'Agricomb' measures multiple gas emissions from... cows

After the optical frequency comb made its debut as a ruler for light, spinoffs followed, including the astrocomb to measure starlight and a radar-like comb system to detect natural gas leaks. And now, researchers have unveiled the "agricomb" to measure, ahem, cow burps.

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Researchers achieve world's first manipulation of antimatter by laser

Researchers with the CERN-based ALPHA collaboration have announced the world's first laser-based manipulation of antimatter, leveraging a made-in-Canada laser system to cool a sample of antimatter down to near absolute zero. The achievement, detailed in an article published today and featured on the cover of the journal Nature, will significantly alter the landscape of antimatter research and advance the next generation of experiments.

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Heat conduction record with tantalum nitride

A thermos bottle has the task of preserving the temperature—but sometimes you want to achieve the opposite: Computer chips generate heat that must be dissipated as quickly as possible so that the chip is not destroyed. This requires special materials with particularly good heat conduction properties.

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New theory suggests uranium 'snowflakes' in white dwarfs could set off star-destroying explosion

A pair of researchers with Indiana University and Illinois University, respectively, has developed a theory that suggests crystalizing uranium "snowflakes" deep inside white dwarfs could instigate an explosion large enough to destroy the star. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, C. J. Horowitz and M. E. Caplan describe their theory and what it could mean to astrophysical theories about white dwarfs and supernovas.

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Super-precise Fermilab experiment carefully analyzing the muon's magnetic moment

Modern physics is full of the sort of twisty, puzzle-within-a-puzzle plots you'd find in a classic detective story: Both physicists and detectives must carefully separate important clues from unrelated information. Both physicists and detectives must sometimes push beyond the obvious explanation to fully reveal what's going on.

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Development of a broadband mid-infrared source for remote sensing

A research team of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, National Institute for Fusion Science and Akita Prefectural University has successfully demonstrated a broadband mid-infrared (MIR) source with a simple configuration. This light source generates highly-stable broadband MIR beam at 2.5-3.7 μm wavelength range maintaining the brightness owing to its high-beam quality. Such a broadband MIR source facilitates a simplified environmental monitoring system by constructing a MIR fiber-optic sensor, which has the potential for industrial and medical applications.

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Researchers observe new isotope of fluorine

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis reported the first observations of a new form of fluorine, the isotope 13F, described in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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ATLAS searches for pairs of Higgs bosons in a rare particle decay

Since the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been studying the properties of this very special particle and its relation to the fundamental mechanism essential to the generation of mass of elementary particles. One property that remains to be experimentally verified is whether the Higgs boson is able to couple to itself, known as self-coupling. Such an interaction would contribute to the production of a pair of Higgs bosons in the LHC's high-energy proton–proton collisions, an incredibly rare process in the Standard Model—more than 1000 times rarer than the production of a single Higgs boson! Measuring a Higgs boson self-coupling that is different from the predicted value would have important consequences; the universe might be able to transition into a lower energy state and the laws that govern the interactions of matter could take a very different shape.

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The egg in the X-ray beam: A peek at what happens to an egg when you cook it

A team of scientists has been using DESY's X-ray source PETRA III to analyze the structural changes that take place in an egg when you cook it. The work reveals how the proteins in the white of a chicken egg unfold and cross-link with each other to form a solid structure when heated. Their innovative method can be of interest to the food industry as well as to the broad field of research surrounding protein analysis. The cooperation of two groups, headed by Professor Frank Schreiber from the University of Tübingen and Professor Christian Gutt from the University of Siegen, with scientists at DESY and European XFEL reports the research in two articles in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Faster imaging in rubber X-ray CT imaging helps tires become smarter and more efficient

Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd (SRI) and Tohoku University teamed up to increase the speed of 4-Dimensional Computed Tomography (4D-CT) a thousand-fold, making it possible to observe rubber failure in tires in real-time.

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Physicists flip particle accelerator setup to gain a clearer view of atomic nuclei

Physicists at MIT and elsewhere are blasting beams of ions at clouds of protons —like throwing nuclear darts at the speed of light—to map the structure of an atom's nucleus.

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A new spin on energy-efficient electronics

The promising field of spintronics seeks to manipulate electron spin to make a new breed of small and low-power electronic devices. A recent study used Argonne's Advanced Photon Source to bring the widespread use of spintronics closer to reality.

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Study identifies a new type of diurnal effect for cosmic ray-boosted dark matter

Over the past few decades, astrophysicists and cosmologists have gathered various observations hinting at the existence of dark matter (DM), a type of matter that does not absorb, reflect or emit light, and thus cannot be detected using conventional techniques for observing electromagnetic radiation. While physicists have predicted its existence based on astrophysical and cosmological observations, so far, DM has never been observed experimentally.

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Radioactive molecules may help solve mystery of missing antimatter

Stars, galaxies, and everything in the universe, including our own bodies, are comprised of so-called regular matter. Regular matter includes atoms and molecules, which are made up of tiny particles, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons. These particles dominate our universe, vastly outnumbering their lesser-known counterparts: antimatter particles. First experimentally discovered in 1932 by the late Nobel laureate and longtime Caltech professor Carl Anderson, antimatter particles have the opposite charges to their matter counterparts. The antimatter particle to the negatively charged electron, for example, is the positively charged positron.

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A bio-inspired mechano-photonic artificial synapse

Multifunctional and diverse artificial neural systems can incorporate multimodal plasticity, memory and supervised learning functions to assist neuromorphic computation. In a new report, Jinran Yu and a research team in nanoenergy, nanoscience and materials science in China and the US., presented a bioinspired mechano-photonic artificial synapse with synergistic mechanical and optical plasticity. The team used an optoelectronic transistor made of graphene/molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) heterostructure and an integrated triboelectric nanogenerator to compose the artificial synapse. They controlled the charge transfer/exchange in the heterostructure with triboelectric potential and modulated the optoelectronic synapse behaviors readily, including postsynaptic photocurrents, photosensitivity and photoconductivity. The mechano-photonic artificial synapse is a promising implementation to mimic the complex biological nervous system and promote the development of interactive artificial intelligence. The work is now published on Science Advances.

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Scientists propose highly reliable thermal power generator

Chinese scientists have proposed a highly reliable thermal power generator by combining thermoacoustic effect and triboelectric effect.

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Scientists realize real-time GW-BSE investigations on spin-valley exciton dynamics

Prof. Zhao Jin's research team from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has made important progress in the development of spin-valley exciton dynamics. The research developed an ab initio nonadiabatic molecular dynamics (NAMD) method based on spin-resolved exciton dynamics. The team gained the first clear and complete physical picture of valley exciton dynamics in MoS2 from the perspective of first-principles calculations based on GW plus real-time Bethe-Salpeter equation (GW + rtBSE-NAMD).

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New machine learning tool diagnoses electron beams in an efficient, non-invasive way

Beams of accelerated electrons power electron microscopes, X-ray lasers, medical accelerators and other devices. To optimize the performance of these applications, operators must be able to analyze the quality of the beams and adjust them as needed.

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Searching for hints of new physics in the subatomic world

Peer deeper into the heart of the atom than any microscope allows and scientists hypothesize that you will find a rich world of particles popping in and out of the vacuum, decaying into other particles, and adding to the weirdness of the visible world. These subatomic particles are governed by the quantum nature of the Universe and find tangible, physical form in experimental results.

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Effective Field Theories and the nature of the universe

What is the world made of? This question, which goes back millennia, was revisited by theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg from the University of Texas in Austin, TX, USA in the first of an international seminar series, 'All Things EFT.' Weinberg's seminar has now been published as an article in the journal EPJ H.

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Study compares three top atomic clocks with record accuracy over both fiber and air

In a significant advance toward the future redefinition of the international unit of time, the second, a research team led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has compared three of the world's leading atomic clocks with record accuracy over both air and optical fiber links.

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E. Coli calculus: Bacteria find the derivative optimally

Scientists from the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology at The University of Tokyo calculated the efficiency of the sensory network that bacteria use to move towards food and found it to be optimal from an information theory standpoint. This work may lead to a better understanding of bacterial behavior and their sensory networks.

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Cost-effective, easily manufactured ventilators for COVID-19 patients

Scientists have been working for the past year to find ways to curb the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though it is outside their typical realm of study, physicists have been playing an important role in many aspects of research about the pandemic and its impact on people.

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Enhanced ceramics could play pivotal role in advancing 5G technology

5G, or the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks, is touted as having finally arrived for ultrafast download speeds, an end to dropped calls and buffering, and greater connectivity to advance autonomous vehicle development, remote surgery, and the Internet of Things.

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New result from the LHCb experiment challenges leading theory in physics

The LHCb Collaboration at CERN has found particles not behaving in the way they should according to the guiding theory of particle physics—the Standard Model.

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Cold molecular clouds as cosmic ray detectors

The ionization of the neutral gas in an interstellar molecular cloud plays a key role in the cloud's evolution, helping to regulate the heating and cooling processes, the chemistry and molecule formation, and coupling the gas to magnetic fields. Usually starlight provides this ultraviolet radiation, but it is mostly restricted to localized regions near massive stars. For the bulk of the neutral gas in the Milky Way, ionization is governed by low energy cosmic-rays (CRs), fast-moving protons or atomic nuclei. Direct observations from the Earth can only probe high energy CRs because the solar wind restricts the penetration of CR into the solar system, but in the past few decades, the total CR ionization rate has been estimated indirectly with observations of diagnostic molecules and ions. Those values, however, rely on some uncertain estimates like the abundances of secondary species, gas densities, the rates of chemical reactions and not least, the amount of the dominant molecular species, molecular hydrogen.

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Faster fusion reactor calculations thanks to machine learning

Fusion reactor technologies are well-positioned to contribute to our future power needs in a safe and sustainable manner. Numerical models can provide researchers with information on the behavior of the fusion plasma, as well as valuable insight on the effectiveness of reactor design and operation. However, to model the large number of plasma interactions requires a number of specialized models that are not fast enough to provide data on reactor design and operation. Aaron Ho from the Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion group in the department of Applied Physics has explored the use of machine learning approaches to speed up the numerical simulation of core plasma turbulent transport. Ho defended his thesis on March 17.

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Scientists observe complex tunable magnetism tied to electrical conduction in a topological material

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have observed novel helical magnetic ordering in the topological compound EuIn2As2 which supports exotic electrical conduction tunable by a magnetic field. The discovery has significant implications for basic research into functional topological properties and may one day find use in a number of advanced technology applications.

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Improving measurements of surface viscosity of filaments and membranes

Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have published a scientific paper that lays the foundation for developing a more precise method of measuring surface viscosity in liquid filaments and biological membranes with viscous surfaces. This development could be applied in the food, pharmaceutical or biomedical industries.

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Method for determining electron beam properties could help future ultraviolet, X-ray synchrotron light sources

The detected intensity from two coherent point-like light sources depends on their relative positions. It is a well-known phenomenon called optical interference. In general, the intensity can range from zero (destructive interference) to some maximum value (constructive interference).

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Researchers find evidence of elusive Odderon particle

For 50 years, the research community has been hunting unsuccessfully for the so-called Odderon particle. Now, a Swedish-Hungarian research group has discovered the mythical particle with the help of extensive analysis of experimental data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.

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Demonstrating the world's fastest spintronics p-bit

Tohoku University researchers have, for the first time, developed the technology for the nanosecond operation of the spintronics-based probabilistic bit (p-bit)—dubbed "the poor man's quantum bit" (q-bit).

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How do birds breathe better? Researchers' discovery will throw you for a loop

Birds breathe with greater efficiency than humans due to the structure of their lungs—looped airways that facilitate air flows that go in one direction—a team of researchers has found through a series of lab experiments and simulations.

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Whispers from the dark side: What can gravitational waves reveal about dark matter?

The NANOGrav Collaboration recently captured the first signs of very low-frequency gravitational waves. Prof. Pedro Schwaller and Wolfram Ratzinger analyzed the data and, in particular, considered the possibility of whether this may point towards new physics beyond the Standard Model. In an article published in the journal SciPost Physics, they report that the signal is consistent with both a phase transition in the early universe and the presence of a field of extremely light axion-like particles (ALPs). The latter are considered as promising candidates for dark matter.

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The realization of a new type of information demon that profits from gambling strategies

Researchers at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy and the PICO group at Aalto University in Finland have introduced the idea of an information demon that follows a customary gambling strategy to stop non-equilibrium processes at stochastic times. The new demons they realized, which differ from the renowned Maxwell's demon, were presented in a paper published in Physical Review Letters.

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New perovskite LED emits a circularly polarized glow

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have revolutionized the displays industry. LEDs use electric current to produce visible light without the excess heat found in traditional light bulbs, a glow called electroluminescence. This breakthrough led to the eye-popping, high-definition viewing experience we've come to expect from our screens. Now, a group of physicists and chemists have developed a new type of LED that utilizes spintronics without needing a magnetic field, magnetic materials or cryogenic temperatures; a 'quantum leap' that could take displays to the next level.

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Researchers make breakthrough in solar cell materials

By using laser spectroscopy in a photophysics experiment, Clemson University researchers have broken new ground that could result in faster and cheaper energy to power electronics.

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A protocol to explore entanglement dynamics via spacetime duality

In recent years, there have been significant advancements in the development of digital quantum computers and simulators. These emerging physical systems are opening up unprecedented possibilities for controlling and measuring a variety of quantum dynamics. As a result, some fundamental questions in many-body physics that would have previously been considered speculative and outside the realm of experimental exploration can now be examined in laboratory settings.

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Tracking cosmic ghosts

The idea was so far-fetched it seemed like science fiction: create an observatory out of a one cubic kilometer block of ice in Antarctica to track ghostly particles called neutrinos that pass through the Earth. But speaking to Benedickt Riedel, global computing manager at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, it makes perfect sense.

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Optimal design for acoustic unobservability in water

Until now, it was only possible to optimize an acoustic cloaking structure for the air environment. However, with this latest research, "Acoustic cloak designed by topology optimization for acoustic-elastic coupled systems," published in the latest Applied Physics Letters, it is possible to design an acoustic cloak for underwater environments.

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Researchers extract in-demand isotope from plutonium leftovers

A new method developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory proves one effort's trash is another's valuable isotope.

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Setback for Majorana fermion as Microsoft team retracts research paper

A team of researchers at a Microsoft laboratory in the Netherlands, who published a 2018 paper in the journal Nature, has now retracted that paper, citing a lack of evidence to support their previous conclusions. The study involved trying to prove the existence of the fermion—a theorized particle that could possibly be both matter and antimatter. The retraction came after Sergey Frolov, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, found that another quantum phenomenon could mimic the results found by the original research team. After a re-analysis of their work, the researchers agreed with Frolov and contacted Nature to ask for a retraction.

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Observing the birth of a quasiparticle

Over the past decades, physicists worldwide have been trying to gain a better understanding of non-equilibrium dynamics in quantum many-body systems. Some studies investigated what are known as quasiparticles, disturbances or entities in physical systems that exhibit behavior similar to that of particles.

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Robots learn faster with quantum technology

Artificial intelligence is part of our modern life by enabling machines to learn useful processes such as speech recognition and digital personal assistants. A crucial question for practical applications is how fast such intelligent machines can learn. An experiment at the University of Vienna has answered this question, showing that quantum technology enables a speed-up in the learning process. The physicists, in an international collaboration within Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and the U.S., have achieved this result by using a quantum processor for single photons as a robot. This work, which con-tributes to the advancement of quantum artificial intelligence for future applications, is published in the current issue of the journal Nature.

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Bacteria know how to exploit quantum mechanics, study finds

Photosynthetic organisms harvest light from the sun to produce the energy they need to survive. A new paper published by University of Chicago researchers reveals their secret: exploiting quantum mechanics.

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IceCube detection of a high-energy particle proves 60-year-old theory

On December 6, 2016, a high-energy particle called an electron antineutrino hurtled to Earth from outer space at close to the speed of light carrying 6.3 petaelectronvolts (PeV) of energy. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a particle that quickly decayed into a shower of secondary particles. The interaction was captured by a massive telescope buried in the Antarctic glacier, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

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Using artificial intelligence to generate 3D holograms in real-time

Despite years of hype, virtual reality headsets have yet to topple TV or computer screens as the go-to devices for video viewing. One reason: VR can make users feel sick. Nausea and eye strain can result because VR creates an illusion of 3D viewing although the user is in fact staring at a fixed-distance 2D display. The solution for better 3D visualization could lie in a 60-year-old technology remade for the digital world: holograms.

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How the electronic properties and atomic vibrations of uranium are linked

Researchers have explained how the electronic properties and atomic vibrations of uranium are linked.

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Creating a new type of computing that's 'naturally probabilistic'

"You see, nature is unpredictable. How do you expect to predict it with a computer?" said American physicist Richard Feynman before computer scientists at a conference in 1981.

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LS2 report: CERN's oldest accelerator awakens

"Synchrotron (PS) is the beating heart of CERN's accelerator system. Situated at the center of the complex, it feeds particle beams not only to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but to many of CERN's major facilities, including the Antimatter Factory and the East Area." Klaus Hanke, head of the Proton Synchrotron operations team, chooses his words carefully to describe CERN's oldest accelerator still in operation. On 4 March, the veteran accelerator received its first particle beam after a two-year shutdown, during which it underwent significant upgrades to prepare it for higher luminosity (an indicator of the number of collisions).

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The physics of transonic shocks produced across a laminar flow airfoil

Armando Collazo Garcia III got more than he expected from a graduate course he took last spring. He developed a new understanding of the physics of transonic shocks produced across a laminar flow airfoil with boundary-layer suction and added a published paper to his resume.

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Microscopic wormholes possible in theory

Wormholes play a key role in many science fiction films—often as a shortcut between two distant points in space. In physics, however, these tunnels in spacetime have remained purely hypothetical. An international team led by Dr. Jose Luis Blázquez-Salcedo of the University of Oldenburg has now presented a new theoretical model in the science journal Physical Review Letters that makes microscopic wormholes seem less far-fetched than in previous theories.

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An investigation of thin liquid films at interfaces between ice and clay materials

For ice, so-called 'surface melting' was postulated as early as the 19th century by Michael Faraday: Already below the actual melting point, i.e. 0 °C, a thin liquid film forms on the free surface because of the interface between ice and air. Scientists led by Markus Mezger, group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (department of Hans-Jürgen Butt) and professor at the University of Vienna, have now studied this phenomenon in more detail at interfaces between ice and clay minerals.

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Microwave-assisted recording technology promises high-density hard disk performance

Researchers at Toshiba Corporation in Japan have studied the operation of a small device fabricated in the write gap of a hard disk drive's write head to extend its recording density. The device, developed by HWY Technologies, is based on a design concept known as microwave-assisted magnetic recording, or MAMR.

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Strategic air purifier placement reduces virus spread within music classrooms

The University of Minnesota School of Music was concerned about one-on-one teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and wondered if it should supplement its ventilation system with portable HEPA air purifiers.

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Safe, simple additive could cut agrochemical pollution

Adding a simple polymer to fertilizers or pesticides could dramatically reduce agricultural pollution, suggests a new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia.

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Evidence of superfluidity in a dipolar supersolid

Superfluidity in liquids and gases can manifest as a reduced moment of inertia (the rotational analog of mass) under slow rotations. Non-classical rotational effects can also be considered in the elusive supersolid phases of matter where superfluidity can coexist with a lattice structure. In a new report now published in Science, L. Tanzi and a research team at the National Institute of Optics and the Department of Astronomy at the University of Florence in Italy, showed how a recently discovered supersolid phase in dipolar quantum gases featured a reduced moment of inertia. The team studied a peculiar rotational oscillation mode in a harmonic potential to deduce a supersolid fraction and provide direct evidence of the supersolid nature of the dipolar construct.

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A device-independent protocol for more efficient random number generation

Recent advancements in the development of experimental Bell tests have enabled the implementation of a new type of device-independent random number generator. Remarkably, this new type of random number generators can be realized with malicious quantum devices, without requiring detailed models of the quantum devices used.

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Squids' ability to tune color and brightness of their iridescence comes down to subtle mechanism

Squids have long been a source of fascination for humans, providing the stuff of legend, superstition and myth. And it's no wonder—their odd appearances and strange intelligence, their mastery of the open ocean can inspire awe in those who see them.

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Establishing the origin of solar-mass black holes and the connection to dark matter

What is the origin of black holes and how is that question connected with another mystery, the nature of dark matter? Dark matter comprises the majority of matter in the Universe, but its nature remains unknown.

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New method could democratize deep learning-enhanced microscopy

Deep learning is a potential tool for scientists to glean more detail from low-resolution images in microscopy, but it's often difficult to gather enough baseline data to train computers in the process. Now, a new method developed by scientists at the Salk Institute could make the technology more accessible—by taking high-resolution images, and artificially degrading them.

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How the growth of ice depends on the fluid dynamics underneath

Researchers of the Toschi group of Eindhoven University of Technology think the water phase change problem with considering the water density anomaly is of great importance relating to common natural phenomena. Their research plan is firstly to understand the physics fundamentals, that is, the coupled problem of the stably and unstably stratified layers with considering the density anomaly.

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Xanadu announces programmable photonic quantum chip able to execute multiple algorithms

A team of researchers and engineers at Canadian company Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc., working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the U.S., has developed a programmable, scalable photonic quantum chip that can execute multiple algorithms. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they made their chip, its characteristics and how it can be used. Ulrik Andersen with the Technical University of Denmark has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining current research on quantum computers and the work by the team in Canada.

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Successor of the COMPASS experiment will measure fundamental properties of the proton and its relatives

Protons are one of the main building blocks of the visible universe. Together with neutrons, they make up the nuclei of every atom. Yet, several questions loom about some of the proton's most fundamental properties, such as its size, internal structure and intrinsic spin. In December 2020, the CERN Research Board approved the first phase ("phase-1") of a new experiment that will help settle some of these questions. AMBER, or Apparatus for Meson and Baryon Experimental Research, will be the next-generation successor of the Laboratory's COMPASS experiment.

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Tantalizing signs of phase-change 'turbulence' in RHIC collisions

Physicists studying collisions of gold ions 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, are embarking on a journey through the phases of nuclear matter—the stuff that makes up the nuclei of all the visible matter in our universe. A new analysis of collisions conducted at different energies shows tantalizing signs of a critical point—a change in the way that quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, transform from one phase to another. The findings, just published by RHIC's STAR Collaboration in the journal Physical Review Letters, will help physicists map out details of these nuclear phase changes to better understand the evolution of the universe and the conditions in the cores of neutron stars.

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Study shows that the GW190521 event could be explained by primordial black holes

In September 2020, the LIGO/Virgo collaboration, a large team of scientists working at different universities worldwide, announced that they had detected most massive gravitational wave binary signal observed to date, which they called GW190521. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, they explored the hypothesis that this signal was produced by the merger of two black holes, with at least the primary component mass in the mass gap predicted by the pair-instability supernova theory.

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Particle detector at Fermilab plays crucial role in Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment

A century ago, physicists didn't know about the existence of neutrinos, the most abundant, elusive and ethereal subatomic particles of matter in the universe.

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Twistoptics—A new way to control optical nonlinearity

Nonlinear optics, a study of how light interacts with matter, is critical to many photonic applications, from the green laser pointers we're all familiar with to intense broadband (white) light sources for quantum photonics that enable optical quantum computing, super-resolution imaging, optical sensing and ranging, and more. Through nonlinear optics, researchers are discovering new ways to use light, from getting a closer look at ultrafast processes in physics, biology, and chemistry to enhancing communication and navigation, solar energy harvesting, medical testing, and cybersecurity.

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Factoring in gravitomagnetism could do away with dark matter

Observations of galactic rotation curves give one of the strongest lines of evidence pointing towards the existence of dark matter, a non-baryonic form of matter that makes up an estimated 85% of the matter in the observable Universe. Current assessments of galactic rotation curves are based upon a framework of Newtonian accounts of gravity, a new paper published in EPJ C, by Gerson Otto Ludwig, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil, suggests that if this is substituted with a general relativity-based model, the need to recourse to dark matter is relieved, replaced by the effects of gravitomagnetism.

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Terahertz waves from electrons oscillating in liquid water

Ionization of water molecules by light generates free electrons in liquid water. After generation, the so-called solvated electron is formed, a localized electron surrounded by a shell of water molecules. In the ultrafast localization process, the electron and its water shell display strong oscillations, giving rise to terahertz emission for tens of picoseconds.

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A potential model for a real physical warp drive

A pair of researchers at Applied Physics has created what they describe as the first general model for a warp drive, a model for a space craft that could travel faster than the speed of light, without actually breaking the laws of physics. Alexey Bobrick, and Gianni Martire have written a paper describing their ideas for a warp drive and have published it in IOP's Classical and Quantum Gravity.

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Research contributes to understanding of hypersonic flow

Using data collected in a NASA Langley Mach 6 wind tunnel, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign replicated the hypersonic flow conditions of a compression ramp flow by means of Direct Numerical Simulation. The simulation yielded an abundance of additional data, which can be used to better understand the phenomena that occur surrounding vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds.

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Reading the physics hiding in data

Information is encoded in data. This is true for most aspects of modern life, but it is also true in most branches of contemporary physics, and extracting useful and meaningful information from very large data sets is a key mission for many physicists.

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Researchers unveil issues with nuclear theory and observe no magic behavior at N=32 in potassium isotopes

Measuring the size of atomic nuclei has sometimes been useful to probe aspects of nucleon-nucleon interaction and the bulk properties of nuclear matter. The charge radius of atomic nuclei, which can be extracted using laser spectroscopy techniques, is sensitive to both the bulk properties of nuclear matter and particularly subtle details of the interactions between protons and neutrons.

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The Large Hadron Collider's official tally: 59 new hadrons and counting

How many new particles has the LHC discovered? The most widely known discovery is of course that of the Higgs boson. Less well known is the fact that, over the past 10 years, the LHC experiments have also found more than 50 new particles called hadrons. Coincidentally, the number 50 appears in the context of hadrons twice, as 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of hadron colliders: on 27 January 1971, two beams of protons collided for the first time in CERN's Intersecting Storage Rings accelerator, making it the first accelerator in history to produce collisions between two counter-rotating beams of hadrons.

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Model describes interactions between light and mechanical vibration in microcavities

Optomechanical microcavities are extremely small structures with diameters of less than 10 micrometers (about a tenth of a human hair) inside which light and mechanical vibrations are confined. Thanks to their small size and to efficient microfabrication techniques that enable them to hold intense light energy and interact with mechanical waves, microcavities can be used as mass and acceleration sensors and in Raman scattering (a spectroscopy technique deployed to analyze materials, including gases, liquids, and solids). A sound understanding of these phenomena can contribute in future to advances in areas such as biomedicine, including the development of sensors to detect molecules that serve as cancer markers, for example.

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A quantum internet is closer to reality, thanks to this switch

When quantum computers become more powerful and widespread, they will need a robust quantum internet to communicate.

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Complex fluid dynamics may explain hydroplaning

When a vehicle travels over a wet or flooded road, water builds up in front of the tire and generates a lift force. In a phenomenon known as hydroplaning, this force can become large enough to lift the vehicle off the ground.

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How does plastic debris make its way into ocean garbage patches?

Tons of plastic debris get released into the ocean every day, and most of it accumulates within the middle of garbage patches, which tend to float on the oceans' surface in the center of each of their regions. The most infamous one, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is in the North Pacific Ocean.

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Ultra-fast electron measurement provides important findings for the solar industry

Using a new method, physicists from TU Freiberg, in cooperation with researchers from Berkeley and Hamburg, are for the first time analyzing at the femtosecond scale the processes in a model system for organic solar cells. This can be used to develop high-performance and efficient solar cells. Key to this are ultra-fast flashes of light, with which the team led by Dr. Friedrich Roth works at FLASH in Hamburg, the world's first free-electron laser in the X-ray region.

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Theoretical interpretations of the pulsar timing data recently released by NANOGrav

The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) is a gravitational-wave detector that monitors areas in the vicinity of Earth using a network of pulsars (i.e., clock-like stars). At the end of 2020, the NANOGrav collaboration gathered evidence of fluctuations in the timing data of 45 pulsars, which could be compatible with a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) signal at nanohertz frequencies.

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Second order optical merons, or light pretending to be a ferromagnet

One of the key concepts in physics, and science overall, is the notion of a 'field' which can describe the spatial distribution of a physical quantity. For instance, a weather map shows the distributions of temperature and pressure (these are known as scalar fields), as well as the wind speed and direction (known as a vector field). Almost everyone wears a vector field on their head—every hair has an origin and an end, just like a vector. Over 100 years ago L.E.J. Brouwer proved the hairy ball theorem which states that you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating whorls, whirls (vortices) or cowlicks.

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Interesting pattern in cross-sections observed in F + HD → HF + D reaction

A team of researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Southern University of Science and Technology, has discovered a thought-provoking pattern in cross-sections observed in an F + HD → HF + D reaction. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their double-pronged approach to learning more about the role of relativistic spin-orbit interactions in chemical reactions. T. Peter Rakitzis, with the University of Crete, and IESL-FORTH, has published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining the difficulty of studying chemical reactions at the quantum level and the work done by the team in China.

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When foams collapse (and when they don't)

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have revealed how liquid foams collapse by observing individual collapse events with high-speed video microscopy. They found that cracks in films led to a receding liquid front that sweeps up the original film border, inverts its shape, and releases a droplet, which hits and breaks other films. Their observations and physical model provide key insights into how to make foams more or less resistant to collapse.

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