Radioactivity in meteorites sheds light on origin of heaviest elements in our solar system

A team of international researchers went back to the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago to gain new insights into the cosmic origin of the heaviest elements on the period-ic table.

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Using neutron scattering to better understand milk composition

Neutron scattering is a technique commonly used in physics and biology to understand the composition of complex multicomponent mixtures and is increasingly being used to study applied materials such as food. A new paper published in EPJ E by Gregory N Smith, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, shows an example of neutron scattering in the area of food science. Smith uses neutron scattering to better investigate casein micelles in milk, with the aim of developing an approach for future research.

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Study reveals cause of 3-D asymmetry in inertial confinement fusion implosions

Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) implosions require very high levels of symmetry in order to reach the high densities and temperatures required for fusion induced self-heating. Even percent-level deviations from perfect spherical symmetry can lead to significant distortions of the implosion and ultimately degrade fusion performance.

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Nuclear physicists on the hunt for squeezed protons

While protons populate the nucleus of every atom in the universe, sometimes they can be squeezed into a smaller size and slip out of the nucleus for a romp on their own. Observing these squeezed protons may offer unique insights into the particles that build our universe.

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Researchers prove fragments of splitting atomic nuclei begin spinning after scission

A large international team of researchers has proven that fragments of splitting atomic nuclei begin spinning after scission occurs during nuclear fission. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their experiments, which may one day fully explain why such fragments begin spinning in the first place.

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Research shows how single celled algae rotate as they swim towards the light

Scientists have made a pivotal breakthrough in the quest to understand how single-cell green algae are able to keep track of the light as they swim.

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Optimality in self-organized molecular sorting

The eukaryotic cell is the basic unit of animals and plants. Through the microscope, it looks highly structured and subdivided in many membrane-bound compartments. Each compartment has a specific function, and its membrane is populated by specific molecules. How does the cell preserve this amazing internal order, and (in the absence of pathologies) not degrade into a shapeless bunch of molecules? Such degradation is countered by a continuous process of molecular sorting by which similar molecules are collected and dispatched to the 'right' destinations, similarly to what happens when a house is kept clean and tidy by daily chores. It's still mysterious, however, how a living cell may achieve this task without a supervisor directing it.

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Nature's funhouse mirror: Understanding asymmetry in the proton

Asymmetry in the proton confounds physicists, but a new discovery may bring back old theories to explain it.

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Experiment reveals new options for synchrotron light sources

Accelerator experts from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), the German federal metrology institute Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and Tsinghua University in Beijing have used a laser to manipulate electron bunches at PTB's Metrology Light Source so that they emitted intense light pulses having a laser-like character. Using this method, specialized synchrotron radiation sources would potentially be able to fill a gap in the arsenal of available light sources and offer a prototype for industrial applications.

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Researchers capture how materials break apart following an extreme shock

Understanding how materials deform and catastrophically fail when impacted by a powerful shock is crucial in a wide range of fields, including astrophysics, materials science and aerospace engineering. But until recently, the role of voids, or tiny pores, in such a rapid process could not be determined, requiring measurements to be taken at millionths of a billionth of a second.

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After 20 years, physicists find a way to keep track of lost accelerator particles

A high-intensity accelerator beam is formed of trillions of particles that race at lightning speeds down a system of powerful magnets and high-energy superconductors. Calculating the physics of the beam is so complex that not even the fastest supercomputers can keep up.

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Spintronics: New production method makes crystalline microstructures universally usable

New storage and information technology requires new higher performance materials. One of these materials is yttrium iron garnet, which has special magnetic properties. Thanks to a new process, it can now be transferred to any material. Developed by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the method could advance the production of smaller, faster and more energy-efficient components for data storage and information processing. The physicists have published their results in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

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High energy radiotherapy could 'paint' tumours to avoid harming healthy tissue

A radiotherapy technique which 'paints' tumors by targeting them precisely, and avoiding healthy tissue, has been devised in research led by the University of Strathclyde.

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New storage medium uses physical properties of antiferromagnetic material

Using nanoscale quantum sensors, an international research team has succeeded in exploring certain previously uncharted physical properties of an antiferromagnetic material. Based on their results, the researchers developed a concept for a new storage medium published in the journal Nature Physics. The project was coordinated by researchers from the Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute at the University of Basel.

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A new study reveals that quantum physics can cause mutations in our DNA

Quantum biology is an emerging field of science, established in the 1920s, which looks at whether the subatomic world of quantum mechanics plays a role in living cells. Quantum mechanics is an interdisciplinary field by nature, bringing together nuclear physicists, biochemists and molecular biologists.

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'Forward' jet-tracking components installed at RHIC's STAR detector

Just prior to the start of this year's run at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)—a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory—a team of scientists, engineers, technicians, and students completed the installation of important new components of the collider's STAR detector. This house-sized particle tracker (the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC) captures the subatomic debris created when atomic nuclei collide so scientists can learn about the building blocks of matter. The new components will expand STAR's ability to track jets of particles emerging in an extreme "forward" direction, meaning close to the beamline through which the particles travel as they collide.

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Heat loss control method in fusion reactors

The core of a fusion reactor is incredibly hot. Hydrogen that inevitably escapes from it must be cooled on its way to the wall, as otherwise, the reactor wall would be damaged. Researchers from the Dutch institute DIFFER and EPFL's Swiss Plasma Center have developed a strict measurement and control method for the cooling of very hot particles escaping from fusion plasmas.

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Physicists discover new route to active matter self-organisation

An international team led by Professor Yilin Wu, Associate Professor of the Department of Physics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has made a novel conceptual advance in the field of active matter science. The team discovered a new route in which the self-organization of active fluids in space and time can be controlled by a single material property called viscoelasticity. This new finding may pave the way for fabricating a new class of self-driven devices and materials, such as the ability to control the rhythmic movement of soft robots without relying on electronic circuits, and for the study of microbial physiology. It has been published in the scientific journal Nature.

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Extending maser techniques to Floquet systems

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China and one in Germany has investigated the possibility of extending maser techniques to Floquet systems. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their approach to creating a new type of maser by amplifying radio frequencies in Floquet systems. Ren-Bao Liu, with the Chinese University of Hong Kong, has published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining prior work with extending the capabilities of masers and the work done by the team on this latest effort.

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Researchers observe stationary Hawking radiation in an analog black hole

Black holes are regions in space where gravity is very strong—so strong that nothing that enters them can escape, including light. Theoretical predictions suggest that there is a radius surrounding black holes known as the event horizon. Once something passes the event horizon, it can no longer escape a black hole, as gravity becomes stronger as it approaches its center.

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Seeing stable topology using instabilities

We are most familiar with the four conventional phases of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Changes between two phases, known as phase transitions, are marked by abrupt changes in material properties such as density. In recent decades a wide body of physics research has been devoted to discovering new unconventional phases of matter, which typically emerge at ultra-low temperatures or in specially-structured materials. Exotic "topological" phases exhibit properties that can only change in a quantized (stepwise) manner, making them intrinsically robust against impurities and defects.

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Potassium nucleus loses some of its magic

A new study at ISOLDE finds no signature of a "magic" number of neutrons in potassium-51, challenging the proposed magic nature of nuclei with 32 neutrons.

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Engineers place molecule-scale devices in precise orientation

Engineers have developed a technique that allows them to precisely place microscopic devices formed from folded DNA molecules in not only a specific location but also in a specific orientation.

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Investigating the wave properties of matter with vibrating molecules

The working group led by Prof. Stephan Schiller, Ph.D. from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has used a novel, high-precision laser spectroscopic experiment to measure the internal vibration of the simplest molecule. This allowed the researchers to investigate the wave character of the motion of atomic nuclei with unprecedented accuracy. They present their findings in the current edition of Nature Physics.

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Ultrafast electron dynamics in space and time

Often depicted as colorful balloons or clouds, electron orbitals provide information on the whereabouts of electrons in molecules, a bit like fuzzy snapshots. In order to understand the exchange of electrons in chemical reactions, it is not only important to know their spatial distribution but also their motion in time. Scientists from Julich, Marburg, and Graz have now made huge progress in this direction: They successfully recorded orbital images with an extremely high temporal resolution.

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LHC/ATLAS: A unique observation of particle pair creation in photon-photon collisions

Creation of matter in an interaction of two photons belongs to a class of very rare phenomena. From the data of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, collected with the new AFP proton detectors at the highest energies available to-date, a more accurate—and more interesting—picture of the phenomena occurring during photon collisions is emerging.

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Physics of tumours: Cancer cells become fluidised and squeeze through tissue

Working with colleagues from Germany and the US, researchers at Leipzig University have achieved a breakthrough in research into how cancer cells spread. In experiments, the team of biophysicists led by Professor Josef Alfons Käs, Steffen Grosser and Jürgen Lippoldt demonstrated for the first time how cells deform in order to move in dense tumor tissues and squeeze past neighboring cells. The researchers found that motile cells work together to fluidise tumor tissue.

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The search for electron-hole liquids gets warmer

An electron-hole liquid is a unique collective quantum state formation in semiconductors where free charges can condense into a droplet. These droplets have interesting uses for laser-controlled circuits based on light beams instead of wires. Unfortunately, electron-hole liquids normally only exist in extremely cold environments, and aren't practical for real devices. But what if these droplets could instead form as the material heats up?

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New advances using exotic matter may lead to ultrafast computing

In the 196zeroes, an exotic phase of matter known as an excitonic insulator was proposed. Decades later, evidence for this phase was found in real materials. Recently, particular attention has centered on Ta2NiSe5 because an excitonic insulator phase may exist in this material at room temperatures. The substance is made up of the elements tantalum, nickel, and selenium, and has the potential to lead to breakthroughs in more power-efficient, faster computers.

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Electrons living on the edge

Scientists at the University of Tsukuba demonstrated the possibility of electrons moving as if they were massless when certain materials called "topological insulators" are irradiated with laser beams. This work may lead to a new class of highly efficient electronic devices and photonic crystals.

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New metamaterials for studying the oldest light in the universe

The cosmic microwave background, or CMB, is the electromagnetic echo of the Big Bang, radiation that has been traveling through space and time since the very first atoms were born 380,000 years after our universe began. Mapping minuscule variations in the CMB tells scientists about how our universe came to be and what it's made of.

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X-ray double flashes control atomic nuclei

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg has coherently controlled nuclear excitations using suitably shaped X-ray light for the first time. In the experiment performed at the European Synchrotron ESRF, they achieved a temporal control stability of a few zeptoseconds. This forms the basis for new experimental approaches exploiting the control of nuclear dynamics which could lead to more precise future time standards and open new possibilities on the way to nuclear batteries.

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Cells use concentration gradients as a compass

Biophysicists at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munch have developed a new theory, which accounts for the observation that cells can perceive their own shapes, and use this information to direct the distribution of proteins inside the cell.

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How icebergs really melt—and what this could mean for climate change

Icebergs are melting faster than current models describe, according to a new study by mathematicians at the University of Sydney. The researchers have proposed a new model to more accurately represent the melt speed of icebergs into oceans.

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A tiny crystal device could boost gravitational wave detectors to reveal the birth cries of black holes

In 2017, astronomers witnessed the birth of a black hole for the first time. Gravitational wave detectors picked up the ripples in spacetime caused by two neutron stars colliding to form the black hole, and other telescopes then observed the resulting explosion.

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Moiré patterns facilitate discovery of novel insulating phases

Materials having excess electrons are typically conductors. However, moiré patterns—interference patterns that typically arise when one object with a repetitive pattern is placed over another with a similar pattern—can suppress electrical conductivity, a study led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside, has found.

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Researchers explore using light to levitate discs in the mesosphere

A team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania has found that it is possible to levitate very thin discs in conditions that mimic the mesosphere using laser light. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their research involving a possible way to allow flight at very high altitudes and how well it worked.

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Research team develops joint splints for sports and medicine inspired by dragonfly wings

Around 80% of sports injuries are so-called musculoskeletal injuries, for example sprains, strains or overstretching. Such injuries can occur especially in those sports with high loads on the wrists, such as handball, basketball or weightlifting. Conventional supports either do not provide enough stability or restrict the mobility of the joint too much. A research team from the Zoological Institute at Kiel University (CAU) has now developed a flexible joint splint that combines maximum mobility and optimal stability. The source of their inspiration was the ultra-thin wings of dragonflies, which have to withstand substantial external loads during flight. Their study was published yesterday in the journal Applied Physics A. Now the scientists want to bring their design into practice, a patent has already been filed.

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New machine learning theory raises questions about nature of science

A novel computer algorithm, or set of rules, that accurately predicts the orbits of planets in the solar system could be adapted to better predict and control the behavior of the plasma that fuels fusion facilities designed to harvest on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars.

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'Swirlonic' super particles baffle physicists

In recent years, active, self-propelled particles have received growing interest amongst the scientific community. Examples of active particles and their systems are numerous and very diverse, ranging from bacterium films to flocks of birds or human crowds. These systems can demonstrate unusual behavior, which is challenging to understand or model.

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AEgIS on track to test freefall of antimatter

It's a fundamental law of physics that even the most ardent science-phobe can define: matter falls down under gravity. But what about antimatter, which has the same mass but opposite electrical charge and spin? According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, gravity should treat matter and antimatter identically. Finding even the slightest difference in their free-fall rate would therefore lead to a revolution in our understanding. While the free fall of matter has been measured with an accuracy of around one part in 100 trillion, no direct measurement for antimatter has yet been performed due to the difficulty in producing and containing large quantities of it.

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Scientists develop new, faster method for seeking out dark matter

For nearly a century, scientists have worked to unravel the mystery of dark matter—an elusive substance that spreads through the universe and likely makes up much of its mass, but has so far proven impossible to detect in experiments. Now, a team of researchers have used an innovative technique called "quantum squeezing" to dramatically speed up the search for one candidate for dark matter in the lab.

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Really random networks

Many natural and human-made networks, such as computer, biological or social networks have a connectivity structure that critically shapes their behavior. The academic field of network science is concerned with analyzing such real-world complex networks and understanding how their structure influences their function or behavior. Examples are the vascular network of our bodies, the network of neurons in our brain, or the network of how an epidemic is spreading through a society.

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Collective worm and robot 'blobs' protect individuals, swarm together

Individually, California blackworms live an unremarkable life eating microorganisms in ponds and serving as tropical fish food for aquarium enthusiasts. But together, tens, hundreds, or thousands of the centimeter-long creatures can collaborate to form a "worm blob," a shape-shifting living liquid that collectively protects its members from drying out and helps them escape threats such as excessive heat.

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School closures may not reduce coronavirus deaths as much as expected: study

School closures, the loss of public spaces, and having to work remotely due to the coronavirus pandemic have caused major disruptions in people's social lives all over the world.

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Advanced simulations reveal how air conditioning spreads COVID-19 aerosols

The detailed physical processes and pathways involved in the transmission of COVID-19 are still not well understood. Researchers decided to use advanced computational fluid dynamics tools on supercomputers to deepen understanding of transmission and provide a quantitative assessment of how different environmental factors influence transmission pathways and airborne infection risk.

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ATLAS finds evidence of a rare Higgs boson decay

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, scientists in the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been hard at work characterizing its properties and hunting down the diverse ways in which this ephemeral particle can decay. From the copious but experimentally challenging decay to b-quarks, to the exquisitely rare but low-background decay into four leptons, each offers a different avenue to study the properties of this new particle. Now, ATLAS has found first evidence of the Higgs boson decaying to two leptons (either an electron or a muon pair with opposite charge) and a photon. Known as "Dalitz decay," this is one of the rarest Higgs boson decays yet seen at the LHC.

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Shuffling bubbles reveal how liquid foams evolve

Foams are found everywhere, in soaps and detergents, meringues, beer foam, cosmetics and insulation for clothing and building. The application of foams tends to take advantage of their unique structure, which is why understanding how their structure can change over time is so important.

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'Magnetic graphene' forms a new kind of magnetism

Researchers have identified a new form of magnetism in so-called magnetic graphene, which could point the way toward understanding superconductivity in this unusual type of material.

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Researchers control a magnet's state by optically shaking its atomic lattice

An international team led by researchers of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) has managed to manipulate the magnetic state of a magnetic material by optically shaking it. The whole process happens within an extremely short time frame of less than a few picoseconds. In times of stalling efficiency trends of current technology, such atomically-driven ultrafast control of magnetism opens broad new vistas for information technology. The results, which have been published in Nature Materials, could eventually lead to fast and energy-efficient data processing technologies, which are essential to keep up with our data hunger.

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The direct observation of the Pauli principle

The Pauli exclusion principle is a law of quantum mechanics introduced by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli, which offers valuable insight about the structure of matter. More specifically, the Pauli principle states that two or more identical fermions cannot simultaneously occupy the same quantum state inside a quantum system.

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Neutrinos, atomic clocks and an experiment to detect a time dilation

Griffith University researchers are conducting an experiment at ANSTO that will test a revolutionary physics theory that time reversal symmetry-breaking by neutrinos might cause a time dilation at the quantum scale.

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New fiber optic temperature sensing approach to keep fusion power plants running

The pursuit of fusion as a safe, carbon-free, always-on energy source has intensified in recent years, with a number of organizations pursuing aggressive timelines for technology demonstrations and power plant designs. New-generation superconducting magnets are a critical enabler for many of these programs, which creates growing need for sensors, controls, and other infrastructure that will allow the magnets to operate reliably in the harsh conditions of a commercial fusion power plant.

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Modeling the brain during pain processing

The many different sensations our bodies experience are accompanied by deeply complex exchanges of information within the brain, and the feeling of pain is no exception. So far, research has shown how pain intensity can be directly related to specific patterns of oscillation in brain activity, which are altered by the activation and deactivation of the 'interneurons' connecting different regions of the brain. However, it remains unclear how the process is affected by 'inhibitory' interneurons, which prevent chemical messages from passing between these regions. Through new research published in EPJ B, researchers led by Fernando Montani at Instituto de Física La Plata, Argentina, show that inhibitory interneurons make up 20% of the circuitry in the brain required for pain processing.

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Venus flytraps found to produce magnetic fields

The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is a carnivorous plant that encloses its prey using modified leaves as a trap. During this process, electrical signals known as action potentials trigger the closure of the leaf lobes. An interdisciplinary team of scientists has now shown that these electrical signals generate measurable magnetic fields. Using atomic magnetometers, it proved possible to record this biomagnetism. "You could say the investigation is a little like performing an MRI scan in humans," said physicist Anne Fabricant. "The problem is that the magnetic signals in plants are very weak, which explains why it was extremely difficult to measure them with the help of older technologies."

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Temperature, humidity, wind predict second wave of pandemic

The 'second wave' of the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in much blame placed on a lack of appropriate safety measures. However, due to the impacts of weather, research suggests two outbreaks per year during a pandemic are inevitable.

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How do electrons close to Earth reach almost the speed of light?

A new study found that electrons can reach ultra-relativistic energies for very special conditions in the magnetosphere when space is devoid of plasma.

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Biosensors require robust antifouling protection

Some promising biosensors and medical devices work well within pristine laboratory environments. However, they tend to stop working to deliver medical therapeutics or monitor chronic health issues once exposed to the real-world conditions of complex biological fluids.

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Why food sticks to nonstick frying pans

Despite the use of nonstick frying pans, foods will sometimes get stuck to a heated surface, even if oil is used. The results can be very messy and unappetizing.

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Not too big, not too small: Goldilocks analogy found in maze navigation

New research from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) has found a surprising randomness for how fluids choose their path around obstacles that depends on their spacing. This has important implications for a range of scenarios—from oil recovery and groundwater remediation, to understanding the movement of fluids through biological systems. The research was published in Physical Review Letters.

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First images of muon beams

A new technique has taken the first images of muon particle beams. Nagoya University scientists designed the imaging technique with colleagues in Osaka University and KEK, Japan and describe it in the journal Scientific Reports. They plan to use it to assess the quality of these beams, which are being used more and more in advanced imaging applications.

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Searching for dark matter through the fifth dimension

Theoretical physicists of the PRISMA+ Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz are working on a theory that goes beyond the Standard Model of particle physics and can answer questions where the Standard Model has to pass—for example, with respect to the hierarchies of the masses of elementary particles or the existence of dark matter. The central element of the theory is an extra dimension in spacetime. Until now, scientists have faced the problem that the predictions of their theory could not be tested experimentally. They have now overcome this problem in a publication in the current issue of the European Physical Journal C.

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Paving the way for effective field theories

Over the past century, a wide variety of models have emerged to explain the complex behaviors which unfold within atomic nuclei at low energies. However, these theories bring up deep philosophical questions regarding their scientific value. Indeed, traditional epistemological tools have been rather elaborated to account for a unified and stabilized theory rather than to apprehend a plurality of models. Ideally, a theory is meant to be reductionist, unifying and fundamentalist. In view of the intrinsic limited precision of their prediction and of the difficulty in assessing a priori their range of applicability, as well as of their specific and disconnected character, traditional nuclear models are necessarily deficient when analyzed by means of standard epistemological interpretative frameworks.

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Backreaction observed for first time in water tank black hole simulation

Scientists have revealed new insights into the behavior of black holes with research that demonstrates how a phenomenon called backreaction can be simulated.

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A full-scale prototype for muon tomography

Each year, billions of tons of goods are transported globally using cargo containers. Currently, there are concerns that this immense volume of traffic could be exploited to transport illicit nuclear materials, with little chance of detection. One promising approach to combating this issue is to measure how goods interact with charged particles named muons—which form naturally as cosmic rays interact with Earth's atmosphere. Studies worldwide have now explored how this technique, named "muon tomography," can be achieved through a variety of detection technologies and reconstruction algorithms. In this article of EPJ Plus, a team headed by Francesco Riggi at the University of Catania, Italy, build on these results to develop a full-scale muon tomograph prototype.

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Unlocking the power of a molecule's spin

Behind the devices that shape modern life is an array of natural and human-made materials. One such component of smartphones and computers are rare earth metals, a group of 17 elements that, because they aren't found in concentrated deposits, require energy-intensive and toxic methods to extract. While recycling rare earth metals from used devices is one way to relieve strained supply chains and reduce environmental damage, the fundamental chemistry required for efficiently separating and reusing these metals remains a challenge.

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The first observation of a marginal Fermi glass

For several years, the condensed-matter physics community has been trying to gain a better understanding of material systems made up of strongly interacting particles. Interestingly, many metals can be described as systems with effectively weakly interacting electrons, even if interactions between electrons are typically quite strong.

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Ultralow magnetic damping of a common metallic ferromagnetic film

Ultralow damping is of key importance for spintronic and spin-orbitronic applications in a range of magnetic materials. However, the number of materials that are suited for charge-based spintronic and spin-orbitronic applications are limited due to magnon-electron scattering. To quantitatively calculate the transition metallic ferromagnetic damping, researchers have proposed theoretical approaches including the breathing Fermi surface model (to describe dissipative magnetization dynamics), generalized torque correlation model, scattering theory, and the linear response damping model. In a new report now published on Science Advances, Yangping Wei and a team of scientists in science, magnetism and magnetic materials, and chemical engineering in China and Singapore experimentally detailed a damping parameter approaching 1.5 x 10-3 for traditional, fundamental iron aluminide (FeAl) soft ferromagnets. The results were comparable to those of 3-D transition metallic ferromagnets based on the principle of minimum electron density of states.

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Solving complex physics problems at lightning speed

A calculation so complex that it takes 20 years to complete on a powerful desktop computer can now be done in one hour on a regular laptop. Physicist Andreas Ekström at Chalmers University of Technology, together with international research colleagues, has designed a new method to calculate the properties of atomic nuclei incredibly quickly.

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