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Physicists study mirror nuclei for precision theory test

It's not often in nuclear physics that you can clearly get both sides of the story, but a recent experiment allowed researchers to do just that. They compared very similar nuclei to each other to get a clearer view of how the components of nuclei are arranged and found that there's still more to learn about the heart of matter. The research, carried out at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, was recently published as an editors' suggested read in Physical Review Letters.

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Researchers develop ultra-sensitive device for detecting magnetic fields

A team of Brown University physicists has developed a new type of compact, ultra-sensitive magnetometer. The new device could be useful in a variety of applications involving weak magnetic fields, the researchers say.

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Gently caressing atoms

Oxygen is highly reactive. It accumulates on many surfaces and determines their chemical behavior. At the Vienna University of Technology, scientists study the interaction between oxygen and metal oxide surfaces, which play an important role in many technical applications, from chemical sensors and catalysts to electronics.

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Novel probes of the strong force: Precision jet substructure and the Lund jet plane

A hallmark of the strong force at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the dramatic production of collimated jets of particles when quarks and gluons scatter at high energies. Particle physicists have studied jets for decades to learn about the structure of quantum chromodynamics—or QCD, the theory of the strong interaction—across a wide range of energy scales.

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New experiments show complex astrochemistry on thin ice covering dust grains

Astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the University of Jena have obtained a clearer view of nature's tiny deep-space laboratories: tiny dust grains covered with ice. Instead of regular shapes covered thickly in ice, such grains appear to be fluffy networks of dust, with thin ice layers. In particular, that means the dust grains have considerably larger surfaces, which is where most of the chemical reactions take place. Hence, the new structure has fundamental consequences for astronomers' view of organic chemistry in space—and thus for the genesis of prebiotic molecules that could have played an important role for the origin of life on Earth.

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'Whispering gallery' effect controls electron beams with light

When you speak softly in one of the galleries of St Paul's cathedral, the sound runs so easily around the dome that visitors anywhere on its circumference can hear it. This striking phenomenon has been termed the 'whispering gallery' effect, and variants of it appear in many scenarios where a wave can travel nearly perfectly around a structure. Researchers from the University of Göttingen have now harnessed the effect to control the beam of an electron microscope by light. The results were published in Nature.

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Cracking open the proton

Physicists around the world are cracking open the proton, within the nucleus of the atom, to see what's inside.

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Researchers experimentally prove flat mirror ability to focus light

For the first time, researchers of Tomsk Polytechnic University jointly with teams from Taiwan and Spain have experimentally confirmed the flat focusing mirror effect, which they previously predicted. Physical properties of the effect and simplicity of its reproduction make it promising for application in microelectronics, photonics, and on-chip systems, where a single microcircuit functions as an entire device. The study results are presented in Scientific Reports.

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Scientists iron out the physics of wrinkling

When we think of wrinkles, we usually envision the lines etched into our skin, for some an unwelcome reality and for others a proud sign of a life well-lived. In material science, wrinkles can also be either wanted or unwanted. But the physical factors that cause wrinkling to occur are not yet fully understood.

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Exploring new ways to see the Higgs boson

The ATLAS and CMS collaborations presented their latest results on new signatures for detecting the Higgs boson at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. These include searches for rare transformations of the Higgs boson into a Z boson—which is a carrier of one of the fundamental forces of nature—and a second particle. Observing and studying transformations that are predicted to be rare helps advance our understanding of particle physics and could also point the way to new physics if observations differ from the predictions. The results also included searches for signs of Higgs transformations into "invisible" particles, which could shine light on potential dark-matter particles. The analyses involved nearly 140 inverse femtobarns of data, or around 10 million billion proton–proton collisions, recorded between 2015 and 2018.

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One-of-a-kind microscope enables breakthrough in quantum science

Technion Professor Ido Kaminer and his team have made a dramatic breakthrough in the field of quantum science: a quantum microscope that records the flow of light, enabling the direct observation of light trapped inside a photonic crystal.

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SENSEI gets quiet: Scientists demonstrate particle detector for dark matter

What makes for a good dark matter detector? It has a lot in common with a good teleconference setup: You need a sensitive microphone and a quiet room.

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Black holes? They are like a hologram

According to new research by SISSA, ICTP and INFN, black holes could be like holograms, in which all the information to produce a three-dimensional image is encoded in a two-dimensional surface. As affirmed by quantum theories, black holes could be incredibly complex, and concentrate an enormous amount of information in two dimensions, like the largest hard disks that exist in nature. This idea aligns with Einstein's theory of relativity, which describes black holes as three dimensional, simple, spherical and smooth, as depicted in the first-ever image of a black hole that circulated in 2019. In short, black holes appear to be three dimensional, just like holograms. The study, which unites two discordant theories, has recently been published in Physical Review X.

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Work resumes in support of stockpile modernization

The effort to resume hands-on work in support of stockpile modernization programs reached a major milestone May 7 with the successful execution of a focused experiment at the High Explosives Applications Facility (HEAF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The experiment is the first using high explosives at the Laboratory since Alameda County issued a shelter-in-place order March 16 and the Laboratory went into "Reduced Mission Critical Operations" in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Levitated timepiece sets new benchmark

A new mechanical "clock" has been created by an international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of St Andrews, which could test the fundamental physics of gravity.

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Active particles with light-switchable propulsion direction and reversible interactions

Researchers from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw, ETH in Zurich and the University of Cambridge have synthesized and analysed active microparticles self-propelling in a fluid and reversing their propulsion direction depending on the wavelength of illuminating light. A research article summarising their work has recently been published in Nature Communications.

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VENUS construction on track for ORNL's newest neutron imaging instrument

Researchers and engineers at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) are making progress on the construction of VENUS, the facility's newest instrument for studying materials in exciting new ways that are currently not possible for open research programs in the United States.

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New test of dark energy and expansion from cosmic structures

A new paper has shown how large structures in the distribution of galaxies in the Universe provide the most precise tests of dark energy and cosmic expansion yet.

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The broken mirror: Can parity violation in molecules finally be measured?

Scientists have long tried to experimentally demonstrate a certain symmetry property of the weak interaction—parity violation—in molecules. So far, this has not been possible. A new interdisciplinary effort led by a research group at the at the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) has now shown a realistic path to demonstrating this phenomenon. The approach includes aspects of nuclear, elementary particle, atomic and molecular physics as well as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). "Molecular parity nonconservation in nuclear spin couplings" is published in the current issue of the journal Physical Review Research.

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Isotopes – Improved process for medicine

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have discovered a better way to separate actinium-227, a rare isotope essential for an FDA-approved cancer treatment.

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Searching for new sources of matter–antimatter symmetry breaking in Higgs boson interaction with top quarks

When a particle is transformed into its antiparticle and its spatial coordinates inverted, the laws of physics are required to stay the same—or so we thought. This symmetry—known as CP symmetry (charge conjugation and parity symmetry) – was considered to be exact until 1964, when a study of the kaon particle system led to the discovery of CP violation.

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New optical technique provides more efficient probe of nanomagnet dynamics

The performance of magnetic storage and memory devices depends on the magnetization dynamics of nanometer-scale magnetic elements called nanomagnets. Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have developed a new optical technique that enables efficient analysis of single nanomagnets as small as 75 nanometers in diameter, enabling them to extract critical information for optimizing device performance.

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Researchers discover a new type of matter inside neutron stars

A Finnish research group has found strong evidence for the presence of exotic quark matter inside the cores of the largest neutron stars in existence. They reached this conclusion by combining recent results from theoretical particle and nuclear physics to measurements of gravitational waves from neutron star collisions.

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Novel method to directly measure stress fields in transparent solids

Laser doppler vibrometer (LDV) technology is used to measure the vibration of an object's surface.

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Researchers develop a first-principles quantum Monte Carlo package called TurboRVB

First-principles quantum Monte Carlo is a framework used to tackle the solution of the many-body Schrödinger equation by means of a stochastic approach. This framework is expected to be the next generation of electronic structure calculations because it can overcome some of the drawbacks in density functional theory and wavefunction-based calculations. In particular, the quantum Monte Carlo framework does not rely on exchange-correlation functionals, the algorithm is well suited for massively parallel supercomputers, and it is easily applicable to both isolated and periodic systems.

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Killing coronavirus with handheld ultraviolet light device may be feasible

A personal, handheld device emitting high-intensity ultraviolet light to disinfect areas by killing the novel coronavirus is now feasible, according to researchers at Penn State, the University of Minnesota and two Japanese universities.

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Theoretical breakthrough shows quantum fluids rotate by corkscrew mechanism

If a drop of creamer falls from a spoon into a swirling cup of coffee, the whirlpool drags the drop into rotation. But what would happen if the coffee had no friction—no way to pull the drop into a synchronized spin?

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Orbital ordering triggers nucleation-growth behavior of electrons in an inorganic solid

A new study by researchers from Waseda University and the University of Tokyo found that orbital ordering in a vanadate compound exhibits a clear nucleation-growth behavior.

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New properties of cosmic rays, silicon, magnesium and neon found by Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer aboard ISS

A very large team of researchers from around the globe has found new properties of the cosmic rays silicon, magnesium and neon using data from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer aboard the International Space Station. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes their study of the three elements and what they found out about them.

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